“What is your only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own but belong body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood; he has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven…”
No one here expects a four-year-old to provide his own food. That’s what dad and mom are for. No one here expects a two-year-old to act as her own medical advocate. That’s what dad and mom are for. Parents look after their children. Parents even expect this care to be taken for granted. They don’t expect their children to know that they’ve smoothed the path ahead in a thousand ways, big and small.
As children age, they begin to recognize the value of being cared for. Some of you young people are starting to see how dad and mom have looked out for your best interests. If you are wise, you will recognize that you still need to be looked after. You will seek a godly spouse to look after you. You will seek godly friends to look after you. Ecclesiastes puts it this way, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls, one can help the other up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up.”
Some of you have buried those people. Others of you are very concerned about what will happen if you have to bury those people. That’s to be expected.
That’s a sign that you were created to be cared for. You were created to be looked after. We know that something has gone wrong when a man says that he doesn’t need anyone or anybody. We recognize there must be some profound hurt in that man because he is denying what he needs.
Why do we feel this need? More pointedly, why do you feel this need? Why do you appreciate it when someone looks out for your best interests?
As I see it, you have two choices. You can consider that appreciation to be an evolutionary byproduct. You can consider it something akin to herd instinct in animals. Monkeys like it when another monkey grooms them free of insects. You like it when dad takes an interest in what’s going on in your life.
You can consider that an evolutionary byproduct or you can consider that you appreciate this care because God chose to create you that way. What’s more, He created you because He wants to look after your best interest. He created you to be a father to you as Jesus taught.
If you don’t belong to Jesus, why do you think you appreciate it when someone cares for you? Your desire to be cared for is more than evolutionary byproduct. It is more than just the way you are. You were created to be looked after. If you doubt that, I invited you to see that there is much more to life than you know.
If you belong to Jesus, you can be certain that God looks after you. That’s the claim of this sermon: if you belong to Jesus, be certain that God looks after you.
We will study this in two points. First: sheep without a shepherd. Second: Jesus watches over me. First, we will see what people who don’t belong to Jesus are missing. Second, we will see what people who belong to Jesus enjoy. First: sheep without a shepherd. Second: Jesus watches over me.
First: sheep without a shepherd. If Christianity is the proper understanding of the way life works, then those who don’t belong to Jesus lack a good deal that those who do belong Jesus enjoy.
Now, if you think Christianity is something less than the proper understanding of the way life works—in other words if you think that Christianity is true for you like Buddhism is true for a Buddhist—then you do need to hear that God doesn’t treat everyone the same. He certainly loved the world by sending His Son, but He treats those who belong to His Son differently from those who do not. God treats the follower of Jesus and the Buddhist differently. If God didn’t, Jesus would have had no reason to call people to follow him.
This morning we are studying the clause of the Catechism that says, “Jesus watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven.” To properly understand that care, we need to understand what it is like to live without it. We must understand what it is like to live like sheep without a shepherd.
The title of this first point comes from Matthew 9:36 in which Jesus, “saw the crowds, and had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
In Matthew’s words, you can see Jesus’ desire to look after people. His heart went out to those people like a mother’s heart goes out to a child growing up in neglect. He knew that they weren’t looked after. He knew that, in the words of Matthew, they were, “harassed and helpless.”
If you are a stranger to God, you must learn to see yourself in those words. God is not caring for you in the same way that He is caring for His children. He would be happy to do so, but you must come to Him.
So, what is it like to live without Jesus looking after you? Those who live like sheep without a shepherd live without hope. Paul talked about people in this situation saying, “remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.”
Unless God is looking after you, you are without hope. You are without any certainty of happiness for the future. You know there will probably be pleasures that come your way, but you also know there will certainly be pain and suffering to come. You will have no permanent happiness; you hope for permanent happiness—everyone does—but you have no reason to expect it. If you don’t believe in God, you have no reason to believe that anything other than blind chance is governing your future. The only certainty that you face is a hopeless one, namely death. God didn’t create you for that kind of hopelessness. He sent His Son so that you wouldn’t have to live with that kind of hopelessness.
Unless God is looking after you, you are without hope. You are also without God. You do not know God. If you do not belong to Jesus, you do not know God. You might believe there is a God. You might believe some specific things about the one you call, “God”, but if you do not belong to Jesus, you do not know God.
The great majority of the people in this world are very religious, but they are religious like the people of Athens in the first century to whom Paul said, “men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.”
Unless you know the Christ whom Paul preached, you do not know God. I’m not saying that you are not religious. I’m not saying that you don’t have many ideas about God. Some of your ideas about God might have a degree of accuracy to them, but you don’t know Him.
A man can only know God if God reveals Himself to that man. Do you believe that the Father of Jesus has reveals Himself through Hinduism? Do you believe that the Father of Jesus has reveals Himself through Islam? The apostle John would say no; “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, hehas made the Father known.”
People who don’t belong to Jesus don’t know God no matter how religious they might be. That’s a sorrowful situation. That’s why Christians care about missions. That’s why God cares about missions. “He loved this world in this way: He sent His Son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.”
Those who don’t belong to Jesus do not know God. They are without hope. They also fail to appreciate the kindnesses from God which they do receive.
