Redemption Accomplished [Ruth 4:7-22]

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Well, this morning we say goodbye to our friend, the book of Ruth. What makes
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Ruth so wonderful? Why do you love the book of Ruth? After all, it probably wouldn't even be on the front page of the
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Telegram and Gazette. Mundane things, fields, barley, harvests, gleanings.
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What makes Ruth so special? It's just day -to -day stuff. Morsels of bread and some wine, reapers, mother -in -laws.
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I mean, after all, there's nothing even supernatural in the book, is there? Somebody raised from the dead, the blind can now see, the deaf can now hear.
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There's not even any invectives from prophets, repent and believe. So why do we love the book of Ruth?
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Strange customs, sandals, leverite marriages.
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Why do we love the book of Ruth? Why is it so wonderful? It's very interesting when you think about redemption.
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We as Christians know something that maybe they didn't fully understand back in those days.
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And that is God, God the Father, when He thinks about redeeming people,
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He could have chosen no one. He would have been just and holy not to choose anyone. No one deserved it. He could have chosen everyone.
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It would have been His good pleasure to do that. But God the Father chose some. He chose a few.
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He chose the elect. He chose the bride of Christ. The Holy Spirit in time doesn't regenerate, doesn't make alive, doesn't bear again every person in the world.
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The Holy Spirit doesn't regenerate and quicken no one. The Holy Spirit makes alive the same people that the
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Father has chosen. The elect, the bride of Christ, the chosen ones. There's a Trinitarian oneness.
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Of course, the Father and the Holy Spirit would work together as the single triune
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God. And then the Holy Spirit's work, the Father's work, is complemented by the
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Son's work of redemption. The Son dies for and redeems the same bride that the
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Father chooses that the Holy Spirit is going to work in. And the Son redeems.
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And see, for us, we know that Jesus is a personal Redeemer. We know that Jesus is not just this transcendent
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God of the universe, but He's eminent, He's close because He was born in a manger. But back in these days, in the days of the judges, when everyone did what was right in his own eyes, they knew that God was a powerful
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Redeemer. Israel's captured by Egypt. And with a strong and mighty right arm,
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God rescues Egypt. God's powerful. He's wise. But is He personal?
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Does He care? Is there any aspect of love and feelings and compassion? He's transcendent, but is
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He close? And so, if you've got Genesis with creation, and Revelation, the consummation, and Ruth found about right here, what does
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Ruth teach us about Jesus? That's the question. After all, Jesus said in Luke 24, didn't
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He? Jesus said in John 5, didn't He? That all Scriptures, including the Old Testament, including
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Torah, including Ruth, speaks of Jesus. So, what does Ruth teach us about Jesus?
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Let's turn our Bibles there to what I've been calling lately, the Gospel of Ruth, because it teaches us so much about the personal, hands -on approach of God the
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Son as He redeems and gives His life a ransom for many.
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Yes, it's true that the book of Ruth shows that God is providentially working, and one day there'll be no longer barren wombs, but a full womb, and David the king will come.
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Yes, it's an apologetic. So, people back in those days would say, well, who's David? How do we know
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David should be on the throne? And we think Samuel is the author of this book as he writes to say he deserves the throne.
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He's the right man for the throne. But what I love the most about Ruth is it gives me a picture of what's a kinsman redeemer like?
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The redeemer has to be strong and powerful, but the redeemer has to be next of kin.
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The redeemer, when we think now of Jesus, He's going to have to be powerfully strong, but He's also going to have to be one of us, one like us to redeem us.
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So, I love Ruth because it answers the question, what will the Savior look like? Genesis 3 .15,
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that first Gospel given in the garden, what's the Savior going to look like?
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You know what? He's going to look like Boaz, but better. What kind of redeemer is
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God? He's going to be like Boaz, but better. What kind of Messiah is He going to be? He's going to be self -sacrificially giving of Himself like Boaz, but better.
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This is not a book mainly about Naomi or Ruth or Boaz, but it's about who God is.
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So, let's pick it up in chapter 4 this morning, verses 1 -6. I'll read to give us a little review, and then we'll finish the book verses 7 -22.
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I know some of you are already saying, I don't think you can do it, but I did it the first service, so I'm going to try to do it this service.
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That'd really be bad if I was only 7 -12 this service, and last service
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I did 7 -22. That'd be bad. So, we're just going to keep going until we're finished, or until my iPad breaks or something.
