Matthew 10:29 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Matthew 10:29

Comments

Christ argues here to reassure his disciples in the face danger, and even of death. It is an argument from the lesser to the greater. He deliberately takes a creature of little consequence in this world and uses it in his comparison. The sparrow is so small, so insignificant, and is given so little thought by men, that men hardly notice it. When it is sold in the market for a morsel of meat – and there is not much more than a couple of bites in it – men give for a pair of sparrows one of the smallest coins in circulation; this again emphases its insignificance. But what is insignificant to man is certainly not overlooked by God. Christ speaks as one who has knowledge that no man has. He speaks as one who is familiar with the innermost thoughts of God. That little bundle of life was created by God and he knows everything about it. He has put a vast amount of thought into the sparrow: it flight, its food supply, its warmth, its colouring and behaviour and reproduction and nurturing of this young, its growth and a host of other things down to the microscopic level. What the mind of man can only dimly understand, God knows perfectly. Though there are millions of little sparrows in the world, the Lord does not regard them as insignificant, and although they all look alike to us, he knows each one individually. Christ says all this in few words. The death of one such sparrow is not an event that man bothers to record, but God does, and the reason he does is that the sparrow has value to him. Though the creature is under the curse and subject to vanity for the sake of human sin, not one sparrow goes out of the world without God being aware of it and caring for it. How minute is his attention to detail, and how loving a Father he is even to the least of the creatures he has made.

Application

Christ tells us these things so that we can reason from them. These are simple but profound truths that even a child can see and think about. The thinking of God is similar enough to our thinking for us to be able to draw reliable conclusions about. God has a scale of values in his mind just as we do. He has created lesser creature and greater creatures, and all that the Scripture says about man shows that he is the most significant of all creatures on earth. Let us observe ourselves and observer the other creatures and hear what God has said about the world and let us draw inferences from all of this. If the sparrow means so much to God, how much more does man, made in his image, mean to him! In case any are not clear on this, Christ tells us explicitly that we are of worth more than many sparrows. He compares the value of one form of life with another, and this should be no surprise to us. Man who was made to have dominion over all other creatures is worth far more than a sparrow. Man who has the gift of reason, and many other distinctions from the animals; man who worships God and is capable of obedience to his moral law, is high above other forms of life. If the little sparrow is cared for, how much more is man cared for!

But then we need to think what Christ is applying this lesson to. The subject is believers facing persecution and even martyrdom for the sake of their testimony to the Lord. How does it help us to know that the sparrow is cared for when we are facing the loss of life. Hasn’t God’s care for us failed if he has allowed us to go out of the world? We tend to set the limits of care within the confines of this life. If we die, then care has by definition failed us. No, says the Lord. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. God’s care continues for us beyond death and does not cease there. Lazarus was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. Our bodies are, as it were, watched over until the resurrection. It is with God’s continuing care after death in mind, that Christ has referred not only to the provision of our heavenly Father for the sparrow during its life, but also in its death. That does not mean that the sparrow has an afterlife, but it does mean that we who have eternal souls are cared for after death. How can we fail to have confidence in the Lord, even if he allows us to pass from this world, even if that happens at the hands of our persecutors?

God has much greater care for us, even than we have for ourselves. He knows more about us even than we know about ourselves. And when Christ says this, it is no doubt a vast understatement. He knows the precise number of the hairs of our head at any time. Who but one who had access to the mind of God could say such a thing, without any fear of contradiction? We who worry about our own lives, often make the mistake of thinking that no one cares more about our interests, and no one knows more about the details of our lives, than we do ourselves. But we are wrong. Our heavenly Father knows more about us than we do. He sees our needs, and he thinks of respects in which we need to be protected from harm which have not even crossed our minds. Can we not resign our welfare into the hands of our superior Protector? This is the Lord’s argument, and it is a great comfort to us.

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Matthew 10:29 Commentary and Bible Study