Ruth 4

All right.

All right, well...

Again, Philip

has preached my sermon.

In the call to worship...

So I'm

just going to give you a little scriptural backing behind what he said earlier.

So, and over and over again,

this is a truth that is found in scripture, that God is

sovereign over all things.

So, if you would, open in

your Bibles, or look at the screen, and we'll read Ruth chapter

number four, the final chapter in the account of Ruth

and Naomi and Boaz.

Ruth chapter 4, we're going to read the whole chapter.

So sit tight.

God's voice says, now Boaz went up to the

gate, and sat down there, and behold, the

close relative of whom Boaz spoke was passing by.

So he said, turn aside, friend, sit down here.

And he turned aside and sat down.

He took 10 men of the elders of the city, and said, sit down here.

So they sat down.

Then he said to the closest relative, Naomi,

who has come back from the land of Moab, has

to sell the piece of land which belonged to our brother, Elimelech.

So I thought to inform you, saying, Buy

it before those who are sitting here and before the elders of my people.

If you will redeem it, redeem it, but if not, tell

me that I may know, for there is no one but you to redeem it, and I am after you.

And he said, I will redeem it.

Then Boaz said, on the day

you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you must

also acquire Ruth the Moabites, the

widow of the deceased, in order to raise up the name of

the deceased on his inheritance.

The closest relative said, I cannot redeem

it for myself, because I would jeopardize my own inheritance.

Redeem it for yourself.

You may have my right of redemption, for I cannot redeem it.

Now, this was the custom, in former times, in Israel

concerning the redemption and the exchange of land to confirm any matter.

A man removed his sandal, and gave

it to another, and this was the manner of attestation, in Israel.

So, the closest relative said to Boaz,

buy it for yourself, and he removed his sandal.

Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people,

You are witnesses today that I have bought from the hand of Naomi,

all that belonged to Elimelech, and all that belonged to Kylian

and Mahalon.

Moreover, I have acquired Ruth the Moabitis,

the widow of Machalon, to be my wife, in

order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance,

so that the name of the deceased will not be cut off

from his brothers, or from the count of his court

of his birthplace, you are witnesses today, all

the people who were in the court, and the elder said, We are witnesses.

May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your

home like Rachel and Leah, both of

whom built the house of Israel.

And may you achieve wealth in Afratha, and

become famous in Bethlehem.

Moreover, may your house be like the house of

Perez, whom Tamar wore to Judah,

through the offspring which the Lord will give you by this young woman.

So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife.

And he went in to her, and the Lord enabled

her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son.

Then the women said to Naomi, Blessed

is the Lord who has not left you without a redeemer today,

and may his name become famous in Israel.

May he also be to you a restorer of life,

and a sustainer of your old age, for your daughter in

law who loves you, and is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.

Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her

lap, and became his nurse.

The neighbor women gave him a name, saying, A son

has been born to Naomi.

So they named him Obed.

He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.

Now, these are the generations of Perez.

To Perez was born Hezron, and to Hezron

was born wrong, and to Ram, Aminadab, and

to Aminadab, was born Nashan, and to Solomon,

and to Solomon, was born Boaz, and to Boaz,

Obed, and to Obed, was born Jesse, and to Jesse David.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we love you, and thank you for your marvelous word

that you've given us, that we can learn from, that we can grow, and

that we can turn that growth and knowledge and the praise to you for how good you are.

I pray that you bless your word, to our hearts and our minds, and bless

your message in spite of the messenger, in Christ's name.

Amen.

All right, so we are going through this

were the last chapter of the story of Ruth

and Naomi and Boaz, and it

was put in here to shine a light onto our

own lives as believers.

It was put in there to point how a normal life,

with its ups and downs, will still and

can still be used by God.

Now, I'm an extremely common person.

My life is very common.

I am not very special.

I come from a common family, with

common means, very common means.

I'm not exceptionally smart.

I'm not exceptionally rich compared to others in my nation.

