Sermon Tone Analysis

Love Story: God’s Epic Tale of Redemption

The Story of Redemption Dr. David Platt

July 26, 2009

THE STORY OF REDEMPTION

Well, if you have a Bible, and I hope you do, I invite you to open with me to .

Has the book of Ruth not been incredible?

Just walk through.

Today we come to the climax of this story, the ending of all endings, the surprise of all surprises.

I think Ruth is kind of like one of those movies by a guy I never can figure out how to pronounce his last name, M. Night Shyamalan, Shyamalamalan.

I don’t know what how you pronounce it, but his movies you get to the end and something happens at the end that causes you to look at the whole picture and say, “Wow.

I never saw that coming.

I could not have imagined.

That changes everything.”

It makes you want to go back and watch the whole deal over again because now you’ve got this new piece of information here.

Well, Shyamalan has nothing on .

And what the narrator is doing here.

So here we go.

And just as a reminder—the poetry that we have been listening to is not, like, directly Scripture.

It certainly takes different liberties and licenses and different ways and even the photography.

I don’t want you to walk away from this series thinking that Boaz is a white male and Ruth was a black female like it’s the picture – the whole goal in poetry and in photography was to envision some of the tension and the beauty that was represented here but just make sure not to equate that with Scripture.

Let’s look at Scripture. .

Now if you have not been here throughout the series or maybe if you’ve missed a week here or there let me recap the story in a nutshell.

The curtain opens in on Naomi, her husband Elimelech and their two sons and they’re journeying from Bethlehem to Moab because there’s been famine in Bethlehem.

When they get to Moab, first Elimelech dies suddenly and the Naomi’s two sons die and she’s left with two Moabite daughters-in-law, Orpha and Ruth.

She begins to go back to Bethlehem because there’s news of food and blessing there.

Orpha stays in Moab.

Ruth commits herself to stick with Naomi and so Naomi walks back into Bethlehem, bitter, a woman with honest hurt who has lost everything she loved and comes back with nothing or at least she thinks.

The next day we see Ruth going out into the fields and finds herself in the fields of Boaz the night in shining armor.

He takes to her.

He protects her, provides for her, sends her home in the days to come with plenty of grain, basically, to last them through the rest of the year.

The two main problems in the book.

These two ladies they’re widowed, childless women in ancient Israelite culture, which means they have need for food, need for provision and a need of family.

It was the curse of all curses not to have an heir, for your name to die with you, the name of your family to die with you.

And so the picture is their in need of food and family.

.

Food is met.

And Ruth finds herself day after day working in the fields of Boaz.

The only problem is after week, after week, after week in his fields, he’s doing nothing else to

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pursue her, at least that we can tell.

So Naomi, the scheming mother-in-law, decides to take things into her own hands and she comes up with a plot that is just plain shady in ’m just thankful that we have gotten past that chapter and are not having to deal with that today.

So picture is have a shady night on the threshing floor as Ruth basically proposes marriage to Boaz and Boaz is humbled by this.

They stare looking up into the stars together from the threshing floor and Boaz breaks the news that there’s actually another guy who has the right to marry Ruth before he would.

It’s this big letdown, the wind out of our sails in this romantic scene you get to the end of the chapter and the curtain closes as Ruth and Naomi are sitting there waiting to see what Boaz is going to do.

He has promised that day to find out if this other man will marry Ruth.

If he will, then so be it.

If he won’t then Boaz will do it.

Today is the day where everything is going to come to light.

God has answered the need for food.

How is he going to answer the need for family, in Boaz or this other dude?

, “Meanwhile, Boaz went up to the town gate and sat there.

When the kinsman- redeemer he had mentioned came along, Boaz said, ‘Come over here, my friend, and sit down.’

So he went over and sat down.”

Okay, we’re going to pause here, much like we’ve done in the last few weeks and just going to take this verse-by-verse, phrase-by-phrase and make sure we understand what’s going on here.

You see midway through that Verse 1 kinsman-redeemer.

Circle it there.

You’ve probably already circled it if you were here two weeks ago, circled it in .

This is a theme.

A term that we’ve seen before.

We’ve kind of mentioned here and there, but it’s really important here that we understand what a kinsman-redeemer is.

So hold your place here in and go back with me to .

Third book in the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus.

Take a left, back a few books to .

“Kinsman-redeemer”—two words in the English, one word in the Hebrew and the picture really is twofold.

“Kinsman” meaning: the nearest adult male relative, the nearest of kin to someone and so in order to be kinsman to Naomi and Ruth this would be the nearest adult male relative to Elimelech and his sons.

The nearest kinsman.

“Redeemer”—meaning that that kinsman would have the right, if he was able, to purchase the property—acquire all the property that belonged to Elimelech, Mahlon or Kilion, Elimelech’s sons.

And so he would be able to redeem—to buy back, to purchase, to inherit— basically, the property that belonged to him.

Now, this is a law that God had set up, a way of doing things God had set up among His people to provide, in disastrous circumstances, tragic circumstances that people might face.

This is just one example here in .

I want you to see how God had provided for the redemption of the land through relatives.

Verse 24, “Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land” ().

What does that mean?

Verse 25, “If one of your countrymen becomes poor and sells some of his property, his nearest relative is to come and redeem what his countryman has sold.

If, however, a man has no one to redeem it for him but he himself prospers and acquires sufficient means to redeem it, he is to determine the value for the years since he sold it and refund the balance to the man to whom he sold it; he can then go back to his own property” ().

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Now, the picture here is land was everything in that day and so there was a provision for the land to stay within the family or at least, if not within the family, the clan which was the group of families.

And so if land was lost because of something—famine or poverty or maybe even because of death—there was a means setup where a kinsman could come and redeem that land, could keep that land in the family.

So that’s the picture that relates to the land.

Now, fast forward to Deuteronomy.

Two books to the right, .

Look at and I want you to see the picture and the Law leading up to this point when it comes to marriage and God – how God had set up a way for a widow to be provided for, particularly for the sake of producing an heir. .

Now as you’re turning there just a little background here.

These laws aren’t like exactly being implemented in all the places we see in the Old Testament and even here in the book of Ruth but this is the background.

Catch the heart of what God had set up regarding land and here regarding family.

Listen to , “If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family.

Her husband's brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her.

The first son she bears...” follow this closely, “...shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel” ().

So God’s going to provide to make sure that this name continues through God providing a kinsman to provide in this circumstance.

Verse 7, “However, if a man does not...”—this is how serious this is—

...if a man does not want to marry his brother's wife, she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, ‘My husband's brother refuses to carry on his brother's name in Israel.

He will not fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me.’

Then the elders of his town shall summon him and talk to him.

If he persists in saying, ‘I do not want to marry her,’ his brother's widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, ‘This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother's family line.’

That man's line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled ().

How about that?

This is a picture of shame.

It is honorable to provide for your family, to provide, to keep the land in your family as well as to maintain the name.

So when we come here to and we have this picture of kinsman-redeemer what Boaz has said is there’s a nearer adult male relative to me that has the right to purchase this land and has the right to take in this family.

And so what we’ve got is Boaz going to the town gate where everybody would pass, whereas we’re about to see business kind of matters would take place.

So you’ve got crowds of people, and this is where the English really doesn’t help us out much, it doesn’t help us glimpse this but it’s the same picture we’ve got in .