You want to turn in your Bibles
to the book of Ruth. I hope that you understand the
historical parts of the book of Ruth that we haven't neglected
to give you an appreciation of what happened in this book historically. Because it is the historical
account God has given here. and the precise words that he
uses to describe the account and the characters in this account
and their actions and their words that gives us insight into the
truth of the gospel. Without that historical account
and those characters described to us by their names, by their
places, where they were from, where they went, what happened
to them there, And all that led up to that and the result of
that, all of it leads us to see and appreciate the work of the
Lord Jesus Christ in our own personal salvation. It's important
that we understand this book of Ruth as applying to us personally. I say that because the Lord Jesus
Christ is the redeemer of sinners. And there's one thing that will
keep us from faith in him. It's our sin. but it's our sin,
not in the sense that we normally think of it. our pride, our lust,
and all these things. But it's that sin that works
out in this way. It keeps us from seeing our need
of Christ, our need of Christ. The lack of an awareness of our
standing before God and our utter depravity and our nakedness and
our ruin, as is described by Moab as a nation and people,
and by the condition of those who went down there, they died.
that unless we see this, we won't have ground plowed into which
the seed of the gospel will be planted and grow deep roots. It'll be superficial, which is
what we are by nature. The parable Jesus gave of the
four different grounds and the seed that was planted therein
by the sower describes us. The first ground, the fowls of
the air came and took away the seed that was sown. And that's
us. We don't understand the gospel.
It goes forth, it's spoken, it's preached, and it doesn't make
a dent. It doesn't penetrate because
we have no need. We don't see our sin. We don't
see beauty in Christ because we don't see our sin. God has
to plow that ground. And the other grounds were the
same way. They clung to the cares of this world, or they had no
root in themselves, because they had no need for Christ. But when
we have a need given by God, and He opens our heart to see
the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ in His saving work, then
that root of the gospel goes deep. And we cling to Him, as
we're exhorted to do throughout Scripture. And this is the fruit,
this brings forth fruit to God. And this fruit is the work of
God. It's the work of God to bring
us to Christ as helpless, ruined, needy, foul, undeserving, ill-deserving
sinners, and finding our all in Him. And that's what the book
of Ruth is about. It's a historical account of
Ruth and Boaz. And it's about Naomi, Ruth's
mother-in-law, It's about these other characters who aren't so
prominent in it, which was Naomi's husband and the two men that
were married to her daughter's in-law, Orpah and Ruth. It's about the servants in the
field. And it's about the maidens, the maidens of Boaz in the field. It's about this other redeemer
who was closer than the, he had a closer relationship than Boaz
had to Ruth, and yet he would not redeem her. It's about all
these characters, but it's primarily about the Lord Jesus Christ as
our Redeemer, and we as His redeemed, and all that God has done, represented
by these people, and these places, and their situations, and how
God redeemed us from our sin and brought us to Christ. And
it's a personal redemption, but it's a redemption by the Lord
Jesus Christ of all of his people. It is God's account of Christ
the Redeemer and of all of his redeemed. We have to see this.
If you look at this and understand Boaz to be God's representation
in this book of Christ, our Redeemer, and Ruth to be the representation
in this book of the entire church of God married to Christ and
each individual member in particular married to Christ, then you understand
something about this book. What a blessing God gave to Ruth. What a blessing. Took her from
a nation steeped in idolatry and pride and untouched by all
the afflictions that come upon God's people to bring them to
Christ, and yet she was brought to Christ. She was brought to
Boaz, which represents us being brought to Christ. brought out
by her relation to Naomi. Naomi spoke to her of God's bread
in Bethlehem, the bread of life, the Lord Jesus Christ, and of
the praise that was there because of this bread of life God had
given, which was the Bethlehem Judah. She spoke to Ruth of Israel's
God and of the covenant blessings He had given them in inheritance,
which speaks of God's gift to His people of an inheritance
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And Ruth's heart was opened. Ruth became so attached to the
message and the prospect, the promise of God to Israel, to
God's people of redemption in Christ, that she stuck by Naomi. She wouldn't leave her. Her whole