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This morning it was the truck window broken. It's not going to rain today, no big deal. All the way down.
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I click on a file, a Word document in my Macintosh. We have no idea who you are.
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You can't have access. You need a bunch of codes that you don't have and we have, and it's yours to find out. Okay. So, here we go.
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Ruth 4 -1. Now, Boaz had gone up to the gate and sat down there. Behold, the
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Redeemer of whom Boaz had spoken, remember that closer Redeemer, came by.
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Providentially, of course, we know. So, Boaz said, turn aside so -and -so, turn aside friend. Remember the focus here of the word friend is, he doesn't really have a name, right?
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He doesn't deserve a name because he's not going to do any kind of redeeming. In a book where names are so important, he's a no -name.
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Turn aside friend, sit down here. Turn aside and sat down. And for witnesses, he took 10 men of the elders of the city, those gray beards, said, sit down here.
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So, they sat down. Then he said to the Redeemer, Naomi, who has come back from the country of Moab, selling the parcel of land that belonged to her, excuse me, to our relative
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Elimelech. So, I thought I would tell you of it and say, by the presence of those sitting here and in the presence of the elders of my people, if you'll redeem it, redeem it.
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But if you'll not, tell me that I may know and there's no one beside you to redeem it and I will come after you.
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Hey, this is a score. I'll take some free land, no strings attached. Great. And he said, I'll redeem it.
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And with great wisdom and insight, Boaz gives the punchline. He says, the day you buy the field, by the way, from the hand of Naomi, you get something else too.
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You acquire Ruth, the Moabite, the widow of the dead, in order to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance.
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In other words, you're going to get the land, but you're also going to get Ruth. And if she has a child, that child's going to grow up and he's going to get the land back.
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I guess there are strings attached. Then the Redeemer said, I cannot redeem it for myself lest I impair my own inheritance.
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Take my right of redemption yourself, for I cannot redeem it. And here we see the faithfulness of Boaz.
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He's going to do what the Bible says. He's going to do what tradition says. He's not going to skirt it. You could easily just say, you know,
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Boaz, you're kind of a fundamentalist. You're a legalist. You're really going to do kind of what the Bible says and you're going to do things properly.
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Just loosen up a little bit, would you? And now we get a little insight from the narrator, verses 7 and 8.
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And what he does is he's going to slow things down. If you're thinking like Naomi, if you're thinking like any reader,
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Naomi's daughter Ruth and Boaz have a thing together. They love each other.
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They're in love, whatever you want to say. And now there's nothing in between them. There's no other legal barrier.
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There's no other Redeemer who's closer. Let's get on with it. And now the narrator slows it down almost on purpose.
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You're wanting to say, fine, let's get the marriage going. Are they going to have kids? But he's slowing it down to build up the tension.
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Now, this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging. So he's going to tell us what that custom is.
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The narrator gives us an idea of what's going to go on. To confirm a transaction, you went down to the notary.
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What's the difference between a notary and a notary? I think first service, I was informed that I said, notary republic.
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But you know what I meant. Let's go down to the lawyer's office. Let's sign the forms.
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Let's do the things. But that wasn't the custom. Remember, they didn't do a lot of writing in the legal aspects. So they did other things.
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And it's really an interesting way they did things. And the narrator tells us, to confirm a transaction.
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This is interesting. One drew off his sandal and gave it to the other. And this was the manner of attesting in Israel.
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So the Redeemer said to Boaz, buy it for yourself. And he drew off his reef flip -flop.
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The best of the best. Now this isn't exactly like Deuteronomy 25 with the sandal deal.
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But when sandals are involved in the Old Testament for transaction, there's an overtone of contempt.
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Let me just read you part of Deuteronomy 25 and see if you can feel the contempt. If brothers dwell together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger.
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Her husband's brother shall go into her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her.
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This isn't exactly what's going on in Ruth, but it's pretty close. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.
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See how important names are? And if the man does not wish to take his brother's wife, then the brother's wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say,
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My husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel. He will not perform the duty of the husband's brother to me.
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Then the elders will call him and speak of him. And if he persists, I do not wish to take her, then his brother's wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and pull his sandal off his feet and spit in his face.
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And she shall answer and say, So it shall be done to the man who does not build up his brother's house.
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And the name of the house shall be called in Israel, the house of him who had a sandal pulled off.
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You know, people like to name their cabins, name their getaways, name their boats, name their houses, name their casas.
