Not Without a Redeemer

Howdy. It's good to see you all this evening. You have your Bible. I want you to turn to Ruth chapter 4. You haven't been here. We've been going through a little summer series on the book of. Ruth, at least I have. And this is the last chapter tonight.

This is the season finale, as you will. I think it's helpful at this point just to kind of resituate us in the narrative of what's been happening up to this point. Very simply, the crisis of Ruth is this: Elimelech of Israel has died. His wife, Naomi, is a widow.

His sons are dead. His sons' wives are childless widows. And his God-given piece of land is going to forever belong to somebody else. And all remembrance of Elimelech's name is going to be obliterated. And Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth will spend the rest of their lives begging for scraps as poor beggars.

That is the disaster of Ruth. And that's what we see in chapter one. But we see the same God who brought that disaster begins to work and to bring redemption. We see that Ruth happens to go into the field of Boaz in chapter two. And we see in chapter three that Boaz promises to redeem Ruth.

And where we left off in chapter three is that Boaz has gone into the city to settle this with the other Redeemer who's. First in line. And so that's where we pick up in chapter 4. And I want to go ahead and read the chapter for us before we start.

Chapter 4, verse 1. Now Boaz went up to the gate and sat down there. And behold, the close relative of whom Boaz spoke was passing by. So he said, Turn aside, friend, sit down here. And he turned aside and sat down. He took ten men of the elders of the city and said, Sit down here.

So they sat down. Then he said to the closest relative, Naomi, who has come back from the land of Moab, has to sell the piece of land which belonged to our brother Elimelech. So I thought to inform you, saying, Buy it before those who were sitting here and before the elders of my people.

If you will redeem it, redeem it. But if not, tell me, that I may know, for there is no one but you to redeem it, and I am after you. And he said, I will redeem it. Then Boaz said, On the day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you must also acquire Ruth, the Moabitess, the widow of the deceased, in order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance.

The closest relative said, I cannot redeem it for myself, because I would jeopardize my own inheritance. Redeem it for yourself. You may have my right of redemption, for I cannot redeem it. Now, this was the custom in the former times in Israel concerning the redemption and the exchange of land to confirm any matter.

A man removed his sandal and gave it to another, and this was the manner of attestation in Israel. So the closest relative said to Boaz, Buy it for yourself. And he removed his sandal. Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, You are witnesses today that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech, and all that belonged to Killion and Machlon.

Moreover, I have acquired Ruth, the Moabitis, the widow of Machlon, to be my wife, in order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance, so that the name of the deceased will not be cut off from his brothers or from the court of his birthplace.

You are witnesses to-day. All the people who were in the court and the elders said, We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, both of whom built the house of Israel, and may you achieve wealth in Ephratha and become famous in Bethlehem.

Moreover, may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, through the offspring which the Lord will give you by this young woman. So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went into her. And the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son.

Then the women said to Naomi, Blessed is the Lord who has not left you without a redeemer today. And may his name become famous in Israel. May he also be to you a restorer of life and a sustainer of your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.

Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her lap and became his nurse. The neighbor women gave him a name, saying, A son has been born to Naomi. So they named him Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David. Now these are the generations of Perez.

To Perez was born Hezron, and to Hezron was born Ram, and to Ram Aminadab, and to Aminadab was born Nashon, and to Nashon, Salmon, and to Salmon was born Boaz, and to Boaz, Obed, and to Obed was born Jesse, and to Jesse, David. Let's pray. Father, this is such an incredible chapter of Scripture.

And we pray that you'd open our eyes to it, to all of your work of redemption. Lord, that we would see the That your name is to be blessed above every name, we would see your goodness. And Lord, we would see that in our lives too. We would see how this chapter connects to us, and that Jesus Christ would be seen as the supreme Redeemer, and that we would put our trust in Him and see His goodness toward us in every circumstance.

Father, I ask that you'd help me in this brief time with so much to unpack in this chapter, so much richness. You would just help me to be an effective communicator of your word, and you would help us to move through the narrative effectively and to see your glory.

In Jesus' name, amen. Well, chapter four, we see it all come together. It's very different from chapter one, where Naomi's life was falling apart. In chapter four, we see everything coming together. And it's an incredible chapter, and some of you have been along for the ride. You've seen, you've been with me for all four chapters now, and you feel maybe in your heart that you should be excited for how God is reversing all of this calamity in Naomi's life.