And I'm really not exceptionally talented.

I live in Denim Springs.

which is not New York City.

It's not Los Angeles.

It's not good at all in many ways.

It's, uh, some people call it donkey springs, uh,

or donkey springs.

And as far as I know, every single person

in this room, more or less, are the

same in their commonness.

So the Bible has great stories

of great men and women, exceptional men and women.

Men and women like Moses, like Mary, like David

or Solomon, the wisest king in all the world, or

like Paul.

Wouldn't wouldn't we like to be like Paul?

And when we read those stories,

And compare ourselves to these men and

these women, sometimes we feel like we could never

measure up to their their greatness, their stature.

Like, I don't have any exceptional ability

to let me rule a kingdom like

the kingdom of Israel, like David, the man after

God's own heart did.

I can barely rule my own house, right?

But Ruth is different.

Our story is just about an

everyday Hebrew family, just

trying to make it in the world.

They ran from a famine in Israel to

a foreign land, just to try to survive.

And then as they did that, tragedy

struck them, and the husband dies, Elimelech.

And then the two sons die and leave three

widows in complete and abject poverty in

helplessness outside of God's provision.

And then, as we saw in the last two sermons, we

went through Ruth, and Oomi traveled back to

their hometown, or Naomi's hometown, Bethlehem

of Afratha, and began to glean,

because of their poverty and their hunger, and

to a man named Boaz's field.

God provided a way for

them to survive, these normal, everyday, poor

people, to survive through the laws that he had given

the Hebrew people about gleaning.

But this simple act of

survival for Naomi and Ruth turned

out to be that the hand of God working through his

providence in these two widows' lives.

Boaz turned out not only to

be a godly man, but a graciously generous

man, and he just happened to be a

kinsman Redeemer, the Goel,

to Naomi, and to Ruth.

So this was someone that the Goel was

someone who would marry a widow, if you remember, of a relative,

for the express purpose of raising up

a son under the deceased man's

name, and so that his inheritance wouldn't be lost.

So when the gnomi realized that Ruth

just hacked upon Boaz's field and

realized who Boaz was, she

told Ruth to go and ask Boaz for

help that he would perform the duty of

the kinsman redeemer for them.

And then last time, we saw that Ruth did that in

chapter number three, and that she showed extreme courage,

and how she went about doing that, listening

to Naomi, and going and begging for

Boaz's help to do this.

And we saw Boaz's generosity, and

his grace towards her, his godliness, and a

spark of love that he had for Ruth,

and promising to make sure that she would be taken care of.

Now, I just want you to think that

this is just a story about a couple

of people in between the time of the judges and

of when the monarchy came in Israel.

These are just normal people, living

their lives as best as they could, just one

step in front of it, one problem they face, and another one comes up,

and they handle that.

And how many people in this

world are living, normal lives.

Just trying to get through it, to survive every

day, just one step after the other.

Most of the people that are in the cities

don't know the other people's names.

If you think about the famous people, the great men of our time.

We only know maybe a hundred people's

names out of all the billions around

this world, and billions of those people will be

born, will live their entire life, and we will die,

and we won't even know who they were.

We won't know anything about them, but they're going

through the life, just like we are, and we

know each other's name, the 25 ish people in here, but

how many people outside these walls know who we are, and

know what we do, know what we care about.

And much less the people that are on the other side

of the world, each one of us experiencing

joy and pain in our lives, right?

Struggles and trials, success,

triumphs sometimes, great things in

our lives, but all of us normal people, going through good

times and bad, just like Ruth

and Naomi and Boaz, these nobodies,

in the middle of Bethlehem, Afratha, the

donkey springs of Israel, right?

And now we have an

account of normal people just like us under

the hand of providence of

a holy, almighty God.

And this story about Ruth is

the same story that is the

story of our lives, that the almighty sovereign

God takes his all knowing hand of

providence, and puts it over each one of our lives as believers,

just like he did in Ruth.

