If you take your Bibles in turn to Ruth chapter 4, we come to the heart of the story. It's about three people who are caught in a system and our God provides for them a way out. Most of us would have difficulty acknowledging that our government and its laws are part of God's providence over us. If they are, Paul the Apostle tells us that all of us ought to be in submission to all the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists the God who has appointed those and incurs his condemnation. Paul would tell Titus that he should teach the saints in creed to be submissive to rulers and authorities and obedient and ready for every good work. Peter would take it even further. He would say be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution whether it be to the emperor as supreme or to the governor sent by him to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, honor everyone, love the brotherhood, fear God onto the king. Servants, be subject to your own masters with all respect not only to the good and gentle but also to those who are unjust, likewise wives be subject to your own husbands so that even if some of them do not obey the word of the Lord they may be one without a word by the conduct of their wives when they see their chaste and respectful behavior, parents and husbands, supervisors and teachers, administrators and magistrates, pastors and elders, governors and presidents, all these human institutions and these human authorities are established in our world for order and for decency. So is our present government. It is one of God's arms of providence in our life. Even when it governs us not so well, we don't have any trouble seeing the hand of God when our government does heroic and noble and biblical things but we have a hard time accepting the fact that God's providence could work through them when they are calling us to do things that are grievous to us or passing laws that are so contrary to the will of God. But so far as I am able to discern from the scripture's loved ones until the government which I don't believe our government has yet done this requires us to disobey our conscience or to violate the word of God then we are bound by scripture to submit to them. Not only that to be grateful for them, as Peter says, to honor them and to pray for them. We are united, human institutions often grieve our spirits, they often offend our sense of righteousness, they bring oftentimes into our lives great inconvenience and because we live in a sinful and fallen world they often do things that are wrong. I turned 65 in a couple months and so I've received about 1,500 mails and contacts from the government notifying me that I am required to sign up for Medicare. Now it doesn't, it's not as simple as it sounds because there's Medicare, parts A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K. And to read through the volume of stuff that you have to sign up for, now I'm only required to sign up for part A and if I don't then there's a penalty. And I knew this sermon was coming and I was filling out the forms the other day and I said, Lord can I honestly stand before your people and tell them that Medicare with all of its red tape is a requirement of a just government that I have to submit to because it's part of your providence. And as I thought about it, the Holy Spirit said, yes it is. It is inconvenient for you at this point but there may come a time in the future where you need all those parts of Medicare and they'll be there for you. We have no problem seeing the providence of God in great and miraculous and positive things. We have problems I think sometime seeing the providence of God in the little mundane things of life. Michael Horton says, it is important for us to recover the doctrine of God's providence. When legs are lengthened and the blind can see we say, ah now, there is God at work. But when we go to work or enjoy good meal with friends or rear of family, these are mundane, common everyday things that don't really demand God's involvement or so we think. But this is far from the biblical view which presents God as active in the most minute details of our lives, even the most trivial. God is at work as much in the days that we forget as in those days that we will always remember. He is always there providing, caring, ruling and protecting. He has been there all along, even in our suffering and in our lack, even in moments of our frustration. When it is most difficult to see the hand of God or to acknowledge it or to be thankful for it is when we get caught in the system. When the law requires a certain thing and it frustrates what we think we want to do or what we think we need. And that is the story that is before us tonight in chapter 4 of the story of Ruth. Naomi and Ruth and Bolas are caught in the system. Naomi, in the opening chapters, bewails the fact that, as she says, the hand of God has gone out against her. She would love to give her daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, sons, but she says, would you therefore wait until these boys were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying no, my daughters, this is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake because the hand of the Lord has gone out against me. Do not call me Naomi. Call me Mara or bitter for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. Here is an older woman who needs to be taken care of. She had no social security or Medicare benefits in her day and age. Her key to be taken care of is her daughter-in-law and an inheritance of land that she received from her deceased husband and sons. And yet, she is caught in a conundrum. The land that was her husband's Ilamalek has been for ten years and more farmed by another relative. She in her dire financial straits feels compelled to sell that land in order just to survive. She also wants to find a husband for her daughter-in-law who she loves deeply, a girl named Ruth who is a Moabitus. And Boaz, who loves them both, would be glad to marry the daughter, redeem the land and provide for Naomi but he can't. He is caught in the system of leverite law and custom. So we move now to scene five. Each scene marked out by a change in venue. And now we move from the barley field and the threshing floor of Boaz to the city gate of the town of Bethlehem. David Atkinson says the focus of attention now moves to the city gate in many ways the very center of civic life. Here the town folk gather for conversation and for the administration of justice. It is at the gate that the poor wait for aid. Here business contracts are transacted. It was at the gate that Abraham negotiated to buy the cave of Macpella from Ephron. He was at the gate that Haymore and Shekham traded with the sons of Jacob as they entered the promised land. It was at the gate that the elders of society would meet, the princes and the nobles, the young and the old. And today Boaz goes to the gate to take his seat with the others. He is on the lookout for the next of kin of whom he spoke to Ruth. From what transpires in the story, it becomes clear that he has a very subtle and definite plan of action ready in his mind. Ruth, Boaz, Naomi, are trapped in this leverate system. A word not found in the Bible, but applied to these laws by us because of the Latin word lever which means brother-in-law or husband's brother. It's a decision that initially looked as if it would for the desires of Ruth and Boaz and