Tawa Baptist

Salt & Pepper

Scripture: Mark 9:38-50

Video Link: https://youtu.be/UozKwTQBBWY

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • The exorcist
  • Crime and punishment
  • Salty sayings
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Most dining tables have salt and pepper shakers on them. Salt and pepper add flavour and spice to the meal. The purpose of salt and pepper is to make the food taste better, but if you try eating salt and pepper on their own, you are in for a nasty surprise. 

Today we continue our series in the gospel of Mark, based on the lectionary readings. Last week we heard how Jesus defines greatness. The way up is down.

This week’s lectionary reading is a salt and pepper passage. By itself it tastes bitter and unpleasant. But mix a little salt and pepper in with Jesus’ goodness and grace, and it improves the quality of your relationships. From Mark 9, verse 38 we read…

38 “Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.” 39 “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, 40 for whoever is not against us is for us. 41 Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward. 42 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. 43 If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. 45 And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. 47 And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 where “‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ 49 Everyone will be salted with fire. 50 “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves and be at peace with each other.”

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

There’s an advert on TV which shows two toasters making toast. Each of the toasters is powered by electricity from different power companies. One of the power companies charges more for their electricity than the other company but, despite the difference in price, the toast comes out exactly the same.

There are any number of power companies, but electricity is electricity. It cooks toast the same, regardless of what power company you use. No power company has a monopoly on electricity.

In verse 38 of Mark 9, the disciple John reports how they saw someone driving out demons in the name of Jesus and told him to stop.

This is interesting. Earlier, in Mark chapter 9, the disciples had been unable to cast out a demon. Now we find someone who is not one of the twelve, but who believes in Jesus and is successful at performing exorcisms.

Why do the disciples think they have the right to instruct someone more competent than them? That’s like any one of us trying to tell Lydia Ko how to play golf.

Well, John told the unknown exorcist to stop because he was not one of them, he wasn’t in their club. The disciples think they are better than this unknown exorcist, even though the exorcist is more effective than they are.

Jesus had just been teaching his disciples about humility and service.

The unknown exorcist is serving the least and he is serving Jesus, but the disciples can’t see it. Jesus’ words haven’t sunk in yet. They don’t understand.  

You get the feeling John thinks he has done something good. Maybe he hopes to be commended by Jesus? Maybe he is wanting to climb the honour ladder and advance himself? But Jesus is not impressed.

In verse 39 Jesus corrects his disciples saying, ‘Do not stop him. For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, 40 for whoever is not against us is for us.’  

To do something in Jesus’ name means to be a bona-fide representative of Jesus. And to be a bona-fide representative, you need to stand in right relationship with Jesus, you need to trust him. It’s more than simply adding Jesus’ name to the end of your prayer, as important as that is.

The unknown exorcist wasn’t using Jesus’ name like a magic spell.

The unknown exorcist stood in right relationship with Jesus. He trusted in Jesus and was able to cast out demons by the power of the Holy Spirit.  

There are any number of power companies, but electricity is electricity.

It cooks toast the same, regardless of what power company you use.

No power company has a monopoly on electricity.

There are any number of Christians, but the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit is free to work through any believer who stands in right relationship with Jesus. No disciple, no church, no denomination has a monopoly on overcoming evil by the power of the Spirit.  

If another Christian is doing good at school or at work, or if another church is doing good in the hood, then don’t knock them. Encourage them. We are on the same side.

In verse 41 Jesus goes on to say: Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.

Don’t you love how Jesus keeps it real. Not many of us are going to perform miracles in this life. But any Christian believer can give a cup of water in Jesus’ name.

Any representative of Christ can show kindness. It’s like Mother Teresa said, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”     

The greatest power is love.

Crime and punishment:

I started this sermon talking about salt and pepper. Verses 42-50 contain the salt and pepper of the gospel in concentrated form. Taken by themselves these verses taste bitter and unpleasant. They were never meant to be read in isolation from the rest of the Bible. So, as you hear them, remember God’s love for you. Remember too, the grace of Jesus. From verse 42 we read…

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea…”

Jesus is talking about crime and punishment here.

Who are these little ones, that Jesus mentions?

In verse 37 Jesus took a small child in his arms and said, ‘whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name, welcomes me…’ So, these little ones might be young children generally. Don’t do anything to harm children or lead them into sin because God is just. He will hold you to account.  

