Better Than Seven Sons - Part 1
In these final episodes, we see more than the conclusion of a beautiful love story; it’s a glimpse into God’s sovereign hand at work, weaving ordinary lives into an extraordinary plan. Discover the wonder of this divine orchestration, not only where Ruth’s faithfulness becomes part of the lineage leading to the Messiah Himself, but where the ordinary lives of believers today are also woven into God’s perfect plan.
Checkout these other Family Fortress Ministries Podcasts:
TIME FOR THREE daily couples devotional: https://time-for-three.captivate.fm/listen
FORTIFYING YOUR FAMILY: https://fortifying-your-family.captivate.fm/listen
MINISTRY WEBSITE: https://familyfortress.org/
Transcript
Welcome to the Fortifying youg Family podcast.
Speaker A:It can be daunting to navigate through an anti marriage and family culture.
Speaker A:Our teacher will expound biblical principles to help fortify our families and keep these sacred institutions strong.
Speaker A:And now here's this week's teaching from Sam Wood.
Speaker B:Turn your Bible, if you would, with me this morning to the Book of Ruth, chapter four.
Speaker B:And Lord willing, we will close out our sermons, my sermons on the Book of Ruth.
Speaker B:I think this is the 10th one, so I hope you have been blessed by this.
Speaker B:Some of you may be saying, amen, I'm glad you're finally getting out of Ruth.
Speaker B:I hope not.
Speaker B:But it has been certainly a blessing to me as I have studied it and been able to preach on it.
Speaker B:There's, it's such a rich and wonderful little book.
Speaker B:Last week we ended in chapter four at verse 11 and we were talking about how that Boaz had went to the nearer kinsman, which the Bible says Boaz said, hey so and so or hey Mr.
Speaker B:So and so, and called him over and asked him if he would take his part as the nearer kinsman to redeem Ruth.
Speaker B:And he was all for it.
Speaker B:When he thought that he would get some land, he thought, man, this is a great real estate deal.
Speaker B:I'll get the land.
Speaker B:That's wonderful.
Speaker B:But when he found out that a mother in law came with it and when he found out that Ruth, he would have to marry Ruth and raise her children, then he wouldn't get the land.
Speaker B:They would get the land and they would take on their Elimelech, that is the family of Elimelech's name.
Speaker B:He thought, man, that's not so good a deal.
Speaker B:Don't think I'll do that.
Speaker B:And he bailed out and we ended up in verse 11 where that Boaz now has had a legal transaction before the 10 elders, which we said represents the perfect law of God, that is the ten Commandments.
Speaker B:And all the witnesses there where they're testifying to the transaction that has taken place where that Ruth will now be wife.
Speaker B:So we're going to pick up the story right there in verse 11.
Speaker B:Look at it with me in chapter four in verse 11.
Speaker B:And I want you to do something today if you would.
Speaker B:I want you to stand if you're able physically to do that.
Speaker B:As I read the Word of God when I visited Mr. Jensen this week in the hospital in Cookeville, as I was talking to him, he said, you know one thing, Brother Sam, I like, I like it when we read the Word of God and we Stand for the Word of God, I said, I like that too.
Speaker B:I don't know why I don't do that all the time.
Speaker B:But really, I've tried to emphasize over the last weeks how sacred the Word of God is, that it is a living word and we need to give honor to the Word of God.
Speaker B:So today, as we stand here, today, we're standing in honor of the Word of God.
Speaker B:Ruth, chapter 4, verse 11.
Speaker B:And all the people that were in the gate, and the elders said, we are witnesses.
Speaker B:The Lord make the woman that is come into thine house like Rachel and like Leah, which too did build the house of Israel.
Speaker B:And do thou worthily in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem, and let thy house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah of the seed which the Lord shall give thee of this young woman.
Speaker B:So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife.
Speaker B:And he went in to her, unto her, and the Lord gave her conception, and she bare a son.
Speaker B:And the woman said unto Naomi, blessed be the Lord, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman, that his name may be famous in Israel, and he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life and a nourisher of thine old age, for thy daughter in law which loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons hath borne him.
Speaker B:And Naomi took the child and laid it in her bosom and became nurse unto it.
Speaker B:And the women, her neighbors, gave it a name, saying, there's a son born to Naomi.
Speaker B:And they called his name Obed.
Speaker B:Obed means he whom serves he.
Speaker B:It is the father of Jesse, the father of David.
Speaker B:Now these are the generations of Perez.
Speaker B:Perez begot Hezron, and Hezron begot Ram, and Ram begot Amimadab, and Aminab begot Nahshon, and Nahshon begot Salmon, and Salmon begot Boaz, and Boaz begot Obed and Obad begot Jesse.
Speaker B:And Jesse begotten David.
Speaker B:Back in the 90s, there was an animated movie that came out by the name of Ants.
Speaker B:I don't watch many animated movies today, but then my boys were much smaller.
Speaker B:So we saw this movie by the title of Ants.
Speaker B:And in the movie, the star of the movie was a little worker ant, a little neurotic worker ant who is in search for the prince's aunt, that he might marry her, that he might fall in love with her.
Speaker B:But as the scene of the movie closes, it's very interesting because the action that follows at the end of the movie, the camera pans and narrows to Central park in New York City, and then it pans out to all the people walking around above the ground.
Speaker B:And thus we're invited to consider the parallels, we might say, between the lives of the ants under the ground and the lives of the real people that are above the ground.
Speaker B:As I thought about that, I thought sometimes we might feel like ants who are living underground.
Speaker B:And there's a great drama unfolding all around us, and we don't really understand what is happening.
Speaker B:But there is something that is much, much bigger, that's happening just like in this movie, above them.
Speaker B:Something much, much bigger that is happening all around us, that is unseen, we might say.
Speaker B:As we look at the end of chapter four, we discover that God is doing something much, much bigger in the Book of Ruth than just bringing two individuals together by the name of Boaz and Ruth.
Speaker B:What looks like a simple story of meeting personal needs and having personal needs filled and personal needs met turns out to be God's way of meeting a far greater need that man has.
Speaker B:God is using all of these events to bring about his own purposes that are much bigger than any characters that are involved in the story that could possibly ever have been imagined.
Speaker B:As the curtains are being drawn closed on this little Book of Ruth, as we're in chapter four, God reveals the bigger picture in this closing scene.
Speaker B:In verses 11 and 12, we see a beautiful picture of a prayer, a blessing by the elders in the city and the people who have gathered there to celebrate what has happened now that Boaz will marry Ruth.
Speaker B:And we see this prayer in these two verses of blessing.
Speaker B:The Book of Ruth is filled with prayers of blessing.
Speaker B:I love that.
Speaker B:In chapter one, we saw that Naomi prayed a prayer of blessing upon Ruth and Orpah.
Speaker B:Then we saw also in chapter two that Boaz prayed this prayer blessing, beautiful prayer, blessing upon Ruth.
Speaker B:And let me just pause here for a second, if I could.
Speaker B:And I want to encourage you to pray prayers of blessings on people.
Speaker B:And if you're a mom and dad and you have children and you have grandchildren, I want to encourage you to pray a prayer of blessing.
Speaker B:Take time to pray prayers of blessing upon your children and your grandchildren sometimes, and I think I did this, Maybe it's been 10 years ago or so.
Speaker B:I have a service called a Bestowing a blessing service where that all the parents and all the grandparents at the end of the service come and bestow a blessing upon their children and their grandchildren.
Speaker B:And I say in that service that a blessing is a spoken message that attaches a high value to someone and pictures a special future for that person with your active commitment, in the parent's case of the parent, to help their child achieve what they're praying for.
Speaker B:It's a beautiful thing.
Speaker B:And the Bible is filled with people praying blessings upon another.
Speaker B:And I think that's one thing in the church and certainly in our families we could do much more of.
Speaker B:Now, in verses 11 and 12, we see all the people and elders praying a prayer blessing on Boaz and Ruth.
Speaker B:And we see two amazing analogies in this prayer blessing.
Speaker B:The first analogy is between Ruth and two women by the name of Rachel and Leah.