But there's a part of you that struggles a little bit, maybe. Maybe you feel. Like in your life, you're still kind of in that Ruth chapter one place where the circumstances of your life have brought you to a place of despair, place that Naomi was. And maybe you feel like God's left you there for a long time, a very long time.

You hear testimonies from your brothers and sisters in Christ of how things have turned out in their lives in this life. Prodigal came home, that family member finally got saved, season of singleness finally ended, the marriage finally got healed, the family finally came together again. You try to be excited, you rejoice with them, and then you look at your life, and it seems like there's not a happy ending.

And the more time that passes, it seems like the less likely there will be a happy ending. And then you look at your life, and it seems like it's rather than having a happy ending, it's the slow, gradual, meaningless destruction of all joy and hope until your view of life reaches a place of total bleakness with no hope in sight.

That's the place where Naomi was. In chapter one, if you're in that place tonight still, I prayed for you that God would speak through Ruth chapter 4 to you. And this is my prayer. If you're the person, and at some point in our lives, we're all that person that I just described, I want God to take that little flickering candle of trust in him and turn it into a bonfire of trust in the goodness and sovereignty of God in your life.

Look with me at verse 14 of chapter 4, and we'll get to this and see the significance. But I just want to give you a few words to have in your mind as we go through the chapter. Verse 14: Blessed is the Lord. Those four words, you have that in your mind as we go through chapter 4 because you're going to see this all through the chapter.

And so tonight, I want to give you at least three reasons from Ruth chapter 4 to bless the Lord. At least three. I'm sure there's more. We could spend more time here. Let's start with the first reason in chapter 4. And we see this in verses 1 to 12.

First reason to bless the Lord. God has not left Elimelech's family without a future. Look with me at verse 1. Now Boaz went up to the gate and sat down there, and behold, the close relative of whom Boaz spoke was passing by. So he said, Turn aside, friend, sit down here.

And he turned aside and sat down. Took ten men of the elders of the city and said, Sit down here. So they sat down. Okay, so remember, this is the critical moment for Boaz. He's made that beautiful promise to redeem Ruth in chapter 3, and he's sworn by the life of Yahweh to redeem her if the other guy opts out.

And so he's gone into the city that morning to settle this. And notice he's gone to the gate. He wants it to be public. The gate was a gathering place. That's where you met up. It's kind of the town square. And he summons the elders who would usually sit by the gate.

So he wants it to be legal, authorized. And he waits for this other guy to come. And so we're rooting for Boaz here. You know, this is the guy. We want Boaz to succeed and marry this woman of excellence, as he calls her. And so the other guy comes by providentially, and Boaz says, sit down, come aside.

And we're not told this guy's name. He's just, in Hebrew, you could almost translate it, Boaz says, turn aside, so-and-so. It's the author kind of is anonymizing this guy, and he wants us to root for Boaz. You've got to feel the tenseness here. Just pretend you don't know how Ruth chapter 4 ends.

Imagine Boaz is here standing, the other Redeemer. The elders are sitting to the side. A crowd of onlookers is standing by. Boaz's heart is maybe racing here, and he's sizing this guy up. And what is he going to say? How is he going to swing this for his favor?

The exchange starts in verse 3. Then he said to the closest relative, Naomi has come back from the land of Moab. Naomi, who has come back from the land of Moab, has to sell the piece of land which belonged to our brother Elimelech. So I thought to inform you, saying, Buy it before those who were sitting here, before the elders of my people.

If you will redeem it, redeem it. But if not, tell me, that I may know, for there is no one but you to redeem it, and I am after you. Okay, so Boaz launches his opening salvo here. And notice his focus is on Elimelech's field. That's entirely his focus.

This is the first time Elimelech's land is mentioned in the narrative. And it was kind of hinted at when he left Bethlehem and went to Moab. It was hinted that he left his field behind, and now Naomi, who's a poor widow, is having to sell that field to somebody.

There's a certain cleverness here with Boaz, the way he starts this. Because Boaz knew that marrying Ruth, redeeming her, and buying Elimelech's land and raising up heirs, he knew that that was a package deal. If he was to. Take on the role of redeemer as the Mosaic law intended, it meant doing both.

