O Baby!

12/16/2012 – Evening Worship

Reading: Ruth 1:1 and Ruth 4

Message: House of Bread

[1:1] In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. ...

[4:1] ... [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.”

[13] So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went in to her, and the LORD gave her conception, and she bore a son. [14] 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! [15] He shall be to you 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.” [16] Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse. [17] 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.

[18] Now these are the generations of Perez: Perez fathered Hezron, [19] Hezron fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab, [20] Amminadab fathered Nahshon, Nahshon fathered Salmon, [21] Salmon fathered Boaz, Boaz fathered Obed, [22] Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David.

Bethlehem (House of Bread) went from famine to “feast” with the gift of a child.

Naomi's family left this village during a time of famine. What is wrong with this world under the sovereignty of the Almighty God of Love? How could there be famine and death here? Naomi's husband and sons died in a foreign land. But a woman of Moab, Ruth, came with her mother-in-law back to the village where David the king would be born, and where a millennium later, the Savior of the world would make infant noises.

The coming of David the king is the proximate reason for the telling of the story of Ruth. But it is the pleroma, the fullness, of the story that interests us the most. Do not be thrilled about David and Bethlehem unless you are going to be thrilled about Jesus. He turns famine into feast with the coming of the new heavens and the new earth. The One who was born in a feeding troth in the little town of Bethlehem is the One in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. He brings a heavenly feast where there was once famine. He speaks new life to a world full of the burdens of death.