TRANSCRIPT
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Thanks, Lauren. And let’s keep that slide up there ’cause we’re gonna do it all together, that’s how I say this. This is part of God’s story. Lauren, that was a great reading. May be seated. And Lauren, I was gonna ask you what version are you using there
And… I never would have guessed that. My goodness. Well, that’s terrific. And as we get started, we’re gonna be looking at Ruth chapter four, as you could probably guess, since we just read Ruth chapter 4, but I have to say something before we get rolling, if you noticed in that last song that all the slides went like split and you’re probably like my wife leaning over to me and saying What is going on in the Tech booth… I will tell you what was going on in the tech, but I was sitting on the clicker…Oh my goodness. It’s an amazing thing, but I will catch on technologically here.
I really do. I thank Alex for the opportunity to teach in Ruth chapter 4. This is a terrific passage, and one of you came up to me before and said, Oh wow, you’ve got the kinsman redeemer passage.
Yeah, a kinsman redeemer or family redeemer or whatever we wanna call it. This is about being redeemed this morning, and this story in Ruth, I’ve enjoyed it every week as we’ve gone through this Book of Ruth.
But the suns also a very special Sunday for us, and that it’s Palm Sunday is Palm Sunday. And I think Jesus, as He was coming down on that donkey and the crowds were waving the pals and they said, blessings on the King who comes in the name of the Lord, Peace in Heaven and glory in the highest heaven.
This is a joyful day for us as Christians. Yes, it is. But I also know that as Jesus was coming round in that corner and seeing Jerusalem, He was saying in front of him, the task that lay in front, he realized that soon he was gonna have to be stepping into this aspect of redeeming His creation and the price was gonna be huge. So yes, it’s a day of joy, it’s also a day of reflection, and as we enter into the story of redemption here in Ruth chapter 4, I just wanna encourage you to realize there’s a reason why we need to be redeemed, and it costs something great. I was trying to think, Okay, how do we illustrate redemption or redeem those of us in the church, we’ve grown up with that name, it’s quite a theological expression, we always think of people being redeemed. It basically means you have to buy back to repurchase to bring new life into a dead life. Redemption. So I was trying to think of an illustration. I tell you, I went through a lot and I found out most of them were false stories, don’t you know that…
I don’t know why it is we preachers make up stories to illustrate our points, but I looked in my own kitchen and this is what I saw, just a piece of furniture, we call it our kitchen cabinet. But to me, as I was getting ready for this week, I couldn’t help but think, Yeah, that’s quite a picture of redemption in that little cabinet.
We keep our pots and pans and some dishes in there years ago, in fact, over a century ago, a century in a couple of decades, it was a regular fixture in my grandfather’s house, and he told me one of the functions of this cabinet in the beginning was to whole buckets of coal, and they would put buckets of coil in there, close the doors and look nice, then they don’t open it to take it over, the cost dumping in, and that lasted that function for a while, and then they got new heating in new ways to cook, and so I no longer had to have coal bucket, so it became a jamb cover and then would put canned goods in there.
Each time it would change its purpose in had a new Code of paint slapped on it, it became a tool covered. And eventually the last function was a pain cover, so you can imagine what this covered… Look like when my grandfather passed away. This covered was basically on its way out, he was gonna be thrown out, and my dad and my mom stepped in and said, You know, we’d like it, so I took it and it sat in our garage for quite a while, and then unbeknownst to me, Dad started re-finishing it, and he began stripping one layer of paint off after another layer of paint, and he got down to that wood and he started sanding it, and he started repairing the hinges, and then he gave it a finish that gave it this beautiful Cherry coating. And then he gave it to us. And you know, this thing isn’t worth much, but it’s priceless to me, surprise list to me because this was the last piece of furniture my Dad ever was able to repair. Alzheimer’s took over. And he just wasn’t able to do it after that. I look at this crazy piece of furniture, and I’m so glad I’m married to a woman who said, You can put it in a place of honor in our house.
