The story goes that Abraham Lincoln was in New Orleans, when he saw a young black girl being sold. He kept bidding one dollar higher than the last bidder until he won. As soon as he won, the girl asked him what he was going to do with her. He said he was going to set her free. In disbelief, she asked him if he really meant it. He said yes and told her she was free to go. Right away, she told him she wanted to stay with him, because he was the man that set her free.
Isn't that a good story? Too bad it's not true. It is completely made up. It's sort of like George Washington cutting down the cherry tree. It's a neat story with a good message but, eh, not true. But it is a beautiful picture of redemption. In fact, that is exactly what redemption is. But since you aren't a slave and you don't know any slaves, you don't really care about what a redeemer is, do you? I mean, why should you care about some old historical term from the days of slavery?
Well, you should care because we ALL need a redeemer because we are ALL slaves to something. There are two types of people in this world: those that are slaves to sin and those that are slaves to God. There is no third choice. I know those that are slaves to sin think they are free to do just whatever they want to do. They think that nobody is going to tell them what is right and what is wrong and they are going to live however they please and they are free like birds. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Thomas Huxley said, "A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes."
(Thomas Huxley, "Address on University Education," Collected Essays, 1902, III, p. 236.)
Phillips Brooks said, "No man in this world attains to freedom from any slavery except by entrance into some higher servitude. There is no such thing as an entirely free man conceivable." (Phillips Brooks, Perennials.)
The reason those two statements are true is that ever since Adam and Eve, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. Those are exactly the words of Jesus in John 8:34. Just like a duck quacks and a cow moos, a sinner is going to sin. (Those are my words obviously.) As a slave is obedient to his master, so a sinner is going to sin. It is slavery. It is bondage. And it is miserable.
Now, as believers, we are no longer slaves to sin. We still sin every now and then and it can be a struggle. But we can resist because we are not it's slaves. We still have consequences when we sin but when we ask God for forgiveness, He does and chooses to never remember them and throws them away as far as the east is from the west. So, while we're now set free from the penalty of sin, we still live in the presence of sin while we're alive on this earth. And the only way we can be free from the power of sin is by the power of the Holy Spirit who is given to believers at the moment we come in faith to Jesus because...are you ready? Jesus is our Redeemer!
He is our redeemer. But what does that look like? Well, I want to ask you to turn in your Bibles to the last chapter of the beautiful little book of Ruth and there we will see a picture of a redeemer and a picture of one who is redeemed. This is our last look at the book of Ruth. Next week, as we start to get closer to Easter, we will start looking at the days that led up to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, the day that changed everything.
But today we are going to see a wedding...sort of. And we are going to see an official court procedure...sort of. And we are going to see how men in the ancient world showed off their new pedicures...sort of. This ought to be interesting. So, turn to Ruth chapter 4 and we will read most of the chapter.
One quick thing before I read, when it says they were at the town gate, this is not a chain link fence type of gate. This is probably a massive rock structure that was built into the massive rock wall with wooden doors that were two stories tall. There may have been sort of a courtyard area where city business was done but I just wanted you to be picturing what was going on here correctly.
Meanwhile Boaz went up to the town gate and sat down there just as the kinsman-redeemer he had mentioned came along. Boaz said, "Come over here, my friend, and sit down." So he went over and sat down. 2 Boaz took ten of the elders of the town and said, "Sit here," and they did so. 3 Then he said to the kinsman-redeemer, "Naomi, who has come back from Moab, is selling the piece of land that belonged to our relative Elimelek. 4 I thought I should bring the matter to your attention and suggest that you buy it in the presence of these seated here and in the presence of the elders of my people. If you will redeem it, do so. But if you will not, tell me, so I will know. For no one has the right to do it except you, and I am next in line." "I will redeem it," he said. 5 Then Boaz said, "On the day you buy the land from Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the dead man's widow, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property." 6 At this, the kinsman-redeemer said, "Then I cannot redeem it because I might endanger my own estate. You redeem it yourself. I cannot do it." 7 (Now in earlier times in Israel, for the redemption and transfer of property to become final, one party took off his sandal and gave it to the other. This was the method of legalizing transactions in Israel.) 8 So the kinsman-redeemer said to Boaz, "Buy it yourself." And he removed his sandal.
