21st Sunday after Pentecost “Happily Ever After”
October 22, 2023 Ruth 4; Eph. 5 vs
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Dear brothers & sisters in Christ,
Today we finish our look at the book of Ruth. When we left off last week, Naomi (the mother-in-law) sent Ruth (the daughter-in-law) to Naomi’s relative -Boaz- in order to request that he follow God’s directive of Lev.25, and redeem them out of their sorrow & poverty. Boaz pledges to them that he will, in the proper procedure. He must go to Naomi’s closer relative to arrange it. That’s the majority of chpt.4, which we will touch on in a few minutes. Let me read the few concluding verses of chpt.4, and then a few other verses from Ephesians 5, to set up our theme.
+++++++++++++++
(from Ruth 4, easy-to-read version, altered)
13 So Boaz married Ruth. The Lord allowed Ruth to become pregnant, and she had a son. 14 The women there said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who has given you a redeemer. …. 15 This child will make you alive again, and care for you in your old age. Your daughter-in-law…loves you, and she is better for you than seven sons.” …They named the child Obed.
Obed was the father of Jesse, and Jesse was the father of David.
++++++++++++++++++++
(from Eph.5)
1 Follow God’s example as dearly loved children 2 and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or blemish, but holy and blameless.
28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. …29 After all,…
a person feeds and cares for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery— but this refers to Christ and the church. 33 but in the same way, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
We’ve got a couple of weddings today: one in the OT, the other in the NT. Both are fully founded on grace = ‘grace’ is God’s undeserved & loving attitude toward us – because of Christ. His grace toward us results in a life of gracious, serving love we live toward others. A main point today is that both of these wonderful things – are quite costly.
The first wedding is of Boaz & Ruth; both of their family’s history involves scandal, so neither one thought they had a chance for a ‘happily-ever-after’ story. Our groom is a descendant of Rahab. Rahab was a gentile prostitute at Jericho. However, when Israel came to take possession of the Promised Land, she trusted God, & hid the spies in her home & kept them safe. When God caused Jericho’s walls to tumble down, Rahab & her family were saved.
She married an Israelite, & her great-great-great-grandson (or so) was Boaz.
And our bride -Ruth- is a Moabite; a descendant of an incestuous relationship between Lot & his daughter. Sometimes the drama in Scripture sounds like a bad ‘soap opera.’
Now, this first wedding does have a happy ending, but it comes at a cost.
The other wedding involves Christ, and God’s encouragement to husbands & wives in Ephesians chpt 5. Paul holds up Christ Jesus as the true husband to all of us sinners. In order to ‘have & to hold’ us, Jesus gave His life as a complete sacrifice; and thru His baptismal washing of water with the word, we follow Him with a life of costly, serving love toward others.
Because of this NT wedding with Christ, you & I will never give up on supporting God’s holy design of natural, Biblical marriage of one man & one woman = because it is a living parable for the one saving Gospel in Christ.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Our first wedding comes only after a terrible time. There was famine, disorder, & death in Bethlehem. Naomi & family moved to a foreign land to survive; but while away, her husband & 2 sons die. She’s forced to move back; thankfully, her daughter-in-law -Ruth- moves with her. But they are struggling. They are both childless, heartbroken widows, and destitute. Yet, they are still trusting in Yahweh, serving each other in love, even while they ‘lament’, & pray to God for a better life.
There are times we understand this lack of hope that Naomi & Ruth have. We can see a ‘famine & disorder’ of good & godly things in our country, in our world, & in our churches. For example, our church body has more pastors retiring now than those graduating from our seminaries = that’s not good. We see small-town, rural churches closing, and larger churches struggling against spiritual apathy. The culture of our world has been turned upside down by an immoral, irrational tsunami. /Bad is called good, /a different opinion is called ‘violence’, /a man is called a woman == and if you say otherwise, you’ll be fired, or taken to court, …..
…or there will be a ‘mostly peaceful protest’, & a mob might burn your business to the ground.