life was devoted to being with Naomi, so much that she labored,
she went out into the field to gather in order to provide not
only for herself, but for Naomi. And so she was a blessed, blessed
woman. This salvation represented by
this marriage to Boaz was brought into her life. And all the blessings
that came to us because of that, because Christ was born to Ruth
and to Boaz. So we need to read this book,
read this book of Ruth as an account of Boaz's love for Ruth. and her response of being absolutely
overwhelmed by His love and His grace to her. This account, it
shows that she was earnestly seeking as a poor woman, as a
widowed woman, as a woman who had been from a country of strangers
to God, strangers to His covenant, strangers to the promises, and
yet was brought in by this providence of God that she was married to
one of Naomi's sons and then he was related to Boaz and then
she was brought back by God's providence to learn of Boaz and
to see his love for her and to be overwhelmed and desiring him
and him her. So it's an account of Boaz's
love, of his words, of his actions toward Ruth. And when we see
this, When we see this now, what should our response be as believers? We ought to pray in our heart
that God would so treat us in Christ as Boaz treated Ruth,
that He would show us His love as our Redeemer and speak all
these things, these wonderful words of grace to us through
Him. Now, I say that as kind of an
introduction here to reacquaint you with themes here of this
book. But I wanna read through chapter
two, and we're gonna go through chapter three. We'll see how
far we get today with this. But when we read through this,
I want you to look at chapter three in verse 18, because this
is where I got the title for today's message, Rest in Our
Redeemer. In chapter three in verse 18,
Naomi said to Ruth, she said, sit still, my daughter, until
thou know how the matter will fall for the man, Boaz, will
not be in rest until he have finished the thing this day. All right, this is Naomi speaking
to Ruth. about Boaz that he will not rest
until he had finished the thing that Ruth wanted more than anything,
which was that Boaz would redeem her and marry her, and she would
be given by God children and that those children would have
the name of her mother-in-law, Naomi, and her family, and that
through those children, Christ would be born. All right? In
this one verse, we see the exhortation of God from his word by the Spirit
of God to the believing sinner. What does God say? Sit still,
my daughter. and sit still, what? Until you
know, until you're persuaded, until you see that the matter,
how the matter will fall, the matter of your redemption for
the man, the Lord Jesus Christ, will not be in rest until he
finished the work this day. That's what the Lord's gonna
do here. And so what you see here is that in our lives, We
see all kinds of sin, failure, ruin, and sorrow, don't you?
Not only when you look back over the course of your life, as I've
mentioned to you before in my own experience, I consider my
life and I think, what a complete waste, were it not for Christ,
were it not for the fact that He showed me the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I'm not saying that that was my value, that was seeing
His value. His life was what was important
all the time, but I didn't know it because I was living in order
to find value in what I did. It was ruined, absolute ruin,
worthless, not only worthless, but deserving of condemnation. And then the Lord showed us Christ. That's the experience of the
believer. And that experience of every believer is described
here throughout this book, isn't it? Ruth was born to a family
and to a nation that was outside of the promises of God. She had
no relation to God, didn't know God. They were idolaters, and
that's us, each individual here in this room. And those that
we know, we were born and we lived our lives ignorant of Christ
and His grace and His saving work, weren't we? And then by
God's providence, he moved in our life and he guided us where?
We heard. We heard something about a promise
of salvation. And then he continued to work
until, as Ruth, she was brought into the field, the very field
of Boaz. In other words, we were brought
into the place where Christ gives his word, the gospel, and feeds
his people there with it. And that word of the bread of
life of His work as our Savior, breaking His body and shedding
His blood for our life, became our food. And while we were there,
gleaning among His servants who served us with the gospel, what
happened? He spoke to us of His work, of
His desire, of His knowledge of us. He saw us, He spoke to
us, He declared grace to us. And He revealed that in all of
our life and the circumstances and the labors of our heart and
the blindness and all these things, He saw it all. He knew us beforehand
and He loved us with an everlasting love. And so he's describing
this in chapter 2 as we read through this. Let's make note
of these things and then we're going to get into chapter 3.