9 Then Boaz announced to the elders and all the people, "Today you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelek, Kilion and Mahlon. 10 I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite, Mahlon's widow, as my wife, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property, so that his name will not disappear from among his family or from his hometown. Today you are witnesses!" 11 Then the elders and all the people at the gate said, "We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the family of Israel. May you have standing in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. 12 Through the offspring the Lord gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah." 13 So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he made love to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. 14 The women said to Naomi: "Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a kinsman-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! 15 He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth." 16 Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. 17 The women living there said, "Naomi has a son!" And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.
Okay, there is a lot to unpack here and we will not do it justice today but there are several takeaways from this unusual passage. First, just like last week, I would ask you to remember that Ruth is a picture of the church -- all Christians -- and Boaz is a picture of Jesus. Neither are exact replicas, of course, but they just give us a picture, a visual and a reminder of what the church should look like and what Jesus looks like.
We saw last week that Ruth, in her own way, basically asked Boaz to marry her and protect her but she did it with an eye to the protection and provision of Naomi, her mother-in-law as well. As you remember, Ruth and Naomi had both lost their husbands and had no one to care for them since neither one had a son. It was a man's world back then and if there wasn't a man in your life, a woman might starve to death or be in all kinds of other danger.
The only recourse a widow had was two laws that come into play here. One is found in Leviticus and one in Deuteronomy and they make it possible for someone to sell their property but have a family member buy it back and the other says that if a man dies without a son to carry on his name, that man's brother or other kin can marry the widow and have a child with her and that child will carry the dead man's last name. It was God's way of protecting the family and the land of the Israelites. That, and several other things mentioned in here, are customs that we no longer have and seem strange to us but that was God's plan for the early years.
Today, we go to the courthouse or the lawyer's office or someplace similar and we sign papers and make documents official that way. Back in Ruth's day, they evidently got all the leading men together at the gates of the city and they would verbally make sure everybody knew what was going on and then, to seal the deal, one of the men would take off his shoe or sandal and give it to the other one. I assume the man would give it back when the process was over but who knows? Maybe the guy limped home and got another pair of sandals or something.
But this is not a story included in the Bible to teach us ancient history so let's focus on what it is there for. I want to start by pointing out something happening in the background all through this book. All through here we see things happening "just by chance." The first thing we see is at the end of chapter one when Naomi and Ruth "just so happened" to get back to Bethlehem at the time of the barley harvest. That's just good luck, right? If they had come at some other time, they might not have been able to find anything to eat. So, obviously that was just good karma; good luck; fate smiling upon them, right?
Then later in chapter two, verse three, it says that Ruth "just so happened" to be gleaning in the field of a nice man named Boaz. Boaz was a good man and "just so happened" to be related to Naomi. What are the odds? Such a coincidence. Obviously more good luck. And just by chance, Boaz has heard of Ruth and knew she was a woman of character so he made sure she had plenty to eat. And just by chance Ruth found him at just the right place and time to propose marriage. And just by chance Boaz was single. And just by chance he was rich.
Then in this chapter, we see that "just by chance" in a city of thousands and thousands of people, Boaz sits down at the city gate and who just happens to walk by? The man he needs to see. So, obviously, the moral to this story is God wants you to have good luck, right? No! Of course not.
That's not luck or karma or fate or any other manmade idea. That was God working behind the scenes. God was working when Elimelech and his family went to Moab and met Ruth. God was working behind the scenes in ways they never could understand when all three husbands died. God was working when Ruth went to the fields. God was working when things looked bleak and they couldn't understand why they had to go through what they were going through. God was at work when they were grieving and in pain. God was at work for their good and His glory and we can see that now, three thousand years later but don't you know it was hard for them to conceive of such a thing? Maybe you can relate.
