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Well, it's always good to stop
and ask ourselves why we are here. I think it's easy with
all the stuff that goes on at church to lose track of the real
reason and sometimes perhaps we look at the secondary things
and we're excited about them, friendships, time together, and
we forget the primary thing. We are here each Sunday to view
the worth of God. That's a very simple definition
of worship. To see His worth, again, presented
in the Scripture, and to express that back to Him. Not just as
an individual. That's the difference between
church and quiet time. We're not here as individuals,
we're here as a part of a body. And while we view the worth of
God together, and hear the same things together and have the
same obligations and while we respond to God together and express
His worth back to Him in the way we sing and pray, the way
we listen, the way we apply Scripture to ourselves, then also there's
this wonderful dynamic of considering other people as we gather and
love to God then flows out into love to other people. It's not
easy in the Christmas season to see the worth of Christ clearly. It tends to be that the pictures
we have of Christ at this season, it's not that they're lies, but
they're half-truths. So we have these kind of childish,
flat, two-dimensional images of Jesus as a babe in a manger,
and the world stops there. And we don't want to stop there.
We want to go back to the Bible, and we want to get the clearest
and highest views of our Lord possible. so that we can not
only know Him as He is and love Him better, but that we would
trust Him and obey Him. So for the last weeks, we've
been looking at Christ, our great shepherd, but not in the work
of doing in the New Testament, as we've looked at in the Gospel
of John, but the passages that God has given us leading up to
Christ. And we see that Christ is precious,
not just to us, but He's also precious to the Father. Now,
I don't normally use illustrations, you know, these kinds of illustrations. But I've got some illustrations
this morning, all right? I really only have one, but it'll stick
in your head. And it'll probably be all you remember of this morning
and not really bother me if that's true. But do you know what these
are? I stole them from Mr. Lanny's high school wedding,
high school photos, wedding album. You ever see, you ever see your
parents' old photos? They got glasses like these?
This is probably A.C.' 's next pair, right? It'll be the coolest
thing. What are they? They're clunky.
They're what? Sunglasses? No? 3D glasses. Alright, 3D glasses. That's enough out of you. It's like going back 12 years.
Alright. 3D glasses. Ugly? Ugly. Clunky? Can't put them anywhere.
Good for nothing? I put them on, everybody looks
a little blurry. They only have one purpose. In a 3D movie, they
make the screen clear. And what would be fuzzy becomes
crisp. There are passages in the Bible
that to us don't immediately seem easy. They don't fit on
Christmas cards easily. They don't fit on our Christian
bumper stickers and t-shirts. They're not the kind of thing
that you would want to memorize for your favorite memory verse
or your life verse. But they're passages that though
they may seem awkward to us at first, when we give them more
careful attention, they bring Christ into clear focus. We're
going to talk about some of those this morning. Passages from Leviticus,
Numbers, Deuteronomy that talk about a person called a kinsman
redeemer, which we don't have in our law system. The other
is not an illustration, but an example. Hudson Taylor, I've
mentioned this so many times before, but his little prayer
that he wrote, Lord Jesus, make thyself to me a living, bright
reality. That's our prayer, isn't it?
