We want to look at that period between the conquest of the land and the establishment of the kingdom. That's kind of the no man's land of redemptive history. It's kind of this strange period where we've already looked at how God dealt with Israel with the judges. But then, after Israel goes in to possess the land and they don't wipe out all their enemies, there's kind of this, what now? There's sort of this, what now? What is God going to do in redemptive history? What is the Lord going to do? And the next big thing he's going to do is he's going to establish his kingdom. And everything's moving to that. And that all the way back In Deuteronomy when God gave the law to Israel, and I'm going to read for us Deuteronomy 17 verses 14 and following and so Listen to what the Lord says here about the king and the kingdom in Israel verse 14 When you come to the land that the Lord your God has given you and you possess it and dwell in it and then say I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me and may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose one from among your brothers you shall set as king over you, you may not put a foreigner over you who is not your brother. Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, you shall never return that way again. He shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive gold, silver and gold. And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law approved by the Levitical priest. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children in Israel." It's interesting that God gives this in Deuteronomy because it's going to be so many hundreds of years after this that Israel finally does get a king. And this seems kind of strange because God is going to bring Israel into the land. And in a sense, he's telling Israel everything that's going to happen in advance. There's really amazing little hints when you read the Old Testament that if you were a Jew, you would have picked up on. For instance, we'll talk tonight a little bit about Hannah and Samuel. And that's all before there's a king in Israel. And yet, Hannah, in her prayer, mentions the king. And so believers were anticipating that there was going to be a king in Israel because they knew Jehovah was king. And one of the big points of God's redemptive history is that God is king and that what has happened in the fall is that Adam has rebelled against the king. Mankind has rebelled against the king and God is going to restore his righteous rule for his people in redemption. He is going to again be their king. He's going to subdue their hearts. He's going to subdue their enemies. Genesis 3 15 really is a promise that God is going to reestablish his rule. The rule that he had before Adam fell, the rule that Adam broke away from in rebellion and following the evil one. God is going to reestablish that rule. He is going to be king. to his people. And so when he gives them the law in Deuteronomy, he tells them, look, just now I'm going to bring you into the land. You're going to have that inheritance. That's going to be pointing to heaven. right that the land of israel pointed beyond itself to the spiritual inheritance of all things in the new heavens in the new earth but when you come into that land the thing i'm gonna do is i'm gonna give you a king to rule over you and he's going to be a representative king and he's going to represent god and and so god gives these details about what the king should do what he shouldn't do he shouldn't take to himself forces he shouldn't take the people back to egypt he shouldn't just amass for himself silver and gold, he shouldn't just build his kingdom because he's going to be God's king. And he should always have God's word before him all the days of his life so that he learns to fear God and walk according to God's word and God's law for the good of him and his children after him. Now what happens in Judges, as we've already seen, is God is judging his people. He's bringing chastisement on them for their idolatry and their rebellion, and then he's delivering them from the hands of the very people he uses to judge them. And God is showing in the Judges that they need a deliverer. They need a redeemer. And that's always what's going to be shown. It's going to be shown in the book of Ruth. But there's a recurring phrase in Judges that we've already talked about that provides the link between Deuteronomy 17 and the establishment of the Davidic kingdom in 2 Samuel 7. And that link is the phrase, because there was no king in Israel. in the book of Judges because there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes. And so you see surfacing already that what God is saying is between Israel entering the land and God ultimately calling David, We'll talk about Saul tonight briefly, but God ultimately calling David. Everything's moving towards when is God going to establish his kingdom? That's the big point of that period between judges, really Joshua and second Samuel. When is God going to establish his kingdom? And when is he going to establish his righteous rule through redemption for his people? And everything that happens in between Joshua and the Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel 7 is moving toward that and anticipating that. So, what's the next book after Judges? Ruth. Now, how is Ruth preparing us for the kingdom? Yeah, well, so Boaz is a typical Redeemer, and we'll talk about that, but remember the seed promise. The seed promise is everything. If you could take a red thread and go all the way through your Bible, and that red thread goes from Genesis 3.15 through everything until Jesus is born, you would understand that that is the backbone of scripture, that there's a seed promise moving through. And the seed, who was to be the seed of Abraham, would then later be the seed of David. He would be David's greater son, Jesus Christ. And that seed promise is always moving through all of the narrative of the Old Testament. So the book of Ruth, One of the big principles