The Lineage of a King: The Unlikely

Introduction

This Christmas, I want to talk about Jesus’ family tree. Now, I know what you are thinking… you mean that portion of the Bible that I skip over in the Bible reading plan. YES, I am talking about that portion.

Even though our family tree is interesting to us, it is rarely interesting to anyone else. It’s why we often skip over the genealogies in the Scripture. How can that matter to us?

What about the family tree of Jesus, the Son of God? Why is his family tree so important?

Matthew’s primary intention was to show that Jesus was the descendent of Abraham and the son of David - thus laying a foundation that he was the Messiah. So, you see the lineage from Abraham to David and David to Jesus.

Secondly, the genealogy of Jesus ties the entire Bible together and brings it to a point - the person and work of Jesus.

In your own family tree, there are people that you know and love that are just names on a page to everyone else, but to you, they are stories and experiences and lifelong lessons.

In the same way, Jesus geneology comes to life when we begin to tell it from the perspective of these stories - which brings me to the third reason that these stories are important.

Matthew’s Third Intention is a little more subtle. Matthew includes some untraditional elements in the lineage.

Where many try to hide the less than scrupulous parts of their family heritage, the Bible flaunts Jesus’. Why?

Because God is carrying out his perfect plan through imperfect people. And he is working his unbroken purposes through broken people. And he is has not discounted those that the world has cast off.

I cannot highlight all of Jesus lineage this Christmas, but I want to highlight a few individuals. Today, I want to talk about Ruth.

Ruth is someone we might think that God is unlikely to use. But as we see God using her, we can see that God can use us. Those unlikely, but not beyond the sovereign gaze of our Savior.

Read Matthew 1:1-6

Matthew 1:1–6 ESV

1 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3 and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, 4 and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5 and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah,

Explanation

THE STORY OF RUTH

Context

The story of Ruth happens around the end of the reign of the Judges. Israel is living in sin. The land is dangerous and broken, and sin is rampant. Because of this, a famine has swept over the land.

The Predicament

This story begins with Elimelech and his wife Naomi and his two sons. A famine in the land of Israel, so Elimelech moved his family to Moab.

His two sons took Moabite wives - Orpah and Ruth.

However, Elimelech died and both of his sons died. This placed Naomi in a terrible predicament. She had no child - no son to bear the name of her husband or care for her.

This was a bigger problem than we think today. Old Testament scholar John Walton would say that this is the equivalent of homelessness today.

Women had no political, economic, or social status by themselves in the Ancient Near East. This, to an aging woman in a foreign land, is almost assuredly a death sentence.

Ruth goes with Naomi

So Naomi gets up and returns to Israel. And she tells her two daughters in law to stay in Moab so that they can find husbands and continue their lives.

Eventually she prevails upon them - Orpah goes home, but “Ruth clings to Naomi.” (v14)

Naomi continues to try to convince her to go back, but she will not and finally shares that statement which often gets used in weddings:

Ruth 1:16 “16 But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

So Naomi takes Ruth home with her.

Ruth and Naomi in Israel

Where to they go? “O, to a little town of Bethlehem.” Such significance in such a small place. No more than a few hundred people have ever lived in Bethlehem. And at this time in Israel’s history, there were certainly significantly less than that. But this illustrates our point. God works through unlikely people in unlikely circumstances. God uses the unsuspected and unsuspecting.

Naomi, not having money or family to support her, only had her daughter-in-law, a gentile who was on the outside of society.

APPLICATION: If you lined up 10 people before the average Israelite and asked, “Who’s story will one day become the Holy Scripture and play a significant part in the family lineage of the Messiah?” Ruth is picked last every time. She was a Moabite woman.

Yet, God uses people that they rest of the world has discounted.

So she tells her Ruth to go into the field behind the harvesters in the village and pick up some grain that they leave behind. This is in the custom of the Jewish law.

So Ruth does exactly this. However, Boaz sees her, and he asks about her. When told who she is, he tells his workers to leave a little grain for her so that she can harvest a little more. He tells her it’s because she has been kind to her relative. He allows her to come and eat at mealtime with his harvesters. He gives her more grain than necessary.

APPLICATION: You cannot imagine the ripple effect of your everyday faithfulness in small things will have on the scale of hundreds of years.

Matthew 1:5 is such a short verse, isn’t it? It’s unassuming and boring until we see the smaller story in the bigger one.

Who knows what God will do with your story?

Naomi wonders why someone would be so kind to a Moabite woman, so she asks Ruth, “Who is helping you?”

Ruth goes home, and Naomi asks how her day was. She says, “You know. This man I am working with - Boaz, he has been very kind do me.”

At this, Naomi exclaims, BOAZ! Boaz is my kinsman redeemer!

The role of kinsman-redeemer is found in Leviticus 25, in the case of an Israelite man's death in which he fails to leave behind a son, the brother of the deceased man is commanded to take his widow as wife and both redeem the land and provide a son to carry on the deceased father's name.

In this case, it would involve Naomi’s husband’s land. The kinsman redeemer would have purchase Naomi’s husband’s property, marry Naomi (or one in her stead), have a child with the name of the father, and give the land one day to the child. This was done in the name of family.

Because Naomi was no longer able to bear children, Ruth could go in her stead.

Ruth Begins to Court Boaz

The details of their courtship are too long for our discussion (and Ruth really bears a deeper reading than we are getting today). However, Ruth makes her intentions known. She would like for Boaz to be to her the kinsman redeemer for Naomi.

However, there was one closer kin who could have been the kinsman redeemer.

Boaz says this to Ruth: Ruth 3:13 “But if he is not willing to redeem you, then, as the Lord lives, I will redeem you.”

Once Boaz found out that the kinsman redeemer closer to Naomi could/would not, he called to the elders and made a covenant with the man, Naomi, and Ruth.

Boaz Redeems Ruth

Ruth 4:9–12 ESV

9 Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, “You are witnesses this day that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Chilion and to Mahlon. 10 Also Ruth the Moabite, the widow of Mahlon, I have bought to be my wife, to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place. You are witnesses this day.” 11 Then all the people who were at the gate and the elders said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman, who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem, 12 and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman.”

APPLICATION: The smallest detail of your story is not beyond the reign of a sovereign God. And the biggest details he understands more than you ever could imagine.

The family is redeemed, the lineage continues, and Ruth and Naomi are saved!

So the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah was preserved as the lineage of Jesus.

Invitation

Ruth is the grandmother of Jesse, and she is the great grandmother of David, the King, and the father of the lineage of the Messiah. So, Ruth is the great, great, great, great, great many times more grandmother of King Jesus.

Just as a child would be born of Boaz and Ruth that would bring about the redemption of a family name, so a little boy would be born in the same town - nearly 1000 years later. But that little boy would not mark the redemption for a family and its land and property but for the salvation of the world.

But that child would grow up and be the Kinsman-redeemer for his bride, the church!