We're All Outsiders Until Jesus - December 21, 2025

Good morning. Merry Christmas.

Welcome to Resurrection Church. My name is Daniel.

I'm the lead pastor here. Hey, so because it's the holiday

seasons, I don't know if you know this, but Hallmark has been

cranking out the movies, man. You know the one, because they

all go about the same way. There's the big city lady who

somehow gets trapped in a small town over the holidays and then

accidentally, coincidentally bumps into that very roguish,

very handsome man, always wearing flannel.

And he sweeps them off their feet and reintroduces them to

love in some cheesy, predictable way that we can't seem to stop

watching because every single plot is the same with just

different character names. Well, last week in the Book of

Ruth, we kind of interrupted our love story at the end of Chapter

3. It was right.

It was like kind of building up into that tension.

And then it was like commercial break.

Oh, sorry for you younger people, a commercial break.

You'll figure it out. So quick recap if you, if you've

missed any of the last three weeks, we've been, we've been

reading through this love story in the book of Ruth, which is

also kind of a Christmas story, which we've been explaining

along the way, even though it took place 1100 years before

Christmas. And so there is a Moabite woman,

her name is Ruth, and she and her Jewish mother-in-law, they

had come back from the land of Moab and they're widowed.

And so as they come back and Moab is the is Israel's enemy.

As they come back to the town of Bethlehem in Israel, a God

provides for them substantially. During the barley harvest, they

end up with food to eat, even though they were destitute and

starving. And in this last chapter that we

covered last week, there's this man named Boaz.

He's the landowner in which they've gotten food.

He has shown Ruth kindness along the way.

And Ruth makes a very bold move. She goes to him and asks him to

be something called a Redeemer. And that word means, in their

culture, to marry her to, to take her in and protect her, to

provide for her. And he agrees and he says at the

very end of last week, I will deal with this today.

And chapter 4 is today. So welcome to what we hope to be

the the kind of culmination of this love story slash Christmas

story. Here's the big idea.

So if you if you've come today and you get nothing else out of

today, you have to, you have to leave with just one thought.

It's this love fixes what the law fails.

Love fixes what the law fails. And we'll explain that.

Join me in reading God's word, Ruth chapter 4, starting with

Ruth 4 · chapter mention

verse one. Give you a minute to get there.

Now Boaz, this is the landowner. Now Boaz who made this promise

had gone up to the gate and sat down there and behold, the

Redeemer of whom Boaz had spoken came by.

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

Now in in ancient cities, the gate was where they did all of

the business transactions. The gate, because that's where

everyone would enter or or leave the city from was the was the

place they would do they would do business deals, they would do

court proceedings. Everything happened at the gate

of the city. And so Boaz in the last chapter

said, Hey, there's a, a Redeemer closer than I.

And what he meant was there's a relative to Naomi and Ruth that

is the closest relative. And in that ancient community

man family had certain obligations.

And so there's a a man that is closest in relation.

He needs to go talk to that man. And he says, hey, come over

here, let's sit down, let's have a conversation.

So he finds him at the gate. This is the by the way, this is

the day after harvest. So they've just been grueling

work for months. This is the next day.

It's like the first day off. And Can you imagine this guy?

He has no idea what's going on. He's just walking like finally

this thing's over. He's just like on his way to

work like us. He's going to go to Dutch Bros

and get a coffee. And all of a sudden it's like,

hey, Fran, come over here. What is this?

Sit down. Now.

I, I want you to catch something that I think is, is it's so

important. It's so easy to miss.

He says, hey, friend, come over here.

Now here's the here's the way that that's easy to miss.

In the Hebrew that this was written in, the word he uses

does not mean friend. It actually is really a vague

word. It means so and so, so and so.

Someone of no consequence, like so and so.

He goes, hey, so and so come over here.

That's a weird thing. That's a really weird thing to

say, actually. And, and I've been saying for a

few weeks now that the author of this story, this is a masterful

storyteller who's very detailed at certain things and very vague

about other things on purpose so that you will see and understand

and even feel this story. So this storyteller absolutely

knows the name of this man. This is the closest relation to

the protagonist in the entire story.

They know exactly who this is. In fact, in a few verses, you're

going to get a genealogy of 12 generations of people.

