Context: Jesus, after the Sermon on the Mount, goes about the country teaching the people, healing the ill, lame, blind, dumb, and crazed, and raising the dead. Finally choosing his twelve disciples, he instructs them in their mission and warns them of their difficult life. They may expect, He says, even torture and death. Declaring that the death of the body is unimportant when compared with the death of the body and soul, He reminds them of God's concern for the small sparrow and, therefore, of God's greater concern for them: