Week 5 Ruth Chapter 4 by Abigail Dodds

Here is the outline for Ruth 4:

1)   Boaz Sets the Stage

2)   Boaz Strikes a Bargain

3)   The People Prophesy

4)   The LORD Gives A Redeemer 

We had three application points:

1-   God does it all. 

He chooses. He plucks people out of Moab. He makes a people out of those of us who are not his people. That’s all of us in here. We are all Moabites, in one sense. We are far off from God, without hope. But God brings us near through the most peculiar circumstances. He redeems us, he gives us a new name, calling us daughter. He chooses to redeem a people and it looks, from a human standpoint, like he is getting a really bad deal with us. Just like it looked like Boaz should have reconsidered his options. But God he goes ahead makes us his bride, against all human wisdom. He makes the unlovable, lovely, by his beautifying love. God does it all. 

2-   God’s people act like God’s people. 

This may seem to contradict the first one. If God does it all, who cares how we act? Let’s not focus on Ruth or Boaz, let’s just focus on God. But part of focusing on Ruth and Boaz’s worthiness and honorableness is that it actually glorifies God. We get to see what it looks like when God is working in the life of his people and what obedience is like. 

They show us what it looks like to be Israelites on the inside. It doesn’t look like staying a Moabite. It doesn’t look like sin. It looks like honoring others and humble submission, and costly leadership. And so, if it’s true that God does it all and that God’s people act like God’s people, that means that God is at work in us causing us to work really hard. And we should praise God for that. We should praise God for God and we should praise God for Ruth and Boaz and Naomi. 

3-   God’s purposes for your story go way beyond your story. 

It was true of Ruth and Boaz and Naomi and it’s true of us. We are not in the upline of Jesus, but we know this: we are his downline. We are his descendants and heirs. We are born of him, the very children of God. We cannot know his purposes for our lives, but we must not live like they end when we die. We must be working for goals 1000, 10000 years from now. DO you have that in your flowchart of goals? 

What aroma do you want to pass down to your spiritual children? That aroma may far outlast the remembrance of your name. What godly, Christ-like, inheritance are you bequeathing to the people around you? Your children, your nieces and nephews, the kids in Sunday school, your neighbors, your co-workers, your friends? Remember God is faithful to a thousand generation of those who fear him. Who will come after you in the line of Jesus?