The Hairs of Your Head Numbered

The Hairs of Your Head Numbered

PREACHED BY

C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"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 sympathy.

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 desire 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, suspect 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 possible manner. He
sought the shortest way to the hearts of those whom He addressed and He
cared nothing whether flowers grew or did not grow by the roadside.
Hence there is no eloquence like the eloquence of Jesus–there is a
style of majestic 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 solidarity 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."

Thinking over these words, they seem to have in them four things at
least, and we may take four views of their mean-ing–and the first is,
foreordination–"The very hairs of your head have been all numbered."
You will find that to be a more accurate version of the text than that
which is before us. The verb is not in the present but in the perfect
tense. The very hairs of your head have been all numbered before worlds
were made.

Secondly, I see in the text, knowledge. This is very clear–God so
knows His people that the very hairs of their head are all numbered by
Him. Thirdly, there is here valuation–He sets such a high estimate
upon His own servants, that of them it is said, "The very hairs of your
head are all numbered." You are so precious that the least portion of
you is precious. The King keeps a register of every part of you, "The
very hairs of your head are all numbered."

And, lastly, here is most evidently preservation. The Savior has been
telling them not to fear those that can kill the body and are not able
to kill the soul. He speaks of God's preserving them. In another place
He told His disciples, "There shall not a hair of your head perish,"
and He intends the same sense in this case. There shall be a perfect
preservation of His people. "The very hairs of your head are all
numbered."

I. Come, then, to the first thought. Here is FOREORDINATION. "The very
hairs of your head are all numbered." Most Christian people believe in
the Providence of God but all Christian people are not prepared to
follow out the Truth of God which that involves. They appear to believe
that there is a Providence overruling but they seem to have forgotten
that there always was such a Providence and that Providence must be,
after all, a matter of Divine foresight. God must have foreseen, or He
could not have provided, for "Providence" is, after all, but the Latin
for foresight. And the provision which God makes is but the result of
His vision beforehand of such-and-such a thing as needful to us.
Foresight must essentially belong to any true and real Providence.

How far does God's foresight extend? It extends, we believe, to the
entire man and all about him. God ordained of old when we should be
born and where and who our parents should be and what our lot in
infancy and what our path in youth and what our position in manhood.
From the first to the last it has all happened according to the Divine
purpose, even as it was ordained by the Divine will. Not only the man
but all that concerns the man, is foreordained of the Lord– "The very
hairs of your head," that is to say, all that which has anything to do
with you, which comes into any kind of contact with you and is in any
sense part and parcel of yourself, is under the Divine foresight and
predestination.

Everything is in the Divine purpose, and has been ordered by the Divine
wisdom–all the events of your life–the greater, certainly–the
smaller, with equal certainty. It is impossible to draw a line in
Providence and say this is arranged by Providence and that is not. It
must take everything in its sweep, all that happens. It determines not
only the movement of a star but the blowing of a grain of dust along
the public road. All this, from the very nature of the thing, is clear.
God's Providence knows nothing of things so little as to be beneath its
notice, nothing of things so great as to be beyond its control. Nothing
is too little or too great for God to rule and overrule.

All that a man undergoes is also ordained of Heaven. The hairs of your
head, should they turn white in a single night by grief, will not do so
without Divine permission. Should you be spared till every hair
constitutes a part of the crown of glory of your old age, you shall not
be older than God wills. You shall neither die before your time, nor
live beyond it. All that concerns you, I say, from first to last, all
that is of you and in you and around you–

"All shall come and last and end, As shall please your heavenly
Friend." "The very hairs of your head are all numbered."

And this is what I call your attention to–what is the source of this
numbering? It is not that they are all numbered by some recording angel
who is set to do the work. It may be so but that is not the thing we
have to consider tonight. This numbering is done by your Father, who is
in Heaven. The ordinances that rule your life are in His hands. Unto
Him belong the issues from death. And this makes it to be such a happy
fact. Fate is hard and cruel. But predestination is fatherly and wise
and kind. The wheels of Providence are always high and terrible. But
they are full of eyes, and those eyes look with the clear sight

of wisdom and righteousness and love–and they look towards the good of
them that love God and are the called according to His purpose.

Terrible, indeed, it is to think of things as fixed by an eternal plan.
But the terror is taken from it when we feel that we are children of
this great Father and that He wills nothing but what shall, in the end,
work out our conformity to the image of His Son and display the glory
of His own righteousness and Divine Grace and Truth. Dear Friend,
perhaps you are blind! You will feel sweet content in the dark when you
can say, "This blindness was determined of my tender and loving Father.
I know it was so, since the very hairs of my head are all numbered."

