Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. (1 Peter 1:13-19 ESV).
The picture I’ve included today is from the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is self-explanatory. These were desperate times when many people didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. These children formed their daily lines to be given a cup of “soup” as their only meal of the day. Some people found their last resort and hope to be gathering some of their last valuable possessions (perhaps a memento from their parents) to get cash at a pawn shop. They would receive a pawn ticket as a voucher, and then, later, if they could scrape together enough money, they could redeem their precious item, buying it back “out of hock.”
As far as I know, there were no pawn shops in Biblical times. But the Bible tells of people who fell into poverty and had to sell the family farm or sell themselves into service, and they desperately needed a way out. Often it was up to a relative to redeem them (cf. Leviticus 25:25-55). I have heard the stories from my parents of the tremendous poverty and difficulty of the 1930s and the Depression. My Dad, having just finished the third grade at the ripe old age of 10 years old, had to quit school in order to help out with the family farm. They grew a few extra vegetables in order to pull the small cart of freshly harvested foods to the main street in town and sell what they could to make enough money to buy other things that they couldn’t make or grow. Desperation and depression were the norms of that time.
Our spiritual plight is that kind of desperate until we find the grace of God working on our behalf. There we will find redemption. We will find that Jesus, our Redeemer, bought us back, at the cost of his precious blood, by dying on the cross. This is the topic of the next few days. The Scripture uses many different images to describe this great work of God. Exploring them will help us recognize how amazing His grace really is!