JESUS - KINSMAN AND REDEEMER

The small women’s Bible study that weekly meets in my home is studying Nancy Guthrie’s book: The Son of David, Seeing Jesus in the Historical Books.  We began last year with her first Old Testament study in Genesis, followed by one on Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.  All three of these studies together have resulted in many WOW moments of amazement at God’s revelation of Himself and His grand plan of redemption! 

I have always been a detail person, so I just love studying the Old Testament for its rich narrative, chock full of the kind of detail that really gets me going.  It’s not uncommon for me to get stuck on a seemingly insignificant thing and then spend lots of thought and study time to understand why God included it. 

Here’s an example for you.  Ehud is one of Israel’s judges written about in the Old Testament book of Judges.  It says this about him in chapter 3, verse 7:

When the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for them: Ehud the son of Gera, the Benjamite, a left-handed man.

When I first read that verse, my mind immediately fixated on the fact that he was a left-handed man.  I initially thought, “And. . . .what difference does THAT make?”   Ah, but it was an important detail!  Read the rest of that story for yourself and you’ll see! 

Though I love all those curiosity piquing details, Nancy Guthrie’s books have been a wonderful stretch!  She is helping me see what I might otherwise miss – the much bigger, cosmic picture of what God was doing in the Old Testament to help us see Jesus – His person and His ministry – so that He would be recognized when He came.

This week we are studying the book of Ruth.  It’s a beautiful story that might, with just a surface reading, seem like a love story, but it is so much more.  First the story itself.

The book of Ruth begins with the story of Naomi, an Israelite woman who, due to a famine in Israel, moved with her husband and family to the Gentile region of Moab.  There her husband died.  Her two sons both married Moabite women, but then they also died. 

Naomi got word that the famine was over in Bethlehem, so she decided to return to the land of her people.  Her two daughters in law made to go with her, but she told them to return to their own people in the hope that they might marry again and bear children.  One of them returned home, but her daughter in law Ruth refused to leave her.  In Ruth’s beautiful response to Naomi’s plea, recorded for us in Ruth, chapter 1, verse 16, Ruth says:

Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.

Ruth’s words are fraught with deeper meaning than simply a love for her mother in law and a desire to remain with her.  Ruth’s words are an expression of faith, aligning her with the people of Israel and their God.  Her words indicate a commitment, to leave behind all that had previously defined her as a Moabite, to become a follower of Israel’s God.

Naomi and Ruth arrive back in Israel without fortune or family to give them security and protection.  Through a series of circumstances, they find a close male relative, Boaz, who agrees to serve a unique role in their lives.  According to Israelite law, when a man died without a male heir (as Ruth’s husband did), his brother was to marry his wife.  The first son born to them would be considered the offspring of the dead brother.  This was done to keep land inheritances in the original family.  If there was no son to do so, it was up to the next closest male relative to fill the role.  The role was that of kinsman redeemer. 

Since both of Naomi’s sons had died, Boaz assumed the role of kinsman redeemer.  Since he was closest kin to Naomi, he was able to buy her husband’s land (redeem it for Ruth’s dead husband and his heirs) and marry Ruth. 

One of the questions in the study this week was to compare the parallels between Boaz and Jesus.  Boaz was incredibly kind to Ruth, even though she was a foreigner to Israel.  He was beyond generous.  Jesus demonstrated these same characteristics of kindness and generosity in New Testament accounts: by showing kindness in the hope of leading us to repentance, by healing the servant of the Gentile Roman centurion.  

Most importantly however, it is in his role of kinsman redeemer that Boaz points us to Jesus, our ultimate Kinsman Redeemer.

All believers in Jesus today recognize Him as our Redeemer.  When we were dead in our sin and unable to rescue ourselves, He stepped in to take the penalty for sin for us.  He redeemed us from death and the sinful, empty way of life we lived before we knew Him.  His gift of salvation is open to all who would receive it, Jew and Gentile.  I know Jesus as Redeemer.

However, it was the word kinsman that kept my detail loving mind awake this week.  How was Jesus our kinsman?  The New Testament tells us how, beginning in Philippians 2:5:

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.  And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

Jesus is our kinsman because though He was God, He came from heaven in human form, “in the likeness of men”.  Here He lived the life we could NOT live, a  perfect life, without sin, fulfilling all of God’s law.  He was the only man who could stand in for us, take the penalty that was ours at the cross, and so become our Redeemer.  We needed Him to be our Kinsman as well as our Redeemer.

In the Old Testament book of Ruth God has revealed so much more than just a story of human kindness and redemption.  He has pointed us toward the One who would fulfill in every way the role of OUR Kinsman Redeemer, Jesus.

I will never get over my love for detail.  But it’s in the BIG PICTURE view of what God has been, and is now doing, that I find myself so in love with Jesus.

And Ruth – the foreigner who aligned herself by faith to Israel’s God?  She became the mother of Obed, who was the father of Jesse, who was the father of David – from whose royal line would come Jesus, the Messiah.