This is intentionally vague. This is purposefully vague.

This is the closest relative to the hero of the story or the to

the protagonist of the story. And yet you're not going to hear

their name mentioned at all. And so they're going to be named

in the story. So and so if the title of the

credits rolled at the end of the Netflix film, it would be like

so and so played by. So for our purposes, we're going

to call this person Joe Blow. So and so we got to pick a name.

They didn't give us one. So he says, hey, so so sit down

here and he turned aside and he sat down and Boaz took ten men

of the elders of the city and said, sit down here.

So they sat down. He's just put a a jury, a whole

series of witnesses. So this is about to get serious.

You can say this is getting serious like it's it's going to

be a legal procedure. It's going to it's going to have

witnesses. They're they're about to do a

transaction. Verse 3.

Then he said to the Redeemer, Joe Blow, so and so Naomi, who

has come back from the country of Moab, is selling the parcel

of land that belonged to our relative, her husband Elimelech.

So I thought I would tell you of it and say, buy it in the

presence of those sitting here. That's the way the witnesses are

there. And in the presence of the

elders of my people. If you will redeem it, redeem

it. But if you will not tell me that

I may know for there's no one beside you to redeem it and I

come after you and he said I will redeem it.

But you see how quick that that reaction was and I'll explain

why. OK, so this is a little weird

because we don't do any of this stuff anymore like this.

And, and even historians and, and, and commentators on this

section of Ruth are very split on exactly what's happening here

because it sounds like a legal proceeding and it kind of is.

The problem is it doesn't exactly match the laws that we

knew about for that time. So we're all a little bit

confused. There were some laws established

in, in, in the Judaic law in ancient times back in Leviticus

25. And according to that law, you

could never sell land forever. You couldn't sell land forever

because even if you thought it was yours, it wasn't really

yours. It was God's.

So the only thing you could sell is you could sell the right to

use it for a little while, but they would go back to whomever

God had granted it to originally.

It was called redeeming the land.

And so he's saying, look, this land when the limit like bailed

on Israel and ran off the Moab, like you shouldn't have.

He sold this land during a famine, but now it needs to be

redeemed. So buy it back because you're

the closest relative. So the losses, you have to buy

it back. Now, here's the interesting

thing. When it got sold, it was a

famine. It wasn't worth anything.

But now there are bumper crops. The land is producing

plentifully. There's food everywhere, so this

land now is worth a lot and he gets to buy it for pennies on

the dollar. Pretty good deal.

Sounds pretty good. In fact, sounds so good.

See how quick he agrees. Hey, if you want to buy it, I'll

buy it. Yep, got that dollar signs.

You ever seen a good deal? You're like, it's too good to

pass up. I know that there's a lot of

good deals because there's a lot of Amazon boxes on my front

porch. He's like, yeah, I'll do that.

I don't know if you've ever watched any of those courtroom

dramas on TV where one lawyer is trying to trick another lawyer

into admitting a piece of evidence because if he does, the

whole case breaks open. You ever seen one of those

things? You know what I'm talking about.

My daughter's in mock trial right now in high school.

And they actually go to the Superior Court and they have an

actual Kern County Superior Court judge in the room as they

they argue a made-up trial in front of a real judge, which is

both cute and comical at the same time, if you can believe

it, because they are on each other like, like you're like,

oh, these dudes are serious. They're like freshman in high

school and they're just doodles. They were like arguing up the

admissibility of a laptop and a thing.

I'm just listening and we're going.

But The thing is that they get points if they can catch the

other person, if they can impeach the witness or if they

can catch him. So they're always trying to like

jump on them. And sometimes they do it too

early. They're like, aha, objection.

And the judge is trying not to laugh because he, like, you got

that a little early there. But that's actually what's

happening in our story. You see, Boaz just set this guy

up to admit something that will then come with a secondary

obligation he's not ready for. And you're going to see that

unfold right now. And it's it's brilliant.

It's actually pretty cool. It's like you're watching suits

on USATV. What did he just do?

Watch what he does, Verse 5. Then Boaz says.

He's like, yeah, I'll buy it, I'll buy it.