Or it may be that you have from childhood been the subject of another
physical infirmity, which has caused you great loss and pain and even
now it is a threat to bring you suddenly to the grave. Had this cross
been laid upon you by an enemy, you might have complained but it has
been ordained for you by Him who cannot be unkind or unjust. Therefore
say, "It is the Lord, let Him do what seems Him good." We are taught to
pray, "Your will be done." Dare we contradict our own prayers by
kicking against that will? Job glorified God and yet he spoke no more
than he should have done when he said, "The Lord gave and the Lord has
taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

I always admire in Job his ascribing all his afflictions to the Lord,
because apparently it was the Sabeans that took away his oxen and
asses. It was the Chaldeans that took away his camels. It was the wind
from the wilderness, raised by the devil, that took away his children.
Job does not care so much for Sabeans and Chaldeans and devils, as to
mention them. But he cries, looking to the First Cause of all events,
"The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the
Lord." When we can get at the back of visible things and see, not
merely the puppets, but the strings that move them, then we come near
to wisdom.

Wicked beings act according to their own free will and therefore the
whole of the moral evil of their doings rests wholly and solely with
themselves. But the great God, somehow, mysteriously, quite clear of
all complicity with human sin, effects His own purposes, which are
always good and right. He it is who from evil, either real or seeming,
still produces good and better still, in infinite progression. When, I
say, we get to this First Force and real source of power, then we get
where we learn wisdom and we are helped in the struggle of life. When
we see that all things are arranged by Him who orders all things
according to the counsel of His own will, then we bow our heads and
worship.

The practical outcome of all this, to every Christian, should be just
this, "If it is so, that all things in my life are ordered of God, even
to the hairs of my head, then let me learn submission. Let me bow
before the Supreme will which ought to have its way. Though it cost me
many a tear and many a pang, yet will I never be content until I can
say, 'Father, Your will be done.' " Human nature prompts us to ask
that, if it is possible, the bitter cup may pass away from us. But the
Divine nature, which God has put into His true children, helps them
still to struggle after full submission, till at last they are
conquerors over themselves and God is glorified in the temple of their
being. I am sure, my Brothers, our happiness lies very much in our
complete submission to the Lord our God.

If you cannot bring your estate to your mind, bring your mind to your
estate. The old Proverb bids us cut our coat according to our lot and
he that can clothe his mind with the garments which Providence allots
him needs not to envy my Lord Mayor in his robes. Joy lies more in the
mind than in the place or the possession. He that has enough, though he
has but a few shillings a week, has more than the possessor of
millions. He that is content is the truly rich man. Your money-grubber
is always poor, how can he be otherwise but poor in the worst sense of
the word? Oh, it is a blessed thing when one can think of all the
events of Providence. That God is ordering them all–then we dissolve
our own will into the sweetness of God's will and our sorrow is at an
end!

This, I think, should, in addition to teaching us submission, always
give us such a degree of consolation in the time of trouble that we
even rise into something like joy. I was reading today of old Mr. Dodd,
who is a person the Puritans are always quoting–a man who did not
write books but he seems to have said things with which other people
made their books attractive. This old Mr. Dodd, it is said, had a great
trouble, a bodily complaint I will not mention but it is one of the
most painful a man can suffer from. And when he was told that this had
come upon him and that it was incurable, the old man shed a few natural
tears at the great and excruciating pain.

But at last he said, "This is evidently from God and God never sent me
anything but it was for my good, therefore let us kneel down together
and thank God for this." It was well said of the old man and it was
well done of him that he thanked God most heartily. Oh yes, let us
kneel down together and thank God for our trouble! Is it consumption? A
dying child? A farm that does not pay? A business that is gradually
leaking away?–Let us firmly believe that our God has never sent us
anything but what He meant good by it. Therefore, let us kneel down and
thank God with all our hearts. If your child should come to

you and say, "Father, I thank you for the rod. I know it has been for
my good," you would feel it was time to have done correcting him.

Evidently he is not so dull and foolish as to need a sharp awakening by
chastisement. He sees the evil of his disobedience and the necessity of
chastisement and now he can be left to follow out the lessons he has
learned. When you and I begin to be familiar with affliction and to
thank God for it, we are pretty nearly getting through it. I believe,
myself, that there is a period often set to the sorrows of saints and
that the period is usually coincident with their perfect acquiescence
in them. When they are content to have all things as God wills, God
will be content to let them have it as much as they will. When two
wills run together, our will and God's will, then we shall find a sweet
double stream of silver peace flowing throughout the rest of our lives.