And we have it right there in the kitchen. Functioning in a new way. It was supposed to be thrown out on the trash. The story we’re gonna look at this morning in Ruth chapter 4, where we left Ruth last week, was in kind of this one, I wouldn’t say limbo, but it was this verse, they only said, We were just be patient, my daughter until we hear what happens.
And if we look at some other translations of that… I think it’s actually King James, it says, just sit still, daughter. Let’s see how this turns out.
Now, this is Ruth, this is Ruth, who was very proactive. This is Ruth who stepped into the situation, she didn’t like grass Grinder Her feet, this was the gal who… When Naomi was coming back from Moab, destitute alone, Rossi, I’m gonna stick with you. Your God is gonna be My God, your peer, gonna be my people. I’m gonna establish a name where you go… I will never leave you. This is Ruth who, as they were there and she realized we’re getting hungry, he just said, Do it, name, I’m gonna go out and I’m gonna find us some food, I’m gonna lean… And she was from Moab, from a whole different country. She didn’t know all the rules and regs of this culture, but she went and she cleaned and you know when she knew, she was directed to go to one of her closest cousins field, and he protected her, and Naomi was through… This is Ruth who worked through the barley harvest, through the wheat harvest, through the second barley harvest, and when you kind of figure all these things out, that’s like five to six months that she’s putting her back into things and she’s providing for Naomi, she’s providing for herself this is Ruth who took things on her win, and this was Ruth who followed her mother-in-law’s advice, and like Alex handled so well last week, got a showered up, went over there on her best, dead at night on all the guys on the threshing floor were sound asleep, she prepped over there where boys wasn’t she? Don’t buy his feet.
And she laid there, and when he woke up and wondered who this was at his feet, she said, This is… I’m Ruth, I’m Ruth, your servant. Please cover me. You’re my family redeemer. And when she said those words, she was putting herself out out on the line, and we’re gonna learn a little bit more about what her request really meant as she asked Boaz these words, but
Let me show you why she has to just sit still and be patient right now, and that’s because Boas says to her, Oh, it’s true that I’m one of your family redeemer, but there’s also another man who is more closely related to you than I am, so let me try to take care of this. And so Ruth, who has been following through on everything to this point has to sit still and wait.
So we’re gonna take a little detour now, because I just… This is why I get Connick, kinda like Aaron gets a lot of Deakin ESS when he breathes. I kind of enjoy some of these things about the law of God, and God way back in the very beginning, he inserted things, teaching his people how to live so that they could really take care of each other. Is back in Leviticus chapter 25, and I don’t want you to turn to this, I’m gonna be popping up a lot of verses, you can look at it this afternoon or this week, sometimes a little bit, ’cause 25 is a fascinating chapter. In fact, I was almost gonna say it’s one of the most amazing chapters in scripture, but then I realized there’s a lot of amazing chapters in scripture, so I think I’m safe to say it’s one of the most amazing chapters in Leviticus.
Mimetic is a tough read, we get to this chapter, and you have the year of July, but it starts with something else. So let me give you a little bit of background. It talks about something called this Sabbath year.
Now, you know the sabbath day is the seventh day of the week, and we’re to rest. And God commanded us to do that, to rest, to replenish your body. Well, he also commanded that for his creation, he said There’s a Sabbath year, so the seventh year, the Israelites were not supposed to plant anything, they were supposed to let their land rest and regenerate and re-energize, and then had this thing called the year of jubilee, and the year of jubilee was a Sabbath of Sabbath years. Now, let me just stop back and do the math, that’s seven times… Seven years, that’s 49 years. The next year, the 50th year, was this year of jubilee. Okay, what was the purpose of the Year Jubilee? Let’s read this Here.
Set this year apart as holy a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there, it will be a jubilee year for you, when each of you may return to the land that belong to your ancestors and return to your own plan.
