Ruth & Boaz

Today's scripture reading comes from Ruth 1, 11 through 18.

But Naomi said, Turn back my daughters, why will you go with me?

I have yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands.

Turn back my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband.

If I should say I have hope, even if I have a husband this night and should bear sons, would you therefore wait until they are grown?

Would you therefore refrain from marrying?

No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter for me to you for your sake, that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.

Then they lifted up their voices and wept again.

And Orpha kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her, and she said, See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods.

Return after your sister-in-law.

But Ruth said, Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you, for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people, and your God will be my God.

Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.

May the Lord do also to me, and more also if anything but death parts me from you.

And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Happy Father's Day.

You know, last week there were like four people here.

And uh it was summer is like this.

Thanks to everybody for showing up on the same day.

This is incredible.

Um there's kind of a joke in Colorado where it's like, how big is your church?

It's like I have no idea.

Because uh if everybody showed up on the same day, we would probably look like flat irons or something.

Happy Father's Day.

Um we uh we are called to honor our fathers, and we get to do that today with a uh uh in a particular uh pointed way.

Um you know, uh our our faith uh last year I I um was listening to a book that was like super hardcore and and I was gave like a Father's Day speech and like on how uh Christianity is a patriarchal religion, we need to honor our patriarchs, and like five people left our church and never came back.

So I'm gonna do that same thing again.

You know, we we honor the fathers that have that have come before us because they hand down to us this faith that we get to receive in such joy.

And as fathers, this is your purpose.

This is this is what you are to do as fathers.

And it's such an honor uh as the pastor of this church to just be surrounded by so many great fathers.

I mean, one of the best things about Redemption Church Denver is how many great fathers are in this church.

And, you know, I don't think if you take a snapshot at any point in time of our church, um, you know, it's about this size.

You can look around and estimate.

Um, and the effects of our church, because we have so many great fathers, I I think it will be immeasurable.

I think it'll be like the the stars in the heavens and like the dust on the ground will be the multitudes that are impacted.

Um, and that's in large part because of God's faithfulness to us in equipping you all and your faithfulness to being such great fathers.

So really keep it up.

Great job.

Let's pray.

We've not been given the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear again, but the spirit of adoption as sons.

Co-heirs with Christ.

Your spirit testifies with our spirit.

So we cry out, Abba, Father.

Lord, you've revealed us to us as the true Father.

You provide, you protect, you care for us.

You lay down your life for us.

We praise you for how you care for us as our true Father.

Lord, we pray that you would help us and equip us to be more like you.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

It's our marriage series, and we are concluding the second part of our marriage series.

The second part of our marriage series has been case studies.

So we've been looking at uh we've looked at two case studies so far.

We looked at Abraham and Sarah, we looked at the marriage of Ibrah, of Isaac and Rebecca, and we are looking today at the marriage of Ruth and Boaz.

In each of the case studies that we've looked at so far, we've seen that faithfulness within marriage finds its ultimate value, its ultimate virtue in faithfulness to God.

In fact, what you can, when you look at these marriages and you see their faithfulness within the marriage, you can't draw a line and say they were being faithful in the marriage here, but they were being faithful to God here, because it's the same event.

Their faithfulness in their marriage is their faithfulness to God.

One way to think of it is marriage is one of the arenas of our lives within which we get to demonstrate faithfulness to God.

And as we've looked at these marriages, we've seen these wonderful principles that we're able to draw from them.

We can see in Abraham and Sarah the patience, the patient faith that uh marriage requires and that the Lord honored in their lives.

In Isaac and Rebecca, we can see the warning of in thinking of marriage as a place to indulge our own appetites rather than a place of honoring the Lord.

And uh we can see Rebecca's um faithfulness to the Lord and uh the necessity of Isaac's repentance.

There's these wonderful principles that we're able to draw from these marriages, but looking at those biblical principles and drawing out those applications so that we can go do them is secondary to my purposes for these case studies.

What's primary is renewing our imaginations for what a biblical marriage is.

And in renewing our imaginations, I hope that we're able to broaden our, to lift up our eyes and see the wonder of what God could be accomplishing within our marriages.