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What do you name your house? I name my house, the house of him who had a sandal pulled off. And it has a nice little ring to it.
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So there's this contempt feeling in there. And it also kind of makes sense. And here's what would happen.
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This guy's sandal is the one that used to walk on that property. He doesn't have a right to it anymore, so he takes the sandal off and gives it to the new guy.
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And he's got the sandal to walk on that property now. And by the way, if you ever come back to me and say,
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Hey, we never did the deal. Those ten elders of the city and all the other witnesses, they're all gone.
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They didn't see. They didn't remember. They all have memory problems. That's really my piece of land. You whip out your sandal and say,
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Oh yeah? How'd you keep the sandal? I thought, you know, some Ziploc bag.
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I just, in my little, you know, with all my legal papers, sandals filed. You know, I guess you could file sandals all right.
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The land has been transferred. The sandal has been given over. The matter is legal.
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The shoe that used to walk on that land is taken off, and now it's the other guy's right to walk on that land.
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These sandals are made for walking. Buy it for yourself. You removed a sandal. You can feel the contempt.
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Okay, then just buy it for yourself then. I don't want it. Boaz is right.
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And so, Mr. So -and -so, so John Doe, so in a book that's so important where we have names and genealogies, this man walks off the pages of Scripture never to be heard again.
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Ratification has happened. And now Boaz gives the closing argument. The narrator's trying to slow things down.
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Boaz is going to try to speed them up. Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people.
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Now he's going to say at the beginning here in verse 9, at the end of verse 10, witnesses. This is a legal deal.
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He's waited. He's trusted in the sovereignty of God. You are witnesses this day that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belong to Elimelech and all that belong to Chilion and to Melon.
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Look at all these names here. And Ruth also, the Moabite, the widow of Melon.
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And I've bought to be my wife to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place.
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So let it be written. So let it be said. You are witnesses this day. And I love it that the last words of Boaz on the pages of Scripture, sacrificial, biblical, loving -kindness, covenant -keeping, and he says, for the record, on the record, you've all seen it, you've all heard it.
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And that first son that Ruth has is going to be legally the son of Elimelech perpetuating the name of Elimelech because the name is so important.
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There's a name missing here besides old what's -his -name. There's another person's name that's missing that should have been listed, but she too walked off the pages of Scripture not wanting to follow
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Yahweh. And when it comes to the name of Orpah, what do you hear from Scripture?
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Crickets, that's what you hear. Old what's -his -name and old what's -her -name. In a book full of genealogies.
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I love it that Boaz says, Ruth the Moabitess, he doesn't care. He's happy to call her that.
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He's not ashamed. Verse 11, that all the people who are at the gate, remember that's the place where they have these legal transactions, and the elders, the gray -beards say, we are witnesses.
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And then they pray. How about that? That would be a nice thing that would happen in courts today. I'm a witness to that transaction.
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Let's all bow our head and pray. Whenever I get in a large group of people and we're going to start some kind of process or start some kind of anything,
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I just always find it funny because I'm ready to just pray. I remember one time we were all together and there's a group.
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I'm not really a dancer or anything like that. And of course, you fundamentalists out there today, you're really going to love this story.
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But I thought, what do I ever do for Kim that's self -sacrificial?
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That she would love but I wouldn't like it, but I'll do it for her sake because it would make her happy. You know what?
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I think I'm going to buy 10 ballroom dancing lessons because I'm going to hate it.
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But we're going to make a big surprise and we're going to go out together and she's going to love it. And so, it was funny.
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The instructor, we got there and Kim was surprised. How do you tell your wife? You have to wear certain kinds of heels, certain kinds of soles.
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This is the kind of shoe you have to wear. This is the kind of sandal you have to wear. So anyway, the guys stand on this side, girls stand on this side.
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The instructor was here and I just thought, this is so weird. They're supposed to say, let's just open in prayer please.
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Bow with me as we pray. And here, this is exactly what they do.
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We're in Israel. We're in Bethlehem. And the legal things have all been done. Now let's have a little prayer.
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What was the prayer of the witnesses? What was the prayer of all the people at the gate? May Yahweh make the woman.
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They don't call her the Moabitess anymore. May Yahweh make the woman who's coming into your house like some other very fertile women, like some other women who weren't
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Jewish to start, like some other women who experienced infertility.
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Remember, Ruth was married for Malan for how many years? Ten years.
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No children. Who, like Rachel and Leah, build up the house of Israel.
