Good evening, Merry Christmas. Welcome to cozy Christmas.
So my name is Daniel. I'm the lead pastor here.
I I brought out. So they're cozy slippers, but
they're all terrain for the storm.
Ready to go, ready to go. All right, tonight in just the
the few moments, because we have a pretty short service so that
you can get home and go hang out and and have some eggnog
tonight. I want you to see 11 really big
thing about Christmas. And it actually is also in our
story as we finish up the book of Ruth today.
And it's this idea. The end was never in doubt.
So over the past four weeks
we've been going through this book called Ruth and we've been
looking at it as a Christmas story, even though it took place
about 1000 plus years before the 1st Christmas story.
And what happened if you you kind of missed part of this is
that there are two widows, a Naomi and her Moabite
daughter-in-law named Ruth. And she's a foreigner to the
Jewish nation. But they've come back from Moab
to the city of Bethlehem. And while there, they have found
food, they have found protection, they have found
kindness by the hand of a distant relative.
His he's named Boaz, and he has agreed to this bold request that
Ruth made of him, and he's going to marry Ruth.
And so last week on Sunday, we looked at sort of this kind of
brilliant, almost legal maneuver that Boaz makes in order to
become the first in line to marry her.
And he takes over a title that was something that they used in
the ancient world called a kinsman Redeemer.
A kinsman Redeemer. And we're going to pick up this
story in chapter 4. This is the end of the book
around verse 7. And in verse 7, he seals the
deal. He kind of completes this, this
legal proceeding. There's 10 elders sitting around
and he's making this, this covenant to redeem Naomi and
Ruth. Now, in the ancient times, I
know it's a little weird. In ancient times, they would
take off their sandal and they would give it to the other
person. And somehow that was like, now
we use DocuSign, which I got to be honest, smells a lot better.
But they would handle hand this sandal over as a way to finish
out this agreement, this transaction.
And I, I live in Bakersfield. So if someone takes off a sandal
here, we call that a chunk LA. And that means mama's mad and
you're about to get beat. But back then, this is how you
finalize the deal. And so Boaz is purchasing the
land of this relative, but he's choosing to take on the
responsibility to care for the widow Naomi.
And he's pledging to Mary Ruth and to produce an heir.
He's committing to this role of kinsman Redeemer, someone that
has the right and the responsibility to rescue family
members in crisis. And so the elders that are there
at the gate of this story, they they bless this and then they
pray a blessing over the new family and the couple.
And we're going to pick up the very end of our love story in
chapter 4, verse 13. And so you can follow along on
the screen. We'll start at verse 13.
It says this. So Boaz took Ruth and she became
his wife and he went into her and the Lord gave her conception
and she bore a son. Then the women said to Naomi,
Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a
Redeemer, and may His name be renowned in Israel.
He shall be a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age.
For your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you
than seven sons, has given birth to him.
Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became
his nurse. And the women of the
neighborhood gave him a name saying a son has been born to
Naomi. They named him Obed.
He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.
Now, this is the very end of our book, the book of Ruth.
And there's some really interesting things that happen
right at the end. Here's the first thing.
So Ruth and Boaz get married and they have a son.
So we're now at least nine plus months out from this moment at
the gate that we we looked at on Sunday and they've been in town
for at least over a year. And once again, we see Ruth
mentioned here in verse 13 when she gives birth to a son.
Here's what's interesting. She's not mentioned again for
the rest of the story, and that's a little weird because
like this book is called the book of Ruth.
So it seems like she's the main character and it seems kind of
weird to not mention the main character if that's her for all
the rest of the story. The rest of the book that we
just read is about Naomi, her mother-in-law, and about this
grandson. The women says the women in the
community or the women in the neighborhood said this to Naomi.
This is kind of the end of the story and I find this very
interesting. They say to her, blessed be the
Lord who has not left you this day without a Redeemer, and may
his name be renowned in Israel. He shall be a restorer of life
and a nourisher of your old age. For your daughter-in-law whom
you love more than seven sons has given birth to him worth
more than seven sons. That seems kind of random, but
see, it's actually it culturally.
That was the Jewish dream. So the if the American dream is
2 1/2 kids in a white picket fence, the Jewish dream was to
have seven sons because 7 was a holy number.
And the women are saying, listen, Ruth means more to you
than even the dream of a perfect family.
And then they say something that I think is really odd because I
had to read this over and over again.
I kept reading this trying to understand what what this meant.
It said they said, blessed is the Lord because he didn't leave
you without a Redeemer. And so I kept reading that and
going, what are they talking about?
Because we have this guy, a kinsman Redeemer.
