Introduction.

1. If you are an employer you know that the most likely time for employees to take sick leave, is not just before a long-weekend or between Christmas and New Year, but during the exercise of stocktaking. Even though taking stock is very important most people would rather avoid the mindless and boring exercise of counting the stock on the shelves. Everyone would like to avoid the task of dealing with the discrepancies that are sure to be found. God never takes stock yet he knows precisely what is happening in every aspect of creation. The greatness of our God cannot be missed in the statement Jesus makes in Matthew 10:29-31 when he says ‘Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.' Our God does not miss a single detail of what happens to every sparrow he has made. Concerning his children, God not only knows them by name but has numbered the hairs on their heads.
   
   
2. How many strands of hair do you have on your head? According to a German scientist the number of hairs on your head depends on the natural colour of your hair. If your hair is red you will have about 90,000 strands, if blonde you will have about 140,000 strands, and if your hair is black you will have about 110,000 stands of hair. Matthew 10:30 does not say that God knows how many strands of hair you have, but that each strand of hair has been numbered. When a strand of your hair falls out God not only knows that one has fallen, but also the number he gave to the strand of hair that has fallen out. This statement about God numbering the strands of hair of your head is quite a staggering concept and wonderfully comforting to those who love the Lord.
   
   

Finding comfort in the amazing knowledge God has of his people.

1. God's knowledge of you far exceeds the knowledge a mother has of her baby. His knowledge is much greater than the knowledge a loving wife has of her devoted husband, even after 50 years of marriage. Even if you had an identical twin God's knowledge of you would surpass the knowledge of the twin a million times. Your Lord knows you better than your very best friend or your soul mate ever will. There are secrets of the heart that only you and God know. God's penetrating knowledge reaches into the very deepest regions of your heart, spirit, mind and life. You may have used the services of the same doctor for forty or fifty years, yet his knowledge of your body and the health of its organs and systems is but a fraction of what the Lord knows. My knowledge of myself or your knowledge of yourself falls woefully short of God's knowledge of us.
   
   
2. God's knowledge of you is much more than you can ever, ever imagine. How many hairs do I have on my head? I have no idea and in my estimation it is a very trivial matter. Mothers love their children, but as far as I know they do not count the number of hairs on their children's heads. The point I am making is that God's knowledge about us is complete even in matters which most people regard as absolutely trivial. God's knowledge is complete even though he has children more in number than anyone is able to count. As Spurgeon says, ‘If there were nobody else in the world except you, and God had nothing else to do but to think of you, and 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.' There is absolutely nothing about us that God does not know, nothing from our past, nothing about the present and nothing concerning the future. You will not do anything in life, even the smallest thing that God does not know fully. God knows already how often you will stand up and sit down or blink your eye-lids in your lifetime.
   
   
3. Does not the fact that God has numbered the very hairs on your head tell you that this knowledge is linked to his love and care for you? The information God has about you is not stored away in some kind of data-base in heaven so that the details are at his finger tips. The numbering of your hairs was a task not given to an angel, but undertaken by God personally and purposely. God's knowledge of you is personal, conscious and constant. Surely you have to agree that if God cares enough about the hairs on your head to number them, then his care for you must be very great. No single hair on your head will turn grey or white except at God's command. Not one hair will be lost from your head without the specific command of God. God is personally involved in everything that happens to you and your body. God is not like a watchmaker who makes a watch, winds it up and then abandons it to operate on its own. God is intimately involved in everything you do. You cannot operate or function without the Lord supplying you with the sustaining strength that allows your body to operate and function. With such wonderful knowledge surely our heavenly Father who in sending his only begotten Son to redeem us from the bondage of sin will deal with us sympathetically and graciously. God knows every weakness in our bodies as well as every flaw in our character. To those of us who are entering the senior phase of life, God's imitate knowledge of us ought to greatly comfort us. The God of all grace understands all about our growing old, our dimming eyes, dulling ears, fading strength and the circumstances that try our souls. Those who pass through times of bodily illness, such as Parkinson's disease, cancer or arthritis ought to find comfort in the fact that God knows their pain, fears, anxiety and frustration. The story of Joni Eareckson Tada is well known. As a seventeen year old a diving accident transformed her life from that of an active woman to that of a person who would face everyday in a wheelchair. Joni drew pictures by gripping a pen in her teeth and then moved her head to make the sketch. She always signed her name followed by the letters PTL. A journalist asked her, ‘Why do you sign your drawing "PTL"?' Joni answered saying, ‘It stands for praise the Lord. You see, Mr Kopf, God loves us - he does care. For those who love God, everything - even what happened to me at age seventeen - works together for good. God has been good to me. He has ingrained the reflection of Christ into my character, developed my happiness, my patience, my purpose in life. He has given me contentment.' It seems to me that God's very, very, very intimate, tender and loving knowledge of us and the fact that he is our Good Shepherd who watches over us ought to fill us with stability, security, contentment, and joy.
   