And we may read that today and say, Oh, okay, it’s the time to have a reunion, go back home, see the family say hi to my ancestors who might still be living there, and we’re supposed to honor them in that way, but He’s saying something much, much deeper than that, it’s not going back just to visit, it’s going back to repossess the land that your ancestors owned, and I’ve sat there puzzling trying to say… I wonder how we do that today. This is a foreign thing to me. I was doing the math. Okay, this is supposed to be… Every 50 years. We were supposed to do that. We bought our house in 1999. I think it was built in about 1986.
So what if in about what, 14 years night. 2036, I get a knock on the door, and I don’t find the door and the person says, Hi, I’m the fellow who built this house and I’ve come back to take it. I have a hard time. There’s a principle underlying this year of jubilee, as found in the next verse, the land must never be sold on a permanent basis, for the land belongs to me, That’s God speaking. This is my land, you’re only foreigners and tenant farmers working for me for every purchase of land, you must grant the seller the right to buy it back. And I had to ask myself the question, me, I wonder what this would do to inflation, I wonder what it’d be like for all of you who are so desirous to buy a house of your own… And here you are in Colorado, where it’s so expensive. Well, there’s a principal.
Okay, every five or 50 years, the land reverts to the person who owned it first, so in essence, the people had to realize it’s not the land that I’m possessing, it’s the harvest that that land makes that I’m processing. So you have to do the math. And you know what? Frankly, the Bible does the math for us.
When you make an agreement with your neighbor to buy or sell property, you must not take advantage of each other, the seller must set the price by taking into account the number of years remaining until the next year of jubilee, the more years until the next… You believe the higher the price, the few years, the lower the price.
After all the person selling the lands are actually selling you a certain number of harvests, and I love what the ads show your fear of God by not taking advantage of each other. I am the Lord, your God, built right into the law. It’s just economic principle. In a way that God protects his people. Well, I wonder what it be like if we put that into practice. And frankly, I don’t know how we would. And also frankly, I’m not sure that the Israelites did. We don’t have a lot of indication that they did, but I think what a great thing that God would slide in there, and then you come to that question… Okay, so that’s for people who are selling the land. What about a person who loses it… Okay, if one of your fellow Israelites falls into poverty and is forced to sell some family land than a close relative should buy it back for him, a close relative, and is where we get into looking at some different translations, and you know if you’re new to Christianity I apologize, ’cause we throw out all these translation… You heard me ask, Lauren, what was the translation you were reading…
Well, you know, this book is so important to us, this Bible, we believe this is consort to us, and it’s fascinating, generation after generation has tried to translate it, but they get new manuscripts, new things are found, and they try to get closer and closer to what it originally might have met. So that’s why things might differ in different translations, I… Your something called the New Living Translation, and it just helps it flow for me. I didn’t realize the NIV was so flowing. But it swith. Anyway, in the English Standard Version.
On the English Standard Version, interprets this a close relative as his nearest Redeemer. So it takes that word close relative and it brings it is nearest redeemer or I would say family redeemer, or as you heard me say earlier. Kinsman redeemer.
Okay, hey, the price that the kinsman has to pay is the same thing as we saw before, the price of the land will be discounted according to the number of years until the next year of jubilee. So this person who is a family redeemer, one of the things he can do is buy back or redeem your land that maybe you’ve lost, or for some reason you’ve had to sell, but
That’s not the only thing that the family redeemer can do, or was even asked to do, he was also asked to buy back your freedom, to buy back your freedom, if for some reason you as an Israelite lost your freedom, there’s a principle behind us too, and I love this again, it’s so much fun getting into the Bible. I would encourage them to read Leviticus 25. I’m not sure about Leviticus, but 25.
