Anxiety and fearfulness are everyday struggles that man has attempted to manage in one way or another throughout the generations. Still, for those who have put their faith in Jesus, these struggles take on new significance. We want to experience the effects of the gospel in every area of our life.
Do your anxieties keep you from speaking out about your faith, forcing you to live as a secret Christian? Does fear of what others might say, think, or do to you, keep you from living openly and confidently as a believer in Christ's death and resurrection? You are not alone. Jesus' disciples struggled in this way too. Today's lesson helps us find our way out of fear and into faith as we hear Jesus' encouraging words of love and concern, and then see the demonstration and proof of them in His death on the cross for us.
“I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. 5 But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him! 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. 7 Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Luke 12:4-7
Here, Jesus is speaking to His disciples and us with such great personal affection calling those who believe in Him 'my friends.' Yet, there is an urgency in Jesus' speech as He both warns us against fearing man and strengthens and encourages our hearts with the reassurance of God's love for and care of us.
Jesus repeatedly reassures and invites us to "Fear not" (Luke 12:7), but, at first glance, we might falter because these words draw our eyes to the very thing we are doing. We understand the command, but we may be held down in the quicksand of debilitating fear, trying desperately and unsuccessfully to escape its clutches. Such sinful fear which brings bondage into our spirit can make us feel worthless and isolated, unloved and forgotten, like one of a flock of seemingly insignificant and defenseless sparrows fending for themselves. As apostle Paul said:
“For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing…Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Romans 7:18-19, 24
But Jesus understands our weakness and calls us out of slavish bondage to fear of what man would do, say, or think about us, in particular as we confess Christ to the world with our words and actions. Compared to the profound beauty, power, and grace of a gospel-directed life that is everlasting, man’s temporal threats can only harm our earthly physical body, and after this, they can do nothing more. Jesus exhorts us to live fearlessly and boldly, trusting wholeheartedly in Him:
“do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” Luke 12:4-5
Man has no power over our souls. Only God has the power to take life and the authority to cast a soul into hell for refusing to put faith in Jesus as Savior (Luke 13:3; Romans 6:23; John 3;16).
The only One we need fear is God, with holy and positive reverent fear as our Creator, Lord, and Savior. We desire above all to avoid displeasing God and to embrace His will and wisdom, which astoundingly gives us the spiritual freedom not to fear people or other things that do not last in this mortal world. We ask: how can this be?
The answer flows from the cross of Christ, where the love of Jesus, which overcomes fear, is displayed. Jesus' death on the cross powerfully proves God's deep care for us and provides eternal protection for us.
God's only begotten Son locked the door to Death and Hades for those who believe in His redeeming work, and now our worst fear of death, which lies at the heart of all anxieties, has been destroyed:
“But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17-18)
At the cross, Jesus went willingly into the pitch blackness of Sheol (translated from Hebrew as Hades; Psalm 88:12), where God unleashed the full force of His wrath on Jesus for sin. There was no comfort for Jesus in this torment. He endured death and all its horrors to release us into a new life of faith in Him. We now rejoice in the light of God’s glory coming from the lamp of the Lamb (Revelation 21:23). Look what He has done for you:
You have the everlasting life of Jesus running through your veins because God did not spare his own Son but gave Him up for you (Romans 8:32). Because you believe in the name of the Son of God, you have eternal life (1 John 5:13).
No enemy can harm your souls since “You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) by “the anointed Jesus, our life-giver, who has dismantled death, obliterating all its effects on our lives, and has manifested his immortal life in us by the gospel.” (2 Timothy 1:10 TPT)
As the evangelist George Whitefield said, “We are immortal until our work on earth is done” because “he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3-4).
You are delivered from the body of death that Paul spoke about in Romans 7:24. You can now say: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.“ (Romans 8:11)
Let us now consider the two reassuring illustrations that Jesus gave as to why we should ‘fear not.’ Both word pictures show the intimate and attentive love of the Father whom we now hold in worshipful awe because Jesus has reconciled us to God (2 Corinthians 5:18).
The first is of a little bird, which was so common as to be insignificant - the sparrow. Its worth in terms of monetary value in Jesus’ day was so minimal: “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?” (Luke 12:6).
In some countries, sparrows are on the decline, so their value is higher than in other places where they are so plentiful as to be deemed pests. The earthly value attached to these birds fluctuates depending on whether they are considered useful to man or a nuisance. However, before the face of God, every single sparrow is known. Likewise, every believer is remembered by God, seen and known to Him; their worth is fixed and unchangeable to Him:
“And not one of them is forgotten before God.” Luke 12:6
In Matthew 10, we read further that not one sparrow and, by inference not one of His children, can die apart from God’s sovereign will, governing providence, and loving consent:
“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” Matthew 10:29
The second picture given is that “even the hairs of your head are all numbered.” (Luke 12:6). Once again, Jesus uses something so familiar and plentiful to highlight the attention and care of our God. The worth of hair to man varies according to the beholder. It represents wisdom in old age (Proverbs 16:31), adornment in elaborate hairstyles (1 Peter 3:3), and cutting it means one thing to some (Acts 18:18) and retaining it is significant to others (Numbers 6:5). But we cannot fathom keeping a daily count of the hairs on our head. We lose hair every day and rarely notice, but our God sees.
How beautiful it is to read that God has as it were a register of every single hair on our heads, an inventory which does not read, ‘one head of hair,’ but every single hair has a number affixed to it. The old grey hairs from an elder, the soft tufts of hair on a newborn baby, the brittle strands from a chronically ill person - God tracks them all. God has not missed a single hair telling us that “not a hair of your head will perish” (Luke 21:18).
Nothing is apart or outside of His care, and nothing can harm those in Christ who are living eternally with God. We are intimately known, down to the smallest detail, and forever loved.
“Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Matthew 6:26
With such a tender eye for small sparrows, how much more will God care for you, His beloved child? Far more! God knew you and intentionally formed you in your mother's womb. He has a plan and a purpose for you; as the psalmist said, "in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them." (Psalm 139:16) You are loved!