We can look at their life in the book of Ruth, and

see how God works out in their life.

And we can apply that to ours.

Even the common, poor, widow's

lives are important to God, and he

is using their common, minuscule,

tiny lives through his wisdom, and

for his own glory, as we see by

being written down in his word and as talking about it today.

So, as believers, the same way that

Ruth got to use her life to share God's

glory to people, our lives, the

providential hand of God, the ups and downs, the blessings

that he gives us, will one day be used for

his glory as well.

At the end of this life, no matter how many

pains or trials that

we face going through, that one step at a time,

life, like Ruth and Naomi, God

will use those things in ways that we can't even imagine,

for his own glory.

John Piper said the life of the godly

is not a straight line to glory, but we do get there.

And that's why each one of us, as we go

through these good times, and these hard times, is suffering, and the trials,

we need to remember that, that at

the end of it, at the end of our life, as a believer, he

will use it in some way for his glory,

just like he did in Ruth and Naomi and Boaz's

life, that they, as we'll see, can't even imagine how

it would have all worked out, but how that it did.

So the last chapter of our story, and the

really, the overall theme of the whole book teaches us that

God uses in the lives of normal, everyday people,

to bring himself glory, and

we must remember that as we go through this

life, at the end of all things.

Every person's life, every aspect of

our life, is the glory of God, and he

allows us to participate that in that.

And that gives us strength to face those trials and the sufferings.

The first way, in the first part, I believe, that

he teaches us as that, is by recognizing that

he uses the actions of men to accomplish his will.

So you took my sermon, chapter

4 verses 1 through 6.

Now, Boaz went up to the gate and sat

down there, and, behold, the close relative

of whom Boaz spoke was passing by.

So he said, turn aside, friend, sit down

here, and he turned aside and sat down.

He took 10 men of the elders of the city, and said, Sit down here.

So they sat down.

Then he said to the closest relative, Naomi,

who has come back from the land of Moab, has

to sell the peace of land,

which belonged to our brother Elimelech.

So I thought to inform you, saying, buy it,

before those who are sitting here, and before the elders of my people.

If you will redeem it, redeem it.

But if not, tell me that I may know, for there

is no one but you to redeem it, and I am after you, and

he said, I will redeem it.

Then Boaz said, on the day, you buy

the field from the hand of Naomi, you must also acquire

Ruth, the Moabitus, the widow of the deceased,

in order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance.

The closest relative said, I cannot redeem it for myself.

because I would jeopardize my own inheritance.

Redeem it for yourself, you may have my

right of redemption, for I cannot redeem it.

Now, this is the following day, after the

end of chapter 3, when Boaz promised

that he would take care of Ruth.

And remember, Naomi said, look, just calm down, Ruth.

He's going to do, you'll know at the end of the day what's going to happen.

Boaz is the type of man that's going to go and take

care of this business.

So our man, Boaz here, goes out and

to take care of his duty.

He had a duty to Ruth and to Naomi as

a relative at the time.

And he was, Boaz was a godly man.

He sought to write by Ruth

and Naomi, but he also sought to do right by God,

and we could see his character, how he allowed his field to

be cleaned in a very gracious way, as we saw in the past chapters.

Now remember, there is someone else.

There's a closer kinsman that

has the right to first refusal to perform the

duty of the Goel.

He could have said that I want the field, and I'll

take Ruth as a wife.

And Boaz has a duty, as an honest,

godly man, to inform the closer kinsman,

that there was a duty to perform here in

taking the inheritance of the deceased

Elimelech, to pass on to keep it in his family.

But Boaz loved Ruth.

And so here he does something that is

very wise, and what the commentators

call Boaz's master stroke.

So Boaz had become very fond of

Ruth, and he saw her faithfulness as she

came to him at night, asked for protection.

He saw her courage as she came from her

own country, turned her back on her old gods and her own

nation, and came into Bethlehem, a new place.

Remember, he said that in chapter number three, verse 10.