Again, in verse 1 of chapter 2, And Naomi had a kinsman of
her husband, a mighty man of wealth, of the family of Elimelech,
and his name was Boaz. That's the relation. Naomi's
husband, Elimelech, and Boaz were related. They were in the
same family. And he was a mighty man of wealth.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Almighty God. In Genesis 17,
1, God appeared to Abraham. He says, I am God Almighty, El
Shaddai. And the name El Shaddai means
not only Almighty, but it means this, all-sufficient. He's Almighty to be all-sufficient
to His people in everything. Revelation 1.8, the Lord Jesus
Christ says, I'm the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the
last, the Almighty. El Shaddai, the One who is Almighty
and all-sufficient for His people. And so this man was a mighty
man of wealth. And what was the riches that he had? Well, he
had all the riches. Our Lord had all the riches of
saving grace and power that we needed, didn't he? He who was
rich for your sakes became poor that you through his poverty
might be made rich. 2 Corinthians 8 verse 9. All the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge are in Him, and He speaks to us out of the riches
of His grace. It's His blood that was more
precious than gold and silver in 1 Peter 1.18, that we were
redeemed by His precious blood. He had the riches of whatever
God required in order to save our souls and give us all that
was His, rich and mighty. And verse 2, And Ruth the Moabitess
said unto Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and glean ears
of corn after him, in whose sight I shall find grace. And she said
to her, Go, my daughter. She understood that God had given
a commandment in the law that the poor and the widows could
gather up grain in the field after the harvesters came, and
they were allowed to go into the field and gather that grain.
In other words, she took the word of God as her warrant to
go into the field expecting God would give grace to her and allow
her to find grace in the eyes of the land owner, which was
Boaz. She didn't know Boaz at this
point. She had heard from Naomi that because she was unmarried,
because her husband had died, that there was a law of redemption,
and she had the hope in her heart. She also knew that God had promised
Eve, Adam and Eve, in His condemnation of Satan, that the seed of the
woman would bruise the head of the serpent. And so all of the
women in Israel from that time forth hoped that they would have
children in order that their children would be that promised
seed that would bruise the head of the serpent and remove the
curse. and give them life and bring them to God. So she had
all these things in her heart because Naomi had told her these
things. And so she said, allow me. She
speaks to Naomi in subjection and submission to her as her
mother. She says, let me now go to the field and glean ears
after him in whose sight I shall find grace. And she said to her,
go my daughter. Naomi guided Ruth to Boaz's field. And so it says in verse 3, and
she went, Ruth came, and she gleaned in the field after the
reapers. And her hap, it was God's will
and his workings in her life, just like he does in the life
of all of his people. It was to light on a part of
the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech.
Boaz was Elimelech's family, was in Elimelech's family, and
they were related, therefore he could be her redeemer. The
emphasis here is that the Redeemer was related to Ruth. And this
was required. In Leviticus 25, it speaks about
redemption of the poor. And the Redeemer had to be a
brother, a near kinsman, a near relative. And this is the one. He speaks about how that if a
woman's husband dies, that man who died's brother should take
her to be his wife, and therefore they would have children together.
in the name of the dead. And this is referred to even
in the book of Matthew. where the Sadducees came to Jesus
and said, Lord, there was a woman who had a husband, and he died
and left her childless. So his brother married her, and
he died and left her childless. And of course, they wanted to
prove there was no such thing as a resurrection, because they
said, how could this woman be in heaven with one of these men
as her husband? Because they all had her, seven
of them. And Jesus said, you do greatly err, not knowing the
scripture nor the power of God. Those in heaven are not given
in marriage as the angels. But he said, God is the God of
the living, not the dead. And so this woman was related
in this law of God. In his law said that if her husband
died, then she would be married to her husband, the dead husband's
brother, and he would have children by her. Boaz was related to her
in this way. God's law allowed her. God's law gave warrant to her
to seek seed to God according to His promise, blessing from
God through Boaz. She was doing this lawfully,
and believers lawfully go to Christ because in Scripture God
has told believers, He's told sinners, Come to the Lord Jesus
Christ. Come unto me all you who labor
and are heavy laden, Jesus said, and I will give you rest. Or
he said, look unto me and be ye saved all the ends of the
earth. This is God's command. We have the warrant from scripture
as sinners to go to Christ. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners. That's our warrant from God,
to hope that we can go into the field where his word is preached
and glean, gather up the food, the bread of life from his hand,
from his field, from his servants. Verse 4, And behold, Boaz came
from Bethlehem, as Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and said to
the reapers, The Lord be with you, as the Lord Jesus says to
his servants. And they answered him, the Lord
bless thee, everything is yours, the Lord bless thee, and make
you prosperous in all your work for your people, that we might
be blessed in you. Verse five. Then said Boaz to
his servants, his servant, singular, his foreman, if you will. Boaz
said to his foreman servant that was set over the reapers, whose
damsel is this? So Boaz comes into his own field,
He sees Ruth, Ruth is picking up grain behind the reapers,
and he speaks to the foreman concerning her. What does this
show us? The Lord Jesus Christ speaks
to his servants concerning his people. You preach the gospel
to them. And He also inquires about her.