Therefore, let us come to this–if even the very hairs of our head are
all numbered, if everything is really ordained of the Most High
concerning His people–let us rejoice in the Divine appointment and
take it as it comes and praise His name, whether our allotment is rough
or smooth, bitter or sweet. Let us cheerfully say, "If the Lord wills
it then we will it, too. If He has purposed it, even so let it be,
since all things work together for good to them that love God, even to
them that are called according to His purpose."

I shall not plunge into the slough of difficulties which some of you
are sure to see lying in the way. I trip over the mire with the nimble
feet of faith. I shall not discuss how foreordination can be shown to
be consistent with the responsibility of man and the free will of man
and all that. I believe in the responsibility of man and the free will
of man as much as I believe in predestination. I believe in the
responsibility of man as much as you do, and I believe in the free
agency of man as much as anybody living. How can I believe both
doctrines? I evidently can believe them both, for I do believe them.

I have learned this–that the man whose creed is consistent in the
judgment of others usually has a very scanty, poverty-stricken creed.
And a good deal of it is rather theory than Revelation. When you come
to make up your theology into a system, you are very apt to act like a
builder, who fills in between the great stones mortar of his own
mixing. I am content to pile up the unhewn stones and put in no cement
of my own. I will not shape the Truth of God, much less add to it. "If
you lift up your tool upon it, you have polluted it." He who takes the
Truth of God as he finds it in the inspired Book has enough material
and it is all sound.

I believe that all the so-called "contradictions" in Scripture are only
apparent ones. I cannot expect to understand the mysteries of God,
neither do I wish to do so. If I understood God, He could not be the
true God. A doctrine which I cannot fully grasp is a Truth of God which
is intended to grasp me. When I cannot climb, I kneel. Where I cannot
build an observatory, I set up an altar. A great stone which I cannot
lift serves me for a pillar, upon which I pour the oil of gratitude and
adore the Lord my God. How idle it is to dream of our ever running
parallel in understanding with the infinite God! His knowledge is too
wonderful for us. It is so high–we cannot attain to it.

Have you never heard of the inquisitive boy who had been forbidden to
go into his father's study. He tried the door but it was fastened–all
proper and safe entrance was out of the question. But he could not be
content till he had satisfied his curiosity and therefore he climbed up
to the window. To his father's horror, up two stories high, stood his
little boy, looking in upon him and crying with childish pride,
"Father, I can see you." What a position of danger for the child! He
must be gotten down and taught not to climb there again. Shall we
imitate this childish folly? Brethren, I will not attempt it. I do not
want to endanger my soul and perhaps even my reasoning powers, by
straining after the unknowable.

Poor child that I am, I would rather love God and wonder at Him, than
regard Him with cold, intellectual apprehensions and dream that I know
Him altogether. I pray to grow in the knowledge of that which the Lord
reveals–and I pray for grace to limit my curiosity by the boundaries
of His revelation. Surely these are far enough apart for the largest
researches. As for the difficulty before us, I do not understand it.
And what good would it be to me if I did understand it? I know that
whatever a man does that is wrong, he does it of his own free will. And
all the sin in the world I believe to be caused by the willful and
censurable choice of the transgressor.

But I know that, at the same time, there is a grasp of foresight and
predestination so comprehensive that everything accords with the Divine
foreknowledge and predestination. Let our hair grow as it will, or let
us pluck out what hairs we please, let nothing interfere with our
absolute liberty in that matter. And yet the hairs of our head are all
numbered. So much for foresight.

II. Now, secondly, here is KNOWLEDGE–God's intimate knowledge of His
people. "The very hairs of your head are all numbered." Observe what a
full knowledge God has of each one of His children. If there were
nobody else in the world except you–and God had nothing else to do but
to think of you. If there were no objects of His attention beyond
yourself and His

eternal mind had no object of consideration but you, only, the Lord
would not then know more about you than He does now. The omniscience of
God is concentrated upon every single being and yet it is not divided
by the multiplicity of its objects. It is not the less upon any single
one because there are so many.

How it should astonish us that the Lord knows us at this moment so
intimately as to count every hair of our heads! The knowledge which the
Lord has concerning His people is most minute and takes in those small
matters which men set down as unconsidered trifles. He knows what you
and I hardly wish to know–He knows that which we may be content to
leave unknown–"The very hairs of your head are all numbered."