He said, then he said, may you be blessed of the Lord, my daughter.

You have shown your last kindness to be

better than the first by not going out young men, whether

poor or rich.

Now my daughter, do not fear.

I will do whatever you ask, for all my people in

the city know that you are a woman of excellence,

and a spark of love and admiration for

Ruth has been begun to form, and Boaz's heart.

And so he sets off for the gates of the city in

this day to take care of this business that he had

to do, to take care of Ruth.

So he goes to the gates of the city, which is where all

kinds of business happened in the city, where

the city gate became the hub of all

the action in the city, because it was where the people would have to come in.

So the trade routes would have to go through the gate.

And so it naturally became a marketplace where

people would go and to buy and sell goods.

And so all the men of the city would go there to

meet and talk and discuss political matters and business

dealings, just like it's happening now.

So Boaz goes here, and he waits for this closer kinsman to come by.

And when he

sees them come by, he calls out to him.

Verse one, turn aside, friend, sit down here.

And he turned aside and sat down, so

that the closer kinsman comes and sits down, and then Boaz

calls 10 of the elders to come and be a witness as well.

So he tells this closer Goel

of the situation that Naomi's in.

She came back as a widow, and she has this property, and

she needs to sell it to survive, and so

he has a duty and a right, a privilege,

to purchase this field from her.

And if he purchases this field, he gets to look like

he's the man of the family, he's performing his duty.

He's an honorable man and he gets the land that

becomes part of his inheritance.

So in his mind, Boaz

is setting up this whole situation in front of

these 10 elders and this man to

where he is giving officially offering

this man the right of first refusal to take this land.

The man agrees to purchase.

said, Look, I'm going to redeem it.

And then this is where Boaz's wisdom comes through in verse 5.

He said, Boaz said, on the day that you buy the field, from

the hand of Naomi, you must also acquire Ruth,

the Moabitus, the widow of the deceased, in

order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance.

So if you're going to buy this land, there's a catch.

It comes with this woman.

And it comes with this widow that you're

gonna have to provide for, that you're gonna have to take care of.

And when you marry

Ruth, your duty as to go well is

to have a son with her.

Now, that son is not going to take your name.

take he's going to take a Limbilex name.

And Mahalan's name, and all that land,

and that the work that you've put into that

family is going to go with him when you die, not

with your other sons.

And so Boaz does this on

purpose in order to get him to really think

about what he's going to have to do.

So, when this man heard this, that

there was a marriage that would be involved.

He quickly changed his mind, verse 6.

He says, I cannot redeem it for myself because I would jeopardize my own inheritance.

Redeem it for yourself.

You may have my right of redemption, for I cannot redeem it.

And now, before all the witnesses, he

gives up his right to the land and to the marriage of Ruth,

and just think about how Boaz worked this all out.

The man knew about Naomi, but

she was too old to bear children, right?

So the closer relative

said, Look, if I take this, I won't have to marry Naomi,

because she can't have a son to take the inheritance.

But then Boaz brings in the reality that there's Ruth,

Mahalan's widow, and

that would come with the duty of taking care of

her and her family as well.

And he says, thanks, but no thanks.

But Boaz does this, because now the

man is able to save face when he says no.

It doesn't look like he's shirking his duty because Boaz

is there saying, I will redeem it if you won't.

You're not obligated to do that.

You're not obligated to take care of them, because I'm offering

to take that duty, that burden from

your shoulders.

So this is, as we'll see, as we

get to the end of the chapter, is the great working of God's providence.

He's turning, the suffering of Ruth, all

the pain and the hardship that Ruth and Naomi have been through.

He's turning it into his own glory,

God's own glory through their story.

hundreds of years before the

story had happened.

God had laid down, as we've talked about before,

the custom and the laws behind this leverite

marriage, this kinsman redeemer.

And Boaz was acting just on these parameters

that God had laid down.

God didn't come to him at night and say,

Hey, this is what you're going to do.

