There's no fear in the place
of Him, He will guide and never leave. It's my song through endless
ages, Jesus led me all the way. It's my song through endless
ages, Jesus led me all the way. Now open your Bibles back to
the book of Ruth, chapter 2. The book of Ruth is a real story. It really happened, but it's
much like a parable in that it is an earthly story which tells
of spiritual things. The book of Ruth is a a book
which glorifies a man named Boaz, who is the kinsman-redeemer of
two poor, destitute widows, saving them from death, from poverty
and despair. This earthly story tells us of
our kinsman-redeemer. The whole Bible is the book of
our kinsman-redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, saves us from death,
from poverty and despair. Now, by way of quick review,
back through what we've already studied for the sake of those
who may not have been here and also to refresh your memory,
there was a young woman named Ruth, which named this book Bears. a young woman named Ruth, a Moabite
woman, a stranger to Israel. She was born in the land of Moab,
which was the land of God's enemies, strangers to the commonwealth
of Israel. And she marries into the family
of this woman named Naomi, who had traveled to Moab with her
sons and her husband. During the time of the famine,
the Lord sent a famine and this woman named Naomi traveled with
her sons and husband into Moab and Ruth married one of her sons. Well, Naomi's husband died and
also both of her sons, leaving Naomi and Ruth both widows. And upon the death of these men,
Ruth and Naomi, after hearing good news from Naomi's former
land, that the Lord had visited his people in giving them bread. They ventured back to Israel,
to Bethlehem, the land of Israel. They ventured back to Naomi's
country in hopes of finding some sustenance, finding some provisions
and a way of life there. being poor and destitute and
widows, as they were. Now, Ruth was the youngest. Naomi, by this time, was an elderly
woman, or at least up in her sixties, perhaps seventies. Ruth, being the youngest of the
two, she goes out into the fields shortly after they arrived back
in Bethlehem. Ruth goes out into the fields
According to the laws of gleaning, the laws of gleaning saying that
the poor people of the land were to find their food in the fields. They were to go after the reapers
and glean what food or grain they could find for their own
sustenance. And the reapers and the landowners
were to leave a little bit. They were not to glean all of
the grain, but to leave some of it for these gleaners, these
poor people. And Ruth goes out into the field,
hoping to pick up a few sacks of barley, or one sack, or as
much as she could, for her mother-in-law and herself to eat to sustain
their life. And so she goes out and chooses
her a field in which to glean, and she just so happens to light
on the field of this man named Boaz, who was her kinsman, the
only one who could redeem her or get her out of this poverty-stricken
and despairing way that she was in. Now, upon returning from
Bethlehem, Ruth goes out into the field and begins to reap
after the reaper or glean after the reaper. Boaz is coming back
from Bethlehem. He's a mighty man, a man of wealth,
and a man in his fifties, Ruth being a young maiden perhaps
in her twenties. And this mighty man of wealth,
this great man of renown named Boaz, he
returns from perhaps a business trip to Bethlehem. And men back
then were not like the old southern plantation owners who sat on
their porches and with their big white hats on and sipping
mint juleps. But they went out into the field
and they took a hands-on approach to their people and their lands. And Boaz goes out into the field. to check upon his reaper, and
he spies or sees this young woman named Ruth, and he immediately
takes a special interest in her. And then he orders his servants
concerning this woman. He set his affection upon her
immediately, and he orders his servants and his reapers concerning
this woman. He is under shepherd's to protect
her and provide for her. And then, as we saw last time,
he introduced himself to her. And this was a very special and
intimate time. So it was Boaz who initiated
this whole thing. Boaz was the one who initiated
this whole love affair, which was soon to be a love affair,
which I have called the romance of redemption. or Ruth's salvation
and her restoration. Now, Ruth, upon seeing this great
man, upon seeing his greatness, hearing about him, she, while
gleaning, perhaps had been talking to some of the other gleaners
and overhearing some of the reapers mention this great man's name,
and perhaps they would talk about him. And Ruth, overhearing some
of these things and then seeing him coming. riding up in all
of his splendor and his honor and his dignity and his beauty,
and then after he speaks with such kindness and such condescending,
or not condescending, but such grace, reaching down to
her and speaking to her and ordering all things concerning her, and
after hearing of his gracious care and provisions for her. This is what she says in verse
ten, or this is what she does and says. Verse ten, she fell
on her face and bowed herself to the ground and said unto Boaz,
Why, why have I found grace in thine eyes? And that thou shouldest
even take knowledge of me. See, and I'm a stranger. And
this also is the heartfelt reply of every single person who has
truly experienced the grace of God Almighty. Knowing ourselves,
knowing yourself to be an undeserving, unworthy wretch, undeserving
and unworthy of the least of God Almighty's favor, an enemy
of God by nature. a sinner by choice, a stranger
from the commonwealth of Israel, a Gentile by birth, we're utterly
amazed that God Almighty would show such mercy and such love
and such grace to us. And it's all through Christ,
the man who came down and dwelled with us, and much less that he
would even take note of us, take knowledge of us. The world likes
to talk of man's rights, don't they? The world likes to talk
of man's worth. Well, they know nothing of grace.