If one of your fellow Israelites falls into poverty and cannot support himself, support him as you would a foreigner or a temporary resident and allow them to live with you, don’t charge interest or make a profit in his expense, instead show your fear of God by letting them live with you as you’re relative. Can you imagine? If we did that… Now, I love the fact that we have a Benevolence Fund, I love the fact that we try to take seriously in one of our own body gets into trouble when we try to home. He’s asking us to go a second mile, and he put it right in His law, and He invites the kinsman, Reimer, the family redeemer, to open up his home and allowed to come in.
Same thing, you may ask them, Okay, if all the Israelites were not supposed to be made slaves, how would someone get into a problem where their freedom had to be bought back? Well, he goes on. Suppose a foreigner or a temporary resident becomes rich while living among you, if any of your fellow Israelites fall into poverty and are forced to sell themselves to such a foreigner or a member of his family, they still retain the right to be bought back even after they have been purchased, they may be bought back by a brother, an uncle, a cousin, in fact, anyone from the extended family may buy them back, and the principle of how you buy them back the same thing as the year of jubilee, they will negotiate the price of their freedom with the person who bought them, the price will be based on the number of years from the time they were sold until the next year of jubilee, whatever it would cost to hire a worker for that period of time.
Again, I love how God thinks of all these details. Anyway, anyway, we go to see that the family redeemer can buy back land, the family redeemer can buy back your freedom. There’s also another one that’s in numbers, I’m not gonna touch on it much today, but the family redeemer can avenge justice for you…
That’d be a tough one for me to do, but it’s one that is called, if someone is wronged, you can go and make things right, but there’s a fourth one, provide an air for you, and this is one where you’re saying, Okay, what’s going on here?
And basically what it’s saying, if an individual was married, has no children and he dies, the family redeemer is called to marry that lady, to have a child by her so that the name can be carried on. I say married, but basically, I kinda mean a choir, which is unfortunate women, but that’s the way it was looked at. Back in that day, the family redeemer would come and do his responsibility by acquiring this woman and providing protection for her, the first son that bears to him will be considered the son of the dead brother, so that the name will not be forgotten in Israel. So I wanna look at these three incidents of this kind, in redeemer, you can buy back the land, you can buy back the freedom, you can provide an error for the person. And that’s what this family redeemer was called to do.
When we look at that, we begin to realize, Okay, there’s gotta be some characteristics of this person who is the closest relative… Okay, the one thing is, I gotta be the closest relative, they’re gonna be that nearest relative, but not just that, they have to be the nearest relative who’s also willing to do it, willing to step in and help in this situation, and they not only have to be the nearest relative who’s willing, but the nearest relative who was willing and has the ability to be able to redeem all of those things, when Ruth went on to that threshing floor and laid at the feet of Boaz and said to him, cover me. Cover me as my family redeemer, she was asking a big thing of base was saying, Boaz, would you buy the land that belonged to my father-in-law… Boat, which I also buy my freedom. I’m a foreigner in this country. Would you take me into your house and boys, would you help me provide an air for the family of Elimelech?
Wow. And now she has to sit silent and wait, and we’re gonna go on now into the passage in chapter 4, and in chapter 4, we’re gonna have some big passage to read here about how Boaz steps into this whole situation to perform this aspect of being a family redeemer. So let me just read this and we’ll kind of stop to make a few comments as we go, boys went into a town gate, he took a seat there, this was the next morning, and he goes to where the business was oftentimes contracted around Bethlehem at their gate. Just then the family redeemer he had mentioned came by, so boats called out to him and said, Come over here and sit down and… Friend, I wanna talk to you. So they sat down together. Now, let me just stop there. One of the things that jumped out of me was that were just then just an mansoor translations say, Behold, the family redeemer just popped in on the shore.
