The topic of
our Sunday school lesson was redemption and the presenter used the story of
Hosea (prophet) and Gomer (prostitute) as an example of redemption. By marrying
the prostitute Hosea redeemed her; however, after bearing him children, Gomer went
back to her profession. Hosea once again redeemed Gomer by purchasing her out
of slavery. It strikes me that Gomer had a lucrative career in prostitution, was
apparently able to feed and clothe herself, and felt she could take care of
herself. It’s no wonder that evangelism is so difficult…we’re often witnessing
to people who are so self-sufficient that they don’t even know they need to be redeemed.
1 comment:
Gail;
-----My Dad’s mom always said something that ran chills down my back. I am really sure you’ve heard it, too. “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” That’s so NAZI-like. That’s so meaningless, tiny cog in a giant uncaring machine like! And such accusations are from the world's hatred of righteousness. Righteousness is everything in its place. In a world where chaos and order mixes by nature, righteousness does seem NAZI-like, until we desire with all our hearts that every cell of our immune systems work like a relentlessly driving, crushing, machine against the cancer, the MS, the ALS, and the countless other maladies which destroy the comfort of life and try to destroy the joy of it, too. We all want the immune system working righteously, don’t we?
-----Its working righteously means even it has its place. Most species of bacteria in our bodies not only are good for us, some are critical to our health. A certain bacterium in the intestines of infants releases toxins which destroy other bacteria that would make the child badly sick. Our digestive system can not break down many plant molecules. But there’s a bacterium living in our digestive track which can, and does. (In some people, this bacterium gets out of control and goes to their heads, thinking the brain to be a giant mushroom, where its picky gobbling will turn them into vegetarians.) And dare I mention the dreadful e-coli which inhabits our intestinal tract? It synthesizes vitamin-K. Vitamin K enables our blood clotting mechanism to function properly. That’s kind of important. E-coli can also make your bathroom duty quite stinky. So the next time you’ve about stunk yourself off the pot, just be thankful the blood in your legs isn’t clotting.
-----An immune system which did not both have its place and stay in its place would clean us out of all these little, beneficial bugs. I guess we would never have gotten past the infant stage. Which means, of course, nobody ever would have reached maturity to have children. Which means two things: 1) no reproduction would mean no human race, and 2) no reproduction would mean no natural selection. Funny how evolution has had to create some critical functions without which a species could not exist so the species could exist long enough for the pressures of natural selection to evolve those critical functions. Smart people, whose brains have not been gobbled upon by plant loving bacteria, call such systems “irreducible complexity”, which is to say “It’s all or nothing, right now, baby!” Irreducible complexity puts evolution in its place..
-----Self-sufficiency also has its place to serve rather than to destroy. “Keep your heart with all vigilance…” (Prov 4:23) does not mean, “Allow the Lord to keep your heart with all His vigilance.” It means you keep; it means you be vigilant. The sluggard will find nothing to harvest if he was not self-sufficient enough to plough in the autumn (Prov 20:4.) Self-control is a function very much at the root of self-sufficiency, not only making the individual self-sufficient in those things the Lord expects, but also in maintaining a guardrail against self-sufficiency in those things which are the Lord’s place for doing.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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