is that God is going to establish the genealogy from which the seed of the woman comes. And so even in having a limelight take his wife and his sons into Moab, which was really a great act of unbelief and wickedness, God was preparing though for them to get wives there and to bring one of those wives back in Ruth. so that she would then marry Boaz and that they together would have Obed and Obed would have Jesse and Jesse would have David and David would have the greater David, Jesus. And so God is everywhere showing his covenant faithfulness. He's everywhere saying, I've promised, I'm gonna do that, watch how I do that. I'm gonna do it in my way and I'm gonna do it in my time. It's also interesting to see how the people respond to that as they wait for the establishment of the kingdom. What should the people be doing? They should be anticipating the fulfillment of God's promise, even in the darkness. Right? So was it right for a Limelech to flee into Moab in one of the darkest periods of Israel's history, the oppression of the Midianites, just before Gideon is delivered? Was it okay for him to flee? No. Why? What was he giving up? What was he leaving? What was he leaving? He was leaving God's people, His inheritance. He was leaving the land. The promise of the land. And they had the law given in Deuteronomy where it talks about famine. And it talks about returning to God and waiting on Him if there's famine. Instead, they left and went to another country because they thought they would find provision there. Right, they were giving up everything. In a sense, too, they were giving up the fact that God had promised to send a Redeemer who would be the seed of the woman, and they weren't looking for that. And allowing their sons to marry pagan women, they were actually saying, God is not going to do that, and he won't do it with our kids. And in a sense, they had apostatized. You know, it's very interesting, actually. I heard Sinclair Ferguson point this out, that the book of Ruth is really a parable. It's a true story, but it's really parabolic. And in many respects, it mirrors what Jesus teaches about the prodigal son. I'd never noticed that before, that she went to the far country Elimelech and Naomi went into the far country in rebellion. They had been part of God's people. They had left the father's house. They had gone into a foreign land. They had basically experienced everything the prodigal experienced, right? All of his livelihood spent. She's empty. And then she hears that God has visited his people. and essentially says I'll return to my father's house and I'll say my father I've sinned and she realizes that she's left the blessing. So in the great act of unbelief what Naomi was doing, what Elimelech was doing, they gave up the land, they gave up the worship of God and they gave up the hope of the redeemer coming. They left in unbelief. And even when Naomi comes back, right? She comes back and she says, call me bitter because the Lord has dealt bitterly with me. Another statement of unbelief. Now it's interesting when in the story of Ruth, Ruth comes back with Naomi and Ruth is already the believer, right? Because she's believing what? The covenant promise. What is the covenant promise? I will be a God unto you and to your descendants after you. I will be your God, you will be my people. Ruth says your God will be my God. Your people will be my people. God is already restoring He's already restoring Naomi through Ruth. He's restoring Naomi through Ruth. Ruth has heard the gospel to some extent. She's heard the covenant promises, and she realizes Naomi can't raise up any more sons for her, but she realizes that God's enough and that the God who has promised is faithful. I mean, it's actually remarkable. that Ruth doesn't do what her sister-in-law does. Because humanly speaking, there's no reason Ruth should have gone back at all. She has nothing there. And yet God provides the fields of Boaz and Boaz is there and Naomi doesn't know all this. And then it's interesting with regard to that seed promise, I think that Naomi starts to believe, she understands that in the law there's a provision for a kinsman redeemer to marry the widow of a man and that way ensure the inheritance, the land. And so there's an attempt to get back what they gave up. Naomi wants to get it back. She wants Ruth to get it back for the namesake, for the family's sake, everything that they had lost in their unbelief. But now she tries to take it into her own hands. And she tries to fulfill God's promises in her way. She says to Ruth, you know, go and go to the threshing floor. And Boaz sort of rebukes Ruth. You know, the threshing floor is kind of like the nightclub downtown where, you know, she's going to make herself available. And Naomi is telling her essentially, you need to take this situation back into your hands. She's still not yet fully understanding that God's promises work in God's time and in God's way. And that's the point of Ruth, right? And God does work and he works marvelously. And then in raising up Boaz, he is raising up a typical redeemer, which we'll talk about in a second, but he is restoring. It's actually remarkable that the family that should least be used by God is the family that is singularly used by God for the seed promise. I mean they're the last ones, they went to Moab. Moab came from the incestuous relationship of Lot and his daughters when they came out of Sodom and Gomorrah and went to Zoar. And so the Moabites are, the Moabite women are the last women that Israelites should marry. They are the pagans of the pagans. And God is using that, the least likely people, by His grace because His covenant promise and His covenant faithfulness is not dependent on human effort. It's not dependent on track record. And so God says, I will fulfill it in my way, in my time, and I will use the least likely people. to fulfill that promise From whom the king will come David will come and then David's greater son will come and so you see that how God