That's what Boaz is doing. But they're not talking about
Boaz. They're talking about the baby.
They're calling the baby a Redeemer.
And I was like, that is really weird.
That's really odd. This is what they say about the
a newborn child. That's what they say.
He shall be a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age.
How's a how's a newborn baby supposed to do that?
Like y'all thought that that that cheerleading parents put a
lot of pressure on their kids. That's a lot of pressure for a
newborn to be a Redeemer, to be a nourisher.
See, I think there's actually a couple of of reasons that I want
you to see that they would mention this, but to but to
understand the context of why they would call this baby a
Redeemer, you got to go back to the very beginning of the story
in chapter 1 to get a full view of the problem.
And so when Naomi and Ruth came to Bethlehem in chapter 1, it
was the women of the community that greeted them.
If you flip back to chapter one, verse 20, this is what happens.
They walk into town, the women recognize her.
And then Naomi says to the women in the community, she said to
them, do not call me Naomi, call me Mara, which literally means
bitter, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.
I went away full and the Lord has brought me back empty.
Now, if you remember the story, they left for Moab, her husband
dies, her sons die, she comes back a widow and her
daughter-in-law are widows. Why call me Naomi when the Lord
has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity
upon me? That's how our story started.
So Naomi comes to Bethlehem hurting and broken and empty,
and she blames God, despite the fact that she and her husband
left voluntarily to go live with God's enemies.
And she says, my new name is bitter.
Now her name, Naomi, actually means sweet or pleasant.
And she looks at this community of women and she says, you know,
I used to be pleasant, but now I'm defined by my bitterness.
And it's God's fault. Never mind that I had a role in
this. My husband had a role in this.
It's God's fault. Sound familiar?
Now, how often have I done that in my own life?
Made a mess of relationships, made a mess of situations, lied
to cover up, lies to cover up more lies, finding myself in a
hole that I dug. And I'm angry at God.
It must be his fault. But if you followed our story
through 4 chapters, since she's come back, she she's had food,
she's had protection, she's actually seen God's Providence
throughout the whole story. She's had all of her physical
needs met, and yet that alone has not fixed the problem.
How? How much of our lives do we
spend? Just just how much of our lives
revolve around our physical needs and desires?
You know, a lot of us live to eat.
We we, we work 4050 sixty hours just to to have food and to have
shelter and to have protection. But in fact, if you're you
really want to bring this close to home, you think about that.
In America, we have almost no discipline around our physical
urges. We're a country with with very
little people with very little discipline.
You want to you want to know we've actually turned hungry and
angry into a word? It's called hangry.
Many of you are sitting next to someone that's hangry.
I'm sorry. We'll be done soon.
If you want to ever know how our physical needs control us, get
in the long drive through line and look at the faces of the
people waiting. So angry that my food won't be
two minutes faster. How dare you get the wrong
topping on my $8 coffee at Starbucks.
This is the culture that we live in.
We make all sorts of choices in our life to fulfill physical
desires and physical needs. And so here is Naomi.
All of the physical needs have been met, and yet she's still
bitter. Naomi is experiencing something
that I think many of us, maybe, maybe all of us, can relate to.
It's this idea that no amount of physical provision satisfies the
soul. Being safe, being fed, being
warm is not enough. We we can simply look at our
culture and come to this realization.
It it is the most famous people in our culture.
It is the most successful people in our culture.
It is the wealthiest people in our culture that have the
highest rate of depression and the highest rate of suicide.
Actors, wealthy, successful people, get to the end of this
little rat race and realize that nothing in this world actually
feeds to the soul. From Robin Williams to Anthony
Bourdain, hopelessness is a human condition.
If only. If only there were something
perfectly shaped to fit this hole inside of us.
Something no amount of scrolling on Instagram or jumping into
another relationship or self medicating with substances could
fix. So.
So the women in this community who one year earlier had heard
Naomi introduce herself as bitter, now look at her holding
her grandson. And you know what they say?
The first thing they say? They look at her holding this,
this little child and they say, blessed be the Lord, the one you
blamed for your condition. Blessed be the Lord because you
were bitter and you needed your bitterness redeemed, not just
your hunger. And now look at how God has
provided for you because food is not enough.
Jesus would go into the wilderness and and as he's
tempted by Satan, he would say man will not live by bread
alone. And now in our story, in our
love story, God has delivered a Redeemer not just for bread, but
to save Naomi from her bitterness.
And then and listen, this is a little crazy because I don't
know how you chose if you have kids, I don't know how you chose
your kids names. But do you notice that it's the
ladies in the town that choose the baby's name?
You probably didn't crowd source your baby's name.
They don't even name their own baby.