However, these little ones might also be adults, like the unknown exorcist in verse 38, who believe in Jesus. Don’t do anything to cause a fellow believer to fall or lose faith because God is just. He will hold you to account.

The point here is that we have a responsibility to set a good example for others in the faith, especially those who are looking up to us. To trip up one who enjoys a close relationship with Jesus is a terrible crime and merits a terrible punishment.

I don’t often tell jokes in my sermons, partly because I’m not a funny person but also because many of you don’t share my sense of humour. That said, I’m going to take a risk and tell you a joke now…

A little girl was talking to a man on the train about whales. The man said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human being because even though whales are very large, their throats are very small.

The little girl said that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. The man became visibly irritated saying again, in a stern voice, ‘It is physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human person’.

The little girl said, ‘When I get to heaven, I will ask Jonah’. 

The man retorted, ‘What if Jonah goes to hell?’ 

To which the girl replied, ‘Then you ask him’.

In verses 43-48, Jesus talks about hell and how to avoid going there.

43 If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.

Ditto that for your feet and your eyes.

In the first century, people were punished by having limbs lopped off.

The punishment for stealing was having your left hand cut off.

The punishment for a runaway slave was having one foot chopped off.

And sometimes people had an eye put out for various other crimes.

These sorts of punishments marked the offender for life, so everyone knew what they had done. And it made practical tasks a lot more difficult for the culprit themselves. 

That said, Jesus is not talking literally here. Jesus is not advocating self-harm. Jesus is speaking metaphorically. He is taking an image his listeners would be familiar with and using it to warn people not to go down the wrong path.

The hand is a metaphor for the sorts of things one might do that could lead them into sin. The foot is a metaphor for the sorts of places one might go that could lead them into sin. And the eye is a metaphor for the sorts of things one might look at that could lead them into sin.   

For example. If alcohol is a problem for you, then you need to be ruthless in cutting yourself off from alcohol. That doesn’t mean cutting off your hand so you can’t pick up a bottle.

That means not having any alcohol in the house. It means not going to the pub and not hanging out with friends who like to drink. And if there are lots of bottle stores between where you work and where you live, then it might mean taking an alternative route home to avoid temptation.

Now, I’m not picking on alcoholics here. You could substitute alcohol abuse for any other harmful behaviour, like gossip or sexual immorality or greed or pride or power or gambling or self-centredness or whatever. The point is to cut ourselves off from sin. Nip it in the bud.

That means we need to be thinking a few steps ahead. Where is this decision taking me? Where is this night out or this drink or this text message or this website or this friendship or this swipe right going to lead?  

Of course, we don’t always know where our first steps might take us. The thing about your hands and your feet and your eyes is that they are not inherently bad, they are useful and good in fact. Sometimes what seems innocent enough at first can be misleading. We need to be totally honest with ourselves.

Three times in three verses we come across the word hell. No one in the Bible talks about hell more than Jesus. The actual word translated as ‘hell’ is Gehenna, also known (in the Old Testament) as the Valley of Hinnom, that is, the Valley of Wailing. Gehenna is located on the south side of old Jerusalem.

Centuries before Mark wrote his gospel, the Israelites had sacrificed their children to pagan gods in the Valley of Hinnom. God hated this evil practice. After that, Gehenna became a rubbish dump, where maggots fed off animal carcasses and rubbish was always smouldering.

Given the stench and the filth and the continual burning, Gehenna became a metaphor for hell. Jesus was using an image his listeners were familiar with to describe what happens to the enemies of God in the afterlife. Jesus uses the term hell to describe the way God’s justice will deal with evil.

Those who are committed to doing evil are destroyed and thrown out like rubbish, 48 where “‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ Hell, therefore, is God’s righteous judgement on evil.

Verse 48 is a reference to the last verse in the book of Isaiah. It contains a message of judgment and hope. In Isaiah 66 we read…

23 From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all humankind will come and bow down before me,” says the Lord. 

24 “And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all humankind.”  

All this talk about hell is scary. It’s horrifying. Questions rise in our minds about what hell is like. What’s the temperature? Who will be there? Is it a place of conscious suffering? Or is it a place of annihilation? We simply don’t know the answers to those sorts of questions and we shouldn’t speculate.

