Ruth No.5 Redemption Accomplished and Applied v2

Let's turn to that book of Ruth again. We're into the fourth chapter. Listen to this, a quotation from Oswald Chambers.

I only read it three quarts of an hour ago, so you couldn't have anything that's hotter than that as far as the quote is concerned. He says, life is not worth living apart from redemption. Life is not worth living apart from redemption.

I was brought up in somewhat unsophisticated, yet I thank God for them, circles in the north of England from a Christian point of view. We used to really love singing old songs from the Moody and Sankey days. There's one song that makes you sing, redeemed how I love to proclaim it, redeemed by the blood of the lamb, redeemed and so happy in Jesus, a child forever I am.

Then the echo came in as you rose to a crescendo, redeemed, redeemed, redeemed by the blood of the lamb. My friend, if I can send you out this morning with just an understanding of what that word redeemed means, then I think I will have achieved at least partially the goal set before me in this passage of scripture. You know, when you go to the New Testament, you find that there are several words which are used for the term redeemed.

It's just translated the same in the English Bible, but in the Greek language, it's much, much richer. For example, in Revelation and chapter five and verse nine, we have a description there of people who have been saved, people like the vast majority of my congregation who are Christian folk, and they're depicted in these words, Revelation 5, 9, and they sang a new song, you are worthy to take the scroll and to open the seals because you were slain and with your blood you purchased or redeemed men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. The word translated redeemed in the authorized version, purchased in the New Testament, it has the idea of going into a marketplace and buying something.

But when you go back to Galatians and chapter one, in the 13th verse, there's another use of the word redeemed, another facet of meaning. For we read there of folk, chapter three, I said chapter one, Galatians 3, 13, we read of folk who have been saved as a result of confessing Jesus as Lord and not through the law of Moses. Clearly, no one is justified before God by the law because the righteous will live by faith.

The law is not based on faith, on the contrary, the man who does these things will live by them. Now verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us for it. The first use of the word redeemed was being bought in the marketplace.

The marketplace in Roman days was where you did all your transactions. It was equivalent to Sainsbury's of today. Galatians 3, 13 was not just being bought in but bought out.

You've got the stuff in the trolley, you've got it through the counter successfully, or through the checkout part successfully, and now it belongs to you. And there's another use of the word redeemed. It's got the idea of a purchase price having been supplied.

1 Peter 1, 18, we were not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver and gold but with the precious blood of our Lord Jesus. Now, why am I taking you to the New Testament? Well, you see, because in the New Testament you've got set down the basis of our salvation and very often illustrations of that salvation are granted to us in the Old Testament. So the story of Ruth and Boaz, a very lovely story of human affection.

But it seems to me it's heightened, it's beyond that. It's an illustration of someone anticipating in some degree the very love of the Lord and pouring that love on the object which perhaps seems to be unworthy. Quite a surprising receptacle for such love.

I speak, of course, of Ruth. Now Boaz is a Jew. Ruth, a Gentile.

Boaz lived in Bethlehem. Ruth brought up in the land of Moab. Ruth has lost everything, her husband, her livelihood.

She comes back into the territory, into the vicinity of Bethlehem, you recall, in the company of Naomi. Both very distressed womenfolk indeed. And then Boaz comes on the scene.

Now wasn't there a time, my friend, in your life, the majority of you here, 95%, when your Boaz came on the scene, your Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he made your life precious. He made it acceptable because of certain things that he did. Now it seems to me that in some ways this is anticipated and illustrated in the fourth chapter.

So let's proceed in working our way through the contents of this lovely passage of Scripture. Here is Boaz, and he's got his eyes set on Ruth, and he's going to redeem her. He's going to help her and Naomi during a critical time in their experience.

You recall the context. Those of you who were present a couple of weeks ago, well you have the joy of reading the first three chapters this afternoon, and you'll understand more what I'm sharing at this moment. Boaz goes down to the town gate, and he sits there because there happens to be someone else who is a closer relative to Naomi than he is, and he wants to spot this man.

You see, somebody has got to help these two womenfolk. Boaz is prepared, but according to the law in those days, there was someone else who had a greater right, who should have had first opportunity. And so Boaz goes to the city gate.

Now by the town gate, you've got to imagine a meeting point, stone slabs in the walls. Very often transactions took place there. When Abraham, you recall, in Genesis, what is it, 19, was purchasing a piece of land that would ultimately act as his sepulcher, and that of his wife.

The transaction takes place in the city gate. When Absalom decides to try to take the authority of his father David, and suggests that he would make a better king, he goes to the city gate and ingratiates himself with the people, as he takes on the position of a magistrate. It's where it all happened, at the city gate, you see.

Well, here's Boaz, early in the morning. He's deliberately there because he wants to catch the nearest relative to Naomi, and speak to him. And so, in an unassuming fashion, the latter character, the kinsman redeemer, comes by.