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Oh, there were two other wives, but they were secondary wives, and so the legal wives for all of the twelve of the tribes of Israel from Rachel and Leah.
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May you act worthily in Ephathra and be renowned in Bethlehem.
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The witnesses pray. God, just bless. Open up the womb, like You opened
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Rachel's womb, like You opened Leah's womb, like You opened up a lot. And these ladies who weren't even Jews, like Ruth who's not a
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Jew, who's a Moabite, open up the wombs. That's our prayer request.
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Verse 12, And may your house be like the house of Perez. You can feel the tempo picking up.
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Who bore Tamar, or whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring of the
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Lord, will give you by this young woman. Give a baby and give an inheritance.
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Not just one child, but a long -lasting inheritance. Like Perez, who's associated with this liverite connection with Tamar, who's from Bethlehem or settled there, who's an ancestor of Boaz.
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Like Tamar, she's not an Israelite either. She was barren too.
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She was refused a liverite marriage. We still need to have a child.
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Verse 13. It's interesting, chapter 3, it's like it takes place within 24 hours.
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All of chapter 3, all of the 18 verses, and now in chapter 4, verse 13, we have nine months jammed into one verse.
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Here comes the honeymoon pregnancy. So Boaz took
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Ruth. She became his wife. He went into her.
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That's the language of, he went into the tent. He went into the tent, so then he would consummate it in the tent.
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And the Lord, Yahweh, gave her conception. And she bore...
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We love girls. Three times I've been in the labor and delivery room and they've pulled babies out and they've turned them over like this and say, it's a girl.
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And I said, no, yeah, it's a girl. But remember the way the laws were here.
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Remember the culture here. First of all, it's been 10 years when she was married and she never had a child.
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And now, you know what? She goes to Moab and everything bad happens. 10 years of just bad, horrible, awful.
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And Ruth is only back in Bethlehem for maybe 3 weeks. And all of a sudden she gets married and then conceives and then 9 months later she has not just a daughter but she has a son.
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The blessings found. And do you notice what she's called there? Ruth, she became his wife.
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That's pretty fascinating to me. Go to chapter 2, verse 10. What's Ruth called there? You can see the progression in the narrator's thinking about Ruth.
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she's a Moabite. Then she is a, chapter 2, verse 10, which is synonymous.
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What's it say there? Since I'm a foreigner. Then you go to chapter 2, verse 13.
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What's Ruth called there? She calls herself servant. By the way, that's a lower servant.
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Then in chapter 3, verse 9, what's Ruth called there? I am Ruth your servant. That's not the lower servant, that's a maid servant.
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It's an upgrade. It'll be like a higher servant. Still a servant, but we've gone from Moabite, foreigner, lower servant, maid servant.
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And now chapter 4, verse 13. Foreigner, to lower servant, to higher servant, to wife.
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And the Lord gives her conception. Just like Rachel, just like Leah. Prayers answered.
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And she bore a son. God isn't the subject of a verb very often in Ruth, but here the second time, in all the book,
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He is. Ten years of infertility in Moab. Maybe it's something in the water.
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I always think that at Bethlehem Bible Church. I mean, there's so many pregnancies here. I think it's like West Boylston water. It had nothing to do with water.
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So -and -so just happened to meet so -and -so. I just happened to go in so -and -so's field. And you can tell, Samuel, if he is the author, certainly the
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Holy Spirit's the author, is trying to write this book in such a way that David's the king, and everybody would look back and say, he certainly has to be king.
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Why? Because how could he finagle all this? Remember David's place, even in his own family, even with his own brothers?
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David's not the best, and the brightest, and the oldest, and the tallest, and all these other things. It's not
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David who was wise. It's the providential hand of God. You'd look back, if you would, if you were in David's day, and say,
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I see how God made David king. I see that. And here,
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God divinely reverses everything about Ruth. Sinclair Ferguson states it this way,
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Ruth left home and family. The Lord gives her a home and family. Ruth made a profoundly costly decision that she would belong to the
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Lord and His people, even if nothing else belonged to her, even though one of the most fundamental
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God -given natural instincts to be a wife and mother may never be satisfied. Verse 14, we move into the conclusion.
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We just see how bitterness, and sorrow, and sadness, and emptiness, and death is turned into joy, and shalom, and fullness, and blessing, and praising.
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And the same women, most likely, who talked to Naomi early on in chapter 1, where she was despairing, and bitter, and just ugly.