I'll buy it, Boaz says. Well, the day you buy the field

from the hand of Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the

widow of the dead, in order to perpetuate the name of the dead

in his inheritance. Oops.

Then the Redeemer said I cannot redeem it for myself lest I

impair my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption

yourself, for I cannot redeem it.

Well, that's a, that's a 180. That's a pretty fast reversal.

He got out of that pretty quick. What just happened?

You see, Boaz hooked that guy with greed.

Hey, there's this land, really good land, producing a lot, and

you're the first relative to redeem it, and you're going to

be able to get it for almost nothing.

What do you think? I'm on it.

Oh, but by the way, if you're really the closest relative,

then there's an obligation to care for these people.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

That doesn't sound so good. So one law says in the Bible

says, you know, there's this right to buy back a family land.

But there's another law that says if your brother dies and is

married, it's your responsibility to marry their

widow. And so Joe Blow so and so is

fine with the one that makes him a lot of money.

He's not so fine with the law that's going to cost him

something. And So what Boaz has done is

he's tied these two laws together.

You want eliminates land. You're also on the hook for his

daughter-in-law. And that's really smart.

That's really smart because he does it in front of 10

witnesses. So there's no getting back out

of it. And I and I like I want to tell

you how how. How strategic Boaz is in the

moment. If you've been with us and

you've been listening to, you know, chapters one and two and

three and four, for two chapters, Boaz has been

overflowing with praise about the character of Ruth.

Yes. I mean, he's been like, man,

everyone in town knows that you are a woman of good character.

I mean, just compliment after compliment about the renowned by

which people see her, her loyalty, her integrity, all of

these things. He doesn't say a word of that

here. What does he say?

The Moabite? Ruth, where are all the

compliments? Where'd they all go?

The woman of good character? The whole town knows I'm saying

none of that. What does he say?

The Moabite? You got to marry the outsider.

You know what that is? Strategory.

Pretty sure that's the word. And immediately Joe blows.

Oh, and so goes no, I can't, can't do that, lest I inher and

impair my own inheritance. Now, what in the world does that

mean? Why does he stop, reverse

course, and head out the other way?

Well, marrying and producing a child with Ruth, because Ruth is

a Moabite. Remember, a Moabite was an enemy

of God. He thinks it'll ruin his

inheritance. And that text is a little bit

vague because we, again, historians don't even agree

about it specifically. But let me tell you what I think

happened in that moment. I think what he's saying is

either I'm already married or a plan to be and I'm going to

produce an heir. And that that heir that I

produce with my wife, who's not named Ruth is going to be

considered, at least for me, pure Israelite.

And if I marry Ruth and produce an heir, now I have two

different heirs. And not only is there a, is

there a complexity to having two different heirs, but one of them

is going to be pure and one of them is going to be maybe not so

pure because now I've made an air with a Moabite woman, my air

will be mixed, not completely of the people of God.

And in his mind and in a lot of Jewish minds, there would have

been two categories. There would have been a category

of an in crowd and a category of a kind of the out crowd.

See, we Israelites, we're God's people and everyone else is not

God's people. Therefore there's in and there's

out and Ruth is out. And so in essence, I believe

what he's saying is, listen, yeah, I know God can redeem some

people. I mean, he can redeem

Israelites, but I don't know about a foreigner in in this in

this moment of the story. I think what the author wants

you to see is this is so contrary to the gospel of Jesus

Christ, because you and I often times do this.

We'll look at a world and we'll say, listen, there's a good

crowd and there's a bad crowd. There are moral people and there

are immoral people. And in that we will judge the

world not on whether or not they know Christ, but rather we'll

judge them on their morals or judge them on their political

party, or we'll judge them on their political leaning, or how

they live or the way they dress or lots of things.

And we'll create in our minds an in crowd and an out crowd, a

pure crowd and an impure crowd. You know, there's kind of the

people I want to deal with and there's the people that maybe I

don't really want to deal with. The wonderful reason to come to

church in person and not just online is you have to deal with

both. You're welcome.

It's easy to avoid on your couch, not so easy on the Pew.

You see, to understand life and the world the way this job blow

so and so is looking at it is is to not understand Christmas.

It's to not understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It's to misunderstand Jesus himself.

Because there there is no in crowd apart from Christ.

