Lost Treasure

by Rev Greg Obong-Oshotse 13 November 2020

Text: Hosea 4:6 “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.”

A 20th century American pastor, preaching on the word of God that had been lost and then found under the reign of the reforming boy-King Josiah says, “Some years ago, I read about an old gentleman who discovered five thousand dollars in a family Bible that had been left to him. Bank notes were scattered all through the book. Get this – many years earlier in 1874, this man’s aunt died, and one clause of her will read, “To my beloved nephew, I will and bequeath my Bible, and all that it contains, with the residue of my estate after my financial expenses and just and lawful debts have been paid.” Do you know how many years it was before he opened that Bible? Thirty-five years. And in that time he had suffered great financial troubles. He lived in poverty most of those years. And while he was packing his trunk in order to move in with his son and his son’s wife, to live out the few remaining years of his life, he at last opened that old Bible, and then the notes began to fall out. What regret must have come to his mind, knowing that this rich treasure had lain idle for thirty-five years.” Such was the state of God’s people decades before they were taken into exile – in accordance with the word which should have saved them, but which they had neglected. An unopened Bible is a lost treasure.

Prayer

Dear Father may we joyfully read Your word which You have painstakingly handed down to us in Christ’s name, Amen.