God treats His children differently from others, but He does show kindness to all. That’s why God’s Son said that the Father, “causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
Men and women who don’t belong to Jesus do not appreciate these kindnesses as coming from the Father of Jesus. As Paul said, “they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
Imagine that you do a kindness for a man this week. Let’s say that you pull his Honda Civic out of a ditch on Highway 18. What would you think of that man if he never thanked you for that kindness? What would you think of that man if he never acknowledged you again even when you ran into each other around town? That is what God experiences from the vast majority of humanity. They never give thanks to Him even though He makes the sun to shin on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. As the worship song says, “Many men will drink the rain and turn to thank the clouds, many men will hear You speak, but they will never turn around.”
That is the condition of most of the men and women in this world. Some of them are very religious, but they don’t know God and so they don’t thank God. Others of them are irreligious. Either way, they are living as sheep without a shepherd. For some reason, for many reasons, they won’t bring themselves to believe that Jesus would watch over them in such a way that not a hair can fall from their head without the will of his Father.
If this is you, why won’t you believe? What is stopping you? Address your doubts. Give your doubts the same level of scrutiny that you apparently give belief. You don’t need to live like a sheep without a shepherd, and that is how you are living. God sent His Son to look after people like you. “The Son of man came to seek and save the lost.” Jesus came to watch over his own. That is our second point: Jesus watches over me.
The Heidelberg Catechism well summarizes what the Bible says about life under a loving God. It says that Jesus, “watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven.” That is the sort of looking after for which you long. That is the sort of care that everyone longs for.
Jesus watched over his first disciples that way. He watched over Peter, James, John, Matthew, and Thomas in such a way that not a hair could fall from their heard without the will of his Father.
Jesus said as much. Before he was crucified, Jesus prayed for his disciples saying, “Holy Father, protect them by the power of Your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me.”
Jesus watched over his disciples’ safety. When the guards came to arrest him, Jesus kept his disciples safe. He said, “let these men go.” John comments, “this happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled: “I have not lost one of those you gave me.”’
Jesus watched over his disciples’ safety throughout all their years together. For example, once they got into a boat and, ‘Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” He replied, “You of little faith; why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”
The Catechism tells you the kind of man he is. He is the kind of man who watches over you in such a way that not a hair can fall from your head without the will of your Father in heaven.
Jesus watched over his disciples’ souls. Before Simon Peter betrayed him, Jesus told him, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon that your faith may not fail.”
Jesus took this responsibility to watch over his disciples seriously. He takes it more seriously than I have ever taken one of God’s commands. That isn’t to diminish the seriousness with which I take Scripture. I just say that to underline the seriousness with which Jesus takes his responsibility. He said, “This is the will of Him who sent me that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.” Jesus saw watching over his disciples as his God-given mission. I see nothing in the gospels that tells me that he plans on failing at that mission.
If you are Jesus’ disciple, Jesus’ mission is to watch over you. What he told his first disciples is true for you. He said, “This is the will of Him who sent me that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.” “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
Since you belong to Jesus, he watches over you. In other words, nothing can separate you from his love. Isn’t that saying the same thing—Jesus watches over you in such a way that nothing happen to you without his will and nothing can separate you from the love of Christ? “What shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Now you might be wondering, if Jesus is watching over me, then why has this or that happen? The answer is difficult to process. The answer has a dozens of sub-points explaining it, but the answer is easy to state. The reason that, that hair has fallen from your head is because it is the will of your Father in heaven.
That is why in that same chapter, Paul could write, “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” We will have much more on that next Lord’s Day.
The reason that, that hair has fallen from your head is because it is the will of your Father in heaven. That’s why Spurgeon could say, “Remember this, had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love would have put you there.”
Now if you as a Christian find yourself unwilling to accept that statement, I want you to see that you are unable to see that Jesus does watch over you in such a way that not a hair can fall from your head without the will of his Father. Either Jesus is watching over you or he is not. Either nothing can separate you from the practical day to day love of Christ or some circumstances can separate you from the love of Christ. Either a hair cannot fall from your head without the will of your Father or a hair can fall from your head without the will of your Father. Which do you believe? There is no question about what Jesus believed on the matter or what Paul believed on the matter and they knew their share of suffering too.
If you do belong to Jesus but find it hard to accept that he watches over you in the way that we’ve been studying, I want you to know that he still watches over you whether you realize it or not. You are worrying about what can never happen. Nothing can separate you from his love. Not a hair can fall from your head without his will.
But, if you do belong to Jesus, know that the way you doubt his care does dishonor him. He is not honored by your unwillingness to believe that he will do what he says, and he says that he will watch over you.
We Christians should be the most confident people alive. We should live as if goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives as Psalm 23 puts it. We should live as if the Lord were our shepherd and therefore, we have no reason for want because we are going to lie down in green pastures and be led by quiet waters and have our souls restored. We should live as if God will be with us even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death because that is what will happen.
Those are either just words or they are the way that Jesus watches over his people. If they are mere sentimentality, they are worthless. If they are reality, then they are reliable. If you belong to Jesus, live like those words are reliable.
Imagine the witness of this church if everyone of us lived like the following words were true: Jesus “watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven.” Imagine the impact that would have on your workplace even without you saying a word.
Some people might ask the question Peter said they would ask, “what is the reason for the hope within you?” Peter expected people to ask that question because he knew they were hopeless. He knew that most people live like sheep without a shepherd.
The men and women whom you see daily want to be looked after. They were created to be looked after. God created them to be a father to them. They need to know God as Father. They need Jesus to look after them. They need to belong to him. Now, if you don’t belong to him, I ask you again, why not?
If you do belong to Jesus, you know that what we have studied this morning is true so be certain of it. Live like you are certain of it. Live like Jesus watches over you because he does. Live like nothing could separate you from his love because nothing can. Amen.