Now, the other guy, for whatever reason, doesn't seem to be aware of this. To him, it's just a land deal. So, Boaz starts by asking this guy, Do you want to buy Elimelech's field? Now, look at his response in verse 4. And he said, I will redeem it.

The other guy thinks he's getting a great deal. The math checks out. He's buying this field. There's more land, there's more crop produce, there's more stuff to leave his children. The math checks out here. And also, none of Elimelech's descendants are around to take the land back. This land that this guy buys would go forever into his possession.

He never has to give it back because Elimelech doesn't have any descendants. And so, this guy is thinking, this is great. And he wants to buy the land. And we're kind of thinking, this isn't good. We don't want this. But Boaz has an ace up his sleeve. Look at verse 5.

Then Boaz said, On the day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you must also acquire Ruth the Moabites, the widow of the deceased, in order to raise up the name of the deceased upon his inheritance. So Boaz makes his surprise move, and he reveals that the other guy wants to take on the role of.

Redeemer, he has to marry Ruth and raise up heirs for Elimelech to inherit that field. So now the math is really bad for this guy. He has to marry Ruth, and notice she's called the Moabitis here. She's a foreigner. He has to buy Elimelech's field, have children with her, and give it all to the firstborn for free.

That's way too expensive for this guy. That's a bad investment now. Look at verse 6. The closest relative said, I cannot redeem it for myself, because I would jeopardize my own inheritance. Redeem it for yourself. You may have my right of redemption, for I cannot redeem it. So that's it.

Boaz has won the redemption. He's cleverly kind of maneuvered this guy out, and this guy kind of disappears from the story after this. And redemption is being accomplished through Boaz. In verses 10 to 12, Boaz turns to the elders and the crowd that's gathered, and he ratifies the redemption.

Let me read that really quick. Verse 10, Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, You are witnesses today that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Killion and Machlon. Moreover, I have acquired Ruth the Moabitis, the widow of Machlon, to be my wife in order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance.

So that the name of the deceased will not be cut off from his brothers or from the court of his birthplace. You are witnesses today. All the people who were in the court and the elders said, We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, both of whom built the house of Israel.

And may you achieve wealth in Ephratha and become famous in Bethlehem. Moreover, may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah through the offspring which the Lord will give you by this young woman. And so we see redemption is accomplished and ratified here.

This was kind of a legal civil arrangement proceeding. The elders are witnesses. They're authorizing, hey, we support this. We ratify this. Something to remember as well, Boaz is bearing the same cost that this other guy would have had to bear to redeem Ruth. It's not like it doesn't cost Boaz anything.

It's all the same cost is happening to him as well. But it's no sacrifice to him when he considers marrying Ruth and redeeming her and Naomi. And you see the contrast here with Boaz and the other guy. Boaz is interested primarily in caring for Ruth and Naomi. The other guy is in it for the land, for the money.

You see that contrast between Boaz's extraordinary self-sacrificial love and the other guy is just what we would expect. And while in chapter 1, it was Ruth's self-sacrificial love that causes the story to move forward. Now it's Boaz at great cost redeeming this family from poverty and obliteration. It was the God of Boaz working through him as his Redeemer to save the future of Elimelech's family.

And so God has reversed the catastrophe of Elimelech. God did not leave Elimelech's family without a future. So verses 1 to 12 show us that what God is providentially capable of through his Redeemer, there's more here that the author wants to show us about God's character. And that brings us to the second reality about God in chapter 4.

He has not left Naomi without a Redeemer. And we see this in verses 13 to 15. In verse 13, so Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife, and he went into her. And the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. So the marriage is joyfully consummated.

But I want you to notice something significant here. Ruth was married before Boaz. She was married to Elimelech's son. But apparently, for all the 10 years, They were in Moab, they didn't have any kids. And so Ruth may have been barren in some way. And notice it says, and the Lord enabled her to conceive.

Literally, Yahweh gave her conception. God is answering the prayer of the elders in verse 11. And if we read this too quickly, we could just conclude: you know, that's nice. God's sovereign. He can cause somebody to get pregnant and have a baby. That's great. There's so much more here.