It's one of the most ordinary places in your life.

It's a place that you experience every day, and yet we can see the wonders of what God is accomplishing within them.

Now, if we're if we're given this biblical imagination for assessing our marriages, it serves this double purpose because it helps us to remove the secular imagination for how we would assess our marriage.

Because if we're just living within just sort of our normal cultural frame of how we'd assess our marriage, then we would happen upon, you know, we would find, oh, I've just fallen out of love.

Or I must not have gotten the right match.

Or and we would assess our marriage merely in terms of how it is satisfying us in this present life.

But the scriptures call us to raise our gaze, to look up to things that only He can accomplish.

Because you, with the shape of your life, you can accomplish single generational things.

Because you're alive for one generation.

You only get one, you don't, you know, you don't respawn somewhere else on earth.

Eventually you do.

It's a different part of the story.

But in order for things to be done multi-generationally, in order for stories to be told that that span the course of human history, those are the stories that God tells.

And we fit in those.

And each of the stories that we've looked at have been this glorious picture of not just how God has worked immediately in the marriage of Abraham and Sarah and their patience and long-suffering, but we see that because he worked in that marriage, we are counted as the sons of Abraham.

That because he worked in the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah, even when the margins were so thin and it looked like Isaac was sure to commit this fatal sin which would have cut us all out of the promise, that by his providence and working in Rebekah, we are the the promise is passed on.

And we trust in that very same promise today.

Now, today we're looking at the story of Ruth and Boaz, and the the whole purpose of looking at this story of Ruth and Boaz, you're gonna hear just a beautiful story.

Like Ruth and Boaz, if you're ever feeling down and you just want to like turn on a rom com and read your Bible, then just read Ruth and read read Ruth.

It's the it's perfect comedy.

Things start out bad and then they and then it ends, and it's like this is wonderful.

That's the it's a Sunday afternoon movie.

That's that's Ruth and Boaz.

But the purpose of it is not just what we're gonna see, it's not just the glory of what happens for Ruth and Boaz.

In fact, they're the it's like a romantic comedy because you don't see the marriage, you see everything leading up to the marriage.

And that's that's what we see here.

So there's not going to be like here's how to deal with your husband who's you know constantly negotiating for bike rides, thinking of what I'm gonna be doing tomorrow.

Or uh, you know, things like that, you're complaining about the old ball and chain, you know, wives.

You know what I mean?

It's not gonna have tips for things like that in this marriage.

Instead, it's going to give you a biblical imagination for the story that your marriage very well might be a part of.

So, stories about Ruth.

Ruth is a Moabite woman, a non-Israelite.

She's a she's from Moab, not ours.

They named theirs after ours.

And she will marry by the end of the story Boaz.

Boaz is an Israelite man.

How could that be?

Moabite woman, an Israelite man?

We're gonna have to tell some sort of story to see that this would happen.

He was a skater boy.

That's one way to think of it.

That's uh.

But in order to see the story, we have to start with Naomi.

Naomi is Ruth's mother-in-law.

And the story starts with Naomi, who marries Elimelech, and they live in Bethlehem.

Does anybody know what Bethlehem means?

House of House of Bread.

House of Bread.

That's right.

That's what I call my house.

It feels jovial in here today.

I'm just going with it.

And the house of bread has no bread in it at the beginning of this story.

There's a famine in the house of bread.

And so Naomi and her husband Elimelech move to Moab.

They go out of the land of promise and they go into the land of their enemies because there's no bread in the land of promise.

They go outside the house of bread seeking bread.

And it is there that her two sons, Naomi and Elimelech's two sons, they get married and they marry Moabite women outside of the people of God.

After ten years, due to some events that we don't know what they are, Elimelech, Naomi's husband, and her two sons die.

And so she went into Moab with these hopes, saw glimmers of a new family beginning, and then her husband dies, and her two sons die.

And so she hears that Bethlehem has received bread again, and so she decides to go back.

And as she's going back, the widow Naomi and her two widow daughter-in-laws walk back with her.