And speaking of conceive, we see that God was working working working all that time so that Ruth would meet and marry Boaz and they would have a kid who would have a kid who would have a kid who was my buddy David -- King David -- and God did all that before they even knew they would have a king. Not only that but I think most of you know who else came from their lineage. We know that David married and had kids and through him was born, still in Bethlehem, our Redeemer, Jesus. Boom! I love it when a plan comes together!
I mean, it's like God knew what He was doing or something. And since He knows what He is doing and He sees the end from the beginning, He knew from the start that YOU were going to need a Redeemer. The Hebrew word used here of Boaz is "ga-al" (Strong's, #1350) and it means to be the next of kin and as such to buy back a relative's property and marry the widow.
Now, the very next of kin to Naomi was this man we see here in chapter 4 of Ruth. He is not mentioned by name and, in fact, in the Hebrew it comes out to something like, "Mr. So-and-So." Well, Ol' Mr. So-and-So couldn't or wouldn't redeem Ruth because it would have messed up his plans and his home life. Can you just imagine him going home to his wife saying, "Honey, I have some good news and some bad news. Good news is I bought us some property, cheap. Bad news is I have another wife now."
Well, just like ol' so and so couldn't redeem Ruth who is a picture of us, the church, our nearest relative is Adam and he couldn't redeem us. He couldn't pay the price the Father said was due because he was a sinner just like us. He was poor and needy and he needed a Redeemer just like we do.
But Jesus said that's why He came to Earth. In Luke 4, Jesus announced His ministry to the world by claiming and proclaiming the words of Isaiah when He said, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." He came to set us free from the bondage of sin and death and to open our eyes to see it and accept it.
He said in Mark 10 that He came to give His life as a ransom for many. That's what a redeemer does. He pays the price, at great expense to Himself. See, God the Father said in the Old Testament Law that anytime anybody sinned, something had to die. They would sacrifice animals of all kinds to pay the price for their sins and the blood of those animals was sprinkled over the altar as a way of symbolizing that their sins had been covered over by that blood.
God did not change His mind in the New Testament. He just allowed Jesus to be the perfect sacrifice for our sins and when He died on the cross, His blood didn't just cover over our sins, it erased them. And by doing that, Jesus redeemed us. He paid the price for us that the Father said was due.
Now, if you don't want Jesus to be your Redeemer; if you think you are a pretty good person and you want to do it yourself, God will allow it. But you have to be perfect...and you have to die. See, you can't be a slave to sin and be your own redeemer any more than Ruth could be her own redeemer. Jesus told some Hebrews in John 8, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." 33 They answered him, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?"
Do you see that? Just like all sinners, they didn't think they were slaves. But look how Jesus responds.
34 Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."
And the Son has set us free. As true followers and believers in Jesus, He has freed us from the bondage of drugs, alcohol, porn, violence, laziness, anger and every other form of addiction and slavery. He has redeemed us, at great price, with His own flesh and blood; a price that no money could buy. 1 Peter 1 says, "For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect."
How about you? Are you tired of that empty way of life? Are you tired of trying to figure out this life on your own and then trying to get out of the mess that got you into on your own? I get it. All of us here that are believers get it. We have all been there. Proverbs 14:12 says, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death." Do you want death or do you want life? Do you want to continue to try to figure it out on your own or do you want God's own Spirit to live inside of you to help you? Do you want to be a slave to sin or a slave to God?
You are going to be one or the other. Jesus died on a cruel cross so that you wouldn't have to be a slave to sin. He traded places with you and took the punishment and paid the price that you should have to pay. He redeemed you and all you have to do to receive that redemption is to believe in Him that He did that for you. But I'm warning you. Being a slave to God is a real thing and if you think that's not going to work for you then Christianity is not for you and that is your choice.
But I beg of you to make the right choice today. Ask God to forgive you of all your sins and then repent -- turn away - from that sin and that lifestyle. Allow God to change you and make you into a new creation like He has for so many of us here today. You won't regret it but do it now as the music plays.
