Everything can be Redeemed

The other day while at the bookstore I picked up a bible study called “the minor prophets.”   This particular study included six books of the bible; Hosea, Joel, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk and Malachi.  After arriving home, I remember wondering why I had picked that particular study.  I had once, long ago, tried to study the small band of prophets in the back of the old testament.  My time of study hadn’t lasted long and been at all fruitful.  So I wondered to myself, why now would I find myself drawn to this particular study.

Today I know why.  I began to study the story of Hosea at the beginning of this week and immediately found myself immersed.  His story has always been confusing to me.  Why would God tell his prophet to go take a wife that is a prostitute.  It has never made a lot of sense to me.  The author, Warren W. Wiersbe, plunged me deep into an understanding that I had never heard before.  He says, Prophets sometimes do strange things. For three years, Isaiah embarrassed people by walking the streets dressed like a prisoner of war.  For several months, Jeremiah carried a yoke on his shoulders.  The prophet Ezekiel acted like a little boy and “played war,” and once he used a haircut as a theological object lesson.  When his wife suddenly died, Ezekiel even turned that painful experience into a sermon.  Why did these men do these peculiar things?  “These peculiar things” were really acts of mercy.  The people of God had become deaf to God’s voice and were no longer paying attention to His covenant.  The Lord called His servants to do these strange things – these “action sermons” – in hopes that the people would wake up and listen to what they had to say.  Only then could the nation escape divine discipline and judgment.  But no prophet preached a more painful “action sermon” than Hosea.  He was instructed to marry a prostitute named Gomer, who subsequently bore him three children, and he wasn’t even sure the last two children were fathered by him.  Then Gomer left him for another man, and Hosea had the humiliating responsibility of buying back his own wife.

Wiersbe calls what the prophets did “action sermons.”  They lived out the word of God in their own life to show the message God required them to tell.  His life story was a warning to the people of God.  It was also a picture of what God was willing to do for his people.  He too was willing to buy back his own wife with the blood of his own son.

Yesterday, I found myself in tears after my study.  God had something to say to me personally.  I’m no prophet but could I use my life as an action sermon for others?  God seems to keep redeeming the past.  His kindness is great.  The mercy of God seems to have no bounds.  All things can be redeemed if we hand them over to God.