Matthew 10:26-31 * June 15, 2008 * Pentecost 5 * Pastor Pagels
In the name of Christ Jesus, dear friends:
You probably weren’t aware of this, but today we are
celebrating a centennial anniversary. It
was one hundred years ago when the first Father’s Day was observed in the
As the story goes there was a fatal mining accident in the
town of
Sixteen years later
President Calvin Coolidge recommended that Father's Day become a national
holiday. President Johnson designated
the third Sunday of June to be Father's Day in 1966. And in 1972 President
Nixon instituted Father's Day as a national observance.
That is a brief
history of the day we call Father’s Day.
That explains why today is the day when many fathers will receive cards
and coffee mugs and t-shirts imprinted with the words, “World’s Greatest Dad,”
but what does that have to do with us?
What does a secular holiday have to do with the sermon text for today? Maybe more than you think.
Even though Father’s
Day is not a religious holiday, there is no reason why Christians shouldn’t
observe it. In fact, we should be the
first ones to honor our fathers, not only because God commands us to honor them
(see Exodus 20:12), but also because of the many blessings God gives us through
them.
It would be
impossible to come up with a list of all these blessings, so this morning I
would like to focus on just two, two blessings that children receive from their
earthly fathers, two special gifts that we as God’s children receive from our
heavenly Father. Those two blessings
are: providence and protection.
On this Father’s
Day weekend the gospel writer Matthew shares with us words that Jesus first
shared with his disciples, and in these verses our Savior gives us this promise…
CHILDREN OF
GOD, YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR
I. Your Father will protect you
II. Your Father will provide for you
The text begins: “Do not be afraid of them” (26). Jesus’ command is simple enough, but it might leave you wondering to yourself: “Who is the ‘them?’” and “Why shouldn’t I be afraid of them?” The answer to the first question can be found in the verses that come before our text.
Before Jesus sent his disciples out to preach and teach and heal in his name, he wanted to prepare them for the opposition they would inevitably encounter. Jesus predicted that his followers would be arrested and beaten and forced to stand trial for the terrible crime of proclaiming the good news of salvation through Jesus. And many of them were. In fact, most of the disciples were put to death because they dared to share their faith.
Two thousand years later not a whole lot has changed for those who claim to be Jesus’ disciples. In some parts of the world Christians are being persecuted, even executed, simply because they are Christians. In our own country, in a land that prides itself in its religious freedom, pastors aren’t thrown in jail for what they preach from their pulpits. But considering the changing religious climate, that day may not be very far away.
If the world is becoming more and more anti-Christian, if
being a Christian means that you walk around with a target on your back, why
shouldn’t we be afraid? Jesus tells us
why: “There is nothing concealed that
will not be disclosed or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the
daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs” (26b, 27).
The day is coming when all the evil in the world will be exposed. The day is coming when good will triumph over evil once and for all. The day is coming when Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead. The day is coming when Jesus will come to take us to the places he has prepared for us in heaven.
So we don’t have to be afraid. We don’t have to be afraid to tell people that people are not basically good. We don’t have to be afraid to call sin sin. We don’t have to be afraid to proclaim from the rooftops that Jesus Christ is the one and only way to heaven.
And when we do we don’t have to worry about what other people might say about us. We don’t have to worry about what other people might to do us. Because God is our Father, because He protects, because He will deliver us, God’s children have nothing to fear.
Well, almost nothing. Jesus continues: “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” (28). This is one of those verses that puts a lump in your throat every time you read it. These words are designed to literally scare a person out of hell.
Jesus recognized that his enemies would go after his followers and that in some situations they would even kill his followers. But that’s all they can do. They can kill the body, but they cannot touch the soul. So Christians don’t have to be afraid of their enemies. Christian martyrs might even want to thank their enemies because they actually help them get to their eternal reward.
If you are going to be afraid of someone, Jesus says, be afraid of the One who knows all your secrets. Fear the One who holds your eternal destiny in his hands. Fear the One who can destroy your body AND your soul. Fear the one who would be well within his rights to banish you to hell forever.
That’s what God’s law threatens, but that’s not what God wants. He doesn’t want you to be afraid of him, but he does want you to see how foolish it is to worry. He wants you to know that you are his dear child. He wants you to know that he will protect you. And he wants you to know that you have nothing to fear because your heavenly Father will provide for you.
Jesus goes on: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father” (29). In Jesus’ day sparrows were a dime a dozen. Actually a dime could get a person a dozen sparrows plus eight more. Even though sparrows had very little monetary value, they were still valuable to their Creator.
Just in case the disciples didn’t understand where Jesus was going with the first illustration, he gave them second one: “And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (30). I don’t know who came up with this number or how they came up with it, but it is estimated that the average person has about 140,000 hairs on his/her head.
God, however, doesn’t deal in round numbers. He knows the exact number of hairs on your head. In fact, God has gone one step farther. He has numbered each individual hair, the hairs on your head, the hairs that get stuck in your brush, the hairs that go down the shower drain.
So what do hair and sparrows have in common? And what do sparrows and hair have to do with us? Let me answer those two questions by asking two more questions. If God cares so deeply about sparrows, little birds that are among the least of his creatures, don’t you think that he will also take care of you? And if your heavenly Father pays attention to the most minute detail like the number of hairs of your head, don’t you think that he will pay attention to the rest of you and provide you with exactly what you need?
Of course God will take care of you. Of course God will provide for you. Those obvious answers led Jesus to an obvious
conclusion. He told his disciples, and he tells you: “Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (31).
You are a special creation of God. When God formed you, he gave you an immortal soul. You are worth more to him than all the sparrows in the world. You are more valuable to God than all the money in the world. You are so precious to God that he was willing to give up his most precious possession, his one and only Son, to die on the cross, to die in your place, to die for your sins and the sins of the whole world.
Because of Jesus, we have the right to call God our Father. Because of Jesus, we pray “Our Father in heaven,” with the confidence that we will spend eternity with our Father in heaven. Because God is our loving Father, we are not afraid.
We aren’t afraid of rising gas prices or rising water levels. We aren’t afraid of the future. We aren’t afraid of persecution. We aren’t afraid to die. Because God has met our greatest need, because God will provide for all of our other needs, we have nothing to fear.
The famous TV dad Bill Cosby once said: “If the American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.”
Cosby’s observation about fatherhood is supposed to make us smile, but it should also make us think. Father’s Day is a good time to be reminded that being a dad isn’t easy. Dads don’t have all the answers. Sometimes father doesn’t know best. And all of us know, especially those of us who are fathers, that dads aren’t perfect.
That is why it is good for us to be here today, to give thanks to God for the gift of God-fearing fathers, to repent for our failures as fathers and mothers and sons and daughters, to rejoice because we have a perfect heavenly Father who protects us and provides for us. And because he does his children have nothing to fear. Amen.