He's just putting one step in front of the other, and

within the perimeters that God has set up and acting out

of his own will, out of his own choices.

He physically went to the gates.

He physically called this meeting and laid out

what was going to happen.

But God was behind the scenes, working out

through all of his choices, all of his actions, all

the choices of the closer kinsmen redeeming, kinsmen

redeemer, the situation that the other kinsmen redeemer

was in financially, where he wouldn't be able to take on the burden of

Ruth and Naomi and their children.

All of that, to work out, for God's

own glory, the story of Ruth and Boaz

and Naomi.

So you need to remember that.

When you are going through suffering, even when people

are acting in wicked ways towards you,

that whatever happens now and here,

in the future, and it may be after

it's all over, we will be

standing before God, and we'll say, hey, you did that for your glory.

I made those choices.

I did those actions, but you were behind the

scenes, working it all out in your

great and awesome sovereignty and your

providence.

So we need to remember that as we go through life, as we face good

times and as we face suffering.

And the second thing that God has given us, to

enjoy this life, and to use for His

glory, or gifts, God has given us gifts

to enjoy this life.

The passage will be from verses 7 or 15,

but I'm going to read verses 7 or 10 right now.

It says, Now this was the custom.

In former times in Israel, concerning the redemption

and the exchange of land to confirm any matter.

A man removed his sandal, and gave it to another.

And this was the manner of attestation in Israel.

So the closest relative said to Boaz,

buy it for yourself, and he removed his sandal.

Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, You

are witnesses today, that I have bought from the hand of Naomi

all that belong to Elimelech, and all that belong to Kylian

and Mahalon.

Moreover, I have acquired Ruth the Moabitis,

the widow of Milan, to be my

wife in order to raise up the name of the deceased on

his inheritance, so that the name of the deceased will not be

cut off from his brothers or from the court of his birthplace.

You are witnesses today.

And we have already been witnesses ourselves,

of many strange customs, as we've gone through

Ruth, but I think this may be the strangest,

the taking off of the sandal to

do a real estate deal, right?

Today, we just use notary republics and title companies

and crazy stuff like that.

So this is extremely strange for us.

But this is how God had set it up, the leverite marriage.

When the law was given in Deuteronomy, there

was an opportunity, a chance that the kinsman Redeemer

would say, No, I'm not going to fulfill my duty.

And that was a shame to him, that

he cared more about his own self and

what his desires were than for his family, his community.

And so God set it up.

Taking the sandal off would

be a humiliation for him, and that

kind of transformed, we'll get into.

But Deuteronomy 258 says, then the elders of this city shall

summon him and speak to him, and if he persists

and says, I do not desire to take her, the widow,

then his brother's wife shall come to him

in the sight of the elders, and pull his sandal

off his foot, and spit in his face.

And she shall declare, Thus it is done to

the man who does not build up his brother's house.

In Israel, his name shall be called the

house of him whose sandal is removed.

And so, apparently, by the time Ruth comes

around, and Boaz, it's kind of been a

little modified, as culture kind of does sometimes,

where it wasn't necessarily a humiliating thing, and Boaz

didn't have to spit in the closer relative's face, but

this kind of became the situation.

And, if you notice, in the passage,

actually, the author of Ruth is saying, at

that time, this is what Israel did.

So the time that Ruth was written, that

custom had gone away as well.

So he had explained to his readers, that's what was going on.

So Boaz then

officially announces, after he

gets the sandal, that he will perform

the duty of the kinsman Redeemer for the land, and

that he will be taking Ruth as his wife.

And so by this time, as often happens,

in these situations, they had the man there in Boaz,

that the 10 elders that were witnessing it.

But then the crowd gathers.

And whenever Boaz finally announced

officially announces this, they all begin to celebrate.

And look at verse number 11, all the people who were in the court, and the

elder said, We are witnesses.

May the Lord make the woman who was coming

into your home like Rachel and Leah,

both of whom built the house of Israel.