   
4. Does not the fact that God has numbered the very hairs on your head tell you that this knowledge is linked to his providence? Most Christians readily believe in the providence of God, but not all Christians are prepared to follow this truth to its most logical conclusion Most Christians are happy to believe that there is an overruling providence of God, but they conveniently forget that his providence is constant and that nothing comes to pass except by God's providence. Our English word providence is simply the Latin word for foresight. God's fore-sight enables him to make perfect provision for his people to accomplish his purposes. Nothing can ever take God by surprise because he knows exactly what will happen. God will never need to change his plan, because he knows precisely every short-term implication and long-term consequence. How far does God's foresight extend? It extends to everything in minute detail concerning all things.
   
   
5. This raises an important question; ‘Is God's foresight a product of his knowledge or is it a product of his controlling sovereignty?' To know in perfect detail what will take place in the future, I believe necessitates controlling the future. If our Lord is not in control of the future in every way then his knowledge cannot be perfect as whatever is in control may change things. God's knowledge is perfect because he has fore-ordained all things. Before the foundation of the world God fore-ordained the number of hairs on our heads, when and where we were to be born, and who our parents should be, and what all our experiences in life would be. Anything and everything about your life in any and every way had been predestined by God to accomplish his purposes for his glory. Listen to Psalm 139:16 as it is found in the New Living Translation, ‘You (Lord) saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.' Nothing has ever happened to you or will ever happen to you, but that which God has ordained. This is true of the biggest and most important issues in life and in the smallest and lest significant things in your life. You cannot draw a line in your history and say; ‘these things have been arranged by providence, while those things have not. God's Providence not only keeps the stars in their courses, but also determines the colours of every sunset. Nothing is too small or too great for God's sovereign rule.
   
   
6. Due to erroneous teachings people often think that there is little or no difference between fatalism and the divine predestination. They differ in this: with predestination the controlling determination of human action proceeds from a rational being, while in fatalism the controlling determination is from an impersonal and irrational force. How do you think of God's involvement in his creation? Do you think of God working by general law and exercising a divine influence over all things in the same way that gravity affects all things subject to its force? Do you think the differences we find in individual lives come about not by divine determination, but by personal choices and responses to the divine influence that touches the lives of all men and women? If you think that God's mode of operation is similar to that of a natural force, then you believe in fatalism. Fate is said to be an impersonal natural universal force that exerts influence on all individuals and determines their lives. Fate sweeps you along as a cork in a fast flowing river. The differences between predestination and fatalism may be likened to the difference between a person and a machine. The whole concept of fate is hard and cruel as it makes men and women victims of ever changing circumstances against which they fight but never prevail. Most of us have been frustrated and annoyed by having to speak to a computer rather than a person when making a phone call. A computer is dead. A person is alive, a rational being filled with understanding and sympathy. Speaking to a computer is speaking to an inanimate material object which is totally incapable of communication. When you talk to your dog or a cat there is a form communication between living creatures and it is wonderful compared to speaking to a pre-programmed computer. When God's providence dealt Job a devastating blow he said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him!" (Job 13:15) Job knew he was dealing with a person and not a machine. The Westminster Confession of Faith teaches that it is God, himself who determines all that happens in the universe he created. As Dr. Charles Hodge says; ‘God has not given it (creation) either to necessity, or to chance, or to the caprice of man, or to the malice of Satan, to control the sequence of events and all their issues, but has kept the reins of government in his own hands.' We ought to rejoice in the fact that God who is perfect in all his ways did not pass the reins of government into the hands or power of someone or something else. Life would be dreadful if it was under the control of Satan or sinful man. The task of controlling all things in every minute detail is not a task too great for our wonderful Lord; our God's sovereign rule is perfect and complete. God is in perfect control over all things for the good of his people and his own glory.
   