is moving all of those things now and Come back to Boaz because I want to deal with typology at the end of this talk. As that seed promise continues and you see glimmers of hope that you're reading the Book of Ruth. Book of Ruth is a marvelous book. I mean it's one of the greatest love stories ever told. Even secular theologians will say it's one of the greatest love stories ever told. And yet if you don't get what we just got, the seed promise and God fulfilling his covenant promises and God continuing to unfold what he's going to do in Jesus Christ. And then you come to the genealogy and you see how perfectly God was fulfilling that. If you miss that, there's a sense where the Book of Ruth is like, why is this in the Bible? I mean, it's, you know, it's not just written so little Christian girls will find a virtuous law-keeping Boaz. I mean, there is obviously value to that, obviously. We want to dismiss that Boaz was upright and that he's an example as an upright believer. But there's a redemptive historical purpose to all of it. God is keeping his promises. At the same time, you see God carrying along, just after this, you see God carrying along his promise to establish the kingdom. He raises up one final judge, and that judge is a very unlikely judge, and that judge serves as a priest. Very interesting, Samuel. Eli has sinned. He has not disciplined his sons. His sons have done all kinds of wicked stuff at the temple. the kingdom, the nation is in disarray, and God raises up a final judge, and in a sense Samuel is the first John the Baptist. He is in a sense the forerunner to the Redeemer, to David. He's a forerunner to Saul, but he's the forerunner to the king. He's the transitional figure. And Samuel functions in redemptive history in a very interesting way in that he is this mighty prophet and he's also a priest. And the mightiest prophet-priest ever besides the Lord Jesus, himself clearly a type of Christ, his birth being supernatural, all of those details about it. But what God is doing with Samuel is He is bringing it to the point where God's gonna, He's gonna bring about the kingdom. And what we see, and this is so interesting, just like Naomi tried to take it into her hands to fulfill God's promises, and just like Abraham had done that with Hagar when he went into Hagar, Naomi had done it in telling Ruth, you need to go do this and try to make it happen, so Israel does with the king. with Saul. They realize God said in Deuteronomy that there's going to be a king, but their motives are wrong. They want a worldly king. They want an earthly king. They've lost sight of Jehovah as king. They want to be like the nations. They want to have a mighty political figure who's going to establish Israel, make them a great political power, and that wasn't the point of having a king at all. And so Saul runs his time, and we see how disobedient he is, and we see how many times he rebels against God, and ultimately he's going to spare Agag, who is the king, when he was told to kill all of Israel's enemies, and he spares Agag. And Agag is going to become the one from whom Haman will come, who will threaten to wipe out all of Israel. You see the enormous failures of Saul and how the residual fallout of that in Israel's history. And yet, And yet, God is going to keep His promise. God is going to bring a king. I think that when we look at the scriptures and we see God has promised to bring a Redeemer. God's going to do it in His way and in His time. And the responses, there's three responses to that. One is just open unbelief. I don't believe that. I don't care. I want to be in the world. The second is a mixture of faith and unbelief and an attempt to take into your hands what God alone is going to do and try to make it happen in your own effort. And then there's waiting on the Lord, trusting Him, being confident that He's going to do what He said, knowing that the God who has spoken has not lied, that not one word of everything that He says has ever failed to come to pass. And again, it's a faith wrought anticipation. that even in times of difficulty and trial, and it's nearly impossible for us to read the Old Testament and not see how much trial and how much difficulty and how much desperation and how much hopelessness, seeming hopelessness is set before Israel constantly. And yet God has said, I am going to do that. And in the choosing of David, God does something that is paralleled only with the calling of Abraham in the Bible. in the choosing of David. in the Old Testament is paralleled and matched only by the call of Abraham in the greatness of what God was doing. So God was going to give Israel a magnificent down payment in the fulfillment of his promises, in the calling of David. He was going to give you the greatest type, conceivably Melchizedek is a great type of Christ, but Ezekiel will actually say about David, that God's going to raise up David to sit on the throne. He's not talking about David. He's talking about Christ. And so the Messiah will even be called in the major prophets David. And Jesus is said to sit where? On the throne of David. And so great was God's dealings with David that the rest of the Old Testament really falls under the umbrella of the Davidic covenant until God fulfills that promise. So that means every book in the Old Testament from the calling of David on, everything from David's reign as king onward falls under the umbrella of the Davidic kingdom. You get the songs of David, which are the messianic Psalms, all the Psalms preparing us for Jesus. You get the prophets prophesying about the restoration of the fallen kingdom. You get even the exile is being exiled away from the kingdom. And then the king comes. And it's hard It's hard to miss this when you read the Gospels, how prevalent, not just in Matthew, but how prevalent the idea of the Kingdom of God is, and that God has brought the King in the coming of Jesus, and that everything that God does with David is, number one, to fulfill the seed promise, because David