Look at this verse 16. The Naomi took the child, laid
him on her lap and became his nurse.
And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name
saying a son has been born to Naomi.
They named him Obed. He's the father of Jesse, the
father of David. Not only to move past this too
quickly, because I think this is a little bit interesting.
This baby named Obed, he grows up to be the father of Jesse.
Jesse has eight sons, the youngest of which is a little
shepherd boy named David, who goes and kills the giant,
becomes the greatest king that Israel ever had.
But the story isn't in there. God makes a promise to that
little shepherd boy who becomes king that one of his descendants
would sit on the throne forever. And 28 generations after King
David, roughly 1000 years later, in the same family line in a
little town of Bethlehem where our story takes place, another
baby is born. And this baby would be called
the Son of David. His name is Jesus, Emmanuel.
God is with us and unlike David, his Kingdom would have no end.
So the the ladies in the town decide they're going to name the
baby and they pick Obed. Who names their kid Obed.
It sounds like a pillow company. You know, that could be a lot in
a name. We see that all throughout the
Bible, right? Like my my wife and I, but
before we got married we picked 2 girl names and two boy names.
I'm a bit of a planner and we wanted our first 2 girls are
going to be named Avery and Baya and our first two boys are going
to be Quintin and Aidan. And I really liked Quintin
because I wanted to name my first son after my dad's dad
Quinn. But we liked Quintin a little
bit better and so I was really excited about that.
Except we didn't have a son. We had four girls in a row.
And so when we had decided we're only going to have 4 kids, and
when I found out my final child was going to be a daughter, that
I was going to be a dad of daughters only.
We call that a dodo. Yeah.
When I realized I was going to be a dad of daughters only, I
remember going, Oh my Lord, this is going to be pink and glitter
everywhere. And I went out that day and I
bought a Doberman Pinscher named Maximus Eridius.
We got to get some testosterone in the house.
It's dying. Some of you know our story.
We lost our fourth child at birth.
And, you know, the loss of Dansley for our family was just,
it was a tremendous, we, we spent a great deal of time
dealing with bitterness and grief and loss.
And it was a couple of years later we found out we were going
to have a fifth child. And we found out it was going to
be a boy. And so of course his name would
be Quentin. I'd been waiting like 12 years
to use that name. And so while we did all the
things you do and you're, the pregnancy is progressing.
We got the vinyl that spelled Quentin up on the wall and we
got the pirate blankie with the little stitching that says baby
Quentin on it. You know, we're getting all the
fun stuff. And I mean, we were 6-7 months
into this and someone looked at me and goes, oh, that's cool.
What does Quentin mean? And I went, oh, I don't know.
And it kind of scared me for just a minute because I realized
like, we took a lot of care with all of our daughters names.
We were very intentional about how we named them and what they
named. And I'd never looked up
Quinton's name because it was after my grandpa.
So it was just, you know. And look, you know that names
can mean some crazy stuff, right?
I mean, y'all are familiar with some of these?
There's a guy in First Samuel, his name is Nabal and that
literally means fool. And I just have questions for
his parents. What were you thinking?
So, so in a semi panic, like I run to Google.
I'm like, oh, we could have made a mistake here.
And I Google what does Quentin mean?
And I, and it comes up on the screen and I literally I'm, I'm,
I'm looking at it like because Quentin actually means, you
know, the thing about names in the Bible is that sometimes
they're, they're given like as a prophecy over the child's life.
I mean, that was actually the case with Nabal in first if
you'll, he was destined to be a fool.
But, but sometimes names are even more strategic.
Sometimes in the Bible it's used to foreshadow something that's
coming that's even further away. But always in the Bible, when we
see this intentionality with names, it is actually to remind
us that God is sovereign. What that means is that God is
ultimately in control, regardless of what how chaotic
we think life is and and how wild and disastrous we think
that that life might be, that God is actually ultimately
completely in control. But things aren't random.
And so after 12 plus years of waiting to get to name my first
son Quentin, I sat in front of a computer staring at some Google
results. And I started crying because the
name Quentin means fifth born child.
Because the end was never in doubt.
God was never not in control of my life.
Not in the loss, not in the grief, not in the pain, not in
the darkness. And so, as Naomi holds Obed in
her lap and he stares at those chubby little cheeks and begins
to realize the goodness of God, who has never not been in
control but has blessed her and saved her despite her own
decisions, despite her being angry at God for all the things
that she and her husband did, she finally sees God's
redemption in her life. What she doesn't know in this
moment is that God's redemptive plan is a lot bigger than what
she sees. It's not just a plan for Naomi.
It's not just a plan for Ruth. It's not just a plan for Daniel.
