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John Stough

Entrepreneur • Strategic Thinker • MOSA Guru • Enterprise Architect • Avionics Software SME • Coffee Lover • Philosopher • Armchair Theologian • Outdoorsman

Our Kinsman Redeemer

This devotional accompanies the sermon series “God is Love: Ruth and Our Kinsman Redeemer”

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you. (Titus 2:11-15)

Humanity has a very difficult time reconciling the idea of poverty.  Those of us who have been born into the privileged life of an American citizen, with food and shelter abundantly available even for our poorest, when we grumble and complain about our lack we can be pointed to those who live on less than $1 each day overseas and count ourselves lucky.  But is our case, even when we are not in material need, really better?  Our lives, even in abundance, are deeply entrenched in depression, doubt, anger, loneliness, and the kinds of pain and suffering we cannot fully put words to.  These are part of the universal “human condition.”  We suffer and groan under a debt that we do not understand and that we cannot pay.  We are the poorest of the poor, we only mask that and numb it with material things, temporary passions, and dim hope.  But real hope has come!  What now if we were to truly release our hearts into a full acceptance of God’s love for us and his purchase of us? Would it not make us the most loving of all people (1 Peter 1:18-23)?  If we can accept it, God will lavish his love on us in a way we could never fully comprehend but that we desperately need, for our Redeemer lives.

Dialogue Questions:

    • What do you make of the book of Ruth, is it merely a beautiful ancient love story or do you see the pattern of God’s saving plan for mankind?
    • The prophet Isaiah proclaimed God as the Redeemer, the one who would bear the iniquities of the world.  There are only three possible ways to take this: Do you see this as wishful thinking to a nation in bondage, an unfulfilled prophecy so that we should wait for another, or is it fulfilled in Christ?
    • How has the redeeming love of God freed us to love one another and those around us?

Things to Pray about:

    • Pray for the poor, especially those without access to the basic necessities of life (food, basic health care). Pray for generosity as we approach a season of giving in the US to bring aid overseas and here at home to those in need.
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God of Mercy

I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.(Psalm 32:5)

The word “forgive” in Hebrew helps us to picture what the action really is – the one who forgives bears the cost of the one who owes the debt.  What is the debt?  We have a difficult time with words rarely used in our culture.  We better understand guilt rather than iniquity, rebellion instead of transgression, and imperfection rather than sin.  But forgive is a term we use quite a lot without really thinking about what the word implies.  We tend to think of forgiveness only as a blessing to the one forgiven and not as a cost to the one doing the forgiving!  David understood this and captured it in poetry unlike anyone before him in human history, at the same time feeling the weight of his emotional guilt for the outright rebellion in his heart towards God and yet still fully understanding that it was God who took that weight. The word forgive is, perhaps, something we have become too familiar with as “letting someone off the hook.”  We often tend to underestimate the impact of our mistakes on others; “oh, so-and-so is just being too sensitive, they need to get over it!”  Are we really in any place as the one who commits the error (and in most cases barely see it as an error to begin with) to estimate the cost of the damage?  How much imperfection does it take to make something no longer perfect?  We were created in the image of God.  We know instinctively, because we feel the guilt of it without ourselves, that we do not measure up to that perfect image and that we make mistakes, errors, and imperfections.  More often than not, we make matters worse when we cover that over to hide it.  The best we can do is seek grace when we offend others, why should this not be true of God also?  But we cannot undo the imperfection.  Instead, the only way for an imperfect person to stand before a Holy God is for a perfect person to take their place.  When God “bears the cost” of forgiving us, he alone is qualified to stand there as a perfect substitute for our imperfection, rebellion, and failures.

Dialogue Questions:

    • What do you think of the word guilt – do you ever experience this?
      • What causes guilt?
      • Can we still be guilty if we do not feel guilty?
      • If we are forgiven of something, do we still feel guilty for it?
    • We tend to think of sin as moral failure only, rather than the whole scope of our mistakes and imperfections. How does your view of God’s Holiness change if you honestly admit making mistakes and being imperfect?
    • Why does forgiving us cost God anything?  Why did it actually cost Him everything and not just a little bit?

Things to Pray about:

    • Spend some time this week in prayers of thanksgiving, just resting in the fact that God is gracious to us when we do not deserve it.  Pray for the others you know that really need to rest in grace.
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