1 Chronicles 27:23

"Handfuls of Purpose,"

For All Gleaners

"But David took not the number of them from twenty years old and under: because the Lord had said he would increase Israel like to the stars of the heavens." 1 Chronicles 27:23 .

David here showed himself to be at once a poet and a saint. He could have numbered Israel arithmetically, but the remembrance of a promise made by the Lord stayed his hand when he thought of thus limiting the Holy One of Israel. God's purpose concerning his Church is that it shall be "like to the stars of the heavens": yet there are men amongst us who love to take the statistics of the Church: so many over twenty-one years of age, and so many under twenty-one years of age; so many old, and so many young; so many rich and so many poor; all this may easily be pushed too far, and statistics may become a misrepresentation of the kingdom of heaven. When God said he would make Israel like to the stars of the heavens, he superseded arithmetical action, he left arithmetic itself far behind, for it has no figures wherewith to represent the boundlessness of the empire of heaven. It is enough that we have the Lord's promise that the Church shall prevail. We might as well take up a seed to see whether it is growing, as to number the Church in order to see whether God's word is being fulfilled. As Christian teachers and preachers we rest upon the words, "The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." David took his rest here, and so he let all numbering beyond a given point cease and determine. On the other hand, there is a numbering that may be permitted, for the sake of pointing rebukes on the one side, and affording encouragement on the other. Our doctrine is that we are not to make too much of numbers, for we may be deceived by them either in the way of exaggeration or defect. The Church of God is to be weighed as well as numbered: for spiritual life relates more to quality than to quantity. When one man is converted the whole world may be converted at the same time, prospectively and instrumentally. Let not the Church, therefore, consult its arithmetic, but consult divine covenants and promises, when it would excite its courage, and bring all its powers to their noblest fruition.