We're looking at these portraits of Christ. We're looking through
the lens that brings Jesus from that flat, childish 2D picture
to a living 3D, clear picture. Lord Jesus, make thyself to me
a living, bright reality, more present to faith's vision keen
than any outward object seen, more dear, more intimately nigh
than even the sweetest earthly tie. So that's our prayer, and
we ask that this morning would be part of the answer to that
prayer. Well, we've been looking at the
humanity of Jesus Christ, the true humanity. Last Sunday, we
considered the fact that he has always had a preexistent glory,
that though he's man, he is God, and that we talked about what
that meant. We often mentioned, oh, think
of what he left when he came to earth, but we don't usually
think too carefully about that. So last Sunday, we spent some
time with that. He possessed an everlasting, timeless enjoyment
of fellowship with the Father in a perfect environment, clothed
in His glory as God. And He laid that aside for a
season, and He came and accomplished the work of our rescue. If we
have any doubts to His humanity, we can read the passages of the
Bible that are so realistic, like Luke 2, 52, when it says
that Jesus, returning home with His parents, He grew in wisdom
and stature and in favor with God and men. Not some kind of
circus act, not some kind of freak. Jesus was really human,
and as a babe, he had to learn, and he was taught to read, taught
to feed himself, taught to clothe himself, taught how to work with
his hands. He grew just like us, except
without sin. I mentioned Wednesday evening
that it's difficult for us as believers, because we do appreciate
Christ and His work so much, it's difficult for us not to,
in the holding the balance between the Godness and the humanness
of Jesus, it's difficult for us not to overemphasize the Godness
to the point that we lose track that He really was one of us,
that He really is our kinsman. He is a human, not just a human,
but a human from our race. gave the illustration that Augustus
Strong gave when he said, if you take any member of the human
race and you think about how many people have contributed
directly to you genetically, how many people do you descend
from directly? And he said if you go back 20
generations, so John Snyder, I have mom and dad, so there's
two, second generation, and then third generation, each parent
has two parents, and then each grandparent has parents, and
each great-grandparent had parents, and so we go back into You trace
that back then, in 20 generations there are over one million people
that have contributed to my humanity. When I was reading Matthew this
week, Matthew gives the generations of Jesus back to the time of
Abraham. So from the day that God promised
Abraham that there would be a seed given to him, not just Isaac,
but through Isaac, someone who would be a blessing to the entire
world, Jesus Christ, From the day that he made that promise
to the birth of Jesus Christ, 42 generations, how many people,
how many people are the ancestors, genetically, of the humanity
of Jesus? Well, I'm not a mathematician, you know that, all right? So
I called our local mathematician, which is Amy, blast and game,
and I think that she had to lean on her husband's computer program,
but she gave me a mathematical formula, and we got this close,
all right? Not too close, but close. Over
4 trillion humans contribute to the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth.
He is a real man. He has a real body. He had a
real human soul. And he's human still today. Now
that's critical if we're going to go forward this morning because
when we talk about a kinsman redeemer, if you're not convinced
that Jesus is one of us, if you think of him in such a separate
category that he has nothing in connection with you, then
we do get into trouble. We get into that trouble of having
a Christianity where we feel like we need another mediator
because Jesus is so high and so holy and so glorious that
he probably wouldn't want anything to do with us. So maybe like
the Roman Catholic, we lean on one of the saints, lean on Mary
instead. Probably we don't do that. Our
temptation may be to think that Jesus is so high and transcendent
that Christianity is a thing of words and concepts that are
beautiful and incomparable and hard to figure out, and we forget
that Christianity really has a very earthly side to it, that
we are to bring these bodies, these mouths, these ears, these
eyes, this tongue, this heart, and bring it all to Christ. So
we don't want to do that. He is our kinsman. Now, if he
is one of us, why is he one of us? And God, for 4,000 years,
prepared the world, particularly the Jews, to understand the work
of Jesus Christ through many metaphors, but one of the metaphors
that he gives us, one of the types that Lanny has been talking
to us about in the prayer time, is this idea of a goel, G-O-E-L
in Hebrew, In English it's translated a kinsman redeemer. What's a
kinsman? A near relative. A kinsman redeemer
is always a blood relative and it's always a man. It's peculiar
to Jewish law where God spells out what the obligations of a
near relative are to other family members who find themselves in
really dangerous or destitute situations. There is no government
safety net here. that you're related to, like
Naomi that we read about, is going to starve because there's
no way for her to provide for herself. If there are no fields
for her to glean in, and no people to take care of her, and you're
a relative of Naomi, as a man, you had a responsibility to step
in and to help Naomi, right? So, safety net that God sets
up. Always a male, always a blood
relative, and always called upon in situations of greatest urgency,
danger or destitution, but not for normal cases. Now, he's the kinsman redeemer.
Let's just think about the word redeem just for a second. There
are a number of words in the Hebrew Old Testament for redeem.