And may you achieve wealth in Afratha, and

become famous in Bethlehem.

Moreover, may your house be like the house of Perez,

whom Tamar bore to Judah, through

the offspring which the Lord will give you by this young man.

Now, this was certainly a situation that

was worthy of being celebrated, that the whole community

of God's people, all of Bethlehem of Frathma,

had an interest in the growth of the community, and that someone

will be married, and that there will be Lord willing children

to come from that.

The marriage is a gift of God, and

children are a blessing as well.

But God gave the gift of marriage

to us at creation.

It's a beautiful illustration

of God's covenant with his people and his

sacrificial love.

Bonhofer, said this in one of his letters from the German prison.

And he said, marriage is more than your love for each other.

It has a higher dignity and power,

for it is God's holy ordinance.

In your love, you see only the heaven of your

happiness, but in marriage, you are placed at a post of

responsibility towards the world, and mankind.

Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is something more than personal.

It is a status, an office, that joins

it together in the sight of God, and man.

So there's this covenant relationship that God uses as an illustration

of the very gospel, as we saw in

Ephesians 5.

And so Boaz was doing his duty, but

he was also showing his love for Ruth.

Now, this is a great contrast to the way

that marriage is viewed by our culture today, today,

and you've probably all heard this, but people don't

even understand why marriage exists.

They only think it is a piece of paper.

Why do I need a piece of paper saying, I love someone, they say.

It is a question that why

it has come down to this.

It's not a question as to why it has come

down to this in our culture, because we have turned our back on God.

And as marriage is a gift that he's given us, and

an illustration of the gospel, it's no wonder that Satan

attacks it in our culture, and

our nation, all of us, as a community, have

an interest in families being created, and husbands loving

their wives, and wives respecting their husbands as an

illustration for the gospel, and for the blessing, of our community,

and the people that were all around them, knew

this, and were celebrating it, and blessing a Ruth.

They said, look, when you get

married, we want you to be like Rachel, and Leah.

Rachel and Leah were the wives of Jacob, and the

babies that they had became the fathers of the

12 tribes of Israel.

And then they said, we want you to

be like Tamar and Judah,

who had twins from a Leverite marriage.

Judah took on Tamar as

the widow of his relative, and

had babies, and became great as well.

So the next part of our story, is another

gift that God gives us marriage, he gives us children.

He provides all these things for us, that we use for his glory, and

another gift is verse 13.

So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his

wife, and he went in to her, and the Lord enabled

her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son.

So, if you remember, way back in November,

when we started, going through the book

of Ruth and telling this story, Naomi

and her two sons and her husband came

to Moab escaping the famine, and her

son named Mahalan married Ruth.

And they were married for 10 years, and

then Mahalan passed away, making Ruth a widow.

But in those 10 years, apparently, they

weren't able to conceive a child.

And if you think about those 10 years, before they even

knew that Mahalan was going to die, I'm

sure them not having a child was a struggle and

a trial and a suffering for them.

But when Boaz and Ruth are

married, they were blessed with a son.

Now, if she would

have just struggled so much with not having if she

would have had a child with Mahalan, none of this,

what we have talked about, would have been able to happen.

She would not have been eligible to be married by a

kinsman redeemer because she would have a son who would

be able to take the inheritance in his name.

So what she thought was a struggle in those

times was a struggle.

It was a trial.

I'm not saying it wasn't, but she didn't see the full picture,

as now God has brought her into a marriage with Boaz

and given her a son.

Sometimes, when we pray, God says,

wait, but he provides, every time,

a gift to us, verses 14 or 15.

Then the women said to Naomi, Blessed is the Lord who has

not left you without a redeemer today, and

may his name become famous in Israel, may

also be to you a restorer of life, and a

sustainer of your old age, for your daughter in law who

loves you, and is better to you than seven sons,

has given birth to him.

