Sermon Illustrations on Redemption

Hosea is told to go and love his wife again, after everything, and the text records what it cost him: fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley. He pays a price to get back a woman who was already his wife. The prophet is not making a point about generosity. He is standing in a market handing over money for a person who should never have had a price on her at all.

Ruth 4 is a property transaction conducted in public at the town gate with ten elders as witnesses. The nearer kinsman is willing to buy the field until he learns that Naomi's daughter-in-law comes with it, and then he withdraws, saying it would damage his own inheritance. Boaz takes it on, field and widow together, at cost to himself. The deal is sealed by taking off a sandal. The Hebrew has a word for what he is: the kinsman-redeemer, the relative with both the right and the means to buy back what the family lost.

The story is told of a boy who built a small boat, carved his name in it, and lost it on a river. Weeks later he saw it in a shop window with a price on it. He went in and paid the money, and coming out he is supposed to have said: now you are twice mine, I made you, and I bought you. Every preacher has heard this. Nobody can say where it happened.

Sourcing: This circulates in many versions, in first and third person, attributed to different preachers, and no primary source has been identified. Treat it as a parable that has been passed down, not as an event.

The one place the English word survives with its original force is the pawnshop. You hand over a watch, you take the money, and you get a ticket. The watch does not stop being yours in sentiment. It stops being yours in fact, and it goes behind the counter. To get it back you redeem the ticket, which means you pay, in full, in money. The watch is not consulted and cannot contribute.

There is a Japanese craft of mending broken pottery by joining the pieces with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. The seams are not disguised. They are made the most visible feature of the object. The repaired bowl is not pretending to be an unbroken bowl. It is a bowl with a documented history of having been dropped, and the history is picked out in gold. The alternative, an invisible repair, asks everyone to agree that the break never happened.

Sourcing: The repair technique is real. The devotional interpretation attached to it in Western preaching is a modern addition, so present the craft as fact and the meaning as your own reading.

Paul writes to Philemon about Onesimus, a slave who had run and had since become a Christian. Paul sends him back, carrying the letter that argues for him. In it Paul makes an offer in his own handwriting: if he has wronged you or owes you anything, put that to my account. I will repay it. And he asks Philemon to receive the man not as a slave but as a brother.

When Jacob dies the brothers panic, assuming Joseph has been waiting to settle the account. They send a message and then come and fall down before him. Joseph weeps, and then says the sentence: you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. Notice what he does not say. He does not say it was not evil, or that it was fine, or that it had all worked out for the best. The word "evil" stays in the sentence.

What is a good illustration about redemption?

Hosea buying his own wife back for a named price, and Boaz at the gate as kinsman-redeemer. Both have a sum, a transfer and a new status, which is what the word actually means.

Where do preachers find illustrations?

For redemption, start with the Old Testament, which is unusually generous here: the kinsman-redeemer laws, the year of jubilee, Hosea, and the Passover all supply concrete transactions rather than abstractions.

How many illustrations should a sermon have?

Two or three. With redemption there is a particular temptation to stack them, because the metaphors are vivid; resist it, because four vivid pictures cancel each other out.

Do I need to cite an illustration's source?

Yes. The boy-and-the-boat story on this page is the standard example of a beloved illustration that nobody can source, and "there is an old preachers' story" is all the framing it needs to be usable.

What is the difference between redemption and forgiveness?

Forgiveness releases a debt. Redemption pays it and takes ownership of what was pledged against it. That is why redemption language always has a price attached and forgiveness language does not have to.

How do I preach redemption to someone with a criminal record?

Emphasise that scripture keeps the record and changes the ownership rather than deleting the file. Onesimus went back, Paul guaranteed the debt, and the status changed from slave to brother without anyone pretending the running away had not happened.