is going to have the adulterous relationship with Bathsheba, and God's grace is going to restore that, and Solomon would be born, and then Nathan would be born, and then the two genealogies of Jesus and Luke and in Matthew, Mary's and Joseph's, presumably, that they both come through David and Bathsheba. and that the seed promise is running down in Matthew's gospel through the kingdom down to the coming of the greater King. And so you see that everything that David is is organically related to Jesus and then everything that David is just about everything, is typologically pointing to Jesus. So that what God is giving Israel, in giving them David, is the greatest picture of Jesus Christ. So that they would again have hope, that they would be looking eagerly for the coming of the Redeemer, that they would understand that God is not done, that even though they've had this dark, miserable, time, really from Egypt on, God is going to do something marvelous. So when you come to the book of Hebrews, I love in Hebrews 1, it says, the father said to the son, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. And then it says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom, for you have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness more than your companions." That's taking you back to Samuel anointing David, and that anointing oil pointing to the Holy Spirit being poured out on Jesus, and that Jesus is the greater David. And he comes with the real kingdom, and he brings the kingdom that's established in the hearts of his people. And so great is the Davidic covenant and the relationship it plays to Jesus, which we'll talk about in the weeks ahead, that when Peter is explaining the resurrection of Jesus, he alludes to a prophecy in Amos that says, I will restore the fallen ruins of the tabernacle, I will reestablish the kingdom of David. And so that in the resurrection of Jesus, God has reestablished the kingdom under the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And so everything, really what we can say is from David on, everything is about the kingdom. From David to the book of Revelation, till we find Jesus sitting on the throne of David, in glory, the throne of God is also called the throne of David and that he's there. And one of the names that he receives in the book of Revelation is he is the root of David. And he says that he has the keys of David. and that he is the ultimate one that David was just a frail representation of in the biblical account. While we have that seed promise running through, running through as this kingdom's established from Ruth and Boaz down through David, and then down from David through everybody that we find in Matthew 1, The other thing you have is you have the typology pointing you to the Redeemer. And you have Boaz, right? So let's just go back there quickly. Boaz is a type of Jesus. He's the kinsman redeemer. The law provided that there would be made a provision that, as we've already said, that a closest of kin could redeem the land and the property and the widow of a man who had passed away. In that sense, redeem the inheritance. What you see in the Book of Ruth that's so interesting to me is that Boaz, in order to be able to redeem Jew and Gentile, Remember, Ruth is a Gentile, Naomi is a Jew. He redeems both of them, but he's not going to just take it into his own hands to do that. He has to do it God's way, and he has to be the law-keeping redeemer. I think this is astonishing that there was a closer of kin, right, and he took his shoe off, which symbolized that he wasn't going to set his foot on the property and say, this is mine, I'm going to take this. But he gave the right to Boaz. Boaz had to keep the law in order to redeem. Jesus has to keep the law in order to redeem. Boaz comes out of Bethlehem. Jesus comes out of Bethlehem. Boaz owns a vineyard. Jesus constantly talks about owning a vineyard and being the son over the vineyard. Boaz has workers in the vineyard. Jesus sends workers out into the vineyard. Boaz says, the Lord bless you to the laborers in the vineyard. Jesus blesses all of his laborers in the vineyard. And so what you have is these beautiful pictures preparing us for what the Redeemer's going to be like. What is he going to be like? And one of the most amazing is Boaz doesn't have to redeem Ruth. Doesn't have to redeem Ruth. Actually, there's nothing in Ruth that should make Boaz want to redeem her. I know that she's younger. I know he says all that he says about you could have gone with one of the young men. But she's a Moabite by nature. And it's costly for Boaz to redeem her. It's costly for Jesus to redeem us. In one sense, we're the only ones that gain by Jesus redeeming us. I mean, clearly he wants his people to be with him where he is and for them to have joy and to give them his joy. But we're the ones, we are not worth being redeemed. I can't stand when people say, you know, you were just so worth it to God. God just really, really thought you were worth it. No, he didn't. I mean, the only reason he thought we were worth it is because he decreed to do it. And because he wanted to fulfill his free, unmerited grace and purposes towards us. And so you have Boaz as a type, you have Samuel as a type, Samuel is a type because he's a priest. He is the one who officiates between God and the people in a substantial way. It's also interesting to me that the priesthood transitions at Samuel from Eleazar to Ithamar, which I'm not quite sure all that that means, but there's a transition in the lineage from whom the priests are going to officiate, and then you have the Levite You have the Levite, Samuel, anointing David. Now David's not a priest, but you have one from the tribe of Levi anointing one from the tribe of Judah. And the focus shifts at David. In many respects, it shifts from Levi to Judah, just like Hebrews is telling us. And that's important because John the Baptist was a Levite. And he anoints in baptism Jesus, who's the Lion of the tribe of Judah.