The women in the beginning, remember, in chapter 2,

they all are, chapter 1, they all came around Naomi,

and they were mourning with her, and Naomi

said, Don't call me Naomi, which means kindness, call me Mara,

which means bitterness.

I'm bitter, because of all that God has brought me through.

But now at the end of the story.

All the women, all the little biddies,

were coming around her, and praising God, and

blessing God for how he's worked out

this horrible story, into this great story.

All of her physical needs will be taken care of, because

of Boaz, and because now she has this grandson

who's going to grow up and be able to take care of her, and

of his mother, where before they didn't see anyone

that would be able.

There was no hope.

Remember, Naomi told Ruth, Go back and marry somebody else.

There's no hope if you come with me to Bethlehem.

Everything seemed to have been snatched from them.

They're husbands, their sons were taken from them,

but now, in a way that only God can do.

You think that Naomi or Ruth could have dreamed

that this would have been the way that their lives had worked out as

widows in Donkey Springs, Bethlehem of Fratha.

You can't even imagine what God is going

to do and how he's going to work things out in his time and his way.

He has given everything back to them, shaken,

pressed down, and overflowing with his goodness and his glory.

And who gets the glory?

Are we sitting here praising Ruth or Naomi or Boaz?

No, we're looking at the story and turning it back into praise for God.

God gets all the glory.

He gives the gift to Ruth, and Naomi,

and to us, and we turn it back into glory for him.

And the last thing that we can do is

we look at how he turns the suffering and trials into

glory, and in his glory at the end.

as we're by remembering that this life is

tiny compared to eternity.

Look at verse 16.

Didn't Naomi took the child and laid him in her lap,

and became his nurse.

The neighbor women gave him a name,

saying, A son has been born to Naomi, so they named him Obed.

He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.

Now these are the generations of Perez.

To Perez was born Hezron, and to Hezron

was born Ram, and to Ram, Aminadab, and

to Aminadab was born Nashan, and to Solomon,

and to Solomon,

and to Boaz, Obed, and to Obed was born Jesse,

and to Jesse, David.

Now, if anyone is planning on having kids or

grandkids in the future, if you need a name, there's a list.

But this is the culmination of

the account of Ruth.

This is the end of the story.

And it's the end of a story that only the Bible can

do as it ends the story in a genealogy.

Now, there's many genealogies and scriptures.

There's a lot of them in the Old Testament.

And sometimes, especially when we're starting out in our Bible reading

plans, and we get to these long lists of names, and it kind

of gets overwhelming, because we don't do things like that anymore.

I heard a preacher one day say that there's a good

reason why there's lists of names in the Bible,

it's because God likes names, and he likes to write

them down in books, so praise God for that.

But every single person that you meet, in

this world, in this church, in our families, in our lives, are

all connected, all the way back to the beginning of creation,

by a genealogical tree, and

God is telling the story of history through

these lists of names.

Again, all these were just people, just

like us, living their lives, putting one foot in front of the other, making

choices, having things happen to them, and them happening to things sometimes.

But thousands of years ago, in Bethlehem,

of Afratha, God has weaved these

nobodies, these common people, just like us, into

the tapestry of his great story, and

he's showing us that he did that through these genealogies.

Naomi took this child, and the gift

from God, and laid him in her lap, that

all the women were mourning, as we said, with Naomi in

the beginning, now came to celebrate with her this birth of

this grandchild, that she was taking care of.

And then he first gives this little mini genealogy, verse 17.

So they named him Obed.

He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.

This very son, this grandson,

who would not have been born outside of the sovereign

hand of God, working providentially in the lives of

these three protagonists of ours, is the

grandfather of King David, the greatest

King of Israel, the man after God's own heart, the

very David, who would slay Goliath.

And we know all the stories of David.

They're still making movies about him and cartoons about him today.

The official genealogy is given after

the mini genealogy, going back to Perez,

who was one of the twins that was born to Judah and

Tamar, from the Leverite marriage.

So they traced the lineage of this

Moabitous widow woman all the way back to

the start of Israel's history.