There is no good and bad. We are all bad.

There is no moral and immoral. We're all immoral.

Jesus would say the same thing in Scripture.

Someone would come and go, good teacher.

He'd go whoa, whoa, whoa, why do you call me good?

There's no one good but God. At the root of our sinfulness is

a hypocrisy in which we justify ourselves and we think that

everyone else is immoral. Everybody else is the insider or

the outsider. But that's not the case at all.

The gospel of Christ says that everyone's bad.

Everyone was born into sin. Everyone was an enemy of God.

That's what the gospel says. You and I, every single one of

us, have rebelled against God. We, we chose our own way over

his. We've hurt people.

We've been selfish. We've lied to us ourselves about

who we really are. And left to ourselves, we are

spiritually dead, separated from the God who made us, with no way

to fix that on our own. So whether it's the religious

person who who looks down on others spiritually dead, or the

moral person who trusts in their own morality spiritually dead,

or the immoral person who knows they're spiritually dead.

And every single one of us needs a Redeemer.

And all of us start as a Moabite, an outsider.

That's the story of the Bible. But God being rich in mercy

because of the great kindness with which He shows up, steps

into the moment and begins to raise people from spiritual

death to spiritual life, from enemy of God to child of God,

from foreigner to a son or a daughter of the king.

Therefore there is no Greek or Jew, barbarian or Scythian, male

or female, slave or owner, Democrat or republican, moral or

immoral. There is either saved by the

blood of Jesus Christ and identify through the

righteousness of his robes, or there is lost.

And to understand the world and the gospel that way will mean

that no longer Christian do I get to shake my fist and all

those immoral people because they are you and I am them, but

for the grace of God. So instead of shaking our our

fists at those people that infuriate us, we open our hands

offering to serve them in hopes that we could call them to see

Christ and that they might enter into life from death.

That's the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That's why Christmas matters so much that every one of us,

foreigner, Moabite, destitute, starving widows, separated from

God, might be saved by God. And to know Christ changes

everything. So no, we're not in the in

crowd. We're not the Israelites who

don't want to sully our inheritance.

We're not the moral. We're the beggars who have found

the Savior who came from Bethlehem, the House of bread,

which is what Bethlehem actually means.

We're beggars who have found bread.

And our job is to find other beggars and tell them, hey, we

don't tell them, hey, I figured it out.

We tell them, hey, I know where you can find bread.

Let me show you. This is why Ruth, the Book of

Ruth is a love story. And a Christmas story, you think

about this, there has been these laws that he's, he's basically

rolling out today and talking about in our story, these laws

have been in place already. And yet for over 2 months wrote

Ruth and Naomi have been in town And conveniently Joe Blow so and

so has not seen fit to have any sort of obligation between for

these widows who have been hurting and alone and in need.

And you know, Joe, Joe probably has enough enough Gray area in

the law that he could argue that's not really my obligation.

You know, like there's some great, but the law that was

there to help them has not helped them at all.

So it's not the law that steps in and saves the day for Ruth

and Naomi. It's actually the sacrificial

love of Boaz stepping in to fix a hopeless situation with

hopeless people. And Boaz steps into Ruth's life

not because there's any legal obligation to do so.

He chooses to love her. He chooses to serve her.

He chooses to redeem her. He's not compelled to.

Love fixes what the law fails. This story, this concept is

actually a microcosm of the entire story of Scripture.

If you've read the Bible at all, especially the Old Testament,

there's plenty of law about what we should do right and wrong.

And and all of the stories of the Old Testament are about

people reading and going, yeah, sounds good.

I'm not going to do that. See, the problem in the Bible is

not that people don't know what to do.

It's that frankly, we just don't want to do it.

You know, the problem in my life, possibly the problem in

your life is not that you don't know what to do.

So we don't want to do it, and sometimes we want to do it.

We don't find ourselves compelled to actually get it

done consistently, which is the well, it's the same problem that

poor old Joe Blow so and so illustrates.

Just like Boaz is redeeming an enemy, Ruth is a Moabite and

making her his family. He's going to make her his wife.

Well, that that's my story too. I grew up a Christian.

I grew up in a wonderful home. I grew up with godly parents.

