Well, Pastor John and Noel have landed in South America. Please join me in praying for them as they travel and minister in Brazil and Argentina and Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires and Campina Grande. Of course, big international trips like this one also mean that we must release Pastor John from the podcast too.

And this is the last APJ with him for a while. If everything goes as planned, he'll be back in the States and back in the studio. And we will be back with new episodes somewhere around March 18th, if my math is right, March 18th. And if you are not, make sure you subscribe to the podcast and your favorite podcast app to get those episodes as soon as they are released.

But before Pastor John left for the airport, I had a chance to ask him one more APJ question. Here's that episode. But today's question is really good. It arrives from a podcast listener named Hannah. Dear Pastor John, first, thank you for your dedication to the teaching of the word.

The Lord has used your ministry in my life more than I can express. I have a question about the way it seems that biblical persons, even God-fearing ones, seem to consider casting lots as a way to communicate with God. Even the disciples cast lots to decipher God's will in choosing the 12th disciple.

Is this morally commendable? Does this mean if I were to ask a question of God and then cast lots, such as rolling a dice, that answer counts as an accurate answer to his will? Just feels too easy. Feels wrong and a bit like witchcraft. But I don't see any prohibition of the practice in the New Testament either.

Pastor John, what would you say to Hannah? Is it morally right? So Hannah says, does this mean that if I were to ask a question of God and then cast lots or roll dice, that I can count on an accurate answer to his will? And then she adds, just doesn't feel right.

Too easy, wrong. I mean, she even says it's a bit like witchcraft. But I don't see any prohibition of it in the New Testament, she says. So Hannah, your instincts here are very good. And your biblical assessment is right. There is no prohibition in the Bible against casting lots.

That's true. Just as important, there is no command in the Bible to cast lots. In the Old Testament, the frequent references to casting lots are almost always regarding the division of the land among the tribes of Israel, which they did by casting lots. In the New Testament, there are only two mentions of casting lots.

One is ugly and the other is God approved. The soldiers, you remember, cast lots for Jesus' clothes at the foot of the cross. Just a horrible, callous moment. And then in Acts 1, 21 following, the apostles did cast lots between Matthias and Joseph after they had applied all the proper criteria to try to make sure that we had two fit candidates to replace Judas as an apostolic witness to the resurrection.

Now, my answer to your question, if I were to ask a question of God, then roll dice, can I get an accurate answer? My answer to this is no. Not only is there no command in the Bible to cast lots, there's no promise. This is crucial to answer your question.

There's no promise in the Bible that if you do cast lots, you will get the right answer. So no, rolling dice is no certain way to find the Lord's will. You don't have a promise to that effect. So I think you are right to be surprised, as I am in hearing you, and suspicious that certain people whom you say are otherwise godly put their stock in casting lots as a means of ordinary guidance in the Christian life.

I think that's crazy. In fact, I think we can say with strong authority and conviction that if someone makes this a pattern in their life, they are out of step with the Bible. And the reason I say that is because in all the instructions that we have for how to live a Christian life and how to make decisions and find and do the will of God in the whole New Testament, this is never mentioned, never, never, never mentioned as part of the way we're to go about discerning the Lord's will for our lives.

That would be very strange, wouldn't it, if it were a good and helpful practice? I'm convinced it is not a good and helpful practice as part of the ordinary way of following Jesus, because what we get instead in the New Testament is a pattern of discernment that is different, very different than casting lots.

I'm give you three examples. Here's the most familiar, Romans 12. Two, don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable and perfect. So the pervasive pattern of discerning God's will is this.

It's rooted in a renewal of the mind. This happens as we saturate our minds with God's Word and have our moral senses trained to discern what honors Christ and what doesn't, what loves people and what doesn't. By the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern. The basic problem with casting lots—mark this now—the basic problem with casting lots is that it does not require any transformation of the mind at all.

A chimpanzee can do it. A robot can do it. In itself, there's nothing spiritual or holy about it. It's not God's desire for us to do things that chimpanzees can do. He wants us to become mature and conformed to his own character so that we see what is beautiful in Christ and in Christ's way, and then love it and then choose it.

But casting lots doesn't require that we see the beauty of holiness at all, which means that choosing it doesn't glorify God. Do you see this? This is so central and foundational. It glorifies chance. But if you choose a path of behavior because you see its fitness as a way of glorifying God and honoring Christ and helping people, then Christ is honored when you choose it, and people are loved when you choose it.

That's what God's looking for, not in robotic ways of discerning a path. Right. Here's another example. Philippians 1, 9, the prayer, "It's my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruits of righteousness that come through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God." If we try to be full of the fruits of righteousness by casting lots, we totally miss the point of what righteousness is.

It's the fruit of love mingled with knowledge and insight bathed in prayer and growing up into the glory of God. That's not what casting lots does. Here's one last example. Ephesians 5, 8, "At one time you were darkness. Now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true, and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord." Ephesians 5, 8 to 10.

All of that would be canceled out, just canceled out by casting lots as an ordinary part of discernment. When Paul says, "Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord," he means go down deep into what it means to be children of the light and act according to your new nature.

So here's my conclusion. Not only don't you have any certainty of pleasing God if you roll dice, you put yourself outside the beautiful pattern of New Testament transformation by the Spirit through the Word. Christ wants you to glorify Him and His way by the way you make your choices.

But lots are mindless things. God is not mindless. You're not mindless. Sanctification is not mindless. Discernment is not mindless. You have the mind of Christ, and you can see the beauty of holiness and glorify the Lord of holiness by choosing it for what it is. Wonderful little survey on how we make God-honoring decisions.

Thank you, Pastor John. And speaking of God's sovereignty over random chance, I talked with Vern Poythress a few years back on this same topic. You can see what he adds to the conversation in episode 807, especially on Proverbs 16, 33, the idea that God still yet remains sovereign over every coin flip.

Really interesting stuff. And then be sure to see him explain mathematically in the follow-up episode, White Casinos Always Win, in the end. That's episode number 808. Those episodes and about 1,300 others can be found at our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. I am your host Tony Reinke. Please be praying for the Pipers now in South America.

Pray for their trip. Pray that the Lord bless their ministry there and Lord willing, Pastor John will return to the studio with us around March 18th. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Thank you for praying for Pastor John and for supporting our labor as a desiring God. We'll see you soon enough.