They know nothing of this thing of God's grace. And they can
really—those who think themselves worthy of salvation and that
they have rights before God—they really can see no need of a kinsman
redeemer. Right? They think if there's
anything in them that can recommend them to God, they should see
no need whatsoever in our righteous substitute, in our kinsman-redeemer. But every poor sinner who experiences
the saving grace of God through Christ, they know and they see
who it was that made them to differ. And it's all in our kinsman-redeemer. Now, let's read verses eleven
through thirteen. verses 11 through 13 again. And
Boaz answered her and said unto her, Now it hath been fully shown
me all that thou hast done unto thy mother-in-law since the death
of thine husband, and how thou hast left thy father and thy
mother and the land of thy nativity, and are 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. Then she said, O let me,
for I have found favour in thy sight, my lord, that thou hast
comforted me, for that thou hast spoken friendly unto thine handmaid,
spoken to my heart, is what that means, though I be not like unto
one of thy handmaidens. Now Boaz commended Ruth. He commended
her and rewarded her for her sacrifice and her devotion to
Naomi. And he commended her and rewarded
her for leaving her home, her family, her gods, and to go with
Naomi. He commended this. And Ruth responds
by saying, Well, I found favor here. I found favor here. And it appears that things will
go well with me here. because you have befriended me
and you have spoken to my heart." And God Almighty, in wondrous
mercy and grace, moving behind the scenes in our life, he directed
every step of our way. working out every detail, bringing
us to Christ, our kinsman redeemer. And it was he who made us willing
in the day of his power. It was he that worketh in us
both to will and to do of his good pleasure. It was he who
constrained us to forsake our false religion, to forsake our
homes and our family. This is what he calls every one
of his children to do. If any man loved father or mother
or husband or wife or son or daughter more than me, he cannot
be my disciple. He calls upon us to forsake our
families like Ruth did, but it was he who made us willing. It's
him that worketh in us both to will and to do this, to leave
our family, forsake our homes and family, come to Christ, and
take up residence with a people who were before strangers to
us. And he rewards us. He rewards
us for the faith that he gave us. That's why we sing of amazing
grace. People talk of grace. We sing
about amazing grace. This is the Lord's doing, this
marvelous in our eyes. So he rewards us and commends
us for what he himself does in and through us. Much like a parent,
you know, commends or rewards a child when he, that parent,
or she directed that child the whole way and helped him and
worked in spite of him. And upon hearing this, upon hearing
of our Lord say to us, well done, thou good and faithful servant,
and reward us, we say, it's nothing. It's my reasonable service. And
it's all because you've shown favor to me. You have reconciled
me to God. You've spoken friendly to me.