But it's not the only genealogy that

mentions these names.

If we go to the Book of Matthew, the very first

chapter and the very first verse.

It says the record of the geneal.

excuse me, gosh.

The record of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah,

the son of David, the son of Abraham, Abraham was the

father of Isaac, Isaac, the father of Jacob, and

Jacob, the father of Judah, and his brothers, Judah

was the father of Perez, and Zerah by Tamar.

Perez was the father of Hezron, and Hezron, the father of Ram.

Ram was the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab,

the father of Nashan, and Nashan, the father of Solomon.

Solomon was the father of Boaz by Rahab.

Boaz was the father of Obed, by Ruth,

and Obed, the father of Jesse, and

it goes on and goes on until it ends up with Joseph,

and then Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

If you notice, there's another name in there, Rahab

was the grandmother

of Boaz, or the mother of Boaz.

But anyway, our protagonists are mentioned here in the genealogy

of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

And this is the ultimate glory at

the end of the story.

Now, just imagine.

Ruth and Naomi, they've

passed on that all this stuff has happened to him.

They thought it was great, but now they're standing before God, the Father.

And they're seeing his glory, and they start to hear what

was going on in real life, what the end of the story would

be, that, hey, Ruth, you Moabite us, you nothing.

You're going to be the grandmother to

the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, my son.

And this is what I mean when you compare the length of

time of our tiny lives to eternity, the

story that God is writing using our lives in

this short little life we have.

This is the same thing that Paul said in Romans 8:18.

He said, for I consider, that the suffering of this present time

are not worthy to be compared with the glory that

is to be revealed to us.

And 2 Corinthians 4:17, for

momentary, light affliction is producing

for us, an eternal weight of glory,

far beyond all comparison, while we

look not at the things which are seen, but at

the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal,

but the things which are not seen are eternal.

This genealogy is a fitting conclusion

to the book of Ruth, to the story of Ruth,

and Naomi, and Boaz, because the real

story of Ruth, and Naomi, and Boaz

is an eternal weight of glory.

And I hope that I've done justice to this

story in the last five months.

And that this story has caused us

to look back, to step back from our suffering,

our trials, even the good things in our life, and

remember that the good things are eternal, that

God is using our little lives, including

the immense suffering, for His glory, in ways

that we can't even comprehend, like Ruth and Omi

couldn't even imagine happening to them.

And no matter what we go through in this life,

the end of it is going to be the same as Ruth and

Naomi, seeing the face of God and his full and complete glory

and understanding things, that we have never been able to understand in this life.

But I also want to remind you that that is a

story that only happens for believers.

No matter what happens in this life, the end of the believer's life

is good and glorious, and a complete

and utter gift that we can't even picture.

But the end of the unbeliever's

life, in complete contrast to our life, is

they can have a life of complete prosperity, and

complete health, everything in this world could provide for them.

And then when they see the

Lord and Savior on that last day, and art judged

by him, no matter what the life provided

for them in good ways, they will get eternal

punishment in hell, without the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

And so we need to remember that, like the author

of Psalm 73, Asaph, when he considered the health of

prosperity of the wicked, he got jealous.

But then he went into the temple and considered their end.

So as we love our people, as

we love our families, our co workers, as we think about

our lives, the suffering that we go through, always

consider the end, and no

matter what way it goes, remember that God will

get glory in ways that we can't even picture or imagine.

Remember that, strengthen yourselves by that, like

Ruth, and Naomi, and Boaz, these normal, everyday

people, and Bethlehem, Ephratha, just like us.

Let's pray.

Heavy Father, we love you and thank you for your great mercy on us.

Every time we were reminded of the gospel.

We were reminded that you deserve all of our praise,

all of your glory, Lord, we

can't even begin to bring you the glory that you deserve.

But I pray that we've made a small effort this morning,

and that you will be praised, bless us as believe, for your glory in Christ's name.

Amen.