I knew what was right. I chose wrong.

It wasn't that I needed to know what right and wrong was.

I already knew. I chose to run from God.

I was an enemy of God and no amount of knowing the law, no

amount of knowing more moral things was going to fix my

problem. It wasn't a knowledge problem,

it was a heart problem. I knew what was right and didn't

want any part of it. I needed someone to lovingly

step into my life and fix the problem.

Not because they were legally obligated to do so, but because

they chose to. And that's the beauty of

Christmas. The one and only gift that can

save us would not be more laws. It would not be more social

programs. It would be an act of love so

radical and scandalous that we are still talking about it today

because it changed all of human history.

God's Son wrapped in flesh, willingly steps into our

hopeless predicament to redeem us, to make us His own, to

choose, to love us. That's the Christmas story.

It's no coincidence this this story is taking place 1100 years

before Christmas. And they're standing at a gate.

And if you actually look at where Jesus was born, it's a

couple 100 meters away, just a few 100 meters away from where

this redemption is taking place. There's going to be another

Redeemer who comes, and just like Boaz is an example of a

Redeemer, he's there to foreshadow the ultimate Redeemer

who will come for you and I. If you know Jesus Christ as your

king, that means that this season for us, this idea of

Christmas, we celebrate that we didn't deserve a single bit of

the grace and mercy that was extended toward us.

What do you, what do you do with that, with that truth?

I would submit to you that we, we, we should use it to remind

us that the only thing that makes U.S. special, the only

thing that makes us any morally different than a lost in a

broken world is that Jesus stepped into our situation.

And therefore we can use that truth to shape us and to

motivate us, to shape us and to motivate it, motivate us when it

comes to living this out in this world, shape us.

Here's what I mean by that we we should adopt A posture of

grateful, foreign, hopeless, orphan, adopted and saved by God

and motivate. We should wake up every day

excited to tell people where the bread of life is and what he did

for us and what he can do for them.

Shape means that this week when I'm tempted to to look down on

someone that that homeless guy outside Trader Joe's, the Co

worker with different politics, the member, the family member

you're going to, you're going to be meeting with over the

holidays that has very different choices than you would agree

with. We get to remember that without

Jesus, I am no better. I'm just saved.

And it should motivate us. Motivate, meaning sometime this

week or over the next few weeks as you as you press into people,

your family, your, your, your people in your carpools, your

cubicle, your cul-de-sac, who you're looking for, who's

hurting and who's searching. And instead of judging them or

trying to fix them, we simply ask, can I tell you about

someone that changed my life? That's Christmas and that's the

gospel. And maybe you've been a

Christian for years, decades, 30-40 years, and you've read

Ruth a dozen times. And my question for you is, have

you become a Joe Blow? So and so have you gotten so

comfortable in your inheritance that you've forgotten you were

once Ruth, an outsider, A foreigner with nothing to offer.

I told you earlier that the author intentionally left out

the name of this character and called them so and so, and there

was a reason. Here's the reason, I think

because legalism and self protection, right?

You out of God's story he chose security over sacrifice and

history forgot him. There's a movie I think it's

Troy. There's a movie where someone

they they go to the main character and they're like I

can't believe you're going to you're going to fight him and he

looks at me and goes and that's why no one will remember your

name when you choose your own preference and your own security

and your own comfort over obedience to Christ.

I don't what are we even doing this for.

Meanwhile, Ruth, Ruth the Moabite, Ruth the enemy of God,

Ruth the foreigner, Ruth the destitute widow with nothing to

author offer. That's Jesus, great, great,

great grandmama. I want you to consider that God

who ordained everything, who chose when Christ would come

before the foundations of the earth intentionally chose that

the grandmother, great great grandmother of Jesus would be an

enemy of God. Would be a foreigner, would be a

Moabite, would be destitute, would be a widow, would be

someone that everyone wanted to exclude.

So that you and I would look at this and have a realization that

this is what God does. He redeems the lost and he uses

them for his glory. Hey, God's not looking for

religious insiders who protect their inheritance.

He's looking for the desperate who will risk everything to

follow him. I had someone come in my office

for counsel this week and, and they were telling me about an

opportunity that they see where they believe God is leading

them. And it's radical.