Our English Bible translates in the same oftentimes, so we
miss it. There is kinsman redeemer, go well, and then there's another
one, that we often find that just means a redeemer. They both
have the same idea when it comes to redemption. What is redemption?
It is to rescue, or come to the aid of, or to purchase back,
or to gain again through payment. So when we talk about a person
being redeemed out of slavery, you pay a price and the person
is freed from slavery. When we talk about being a redeemer
and someone's in danger, you step in and whatever the situation
calls for to rescue them, you do that. The difference is that
Goel, kinsman redeemer, emphasizes not the act of redemption, but
the individual doing the job of a blood relative, of a close
friend, of a kinsman. All right. The laws that are
attached to the kinsman-redeemer are found in Leviticus 25, verse
25, through the end of that chapter, Numbers 35, and Deuteronomy 25. Now, it shows up a lot more than
that, but those are the laws. And for the sake of time, I'm
not going to read through the Old Testament laws. But I am
going to summarize the six things that a kinsman-redeemer was required
to do. If you were a relative and a
male, who had the ability to come to the help of a near relation
who was destitute or in danger. You could do that. You were obligated
to do that in six different situations. All right. Let me quickly give
them to you, and then we're going to apply them to ourselves. Number
one, a kinsman redeemer was obligated to rescue their relative from
poverty when they had to sell their property. So things get
so bad financially that you have to sell off your family land
that was given to you, you know, back in, all the way back in
the promise of the land, and your tribe gets a section of
Canaan, and you get a section of that tribe's section, that's
your family's land. But you're so poor you can no
longer afford to feed yourself, and so you have to sell your
inheritance. The kinsman redeemer, hearing
of your destitution, had the obligation to come in, and before
somebody else snatched it up, he would buy it and restore it
to your family. Second, if you reached a position
of such poverty that you didn't even have property to sell, you've
already sold that, but now you have to sell yourself to stay
alive, the kinsman redeemer, hearing of your condition, was
obligated to step in and at his cost, pay for you as a slave,
buy you out of the slave market, and restore you to freedom. Third,
if you were in legal trouble, the kinsman redeemer was obligated
to help you with whatever was necessary for your defense, whether
it was payment, or testimony. Now, don't get this wrong, we're
not talking about Cousin Joe, why don't you come in and say
what I tell you to say, you know. Now I'm going to tell you what
to say, we'll rehearse it, then we get in the courtroom and you
tell them I'm a good guy. But imagine a scene different,
imagine a scene in ancient Israel where your relative is being
accused of something falsely or maybe they're about to be,
they're going to lose their property or something and it's an unjust
lawsuit, but a wealthy man, a powerful man is on the other side of the
lawsuit. And no one wants to step up and risk the anger of
the wealthy man in town by saying, you're doing what's wrong, and
this fellow here is innocent, or this fellow here is being
wrong. But if you're the kinsman redeemer, you have an obligation
to risk everything for the sake of your near relation. So you
should show up and tell the truth, no matter what the cost is to
you. So legal help. Fourth. near relative, was in
physical danger. Imagine again, in Israel, being
one of those families that live on the edge of the borders with
other countries, and these other countries, they send over little
raiding bands, and you find out that your relative, your cousin,
your nephew, whatever, his home is on the border, and he's constantly
in danger, so you would be required by the law to go and to help
him with all the men that you can muster. Rescue from physical
danger. Fifth, if a widow, if a woman
loses her husband, she's widowed without children, so that man's
line will die, become extinct, all right? His near kin, a brother,
is obligated then to marry the widow and to raise up children
through that widow so that his brother's name wouldn't disappear,
that the line wouldn't fail. Sixth, and finally, an avenger
of blood. It's the same word in Hebrew,
translated very different in English. The avenger of blood.
