Jesus, My Kinsman Redeemer: Ruth 2-3


It takes more than a pair of starry eyed lovers to make the perfect Hollywood romance: the greatest love stories of the silver screen, from Casablanca to Titanic to Cold Mountain, owe their appeal to a rather unromantic scientific formula, an American academic has found.  Every romantic film, however innovative it might appear, is really a variation on one of just seven themes, each of which is calculated to touch the emotions of people with a particular psychological profile. Marcia Millman, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz has found that themes, such as first love, sacrifice and obsession, work again and again not because they offer an idealised picture of love but because they reflect the experiences that turn up in real-life love affairs.

What is more, her findings can help people to avoid the amorous pitfalls that are common to their personality type, and guide their love lives towards a happy ending. By identifying the style of love story that appeals most, and remembering its lessons in their own relationships, people can learn to recognise the unconscious factors that guide their romantic choices, she suggests in her new book, The Seven Stories of Love, And How to Choose Your Happy Ending. Professor Millman studied thousands of films, dating from the silent era, to pick out the underlying psychological factors that make them work. Millman found that by studying the dynamics of screen love affairs people could learn to make life imitate art.

Hollywood Guide to Happy Endings

1. First Love: The most common category that separates a character from their parents, such as in Titanic and Dirty Dancing. These are about someone who leads you into a different world. It needn’t be a lifelong relationship, and often the object of love is a parental substitute. A sub-genre is the story of the widow/widower who finally separates from the memory of a dead spouse, ready to love again, as in Ghost.

2. Pygmalion: Also known as “Mentor and Protégé”. As well as Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, this includes films such as Educating Rita and The Graduate. It is normally, but not necessarily, an older, controlling man and a younger woman. But the younger person also has a motive: the recognition and nurture of a more powerful patron. This sort of story normally ends in conflict, but it need not if the teacher is ready to accept the pupil as an equal in the end.

3. Obsessive Love: This is often a scenario that applies to those who felt parental abandonment when young, and who remain angry about their rejection. When they meet someone whom they idealise, they go too far and become so demanding that they eventually ensure that they will be rejected again. The result is often violent, as in Fatal Attraction. Wuthering Heights is a variation on the theme.

4. Downstairs Woman & Upstairs Man: This theme includes Pretty Woman, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, and can end in an uplifting or a tragic fashion. It is the story of someone who pursues a partner who is hard to win over for fear of what society would think of them, or falls in love with a partner who ought to be out of reach.

5. Sacrifice: In this kind of relationship someone gives up the love of their life, as in The End of the Affair, Brief Encounter, Casablanca and The Bridges of Madison County. Its theme is a person who has always led a cautious life but becomes embroiled in a passionate affair. They are then caught between wanting to be with their partner, or wrecking the life of someone else, or even their own life. Often thought to be about guilt, it’s really more about control: these people are not used to letting go.

6. Rescue: in which one lover seeks to nurse the other back to physical or emotional health. The genre includes Beauty and the Beast, Dark Victory, Mona Lisa and Shadowlands. A female protagonist has often lost her father, and seeks to do something she blames her mother for never achieving: saving him. If she can restore her lover, she restores something of her father. 

7. The Courage of Love: The theme of some of the most successful love stories of all time, such as Sleepless in Seattle, Onegin and An Affair to Remember. It is the story of willingness to take a risk for love. It is about the person who finally learns to make a commitment, to have faith that things will work out, and to avoid avoiding. People who avoid commitment are often those who have a dream that they will never grow old; they tend to learn to fall in love only once they confront their own mortality.

 

Millman says we, “invariably find that one story resonates more strongly for them. By understanding why a particular story appeals to us we can learn better to control its course in real-life romance.”

Good advice. I would like to suggest however that there is an eighth genre of love story not yet explored by the Hollywood script writers. It is found here in the Book of Ruth. It could be subtitled “three funerals and a wedding” for the Book of Ruth opens with three funerals but closes with a wedding. There is a good deal of weeping recorded in the first chapter, but the last chapter records an overflowing of joy in the little town of Bethlehem.


Ruth and Esther are the only OT books named after women. Ruth was a Gentile who married a Jew; Esther was a Jew who married a Gentile; but God used both of them to save the nation. Ruth is placed between Judges and Samuel for a definite reason. Judges shows the decline of the Jewish nation; Samuel shows the setting up of the kingdom; and between them, Ruth points to our Kinsman Redeemer - the Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour and King.

Jesus Christ is not only descended from Ruth but in the NT, Like Boaz, calls and redeems His Bride, the Church, from all nations.

So Ruth is a love story between Ruth and Boaz, but points us to the ultimate love story - God’s love for us.  But first notice:

1. Ruth’s Sorrow (Ruth 1:1-15)
Why a famine should come to Bethlehem (“house of bread”), we do not know; possibly because of the sins of the people.

