The Hairs on Your Head are All Numbered!

But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” Matthew 10:30.

IT is most delightful to see how familiarly our Lord Jesus talked with His disciples. He was very great and yet He was among them as one that serves. He was very wise but He was gentle as a nurse with her children. He was very holy and far above their sinful infirmities but He condescended to men of low estate. He was their Master and Lord and yet their friend and servant. He talked with them, not as a superior who domineers but as a brother full of tenderness and sympa- thy.

You know how sweetly He once said to them, “If it were not so, I would have told you.” And thus He proved that He had hidden nothing from them that was profitable to them. He laid bare His very heart to them—His secret was with them. He loved them to the uttermost and caused the full river of His life to flow for their behalf.

Now, in this chapter, if you read it at home, you will see how wisely the Lord Jesus deals with their fears. He is afraid lest they should be afraid, anxious that they should not be anxious—so He talks to them as a very tender friend would talk to some very nervous person—some weak-minded brother or sister. And He speaks in such a way that if they were not comforted, surely they must have willfully resolved to put comfort from them. He says to them, “Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear you not, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows.”

Brethren, admire the tenderness of our Lord Jesus and imitate it. Let us try to be equally kind to our fellow- Christians. Let us never attempt to show off, or to make ourselves somebody, or to exhibit our strength of faith—for that will grieve the tender little ones and make them shrink into self-doubts. Let us consider their weakness and the help that we can render them, their sorrow and the comfort that we can afford them. Jesus was Himself a Comforter, or He could not have spoken of “another Comforter.” And so let us be comforters in our measure, treading in His steps.

This reminds me, also, to say how very homely the Savior’s talk became with His disciples in consequence of this de- sire to cheer their hearts. Why, He talks, I have often thought, just in the way in which anyone of us would have talked to our children when desirous to encourage them! There is nothing about the Savior’s language which makes you say to yourself, “What a grand speech! What a rhetorician! What an orator He is!” If any man makes you say that of him, sus- pect that he is off the lines a little. He is forgetting the true object of a loving mind and is seeking to be a fine speaker and to impress people with the idea that he is saying something very wonderful and saying it very grandly.

The Savior quite ignores all idea of beautiful expression in just trying to bring forth His meaning in the plainest pos- sible manner. He sought the shortest way to the hearts of those whom He addressed and He cared nothing whether flow- ers grew or did not grow by the roadside. Hence there is no eloquence like the eloquence of Jesus—there is a style of ma- jestic simplicity about Him that is altogether His own and in this lies unsurpassed sublimity. I now and then see in books quotations and the names of the authors are put at the foot of the extracts. But when ever I observe that the name of Christ is put below a quotation I regard it as a superfluity which ought to be struck out. For there is never any fear of mistaking the language of the Son of God for that of any of the sons of men.

He has a style all His own. This, however, is incidental to the design aimed at. For He does not study style of rhetoric in any degree but simply aims at conveying His thought. Hence He speaks in homely words, such as those of our text— “The very hairs of your head are all numbered.” Your great and learned men will not talk about the hairs of your head. All their discourse is upon the nebulae and the stars, geological periods and organic remains, evolution and the solidar- ity of the race, and I know not what besides. They will not stoop to common things.

They must say something great, sublime, dazzling, brilliant, full of fireworks. The Master is as far removed from all this as the heavens are from the gaudiest canopy that ever bedecked a mortal’s throne. He talks in homely language because He is at home. He speaks the language of the heart because He is all heart, and wants to reach the hearts of those to whom He speaks. I commend the text to you for that reason, though for many others besides. “The very hairs of your head are all numbered.”