I say unassuming, because he doesn't realize what's going to happen that day. When the kinsman redeemer he had mentioned came along, Boaz addresses him. He calls him to attention.

I wonder if you're a school teacher, how do you call people, your children, to attention? You say, well, you've yet to discover the formula that works. Have you ever noticed how kids call one another to attention? Oy! At least that's what they used to say in the Tottenham School, where I was teaching. And sometimes, if a lad was really mad with another lad, he'd come to me and he said, you know that fellow, he's a so-and-so.

And he left me to understand, or to sort of read into what he meant by so-and-so. He didn't want to speak his name because he'd been offended by his pal. Well, in one sense, you get that here.

There is no indication of the name of the nearest kinsman of Naomi. The NIV and the RSV, they go beyond what is permitted, actually, in the original language by saying, come over here, my friend, and sit down. The AV makes a better attempt, but doesn't get much further.

Someone's got the AV. Just read out that second verse, I've forgotten it. Ho, the first verse, the latter part.

Ho, everyone, is it? Or ho, someone. Ho, such a one. Thank you, Len Dickerton.

He never was a shy man. Ho, such a one. So, this man goes by, and you see Boaz spots him, and he says, ho, oi there, so-and-so.

And the man's attention is caught as Boaz takes him to task. In front of, verse two, the ten elders of the town. You see, this piece of redemption in which this man is going to act on behalf of Naomi and Ruth has got to be publicly enacted.

This isn't going to be done in a corner. Neither, incidentally, was the redemption achieved by you in the person of our Lord Jesus. It wasn't done in a corner, was it? That Calvary death, a public spectacle for those who were hostile to look at, as well as those who were sympathetic, the handful of women folk.

Sit here, says Boaz to old so-and-so, and to the ten elders. And then the legal transaction, which is quite fascinating. This is the only record we've got of this sort of transaction from the ancient days in the whole of Scripture.

The transaction takes place. Then he said to the kinsman-redeemer, verse three, Naomi, who has come back from Moab, is selling the piece of land that belonged to our brother Elimelech. I thought I should bring the matter to your attention and suggest that you buy it in the presence of these seated here and in the presence of the elders of my people.

If you will redeem it, do so. But if you will not, tell me so that I will know. For no one has the right to do it except you, and I am next in line.

You know, my friends, it says in the New Testament of Nathanael, here is an Israelite in whom there is no guile. A guileless person is a wonderful person to know. You've got someone who's guileless within your fraternity of friends, then you are very, very favored indeed.

It seems to me that here is the Old Testament counterpart to Nathanael, Boaz. You see, he's already got his affections aroused by Ruth. He's already determined that he will endeavor to help Ruth and Naomi, but he's scrupulously honest.

He won't exploit the situation that this unnamed man, who is perhaps referred to as so-and-so by the narrator, by the writer of this book, to indicate that he's not really of importance because he fails to redeem. So-and-so, he's not to be exploited. Incidentally, never exploit your friendships.

It's a terrible thing for a Christian to exploit friendships. For a pastor, for an elder, for a deacon, for an ordinary person, count your friendships as precious. Don't exploit the people whom God comes within the parameters of your life.

Boaz will deal honorably with this man. He puts him in the picture. Look, these two, there's land available.

It needs to be redeemed. They're in dire circumstances, and I don't want to take the advantage of you simply because I've got the intelligence, I've got the information, and you haven't. I thought, verse 4, I should bring the matter to your attention and suggest that you buy it in the presence of these seated here, and so forth.

But if you will not tell me so that I will know, for no one has the right to do it except you, and I am next in line. Here is Boaz acting on behalf of Naomi. You see, in those days, a woman couldn't act on her own behalf, not legally.

She had to have someone to represent her. Now, don't get too upset about that because, scripturally speaking, the same obtains for us in the counsels of God. You see, you can't act for yourself whether you're a sister or a brother, can you? You can't really feel satisfied.

You can't feel relaxed in the presence of God, acting on your own merit. You need someone else. You need a Redeemer.

You need someone who will plead your case. The final hymn, if ever we get time to sing it, will speak of our Lord Jesus as our friend and intercessor. Love's Redeemer, plead for me, because there are things that only Boaz Jesus can do.

You can't do it for yourself. So Naomi and Ruth, they encapsulate our own circumstance. They need it.

We need an intercessor. Here is Boaz, and he pleads on their behalf. In what did Israel generally turn to as far as its possible salvation was concerned? I put that question to you a couple of weeks ago.

I want to re-put it because it's good for you to be reminded of things that you learned in past weeks. What anticipated the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? Well, the law of Moses. Is that not so? You see, God gives the Israelites ten commandments.

