Ruth 4 Piper

Now we come to chapter 4. Boaz goes to the city the next morning, and this nearer kinsman shows up.

And Boaz lays the situation out before him and says that Naomi has a small amount of property.

She's going to sell it, and you can buy it and take the inheritance that, in a sense, belongs to you first.

And he says, and now this is the next setback, an obstacle.

He says, I will redeem it. And we want to say, no, you won't redeem it.

You get out of here. You're going to mess things up. But he says, yes, I will redeem it.

And then, that's verse 4 at the end there. I will redeem it.

Then Boaz said, verse 5, the day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you also acquire

Ruth, the Moabite, the widow of the dead, in order to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance.

And then we get a great sigh of relief as this setback ceases to be a setback, verse 6.

Then the Redeemer said, I cannot redeem it myself, lest I impair my own inheritance.

Take my right of redemption yourself, for I cannot redeem it.

And that's good news, and we're very happy to hear that. We want to say yay in the background as we watch this drama unfold.

So they move forward, and they marry. And there is another setback.

It's not mentioned. She hasn't, for one reason or another, conceived in marriage for the 10 years that she was married.

No, that doesn't prove anything, I suppose, about her own fertility, does it?

It might have been Malan. But the question lingers. She didn't have any children with that husband.

Could she now? Probably in her early 30s, mid -30s.

I don't know how early she married Malan. But it's been 10 or 12 years now.

And will they have children? And so you have this amazing prayer in verses 11 and 12.

Let's read those. Then all the people who were at the gate, the elders said, we are witnesses.

They start praying. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house,

Boaz, like Rachel and Leah. Now, you remember the story of Rachel and Leah.

They had, I forget how many children, because they had handmaids.

But together with their handmaids, they raised up 12 sons who became the 12 tribes of Jacob, tribes of Israel.

And do you remember that as each of them resented the other, God closed their wombs?

Rachel's closed, and Renewal's closed, and Rachel's open, and Leah was open, and back and forth it went. And so they know that these women represent closed wombs and open wombs.

That is, they show God's in control of whether you get pregnant or not. Ultimately, in the

Old Testament, every conception is from the Lord. God does this.

And so they're praying that they would be like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel.

So they pray that Ruth would have a child with Boaz and would be in that kind of line.

They built up the house of Israel. They created, as it were, the house of Israel with the 12 tribes coming from them.

And they pray that Ruth will be like that, that she will be in a line like that, have significant offspring like that, which is, in fact, what comes to pass.

Verse 13, so Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife.

And he went in to her, and the Lord gave her conception, and she bore a son.

Now, that looks like a good ending. And you could go on to say, and the son was named

Obed, and Obed gave birth to Jesse, and Jesse gave birth to David, and David was the king, the ideal king, to whom was promised an heir who would sit upon the throne forever,

Messiah, and He would redeem His people from their sins. You could tell it like that. And that's not the way it ends.

Ruth does not end as the main character. Naomi does. So let me read with you verses 14 to 17, and have you marvel with me that Ruth disappears here.

Now, she does show up in verse 15, loved by Naomi, but she doesn't show up by name.

This is all about Naomi. Verse 14, when the women's then, when the child was born, then the women said to Naomi.

So here the shift is away from Ruth. Blessed be the

Lord who has not left you this day without a Redeemer, and may

His name be renowned in Israel. He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter -in -law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to Him.

Then Naomi took the child. Naomi took the child and laid Him on her lap and became

His nurse. And the women of the neighborhood gave Him a name, saying, a son has been born to Naomi.

They named Him Obed. Obed comes from Abad, the Hebrew word

Abad. It's a participle. Abad means to serve or to worship most often.

And so Obed, the participle, is one who worships. They named

Him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

And then the genealogy is taken back and brought up, and it's repeated. So David gets a double emphasis there.

So let's reflect for a few moments on why Naomi becomes the prominent person at the end of this book and what these verses say.

I've got four observations for you. Number one, ask you a question here.

Who is the Redeemer in verse 14?

Blessed be the Lord who has not left you this day without a Redeemer. Now, my first answer to that would be immediately

Boaz, because this other fellow is called the more immediate relative, the

Redeemer. There's another Redeemer, Boaz says. I cannot take you to be my wife.

There's another Redeemer, and I'm going to be righteous and follow through here as much as I want to. I will do what's right.

We'll go to that Redeemer. And he says, I can't redeem her or the property. You now have the right of redemption.