What we can say is that God is good. He is just and merciful, gracious and true. God is love. The Lord of love is our judge and he will do what is right by each one.

The present reality is that this world is a war zone, spiritually speaking.

For the kingdom of God to be realised on earth, the kingdom of evil must be destroyed. Hell is the destruction of the kingdom of evil and that, ultimately, is good news for humanity.

In the same breath that Jesus talks about hell, he also talks about entering life and the kingdom of God. The point seems to be, participation in the kingdom of God is worth any sacrifice. It is better to be limited in what you do in this world, if that means enjoying eternal life.

Salty sayings:

Some of you may have played the word association game. With this game, you start with a word and then someone else says another word that is related in some way and you keep going like that until a word gets repeated or you can’t make an association.

For example, you might start with the word cow, then milk, cereal, breakfast, dinner, steak, salt, fire and so on. Now some of you may be thinking, I can see the connection between most of those words, but what’s the connection between salt and fire? Well, the thing that salt and fire have in common is they both purify things.  

In verses 49-50 of Mark 9, Jesus gives us three salty sayings. We don’t know whether Jesus said these sayings all on the same occasion or whether the gospel writer, Mark, simply collected the salty sayings of Jesus in one place to make them easier to recall.

What we do see here is a certain word association. Verse 48 talks about the fire that is not quenched and in verse 49 we get the saying, ‘everyone will be salted with fire’.

In the ancient world, salt was associated with purity because it came from the two most pure things known at the time. The sea and the sun. Likewise, fire was associated with purification because precious metals (like silver) were refined by fire.

Therefore, the phrase, everyone will be salted with fire, probably means everyone will be purified. This is not saying everyone will go through hell or purgatory. Being salted with fire is a metaphor for the process of purification we go through in this life.

Jesus’ second salty saying reads: Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again?

Salt is a preservative. Salt fights corruption. Unless the Christian resists corruption and evil, bad things will flourish unchecked in the world.

Followers of Jesus are to live a pure life, a life of moral integrity.  

But wait, there’s more. In the Law of Moses, grain offerings needed to be seasoned with salt before being burned. In Leviticus chapter 2, we read…

13 Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.

As well as being a preservative and a purifying agent, salt is also a symbol of a covenant commitment with God. To lose one’s saltiness is to lose one’s commitment to God. Mark 9, verse 50, is a warning against apostacy. Jesus is saying, don’t turn back on your commitment to God. Keep the faith.

Jesus’ third salty saying goes like this: Have salt among yourselves and be at peace with each other.

Salt brings out the best in food. Salt makes things taste more like themselves.

For example, if you put salt on an egg, it makes the egg taste more like an egg. Without salt, the egg tastes a bit like rubber.

To have salt among yourselves, therefore, is to bring out the best in each other. To help those around us to be the best version of themselves. Having salt among yourselves is the opposite of tripping others up or causing them to fall.

William Barclay explains Jesus’ meaning well. Have within yourselves the purifying influence of the Spirit of Christ. Be purified from selfishness and self-seeking, from bitterness and anger and grudge-bearing. Then you will be able to live in peace with those around you.[1]

Last week, we heard how the disciples had been arguing about who was the greatest. This kind of thinking does not bring out the best in people. It brings out the worst. Jesus wants his disciples to preserve their relationships together and to bring out the best in each other. This requires a covenant of salt, a commitment to serving one another’s wellbeing. 

Conclusion:

Each of us (if we are honest with ourselves) is a mixture of good and evil.

We are not pure and we cannot purify ourselves. So where does that leave us?

Well, God does not want to send you to hell. The Lord does not want anyone to perish, he wants everyone to come to repentance and be saved. Your soul is precious to God. So precious in fact, that God sent his own dear Son, Jesus, to redeem your life.

We are made right with God through faith in Jesus. Learning to trust and obey Jesus is our purification process. Sometimes it hurts. We are made salty again as we submit to the work of God’s Spirit in our lives.

May the Lord guide us in the way of purity and peace. Amen.    