When a relative was murdered, and you don't have a system of
policing and you don't have an army or a national guard or police
in the cities to help with this, the kinsmen redeemer was obligated
to gather men and to hunt down the murderer. And this isn't
vigilantism and it's not a blood feud. It's commanded by God that
if someone near to you has been murdered that the kinsman redeemer
would go and make that right and provide justice by executing
the murderer. And he was guiltless before the
law for killing the man who had been a murderer. Now, again,
in each of these six situations that the Bible gives in the Old
Testament a law for the kinsmen coming in. Each situation it
is a blood relative that has to act and in each situation
the person who's being helped is helpless without the intervention
of the blood relative. All through the Psalms and the
Prophets we find the same term used for God in the way that
He treats His people, particularly Israel. And of course as we look
in the New Testament it becomes very clear that 4,000 years of
this law of a kinsman redeemer prepared us to understand why
does Jesus become one of us? Why does God send his son to
become one of us? Why is Jesus of Nazareth both
God and man? And what can we expect him to
do? Well, let's think about God as our kinsman redeemer. I want
to take those same six things I mentioned And I wanna just
give it to you simply in six scenes, so you're gonna have
to use your imagination, all right? Otherwise, you just check out
on me and say, we have six more points coming up, and then you'll
fade out and fade back in at the closing hymn. So don't do
that. Number one. Imagine a family where the father's
lost his job. It's not hard. And for a while,
they keep their chin up, because they have some savings, and the
savings can keep them afloat. But as weeks turn to months,
as dad looks for a job, savings are depleted. The hope of a job
coming soon becomes very faint. Despair and depression begin
to creep in. Mom and dad are at each other's
throats. Oftentimes, as the bills come in, they don't know what
to do. Children are even bothered. The fat is trimmed out of their
family budget. Hard times come. house repairs,
car repairs, clothes, these things that normally they keep supplied,
they're now neglected because they can't afford those kinds
of things, and now things have gotten so bad that though they
don't tell their friends, they don't really know how they're
going to buy groceries for next week. So they begin to sell things. And finally, they have nothing
left but their house to sell. And when they sell the house,
it's not as if that's going to fix things. They won't get much
for it. They don't know what will happen next. They have no
hope. They put the house on the market. Well, one day, into this
scene, a car drives up to the family. It's a man that the kids
don't really recognize, but the parents do. He's one of the relatives
of Dad. And he takes Dad for a drive. They're gone all afternoon. He
comes back, and Dad steps out of the car with some bank papers
in his hand, and he's smiling. The man that took him was a near
relative. He's a wealthy man. He heard
about the problems of the family. He knows it wasn't their fault.
He bought the house. But instead of keeping it for
himself, he handed it back to them. And he's promised to continue
to provide until dad gets a job. Everything changes in the home
now. He's the kinsman, redeemer. What
about Christ? Humanity has sold all that is
of good. in a fraudulent deal with the
enemy. Adam did it as our representative.
We do it daily on our own. We give up all that we need for
real happiness in the hopes that we can be little gods. I want
to be like God. I want to do what I want to do.
I want to have what I want to have. I want to go where I want
to go, say what I want to say, think what I want to think, do
what I want to do, when I want to do it, how I want to do it.
I mean, that's the statement of everyone. By birth, that's
our nature. And we have sold everything. We're poverty stricken. We are
starving people. We are miserable. We are exposed. We've tried everything and nothing
satisfies. Into this hopeless scene comes
a man, the man. There's a man that pays my debt.
There's a man that restores everything that Adam lost when he chose
sin. There's a man who promises that
because of what he's done, we will never again lack what we
need for happiness. Forever and ever. Jesus Christ,
God, become man, our kinsman, redeeming us. 2 Corinthians 8. You know the grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ, Paul writes, that though he was rich, yet for your
sakes he became poor, that through his poverty, you might become
rich. Second picture. A person, again,
a scene of great poverty, but we'll have to go back in time.
Imagine a Jewish family in great poverty. They've sold everything,
they've sold the house. Things are so bad, they can't
put food on the table for tomorrow. Dad has passed away. Mom's trying
to raise the children. It's not going to work. She makes
plans for folks to take the kids, and she sells herself into slavery.
You can imagine the scene of goodbye. It happened many, many
times in the Old Testament. Mom telling the children they'll
be all right. Mom telling the children that it's the only way.