He knows us better than our friends know us. Many a man has a kind
friend who knows his affairs most accurately, but even such a familiar
acquaintance has never counted the hairs of his head. No man's wife has
done that, nor even the doctor who has, by his long attendance upon us,
become aware of the condition and health of every part of our body. God
knows us better than we know ourselves. Nobody knows how many hairs he
has upon his own head. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered
by One who knows us better than we know ourselves. God knows matters
about us that we could not of ourselves discover. There are secrets of
the heart which are unknown even to ourselves but they are not secrets
to Him. His penetrating knowledge reaches to the most hidden things of
life and spirit.

Do you not think that a charmingly tender knowledge is intended when we
are told that the Lord counts the very hairs of our heads? Does it not
intimate how much He thinks of them? There are some who love us very
much and they are always aiming at our good–God goes beyond them all
in a more than motherly care of us, strikingly minute in its
thoughtfulness. We see that His love passes the love of women, for the
very hairs of our head are numbered–and that at every period of our
lives. Does it not imply a very sympathetic care? When one has a sick
child and watches over it night and day, every little fact about it is
known and noted.

The darling looks a little pale today, or he fails a little in his
appetite. The symptom is anxiously noted. You know how easily love can
degenerate into foolishness in that direction. But, without any folly,
God is infinitely careful and kind towards us, for He knows when we
have lost a hair from our head. We cannot make one hair white or black
but He knows when they turn white with grief or age. He understands all
about our fading and our growing gray, the little details concerning
our body as well as the minute circumstances that try our souls. It
seems to me–I do not know how it strikes you–as meaning a very, very,
very intimate, tender, and affectionate knowledge of us. And the fact
that the Lord thus graciously looks upon us should fill us with joy.

This careful, tender knowledge on God's part is constant. He knows the
number of the hairs of our head today, tomorrow and all the days–He
without ceasing watches all the processes which even in the least
manner affect our lives. So intimate is His knowledge of us that our
lying down and our rising up, our thoughts and our ways, are all
continually before Him. And what are we to learn from this? Does it not
make life a solemn business? Who will dare to trifle with the Lord God
so near? Do you keep bees? Have you ever taken out one of the frames
from their hive and held it up to observe what they are doing on both
sides of the comb?

Or have you looked at them through one of those interesting hives,
furnished with a glass, through which the whole business is visible?
The bees scarcely notice that you watch them, certainly they are not
eye-servers, for they are so industrious that they could not do more
even if all eyes in the universe were fixed on them. What manner of
persons ought we to be when we know that God is observing us and noting
every movement of our being! What care there should be as to our
feeling, our thinking, our resolving, our desiring, our doing and our
speaking, when everything is minutely known to God, even to the
counting of the very hairs of our head!

What perfect consecration we ought to maintain! If God so values me, so
knows me, that He counts the very hairs of my head, ought I not to give
to God my whole self even to the minutest detail? Should I not give Him
not merely my head but my hair, as that penitent woman did, who unbound
her tresses that she might make a towel of them, to wipe the feet that
she had washed with her tears? Ought we not to consecrate to God the
very least things as well as the greater things? Is it not written,
"Whether therefore you eat, or drink, or whatsoever you do, do all to
the glory of God"? "You are not your own, you are bought with a
price"–and when the inventory was taken, the Lord did not leave a hair
of your head out of the catalog.

Certainly He has not left your hair to any of you Christian women to
indulge your vanity and pride. It is every tress of it your Lord's. He
does not leave to you men even a part of your talent, of your mind, or
of your body. Your whole self is altogether His and He takes stock of
it and expects you to include it in your practical consecration. He
observes what you do with little things–He notes even those minor
matters which seem too inconsiderable to come under rule at all. We are
under Law

to Christ and that Law covers the whole man. Should not our belief in
this knowledge of us by the Lord, help us in prayer? Do not some
Brethren pray as if they were informing God about themselves?

I think I have heard remarks in prayer which seemed to imply that God
was not acquainted with the Shorter Catechism– friends have even gone
over the doctrines of grace as if the Lord was not aware of them. I
have heard others pray as if God did not know the experience of
Christians–as if they have had to explain to Him some of their doubts
and fears. When we pray we do not need to explain anything, for the
Lord knows all about us, even to the hairs of our head. Dear friends,
we have no need to explain our difficulties and perplexities to our
God. "Your heavenly Father knows"–let this be your comfort.