   
7. There is some thing terrifying and even horrifying in the idea of life being fixed by an eternal plan, especially if you are an enemy of God who controls all things. Christians enjoy the amazing comfort of knowing that their God is in control of their lives. Sometimes we bulk at the idea of God being in total control, yet we pray ‘Lord your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.' Living in submission to the will of God is a basic aspect of the Christian life and implies that God has planned out your life. The Bible tells every Christian that God's eternal plan for their lives, wills nothing but that which in the end brings them into perfect conformity to the image of his Son, and displays the glory of his own righteousness, grace and truth. Christ died as a sacrifice of atonement for your sins to remove the guilt of your sins so you can be more like him. Christ died to make propitiation for your sins to end your alienation from God, so that being reconciled you might be more like him. Christ died to set you free from the bondage of your sins so you can be more like him. Christ died in obedience to the command of the Father so you can be more like him by being clothed in his righteousness. When the risen Christ ascended to the throne of God, he with the Father sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in his people to make them more like himself. God's will, plan or purpose is for you to be conformed to the image and the likeness of Christ Jesus. All God's providences will work to bring me to the place where I conform to the image and the likeness of Christ. The first lesson in submitting to the Lordship of Christ is grasping that it is his purpose and will that you be like him. You need to take that goal of the divine plan and make it your own. Give all your heart, mind, will and strength to becoming more and more like Jesus. If you make this goal your own, you will have no problem rejoicing in the fact that God is in total control and he will determine the process that you need to pass through in order to be conformed to the image of Christ. In order to set the process needed to drive sin from your heart and replace it with righteousness requires a full, comprehensive, and complete knowledge of your life from beginning to end. Only God has this great knowledge of each of his children. If the God who determines the processes that I will pass through takes care to number each hair on my head then I can be absolutely sure that his care will be perfect and I can be confident that due to the power, purpose and providence of God I will be like Christ Jesus.
   
   
8. That the very hairs on your head are numbered reveals that God sets a great value on you. God values you because he chose you to be one of his elect and wrote your name in the Lamb's Book of Life before time began. You are valuable because he made you in his own image and likeness. You are valuable because Christ Jesus bought you with his own blood. You are valuable because Jesus the King of glory wants you to be in glory with him. In the light of these facts it is preposterous to think that anyone whom God counts as valuable will ever be lost or neglected by his loving care. You are precious to God, he treasures you, you are the apple of his eye and his amazing knowledge of you confirms in the strongest possible way that the Lord will watch over you, protect you, provide for you, lead you, and work for your good in all things perfectly. In the eyes of the world you may be considered of little value and worth, but in God's eyes you are very precious. If God counts the very hairs of your head how precious is your soul to him?

Conclusion.

As a Christian God's complete and perfect knowledge of you ought to fill you with comfort and assurance, for God will most certainly accomplish his purpose and you will be like Christ and enjoy eternal face to face fellowship with the Lord of Glory. We will be with Jesus and like Jesus and the mighty power of God and his perfect knowledge guarantees that end. Unbelievers ought to be deeply alarmed at the perfect knowledge God has of them, he knows your every sinful way, thought, feeling, word and action and he will judge you in his perfect holiness and justice. I urge you to seek the Lord and the fullness of his grace to reconcile you to himself and deal with your sin.