But on their way back, as we read this morning, Ruth turns Naomi turns to her daughter-in-laws and says, Don't follow me back to Bethlehem.

I have no future to offer you there.

Even if I got pregnant right now, would you wait to remarry those sons?

There's no future for you in Bethlehem.

If you go back there, then you know that your future is done.

Stay here in Moab.

And Orpah, one of Ruth's well, excuse me, one of Naomi's daughter-in-laws, says, okay, good point.

Kisses her, leaves her in love.

And Ruth, in response to that, says this to her mother-in-law, Naomi.

You know what she says, but it's worth hearing again.

But Ruth said, Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you.

For where you go, I will go.

And where you lodge, I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.

May the Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts me from you.

That's beautiful.

It's one of the most beautiful passages in Scripture.

What Ruth is saying is that because of my love for you, who can offer me nothing, and even though in following you I am laying down my future, because of my love for you, I will go where you're going.

I will follow your God.

Your people will be my people.

She's a true convert.

She believes in the God of Naomi.

She loves her mother-in-law, who she sees has lost everything.

And like her, she's lost everything with her.

But she won't part from her.

She'll go with Naomi, even though it means walking a path towards which there is no future.

This is incredible, beautiful, sacrificial love.

What you should see from this characterization of Ruth, you should think Ruth is good.

Ruth is good.

When they arrive back in Bethlehem, it's around the time of barley harvest.

And what the law in Deuteronomy instructed to the Israelites was that they weren't to harvest their fields all the way out to the edges, but they were to leave the edges of their fields.

And if they dropped something while they were harvesting, then they should just leave it dropped on the ground.

That way there is a remainder that is left for the poor.

And this means that if you were poor, you were able to go behind the harvesters, and you could walk behind them and you would pick up what was what was dropped and what was left, and that was that was yours to have.

And so when they get back, it's time of the barley harvest, and Ruth goes out to harvest on behalf of her and Naomi.

And you'll see that this this book is it's sort of like the book of Esther.

There's the there's the miracles are not, they're just timing.

All the miracles are just like, whoa, that was close.

Glad they met at the right time, and that happened at the right time.

That's what the miracles are like in the book of Ruth.

And so look what happens.

So she in Ruth 2, verse 3, it says, So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers.

Ruth 2:3

And she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech.

Elimelech, Naomi's late husband.

Boaz is of that same clan.

They're relatives.

She happened to come to that field.

This is the way life is.

In life, you always have two options for how you're going to interpret it.

It's just circumstance.

Coincidence.

Just happened to be that way.

Or providence.

The Lord is telling a story.

You can engage with it as happenstance, you can engage with your life by faith.

The Bible poses this question to you all the time.

So she happens to come to the field, and it's the field belonging to Boaz.

So now let's meet Boaz.

What happens is Boaz sees her in the field and he inquires of his reapers and he says, Who's this who's this in the field?

She's new.

I don't know if there probably not a lot of new folks showing up in your fields around barley harvest time in Bethlehem.

It's a small town.

And they say that's Ruth.

She's the Moabite woman you've probably heard of, who came back with Naomi.

Remember the story?

Naomi, she just came back.

Things did not go well for her in Moab.

She's pretty bitter about it.

For those of you who've recently read the book, bitter, look it up.

And she comes this is the woman who came back with her, who showed her that love.

This is Ruth who came back with Naomi.

And so Boaz goes to Ruth and he says, Whatever you need, I'll take care of it.

I've instructed my men, they'll stay away from you, stay with the women, and they'll they're great, they'll be great friends.

And whatever you need, you can glean in my field this whole season.

And in fact, don't go to any other field.

Could be dangerous.

You'll be protected and taken care of here.

And he even invites her to lunch, and they have a, you know, lunch is my favorite meal of the day.

And they so that's a great thing to be invited to, and she gets to eat lunch with him.

And then he gives her six measures of the food to bring back to Naomi.

Well, Ruth, by this hospitality, is is stunned.

She's she's so surprised, and it's such wonderful providence.

And she says, in Ruth 2.10, it says, Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and said to him, Why have I found favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me, since I'm a foreigner?