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Then the women said to Naomi, Blessed be Yahweh, who has not left you this day without a
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Redeemer, and may His name be renowned in Israel. Yahweh is to be praised for what
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He's done. Blessed be the Lord. Thank you.
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When you say, blessed be God, that you brought it to pass. You get a new job and you say,
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God, I bless you. You're the one that did it all. You bring your plans to pass. Verse 15,
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He shall be to you a restorer of life.
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You just think about all the death, and Moab, and judges, and a nourisher of your old age.
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That little baby's going to nourish you. He's going to sustain your gray hair, literally.
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For your daughter -in -law, oops, not call the Moabitess there, is she? The daughter -in -law, your daughter -in -law, who loves you.
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Wait a second, I thought it was Leviticus 19. Israelites, you are to love aliens like you're to love yourself.
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You're supposed to love Moabites, and now the Moabite is teaching the lesson to the Israelites, here's how you love.
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And it wasn't just a love of feeling, although she probably had a feeling of love for Naomi, but you just look back in chapter 1, 2, and 3, and you see how she loved with action her mother -in -law.
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And could there be a bigger compliment, verse 15, back in those days? Who is more to you than what?
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Seven sons. Seven brides for seven brothers? No, that's not what it says.
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More to you than seven sons. You wanted to have a son back in those days for all the reasons that we know of in biblical history, in biblical culture.
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More than seven sons. Than the perfect number of sons. What was that,
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Fred Murray? What was that show? My Seven Sons? What was it called again? I knew that.
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Notary Republics, unite. More than seven sons has given birth to Him.
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Restored the love of Ruth. The highest compliment could be given.
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The daughter who loves you. Verse 16, Ever seen a grandma with a baby?
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Ever see a grandma with her first grandkid? Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse.
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By the way, that word there found in the Hebrew in Ruth 4 .16
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never means she brought the baby to her breast and then wet nursed him.
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This is the language of a grandma who just loves the baby and brings up the baby close.
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Not to nourish with milk, but to cherish with love. She took the child, laid him on her lap and became his nurse.
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That's just what grandmas do, don't they? Verse 17,
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And the women of the neighborhood, they gave him a name. A son has been born to Naomi.
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They named him Obed, which is short for Obadiah. Old Obed. He was the father of Jesse.
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Wait a second. What if they just would have stopped right there? They named him Obed. Wouldn't that have been enough?
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You watch Ruth and you've got the barren land and the barren wombs, anything but barren graves in chapter 1.
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And the end is, there's a little baby in grandma's arms. The end. Wouldn't that have been enough?
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That would have been enough. It would have been a perfect place to end. But the author, the narrator, doesn't stop there.
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Because the author knows, although it's important to have a son, there's redemptive history that's going on.
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Redemptive history like there needs to be a Redeemer. That this is a story, but if you get your head down too close like this, and you've got tunnel vision and only see
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Obed, you forget to see David. And if you forget to see David, you forget to see the son of David.
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The greatest king that Israel would ever have, humanly speaking, is born from Boaz and Ruth.
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Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David. I think
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Boaz's name would be renowned in all the land. I think it would be renowned more in Bethlehem, no more in Israel, no more in the whole world.
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And now we have the genealogy. You can read 1 Chronicles 2 if you'd like, or Matthew 1 or Luke 3 to fill in some of the blanks here.
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This is a genealogy, some call it a surprising genealogy, but we've been reading Ruth, so it's not surprising at all.
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And you'll find Boaz probably in the most favored slot, not slot 1, not slot 6, but slot 7.
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And this isn't an inclusive genealogy. If you figure out when people were born and when they lived and who was related to whom, like most genealogies, there are some omissions.
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But it's representative and we get the gist of it. We understand what's happening. Verse 18, now these are the generations of Perez.
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Perez fathered Hezron. By the way, this is a good genealogy to study if you always hate genealogies.
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I felt the tension. I'm a new Christian. I love the Bible. I love God's Word. I would come home and just devour it and I would just eat it like I found some kind of morsel, like it was honey as Psalm 19 talks about.
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And then I would get to numbers and they'd just be numbering people. You know, what's numbers about?
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You want to know what numbers is? In the desert there's a lot of sand and God has a lot of time.
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That's how Ron Allen would describe numbers. And I always felt bad. Like my kids, I tell my kids, you read through the
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Bible completely through, you get a hundred bucks. A hundred bucks by works. I am the king of my castle.
