Our Worth In The Sight Of God (Short Sermon)

Most of us need a confidence boost especially when we have to do something new, something different.

Some of us even fail to recognise our worth, the world is very good at putting us down - More often than not, it simply ignores us.

In this kind of world a sense of our own self-worth is difficult to build, and even more difficult to maintain.

Today's Gospel puts that right, Jesus was preparing His disciples for their first preaching mission.

He knew that the world would not treat them any more kindly than it had treated Him.

To prepare them, He reminded them of their personal worth and their importance to God.

He compared them to the birds of the air, sparrows who are the most common birds in the world.

Worthless little creatures? - NO, in God's eyes they are valuable.

Not one of them falls to the ground without His awareness.

Like sparrows, we sometimes feel so small in such a large and indifferent world.

Most people do not even know we exist. And of those who do, how many really care?

Our contributions are so minimal that society could probably get on just as well without us.

That might seem morbid, but you will have to admit that, for most people it is realistic.

But this is not so with Jesus. He said that to the world sparrows are virtually worthless.

Yet He insisted that not one of them ever falls to the ground without the awareness of His Father.

From that thought Jesus drew this conclusion, "You are worth more than many sparrows."

We may be small, we may be insignificant, but we are important to God.

Sometimes we may feel helpless amongst the tragedies of life, but we are not forgotten. Jesus said, "Not a single sparrow falls to the ground without your Father's perception."

Through the tragedies of life and sometimes life can be very cruel, life seems to say that we don’t matter, but the fact remains, we do matter to God.

Then sparrows are two a’penny, are we so insignificant amongst so many as to have little or no worth?

There are about 5 billion of us here on the earth. How can any one person be considered valuable in the midst of so many?

To answer that question accurately, we must first know who that one person is.

If we are speaking of some nameless, faceless individual, residing somewhere in the slums of Africa, then the answer is obvious.

That person has no real importance to you and to me.

Whatever happens to them will not affect us one way or the other.

But if that one person is the child who shares our home, then the answer is decidedly different.

We know every detail of that child's life. Anything that happens to them is of first-rate importance to you and to me.

And in many ways that’s the importance of the media especially tv as it brings these situations into our homes.

Jesus wants us to understand, that with God our Father there is no such thing as a nameless, faceless individual.

Every person on earth is His child who shares His home.

He knows the details of every life and cares very deeply about what happens to each one of us.

That is what Jesus meant when He said, "Every hair on your head has been counted."

We may feel insignificant in the midst of so many, but that is not the way God sees us.

These words of Jesus that we have heard this morning have been preserved in Scripture for one reason and one reason alone.

It is that you and I might recognise our true worth and realise how precious we are in the sight of God.