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.