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.