It's all because Jesus Christ befriended me. You've spoken
to my heart. It's all because you spoke unto
my heart. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto
us, but unto you be the glory." And he does all of this by his,
I love this term, by his irresistible grace. irresistible grace. He makes
us willing. He irresistibly draws us by his
mighty power, the powerful influence of his Holy Spirit, and he does
this through a sight of, a vision or an experience of his own glory,
his own beauty, his own love, and his own grace. And we see
this in verse 14 concerning Ruth. We see this come to pass in her
relationship with Boaz, how that he woos her and draws her to
himself. Look at verse fourteen, And Boaz
said unto her, Now at lunchtime, Ruth, at lunchtime, you come
up hither, you come up here to the house, leave the field, and
come right up here to the master's house, and eat of the bread,
the good bread, the choice bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar. And so she sat beside the reapers
in Boaz's very house, eating of the choice food from the master's
table. And so it is that we are gathered
in the Lord's house by his own invitation or special call. We are gathered with his reapers,
with his church, and we are made to sit at the table Psalm 23
says that our good shepherd maketh us to lie down in green pasture,
and we are made to eat of his bread, his choice bread, his
choice food, his word, and dip into the choice sauces and spices
of his word, of his glorious word, while the world eats of
husks. and dry things. This very evening,
the world is parched and dry, and not partaking of what you
are partaking of. We sit together with the Lord's
laborers, who are laborers together in the fields of our Lord. We
sit at the table, and as I said, this is the highest privilege
known to man. And it says here in verse fourteen,
did this. She sat beside the reapers, and
while they were eating lunch, it says that he reached her parched
corn. He was either sitting beside
her or directly across from her, and he reached over, Boaz reached
and got the cornbread, the plate of cornbread, and picked the
biggest piece, not for himself, but for her. And he hands it
over to her, right beside her, but kind of hands this piece,
puts it on, and brushed up against her, kind of looked her in the
eye, and the sparks were flying. And she takes it. He's flirting
with her. That's exactly what he's doing. He's an unmarried
man, and she's unmarried, and this is lawful, and it's good
in the way of a man with a maid, in the way of our Master with
his his people. And he's flirting with her. He's
wooing her. He's drawing her. And it says
that she ate it, and she was sufficed, and she left. She's
playing a little bit hard to get, perhaps, as women are prone
to do. And maybe she didn't realize. She wouldn't have played hard
to get if she realized, fully realized, who this was that was
her suitor. who this was that was wooing
her and what he could give her. the word, the gospel. And we
didn't fully realize it at first, did we? When he first began to
woo us and work upon us, we didn't fully realize his intentions,
or who it was that was dealing with us, or who our suitor was,
or we would have been much more interested from the beginning.
All right, look at verses 15 and 16. Now, when she was risen
up to glean, That is, Ruth got up from the table, and she went
out to glean in the field. And Boaz, while she left, Boaz
began to make some more, give some more orders concerning her.
He was interested in this girl, wasn't he? And he commanded his
young men, verse fifteen, saying, Let her glean even among the
sheaves. Don't make her go out there and
and scrounge around. Let her come right up to the
wagon. Let her come right up to the
sheaves of barley corn that they, back in those days, they would
stack it up, you know, and tie it in a big sheave. Let her come
right up and get some of that. Don't rebuke her. Don't rebuke
her. Reproach her not. Shame her not. Verse 16, and he said, And let fall also some of the
handfuls of purpose for her. Throw a big handful of the choice
grains out there for her, and leave them, as she may glean
them, and rebuke her not." So Boaz's reapers, they were instructed
by him to Every now and then, as they went along and began
to cut the grain and so forth, every now and then, to look back
and see that Ruth was immediately following, and then every now
and then they'd throw a big sheaf up on the wagon, or pretend to
be, and they'd let some of the choice grains fall. Throw a big sheaf up there and
drop a handful on purpose. I was made to think of Psalm
65, verse 11, in this. It says, The Lord's paths drop
fatness. And we walked along all of our
lives, in years gone by, walked along, gleaning in the Lord's
fields. What do we have that we have not received? Everything
we have, we've received it, and we've gleaned vast amounts of
God's grace, haven't we? You look back on your life, people,
