Isaiah 49:7a
This is what the Lord says – the Redeemer and Holy One of Israel –
Did you notice what Isaiah does in this verse? Just as he’s about to report to the people something that God has said to the Servant, he interrupts himself to tell them something important about who God is. That may not seem very significant on its own, but if we were to read through the whole of chapters 42-49 together, we’d see that it’s not just a one-off, but something he does repeatedly. 13 times in fact. It’s as if he wants to keep reminding the people why they must listen to the
words of the Lord. This isn’t just anyone speaking, but the Redeemer, the Holy One, the creator, the king, the rescuer, the Lord Almighty.
Some of those titles are self-explanatory. But what, exactly, is a redeemer? It’s not a word that we hear much outside of church and the Bible, so even if we recognise it as a description of God, we might not be very clear about what it means.
The best place to look in the Bible to discover what ‘redeemer’ means is in the book of Ruth. There we
read the story of a widowed Israelite – Naomi. When she loses first her husband and then both of her sons, she is not just bereaved but also bereft. She has no-one to provide for her and her two daughters-in-law, no breadwinner, no safety or security. So, she returns to Israel – the land of her birth, where she will be dependent on the kindness of others. Ruth, her daughter-in-law,
goes with her and keeps them both alive by going into the fields at harvest time to gather up the leftover grain. There she meets Boaz. He turns out to be a distant relative of Naomi’s late husband, who wants to provide for these
vulnerable women by marrying Ruth and buying back the family land. In other words, he wants to act as their ‘kinsman-Redeemer’ - the guardian who bears the
responsibility for safeguarding the weak and providing for the needy within the extended family. We might think that sounds like a burden, but remarkably, it turns out that Boaz doesn’t even have to do it. There is a closer relative, who ought really to be the redeemer in this situation. Yet Boaz goes out of his way to take on the responsibility for
meeting Naomi and Ruth’s needs Boaz acts, therefore, as
a picture of God’s redeeming work – not only for the people of Isaiah’s day but also for us, who are redeemed by the death of Jesus. Motivated entirely by his own love and goodness, God steps in to meet our needs, pay our debts and secure our safety. He isn’t obligated to do this – he willingly chooses to become our Redeemer.
Let’s thank him for that today, and let’s commit ourselves to listen carefully to what this Redeemer says when he speaks. For who wouldn’t want to listen to someone who has demonstrated such sacrificial love?