In our country, Matt.24:12 is true: ‘The love of many has grown cold.’ People are quick to anger & to blame; quick to take offense or give offense; eager to kneel before the UN-holy trinity of ‘me, myself, & I.’ It’s no wonder divorce rates are high, & the rate of marriage is getting lower. Who needs marriage – if you’re so busy with ‘me, myself & I’ ?
Now, Jesus was unmarried = so it is blessed to remain unmarried; but God also designed & sanctified marriage = so that -too- is blessed. So, a person needs to seek God’s will for their lives to do either one; and both have a cost. This morning, we consider the cost of marriage.
++++++++++++++++++
In a personal sense, marriage is costly. A husbands is called to die to self and live for his beloved. That’s what Boaz demonstrates in chpt.4. He doesn’t delay, but he hurries to give his life to serve these two poor widows, Naomi & Ruth. Under the Lev.25 guidelines, Boaz was a relative of their deceased husbands, and therefore assigned the role of kinsman-redeemer for them. No matter what HE thought his life should be about, he also had the God-assigned duty of caring for his relatives’ family by marrying the widow.
Boaz does not argue with God; he takes the steps needed to rescue Naomi and tie the knot with her loyal & worthy daughter-in-law, Ruth. This responsibility & marriage will cost him of his own independence & wealth, of his hobbies & pursuits, & even his own inheritance.
And yet, he gains two godly, reliable women in his life; their unwavering loyalty to each other will now include him. He gains in the areas of giving, belonging, & being loved. Money can’t buy those things!
The kinsman-redeemer had the option to buy the land of Naomi that would have been inherited by the son that married Ruth. But with that land, he would be required to care for the widow – Ruth, and restore the name & inheritance of her late husband == giving up his own inheritance. That other closer relative said to Boaz: ‘I cannot redeem it for myself, or else I jeopardize my own family’s inheritance. Take my right of redemption for yourself.’
We won’t judge this man’s motives. Yet, God put him in that first-redeemer position, but he was not willing to obey God’s Word & pay the cost when he was called upon to help his poor relatives. Instead, he wanted to save his family name. But it didn’t work because his name is not remembered.
Now Boaz had come to that meeting well-prepared. He immediately declares to that man & to the group: “Today you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelek, Kilion and Mahlon. 10 I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite, Mahlon’s widow, as my wife, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property, so that his name will not disappear from among his family or from his hometown. Today you are witnesses!”
The Lord then blessed the marriage-union of Boaz & Ruth with a son, Obed. And it was from Obed’s family that a grandson was born, a certain ‘David,’ who became king of Israel; in whose lineage was Jesus, the Messiah.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
In the old fairy tales, it was a great moment when the marriage happened. They lived happily ever after. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White; lowly & mistreated women, they are sought-after, raised up, & they marry the generous, devoted prince. Why would such stories still appeal to us? Because they are like parables, or pictures, of the spiritual truth of the greatest marriage; the most costly, devoted, & generous act in all of human history.
The very Son of God came down from heaven, the most blessed descendant of Boaz & Ruth. Beginning in Bethlehem, & clothed in our flesh, Jesus came to seek the lowly & mistreated. The ultimate kinsman-Redeemer came to fulfill God’s promise to be the true, generous, loving husband to His Bride = the Church; which is how Scripture refers to you & me, and to all who believe & are baptized into Christ.
To have YOU, Jesus gave up everything. He used-up His life to buy you out of being under the condemnation of the Law, destitute, & a life with no hope. Jesus’ costly, self-less love took Him all the way to Golgotha, to do what no other human could do: to redeem your soul in the courtroom of the Holy God. He fulfilled His assignment given by our loving HF.
He has called you to be His dearly beloved; He has given you a new name under His family name; He has reserved for you an inheritance of heavenly joy & peace, which no amount of trouble, injustice, or sorrow can take away.