and see the Lord's grace, bountiful care for you. We gleaned a wife
here, a husband there, a home, a child here, another child,
another child, another child, a quiver full of them, a job,
a new job, a new car, a new home, another child. cabinets full
of groceries, a freezer full of—two freezers full of meat,
another car, another child, handfuls on purpose. Huh? What do you
think Ruth said when she was walking along? And, hey, look
at there. Wow, I'm lucky. Aren't I lucky
today? Or maybe did she say this? Boy,
I'm a good gleaner. After she got sacks full, boy,
can I ever glean! Did she say that? And perhaps
we've said the same thing in times past, haven't we? Oh, I'm
a hard worker. No, this is handfuls on purpose. God Almighty, handfuls of grace
on sovereign purpose is what these things are from the hands
of our great God. And we give him all the glory
in verse seventeen, so she gleaned in the field until evening. And
she beat it out, or that is, she threshed out the barley corn,
the chaff from the wheat or the grain. And after she had gleaned,
it was about, it was about an ephah of barley. Now, back in Exodus sixteen,
verse thirty-six. You'll see that in your center
reference, if you search the scriptures, this is where I found
it. The children of Israel, their daily portion of manna that they
were to gather for a day's worth of eating, that is for breakfast,
lunch, and dinner, regardless of the size of the household,
each household was to take an omer of manna. That's a very
large portion, an omer of manna, enough so to feed them for three
square meals. Now, do you know how much an
omer is? An omer is one tenth of an ephah. She gleaned in one
day ten days or thirty meals worth of grain. I just imagine
she went down there with a little tow sack and came home with a
wagon. It reminded me of Joseph's brothers. Remember when they came with
sacks and they came home with cartloads, wagons Look at this
glorious, I love this, I couldn't hardly contain myself when I
read it. Verse 18, so Ruth picked up her, somebody had to help
her carry all this home, a couple of wheelbarrows, Joe, and she
took it up and went into the city, went back to Bethlehem
where her mother-in-law was, and her mother-in-law saw what
she had gleaned. And Ruth brought it forth and
gave it to her. And after she had reserved, after
she was sufficed, and her mother-in-law said unto her, Where have you
been today? Where have you been? Oh, blessed
is he that did take knowledge of thee. There's you a hymn to
write, Terry. There's you a title in the first
line. Blessed is he that did take knowledge of thee. Where
have you gleaned today, young lady? My, my. Naomi knew something. Naomi knew something of the grace
of God, and she gave credit where credit was due. She didn't say,
Boy, you're a good gleaner. She said, Blessed is he. The
Lord's been good to you, she said. And Ruth tells her where
she'd been. Verse 19. And her mother-in-law
said, Where have you been today, and where have you wrought? Blessed
is he that did take knowledge of thee. And Ruth said unto her,
and showed her mother-in-law with whom she had wrought, and
said, The man's name with whom I wrought today is Boaz. And Naomi said unto her mother-in-law,
Well, praise the Lord! Blessed be the name of the Lord,
who hath not left off his kindness to the living and to the dead.
And Naomi said unto Ruth, This man, this man whose fields you just
so happen to light upon, is near of kin to us. He's our kinsman
redeemer. Or he's one of our next kinsmen.
The margin says, He is the one that hath the right to redeem. The one that hath the right to
redeem. And this to me is a picture of
a babe in Christ. Ruth is a babe in Christ who
doesn't know much, gleaning from the word of God, and she runs
into a mature believer. Naomi represents a mature believer. And a young believer, after gleaning
through God's word sometimes, a young believer is just not
sure what they are reading. They're not sure what they're
reading, but the believer, the mature believer says, Oh, honey
child, that's talking about our kinsmen redeemer. That's who
that is. That passage speaks of the Redeemer. So Ruth goes on and excitedly
recounts the whole story. You know, just like a young believer
will go up to a mature or older believer and begin to tell them
things that they've heard a thousand times, but they'll listen with
intent, rejoicing all the while in this young one's newfound
experience and meeting up with the Lord. And Ruth goes on and
recounts the whole story, and she says in verse 21, The Moabites
said, and listen to what else he said unto him. He said also
unto me, Thou shalt keep fast by my young men until they have
ended all my harvest. He told me to come back tomorrow.
So Naomi, I'm going back tomorrow and see what else I can find.
Verse 22, Naomi said unto Ruth her daughter-in-law, It's good,
my daughter. Yeah, it's good. That's the right thing to do.