It means quitting their job means taking financial risks.

It means all of this stuff, walking away from the

comfortable and the safe. And, and, and so they finish

telling me all this and they look at me with tears in their

eyes, and they say I'm ready. And I started to, I started to

cry, I'm listening to this and I'm like, because I don't even

know exactly how God is going to use that person.

But here's what I do know. I know that when your posture

looks like that toward God, he does great things.

He does great things, He moves. So I want to encourage you push

into that Christian as God begins to lead you into those

moments. I call them high dive moments.

You ever stood on one of the big high dives at the end and put

your toes over and went, I may have made it, made a bad

decision and you're, you're genuinely thinking like, is it

going to be worse to jump or or have the crawl of shame back

down the ladder? And I just want to encourage

you, when the Lord is leading you to something radical, jump

in. The water's fine.

You're going to love it. Why would you want to live this

life any other way than radically going hard after

Christ? What does that leap look like

for you, Christian? What does that leap of faith

look like in your life right now?

Is it forgiving someone who you haven't forgiven?

Is it addressing an addiction or, or an ongoing sin that

you've just been tolerating and hiding?

Is it some radical act of, of generosity or obedience that God

is calling you into? Perhaps, perhaps today your leap

of faith is a little different. Perhaps today you're you're here

joining us for this Christmas service or you're watching

online and you don't yet know Jesus Christ as your king.

Maybe you've heard about him, but you don't know Him.

And so as we wrap this service up for just just a moment, give

me your attention. Maybe you came here today or

you're watching online and you don't know Jesus as the Savior

of your life. And I want to tell you, He came

to offer you a new life, a new land, a new family to redeem

you. You don't need more advice, you

need a Redeemer and love fixes where the law fails.

No amount of morality is going to fix the problem.

If you look around our world and and the life that we live, all

of human history points to the story of of evil and chaos and

suffering and points to the need for someone to supernaturally

step into this moment and intervene.

It points to the need for a Redeemer because the world is

broken. You and I were born broken into

a fallen world, into sin, and at the first chance we had, we

rebelled against God, choosing our own will over His.

But God, being rich in kindness, has planned since before the

creation of the world, to fix this problem.

He sent his one and only Son in Jesus, born in flesh to live a

perfect life. We couldn't live to die a brutal

death on a cross that we should have died and to rise again

three days later, conquering death, making a way for you and

I to be saved and for our relationship with God to be

restored. And so if you would like to

accept the work of Christ on the cross, Romans 10 says this is

what it looks like, that if you will confess with your mouth

that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised

him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart 1 believes and is justified, and with the

mouth 1 confesses and is saved. And so if you'd like to

surrender your life to God today, I want to give you that

chance here at Christmas. Will you all please bow your

heads and close your eyes and we'll wrap this service up.

But I just want you to to focus on this for just a moment.

If you're willing to ask a God for forgiveness and salvation

with every eye closed and every head bowed, I just want you to

to quietly or silently say this prayer with me.

Jesus, I know I'm lost and I need to be saved.

I want you to redeem me. I surrender everything to you

and I receive your promise of redemption.

Be my Lord. Please, Jesus, if you said that

prayer for the very first time right now, would you be brave

and raise your hand for me to see?

Thank you, thank you. Put your hands down, Thank you

in Jesus name, Amen. All right, real quick, Jesus

loves you more than you actually can imagine or comprehend.

And if you gave your life to Christ moments ago or recently,

welcome to the family. In just a moment, we're going to

sing some songs and we're going to respond to this sermon.

And as we do, you have an opportunity.

If you've given your life to Christ recently and not told

anyone about it, we want you to go to the back where it says I

raised my hand on either side. We would love to celebrate with

you. We have a gift for you.

We'd love to talk about what it looks like to follow Jesus.

Will you stand? Our prayer team is going to come

up. We're going to be on the sides

today because we got a full band.

So just look left or right. You'll find prayer members

everywhere. We love praying with you and for

you for any reason I want, I want to remind you that God

loves you tremendously. And whatever it is that you're

going through in this moment, you are not doing it alone.

And so as we sing, you move as the Lord leads you.

We would love to pray with you and for you.

We love you church. Merry Christmas.