Matthew 10:28-31 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Often in our religious efforts, in our attempts to conceive of God, we make God in our own image. We make him much smaller than the One described in today’s scriptures. He knows even the number of hairs on our heads. We cannot conceive of that, so we generalize or rationalize what Jesus meant when He said, even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Yes, we were made like God in many ways, capable of functioning with him, relating to him, interacting with him, but we are not omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. We are not as the all-consuming God, the ever-present God, the eternal One. God knows every sparrow that falls, not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. As the mighty God beyond our understanding and knowledge, He keeps a constant inventory of all living matter and of all inert, static matter. He has inventory of all matter of any sort, carbon or non carbon. He knows the stars in the heavens, the length and breath of the galaxies. He knows the meaning of existence, the beginning and ending of all that is and ever will be. He is a God whose word is timeless, forever speaking, forever creating. He also is perfect, holy, just, right in every detail of existence and awareness. The Bible describes him as the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. (James 1:17 KJV) Consequently, anything that is incongruent to God’s being and nature is open for judgment. No imperfection can stand outside of his attention. Sin is averse to God’s nature of harmony and peace. Jesus says, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. There is no place of security outside of God’s complete authority; there is no rest outside of perfect harmony with him. Any action or attitude different from his just and holy nature will face eternal judgment. God is not a man who relies on the “oops I’ve made a mistake; I will try again.” He does everything perfectly the first time. He made humankind as He desired with the freewill of deciding the direction of their own lives. He set people apart to have the nature they have of making their own choices. But there is only one perfect God, and He is the Father of all things. Men and women fail because they are not God, just made in his likeness. Jesus says very clearly, call no man “good” not even him. As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.” (Mark 10:17-18) Of course, we know Jesus was sinless, but He was still in the raiment of man. Man’s nature is to do his own thing. He has a freewill madness: to be like God. Nonetheless in his humanity, he fails to be completely good and just at all times.
The Old Testament depicts this condition of self-will in mankind very clearly. A chosen race, selected by God out of a pagan caldron of idol worshippers was given his blessing. A schooling was to take place with a chosen race, one established by Abraham’s faith: his decision to believe in the unknown God and his words regardless of his circumstances. God takes Abraham’s progeny and forces them into slavery, placing them within the Egyptian kingdom with their own god, the Pharaoh. As slaves they had no freedom. God then frees them from this bondage with miracle upon miracle. When they are fleeing Egypt, He makes a way where there is no way when they reach the Red Sea. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. (Exodus 14:21-22) After they passed through, the Egyptians went into the sea on the dry ground, and Moses stretched out his hand again and the sea closed over them and all were drowned. God’s people were now free indeed—no longer in bondage to anyone’s will but their own. He escorts them through the wilderness with one miracle after another, separating them from the rest of the world. He takes care of them as one would a baby, providing nourishment for them, not even allowing the sandals on their feet to wear out. In this wilderness, He gives them the law to regulate their lives and to show them He is a just and good God, but a God of holiness as well. The law and regulations flesh out the image of God and set00 them on a road of faith, believing God’s written words. By obeying the law and regulations, they are to be especially blessed by God, above all other people on the face of the earth. He is no longer just Abraham and Moses’ God, but their God. By faithfulness to this God, they would receive a promised land, an inheritance for loving the God of Abraham who was given the promise of a land his descendants could inhabit peacefully. Their wilderness journey ended at the doorsteps of this land, but they failed to enter in because they did not believe God. The Bible says, And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief. (Hebrews 3:18-19) They were punished for their lack of faith in God’s words and had to return to the wilderness for 40 years. We are warned in Hebrews not to be as the Israelites. When they finally do enter in, God gives them Jericho by faith alone, probably to encourage them. But now their babyhood was left behind. They would have to fight for the land: with God’s strong right hand they defeated the nations within the land. In the Promised Land they were to live by faith, following the laws and regulations that God gave them in the wilderness. Some of their leaders were faithful in following God. David was the most faithful, seeking God in almost everything he did as the Israelites’ king. But, most of the kings and religious leaders were unfaithful to the God who had delivered them out of slavery. Even though chosen, given miracle after miracle, their freewill to live according to man’s sinful nature caused them to do even worse things than the people who had inhabited the land before them. Even under the threat of great punishment issued by the prophets, their hearts hardened against God. God finally drove them out of the Promise Land except for a small remnant. The remnant was left because of God faithfulness to his oath of blessing Abraham.
Was all of this an “oops.” Or was it the plan from the beginning? We read in the New Testament that God’s plan was always in place: He (Jesus) was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. (1 Peter 1:20) God who is greater than our imagination was in the business of making children in the household of God; consequently, He was not negligent in seeking his own. Yet He knew even the most chosen of races would let him down, for their humanness was filled with the sickness of sin. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned. (Romans 5:12) All sinned, all were contaminated by the nature of mankind. Even the Jews who found rightness with God were contaminated with sin. They experienced special blessings from God, even though they knew what it was to be under the oppression of others. They experienced supernatural deliverance from this oppression, even though they could not stay faithful to the mighty God of deliverance. They ended up hopelessly lost, so much so, that God drove them out of the Promised Land. This journey of humankind was necessary to make children of God. This was not an “oops" in God’s dealings with humans. God all along determined to adopt children into his household. Jesus’ teaching about the sparrow and the hairs on our heads reveals that God is greater than our imaginations, bigger than our wisdom, more knowledgeable that our deepest thinkers. His grace is greater than our sin. He is the galaxy maker, the star producer, the creator of all that is. He knows how to make children for his household. We cannot earn our way to heaven, we cannot make ourselves better, we cannot even be enveloped into God’s image without a Savior. The Jews, even though chosen, could not avoid their dead-end alley of self-will. Abraham is emblematic of faith, the right road to God. Even though his fleshly body was dead, even though Sarah could no longer produce children, he believed God’s promise to him that an Issac would be born. A year later when the angel of the Lord returned, Sarah had birthed a boy child: the promise had been fulfilled with a newborn baby. We are children of promise. Even though we are in a dead world, no hope of regeneration, God has promised us a new birth. We are to believe that promise which is fulfilled by faith in Jesus’ works. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 3-5) Humans made with absolute freedom have to come to the realization that even if chosen, even if blessed, even if delivered from slavery, their condition of being as God is hopeless. They need a Savior, for God is God and man is not God. God does not make mistakes. He talks to us within our perceptions, our reality, our awareness, our senses; but He is often far removed from our understanding. He does not need to explain what is or what is not. He does not use our periodic table of existence. We do not know what we shall be; we do know the reality of our coming existence. We do know that the God of all inventory has made it so we who are IN CHRIST will live forever in his household AS MEMBERS OF THE perfect body of Christ. Yes, He knows the number of hairs on our heads and He knows so much more, enough to fill eternity. Amen!
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