You go back there, right where you found it the first time,
and that thou go out with his maidens. You stay right there,
that they meet thee not in any other field. Don't go anywhere
else. You stay right there. It's good, child. You keep going
to Boaz's field. You stay near his people. Don't
go anywhere else. That's where you found corn,
and that's where you'll continue to find it. Verse twenty-three,
so she kept fast, or stayed fastly, by the maidens of Boaz. to glean
unto the end of the barley harvest and of wheat harvest, and dwelt
with her mother-in-law." And this is much like an older, mature
believer telling a young one, Come thou with us, and we'll
do thee good. And you keep coming to Christ. You keep coming where
you first came. Keep coming back to Christ, and
you'll continue to find sustenance there. You keep gleaning with
us. and it will be well with thee.
And if you continue in the faith to the end of the barley harvest,
things will go very well indeed for you. And it does not yet
appear now what you shall find or shall be, but it will be made
manifest by and by unto you. Now, so Ruth, this happened on
a daily basis. Ruth would get up and go, you
know, the scriptures, we tend to read the scriptures as if
all this happened just day, next day, next day, you know. No,
all of this happened over a period of time, much like our lives.
The reason we can see so clearly in reading the scriptures is
because it's time, it appears to go. In our own lives, we could
read our own lives and the happenings and things in our own lives if it were not spread out over
a period of time. But this was happening over a
period of time. Ruth would get up each morning
and go out to glean in the field, in Boaz's field. And perhaps
there would be times when she would work in your garden. back break
is hard work to labor in the hot sun and so forth, and she
would do this day in and day out. And perhaps there would
be days, there would be some morning that Ruth would not feel
like going out into the field, you know. Ruth would not feel
like stirring some sleepy morning like I felt this morning. And
Naomi would come to her, being the wise woman that she was,
and rouse her and say, Now get up, honey, get up. You don't
know what you might get today. You don't know, but you might
see Boaz again. Now get up. And Naomi knew what
was astir. She heard the story about Boaz's
kindness and his words and sitting next to her at the And she was
a wise woman. She'd get up, honey, now go on
now. You've got to go glean, and you
just might see Boaz again today. And you know, we're the same
way, aren't we? We may not always visit with Christ every time
we come to the house to try to glean. We may not get a whole
lot. My brother said to me last night, you know, every now and
then the Lord serves us up cake with icing and all the trimmings,
or food with all the trimmings and cake and dessert and all
that we can hold and more. But every now and then we just
get a morsel. But that's good enough, isn't it? That's a day's
sustenance that we need, and we need to always come to the
table. And we may not always visit with Christ as closely
and as intimately and commune with him as we'd like to. But
forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner
of some is. You may be glad. Make yourself. Get up, honey, and go to the
table. Most of the time, you're glad
you did. I've talked to a number of you
who have said that very thing to me, that the times when you
do not feel like coming, but yet, and that's someone else
working to prevent you from hearing the gospel to make you spiritually
undernourished. As someone else working against
you, not counting yourself. And we make ourselves, by God's
grace, make ourselves get up and come to the table, and we're
generally glad we did. We glean something, and sometimes
we even sit by Boaz. He visits with us personally.
And very soon, very soon, it does not yet appear unto us what
we shall be, but when he appears I'm going to be with you, and
I barely believe the time when Christ comes is going to be.
We may not know the day. For the particular hour of the
day or whatever, but I believe. I just just for all it's worth,
I believe it's going to be when God's people are meeting together
in a worship service where two or three are gathered together.
He's in their midst. And I believe it might just fall
on the year of Jubilee. Look that up sometime. We're
going to get into that a little later. So Ruth kept fast, and
she ate at the table and survived. And she came to know Boaz a little
bit better every day. And her love for him grew and
grew. Now, look at verse 20 in our
Herb. Verse 20. This is the first mention. Now,
back in verse 1, the Holy Spirit in narrating. tells us who Boaz
was, but this is the first mention that Naomi gives, or Ruth and
Naomi speak of, this kinsman. Naomi said unto her, The man
is nearer kin unto us. He's one of our next kinsmen,
or in the margin, he's the one that hath the right to regain. They're talking about Boaz. This
is Naomi's testimony of Boaz, and he is to be the focus of
the whole story, and the destiny at the destiny of Naomi and Ruth
hangs in the balance, it's all depending upon the kinsman-redeemer.