The next, this verse and the two after this are so theologically loaded for this book. God has sovereignly given Naomi a son, maybe even miraculously in Ruth's case. I've got to take you back to chapter one to appreciate this. So flip back to Ruth chapter one. Back into Naomi's devastation, desolation.

Look at verse 11 of chapter 1. Naomi speaking to her daughters-in-law. Return, my daughters. Why should you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb that they may be your husbands? Return, my daughters. Go, for I am too old to have a husband. If I said, I have hope, if I should even have a husband tonight and also bear sons, would you therefore wait until they were grown?

Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is harder for me than for you. For the hand of the Lord has gone forth against me. Look now at verse 19. So they both went until they came to Bethlehem. And when they had come to Bethlehem, all the city was stirred because of them.

And the women said, Is this Naomi? Naomi's response in verse 20. She said to them, Do not call me Naomi. Call me bitter, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has witnessed against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?

So Naomi, we've re-entered into her devastation in chapter one. And what the author is doing in chapter five is he's showing us that God has totally reversed this situation. And one thing that's important to recognize is there's never any question in the book of Ruth as to who is responsible for Naomi's life.

In chapter one, the author doesn't pause and interrupt Naomi and say, Naomi said this because she didn't know that Satan was buffeting her. Or Naomi said this because she didn't realize that God wasn't involved in this. The author doesn't say that. The women in Bethlehem don't correct her.

God is governing this situation in Naomi's life, but we see that the same hand that brought this into her life. And chapter one is reversing this. In chapter four, in a way that would have been impossible, Naomi thought that she wouldn't have a son, and now God's brought a son through her daughter-in-law.

So we see God as the one who undoes all of the calamity in Naomi's life. And what's the appropriate response? Look at verse 14, first part of verse 14. Then the women said to Naomi, Blessed is the Lord, who has not left you without a redeemer today. So the other women are seeing all that's happened in Naomi's life.

They're seeing this and they're saying, Blessed be the Lord. It's a phrase that celebrates the goodness and sovereignty and faithfulness of God toward Naomi. And it's a phrase that appears throughout the Old Testament, usually celebrating some deliverance that God has accomplished for one of his people. The book of Ruth, it's really the book of Naomi, has been said.

It's a story of Naomi and God in many ways. It's a story of how Naomi's view of God has been totally transformed in ways that could not have been if the disaster of chapter one hadn't happened. And God has done more in chapter four here by bringing Naomi a son than just bringing her life back.

Back to status quo, he's done the greatest thing he could do in any of our lives, showing us more of his glory. And so, the response, really, the narrator speaking through the women here, Blessed is the Lord. Do you respond this way when God moves in your life?

I know there's times where I haven't. That should be our response. Let's read the rest of verse 14. Then the women said to Naomi, Blessed is the Lord who has not left you without a Redeemer today, and may his name become famous in Israel. May he also be to you a restorer of life and a sustainer of your old age.

For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him. Now, it's something to notice: the Redeemer of verse 14 is actually Ruth's son, not Boaz. That's clear from verse 15, where it says, Ruth has given birth to him. The nearest reference of him is in verse 14, where the Redeemer is mentioned.

And so, Ruth's son is called a Redeemer because he's the one that's going to care for Naomi and provide for her and sustain her in her old age. And so, we see that God has not left Naomi without a Redeemer, protector, provider. Notice also that incredible description of Ruth.

Verse 15, your daughter-in-law who loves you. God has worked through the self-sacrificial love of Ruth to reverse this, reverse Naomi's disaster. God has not left her without a Redeemer. It's at this point where I believe if you're engaging with Ruth chapter 4 honestly, you begin to ask a question.

What about my circumstances? Will God, things turned out well for Naomi in this book. You know, her life's destroyed in chapter 1, and then everything turns for the better in chapter 4. Will that happen in my life? That's not a wrong question to ask in this book. And questions like this that confront us with Ruth really touch the deepest emotional struggles we have living in a fallen world.

Now, how do I answer this question? I'm accountable before God for how I answer the question of: will Ruth chapter 4 happen in my life? There's two claims from Scripture that are at tension with each other here. Two claims. Claim number one: the book of Ruth. Should expand your faith in God's redeeming power rather than limit it.