And so surely in verse 14, the Redeemer is Boaz. God raised up for Ruth a

Redeemer, Boaz. That's not the right answer. Let's read.

Keep reading, and you see if you don't agree with this. Verse 14, blessed be the

Lord who has not left you this day without a Redeemer, and may his name be renowned.

So this Redeemer, whoever it is, may he be renowned in Israel. Verse 15, he, now this he there,

I presume, is still the Redeemer that should be renowned. He shall be to you a restorer of life, a nourisher of your old age.

For your daughter -in -law, who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.

Oh, oh, wait a minute. I've got to rethink. I've got to go back up now and say, it's the baby.

That totally takes me off guard here. It's the baby.

It's the worshiper. It's Obed. It's the line leading to David and Jesus.

I doubt that that's an accident that this book ends on a double note of David, the king, who's not in existence yet when this story takes place.

Obed, father of Jesse, father of David, is a

Redeemer. And so I think the answer to the question, who's the

Redeemer, is the child born leading through the line of David to the

Messiah, which raises this next question. How does this child become a

Redeemer? And the answer, I think, would be not simply that he has now a line for Malan's name to be preserved, but the emphasis falls on David.

And he is going to bring forth David. And according to the

Davidic covenant, 2 Samuel 7, verse 13, God says, I will establish your son's kingdom,

David's son's kingdom, forever. And that's the Messiah. And that's

Jesus. So I think this is a pretty clear pointer to the fact that the way this child is most fully the

Redeemer is that he gives rise not only to David, but to David's son,

Jesus Christ, who is the Redeemer. The word Redeemer, ga 'al, or participle go 'el,

Redeemer, doesn't just have a technical meaning. A technical meaning of kinsman,

Redeemer. Most often, it is broadly used of purchasing something back from some difficult situation or obtaining at a cost or at a price.

And so the word Redeemer here may be broadening out into the David Messiah meaning, not just this narrow kinsman meaning.

Third observation. So the first observation was, who's the Redeemer? Second observation, how does he become a

Redeemer through the Davidic line? And third observation, what will it mean that he's a

Redeemer? What specifics are pointed out in verse 15 for her in particular?

And let's just look at them. Verse 15, he shall be to you a restorer of life.

That's number one. He shall be to you a nourisher of your old age.

And thirdly, he will be renowned. May his name be renowned in Israel.

So you could take a narrow meaning of those and say, this child here is so full of hope for her because now the line is continued.

And so her old age hope is nourished. And her life that seemed to be draining out in chapter 1 and going away has been restored.

Or you could broaden out that life and that nourishment and that hope into the Davidic line and the

Messianic line and say, this woman's fullest life and fullest nourishment will be found through this

Redeemer, ultimately Jesus. Now, why all this focus on Naomi?

You could have said all of that by simply calling attention to the child and saying he was the

Redeemer and doing it all with Ruth. But we end by a bridge that is being forged back to chapter 1.

And chapter 1 was Naomi lost seemingly everything. This is about Naomi.

I went away full and I came back empty.

God has dealt bitterly with me. And this book,

I said, was written in order to help you know that in your darkest days,

God is at work. He's doing more than you'll ever know for the future.

And that's why chapter 4 ends with Naomi, to underline the fact that the woman who seemed to lose everything in chapter 1 and who felt so depressed that she couldn't see anything hopeful in the future is now drawn out as the very one most blessed in the last chapter.

So I'll say again, this book is in the Bible for us to learn how

God is at work in the darkest of our times. And I use some words there.

Was that two days ago on chapter 1 that has prompted a few people to come and ask me questions?

I said, well, very probably, they sinned in going to Moab.

Or if not in going to Moab, in the sons marrying foreign women.

Ruth, I mean, Naomi said, go back to your gods. These women were pagan.

They weren't believers. And you're not supposed to marry pagans.

Jews weren't supposed to marry non -Jews, and they did.

And so I said, so God governs, ordains, even sin.

And that has prompted questions, because some of you have never heard anybody say that, that God does not sin when he ordains that sin be.

So I'm going to linger on that and draw things to a close with some reflections on the bigger picture here.

And this is my fourth observation while the focus on Ruth extended out this way.

Notice David is celebrated in verse 17 and verse 22.

In fact, David, King David, is the last word of the book.

Now, David doesn't exist yet. This book happens early on in the period of Judges.

If you do the chronology here with Salmon fathered

Boaz, Salmon was the husband of Rahab, according to Matthew 1 .5.

