“God’s Protection Guaranteed” (Luke 12:4-7)

The sovereign God is in control of everything. He may either allow us to be hurt by our enemies or see to it that not even a single strand of our hair would be touched. Bottom line: God will protect us because we are under His care.

“I tell you, my friends: Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body and, after that, have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom you should fear: Fear Him who after He has killed has power to cast into Gehenna. Yes, I tell you: Fear Him. Aren’t five sparrows sold for two assaria coins? Not one of them is forgotten by God. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Therefore, don’t be afraid. You are of more value than many sparrows” (Luke 12:4-7).

God holds us precious.

“Aren’t five sparrows sold for two assaria coins? Not one of them is forgotten by God. … Therefore, don’t be afraid. You are of more value than many sparrows” (6,7b).

Even evil people whose minds are saturated with 100% evil surprisingly possess the positive sentiment of love and care for their own. They hold certain people dear, and they won’t allow anything bad happen to them. To see that their loved ones are okay is even one their motivations or their very motivation for engaging in evil. Therefore, why won’t the good God be better in this regard? Why won’t our God be even more loving and caring?

We won’t expect anything less from God. Once He makes us His own through our faith in Him, He holds each and every one of us precious. As His own, He won’t allow anything bad happen to us. We can be sure our safety is God’s primary concern. He won’t allow Satan have his way in us. Satan will never be able to smite us unless God permits it. Therefore, God is still in control. Since God is in control, we’ll be fine. Everything will be all right.

Let’s keep this fact in mind whenever we’re facing troubles, danger, and calamities. We’re not alone because we have our God to protect us.

If God sustains the animals and their natural habitat, why won’t He take care of human beings who are His special creation especially us who are His children? Though we are inferior to angels and in many ways resemble mammals, we humans are God’s prime creation. So we better be good at being one.

The birds get by in life without having to worry about how they’re going to eat. The nature that God created provides for them. They simply follow their everyday routine in finding food for themselves and for their younglings.

Therefore, the safest place we can ever be is under the shadow of God’s wings. If we’re only following the will of God in our lives, we can rest assured that God will take care of everything we may ever need or want without us having to worry about it.

God knows us better than we do ourselves.

“But the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (7a).

We can trust God’s wisdom because He knows everything about anything because He created everything. We may not know ourselves fully well. Alas! Oftentimes, we don’t even have a single clue. As His handiwork, He knows how to deal with the minutest details of our persons. He knows exactly what is good for us and He gives us that or what is bad for us and He keeps us away from that or that from us.

Even if calamity gets to us, it can only hurt our body.

“I tell you, my friends: Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body and, after that, have no more that they can do” (4).

We human beings are not all flesh and blood. Our bones, muscles, organs, and innards are not all of us. We’re not like the other living flesh that once they die, they’re done. We have a soul, which is our true self. Even soulless human beings have souls. Our soul or our spirit or our inner being is the part of us that’s eternal.

Our body is just the vessel of our true self. It is our soul that makes our body and every part of it function; for instance, to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. Once our body receives a fatal injury, the life in it gets extinguished and our soul departs from it.

For as the body apart from the spirit is dead; even so, faith apart from works is dead (James 2:26).

Our body then will be no more and will start to decompose. No matter how beautiful it had been, it will rot and stink and decay and will return to ashes. But our inner being lives on and goes to where it’s supposed to go.

Inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and, after this, judgment… (Hebrews 9:27)

If we are true children of God, we will go home to our Father God; if not, God cannot have anything to do with our soul.

So even if those creatures devoid of soul who, for no valid reason, hate us so much succeed in killing us, the part that they would only destroy is our material composition. They can’t harm our soul. It is only us ourselves who can either save or harm our souls by our decisions to either obey God or our sinful selves, to be good or bad, to put our faith in Him or not.

Of course, we’re not saying that we should now disregard and stop taking care of our perishable bodies while we have them. Our physical form is one of the things that identify and define us as unique individuals created by God. We can glorify God through it. As good stewards, we should keep our bodies healthy and clean. We should keep ourselves from situations, foods, and people that might imperil the health of our body.

We should also not give evil people an idea that it is okay for them to hurt us, do everything they want with us, or ultimately kill us because, anyway, we won’t cease to exist even if we die and heaven is waiting for us. No. We shouldn’t willingly make ourselves a prey for the predators. That’s utter foolishness.

That is not the kind of humility and meekness that Jesus teaches. That is not what turning the other cheek means. That is not how turning the other cheek works. In other places in the gospels, Jesus teaches that we should not make ourselves a cause of sin to others. If we willingly make ourselves a prey for the predators, we’re actually promoting evil.

Jesus never teaches us to throw our lives away, invite persecution, or welcome death. But if ever the forces of evil are too powerful and insanely strong and God allows us to be overcome by them, Jesus is just giving us an assurance that our souls are safe with God. Death, physical death, won’t mean a thing. Its fangs won’t have any more bite because Jesus has overcome the power of death when He resurrected.

Our God is more powerful than the enemy in every way.

“But I will warn you whom you should fear: Fear Him who after He has killed has power to cast into Gehenna. Yes, I tell you: Fear Him” (5).

This verse, among others, teaches us that there is hell as well as there is heaven and God has control of both. Hell is not Satan’s dominion but his prison; he is the royal occupant, not the lord, of that place. It is his and his fallen angels’ future place of torment. Therefore, it’s not Satan who determines who goes to hell. That is God’s prerogative, based also on our decision through the free will that God gave us as human beings. So who turns out to be the more powerful whom we should fear more?

Life is unpredictable and full of surprises. We don’t know what joys or pain await us in the future. But the sovereign Lord is in control of everything. At times, He may allow us to get hurt by our enemy either slightly or significantly; or He may see to it that not even a single strand of our hair would be touched. A variety of things can happen; it’s not really formulaic. But the bottom line is that our protection by our God is guaranteed because we are under His care. God is more than just a responsible parent.

Passage by Passage: Luke 12 series, episode 2

by: Marven T. Baldo