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And I can imagine my kids, I won't tell you how many have collected on it, but two have. It's a hundred dollars well spent.
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And I never said, did you read the genealogy? But I would imagine when they're reading it, they're thinking, do I have to read every one of these words?
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How can I read a genealogy and not feel bad, my conscience not killing me, that I'm like, okay, one name and the next and the next.
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So I would say to myself, you know what? God personally knows every one of these people. He cares.
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He's not just this big God who's a theistic God and He's running the universe and He can't care for people. I think that way.
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I think, you know what? Every time a genealogy is listed and the last name is A -H, that's short for Yah, Yahweh.
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His name has God in it. Every time there's a last name, a first name that has E -L in it, that's
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Elohim. That's the Creator God's name in His name. And then the more
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I think about it, how important names are in the book of Ruth, how important names are in the Bible, what it means to have a name.
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And then I read things like Revelation 2. For those
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Christians, the one who conquers it says, I will give some of the hidden manna and I will give them a white stone with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.
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In heaven, you get a special pet name from God and nobody else knows what it is except you and God.
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By the way, don't ask me what my name is. A, I don't know it yet and B, I'd have to kill you if I told you.
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It's only between God and I. The names. Even in America, don't we get it?
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Even in other cultures, we name libraries after people and bridges after people.
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But these things are written here so that we would realize, C, this is the apologetic for the
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Davidic throne. And also C, what kind of sinful people does
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God use to eventually spring forth the Messiah? How does the Messiah relate to these people?
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Just go back in your family tree. I dare you. I don't think you really want to know about even in the last four generations of all the horrible sin that has happened in your life to get you to where you are.
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It didn't take me that long to figure out as I'm sitting on my dad's deathbed. It was 25 years ago. He's dying of cancer.
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We're in Nebraska. I had a very generous boss who would say, Mike, you're a trainer in this medical company.
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Go train some people in Nebraska. We don't have any people there. I know. Go train them. I know your dad's dying.
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Just go. Thank you. I would sit there on the bed and dad would say things like, well, you know, take care of your mom.
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You're the oldest male now. Sometimes he just wouldn't say anything. Then one time
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I said to my dad, I think I've told this story maybe a few times, Dad, why did you and mom never celebrate your anniversary?
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My other friends, they had their parents. They had anniversaries and they did things. I think it's good for kids to do things for their parents' anniversary.
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Kim and I will be married 25 years this June 6th, so kids, just a little hint. Really expensive things.
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Exquisite things. International travel things they should do. Student loan things.
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And my dad looked at me and said, which one? That's a weird response.
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Which one? What do you mean which one? Well, your mom and I were married.
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I was sinful and foolish. He didn't say sinful, but that's what he meant. And if I told you what he did,
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I'd feel ashamed for what my father did to my mother. And then she divorced him.
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They ran into each other a year later at a party. And lo and behold, I am conceived.
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And then they got married and stayed married for 30 more years until he died. So when
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I read genealogies, I don't really have to go back to learn about Tamar and how bad that situation is to realize how can
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God sovereignly work through all these sinful people and still make something good come out of it?
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How can God work through sinful people and have the Messiah spring forth?
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I hate genealogies. I love them. It says in verse 18, now these are the generations of Perez.
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Perez fathered Hezron. Hezron fathered Ram. Ram fathered
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Ammedad. Ammedad fathered Nashan. And Nashan fathered
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Salmon. Remember, Salmon was the husband of Rahab.
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That's why we've got some gaps in here time -wise. Some selectively omitted people.
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Salmon fathered Boaz. Boaz fathered Obed. Obed fathered
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Jesse. And Jesse fathered David.
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And there's enough time in here to make sure Deuteronomy 23 is taken care of where the
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Moabites are not to enter the congregation of the Lord even to the 10th generation. Derek Kidner.
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God's hand is all over history. God works out His purpose generation after generation limited as we are to one lifetime.
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Each of us sees so little of what happens. A genealogy is a striking way of bringing us before the continuity of God's purpose through the ages.
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The process of history is not haphazard. There is a purpose in it all and the purpose is the purpose of God.
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No wonder Isaiah says, I am the Lord and there is no other.
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There's no one like me declaring the end from the beginning and from the ancient times things which have not been done.
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My purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. I leave you with these three thoughts as we leave
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Ruth. I think my assignment for you this week is sometime this week just read through Ruth and you'll be able to understand the riches of redemption of the better Boaz, Jesus.