He knows what things we have need of before we ask Him. This is a great
help in prayer. It may shorten your prayer a good deal if you go to God
with the expression of your desire and plead His promise and submit
your spirit to His Divine discretion. Such a shortening of its length
will be an addition to the strength of prayer. You need not be afraid,
as if God did not know, but come sweetly to Him who knows all about you
and will not act upon your faulty information but upon His own certain
knowledge.

This persuasion will help us to feel that the Lord will deliver us out
of all difficulties for He knows the way out of every labyrinth–He
perceives the answer of every enigma. If He counts the very hairs of
your head, depend upon it, He has a high discretion for greater things
and He is a matchless Pilot whereby, through waves and rocks and quick
sands, He will gently steer your way and bring you to the desired
haven. There is so much of comfort in this doctrine of the infinite
knowledge of God that I wish every poor sinner here would remember that
God knows all about him and consequently can deal with all his sins and
fears.

If you want mercy, come to the Lord at once. He knows your way, He
knows your position, He knows your broken heart, He knows your weary
struggles, He knows what you cannot express. The whole of the wrong you
have worked and the whole of the right you desire, He perceives. For
"the very hairs of your head are all numbered."

III. Now, thirdly and very briefly–Does not this text express
VALUATION? "The very hairs of your head are all numbered." It seems,
then, that lowly saints are exceedingly precious to their Lord. The
whole of Christ's flock on earth were very poor people. If they had a
boat and a few nets, it was all they were worth. If anybody had seen
Christ in His little Church on earth, he would have said, "There is not
a respectable person among them." That is how we talk nowadays. As if
it were respectable to have money. As if respect did not belong to
character but only to possessions. Yet those twelve poor men He picked
out and He thought so much of them that He numbered the hairs of their
heads.

Yonder is a poor old man in the aisle and he has a fustian jacket on.
Never mind his fustian jacket–the very hairs of his head are all
numbered. Yonder is a poor old woman just come out of the workhouse and
she loves to hear the Gospel. She is such a very poor old woman that
nobody likes to invite her into a pew. I speak to the shame of such
pride. She is one of Christ's saints and saintship is a patent of
nobility. If you sold a farm you might count the trees but not the
boughs and the leaves. But if you sold a jeweler's shop, you would
count all the pins and all the diamond rings, because everything is
precious there. Now God reckons everything about His people to be so
precious that He even takes stock of the hairs of their heads.

How precious in the sight of the Master His saints are! I have been
trying to work out a calculation–if the hairs of their heads are worth
so much that God registers them, what are their heads worth? Who shall
tell me that? If their heads are worth so much that the Lord Jesus
Christ died to redeem them, who can tell what their souls are worth, or
rather what they are not worth? They are worth more than all the worlds
put together. Ask a mother what her child is worth. "What will you take
for your boy, Mistress?" My Friends, if she sold him at the price she
would consider a fair compensation, we could not all of us make up the
money if we put all that we have into one common fund.

The Lord set such a value on His children that He gave His Son Jesus
Christ to die rather than He would lose one of them. And Jesus Himself
chose to die on the Cross that none of His little ones should perish.
Oh, the value and the preciousness of a child of God! Worlds would not
serve for pence to be the basis of the valuation. Let us prize the
people of God very highly, feeling as the Psalmist did when he said, "O
God, You are my God–my goodness extends not to You. But to the saints
that are in the earth, and to the excellent in whom is all my delight."

You please Jesus when you do good unto one of the least of these, His
children. He reckons that you have done it unto Him. If they are so
dear to Him, let them be dear to you. And as some of those whom Christ
has purchased with His blood are still lost–

"O come, let us go and find them! In the paths of death they roam."

If the hairs of their head are counted, what must their souls be worth?
Let us feel that all we can do to save a soul from death is but cheap
work compared with the priceless gem we seek.

O come, you Divers, plunge into the sea–the pearls you bring up shall
well repay your utmost risk and toil! Come, you Hunters after souls,
there is no such chase as this! Hunt after souls as the brave Switzer
chases the chamois upon the mountains and let no difficulties daunt
you, for "he that wins souls is wise." There is no more profitable
purchase than this, though you should lay down your lives to bring men
to Christ. How very much does God value the souls of His people!

IV. Lastly, here is PRESERVATION. See how carefully God intends to
preserve His own people, since He begins by counting the hairs of their
heads. I say it, for there is Scripture at the back of my assertion,
that none of the people of God shall suffer in the long run the
smallest loss. "There shall not a hair of your head perish," said
Christ to His believing people. If I were to lose a hair from my head,
I should not know it–should you? But God would know if His servants
lost a hair of their heads and He makes the promise to them of such
complete protection that there shall not a hair of their head perish.
Remember that other text, "The Lord keeps all His bones, not one of
them is broken."