From here on out, and as we've seen before, it was God's working
to begin with, God's predestinating purpose in bringing them to this
point of meeting their kinsman-redeemer. But from this point on, they're
totally passive, and the kinsman-redeemer undertakes the whole work for
them. And all they're doing is sitting
back while he's doing all the work. He's getting the job done. everything that is necessary
for their redemption. Now, I want you to turn back
to Leviticus 25 with me. Leviticus 25. Now, this is the
story. This is where the Lord instituted
this law of the kinsmen, kinsmen redemption. The children of Israel,
Leviticus 25, the children of Israel, as you recall, when they
came into the promised land, God Almighty took it from the
people and whose hands it was, took it from their enemies, the
enemies of his people, and gave it to the twelve tribes of Israel,
gave the land to them. Although it still belonged to
the Lord, he gave it to them. Now look at verses twenty-three
through twenty-five, and some of them sold this land. When
the Lord said, The land shall not be sold forever. Now understand
the significance here. Look at this with spiritual eyes.
The land shall not be sold forever. The land is mine. Your strangers and sojourners
with me, and all the land of your possession, you shall grant
a redemption for the land. Now, if thy brother be waxen
poor and hath sold away some of his possession, if any of
his kin come to redeem it, then shall he redeem that which his
brother sold." So if the children of Israel at any time lost or
sold their land, which was still the Lord's land, it never was
theirs to begin with, but did they lose or sell any of that
land, after forty-nine years there came a time called the
year of Jubilee. If you want a blessing, you read
that sometime in the first part of Leviticus twenty-five, the
year of Jubilee. No matter what, the land reverted back to its
people in the year of Jubilee, and a trumpet sounded. After
the forty-ninth year, in the morning of the fiftieth, a trumpet
sounded, and they were free, debt free, and everything was
returned to them. But if that didn't happen, in
the meantime, the land could be purchased back by a kinsman.
until that jubilee, the kinsmen could purchase the land for them. Now look at verse forty-seven
and on. The verse is following, If a
sojourner or stranger wax rich by thee, and thy brother that
dwelleth by him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger
or sojourner by thee, or to the stock of the stranger's family,
after he is sold, he may be redeemed again. one of his brethren may
redeem him. Either his uncle or his uncle's
son may redeem him, or any that is nigh of kin unto him of his
family may redeem him, if he is able. For if he is able, he
may redeem himself. And he shall reckon, whoever
it is that redeems shall reckon with him that bought him." Now,
who do you suppose that's talking about? This is the law of the
kinsmen. Let me refer you back, and I'll
quit these few points here. The law of the kinsmen was this.
For one, in order for one to buy back the land that was lost
or sold by one of these Israelites, as is the case with Naomi and
her daughter-in-law, Ruth, who lost all of their possessions
through the death of their husbands, through famine and so forth.
The law of the kinsmen was that if these destitute and poor people
had a kinsman, had a near relative, that that near relative could
buy it all back for them. And this is the first qualification. He had to be related to them.
So Christ is called our kinsman, Redeemer, because Galatians says
he was made of a woman, bone of our bone. flesh of our flesh,
made of a woman, made under the law to redeem them that were
under the curse of the law, who had lost everything they had
through the fall, who were bankrupt, poverty-stricken beggars, who
had lost that which belonged to God in the first place, their
soul. And the second thing now, this kinsman This near of kin,
this relative, had to be able to get the job done. He had to be able to buy the
property back. And that's the reason the Lord
Jesus Christ must be God. He is very God of very God, because
only God can satisfy his holy law. And Christ alone was able
to fulfill the law of God, to satisfy God's justice And only
God could bear the sins of so many people on his mighty shoulders. Only God could do this. So Christ is able. He's next
of kin, he's a man, and he's able because he's God. And in
the third thing, we never answered this question last week concerning
Naomi and Ruth. He must be willing. Now notice
there in verse 20, Naomi said, I quoted it wrong to begin with,
but Naomi, this is what she said, the man is our nearest kin unto
us, and what she said here is that he's the one that has the
right to redeem. She didn't say, Rick, he's our
kinsman redeemer. She said, he could be, he might
be, he has the rights, he's the only one that can. But he doesn't
have to. She knew where she was. She knew
she was totally unworthy and undeserving of any mercy or grace
at the hands of this Boaz. He didn't need her, but she sure
needed him. And she knew where her only help
and salvation was coming from. Is he willing? Well, it appears
that he is. From everything I've seen and
heard and read thus far, it appears he's very willing. Is Christ
willing? He's able. Is it? Go and listen
to his words himself. Come unto me, all you that labor
and are heavy laden. I'll give you rest. I'll redeem
you. I'll redeem you. And here's another
law I didn't give you. Another law concerning the kinsman.