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But let me give you three things for now. Number one, you should rejoice that the ransom price was fully paid for you.
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The ransom price was fully paid for you. Boaz did not pay the ransom price to make
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Ruth's redemption possible, probable. It was paid in full.
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It guaranteed the redemption of Ruth and that's exactly the same with the Lord. Many people will say,
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Jesus died for everybody and He makes redemption possible and now it's just incumbent upon you to believe.
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Well, it is incumbent upon you to believe but Jesus paid for those things in full and when
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He said it is finished, He meant it. Paid in full. The Bible never says He made redemption possible.
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He made redemption. He gave Himself for our sins. It was a vicarious substitute and He died for a real group of actual people by name, by number, redeeming us from the curse of the law.
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Number two, rejoice that God's sovereign over your past, present and future. He's sovereign over your past, present and future.
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That's no excuse to sin now so God can make some good out of it. May we sin that grace might abound?
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Answer, may it never be. But as one writer says, no immigration, no return of Ruth.
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No Ruth, no marriage to Boaz. No marriage to Boaz, no Obed. No Obed, no Jesse.
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No Jesse, no David. No David, no Jesus. It's amazing.
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No wonder William Cooper said, deep and unfathomable minds of never failing skill.
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God treasures up His bright designs and works His sovereign will. And number three, please turn to Hebrews chapter 2.
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Praise the Father and the Son and the Spirit that you have a relative redeemer, a kinsman redeemer.
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I've been wanting to talk about Hebrews 2 for weeks and tried to just save it here for the end. Hebrews chapter 2.
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Now if God were to redeem angels, He would have to take on an angel nature so He could be a representative, so He could die in the place of angels.
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If God is going to be a Savior of people, He's going to have to take on the nature of a person to be a representative and a substitutionary representative at that.
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And so why do we have the picture of the kinsman redeemer in Ruth? The answer is it has to be a blood relative who can rescue someone in need.
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Well that should make you think right away that no wonder Jesus has to become a blood relative to rescue people who are in need.
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And so that's exactly what Hebrews 2 talks about. Probably the most amazing supernatural thing that ever happened and that was the eternal
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Son of God adds human flesh. Sinless human flesh, but flesh nonetheless.
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The eternal Son adding a body that He'll have by the way forever.
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Hebrews chapter 2 verse 5. He's already talked about how great the
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Son is and how God speaks now and how Jesus is better than angels verse 5 of chapter 1.
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And then it says in chapter 2 verse 5, For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come of which we are speaking.
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It's been testified somewhere, by the way that's Psalm 8. What is man that you are mindful of him?
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Are the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels, you've crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.
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Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.
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God had Adam and Eve and everything was in subjection to them. And then
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Adam the federal head sins. And now we have Jesus the last
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Adam. He's the true representative of humanity. And where Adam fails,
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Jesus will succeed. Nothing is outside of his control. Verse 9,
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But we see him who was for a little while during the incarnation made lower than the angels, namely
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Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death.
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Remember that great atoning, substitutionary death of Jesus confirmed by the resurrection so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
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Everybody was going to follow him. Jew, Gentile. And now we come to this part of the passage that's so close to the kinsman -redeemer motif, for it was fitting that he,
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God the Father, for whom and by whom all things exist in bringing many sons to glory should make the founder of their salvation,
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Jesus, perfect through suffering. Jesus, the author.
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Jesus, the leader. I think the ESV is good here where they call him founder, but it could be expressed this way, the captain.
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You have a philosopher, you name a school after him. That's the word here. You have a military leader and he leads by going up front.
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He doesn't lead from the back. That's the word used here. We could even translate it, hero. The hero.
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The hero Jesus. Verse 11, for he who sanctifies. And those who are sanctified all have one source.
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And here's the verse. This is the amazing thing. That is why he's not ashamed to call them brothers.
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I wonder if there are some people here who if they introduce me to their sister or their brother or their cousin or their crazy uncle or weird aunt, if they were to introduce me and then they might have to make a little excuse for their odd behavior, eccentric behavior, criminal behavior.
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I wonder if anybody ever introduced me to some of their family members they might even blush a little bit. I wonder now since you know about my father if I were to ever introduce you to my father.
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It's impossible, but if I were to, I wonder if I'd have kind of a blush and a little embarrassment.
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This is my father. How much greater sinners are we all in front of the thrice holy
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God and what does the text say because of Jesus' substitutionary kinsman -redeemer work.