Live by these commandments and the subsidiary commandments. And not only will it be a good, wholesome society, but you will honor me and you can keep my company, but break that law and you are in trouble. Incidentally, it's not really true to say that you break the law of God, is it? I learned that from Campbell Morgan, a great preacher years ago.

You can't break God's law. You see, God's law remains inviolable. You can't break it.

It remains constant. What you do is you break yourself on God's law. All that the world might see the sense of that.

God sets down his code of sexual conduct. Break that law. No, you break yourself.

And that's what we're seeing increasingly in our society. Increasingly, I say. Now, when you've been broken by the law, you're in a perilous condition, you see.

You're as bad as David. Here he is in Psalm 51. He's broken the law of God.

Actually, in the sexual area, though it's only coincidental that I pull this one up as an illustration, it was at the back of my mind and I got through first before any other. Sacrifices? Well, David could have brought thousands of them. But sacrifice you don't deserve.

I can't satisfy you. I can't pay you off by satisfying you with sacrifices. There's only one thing that David can appeal to when he's in this desperate condition of being judged, guilty by God.

And that is the nature of God, the character of God, the grace of God. You see, if your nearest redeemer, if the thing that you are relying upon is your own good works, is keeping true to the law of Moses, then you are in desperate straits. It may be the nearest redeemer, but there is no redemption possible because it anticipates so much moral conduct, so much input on your part.

And so this redeemer, going back to the story, this nearest relative, immediately on hearing what is at stake, surprises Boaz by saying, I will redeem it. Then Boaz, verse five, puts the rest of the responsibilities there. On the day you buy the land from Naomi and from Ruth the Moabitess, you acquire the dead man's widow in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property.

You see, it's a full redemption that these two women require. Now, are you in a position to do this? And the man realizes he's not. There are a number of reasons which have been put, deduced from scripture and brought by the Jewish writings, the Targum, as to why this near redeemer rejects the possibility of acting as a savior to these two women.

You see, maybe he's a materialist. He wants to make a name for himself. And he knows that if he redeems this land, if he acts on behalf of Naomi and Ruth, then, in effect, all his effort and his work will go to the credit, so to speak, of their ancestors, of Naomi's husband and Ruth's husband and so forth.

You see, he wants a name for himself, doesn't he? That's really what he says in the sixth verse. I cannot redeem it because I might endanger my own estate. The Jewish Targums, writings to which I make reference, that they deduce that actually he was a suspicious fellow.

Marrying Ruth has already cost the life of one Jew. He doesn't want to follow. Well, whether that's right or not, I don't know.

But it is obvious that he is reluctant to come to the position of acting as redeemer of Naomi and Ruth. He wants to preserve his own name. Isn't that rather ironical, my friend? He doesn't want his own inheritance to be endangered.

And yet, the man who does act as redeemer, it's his name that's stuttered throughout the whole book. Boaz, Boaz, Boaz, Boaz, Boaz. And the man who wants to retain his name historically, well, the Hebrew writer calls him the old so-and-so.

Do you know there's immortality in an act of goodness, so to speak. You see, when you do something on behalf of another in the name of God, the record is kept. You see, it's the rich man in the story whose name we don't know, Lazarus we do know, the beggar.

It's the action of the woman who came along and brought her ointment to the feet of the Lord Jesus, which is revered in Scripture as her particular memorial. If you want a memorial, my friend, it will grow in the accumulated way. That you heap the blessings of God upon other people as you redirect his goodnesses towards you.

Because that, you see, falls into line with the character of God, who's a good God, a gracious God, a generous God. I believe that a book should be written on the generosity of God. And I believe that his people should partake of that generosity.

Well, here you see is Boaz, and he's very much like the Lord in a great sense. Here is this kinsman redeemer, this old so-and-so who doesn't really want to part with his shekels, who's so concerned about preserving his name and his livelihood. No, I can't redeem these two.

It's too great a cost. You redeem it yourself. I can't do it.

I once read in Scripture of a time in heaven when God the Father cried out for someone who would go and help the lost sons of Adam. And a voice responded, here am I. Send me our go-all redeemer, our Lord Jesus. Verse seven takes us into a custom that had fallen into disuse at the time that the chronicler was putting down this narrative, so he explains.

In those days when you transferred property, you took a shoe from off your foot and you handed it to the person who was buying the property. Now, I like that, quite frankly. I think it would be a jolly sight, less expensive if solicitors.

You can work that one through yourself. You see, the shoe stands for obviously the place where you put your foot. I mean, you don't need to be very logical to work this out, do you? And so here is this kinsman redeemer, this possible kinsman redeemer who's missed the opportunity, and he takes his shoe from off his foot in the presence of the elders and all the people who are gathered around, because Middle Eastern people are very curious.