Speaker B:The second blessing we see in verse 12 is between Ruth and a woman by the name of Tamar.
Speaker B:So let's look at this for just a minute.
Speaker B:Let's look at this first blessing, this first prayer blessing that they pray between Ruth and Rachel and Leah.
Speaker B:Let me read the verse again.
Speaker B:In verse 11, it says, and all the people, they were in the gate.
Speaker B:And the elders said, we are witnesses.
Speaker B:The Lord make the woman that is come into thine house like Rachel and like Leah, which too did build the house of Israel.
Speaker B:And do thou worthily in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem.
Speaker B:Now, if you remember, back in chapter one, where we started in Ruth, many weeks ago, we were told that Ruth had been married 10 years to a man, Elimelech's son.
Speaker B:His name was Mahlon.
Speaker B:But in these 10 years, they had no children, it says they had no children.
Speaker B:So it appears that Ruth is barren and may not be able to have a child to pass on the inheritance to the land, to the name, to the family name, to even after she marries Boaz, the kinsman Redeemer.
Speaker B:So even at this point in the story, like there are many other points in this story, there's still suspense.
Speaker B:There's still suspense.
Speaker B:How will Ruth have a child?
Speaker B:But it's very significant that in this prayer blessing then that these women and these elders mention Rachel and Leah.
Speaker B:They know that Rachel and Leah were both barren and fruitful with having children, that it was God who had opened and God who had closed their wombs.
Speaker B:The Jewish people also knew that Rachel and Leah were the great matriarchs of Israel because they and their handmaids had given birth to the 12 patriarchs in Israel.
Speaker B:Therefore, the prayer that Ruth be like Rachel and Leah was a plea not only that God would open Ruth's womb to conceive and have a child, but also that Ruth would take her place in the great line of Israel leading to the coming of the Messiah.
Speaker B:What a prayer.
Speaker B:What a beautiful prayer, a blessing.
Speaker B:But perhaps one of the most striking aspects of the blessing given to Boaz and Ruth is in verse 12.
Speaker B:Because in verse 12 we see an analogy here in this prayer blessing in verse 12 between Ruth and woman by the name of Tamar says in verse 12, and let thy house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah of the seed which the Lord shall give thee.
Speaker B:Of this young woman.
Speaker B:Ruth and Tamar are like each other in some ways, yet unlike each other in many other ways.
Speaker B:Like Ruth, Tamar was an outsider to God's covenant.
Speaker B:People who married into the family under dubious circumstances, we might say.
Speaker B:Like Ruth, Tamar lost her husband and had no child.
Speaker B:Both Ruth and Tamar dressed themselves up in pursuit of a husband, a child and a future.
Speaker B:But here the similarity ends.
Speaker B:Ruth revealed her identity to Boaz and received a child legitimately through marriage to him.
Speaker B:Whereas Tamar concealed her identity and deceived Judah in order to receive a child illegitimately outside of marriage.
Speaker B:Tamar pretended to be a prostitute in order to trap her father in law, Judah.
Speaker B:If you remember the story, I think it's in Genesis 38, into sleeping with her so that she might have a child.
Speaker B:But Ruth had a right and responsibility to humbly come before the feet of the Boaz, as we saw in chapter three, and proposed to him and asked him to be her kinsman, Redeemer.
Speaker B:The end results of both unions, legitimate and illegitimate.
Speaker B:O was children who in the providence of God, had an important part in God's overall plan, in God's overall purpose.
Speaker B:We might ask, why does God do things this way?
Speaker B:Why is he willing?
Speaker B:Why is God willing to be involved with such suspicious characters, we might say, in his ancestry line?
Speaker B:If you look at the women who were involved in the genealogy of Jesus as recorded in Matthew chapter one, you see Tamar, the Canaanite mother of Perez.
Speaker B:Then there's Rahab, who didn't dress up like a prostitute.
Speaker B:She actually was a prostitute.
Speaker B:Then there's Ruth, who is a godly woman, but she was an outsider.
Speaker B:She was a pagan outsider from a country that was despised by Israel, called Moab.