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Jesus isn't ashamed to call you, and I'm preaching to you, but it works for me as well, brothers.
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He should be ashamed, but he's not because he bore our shame, scoffing rude as the song says.
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And when the son finally presents the bride, all of us, to the father, he's not going to blush.
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He's not going to be embarrassed because he bore all our imperfections. He bore all our sins.
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He bore all our guilt. And now we're in Christ Jesus and when the father sees us, he sees us in the son and it's not one of those faces of frowning.
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I preached the gospel to somebody this week and I said when I left, may the Lord bless you and keep you.
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May the Lord's face shine upon you. I said, what does that mean? How do you have your face shine upon someone?
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Well, the opposite of shining is just all scrunched up and mad. You ever meet somebody with a stern, mad -looking face?
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You see that in the morning when you wake up? See it on me? What's a smiling face?
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Now, let's picture Naomi. When Naomi got that baby, they wiped that baby down.
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Maybe she didn't even care. I would imagine grandmas don't even care. They don't care about all the spit and all the other goo and everything else.
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Give me that baby! What was Naomi's face like? One of the girl.
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Does it have six toes like those giants in the land did? What was she doing?
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Her face was shining. Her face was open. May the Lord bless you. May the
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Lord keep you. May His face shine upon you. Smiling and shining, it's an open face.
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Naomi sees the baby. Hi, baby! And if I were to ask you your deep, dark secrets and your skeletons, and now you stand in God's tribunal and He goes through every one of those sins,
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I know for a fact, God wouldn't smile. But He doesn't see you.
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He doesn't see my sins. He sees Jesus. And His face shines. He smiles.
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Verse 12 saying, I will tell you of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation.
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I'll sing your praise. Again, I'll put my trust in Him. And again, behold, I and the children
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God has given me. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood,
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He Himself, see it's family, it's kinsmen, likewise partook of the same thing that through death
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He might destroy the one who has power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.
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It's surely not angels that He helps, but He helps the offspring of Abraham.
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Therefore, He had to be made like His brothers. He had to be a kinsman in every respect, except sin, of course, so that He might become a merciful, faithful, high priest in the service of God to make propitiation, to make atonement, to make wrath satisfied and assuaged for the sins not of His Son, but of the people.
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For because He Himself has suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.
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Our Heavenly Father, spiritually we would be like those folks back in the days of judges.
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Empty, barren, no hope, worshiping that crazy god
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Chemosh or any other god or ourselves as God. We're thankful this morning to increase our thanksgiving.
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All those people back in those days could see their gods, but their gods never talked. And we can't see
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You and live, but You do speak. And in these last days, You've spoken to us in Your Son. In the days long ago,
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You spoke through men like Samuel who would tell us about the kinsman Redeemer, like Boaz, whose name we'd come to know as Jesus Christ.
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Thank You that every one of our sins, past, present, and future, has been redeemed by Jesus, paid for.
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Thank You that we don't have to fear God the Father. We don't have to fear You looking upon us with displeasure.
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And to think one imperfection, one sin, we would deserve to be cast into the lake of fire with no hope.
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But because of Jesus Christ, a kinsman Redeemer, He lived in our place and died in our place.
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And You confirmed that great transaction by exalting Him to the right hand.
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Father, I pray for those who are here today that don't know You. I honestly do pray, don't give them any sleep or rest until they rest in the finished work of Jesus.
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I pray that You would vex them. I pray that You would grant them repentance. I pray that You would help them consider their ways.
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We've learned in Ecclesiastes this morning, everything else is going to be a dead end. For what reason? So we realize who
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Jesus Christ is. And then with Him, we can enjoy all things. I pray for the saints here at Bethlehem Bible Church.
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I pray that You would help us to be kind to one another and loving like Ruth was to Boaz, like Ruth was to Naomi, like Boaz was to Ruth.
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And that people would see a reflection in us. It's not their love, but it's Your condescending love that You work out through people.
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Help us to be thankful people. Help us to see our trials in light of eternity. Help us to be trusting in this
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God who works these things out. If a God can work out a genealogy through sinners, He can take care of my anxious thoughts.
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Help us to not focus on our health and temporal things because we all, short of the sun soon returning, we all are going to die.
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And then one day, that will be our only hope on our deathbed. Are we afraid of death? We hate death, but we're not afraid because You have promised us that You'll have
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Your face shine upon us through Christ Jesus and His work. I ask this in His name,