Mom selling herself as a slave to a foreigner. Jews weren't
allowed to buy Jews as slaves. And right in the midst of this
terrible scene, a person arrives, an uncle. Just as the papers
are about to be signed, he steps in. He talks to the man about
to buy a mom. The man relinquishes the deal. The uncle pays the cost and promises
that everything the family needs from this point forward will
be provided. He's a kinsman redeemer. Now, what about Christ? Again,
it's not just that we sold off what was good when we chose sin,
when Adam chose sin. It's not just that daily we make
that choice outside of Christ. We choose to live another day
for myself and tell Christ that maybe tomorrow would be a good
day. It's that we are slaves. It's not just that we're poor.
We're under the constant tyranny of sin, misery and emptiness,
deceit. Those are our jail keepers. And
it becomes painfully clear that nobody is going to get us out
of this jail. All of our friends are in the
same condition by nature. No church can free me. No preacher
can free me. No parent can free me. No scheme
of morality can free me. No amount of religion can free
me. And we're helpless. Then into
the scene comes Christ, our kinsman, one of us, a real human. And
He pays the cost for our slavery. He purchases us away. And you
think, well, what good is that? I was once a slave of sin and
misery and death. Now I'm a slave of God? Oh, but
to be a slave of Jesus Christ is a perfect freedom. It's the
happiest life. It's the restoration of real
living. Listen to what Paul says in 1
Corinthians 6. You were bought at a price. Therefore, glorify
God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. God
owns the believer. He's purchased us. What's the
result of that purchase? Well, Romans 6. He talks about
us being united to Christ, because Christ purchases you. He changes
the metaphor, not to purchasing, but to being united to someone
who has died and been raised again. And so Paul says, when
Christ died, because he bought you, now he's united you to himself.
When Christ died, you've died to the old life. You've died
to the old fears. You've died to the angry law.
You're raised again in a completely new environment. You belong to
him now. And because he lives, you live.
And then he says this. But God bethanked that though
you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form
of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set
free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. How did it
happen? Well, I decided I needed to go
to church? No. I decided I should pray a sinner's
prayer? No. It happened because God became
man and the Son of God became our kinsman. And He has done
the work of a kinsman redeemer. Third, imagine a teenage girl,
small town, everyone knows everyone's business. And this teenage girl
has gotten herself into a lot of trouble with the law over
and over. This is not the first time that
we see her in trouble. All the evidence is against her.
She's going before the judge. In this small town, she doesn't
belong to a family that's particularly influential or important. Nobody's
going to stand up for her that has any pull with the judge and
say, let's be lenient. The town is sick of her. She's
made herself a nuisance by her constant crimes. And so this time, she's going
to be headed to the juvenile detention center or to a juvenile
prison. Suddenly, into the court scene
before the sentence is passed, a very respected, influential
leader in the community steps up He says, I would like a word
before the court. And so he talks to the judge.
And to everyone's amazement, he's a relative of hers. Well,
obviously, the way her family's behaved, he didn't really want
to admit it before, but now she's in trouble. And so he says to
the judge, and the judge will be lenient one more time, that
he himself will take her under his wing, that he will move her
in with his family, that he will help her choose a different course,
that he will pay the debts and fix the things that she's done.
She walks out of the court free, pardoned, guiltless, befriended,
and a whole new life in front of her. What about Christ? You and I are before the judge.
His awareness of your sins is breathtaking. He knows every
thought. He knows every desire. He knows
every word. He knows every attitude. He knows
the things we've done in the dark and the things that we've
done all by ourselves. He knows what we've done in public.
He knows what we did 20 years ago that we have forgotten with
our fuzzy memories. He knows what we'll do tomorrow
morning. He is completely aware. Nothing is hidden. If you put
all your most shameful things on a big screen, a big movie
screen, and played them out scene after scene of the things you've
thought, scene after scene of the things you've done, God has
watched all of them, listened to all of them. Psalm 90 says
our sins are before His face. They've all been committed right
in front of Him. And so, of course, we have no defense. We don't
even offer an answer. The Bible says we're silenced.