It’s so easy to look at that and say, Wow, what a coincidence. I don’t think it was a coincidence at all, because I see God’s providence to this every step of the way, how amazing that Ruth would go to a field she had no idea who it was, and it turned out to be her cousin. How amazing that he would reach out and care for her each step of the way, there’s the providence, and I believe how amazing is this guy who is a closer relative, shows up just then as Bois is waiting. Anyway, then Boas called 10 leaders from the town and he asked them to sit as a witness, that thing 10 leaders on all I can say is there’s no place in scripture that says You gotta have 10 people in order to do business. But it is interesting later on in the history of the Jewish people, when that a synagogue… In order to have a quorum, you had to have 10 people to do business. And so here’s Boaz, who knows the business has to be done, so he calls 10 leaders in Bethlehem to sit down to listen to what he has to propose to this family redeemer, and He goes on the same…
I said to the family redeemer, you know Naomi who came back from me, I’m… She’s selling the land to belong to our relative Elimelech, I thought I should speak to you about it so that you can redeem it if you wish, if you want the lands and buy it here in the presence of these witnesses, meaning you think that… Or there Naomi is selling the land that belonged to our relative Elimelech.
Now, we went through all of those scriptures there in Leviticus 25, oldest versus about this kinsman redeemer or this family redeemer. And it sounds like Naomi still owns the land. And maybe you can look at it a couple of different ways. Maybe a line, when he realized that there was a family and he had to move his family over to Moab to provide them, they just left, left their land, and he anticipated to be back in a year or two…
Well, it’s been over 10 years. It’d be interesting to know if that land just the empty for 10 years, I’m not sure. Or it could be that a lilac as he was anticipating going to Moab, went to someone and sold his land, realizing that when I go to Moab, I can make some money, come back and re-purchased the land with the whole year of Julie thing that we just read, and I believe very much that Naomi has that right of purchase, and Naomi, through Ruth, has approached Boaz to ask him that big favor, would you take my right and purchase your cousin’s land? And I’ll let you have it. So Boaz, being the righteous man he is, goes to the nearest relative and lays it out for him, and this relative, I can just imagine what he’s thinking.
Wow, I could increase my land, it’s a pretty good price because it’s not a full 50 years, I have to pay for… And he says, Alright, I’ll redeem it. And I can just imagine if Ruth were sitting there kinda getting caught in her breath, going, Wait a minute, that’s not the way this is supposed to go. I asked Boaz.
Boaz continues… Boaz told him, of course, your purchase of the land from the… IT also requires that you marry Ruth, the Moabite widow, that way she can have children who will carry on her husband’s name and keep the land in the family. I just like to point out, as we’ve been looking at this whole thing about a family redeemer, it all sounds good and nice and wonderful, and the right thing to do, and yet we don’t realize it was also a very costly thing to do. There was no guarantee that when this person bought the land, that they would possess it, they were supposed to buy the land for the person who lost it, and when Paul was as being asked to provide an air, he’s realizing it is inherited and said, he’s been working on is now gonna be shared, and that’s just what this other fellow, this near her cousin realizes, and so he backs out and he basically said, Bai can’t do it, I can’t jeopardize my estate, if that’s what I have to do, if I have to acquire the malate woman as my wife, no way my wife would not put up with that.
So he backed out of the deal, and we read in the passage of Scripture, there’s some legalities that have taken place, like it seems like he takes off his shoe and he hands it to Boaz in front of all these 10 witnesses, and they all realize that he is handing over his responsibility to Boaz by doing them, and then Boaz in front of all the people, we… The witnesses says, Now you’re a witnesses that today I have bought from the OMA all the property of elimination and melon, and with the land I have acquired Ruth, the Moabite, widow of Malone to be my wife. This way she can have a son to carry on the family name of her dead husband and to inherit the family property here in his hometown, you are all witnesses of that today, boasts as then the nearest relative who was willing to intervene and to get involved and had the ability to be able to do it. And those three aspects are so important, he’s the nearest, he’s the most willing, and he has the ability to be able to do it, and then we see the rest of the chapter, it kind of unfolds like a Disney movie, all of a sudden, they’re married that the town is praising them, they get married, they have a child named Open, and Naomi, Naomi is praised and she holds over her grandson, everything seems right, and it would be great if everything could have ended there, but the way it ends is interesting because it ends with a genealogical record.