It isn't that the Lord Jesus needs to ask someone else about
us, but in asking about us in His Word openly, He's showing
that He knows us beforehand. And He inquired about us from
His Father because this was in that eternal covenant, His relation
to His people. So the servant that was sent
over the reapers answered and said, It's the Moabitish damsel
that came back with Naomi out of the country of Moab. He doesn't
varnish her character or her reputation. He doesn't try to
cover it up. Notice, she was from this country
of the cursed, the idolatrous people, the proud, arrogant people
who trust in their own righteousness. And doesn't the Lord do that?
Remember when he came into the world and he walked this earth,
he found people who were sinners, lepers, unclean, blind, halt,
withered, lame, and he healed them. And the Pharisees accused
him of being a friend of publicans and sinners. And he said, you
go learn what this means. I will have mercy and not sacrifice. And so the Lord Jesus knows us
and the fact that we are ungodly in ourselves and sinners in ourselves
and without strength and even enemies of God by nature is not
a deterrent to Him because that's the purpose for which He came
to save us from our sins. He loved us with an everlasting
love. He obligated Himself to redeem
us. Verse 7. And the foreman goes on and relates
to Boaz what Ruth had told him. He said, she said, I pray you
let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.
So she came and has continued even from the morning until now
that she tarried a little in the house. She's been here all
day. She asked me if she could glean. She came, she's been working
at it all day long. She's been gleaning. She wanted,
in the spiritual sense, she wanted to come under the hearing of
the gospel, since she knows that faith comes by hearing, and hearing
by the word of God, and the word of God is preached to us in the
gospel that God preaches. 1 Peter 1.25 and Romans 10. Therefore she came under the
hearing of the gospel." She knew that those who preach the gospel
are given charge by God in stewardship to watch for those souls. And
how do they do that? By preaching Christ and Him crucified. That's the only food, the only
way that can be saved. And so she came into the hearing
of that to gather after the reapers. These were servants to Boaz.
These men went out at his command to glean, I mean to gather the
grain in his field. They drew water, his servants
drew water for the reapers, and they gave water and grain to
those who gleaned in the field. This was Christ's purpose, to
send the gospel. Remember when he broke the bread,
the fish and the two loaves that were given to him, the five loaves
and the two fish that were given to him by the little boy? He
broke that bread and he gave it to his disciples and they
gave it to the people and they were all filled and there were
12 baskets left over. That's the reapers. That's what
the Lord Jesus Christ does for his people. The gospel is preached. God's people hear it. Christ
blesses it to them. That's his gift of grace. That's
the way he works. And then in verse 8, then said
Boaz to Ruth. To Ruth, now, he speaks to the
foreman concerning her. He makes it evident his intentions.
He's interested in her. He has a desire to her. He's
determined to be gracious to Ruth. He loves her before she
knows him. And so Boaz said to Ruth, hearest
thou not, my daughter? He's asking her, don't you know
what's been in my heart, what I've already spoken to my servants
about you? I want you to hear this, because
you need to hear it as if I've spoken it already, and now just
hearing it, you yourself understand my intentions, my desire, what
I see in you. Boaz said to Ruth, hearest thou
not my daughter? Go not to glean in another field,
neither go from hence, but abide here fast by my maidens. These
maidens were servants of Boaz. They also were gathering the
grain. Just like in the church of God, there are these people
who come to hear the gospel. And these servants were also
servants of Boaz, and the maidens and the reapers were all servants
of Boaz. All in the church are servants
to Christ for the blessing of his redeemed. Verse nine, let
thine eyes be on the field. He says, Boaz says to Ruth, let
thine eyes be on the field that they go to reap, that they do
reap, and go thou after them with my maidens have I not charge
the young men that they should not touch thee. He's protecting
her and providing for her. The Lord Jesus is the one we
look to and trust to protect us and to provide all for us. And when thou art a thirst, go
into the vessels and drink of that which the young men have
drawn. These men are my servants. They drew water for the ones
I will give it. They reap the grain for those
I will give it to. And so he directs her to the
water and to the bread. Isn't that the Lord Jesus? He
directs sinners to himself through his servants. Doesn't he? What a blessing this is. The
Lord Jesus Christ, through the gospel preached, directs sinners
to himself as the bread of life and as the water of life. If
you knew the gift of God, he told that woman at Samaria, you
would have asked and he would have given you living water.