Questions for discussion or reflection:

  1. What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
  2. How do Jesus’ words in Mark 9:38-50 make you feel? Why do you feel this way?
  3. Why does John tell the unknown exorcist to stop driving out demons? Why does Jesus correct John?
  4. What does it mean to do something in the name of Jesus?
  5. Discuss / reflect on Mark 9:42-48. How are we to interpret these verses? Who are “these little ones”? What is hell? What notes of hope do you see?
  6. Is there anything in your life that you need to cut off? (E.g. a habit, a pattern of thought, a relationship, etc.) How might you do this? 
  7. Discuss / reflect on the three salty sayings of Jesus in Mark 9:49-50. What is the connection between salt and fire? What does it mean to lose one’s saltiness? How might we bring out the best in one another and be at peace?      

[1] William Barclay, Commentary on Mark’s gospel, page 244. (My paraphrase of WB’s words.)

Tawa Baptist

Sparrows

Scripture: Matthew 10:26-31

Video Link: https://youtu.be/hKmTvdrS1-4

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Don’t be afraid of people
  • Don’t be afraid of death
  • Don’t be afraid of your value
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

Can anyone tell me the meaning of the word ubiquitous? (Not something that comes up in the daily Wordle.)  [Wait] That’s right, ubiquitous means being found everywhere. 

If something is ubiquitous it is common, widespread and constantly encountered wherever you go. Oxygen is ubiquitous. The orange road cones you see up and down New Zealand are ubiquitous. As are cars and cell phones.   

Sparrows are also ubiquitous. They are found everywhere. In urban areas, in forests, in the hills, by the sea and even in deserts. About the only place you don’t find sparrows is Antarctica. Sparrows are adaptable, resilient and prolific breeders. Most pairs will raise two or three broods a year.

Today we continue our series on Birds of the Bible by focusing on the Sparrow. Jesus talked about the sparrow when he was preparing to send his disciples on a mission trip. Jesus’ messengers need some of the sparrows’ adaptability and resilience. From Matthew 10, verses 26-31, we read…

26 “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing secret that will not become known. 27 What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. 28 Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31 So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

It is thought there are around 130 different types of sparrows around the world. The kind we are most familiar with is the house sparrow. It’s called the ‘house sparrow’ because it tends to make its home near human habitation.

In Psalm 84 we read: Even the sparrow has found a home… a place near your altar. Sparrows are not afraid of human beings. Sparrows are comfortable in the company of people.

In the context of Matthew 10, Jesus is giving his twelve disciples instructions for mission. The Lord is sending his disciples out as messengers of the gospel, giving them power to heal and cast out demons. Part of Jesus’ encouragement to his messengers is to not be fearful.

Three times in verses 26-31 Jesus says, do not be afraid. Don’t be afraid of people. Don’t be afraid of death and don’t be afraid of your value.

Don’t be afraid of people:

In verse 26 Jesus tells his disciples, “So have no fear of them…” The them, that Jesus is referring to here, are those people who are opposed to Jesus and his messengers.   

Jesus combats fear with reason and logic. The disciples do not need to fear people, or what people may say about them, because nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing is secret that will not become known.

Now, on hearing this we might wonder, does that mean all my deepest darkest secrets are going to be revealed? Is Jesus saying, all those embarrassing things I’ve ever thought or said or done that I don’t want anyone to know about are going to be made public and I’m going to be humiliated? Because that is not comforting at all. That is terrifying.

Well, I don’t believe that is what Jesus means in these verses. In the context of Matthew 10, Jesus is sending his followers into the world with the message of the gospel. So the beans being spilled here are not your personal secrets. The information being uncovered is the good news about God’s kingdom coming to earth. This isn’t about us. This is about Jesus and God’s plan of salvation.  

So the reason Jesus gives for not fearing people is that the gospel is the truth and the truth will win out in the end. In other words, the messengers of the gospel may be misunderstood or maligned at first, but eventually they will be vindicated. They will be proven right.

In verse 27 Jesus continues… What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. 

The followers of Jesus are to share freely with others what Jesus has shared with them. Some people think that to be a good preacher or evangelist you must have the gift of the gab. But the bigger part of sharing the gospel is listening.

Most of you are not preachers but you are believers with good news to share. You might think, I’m not good at talking about my faith. I don’t know what to say or how to say it. Besides, no one cares what I think anyway.

Before we worry about what we might say in relation to our faith, we need to listen. You can’t share something you don’t have. You can’t tell people about Jesus unless Jesus is real for you. You can’t pass on God’s love unless you have experienced God’s love for yourself.