Now, a Christian man may break the bones of his body but in a real and
spiritual sense he is free from such danger, God will keep him–yes,
keep him to all eternity! "There shall not a hoof be left behind," said
Moses to Pharaoh and there shall not a bone, nor a piece of a bone of
the ransomed, be left in the dominion of death and the grave. When the
trumpet shall sound, the whole of redeemed manhood shall start into
life. When Peter came out of prison, the angel smote him, and his
chains fell off and he came out of prison but he did not quit till he
had put on his sandals. He did not leave even a pair of old shoes for
Herod and his jailers.

So shall it be with the children of God at last–"from beds of dust and
silent clay," when the angel's trumpet shall ring out, they shall arise
and they shall leave nothing behind. They shall not leave an essential
particle in the tomb. They shall rise, body, soul and spirit completely
redeemed of the Lord. "The very hairs of your head are all numbered."
Christ knows what He has bought and He will have it. Even to the last
atom He will have that which He has purchased. We shall not enter into
our new life maimed or having one eye. He will preserve His people in
their entirety, and present them, "without spot, or wrinkle, or any
such thing."

Observe that in the close neighborhood of the text, we read of
persecution. Beloved, if persecution should come, it cannot really harm
you. The three Hebrew children, when they came out of the fire, were
not scorched or singed. There was not the smell of fire upon their
hats, their hose, or their hair. When God's people pass through the
fires of persecution, they shall not be losers. They shall go through
the fires altogether unharmed–no–they shall win the martyr's palm and
crown, which shall make them glorious forever, even if they die in the
flames. Therefore, fear nothing. Nothing shall by any means harm you.
In the end your sufferings shall be your enrichment. Though you count
not your lives dear unto you, precious shall your blood be in His
sight.

Besides persecution, there may come to you an accident or sudden
calamity. Never be afraid. It is half the battle, in an accident, to
exhibit presence of mind–therefore let the child of God be calm and
self-possessed. For although you should suffer in body, your true self
will be safe. Though in the tornado, or in the shipwreck, or in
cholera, or in fire–you shall be placed in outward peril even as
others are–yet your real life is insured by the Covenant of Grace from
all injury. Therefore rest in the Lord, for you shall be safe though a
thousand should fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand.
If you lose, your loss shall be transmuted into a real gain.

Sickness, if sickness comes, shall work your health. God's children
have often been ripened by sickness. They are like the sycamore fig,
which never gets sweet until it is bruised. Amos was a bruiser of
sycamore figs and affliction is God's Amos to bruise us into sweetness.
Maturity comes by affliction. Alas, you say, "I have lost a dear
friend." Trust in God and by Divine friendship the void in your heart
shall be more than filled. Have you lost a child? The Lord will be
better to you than ten sons. Should your father and your mother be
taken from you, you shall find them both in Christ and be no orphan.
Thus does the promise stand–"No good thing will he withhold from them
that walk uprightly." "I will never leave you, nor forsake you."

Trust, then, in the Lord at all hazards. Trust in Him in deep waters as
well as on the shore. When the waves are raging, trust your God as well
as when the sea is as glass. When the sea roars and the mountains shake
with the swelling thereof, trust in Jehovah without the shade of a
doubt, for "the very hairs of your head are all numbered." Why should
you fear? Your vessel carries Jesus and all His fortune. If you are
drowned He cannot swim, He sinks or swims with you. For thus has He put
it, "Because I live, you shall live, also." If your Lord lives, you
must live. Therefore, comfort one another with these words and go
quietly, patiently, happily, joyfully through the world, under Divine
preservation, since "the very hairs of your head are all numbered."

As for you who are not in Christ, I feel a great sorrow for you because
you cannot partake in the joy of this preservation. As for the
righteous, the stars in their courses fight for them and the beasts of
the field are in league with them. But as for you, earth groans to bear
the weight of such a sinner, and the elements are impatient to avenge
the quarrel of God's covenant by destroying you. All things work
together to bring upon you the justice which you provoke. Flee! Flee!
Flee! You have but one friend left–flee to Him! That Friend, "the
Friend of Sinners," entreats you to come to Him. Hear Him as He cries
in most tender accents, "Come unto Me, all you that labor and are
heavy-laden and I will give you rest."

Come to Jesus–come at once, for His dear love's sake! O, may His
Father draw you to Him now! Amen.