They'd want to know what was happening, and he gives it into the keeping of Boaz. Incidentally, though, time's beat me. I could have taken you to the book of Deuteronomy, which spells out a little more clearly the whole thinking behind that particular action, but you can check it through for yourself.

Buy it yourself, verse 8, and he removed his sandal. Then Boaz announces to all the elders and all the people, today you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelech, Gileon, and Maelon. I've also acquired Ruth the Moabite, Maelon's widow, as my wife in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property so that his name will not disappear from among his people or from the town records.

Today you are my witnesses. There's an Arabic custom. When a man divorces his wife, he takes off his slipper, and he says, she is my slipper, and I cast her off.

Now that's basically what the nearest relative did as far as Naomi and Ruth were concerned. He took off the slipper. He divorced himself from the proceedings.

He didn't want to have any interest in their lives whatsoever. I want to tell you something about the Lord Jesus, our kinsman redeemer. He never takes the shoe from off his foot.

He never takes the slipper, if you like, to change my illustration, from his foot. He never divorces nor distances himself from people like you and me who so desperately need to be redeemed. You see, one of the great calamities in Hebrew society was for a family line to come to an end.

The Hebrews would do anything to preserve life. You know this business in Palestine at the moment, in Lebanon, where the Palestinians are keeping one Hebrew pilot, one Jewish pilot, who bailed out of his aircraft and he was taken to prison. And there is the possibility of 400 Palestinians being bargained for over against that one man's life.

Now I'm not arguing the ethics. I'm not arguing the politics of this. I'm just using it as a contemporary illustration for you to understand the Jewish way of mind.

You see, nothing is more important to the Jew than the preservation of his own race and his own family. And so here is Naomi and Ruth. The family line is at an end, or so it would seem, unless a kinsman will come along.

Because it can only be a near kinsman who can do the act of redemption, who can create the finances that are necessary, and who can take Ruth as wife and through her perpetuate the family line, as in the grace of God, children might be granted. Now my friends, you're thinking people. That's the reason why you'll come and listen to a half hour, 35 minutes address on a Sunday morning.

Some people couldn't take that length of teaching. But you're thinking people. So I hardly need to stay on the subject matter for you to work through the principles.

You see, it's not so much Boaz and Ruth that are important. It's you and me and our Lord Jesus. We desperately need a Redeemer.

Old Job, and I date him as one of the earliest characters that you read in the Old Testament. He knows. He knows his need.

Oh, that there was a Redeemer. Oh, that there was a daysman, an umpire, who could stand between me and God. And then in a flush of remarkable faith, he perceives that a daysman, a Redeemer, is there.

And he says, even though his body is emaciated, he feels that he's dying. I know that my Redeemer lives. That at the last day, he will stand upon this earth, whom mine eyes shall see for themselves and not another.

Old Job knows the need that he has of a Redeemer. And when the Lord Jesus Christ is born into this world, he comes as part of our kith and kin. He's son of man.

He's also son of God. He comes the closest one to us, who can do for us what nobody else can do. You see, the law couldn't do it.

Romans 8, verse 3 will tell you that. It was powerless. Sometimes I go to Eastbourne as I was preaching there the other Saturday.

And though I didn't have time, I was in rather rushes. I had to go on to Torquay to preach later on. I like to go to the Eclipse by Beachy Head.

I like to see the lighthouse there. And yet you know that lighthouse, although it's very significant, there is one thing it cannot do, it cannot say. It can warn.

It will flash the light on and off, but the ship that comes nearby too close to the rocks will be smashed up. The lighthouse can't do anything. It's like the law.

It's like a kinsman redeemer that's ineffective. But you see, the Lord Jesus Christ not only warns, he has the ability, maintaining the metaphor, he's not just the lighthouse, he's also the dinghy. He's also the lifeboat.

He can go to where you and where I happen to be and come to our attention and deliver to us what we need more than anything else. Our redemption. And so as we conclude, here is Boaz and in front of the elders, in front of the townspeople, he witnesses and they witness to the fact that he has gone through this transaction and he has redeemed this woman.

They are his spectators on the scene. Today you are my witnesses. The last part of verse 10.

Where did I start in my address? Oswald Chambers. Life is not worth living apart from redemption. He's right, you know.

Jesus came and bought us in the slave market of sin. Not only did he buy us there, he brought us out of the slave market of sin. How did he do it? By the shedding of his own blood.

You remember? Not redeemed with corruptible things like silver and gold, but with his precious blood. He didn't leave it to the law. The law couldn't do it.

He came nearer to us than the law could ever get. He came as our savior. He came as our friend.

He came to offer us salvation. Now, have you received him? Is he your kinsman redeemer? Have you been covered by his love? Has his blood bought for you your eternal salvation? If there was ever a time when men and women in this country needed the ministry of Boaz Jesus, I tell you, it's now. Let's pray.