As Christians we listen to God’s Spirit in a variety of ways. Two of those ways include prayerfully reading Scripture and observing the world around us.

We can’t expect to know the gospel of Jesus unless we spend time regularly studying the Scriptures and listening to what other believers say about the Lord.

Likewise, we need to be outward looking and curious about the world. We can’t expect to communicate well, with people who believe differently from us, without first seeking to understand them.

We read the Scriptures and observe the world in conversation with God. We can’t expect to know what we really believe unless we are honest with ourselves before God in prayer.

If our talk about Jesus is to be real and authentic, then it must grow out of the soil of listening. For Christians, listening needs to be as ubiquitous as sparrows. I believe, when we listen well, God gives us something to say. The truth, spoken with grace, wins out in the end.

Don’t be afraid of death

After telling his disciples not to be afraid of people, Jesus goes on to say, don’t be afraid of death. From verse 28 of Matthew 10 we read Jesus’ words…

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Again, Jesus appeals to reason and logic in combating the disciples’ fear. But the way it comes across (with talk of hell) seems more likely to fill us with terror. The English translation of this verse is like a bomb. It needs careful handling.

Your body, in this context, is your physical body. And your soul is the core of your being, your life force, that part of you that is unique and animates your body.

The trickier word, in verse 28, is the word translated as hell. Most of us, when we hear the word hell, probably imagine a place of torment, with a horned devil waving a pitchfork and torturing human beings by roasting them over burning coals for all eternity. We think unbearable pain, agony and despair. 

This concept of hell (as a place of eternal torture) is highly problematic, not least because it does violence to our understanding of the Almighty.

God is love. The Lord is just and merciful. He is kind, not cruel. The idea that God would torture anyone is totally inconsistent with the character of God, as revealed by Jesus.

When it comes to hell and the afterlife we need to be honest and admit the fact that we simply don’t know very much. We cannot say what hell is like with any certainty because we have not been there.

The Bible isn’t much help either. Scripture uses a variety of different images and metaphors to talk about the afterlife. Sometimes those images are confusing and seem to contradict each other. The afterlife is in the realm of mystery. God, in his wisdom, has not revealed the details to us.

What we can say with certainty is that the word translated, in verse 28, as hell is actually Gehenna.

Gehenna is a reference to the Valley of Hinnom, outside the walls of Jersualem. Gehenna (or the Valley of Hinnom) was the place, in the Old Testament, where people sacrificed and burned their children to one of the pagan gods. It was an evil practice, detested by the Lord Almighty.

Later, Gehenna became a rubbish dump for Jerusalem, where the city’s waste was burned. Fire and the stench of burning rubbish was ubiquitous to Gehenna. Jesus used the image of Jerusalem’s earthly rubbish dump as a metaphor for one aspect of the afterlife.

The interesting thing about the Gehenna image is that it is not a place of torture. It is a place of annihilation. It is a place where the human soul is not in torment but rather is destroyed, so it ceases to be altogether. 

Jesus does not want his disciples to be under any illusion. They will face suffering and persecution in their work of sharing the gospel. Sometimes that persecution might result in them being killed or martyred. However, the persecutors are limited. They can only kill the body; they cannot kill the soul.

The human soul is in God’s hands, not the hands of men. God Almighty is the only one with the power to grant immortality to the human soul. Likewise, God is the only one with the power to destroy the human soul. Not that he wants to destroy anyone. God’s preference is to save people. The Lord is looking for ways to get you into heaven.

It may seem contradictory to us that Jesus says, do not be afraid of those who can kill your body but do fear God who can destroy body and soul.

In the Bible, fear of God covers a range of meanings, from absolute terror, at one end of the spectrum, to something more like reverence and respect, combined with awe and wonder, at the other end of the spectrum.

In the context of Matthew 10, where Jesus is encouraging his disciples, fear of God is not something that is meant to terrorise them. No. Jesus wants his followers to be free from the fear of man. The fear of God is supposed to protect us.

If you touch something hot, it hurts and you learn to fear hot things. That is, you learn to be careful around boiling water and stove tops and fire. The fear of being burned protects you from harm.

In C.S. Lewis’ book, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Mr Beaver is explaining that Aslan is a lion and Susan asks, ‘Is he quite safe?’ To which Mr Beaver replies, ‘Safe? Who said anything about safe. Of course he’s not safe. But he is good. He is the King I tell you.’