Verse 10. This is the reaction of the one
who is the object of God's saving grace, which we hear in the gospel. This is the response of the heart
that sees God's grace so freely and abundantly given to us as
undeserving and ill-deserving sinners. It says, she fell on
her face and bowed herself to the ground and she said to him,
Why have I found grace in thine eyes that thou shouldst take
knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger? I have no claim on
anything here. I'm a stranger, and yet you have
taken knowledge of me. I have found grace in your eyes.
And Boaz answered and said to her, Notice how he speaks to
her, It hath fully been showed me all that thou hast done unto
thy mother-in-law since the death of thine husband, how thou hast
left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity,
and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore.
The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee
of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to
trust. When we hear the gospel, what do we learn? Well, the first
thing we learn is the Lord Jesus is the Lord, that He's the only
Redeemer, and that His redemption is our only hope, that all of
our hope is in Him. And then what does He tell us?
I've known you. I knew you before. Before you
heard, I knew you. I saw all the labor of your heart.
I saw all the inner workings of God's Spirit drawing you to
myself because I loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore
have I drawn thee. He saw the work of the Spirit
of God in her according to God's eternal will that he had given.
His people to Himself to save them and reveal Himself to them
in eternal life. He knew that and He reveals that
to us. And what a depth of tenderness
and compassion and love we understand from the gospel that He had towards
us individually as He had towards all of His people in the church
that He gave Himself for us and revealed Himself to us. I knew
you before. I knew how you were in that country.
I knew that you were of a different people. I knew that your husband
had died. And I knew that you left your
father and mother and that land of your nativity and are come
to a people that you did not know until you got here. And
the Lord recompensed thy work." He's saying good things about
Ruth, isn't he? And have you ever had someone
say good things about you that were really the work that God
had done? Why do you have such an interest in Christ? Well,
yeah, but it's not what I did. The Apostle Paul said, I am what
I am by the grace of God. And that grace which was given
to me, I labored more abundantly than they all. He attributed
it all to Christ and His grace. And so the Lord says good things
about us, but he's just observing his own work, his own work of
grace in our heart, whose heart the Lord opened. We heard and
we believe because God attended his word with grace. And we say, like Bruce Crabtree
said, He said, you go into the house of God, you creep in, you
know you're a creepy sinner, and someone says something good
about you, and you go home, and you fall on your knees, and you
apologize to the Lord that something so good could be said about you,
because you know what you are. And here, Boaz is speaking of
God's work, Christ's own work. He looks at his work, drawing
his people to himself by the Spirit of God, and he commends
his own work in them. And He shows it to us so that
we would know this is His work, not ours. God put it in her. He knitted her heart to Him in
love. In verse 13, then she said, let
me find favor in thy sight, my Lord. She owns Him as Lord, for
thou hast comforted me, and for that thou hast spoken friendly
unto thine handmaid. In other words, He's spoken to
her heart. Though I be not like one of thine
handmaidens, I'm not at all like you. I'm not like you. I mean, I'm not like your servants.