It ends with this that Lauren, it’s such a great job in reading as far as all these names, the genealogical record of their insurer Paris, Paris with the father of Hazara, Heron was the father of Ram, ram was the father, eminent dot was the father of national nation. Was the father of Salmon, Salmon was the father of Boaz, Boaz was the father of Obed, Obed was the father of Jesse. Jesse was the father, David, King David. And we begin to catch on, whoever is writing the story is looking back, maybe he’s the live during the time of King David, maybe he’s just a live during the time of the kings in Israel, but he’s looking back and he’s realizing the pivotal point that this situation played when Boas was willing to be the kinsman redeemer for Ruth and they united together, and it continued this genealogical line that went down to David.
King David, that many people looked as a redeemer for Israel, as one who was able to establish a strong kingdom for the Israelite people. He stops there. But the story doesn’t stop there. Because the story continues hundreds of years later, when Matthew, in his biography of Jesus, takes this very same section of names and puts them into the genealogy that he’s putting together, starting from Abraham and going all the way to Jesus Christ, and you’ll see those names within Boys was the father for Aedes, mother was Ruth. Amit was the father of Jesse, Jesse was the father of King David. And then it goes, I think it’s like 32 generations. 32 generations until it comes to, Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah.
And I wanna present to you today, just in closing…Yeah, that was the whole purpose of Ruth being ready. Now, I doubt that the person who wrote Ruth really understood that, but he thought How important to show that runs came together and that protected the line going to King David, but how amazing that Matthew and the other apostles saw how important Ruth and Boaz were… Come together and go all the way to Jesus Christ, the Messiah, and that brings us right back to where we started.
Where the crowds today on Palm Sunday saying, blessings on the King who comes in the name of the Lord, praise in Heaven and glory, and highest Heaven. And Jesus is coming down that hill to the Mount of Olives, and a little bit later in Luke’s gospel, Luke records these words, but as he came closer to Jerusalem and you saw the city ahead, he began to weep. How I wish today that you of all people, would understand the way of peace, and I pictured Jesus as he’s coming around on that donkey and probably even looked a little odd, and the people around her waving palm branch is saying, Oh, SANA and breaks down and weeps and says, If only you knew the way of peace today, and I believe when he went… Yeah, I believe he saw other things. I believe he saw time in a garden at the beginning of creation, when he and the God had walked with His created ones. I believe he remembered how wonderful it was to walk with Adam and Eve who actually put his image into them and had so many hopes and desires for them, and he walked, and I think he remembered that time when they were attempted and they succumbed and they chose a different way, they chose to take his place rather than to accept His offerings to them.
And I have a feeling Jesus might even have remembered when he had to kill one of his other creations to be able to cover those two of their shame and their guilt and their fear, and I believe as he looked at Generation since then, he saw the same thing happening a year after year, where some of these other creations, these animals who had no idea what was going on had to be sacrificed to be able to cover the choice, the guilt, the fear, the shame, and I believe as he looked over Jerusalem, he saw that whole path of history that brought him to this point to realize he was going to step in to be that family redeemer for us. He’s the nearest relative to us, he was most willing to do it, and he had the ability to do it too, is… I just wanna read just some verses, I’m not gonna flash is up, I’ll put it up at the end, and if you wanna know what the addresses of these verses are, but let me just share some verses, I believe that Jesus is our family redeemer. Yeah, is the nearest relative. This is this, he’s our Creator, For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him.
And for him, that’s Jesus Christ, who created us just as a father and mother would come together, he created us, he became human, he entered into His creation, He entered into our skin. Though He was God, He did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, He gave up His divine privileges. He took the humble position of a slave. He was born as a human being. Finally, he became our brother. He became our brother. So now Jesus and the ones he makes Holly have the same father. That’s why Jesus is not ashamed to call us His brothers and sisters. He stepped into that role of being the nearest relative to us, he was also willing… He was also willing to step into it, he paid the redemption price voluntary. And now this is from John chapter 10, where he’s talking about the Good Shepherd, and he identifies himself. Is that he says, I’m the good shepherd, the good shepherd. Sacrifices his life for the sheep. No one can take my life from me.