Instead of trusting God in the land, Elimelech (which means “God is my king”) and Naomi (“pleasantness”) take their two sons to the land of Moab to the East. They plan to stay briefly, but instead they settle down until the father and the two sons die. Naomi desires to return home but in bitterness cries, Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.” (Ruth 1:20). Yet God was going to use Ruth to change her mother-in-law’s attitudes toward life and toward God. “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.” (Ruth 1:16-17). Ruth’s Sorrow.

2. Ruth’s Service (Ruth 2:1-12)
Barley harvest was in April, and Ruth labours in the scorching heat as a poor gleaner - someone allowed to follow the harvesters and pick up the grain dropped or left at the edges of the field. (see Deut. 24:19-22 and Lev. 19:9ff). Note her dedication and determination: “Let me now go to the fields” (2:2); “Let me glean and gather among the sheaves” (2:7). That afternoon the owner of the field came to greet the harvesters. His name was Boaz. Ruth could tell right way he was well liked by the workers. “May the Lord bless you!” He called out to them. “And may the Lord bless you” they returned. A short time later Ruth is startled when Boaz approaches her. She asks, head bowed, why he should take an interest in her a foreigner.

“I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” (Ruth 2:11-12)


God’s providence had led her to the fields of Boaz. Notice how Boaz protects Ruth and provides for her long before he marries her, a perfect picture of our Lord. Even Naomi begins to lose her bitterness. Ruth’s Sorrow; Ruth’s Service.

3. Ruth’s Surrender (Ruth 3:1-16)
“Do you care for him?” Naomi asks one night. Ruth smiles and blushes. “He is kind to me... He provides for me... He is a good man” A few weeks later, Naomi sits Ruth down and says, “My daughter, don’t you think I should try and find a husband for you, a home where you will be well provided for?” Ruth didn’t answer, but she thought she knew what was coming next. “As you know Boaz whose servant girls you have been gleaming with, is a kinsman with the right to redeem us. And tonight is a perfect time to approach him. “Tonight?” Suddenly Ruth felt weak. 

Wash and perfume yourself and put on your best clothes, go down to the threshing floor. Don’t let him know you are there. When he lies down and falls asleep, go and uncover his feet, lie down and when he wakes up he will tell you what to do. Ruth was very nervous. Her heart pounding in her ears.  Boaz might not want her. He might be angry with her. He might reject her.

Why would he want to redeem her, a poor Moabites, especially when she could probably not offer him any children. She’d been married to Naomi’s son for 10 yrs without bearing children. Hours later, Boaz woke with a start and discovered Ruth lying at his feet. “Who are you?” He asked. Fear clutched Ruth’s throat. “I am your servant Ruth”, she said just above a whisper. “Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are my kinsman redeemer.” This word ‘corner’ is this same word  translated “wings” in 2:12, when Boaz says to Naomi, “May the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge, reward you fully.” Ruth is taking his own prayer and asking Boaz to fulfil it by sheltering her under his wing and redeem her. In short, she is proposing marriage! She watches Boaz’s face for his reaction. He broke into a wide smile that shone brightly even in the dim light.

“The LORD bless you, my daughter,” he replied. “This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier: You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor. And now, my daughter, don’t be afraid. I will do for you all you ask. All my fellow townsmen know that you are a woman of noble character.” (Ruth 3:10-11)


The Kinsman Redeemer is a central theme in Ruth and the Scriptures. The Kinsman Redeemer was responsible for protecting the interests of needy family members:

  1. To provide an heir for a brother who had died (Deut. 25:5-10)
  2. To buy back an estate which had been lost through poverty (Lev. 25:23-55). This kept the land in the possession of the family.
  3. To redeem a relative who had been sold into slavery (Leviticus 25:47-49)
  4. And to avenge the killing of a relative (Numbers 35:19-21).

    “Avenger” and “kinsman” come from the same Hebrew word. The kinsman, of course, had to be willing and able to redeem. “Spread the corner of your garment over me” (3:9) was Ruth’s legal claim, asking Boaz to be her kinsman-redeemer and marry her. We can see in Ruth’s actions a beautiful illustration of the believer’s relationship to Jesus Christ. Certainly if we want to know him our proper place is at His feet. How appropriate on this Advent Sunday when we remember that Jesus will soon come to claim his Bride, though it is “night” now, we look forward to when morning will come. Ruth’s sorrow, Ruth’s service, Ruth’s surrender.

    4. Ruth’s Satisfaction
    Another man in Bethlehem had prior claim on the estate, so Boaz approached him the next day. The man was anxious to claim the land, but he did not want Ruth! He knew that any sons Ruth bore him would carry, not his name, but the name of her first husband (4:5); and thus he would lose the estate the son would inherit.
    He had no love for Ruth. Boaz however was willing to risk everything, and pay any price to redeem the woman and her estate - because he loved her. In the latter half of chapter 4, we now discover the significance of this book: Ruth becomes an ancestress of David.

This book begins with a funeral and ends with a wedding!
Boaz and Ruth were married as soon as arrangements could be made. God blessed them with a baby boy. It was hard to tell who was happier about the birth of Obed - Naomi or Ruth! For it was through Naomi’s God that Ruth obtained a timely redemption - and found a home for her pilgrim heart.