This makes our Savior, Jesus Christ, the most beautiful of all grooms; even tho -thru Isaiah- we are told that Jesus of Nazareth was not a ‘handsome’ man. Isaiah said that he was not physically attractive; he was no Cary Grant, Robert Redford, George Clooney, or Ryan Gosling.
And yet, in the qualities that really count to be our Redeemer, Jesus had no flaw or blemish. Every thought, word, & deed was good & holy, true & loving. When He saw the created beauty of human holiness turn to repulsive sin -in the Garden of Eden- He did not look away in disgust. He answered the call to rescue mankind.
When Jesus becomes sin in our place on the cross, He becomes ugly & disfigured, because He bears the sin of the whole world = the ultimate ugliness to God. Which, in a spiritual sense, makes the crucifix the most beautiful picture of divine love & grace there can ever be. To earthly eyes, it hurts us to see the reality of Golgatha; the whipped, bloodied, stripped, contorted body of Jesus. Yet to the eyes of faith, it is thee picture of history’s greatest love. So, by the HSp, when we look at the body of Jesus on the cross, we see the Lamb of God & our forgiveness. It’s not the cross, but His crucified body that is the love of God – which overpowered His sovereign, holy justice against man’s sin. The crucifix is the full display of the beauty of the gospel message of our kinsman-Redeemer.
Until you & I enter thru those gates of pearl, ugly sinners still need that sign of our ugly groom, which stands for the great exchange made for us. In His body is the lovely fruit of His forgiveness for you, for me, & for all. That’s what makes us His beautiful bride = the Church.
To emphasize this gospel teaching, in four places, the Scripture uses that verse, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24; see Mt 19:5; Mk 10:7–8; Eph 5:31). So at the cross, Jesus leaves His Father & says goodbye to His mother because He’s getting married, & He cleaves to His wife = the Church. By the gift of faith & holy baptism into Christ, we are brought into union with the One who loved us more than His own body. We become His beloved, and our loneliness is taken away. He is our loving head; and what a relief & joy it is for us to submit to the One who loves us forever.
+++++++++++++++++++++
In these various events of Scripture history, the Lord convinces us of His generous, redeeming love, especially when our lives are troubled, and we can’t see how things are going to work out. So the Lord tells us how He loved undeserving Rahab and Ruth, and grafted them into Jesus’ family tree. He tells us how He knit together the history of Naomi & Ruth, Boaz & Obed, Jesse & David.
They couldn’t see God’s big picture. They could only trust God’s promises & His character; they were called to obey His Word because it is right & true; in faith, they made their lives reflect the cost & willing service of their promised Savior, their kinsman-redeemer. And so, they lived a life of loving care & service to those God placed around them.
+++++++++++++++++++
Naomi remained single the rest of her days, but she trusted the Lord who loved her generously, and she showed that love toward her new family of daughter & son & grandson; and her life was blessed. Ruth & Boaz received the blessing of marriage, and so they become an illustration for Paul to draw on to instruct those of us who are married. Our marriage is to reflect the love of the world’s kinsman-redeemer.
So you husbands, now love your wife in the same gracious, generous, & costly way. Look past any weakness or sin of your beloved; she has been clothed in the forgiveness of Christ. Give your life up for her. And you wives, as Jesus yielded himself to the will of the Father to save you, now reflect Christ’s love in yielding to your husband, looking past his weaknesses =for he is forgiven. Respect the role God has given each of you, & be blessed.
+++++++++++++++++++++
And for all of us, who in faith together are called the Church, the beautiful Bride of Christ, we learn that our life in this world is like living in a foreign land, among those who will mock our Bridegroom and make fun of our heavenly wedding of Christian faith. The world will tempt us to stray away from Him; Satan himself hates to see us fulfilled, blessed, and at peace in Christ. Too bad for him!
We will continue to look to our Redeemer who bought us at a great cost. And we will never forget that our bridegroom is on His way -to bring us home-, and our lives have His promise of ‘happily ever after.’
Amen.