Her expectation when she went to Bethlehem was to just be treated as a foreigner for the rest of her life.

This is what she was laying down for the sake of Naomi.

And she goes there to be treated as a foreigner, and then she receives this incredible hospitality.

And Boaz explains to her why he shows this hospitality.

In Ruth 2, 11 through 12, it says, But Boaz answered her, All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me.

How you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before.

The Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.

Why does he treat her with this hospitality?

It's because he's heard her story.

And this story has spread around Bethlehem.

Have you heard about Ruth who came back with Naomi?

The love that she has shown her mother-in-law?

How she was willing to lay this down, how she sees our God as her true God.

And man, she acts like it more than we do.

She's willing to lay her whole future down for the sake of her mother in law.

Boaz saw that.

He saw that in this foreign woman that there was a true conversion, that she took refuge under the wings of God, the true God.

And he sees that it has worked in her heart an incredible love towards her mother-in-law.

And why did Boaz have such eyes to see the faithfulness of this foreign woman?

Do you know who Boaz's mother was?

Rahab.

Remember Rahab the prostitute lives in the walls of Jericho?

And when the spies come that are sent by Joshua to scope out Jericho, she's like, hey, you she hides the spies.

And she's like, okay, so I heard about the Red Sea event.

And if your God can part the Red Sea and bring you guys out on as though on dry land to rescue from the hands of the Egyptians, I'm pretty sure that's the real God.

And she becomes a true convert, hides the spies, and allows for the sacking of Jericho.

She's protected, and she becomes a true convert.

And lives in Israel.

She marries a man named Salmon.

Salmon.

Depends on what part of Israel you're from.

And they conceive a son, his name is Boaz.

So part of Boaz's story and his whole life is growing up is that your mother, she's Rahab.

She's the righteous foreign woman who becomes a true convert, and who God draws into this story, the deliverance of his people, the conquest of his people.

And so Boaz sees Ruth come in and he's like, I know stories like this.

And I knew what it meant for my mother to be received into a place like this, when she, at great risk to herself, at laying down her future with the people, the only people that she had ever known, said, I will trust in the Lord God.

And so Boaz has eyes to see it.

So Ruth goes back to Naomi with just tons of barley.

And Naomi's like, this is great.

Where did you glean?

And she explains, she gleaned in the fields of Boaz.

And Naomi's like, wow, bless Boaz.

You know, he's our redeemer.

He's a relative.

One of our redeemers.

Now, what that means, I don't know if you've uh if your mother-in-law ever said that.

But what it means that he's a redeemer, the land in Israel is allotted to families, to the heads of households.

And so there's a land that would have been given to Elimelech and his sons, Naomi's late husband.

And the land, since it's allotted to families, when one of the when one of the men who this belongs to passes away, then it is the responsibility or the opportunity of the nearest male relative to redeem the land, which is to purchase it on behalf of that family, and the offspring that they had, they would uh have in the name of the deceased family member, so that that uh husband's name or father's name would continue on in Israel.

And so this means that he has the opportunity to purchase the land which would have belonged to Naomi.

But if he purchased the land that belonged to Naomi, then Boaz would marry Ruth, and when he married Ruth, he would have offspring not in his own name, not for his own heirs, but for the heirs of Ruth's late husband.

So it's this position where it's it's in a sense, you you gain what you didn't have, but it's not in your name.

So it's really an act of laying down your future and the future of your name for your relative.

That's what the act of redemption is.

And it's just like what Naomi had done.

Naomi had laid down, excuse me, what Ruth had done, there's a lot of names in the story.

It's just like what Ruth had done when she stayed with Naomi.

She laid down her future that she would have had in Moab for the sake of her love for her relative.

For Boaz to redeem Ruth would mean the same thing.

He would lay down the future of his name and the future of his heirs for the sake of the heirs of his relative, Elimelech.

So, Naomi has a plan, and she says, This is a good man, Boaz is a good man, and you should go and try and get yourself redeemed.

So um, you the yeah, that's right.

It's like here's here's your last chance, Fancy, don't let me down.

That's uh like 1980s country song reference.

Didn't really land.