I don't measure up to them. And yet you have spoken this
grace friendly to me. And Boaz said to her, at mealtime,
you come. Come thou hither, and eat of
the bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar, the bread and
the wine. Christ's broken body, Christ's
shed blood. You eat, you drink. And she sat
beside the reapers, and he reached her parched corn. In other words,
Boaz gave to her directly. Christ directly gives to each
of his people from the gospel under the hearing, we've come
into his house, we've come under the hearing of the gospel, whether
we're listening in our cars, we're driving to work, or whether
we're listening at home, maybe unexpectedly, suddenly, the gospel
comes to life, and we realize he has reached her parched corn. And she was sufficed and she
left because he's all sufficient. God Almighty, El Shaddai. And
when she was risen up to glean, verse 15, Boaz commanded his
young men saying, let her glean even among the sheaves and reproach
her not. Let her go into the inner place
where that bread is freely and abundantly given, and let fall,
verse 16, also some of the handfuls of purpose. As you're stripping
the grain from the stalks, let it fall for her. Because God
commands His servants, you preach the gospel, and you preach it
so that it comforts their hearts. You heap grace upon grace upon
grace. Open the things of Christ and
let them freely eat. Ho, everyone that's thirsty,
come ye to the waters, and he that has no money, you come,
you buy, and you eat wine and milk without money and without
price. Let fall some of the handfuls
of purpose for her and leave them that she may glean them
and rebuke her not. So she gleaned the field till
evening and beat out that she had gleaned and it was about
an ephah of barley, all that she needed and more. And she
took it up and went into the city and her mother-in-law saw
what she had gleaned and she brought forth and gave to her
that she had reserved after she was sufficed. So she had plenty
and to spare. And believers, when they hear
the gospel, their heart overflows. Jesus said, if any man thirst,
let him come unto me and drink, and out of his belly shall flow
rivers of living waters. So she goes home, she has enough
for herself and enough for Naomi too. And she brought forth and
gave to her that she had reserved after she was sufficed, verse
19, and her mother-in-law said to her, where hast thou gleaned
today? Where did you work? Where wroughtest
thou? Blessed be he. Notice Naomi gives
all credit for all grace to Boaz, as we do to the Lord Jesus. Blessed
be he that did take knowledge of thee. And she showed her mother-in-law
with whom she had wrought. And she said, the man's name
with whom I wrought today is Boaz. Naomi said to her daughter-in-law,
blessed be he of the Lord who has not left off his kindness
to the living and to the dead. And Naomi said to her, the man
is near of kin to us, one of our next kinsmen. In other words, it says in the
margin, he's the one who has the right to redeem. He's the
one. God has not left off his kindness
to the living and to the dead. You see, we are in ourselves
dead in sins. And the Lord Jesus Christ did
not leave off his kindness to us even when we were dead in
sins. He that hears my word and believes
on him that sent me, as the scripture has said, he says in John 5,
24, has everlasting life. And he shall not come into condemnation. He shall not. Because Jesus Christ
gives life to the dead. He said, it is the spirit that
quickeneth, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak
to you are spirit and they are life. He has mercy on our condition,
though we're dead in sins and trespasses. And he gives us life. And he gives us life through
the gospel, through hearing it. He gives us life because Christ
is our life. And we hear this, Christ is our
life. Because I live, you shall live
also. I am the resurrection, life from the dead and the life. Those who were dead in sins are
raised to life and those who are living are given more life.
They're continually given the stream of life. Blessed be Christ,
the blessed of the Lord. He has not left off his kindness
to the living and to the dead. He brought us out of Moab, out
of our own natural selves, dead in sins, and he brought us to
life, and he made a name for us with himself. We were married,
but we died with Christ, and we died to that marriage for
our first husband, and now we're married to Christ. And Ruth the
Moabitess said, he said to me also, thou shalt keep fast by
my young men until they have ended all my harvest, Don't leave
this field. You stay by my servants. You
stay here until the harvest is over, until the world ends and
Christ brings you to glory. You stay there. You don't leave
the field. You just continue gleaning. Naomi
said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, it is good, my daughter, that
thou go out with his maidens, that they meet thee not in any
other field. Don't go to another field. You
go to where Christ is preached. That's where his servants are
laboring. That's where his handmaid servants are are gleaning, verse
23, so she kept fast by the maidens of Boaz to glean unto the end
of barley harvest and of wheat harvest, and she dwelt with her
mother-in-law. She stayed there. Well, we're
not gonna get to chapter three today. We'll do that next week.
Let's pray. Lord, we pray that we would be
so drawn to the Lord Jesus Christ as needy sinners, that we would
hear from the gospel of what he has done to save us from our
sins, and we would be so enthralled with his eternal love towards
us that he drew us through all the meanderings of our life by
the providence of God's predestinating grace to bring us to Christ and
conform us to his image and find ourselves wedded to him from
eternity and given this grace because of that union with Him
so that His righteousness is counted ours and the work of
the Spirit of God in life and our souls as a result of His
love and work for us before we were ever born. Though we were
sinners in ourselves and without strength to do one thing about
it, and though in our hearts we were estranged from God and
enemies of God, yet by the death of your Son you have reconciled
us to yourself. May we find all of our justification,
all of our redemption in the Lord Jesus Christ by his precious
blood, and see that he is the mighty man, the man of wealth,
who had all and gave all in order to give us all in himself. What a what a savior, what a
what an account you've given in your word of the experience
of our redemption that we know in ourselves to be true by your
word. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.