Welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host for this daily challenge. It’s Thursday, the day we try to apply and live out what we’ve learned this week from the Bible. This week we’ve been studying the story of Naomi, Ruth and Boaz – two women with no future, who meet a generous landowner who secures a new future for them.
Boaz was not just a really nice guy. He was a living example of what Jesus was going to do, a few hundred years later, for an entire world in need of redemption.
We human beings were created to live with God in the Garden of Eden, with all the riches in the world, all the security and comfort of a relationship with God. We lived in a promised land.
Like Elimelech’s family, who left the literal promised land in search of riches elsewhere, we have all lost turned away from God, leaving a relationship with him, and have no way to restore what we’ve lost.
We can try all we want, but none of us can be kind, good, and perfect enough to satisfy God and buy our way into God’s kingdom.
We need a Boaz – we need a redeemer.
Remember, three things are needed for a man to redeem his dead relative’s wife:
They need to be related by blood, he needs to have adequate resources, and a willingness to use them in this way.
Jesus was a Blood Relative of us all: 2000 years ago a descendent of Boaz and Ruth was born in Bethlehem, named Jesus. He was a human being, with human blood. He was a member of the family.
Jesus was Able to Redeem Us All: He was no ordinary man, he was God in human flesh. Though he was our brother human, he was able to live the perfect, sinless life we couldn’t. He had the spiritual capital to redeem every human being on earth.
Jesus was Willing to Redeem Us All: He willingly sacrificed his perfect, sinless life, dying on a cross. He could have stopped it so many times – recanting all that he’d said that was called blasphemy, or explaining it away as a misunderstanding. He could have let Peter attack the guards who were arresting him. He could have called down angels to defend him. But he was willing to redeem us instead.
Finally, Jesus made the sacrifice permanent. He married himself to a bride he calls the church – those who throw themselves at his feet and ask him to be their redeemer.
This is why we call Jesus Redeemer, and why this is named Redeem the Commute.
Do you need a redeemer? Is your life not what God created it to be? Have you wandered from God’s plan for you, and lost everything? Are you not sure how to get back to God?
We need more than nice stories and moral examples, we need redemption.
When there is no niceness, kindness or goodness in this world or even in us, there is in Jesus Christ, and he is remaking our world.
He freely offers to redeem us, whatever we’ve done to leave he wants us back, and paid to get us back. All we need to do is accept that gift of love, commit ourselves to him like Ruth to her redeemer, become one with him, and live in his ways.
Nice story. Nice people. And I think you should be nice people, too. But there was so much more to this story. It’s the greatest story ever told, for all people in all places and times, and what could be nicer than that?
Challenge: Where are you relying on niceness, rather than on your Redeemer?