He had to be debt free himself. He could no opinion. He could
no opinion. This was part of this being able
to redeem if he owed a debt himself how was he going to be able to
redeem those who are in there. Christ is without saying. He's
without saying this is why he must be impeccable incapable
of sin because if he has any sin in himself or even is even
possibility that he could say and he must save himself he can't
save But in him is no sin, no sin. And he can incur all of
our indebtedness. I was reminded of the psalm that
says, none of us can by any means redeem our brother, because we're
in debt ourselves. But Christ can, and he did. He poured out his whole soul
unto death for the redemption of his chosen people. Here's
another requirement. this man who was going to undertake
this work of kinsman-redeemer in order to be rightfully called
the kinsman-redeemer, in order to actually do this part of the
redeemer, his work had to be certain and it had to be effectual. In other words, the kinsman could
not lay down an installment. He couldn't pay part of it and
come up with the rest later. No, he had to pay it in full. Every dime that the indebted
one owed, every debt that was against him, he had to absolve. Every debt. What if Boaz, let
me just conjecture here, what if Boaz had said unto Ruth and
Naomi, this is what these fools are saying today, what if Boaz
had said, now Naomi and Ruth, your land is going to cost me
thus. going to cost one million dollars. Now, these ladies didn't have
a penny. It's going to cost one million dollars. Now, I'll come
up with nine hundred thousand. Now, that's good, isn't it? That's good of me. That's big
of me. I'll come up with nine hundred thousand. If you'll come
up with the rest, you'll be redeemed. Why, Joachim said, I'll come
up with 999,999. Come up with one dollar, and
you'll be redeemed. Why, Naomi and Ruth would have
to throw their hands up in the air. We're lost forever. We don't
have a dollar. What if Christ had said that,
like these fools are saying today? I'll do all I can do, but the
rest is up to you. Huh? No, the song says Jesus
paid it off, all the debt I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. Did you hear what Jesus said
to me? They're all taken away. Your sins are pardoned. You're
free. They're all taken away. And so we have nothing. In my
hands, no price I bring, simply to the person and the work of
Christ, I claim. So next week, we're going to
see how that there's someone else. There's someone else that
Boaz had to contend with. There's someone else who had
some claims over these women. There was a nearer kinsman who
had some claims, and he had to be dealt with. And Boaz is going
to have to go to him face to face and take his shoe off. and do the work of Kenton to
redeem these ladies back. All right, let's stand for prayer. Our Lord, what a sweet and blessed,
precious morsel of truth this is that we've gleaned from your
Word tonight. We've dipped it down in the vinegared
wine of your blood. and then spices and anointing
the special workings of your Holy Spirit
upon your Word. Otherwise, we could not get anything
out of this. It would be just another dead,
dry story unto us. Yet we see our kinsman Redeemer
on every line. We see his glorious work for
us on every line and every page, and we thank you for that. Thank
you for the privilege of being here. We ask that you would keep
our minds stayed on thee, our kinsman-redeemer, who is working
all things out together for our good. And let us not be downcast,
and let not anything make us despair or become distraught
or in distress, because our great Boaz, our Lord and Savior, is
at work, and all things are working together. And he is bringing
everything for our good and for his glory. And someday we'll
look back and praise him to the top of our lungs for this great
work of redemption. In Christ's name we pray, we're
met together. Amen. Bye!