I was just reading about Tim Allen of “Home Improvement,” “Last Man Standing,” “The Santa Clause,” and the voice for Buzz Lightyear, has just finished his first time through the Bible. He took it slowly and methodically, spending 13 months to complete the task. The 71-year-old said he was “Humbled, enlightened and amazed at what I read and what I learned. I will rest and meditate on so much. I will begin it again.” His life had been marred with difficulty with his dad killed by a drunk driver when Tim was only 11. He remembers bargaining with God to get his dad back, and was even more upset to hear others say his dad was “in a better place.” This left him with more questions, and few answers.
But through tragedy, God can and does work. And it can come when a people becomes captive to another nation for a number of years. They remember God and cry out to Him for deliverance as we see in the book of Judges. For about 400 years, this was the story of Israel. They had no king, and the people would do what was right in their own eyes, get in trouble, then call out to God. And God would raise up a deliverer (judge) to set them free and rule over the people until they died.
Toward the end of this period of time, the events of Book of Ruth took place. There was no king yet and times were tough. Elimelech takes his family, Naomi, Mahlon, and Chilion their sons, not only away from the Covenant Community, but into the area of their enemies, the Moabites. If you remember, Moab would not let the Israelites pass through their land on the way to Canaan. And also it would be good to remember where Moab came from, which is Lot and one of his daughters way back in Genesis 19. These were not good people, but apparently Elimelech thought this was a better situation than Bethlehem.
Tragedy strikes when Elimelech dies, and then 10 years later, both of their sons die leaving Naomi with Orpah and Ruth, her daughters-in-law. She insists that these young ladies go back to their people and their gods to find husbands. Isn’t it amazing how far Naomi had strayed, almost suggesting that the gods of the Moabites could help in any way. Well, as we know, Orpah leaves, but Ruth does not. She seems to know there is something different about the Israelites as vows that they would be her people, and their God would be her God, and that she would follow this way of life till death.
In the midst of all of this, the death of her father-in-law and her husband, she still decided to follow after the God of Israel. I wonder what compelled her to this decision. Maybe it was that God was stirring her heart for a bigger purpose. He does that.
Anyway, through an ancient custom, and through providence, Ruth ends up in the field of Boaz to get the gleanings from the harvest to help provide for her and Naomi, who changed her name to Mara because of the bitterness of her circumstances.
The word in the Hebrew is Goel, and it means kinsman-redeemer. If you fell into bad circumstances where you find yourself destitute with no way out, your nearest relative was to redeem you. In other words they would pay your debt so you could maintain your property, and if necessary, they would marry the female in order to preserve the inheritance that God gave them when He brought them to the Promised Land. Then, in the year of Jubilee, all debts were canceled and everyone went back to their original inheritance. The Goel insured that no property would be transferred to another family.
Boaz marries Ruth and has a son for Naomi to carry on the name of Elimelech and his property. That son’s name was Obed. And when he grew up. he got married and had a son named Jesse, and Jesse had David. And through David came Jesus our Lord. This blows my mind in several ways in that Ruth, a cursed Moabite, was in the direct line of Jesus. But her relative was Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute, who is also in the direct lineage of Jesus. It’s as if God wanted to make sure that the Savior, our Goel, our near relative, our Redeemer, is for everyone who would call on His name, all on whom He calls to salvation.
Is it any wonder that Tim Allen was amazed at what he read in the Bible for the first time through. He said it was so very different than what he imagined. I’m wondering if he, as well as so many others, believe that the Bible is just a list of the “rules of the game.” Endless statute after statute telling us mostly of all the things we are to avoid so we can be good enough when we stand before the judgement seat of Christ. The thing is, nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, the Bible does contain the law, but what Tim Allen found out was that the law was given so that sin would increase (Romans 5). We are hopeless and helpless to save ourselves by works.
Or as our church says on a regular basis, the Bible shows us that we are a complete mess, but that Jesus has made the only way for us to be made new, and that we can now get in on this for free because of the finished work of Christ. And this is the good news that I pray Tim Allen, as well as anyone else who would take God’s Word seriously, would come to find out. I’m not sure about Tim’s spiritual condition, but it sure seems that through the tragedies of his life, God may be working on his heart, or at least using him to get others to read His Word, because His Word never returns void.
How about you? If reading God’s Word isn’t part of your regular routine, I would strongly urge you to make time for it. God’s Word is life because His Word is Christ.
Amen
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