One of the goals of the author of Ruth was to show us that God can take the most horrific, broken situation and redeem it for his glory. And so that should give us a certain hopefulness, an expectancy to look to God to be our provider, a sovereign provider.

But claim two is this: we are finite. We don't know how things will turn out even 30 seconds from now. And this life is full of uncertainty and suffering and difficulty. And one of the hardest things about living in this world, as cursed and broken as it is from Adam's sin, is this reality of uncertainty about suffering.

And so we're caught in this tension between looking to God expectantly, claim one, and the reality that we're finite, claim two. We're caught in that tension in a fallen world. The women of verse 14 bless God because he's brought that deliverance in Naomi's life. But what if he doesn't in ours?

Can we still bless God? That's the question. So if you haven't found Felt that tension, you will at some point. Suffering is going to break into your life repeatedly, but you need to know that there is a place, rather, a person in whom we can find certainty in this fallen world between those two tensions.

And that brings us to this last reality about God in Ruth chapter 4. God has not left us without a Savior. And we see this in verses 16 to 22. Verse 16 continues the thought of verse 15. Naomi becomes the special caretaker of Ruth's son. She enjoys a special relationship with him.

And we see that her son is given a name in verse 17. The neighbor women gave him a name, saying, A son has been born to Naomi. So they named him Obed. Just stop there for a second. A son has been born to Naomi. That is such a concise way the narrator tells us about God's goodness to her.

A son has been born, something that was impossible in chapter one. Pick up verse 17 again. So they named him Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David. So, with a few verses here, the author also shows us that the book of Ruth serves a bigger purpose.

In the Bible storyline. And after verse 17, he gives us a genealogy spanning four verses that's connected to David. And so David suddenly introduced to us King David as a descendant of Ruth's son, Obed. This little genealogy in verses 18 to 22 isn't something that the author just kind of clumsily pasted on to the end of the book.

It shows us, it's very important, it shows us that Boaz is descended from Israel's patriarchs. Notice he starts with Perez and is thus a worthy ancestor of David. And so the goal of the book of Ruth, if you really could summarize it in one simple sentence, is to get us to David and show us a lot of things about God along the way.

We learn about David in the book of Samuel that he was a king that God specially chooses over Israel. He was a man after God's own heart. He's that model king of the Old Testament. He delivers Israel from its enemies. He sets the nation on a trajectory to worship God.

He prepares the construction of the temple. So David does all of these great things in the Old Testament. But at the same time, we look at the narrative of David's life, we find he's a flawed, cripplingly sinful man. David fails in horrific ways with Bathsheba, the murder of her husband, the census.

David can't ultimately fully unify the nation. His own son leads a civil war against him. And David can't prevent the disaster that overtakes the nation after his death. And more importantly, David can't deliver Israel or the rest of humanity from the most fundamental problem, and that's the problem of sin.

And he can't reverse the effects of the fall of Adam. So the answer to Israel's and the rest of humanity's most fundamental issues is not David. There's a better David. I want you to turn to Matthew chapter 1. Matthew chapter 1. I want to show you something. Some of you already know where I'm going with this.

Matthew, the author of Matthew's gospel, picks up where the author of Ruth and the rest of the Old Testament leave off. He introduces us to the better David in Matthew 1, chapter 1, verse 1. The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

So Matthew begins his gospel. Also, with a genealogy. This is why you need to read genealogies. They're really important. Don't skip those. And some of you are familiar with the fact that in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus' line, there are four women mentioned: four really prominent Old Testament women.

You have Rahab, you have Tamar, Mary, Ruth. And so we see, and the mention of Ruth here tells us that God worked through the life of Naomi to not just give us David, but to ultimately give us Christ. And Jesus is that perfect David. He is the one who came and did what David couldn't do.

He forgives our sins through his crosswork. He changes our hearts through the Holy Spirit. He undoes the effects of the fall. He will restore Israel. And not only that, he will restore all things at his coming. And the book of Ruth leaves us really and shows us in miniature what God is doing on a universal scale.

In Ruth, we see God's sovereignty and goodness to totally reverse the disaster of one woman's life and cause her to appreciate his glory in new ways. We zoom out in the rest of history, we see that God will eventually. Accomplish not a partial restoration like we see in Ruth, but a restoration so comprehensive, so expansive, that the Apostle John's vocabulary is really stretched to the limit to try to describe it.