Speaker B:Next in line is a woman by the name of Bathsheba who had an affair with a man by the name of King David.
Speaker B:But the men in Jesus family tree are not much better.
Speaker B:I mean, it was Judah in his family tree that slept with Tamar, whom he was not married to.
Speaker B:It was David who arranged for Bathsheba seduction and Killed her husband, Uriah.
Speaker B:Then there was Manasseh.
Speaker B:You remember Manasseh.
Speaker B:He was the greatest idolater of all the kings.
Speaker B:Together, you could say this collection of men and women in the line of Jesus don't paint a very pretty face.
Speaker B:Family portrait.
Speaker B:What I'm saying here is, you know, if I wanted to do my research and I went to ancestry.com I think is where a lot of people do that, and I got back a picture like this, I would be pretty disappointed to think that my ancestors were a bunch of misfits.
Speaker B:I mean, here's someone who committed murder, here's someone who had an affair, here's someone who was a prostitute.
Speaker B:And you look back and that isn't what you'd want to see.
Speaker B:But when you bring up the papers and get the papers back and you print them out from Ancestry.com kind of reminds me of a story about a family who wanted to give their dad a family tree for Christmas.
Speaker B:I mean, they were going to get the family tree drawn out and they were going to frame it, present it to him at Christmas.
Speaker B:They could hardly wait to do this.
Speaker B:But when they did research for the family tree, they found out that their dad's uncle by the name of George had committed murder and died in the electric chair.
Speaker B:And they thought to themselves, how in the world can we put Uncle George in the family tree and make this a Christmas present?
Speaker B:Well, Christmas morning came, and their dad unwrapped the framed family tree, and he looked down, and where it said Uncle George, it said, uncle George occupied a chair of applied electronics at a government institution.
Speaker B:Said he was so attached to his position by the strongest of ties that his death came as a complete shock.
Speaker B:Well, they spun that pretty well.
Speaker B:And we like to spend those kind of things, but the Bible is very honest and open.
Speaker B:God intentionally wants us to see something.
Speaker B:I believe through this.
Speaker B:So why would the Lord Jesus, who could have picked men and women of great moral character to be in his ancestry, choose such a varied array, we might say, of misfits and these kind of characters?
Speaker B:Jesus answers that question for us really many places.
Speaker B:But he answers that question for us in Luke chapter 19 and verse 10, when he says, the son of man came to seek and save that which was lost.
Speaker B:Jesus said, I came to seek and save that which is lost.
Speaker B:Jesus came to rescue sinners, people like his own ancestors.
Speaker B:People listen, folks, lest we get too proud.
Speaker B:People like you and me.
Speaker B:Like you and me.
Speaker B:He was called the friend of tax collectors, and he was called the friend of sinners.
Speaker B:He was hung on a cross between two thieves on Mount Calvary.
Speaker B:Why would the Lord of the Universe allow Himself such company and such humiliation?
Speaker B:I believe it's because that is how he would identify with us and that's how he would save us.
Speaker B:Yes, Jesus is the friend of sinners.
Speaker B:In verse 13 in chapter 4 we see that this prayer blessing was answered.
Speaker B:So Boaz took Ruth and she was his wife, and when he went unto her, the Lord gave her conception and she bare a son.
Speaker B:So we see here that God answered the prayer.
Speaker B:Her womb was open, she conceived and she bore a son.
Speaker B:And I'll pause right here to say this too.
Speaker B:No thing in your life, no prayer request is too big for God.
Speaker B:God is bigger than any needs you have in your life.
Speaker B:He's bigger than your health needs, your financial needs, your relationship needs, your he's bigger than anything in your life.
Speaker B:Take your cares to God in prayer.
Speaker B:He answers our prayer.
Speaker B:You have listened to the first part of a two part message by Evangelist Sam Wood.
Speaker A:Thank you for joining the Fortifying youg Family podcast.
Speaker A:And if you feel encouraged by today's teaching, give us a follow so we can invite you back and share us on your socials so more marriages and families can be strengthened and fortified through the truths of God's Word.
Speaker A:Remember, fortified Fortifying your family starts with a strong belief in God's Word.