But before the sentence is passed, a kinsman comes. He is our kinsman. He's also the kinsman of the
judge. And he pleads for justice, not mercy. Oh, we say, don't
ask for justice. I did all of that. I do deserve
it. No, this kinsman has suffered in our place. This kinsman has
paid our debt to the law. This kinsman has obeyed perfectly. And he has the right now before
the judge. to ask for their pardon. The Christian leaves the courtroom
guiltless, guiltless, shameless, and above reproach. In whose
eyes? In God's eyes. All that could
have been played on the screen cleared away. and a new life
in front of them. At the end of Paul's theological
dealings with the Gentiles, I mean, chapters 9, 10, and 11 of Romans,
he does deal with the question about Jews, but in Romans 1 through
8, he has these wonderful theological sections describing the work
of Christ and the work of the Spirit to save us. And he comes
toward the end of chapter 8. He deals with this question of
our shamelessness, our freedom before God and the law. And he
asks five questions. Let me just give you the questions.
You'll recognize them. Because this is what our kinsman has
accomplished for us. When our kinsman comes, one of
us stands before the Father, the Father is pleased with the
work of the kinsman, and now these five questions can be asked.
If God is for us, who can be against us? Well, let's make
it personal. If God is for you, if He's your
kinsman, Redeemer, who can be against you? He who did not spare
his own son, but delivered him up for you, how shall he not
with him also freely give you all things? Third question. Who will bring a charge against
God's elect? It's God who justifies. Fourth
question. Who is he condemns? It's Christ
that died. And furthermore, is also risen,
who is even at the right hand of God, who makes intercession
for us. Fifth question, who will separate you from the love of
Christ? Now, listen, that does not apply
to everyone here. It applies to those. To whom
Christ is the kinsman redeemer. Because he has done all these
things. Fourth picture. A person, again,
back in ancient times, an Israelite family on the border, under attack,
families small and exposed, defenseless, each morning, each night, filled
with fretting, wondering if there'll be another raid. Things are getting
dangerous. And suddenly someone brings news
that a man is leading a great group of people to you, they're
armed men, and you're afraid of the worst. No, no, it's not.
The enemy, it's a relative who heard of our danger. He's come
and he sets up military defensive camps all around our property
and deals with our enemies. And tomorrow morning you wake
up and it's a completely different thing. You're safe now. What
about Christ? The Christian's out of debt.
The Christian's out of slavery. The Christian's no longer in
trouble with the law. The Christian is justified. But
enemies are still there. within and without, and the Christian
feels weak and surrounded, outnumbered, outwitted. And there's always
the troubling question within. Will I endure all the way to
the end? Will I run the race? Am I what
I say I am? And Christ comes. And we might
think at first that the reports there's someone coming with all
these Army's, no, no, it's the enemy. No, it's not the enemy
this time, it's Christ, your kinsman. And he encamps around
us. Hasn't he made these promises
to us? We won't be tempted beyond our ability. That every situation
is ruled over for our spiritual good. That his grace will be
sufficient even in the most difficult situations. That we are more
than conquerors in Christ. That our weaknesses, which he
has measured, are the very places where his strength will be most
wonderfully demonstrated. It's our kinsman redeemer that
keeps us from our enemies. Fifth picture, a widow. She has no future. She's a newlywed. Her husband dies. They have no
children. She wakes up every morning with the despairing expectation
of poverty and hopelessness. One day she's at a family gathering
and a young man is there and he meets her. He's her husband's
relative. He's unmarried. They talk. He
knows her situation. He gives up his right to go pick
the bride of his choice and instead offers his heart to her. And they marry. They have a family. And every morning she wakes up
and now He's there beside her, her husband, her provider, and
her children are there in the house. Things are so different
than what they look like. A kinsman redeemer has come.
What about Christ? Humanity? Poverty, stricken because
of our sin, sold into slavery, divorced from our own God. Made for God. The metaphor of
the husband-wife relationship. Your maker is your husband, but
by sin we're separated from him. We're as good as a widowed woman.
We have no hope without this husband. We can't sustain ourselves.