Revelation 22, don't turn there. Verse 3, John describes the new creation that Jesus will bring. There will no longer be any curse, and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his bondservants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads, and there will no longer be any night, and they will not have the need of the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them, and they will reign forever and ever.

So, just as God was sovereignly governing all the details of Naomi's life toward that restoration, that filling in chapter 4 from her emptiness, the same God is sovereignly governing all things toward the restoration through Jesus Christ. That plan included the life and the horrific death of God's Son on the cross so that you could be forgiven, we could be forgiven and have eternal life in God's kingdom and be saved.

Not only saved, but have that certainty that Jesus rose from the dead and that there is a God who is sovereignly moving history toward the new creation, showing us that there's no such thing as a senseless tragedy. That notion that you just kind of, you got a bad roll with the dice, you know, you got on the wrong side of fate.

The resurrection, the work of Christ, shows us that God uses the sufferings of this life to show us dimensions of his character that we could not have known otherwise. Naomi couldn't have known the goodness of God, the meticulous providence, the power and kindness of God toward her if things had not happened the way they happened in chapter one.

We know that living in a world of sin and the fall is not, it's very hard. And as Christians, we live in this tension of this life, this uncertainty. How will things turn out in my life? Will the pain stop? The Bible is aware of our struggle. Paul describes this struggle as groaning.

Listen to Paul's response as he deals with this in Romans 8, verse 19. He says, For I consider that the sufferings of this present life are not worthy to be compared with the The glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.

And not only this, but also we ourselves having the first fruits of the Spirit. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of the body. You're going to groan in this life. There are going to be times where you go into Ruth chapter 1 and you groan and it hurts.

And we long for something better. We have this longing in our hearts for the perfect, for the new creation. But the tragedy is that we often take that longing and we try to drown it through substitutes, social media, relationships, entertainment, busyness, anything other than Christ. And when the high stops, we're left with this emptiness.

The longing is still there. C.S. Lewis writes this: If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. That longing that we have when we reach the end of Naomi's story and see how it turned out is a gift from God to us.

Because if we pay attention to it, we'll see that it can only be satisfied in Jesus Christ, in the future we have with Him. So we can say with the women of verse 14 of Ruth chapter 4: Blessed be God, who has not left me without a Savior, without a Redeemer.

That Savior, Jesus Christ, He's not some abstraction, He's real and personal. He's building His church, He's gathering His people from the nations. That song that John sang has a line, For I know whatever befalls me, Jesus doeth all things well. If you're one of His people and you're struggling with the weight of your circumstances, you're in Ruth chapter 1 and you're in the fire.

Take all the worry, all that concern that you feel about how things will turn out, and let that longing direct you to Christ. And the future that you have with Him, the revealing of the sons of God, the redemption of your body, the restoration that God will bring, that new creation, where you will be with Christ and with His people, and you can bless God for that.

That's where the book of Ruth leaves us. You know, it puts us on this train track and gives us the momentum and carries us forward to look past the book of Ruth and to see the redemption, the ultimate culmination of the redeeming work of Christ, the greater David.

I want to wrap up with another quote from C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. He says, This: I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, that's heaven, obviously, which I shall not find till after death. I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside.

I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country to help others do the same. That's our goal in life. We're moving through this life, it's temporary, it's almost an engagement period, as one pastor put it. It's temporary. And there's longings in our hearts.

There's longings that the book of Ruth confronts us with that can only be satisfied in Christ and in his new creation and departing and being with him in that future. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the book of Ruth and such an incredible story, Father. Things that I know that as I studied, I never would have imagined the riches that you embedded in this book, and the riches of your sovereignty and your goodness toward us.

I pray that you would cause us to see that. Lord, I know that even this week, my own life, I've been so tempted to doubt your sovereignty and your goodness toward me. And Lord, I thank you just for the sanctifying, edifying nature of the Word of God, that your Spirit uses the Scripture to encourage us and to lift us out of despair.

Lord, cause us to just to deal with these truths during the week. I pray you to remind us, show us, and give us that longing for Christ and for his kingdom. And Lord, help us to share that with others, Lord, other suffering people in our life. I pray that you would help us.

In Jesus' name, let me close our service tonight with