Rahab was in Jericho at the very beginning of the conquest and the beginning of the period of the

Judges. Therefore, Boaz in marrying

Ruth as the child of Rahab means

Ruth is the daughter -in -law of Rahab, which is early.

And so you've got 100, 200 years before David ever comes on the scene or more, which means this was taking place before there was any king in Israel.

In fact, this was taking place during the time when there shouldn't have been any king in Israel.

And it was a sin to even think about having a king in Israel. Do you remember 1

Samuel chapter 8? 1 Samuel 8, you might want to go there.

It's just a few pages over. Just keep turning in your Bible. 1 Samuel chapter 8, verse 4 through 7.

Samuel's time now, just before the beginning of the king,

Saul, David, Solomon, verse 4. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel, chapter 8, verse 4, at Ramah and said to him, behold, you're old and your sons do not walk in your ways.

Now appoint for us a king to judge us, like all the nations.

But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, give us a king to judge us.

Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.

Turn to chapter 12. Just keep going a few verses, a few pages farther. Chapter 12 of verse

Samuel and look at verse 17. Is it not wheat harvest today?

I will call upon the Lord that he may send thunder and rain and you shall know and see that your wickedness is great, which you have done in the sight of the

Lord in asking for yourself a king. There shouldn't have been any king.

It was a sin to ask for a king. It was a sin to reject

God as your immediate governor and to want a king.

That was true in Ruth's day. That doesn't make any sense, does it?

This book is being written after David. So hundreds of years later, this book is being written about the time of Ruth.

And being celebrated is how God brought a

Moabite into the line of David and Messiah. And David is clearly a hero and a positive figure in Ruth.

In a time when there shouldn't have been a David and it was a sin to want a David.

Do you see why I say things like, so God planned that there be a king and said it was wicked that the people want a king.

Yes? It was sin to want a king. It was sin to move toward a king.

It was sin to reject God and say, we want a king. And God is planning that there be a king.

And that his son be the son of David and be king.

I hope you feel this. God's ultimate purpose for the universe is that his son be king of kings.

And every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is

Lord and King. That's the purpose of the universe. And it was sin for that to come about.

You have done a wicked thing in bringing about this kingship.

There is no way for God to rule the universe that he has created that brings us to Jesus as king without God ordaining that sin come to pass.

Now, that shocked some of you. And so what I want to do is just give you a few other illustrations, because this is all over the

Bible. These are not isolated incidents. I asked

David, my assistant, this morning whether InterVarsity in Britain has made an arrangement with Crossway to publish the book that's supposed to be out in eight days called

Spectacular Sins, subtitled,

And Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ. But you're getting a snapshot of that little teeny book, 140 pages or whatever.

And I don't know whether they have, so I don't know whether it'll be here. But I would very much, if I had it,

I'd give you all a copy, because I know what I'm saying now is jarring to some of you.

So let me give you some illustrations, and we'll close with these illustrations. Joseph, the story of Joseph.

His brothers sell him into slavery. First, they throw him into a pit, lie to his father about what happened to him, and sell him into slavery.

That's sin. That's sin. They lied. They almost murdered.

They kidnapped, and they sold him. Then he gets taken into the house of Potiphar, and he gets lied about.

His wife says that he tried to rape her, and he didn't.

And so he goes to prison as an innocent man, and that's sin, to send an innocent man to prison.

And he tells the dreams to the butler and the baker, and the baker gets killed, and the butler goes back and gets forgotten for two more years when the butler said,

I'll remember you. And that's a sin, to treat him like that. Sin, sin, sin, sin, all the way to the bottom of the dungeon in Egypt.

Let me read you two verses that give you God's perspective on those sins. The first is

Psalm 105, verses 16 and 17. It goes like this. When God summoned a famine on the land and broke all the supply of bread,

He had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave.

So what was happening in the sinning of his brothers? In the sinning of Potiphar's wife?

In the sinning of the butler who left him there? What was happening in that horrible, sinful process by which this godly man,

Joseph, was being abused all the way down to prison in Egypt? I'll tell you what was happening. Salvation was happening.

Your salvation. And the glory of Jesus Christ, born of the heirs of this family which would have been wiped out by the famine had not

God sent Joseph ahead of them by means of sin.

And so, Joseph's own interpretation in Genesis 50, verse 20 was to his brothers, you meant it for evil.

God meant it for good. That's one of the most important verses in the Bible. You need to say that to Satan every time he beats you up.

Bring some disease into your life. Clobber some relationship. Satan, you mean this for evil.

