SPARROWS! Whoever would have thought that they were worth naming in the Bible? But they are, and in many places too. Chirping on our housetops, picking crumbs from the road, they are object lessons of God’s care, for not one of them can “fall on the ground” (Matt. 10:29), without God knowing of it.
SPARROWS SOLD. (Matt. 10:29.) “Two sparrows sold for a farthing"—cheap enough surely. But sinners who sell themselves to the service of sin and Satan go for less. For the Word says, “Ye have sold yourselves for nought.” Isaiah 52:3.
THE ODD SPARROW. (Luke 12:6.) Two for a farthing: five for two farthings — so that odd one is thrown in. Of so little value are these birds reckoned among men. Yet the Lord Jesus tells us “not one of them,” not even the odd sparrow, “is forgotten before God.” And boys and girls whose souls are precious in God’s sight, are “of more value than many sparrows,” (verse 7). Need we wonder, then, that He has given a great “ransom” (1 Tim. 2:6) to buy them back to Himself?
A SPARROW SACRIFICED. (Lev. 14:4, margin.) “Take two sparrows, alive and clean.” One was killed, and its blood preserved in a vessel of water. Then the poor leper who had been shut out from his friends and from his God had this sprinkled on him, the priest saying that now he was “clean.” A wonderfully simple illustration surely, of how a sinner is made clean through believing what God’s Word (John 15:3) says about Christ dying for sinners (Rom. 5:8) for you, for me.
A SPARROW LIBERATED. (Lev. 14:6.) Dipped in its fellow’s blood, the live sparrow was set free, and soared into the air with the blood-mark on its wing redeemed and set free. So it is now with all who “have redemption” (Eph. 1:7) through Jesus’ blood, and who confess Him as “my Redeemer.”
J.R.
ML-02/25/1962