Yeah, there we go.

All right.

So here's her instruction to here's Naomi's instruction to Ruth, it's a good mother-in-law.

Wash, therefore, and anoint yourself, and put on your cloak, and go down to the threshing floor.

But do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking.

You want him in a good mood.

You want to be clean.

But when he lies down, observe the place where he lies.

Then go and uncover his feet and lie down.

He will tell you what to do.

And Ruth replied, All that you say, I will do.

That's precisely what Ruth does.

She goes, get cleans herself up, waits till he's eaten and drank.

It's a good day of threshing and winnowing.

And he lays down at the threshing floor to sleep, and he she uncovers his feet, she lays down at his feet, and when he wakes up, he says, What is this woman?

That is actually what he says.

Can read it, it's funny.

See, Ramcom.

This is the one to read.

Ruth 3.9 said, he said, Who are you?

And she answered, I'm Ruth, your servant.

Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer.

Remember Boaz's prayer for her?

May the Lord reward you.

The Lord, the God of Israel, the true God, whom you have come to seek refuge under his wings.

That prayer that Boaz had prayed for her, Ruth is lying at his feet saying, You're the answer to that prayer.

You're the redeemer.

You're the one, you're the way that the Lord will cover me in with his wings, so that I might be protected and provided for, and there might be a future here.

So she appeals to him from this position, relays the precise language that he had prayed over her, and he uh he says, There's he explains there's one redeemer closer.

So there's one relative who has the claim.

And he gives her six measures of barley, and he's like, Don't worry, I'll handle this tomorrow.

And he goes to the city gates and he meets with the elders and he meets with the one closer relative who can redeem her.

And he explains to the closer relative and he says, Um, uh, would you there's land for sale from Naomi.

You are in line to redeem this land.

Would you like to be the redeemer?

And the closer relative says, Yeah, that sounds great.

I'll be all buy that land.

Then he says, one thing.

When you acquire the land, you will acquire uh Ruth, the Moabite woman, who came back, uh, and you must redeem her as well.

And the closer relative says, I can't threaten my inheritance like that.

Uh I can't, I didn't realize, I thought it was just the land.

I didn't realize that I'd have to threaten my inheritance by having offspring in the name of Elimelech.

And so Boaz says, Great, I'll do it.

I'll redeem the land, I'll marry Ruth, and have offspring outside of my name, uh, but for the glory of Ruth for his love for her, for what he sees God is clearly working.

And so they get married and they have a son.

And that's the story of Ruth and Boaz.

What lessons do you learn from that story of Ruth and Boaz?

Well, it's good to be it's good to have your heart so transformed by the Lord that you're able to love sacrificially.

That their marriage came together because they were each willing to lay down their futures for the sake of the love that the Lord had called them to.

So marriage is in a lot of ways.

But really, the glory, the wonder of the story of Ruth and Boaz is not just in the marriage of Ruth and Boaz.

The marriage of Ruth and Boaz is like this unthink it, it's this incredible culmination of all of these stories that the Lord has been telling.

The marriage of Ruth and Boaz is like this little window.

And when you when you see their marriage, you can look through their window and you can see God has been doing something through this marriage that is beyond anything they could have possibly known.

What did they do?

They loved sacrificially in the midst of their marriage.

But their marriage becomes a part of this story that's just unimaginable.

You can see it in the blessings, actually.

When they're at the city gate and Boaz says that he's going to marry Ruth, the elders of the city they bless him.

They see the they see this part of this glory of what he's doing.

It's this real sacrificial thing that he's doing in offering to redeem her.

And they say, We are witnesses.

The elders at the city gate say this, we are witnesses.

May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel.

Rachel and Leah, the brides of Jacob, who is Israel.

They are the women who built up the house of Israel.

They are where the twelve sons of Israel come from.

And the elders at the city gate are saying, May this Moabite be like the ones who built up the house of Israel.

Now, there's been these clues about the that that this is a picture of God bringing the nations into Israel.

God bringing these people who were cast out, who were cut off from God's people.

He's bringing them in and saying, you are God's people.