The Abiding Lesson: The Kinsman Redeemer
The Hebrew word “goel” is translated by the English word “kinsman” (3:9) and also the word “redeemer” (Job 19:25). The word simply means “to set free”. Not everyone could fulfil this role. 

  1. The redeemer must be a near kinsman.
  2. The redeemer must be willing to do so.
  3. The redeemer must be free to do so.
  4. The redeemer must possess the ability to do so.
  5. The redeemer must be able to pay the price of redemption.

Through the kinsman tradition God provided for widows and orphans, guaranteeing them a future when they had none.

The marriage of Boaz and Ruth is one of the most powerful love stories in the Bible. Yet, amazingly, the word ‘love’ never appears. Perhaps because it doesn’t need to. The setting of Ruth’s proposal wasn’t exactly romantic. A threshing floor, perhaps even a community one. Boaz’s answer might not seem romantic either. “First, I need to make sure the other man doesn’t want you.”  But love, in this case, had little to do with romance - and everything to do with redemption.

As Ruth’s kinsman redeemer, Boaz was fulfilling a legal duty when he married her. But Boaz went much further. Before she ever asked, Boaz made up for what she lacked, he provided for her, protected her, affirmed her character. That generosity and sacrifice must be at the heart of every relationship if a marriage is to flourish. Every one entering marriage brings some kind of poverty - a broken past, a spiritual hunger, an aching need unmet in childhood. Sometimes life can leave us trembling, like Ruth at our partners feet. We feel naked and ridiculous. When I ask for covering, will I be accepted or rejected? This is the moment God waits for - when we are brave enough to say “I need you”. Such timely redemption in marriage is a gift of God’s grace to the other person. Perhaps that is why marriage is used as a model in scripture for our relationship with God. Jesus is portrayed as the bridegroom and we the Church, his bride. In the book of Revelation

“Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready… The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.” (Revelation 19:7; 22:17)

 

Like Ruth, perhaps you are ready to receive the redeemer into your life. Ruth and her sister-in-law Orpah help us see the options. They both had the opportunity to turn their backs on what they were worshiping and follow the true God. Orpah had started out to follow Naomi but then changed her mind.

        
Many people do that today. They start out but never make a commitment to Christ. You might see them in church for a couple times but then they vanish. God doesn’t want a half-hearted commitment. He’s looking for people today who will say, “Your God will be my God.” Are you ready to do that?

We all need a redeemer. The Bible says that we need someone to rescue us from the slippery slope of sin. You might think that you can’t possibly be forgiven for what you’ve done. That’s not true. God can forgive anyone. But just as Ruth needed to ask for redemption, so too, we need to ask Jesus to redeem us.
Are you ready to curl up at the feet of Jesus and ask Him to save you? God is romancing you right now. He longs to have a relationship with you, but you need to make the proposal.

He’s waiting for you to ask Him. The Book of Ruth is revered because she is the first “believer by choice” in the Bible. She put her faith in the God of Abraham voluntarily and she did so with a full-fledged commitment. In the Old Testament, a redeemer must be related by blood, he must be able to redeem, and he must be willing. Jesus took on flesh and blood so that He could relate to us. He is able to redeem because He has paid the price for our redemption and He is more than willing. Are you?

The Book of Ruth concludes with a genealogy. Did you know there are 41 separate genealogies from Genesis to Revelation? Have you ever stopped to wonder why? These family trees are really “faith albums” of God’s promises to His people.

 

When God made the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 that all families on earth would be blessed through him, we see that God has grafted in individuals like Rahab and Ruth in order to bring David into the world. Then, when we come to Matthew 1, we see that the lineage of Boaz and Ruth from Bethlehem ended up in David’s greater Son, born of a virgin in a stable in Bethlehem.

Just as God plucked Ruth out of a rough world and adopted her into the family faith tree, maybe you will be the first in your family line to follow Jesus. Your spiritual scrapbook may be brand new. Or, maybe you’re continuing a long-established family tree of Christ followers. In John 1:12, the apostle writes,

             
“But as many as received him, who believed in his name, he gave them the right to become children of God.” (John 1:12) And in Ephesians 2, Paul writes,

             
“Now you are no longer strangers to God and foreigners to heaven, but you are members of God’s very own family.” (Ephesians 2:19 Living Bible)


Are you ready to receive your kinsman redeemer? Do so today - right now as I pray this prayer. Lets pray.

“Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for coming into this world to save me as my kinsman redeemer. Thank you for dying in my place to take away my sin. Please become my kinsman redeemer for I cannot save myself. Forgive me sin and cleanse me. Fill me with your Holy Spirit. Make me your child and never leave me.  Hide me under the shadow of your wing. Protect me and uphold me. From this day forward and for ever more. Amen.”

 

 

 

With grateful thanks to Brian Bill, Warren Wersbie and David & Heather Kopp for inspiration and ideas used in this sermon .