We can't make ourselves happy. We can't make our children happy.
We have no future. Humanity is doomed. We're headed
toward the edge of a cliff. We will be forever and ever in
hell, judged for our rebellion. And when, as a widow with no
future hope, we feel that The despair sweeps over us, then
in comes Christ. The picture in the Old Testament's
clear. Like Hosea, when God marries this woman to himself, or in
Ezekiel, when God says, I saw you and you were like a little
baby who had just been born, but nobody wants the baby, so
they take the baby and they throw it in a ditch. But I found you,
and I took you home, and I raised you, and my heart went out to
you, and I married you as my people. Or Ephesians 5 where
it says that Christ gave, what? Himself? The kinsman gives everything
to make us his wife and to his bride. Brought near to God through
the Son. Every morning we wake up. Doesn't
matter what's happening around us. We turn and there is our
kinsman. There's our husband, Christ. And everything is different now.
Not just for us. But in a sense, for the next
generation and the next generation of humanity. It's not just the
New Testament church that had a husband, but there was promise
that the seed would go on. The church has never been without
a future because of the kinsman redeemer. So humanity that has
no future outside God, in its union with Christ, has a great
future. In the New Testament, we find Jesus saying to the Jews
that even if all the Jews turn their back on him, he will gather
people from the East and the West and they'll sit with Abraham,
even though the Jews in front of him will not. In the book
of Acts, what do we see? The church is hunted down by
the Jews. They're being put into jail and
murdered. But because Christ is our husband,
He gives her children, 3,000 children in one day, 5,000 another
day. The family spreads, it spreads
to every corner of the globe. 2,000 years later, every Christian
here this morning, we have a husband, and not just for us, but we have
the hope for our children. We look at our children, we tell
them the gospel. And we know that God will continue to give
the church children. A next generation and another
generation and another generation will be raised up. And from these
generations all around the globe, God will save people. It's not
because of us, is it? It's because of the kinsmen redeemer.
Last picture. Imagine a family in Israel. The
oldest son works with some other neighboring families and there's
a lot of strife. One day he gets out of hand and
the son is murdered. People run home, they tell the
family the terrible news. A kinsman hears of it. He gathers
his men and he hunts the man down and he enacts justice. He executes the enemy who's killed
the man unjustly. Do we see this in Christ too?
We do. The church is Christ's. He's saved us from poverty, saved
us from slavery, saved us from the law, brought us to himself,
saved us from a hopeless future, married us to himself. When you
persecute the church, and Paul warns people inside who gather
with Christians, those inside the church who are persecuting
the church, those who pretend to be Christians but rip up the
body of Christ, and those outside the church who persecute the
church, when we see the church persecuted, we find Christ stepping
up as the kinsman redeemer. as the avenger of blood, and
he will ultimately bring justice to planet Earth. Listen to 2
Thessalonians chapter one. It is a righteous thing with
God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you, and to
give you who are troubled rest with us. When the Lord Jesus
is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming
fire, to take vengeance on those who do not know God and on those
who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These
shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence
of the Lord and from the glory of His power when He comes in
that day. When we read the book of Revelation
and the persecuted church sees these visions of Christ exalted,
Christ gathering, Christ judging, don't forget it's our kinsmen. He is still human. It wasn't
just for 33 years. He has a glorified human body
in heaven. He bears scars. He still has
a human soul. He's still our kinsman. And on
that great day, all will be put right by our near blood relative. Do we see through our 3D glasses
that our kinsman redeemer portraits that to us may have seemed before
just like strange Jewish laws. Do you see Christ more clearly? What about some application?
Well, let's make it very clear. For God to redeem you, his enemy,
was an act of grace, undeserved, unexpected kindness. Compassion
shown to those that deserve wrath. But for God to redeem you by
becoming your kinsman is amazing grace. The angels view the work
of God, the unfolding of redemption, and it includes the humiliation
of the Son. He takes our humanity forever
and ever. He is now surrounded by the angels
in heaven worship, but still in His humanity. They are amazed. God become man. To do what? to act the part of our blood
relative and to intervene just at the point where we were most
destitute and in most danger. Now, some of you hear about Jesus
every week and you're unmoved. I mean, you may be emotionally
moved, but nothing happens other than that. Your will, your determination
is to live for yourself another day, and maybe Jesus can have
tomorrow. You are like those people in
the book of Ruth who were allowed to glean on the edge of the field.