It is to save all of us. So these ladies in the
community, they look at this little chubby baby and they name
him Obed. And in that moment, holding this
tiny baby, Naomi has no idea that she's holding the
grandfather of King David. She has no idea that 28
generations later in this family, Jesus will be born in
this same town. She has no idea that the prophet
Isaiah will one day write about a coming Messiah who would be
called God's servant, someone who would bring justice not
through power, but through humility and sacrifice.
That's how the apostle Paul describes Jesus in Philippians
2. He says this.
Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality
with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking
the form of a servant. Being born in the likeness of
men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by
becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
The Bible is filled with stories that foreshadowed Jesus, and
this is one of them. Ruth, the outsider who's grafted
into God's family. That's the church.
That's you and I, Boaz, the kinsman Redeemer who willingly
pays the price to rescue. That's Jesus, Naomi, bitter and
broken, restored to overflowing joy.
That's what Jesus does for us. And Obed, this baby named
specifically who carries the bloodline of the king, the
genealogy that leads to Jesus, the servant King born in
Bethlehem. God was writing the Christmas
story for 1000 years before Jesus was born, and He made sure
that you and I wouldn't miss it. Of all of the names that that
community of women could have picked for this little baby, joy
or happiness or excitement, they didn't pick any of those names.
They picked Obed the most illogical name in that moment
because Obed means servant. In the moment, that seems like a
really illogical name for that little baby.
But if the purpose of that name is so that you and I might not
miss the most important story in history, that a servant king who
came to die, rise again and conquer, well, if that were the
purpose, then this is a very appropriate name for a baby
indeed. Obed servant pointing to a
servant that would come 1000 years later.
What does this mean for you and I on Christmas?
Two things. Two things.
First, if you're a Christian tonight, but you've been running
on empty, maybe you're bitter like Naomi, and you don't even
know why. I want you to know that God is
not surprised. He's not ashamed of you.
He's not angry. He's calling you to repentance.
He didn't send his only Son to die for you so that you could
feel ashamed. He sent him so that you could be
redeemed, that you might have your soul restored to go from
bitter and empty to a cup that overflows if you follow Christ,
if you know Christ as your Savior, but you found yourself
living a life by your own power, by your own strength, by your
own wisdom, and you've forgotten that it is God who sustains and
gives us life. Then tonight I give you the
simple recipe of the gospel to throw yourself on Jesus.
What does that mean? It means to rely on His finished
work on the cross, not your own merit.
It means to confess and repent and follow Him anew every day.
And you can do that tonight, in just a moment.
As we respond to the sermon, our prayer team is going to be down
here. We would love to pray for you
and with you. And if you need to come up and
confess and repent and be prayed for, we would love to do that
for you here on Christmas Eve. We have a community that wants
to walk with you. Maybe you've gotten caught up in
the difficulties of life, but I want you to remember when you
wake up tomorrow on Christmas Day as a child of God, the end
is not in doubt. The end was never in doubt.
It's already been written. 2nd For those of you that have never
surrendered your life to Christ, baby, tonight on Christmas Eve
you'd like to do that for the first time.
There's no greater gift than the salvation offered to us freely
by Christ Jesus according to scripture.
Here's how you do that. Romans 10/9 and 10 says if you
confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved. For with the heart 1 believes
and is justified, and with the mouth 1 confesses and is saved.
So if you would like to surrender to God today, I want
to give you that chance. Would you all please bow your
heads and close your eyes for a brief moment as we wrap up?
If you're willing to ask God for forgiveness and salvation with
every eye closed, with every head bowed, I just want you to
quietly or even silently repeat this prayer after me.
Jesus, I know I'm lost. I want you to redeem me and save
me. I want to be part of your
family. I surrender everything to you.
Be my Lord. Please Jesus, if you prayed that
prayer for the very first time right now, would you be brave
and raise your hand for me to see?
Thank you, thank you. You can put your hands down.
Thank you, thank you in Jesus name, Amen.
Real quick, right here, real quick.
Jesus loves you. And if you just gave your life
to Christ, welcome to the family.
We're going to have a time to respond to this.
You go and stand. We're going to sing as well.
Our prayer team's going to be on both sides over here.
If you would like prayer for any reason at all, come down.
We would love to pray with you and for you and over you.
If you just made a declaration of faith to Christ, we would
love to talk to you. There's some tables in the back.
Say I raised my hand. You can go back there.
You can come up to one of us. We have a gift for you.
We'd love to celebrate with you. Our prayer team is up here to
pray with you for any reason. You move as the Lord leads you
church. We love you and Merry Christmas.