By definition, God is the most powerful being there is and as the most powerful being, he is not safe but he is good. Fearing God means remembering that God will not be domesticated or controlled by us.

Another example to illustrate how the fear of God operates. Imagine you are driving in your car. You see a speed limit sign that says you need to slow down to 40km’s/hour, because you are approaching a school. You slow down, not because you are afraid of getting a ticket, but because you do not want to do any harm. If you hit a child, you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself.

For the Christian believer, the fear of God is not so much about avoiding punishment. (Perfect love drives out the fear of punishment.) The fear of God has more to do with avoiding harm. We fear God in the sense that we value our relationship with God and do not want to do any harm to that relationship, nor to our own soul.

In Matthew 10, verse 28, it’s like Jesus is saying: you need to be more afraid of being disloyal to God than you are of being killed. Because you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if you betrayed God.         

In practical terms, the fear of God protects us from every other fear, including the fear of hell. No matter what the followers of Jesus may suffer in this life, the Lord will not abandon his faithful ones to Gehenna. We do not need to fear hell. God did not make human beings for hell. God made human beings for relationship with himself.

Don’t be afraid of your value:

Anyone who has studied economics will know about the law of demand and supply. The more there is of something, the cheaper it is. Conversely, the greater the demand for something, the more it costs. Under this scheme, anything that is ubiquitous, like sparrows, won’t be valuable at all.

Jesus told his disciples not to fear people who oppose them in preaching the gospel and he told them not to fear death, but rather to fear God. Now he tells them not to fear their value. From verse 29, Jesus says…

29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31 So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

The basic message here is that we are valuable to God. Given the opposition and suffering the followers of Jesus would face, it was important they knew how valuable they are. Because, when the world treats us badly, we tend to think it is because we are not worth much.  

Human beings may not place a particularly high price on sparrows but God does value the sparrow. God’s way of valuing is different from ours. God does not follow the laws of demand and supply. God values what he has made, not because it is rare, but because he is love and that is what love does. Love values and love cares. 

It’s not that birds don’t matter. They do matter. That’s the point. Given that God values the sparrow, how much more does he value human beings who are made in his image?

One of our greatest human fears, is the fear that we don’t matter. That our lives have little or no meaning and that we are not valuable or loveable. As a consequence, we go to all sorts of lengths to prove our value, trying to make people love us. In the process we end up hurting ourselves and others.

The fear that you are not valuable is a lie. You do matter. Your life does have meaning. You are loved by God eternally. The Lord values you highly.

Even the hairs of your head are all counted. This is a poetic way of saying God knows you better than you know yourself. His attention to you and his care for you is beyond comprehension.

You might wonder why God would bother counting the hairs of your head? Perhaps it is because God knows you will lose many of those hairs in this life and he intends to restore them in the next. But not just your hairs. God plans to restore other more significant losses also. Nothing is beyond God’s reach. Nothing is beyond God’s care. 

Conclusion:

The phrase, God loves you, is ubiquitous, it sounds cheap, clichéd. But that doesn’t make it any less true. Oxygen is ubiquitous. It is so plentiful we take it for granted, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable, for without oxygen we would die in minutes.

We need to know that God loves us in much the same way we need to breathe. Do you believe that God loves you? How much do you really believe it?

In a few moments we are going to share communion together. Communion is a time to let go of our fear and trust ourselves to the love of God in Christ.

The musicians will come now and lead us in song as we open our hearts to God. How deep the Father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure.

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading these Scriptures and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

  • How does Jesus combat fear? How might we apply Jesus’ principles in overcoming our own fears? 
  • What does Jesus mean, in verse 26, where he says: “Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing is secret that will not become known”? Why do we not need to fear people or what they might say about us?
  • How do we listen to God’s Spirit? Do you have a regular pattern of Bible study? What does this look like? How might we seek to understand people who believe differently from us?
  • How does the fear of God protect us? Why do we not need to fear death?
  • Some people think of hell as a place of eternal torture and torment. Others think of hell as a place of final annihilation. What difference does each of these paradigms make to our understanding of God?
  • Do you believe God loves you? To what degree do you believe this? How might we cultivate our trust in God’s love and care for us?