You have enough to get by today. But do you not want what Ruth
eventually had? Are you okay with scratching
the world's garbage pits for another happy moment, another
temporary excitement? Is that all you want? Do you
want to pick up the little crumbs on the ground of life until it's
too late? Why not go to the kinsman redeemer? And to lay yourself at his feet
like Ruth did. And when he says to you, what
do you want from me? For you to say to him the same
thing Ruth said. You are my Goel. You are the
provided near relative Redeemer. You're the one that God the Father
has given us sinners. Take me, put me under your wing. Just like your covenant said
you would. It doesn't do any good to know all about the kinsmen
Redeemer. and fail to go lay yourself at
his feet. You can't go and bargain. You can't tell him you'll give
him most and he can give you some. You can't do a deal with
God. There's no restrictions. It's
an unconditional surrender. You lay at his feet. You hand
yourself over. He can do whatever he wants with
you. But plead with him. You are the one provided as a
kinsman redeemer. You're my relative. Save me. If you don't, Then you have all
six scenes. Still, still, you're in misery
in every one of them. You are poverty stricken. You
are empty on the inside. You are enslaved to your sinful,
selfish determinations. You are before the law of God
already condemned. You have no future, no hope. You will be murdered. or executed, death will take
you and Christ will not enter in and intervene between you
and death, because you have no kinsmen. Now for the Christian. Well, before we get to the Christian,
let me give one more advice for those who are not. When Naomi
talked to Ruth, she said, and she heard that Boaz was the one,
and she knew he was a mere kinsman, and she was scheming in her mind
like every mom does with daughters, and thinks he would be a great
husband, So here's what you do. Don't go to any other fields,
even if there's some food in another field. Don't leave his
fields. Don't leave his girls, the women, the servants that
belong to him. You stick with them. Don't go
to some other guy's field. You enslaved, poverty stricken,
futureless sinner in a church. Don't go to another field when
you leave the building. Don't go turn on the television.
Don't go to your iPod list. Don't call your friends to find
something to do. Don't fill up on the stuff that never works.
Don't say to Jesus, I want you to save me. But of course, I
have other things in case you don't work. Go to him alone. Cast yourself on him. Demand
with a humble desperation that he save you because you are not
going to look anywhere else for hope. Well, for the Christian, what
an amazing hope. What a difference a day makes.
One day, all six of those scenes, that was us. And in a moment,
the kinsman comes into your life. And your eyes are opened, and
your heart is softened. You're free. You have a new freed
will, you run, you embrace this Savior. He's your kinsman. He's
now your Redeemer. You're His forever and ever.
All of you is all of His and all of Christ is yours. And every morning you wake up
and you turn to pick up your Bible off your bedside table.
It's so different now. You are His and He's yours. It's not just reading a Bible,
it's not just going to church anymore, it's not doing good
things anymore, it's not trying to fix yourself or fix your family
anymore, it's living with God, with the kinsmen. Remember what Job said, Lanny
quoted it this morning. Every believer here can say this
because of a kinsman redeemer. I know that my redeemer lives
and he shall stand at last on the earth. Who? And after my skin is destroyed,
when this goes into the grave, this I know, that in my flesh,
again, I will see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes will
behold him, and not another, how my heart yearns within me. Do you look forward to seeing
your relative in heaven? Isaiah says it this way, in the
darkest days when everyone seems to be drifting to idols, he says
this, as for our Redeemer, our kinsman Redeemer, the Lord of
hosts is his name, the Holy One of Israel. What a difference
he makes. Well, let's sing to his glory.
The Kinsman Redeemer
Series Gospel of John
| Sermon ID | 121612217557 |
| Duration | 47:10 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Ruth 2 |
| Language | English |
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