I sacrifice it voluntarily, I have the authority to lay down my life when I want to, and also I have the authority to take it back up, and I almost hear him saying, I’m not gonna do it until it’s done. And He came for this very purpose, in Mark chapter 10, it says, For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others, and to give His life as a ransom for many. That’s the reason he came. There was another one, I meet with a bunch of guys on Friday, and on Friday, we were going through Matthew 26, and we came to that verse in the garden of Gisele, where one of His disciples had chopped off the ear of a high pre-servant and Jesus healed it, and then he said, Put your sword away. Have we come to be revolutionaries? No, listen, I want you to know, if I wanted to get out of this, I could call thousands and thousands of angels right now to come and deliver, but that’s not what I’ve come to do, and so he willingly endured the cost of redemption that had to be made… And then finally, he is more than able to redeem us, He has the ability to redeem us, he paid with His own blood. I remember how he said he had to kill one of those animals to cover the shame of Adam and Eve, and year here after year, an animal was sacrificed to cover the shame of us, and Jesus came with His own blood, not the blood of goats and calves, entered the most holy place once for all time.
And secure our redemption. Forever, Christ offered himself to God. That’s a perfect sacrifice for our sin. But it wasn’t just his blood, he also paid through His generous grace, you know the generous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, though He was rich, yet for your sake, He became poor. So the buy is poverty. He can make you rich. I say to you today, just as Boaz was a redeemer for Ruth, and brought meaning and purpose and future into her life and brought covering to protect her and provided to land for her, Jesus are redeemer, is open up the way that we can come back into the purpose that God had for us way back in the Garden originally, but redemption is a big cost. I’m gonna ask Aaron and the team to come up and I just wanna throw out two pictures for you just in closing.
I was reading about a translator who was working on the Bible and he was doing this for a language in Mali, West Africa, it was called Bambara, the Bambara language, and he came to this concept of redemption, and he asked his translator, what’s the word that means? This redemption. And he explained what redemption was, and the fellow, all of a sudden, he just spilled off a word, and so the translator wrote down that word and he said, What does that really mean? And the translator said, Well, it means he took her heads out, and this Bible translator goes, He took our heads out, now wait a minute, and
He explained what redemption was again to him. And the translators, yes. Yeah, it means he took our heads out and he said, Can you explain to me the story of that word is it certainly generation after generation has been told the story in our country, in our culture, of how the slave traders would come and they would go in land into our country. And in order to do that, they had to pass through all kinds of different tribes in different cities, and they were given permission to go on one condition that when they returned, they would have to stop at that tribe so that the chief could take a look and see who it was. And he said when they would go to the try that they were gonna capture, they would capture them and they would shackle them, they would change them person to person to person, and they would put a net color around them, and they would march them back to the Sea where they were gonna be put on boats, but as they came to each village, the chief would come out, and if you saw somebody who recognized or someone that he knew or someone that he liked, he would say, take his head out of the chain, and he would give the slave traders money that they would recognize is currency, and he would buy their freedom.
That’s what redemption has done for us, it’s taken our head out of that chain that is enslaved us to shame, to fear, to guilt, everything that God never wanted us as his creation have to go through. Jesus is our family redeemer. As we enter this week of Holy Week, I look forward to Easter, I do. But before every resurrection, there has to be a death, and we’re gonna go day by day, by day by day, until we come to Good Friday. I think of how Ruth spent that night at the feet of her family redeemer. I invite you to spend time at the foot of Jesus, think about the cost, the redemption was for you, but as you do, think with joy that He is a redeemer and He has freed us, but it costs. Let’s close with this song