And the clue to him doing this was actually that weird bit with the sneaking in at night and uncovering the feet.

Remember that?

That's the part of Ruth where it's like, okay.

And the question all the modern commentators ask is, but did they?

Like, did they?

And the answer is no, they didn't.

They didn't.

Then why did that happen?

Why did Naomi give that instruction?

I think Naomi gave that instruction to Ruth because Ruth is a Moabite.

That means she is descended from Moab.

Moab was the son of Lot and his daughter.

You heard that right.

You heard that right.

It's the son of Lot and his daughter.

And the way that that happened was after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, they uh move to these cities of the plains, and uh there are no husbands for Lot's daughters.

And their future is being cut off.

And so what Lot's daughters do is they conspire against their father and they get him drunk, they feed him, and then he goes to sleep at night, and when he's asleep at night, they go in and they uncover him, and they lay with their father, and then they conceive by him.

And so they conceive these incestuous children, and these children become cut out of the people of Israel.

In fact, they become enemies of the people of Israel, the Moabites, are true enemies of the people of God.

And their origin is at this deceptive incest by going in and uncovering their father's nakedness.

It's the same sort of uncovering the father's nakedness that takes place with Noah.

Different, but same pattern.

And so that's the people of Moab.

And so Naomi says, You're a Moabite.

There's this story about Moabites.

What if you went into Boaz in the pattern of Lot's daughters, like you know, the Moabite pattern?

But what if this time you did it right?

What if the Moabite came in and said, I'm not going to take from you, I'm going to offer myself at your feet and request that you, like the Lord, would offer me refuge under your wings.

And so Ruth becomes this picture of the people who are not the people of God being brought in.

It is the grace of God to the nations is shown in this Moabite woman in her marriage to Boaz.

And then, so you can hear what is this wonder of this story that they are praying and blessing Boaz, saying, May this Moabite woman build up the house of Israel, like Rachel and Leah did.

God is bringing in the nations in this story.

And then in Ruth 4 12, their blessing continues and says, And may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman, the house of Perez.

Perez is the son of Tamar and Judah.

You may remember this story.

But Judah had three sons.

And the first son married Tamar, and he was wicked, so God killed him.

Now, as we learned about redemption, it is the spot it is the responsibility of the next son to marry Tamar and to raise up offspring in the name of his older brother.

And that that happens, but he refuses to have offspring with Tamar and refuses to raise up offspring with her in the name of his older brother, and so God kills him too.

So Judah, who had these three sons, two of which have been married to Tamar, two of which have died, refuses to marry his youngest son to Tamar, although that is his, although that is Tamar's right, that she ought to be married to the youngest son.

But Judah keeps her from her, so Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute, engages with her father-in-law, Judah, disguised as a prostitute, and conceives by him.

And when Tamar shows up and she is pregnant, then Judah says, okay, great.

This is an opportunity to kill Tamar.

I can finally shake off that Tamar problem because look, she's been adulterous.

So let's stone her.

And then she has his staff and his signet ring on a chain and explains, uh, I'm pregnant by the man to whom these belong to.

And Judah's like, that's me.

That's me.

And Judah says, She should be spared because she is more righteous than I.

Because she got what was what she was owed by the law, which is offspring from this family.

It's a wild story of this sort of illicit engagement and this failure and utter sin of Judah.

And so from this other sort of picture of like this deceptive, incestuous relationship comes Perez.

And they pray, may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman.

Why the house of Perez?

Well, from the house of Perez comes Boaz.

And here's the real climax.

This is the end of Ruth.

And you don't get Ruth unless you get this stinger, because this is what Ruth and Boaz is about.

Ruth 4, 18 through 22 says, now these are the generations of Perez.

Remember Perez?

Probably not a great reputation because of where he came from.

Judah and Tamar.

These are the generations of Perez.

Perez fathered Hezron.

Hezron fathered Ram.

Ram fathered Aminadab.

Aminadab fathered Nation.

Nathan fathered Salmon.

Salmon, I'm just going with Salmon.

Salmon married Rahab.

Salmon and Rahab fathered Boaz.

Boaz fathered Obed.

