RC Sproul Jr

Children are naturally curious. They not only want to know more, but want to know more about us. “What’s your favorite animal?” “Do you have a favorite food?” Some even ask what my favorite number is. Favorite number? I understand preferring one color to another, as such touches on matters of aesthetics. I understand favorite animals as well, as each different animal uniquely manifests the glory and wisdom of God in creation. Favorite food makes sense too, even if it is just a matter of taste. But favorite number? How would one choose? “Oh, I much prefer 8 because it is divisible by both 2 and 4, whereas poor 9 is only divisible by 3.”

It is not just children, however, who find something sacred in numbers. Professional athletes have been known to pay tens of thousands of dollars to secure the rights to wear particular numbers on their jerseys. Fans, by the thousands, pay hundreds to wear those same numbers on replica jerseys. Nor is this simply a Western phenomenon. Some among the Chinese are so fascinated by the power of numbers that they will name their restaurants after them. I used to frequent one called 4-5-6. Why this obsession with numbers?

Perhaps we find the answer in Eden. Numbers, because of their abstract nature, may be that place where our thinking grows closest to God’s. We hear in the harmony of music and we see in the dance of the heavenly spheres echoes and reflections of the beauty of not just creation but the Creator. In its place, this is right and proper. We should always marvel at His glory and power. But we must always remember that His ways are not our ways, His thoughts not our thoughts. We must not, as Satan tempted us, see numbers as a tool for our own power and glory.

As the tenth century drew to its conclusion, too many Christians saw in that grand, round number what they thought was a glimpse into God’s private thoughts. Disappointments along these lines, then and now, can be peculiarly damaging, as theologies are twisted and Scriptures denied in order to explain how our math turned out wrong. If we say, “We know from searching the Scriptures that Jesus will return by this date,” and He does not return, we are left with the choice of affirming either that the Bible is not clear, or worse, wrong, or that Jesus did something else important. (See the founding of Seventh-day Adventism.)

As the twentieth century drew to its close, many of us suffered from the same folly. Whether it was 88 Reasons Jesus Will Return in 1988 or even the technological version of millennial fever that some tended to favor, we thought our math would show us the mind and plan of God. We were wrong.

There is, however, a number that has the power to reveal to us God’s will for our lives — first. Jesus commands that we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. It’s the only number we need to know. Jesus not only doesn’t tell us to divine the day and the hour, He insists that no man knows this. He doesn’t tell us to cook our numbers so that we might read the future in their tea leaves. He tells us to leave all such foolishness and to be busy about the business of pursuing His kingdom.

Leave the numbers to our one true King. Seek first His kingdom, remembering that there is one faith, one baptism, and one Lord, world without end. Amen.

Have you ever wondered, perhaps when reading through John Calvin’s Institutes or the Westminster Confession of Faith, why God gave us His Word in such a confusing and disjointed way? I mean, shouldn’t the book of Genesis be about the doctrine of revelation rather than being about the creation of the world, the fall of man, and the lives of the patriarchs? How can we read God’s Word until we have carefully articulated a doctrine of revelation?

And wouldn’t it be more sensible if Moses and the Holy Spirit had explained to us theology proper, the doctrine of God, before saying, “In the beginning God …?” That way we would know of whom the words spoke. At least the last book in our Bibles deals with last things. I don’t think, however, anyone would describe Revelation as straightforward prose, something easily understood.

When I was in seminary, I had an outstanding professor of systematic theology. He was no atomist, a person who comes to the Word of God and looks at each passage as if it were in a vacuum. As if there were no relation between this text and that. We can’t, after all, say the Bible here teaches x and there teaches non-x, and we’ll believe both if we’re pious enough.

He rightly defended the labor of systematics as an attempt to rightly understand the Word of God in its context. He showed that the God we worship is a God of order. His Word coheres; it is one Word. But it is one Word given to us in historical narratives, wisdom literature, and prophetic discourses. There are also didactic portions, but the Bible isn’t a systematics text. If we preach as if it were, we do a disservice to the Word, and to preaching.

One of the dangers of treating the Bible as a mere sourcebook of quotes to corroborate our systematic theology is that such makes it easier for us to ride our hobby horses. We Reformed folk, of course, are rather adept at talking about God’s sovereignty. And the Bible talks about His sovereignty in many places. But the Bible isn’t only about His sovereignty. Preaching exegetically, refusing to pick a theme and then go to the Bible, allows the Bible to balance our themes. If we follow God’s story, we are less likely to simply re-preach our favorite abstractions from God’s Word.

The same principle also works in reverse. Not only do we preachers like to talk about what we like to talk about, we don’t like to talk about what we don’t like to talk about. Some of us aren’t so well-known for our gifts in mercy ministry. We aren’t known the world around for preaching faithfully and powerfully on the “one-another” passages of the Bible. And so it would be rather easy for us to exacerbate our weaknesses by not preaching on them. We are not free to flit here and there, from one passage on election to another, in our preaching.

When we take the simple precaution of preaching through books of the Bible (understanding also that we probably have missed the point if we spend decade after decade preaching exclusively through Paul’s epistles), we can alleviate the temptation to stay inside our own comfort zone, and that of the sheep entrusted to our care. When we treat the Word as God’s story we are less likely to seek our own glory.