You're attempting to eat my faith alive. But I'll tell you what, I have learned something.

God means all things in my life for good. So be gone.

You're not having my faith. You may eat my body, but not my faith.

That's the way Job was written. Here's another example. This is the most important one.

Namely, Acts chapter 4, verses 27 and 28.

David and I were talking last night about these things and how serious they are because of how they relate to the cross.

If you don't have a category in your brain like this,

God ordains that sin happen without being a sinner.

If you don't have that category, I don't know how you're going to believe in the cross as the work of God on your behalf.

So you might feel like, oh, he's really into this kind of heavy duty theology and speculation about the problem of evil.

I'm not. I'm right at the center. How did the cross happen?

It happened by sin. How did it happen? God made it happen for you.

So let's read that. Chapter 4, verses 27 and 28. Truly in this city, there were gathered together against your holy servant

Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod, Pontius Pilate, along with the

Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

I just don't think it gets any clearer. Herod sinned in mocking

Him and putting a purple robe on Him and saying, I wanted to see a miracle from Him.

Pilate sinned by washing his hands and saying, even though I see no guilt in Him, take

Him and crucify Him. The Gentile soldier sinned by ramming a sword into his side and nailing his hands to a cross and bargaining for his garments and putting a crown of thorns on his head and smacking him around and saying prophesy and spitting on him and pulling his beard.

All of that scripted in the Psalms by God.

All of it sin. All of it sin. And the Jews, crucify

Him. Crucify Him. Come down from the cross. All of it sin.

And all of it the fulfillment of God -ordained prophecy and plan.

You see, the reason I write a book about this and the reason I close with this is because it's all over the

Bible. I just have such a burden that on this issue of the sovereignty of God, we not play games.

We not get into pointless arguments. We just stay very close to the center here. Christ died for me.

I am crucified with Christ. When the chaplain came to me in the hospital when

I was a sophomore in college and I was in the hospital for three weeks with mono and my whole life was being turned around.

He said, as he walked out, Johnny, you got a favorite verse? And out of my mouth came,

I actually said, you got a life verse. You got a life verse. And out of my mouth came, I am crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the

Son of God who loved me. Do you hear how personal Paul was there? Who loved me and gave himself for me.

Now, if you have a massive theological obstacle standing in the way of God loving you through Jesus death, so I would like you to believe that God ordains all things, including the horrors of the first chapter of Ruth.

So let me close like this. Why? Why the first chapter of Ruth like that?

I mean, OK, granted, Piper, if God is that sovereign that he can even govern sin without being sinful and orchestrate the world of evil to bring about his purposes, what was he doing in chapter one?

Why the famine and why the marriage of the foreign women? If he's in control, he didn't have to bring the famine and he didn't have to let them marry the foreign women.

What's he up to in guiding all of this without himself sinning? And you could probably figure that out as well as I can.

Here's my closing effort. Number one, he is showing by drawing

Ruth into the line of the Messiah. He is showing how amazingly free and undeserved are all his blessings.

We are tempted to boast if we're Jews, we're the people, we're the line.

And God, if he spots that, will do something to cut that boast right out from under us.

You think you're the line? You think you're the pure line? I'll tell you what

I do. I freely choose Moabites, women, pagans, and I put them in the genealogy of my son.

So that's one reason for why he did it. He's going to show how free his grace is, how free he is to bless his people and to bring his son.

A second idea. God's heart, even in the

Old Testament with all the focus on Israel, is for the nations. It was last night, so I'm just going to end on underlining this last night emphasis.

He went and he took a Moabite and made her by name in Matthew 1 5 by name, a part of the genealogy of the

Christ, the son of God. Third, almost saying the same thing. The glory of Christ is that he comes from the nations and the

Jews as well as dying for the nations and the Jews. If you stop and ponder the glories of Jesus, they are bottomless.

This is one that I saw this morning for the first time. This this text is saying

David and his son, the Messiah, not only will come for the

Jews and for the nations, but from the Jews and from the nations so that none of us can boast in the end.

And finally, I think chapter one happens the way it does, because he does want to show that in all of these purposes, he overcomes massive obstacles to bring about his merciful purposes.

So that may be very practically for you the most important thing you'll take away.

The book of Ruth exists to show that God in his inscrutable governance of the world and his sovereignty.

Is always at work in my darkest hours, able to overcome the most difficult obstacles and bring me to worship the son of David.

Jesus Christ. And grow forever in my capacity to see his immeasurable glory.