Obed fathered Jesse.

Jesse fathered David.

You know, Ruth just happened to be in Boaz's field.

Look at the stories that have come together.

I want you to consider a point in each of them.

Lot's daughters get him drunk, and they sneak in and they they there's incest with their father.

In the story of Ruth, those incestuous offspring are brought into the fold of God.

And Judah refuses to marry his son to Tamar, his daughter-in-law.

And there's this moment where he's about to stone Tamar, and Tamar is about to die.

I want you to like go into that moment in the story.

And then it's uncovered that Judah had committed this sin with her, this terrible sin with her.

And then from that offspring, what comes from that offspring?

It's Perez, who now is the line of the kings.

There's this moment where Naomi, after 10 years of living outside of the land of Israel, sits and realizes, my husband is dead, my two sons are dead, why did we even come into this land?

Is there any purpose to this life?

Is there any hope to come?

Because all of what I hoped for had been cut off.

But Ruth, because of the love with which she loved her, followed her to Bethlehem.

And there's a moment on the walk where Ruth is going to Bethlehem, and she must have thought.

Ah, this is probably foolish.

I'm gonna call Orpah at the next stop and maybe head back to Moab.

But she kept walking because of the love that she wanted to show Naomi.

And because of that love that she showed then at that point of what seemed like utter despair, the thing that they had most in common was that both their husbands had recently died.

You consider that moment in the story.

And what did that story become a part of?

Consider Rahab.

It's the night before they're, you know, they're about to be attacked, and there's this whole plan.

It's like, what if we get discovered?

I went all in on this thing with these three guys that I just met.

But he parted the Red Sea.

And so she sticks with him, hides the spies, cities overthrown, becomes an Israelite, has Boaz.

See, the story of Ruth and Boaz is a beautiful story.

It's a beautiful story.

The sacrificial love that they show to one another.

They have a son, Naomi gets a grandson, becomes his nurse.

It's a beautiful story.

But what it means, what their story means, lift up your eyes.

Ruth and Boaz, their story means more than they could have possibly known.

Because from Ruth and Boaz comes Obed.

And then from Obed, your father Jesse.

And Jesse, father David, David would be promised an eternal throne by God.

That would never go away.

And that promise of the eternal throne will be fulfilled by the Son of David, who is the redeemer of God's elect.

The only redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who being the eternal Son of God became man, and so was and continueth to be.

Ruth and Boaz couldn't have known.

But in Christ, what could your marriage be about?

You might think, well, mine couldn't.

Because look at this situation that I'm in.

Oh yeah, is it one of those situations where like your father-in-law that you just slept with is trying to stone you?

I mean, the places within which the scriptures call us to hope and to see, to imagine that glory could be brought out of.

That's what this story is for.

That's what Ruth and Boaz is for.

So I want you to learn to practice imagining the glory that could be brought out of your marriage.

We have a more sure reason to hope for that.

Because we see Jesus Christ.

We see the forgiveness that He's brought, that He offers to us, the Spirit that He's poured out onto us, that we might be equipped for all that He's called us to.

We have a hope of resurrection.

That even unto death, there's a glory on the other side.

This is a Christian imagination.

That's what we need to have: Christian imagination.

We're going to practice this in a bit.

As we baptize three children soon.

Part of that is just participating in this Christian imagination.

Who knows what's coming?

But the Lord has promised faithfulness.

And so we will bring them in as the ones who have passed through the waters.

But before that, let's pray and we'll take communion.

Holy Father, we lift up our eyes as we consider the stories that you can tell.

You can tell stories that span generations.

Lord, I pray that you would give us a generational hope.

Lord, you did not feel the need to make your Bible full of these clean stories.

In fact, those would not be useful to people with lives like ours.

Instead, you taught us to hope by showing us these stories of incredible pain and deep difficulty and moments of seeming hopelessness.

And from that, you show the story of the redemption of the world and your son, Jesus Christ.

Lord, transform our imaginations to hope in the way that the scriptures teach us to hope.

We have peace with God.

And so we can have a sure hope in your providence, Lord.

Transform our minds that we might see that.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.