Naomi, but the end it was the institution, the system that was used by God to take care of everyone. So we go to this story. We notice three things. How the leverite code seemed to be an insurpassable obstacle to these three people. How the leverite transaction was actually their liberation and how it foreshadows the Lord Jesus Christ who is our Kinsman Redeemer. Look at the first part of this scene number five, the first six verses of Ruth chapter four. Now Boaz had gone up to the gate and sat down there and behold the Redeemer of whom Boaz had spoken came by. So Boaz said, turn aside friend and sit down here and he turned aside and sat down. And he took ten men of the elders of the city and sat down here. So they sat down. Then he said to the Redeemer, Naomi, who has come back from the country of Moab, is selling the parcel of land that belonged to our relative Eli Malek. So I thought I would tell you of it and say buy it in the presence of those sitting here and in the presence of the elders of the people. If you were redeem it, redeem it. But if you'll not tell me that I may know for there was no one besides you to redeem it and I come after you. And he said, I will redeem it. Then Boaz said, the day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the widow of the dead in order to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance. Then the Redeemer said, I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I impair my own inheritance. Take my wider redemption yourself for I cannot redeem it. Though what takes place here, we mentioned last week, comes from some laws, some customs that were three hundred years old, at least that old, actually older in terms of custom. They go back to the time of the days of Jacob and his sons, called the leverite code. If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest Redeemer shall come and redeem what is his brother. If a man has no one to redeem it, and he himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient money in order to redeem it, let him calculate the years since he sold it and pay back the balance to the man to whom he sold it, then the property will be returned to him. If brothers dwell together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to his stranger. Her husband's brother shall go into her and take her as wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. And the first son, who she bears, shall succeed to the name of his dead brother and his name shall not be blotted out of Israel. And if a man does not wish to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate to the elders at the city and say, my husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel. He will not perform the duty of a husband's brother to me. Then the elders of this city shall call him and speak to him. And if you persist by saying, I do not wish to take her, then his brother's wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, pull off his sandal from his foot and spit in his face. Then she shall answer and say, so shall it be to the man who does not build up his brother's house. And the name of his house shall be called in Israel. The house of him who had his sandal pulled off. Now these laws, if you go back and read in the context of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, they occur as a subset of legal codes in this grand set of codes called the Year of Jubilee. Every 50 years, all of the land that was sold, all of the slaves that were enslaved, and all of the inheritance that was mortgage to someone else shall return to the original family and the original name. It was a fair system in that if you bought a man's land on the first year of this 50-year period, then you paid the full price. If you bought it in the 49th year, you paid a little bit because you soon had to forfeit the land back to him. And part of the reason in all of this, God says, is that he had redeemed Israel out of slavery out of bondage. And he had given them an inheritance, a land which was perpetually theirs, and God says which really belonged to him. Therefore God did not want his people in perpetual slavery, or the land to be sold to foreigners, and they lose their inheritance because of difficult, providential circumstances in their lives. It is in this code of the Year of Jubilee that these customs take place. Notice that's how it says here. It says that this was a custom. Now there was a custom, verse 7, in the former times the visual concerning redeeming and exchanging. It wasn't a hard and fast law, but it was a custom, something built into the system in which the Israelis lived with each other. This customer statue applied to Ruth's situation. There was some land, obviously, but long to Elay Malak and Naomi and her sons, that they had left in the care of a relative when they moved to Moab for 10 years and tending to come back. That man who was called the Goel, or the Kinsman, or the relative, or the Redeemer, translated several ways in the English, had farmed that land and had taken the produce for himself. He had both held that land in trust for his relative, Elay Malak, and his sons, Maylon and Kylion, they had the benefit of using it for at least 10 years. The inheritance should have gone to Elay Malak's sons, Maylon and Kylion, but of course they both died. So the son's widow would receive the inheritance as long as she had a son. And if she had a son, then the land would go to him in the name of her deceased husband and their grandfather, Elay Malak. But Ruth had no sons, so the leverite code devolved upon Naomi's relatives. If a stranger or a sojourner with you becomes rich and your brother beside him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or a sojourner with you or a member of the stranger's clan, then if he is sold, he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem him, or his uncle may redeem him, or his cousin may redeem him, or a close relative from his clan may redeem him, or if he grows rich, he may redeem himself. A brother, an uncle, a cousin, a close relative, it stays within the family of this Kinsman Redeemer, this right to redeem. Hence we have the idea here of a Goel, G-O-E-L, that we translate a Kinsman Redeemer. Boaz wanted to fulfill that duty, but he tells us over in chapter 3, verse 12, and now it is true that I am a Redeemer, yet there was a Redeemer nearer than I. One who was a closer relative to Naomi and therefore to Ruth, and who had what we would call the right of first refusal in this transaction. I want you to notice something about this custom. It involved a custom established long before Moses because we could go back to the story of Judah and his son and his daughter-in-law Tamar defined the leverite custom already in place. It was an administrative procedure and not a judicial one. In other words, the man who refused to fulfill the Kinsman Redeemer role could not be penalized financially or judicially. It involved family law. It only applied to widows, to land, to slaves, and to personal debts which became the responsibility of a family and not the community. And finally, it involved a personal transaction. The elders were merely witnesses. They were not to enforce any kind of statute upon either party. The bottom line is this leverite code, strange to us, was part of the system of life that Boaz and Ruth and Naomi lived in. So Boaz, because he's a Kinsman, because he's related in the family, takes the initiative in the standard manner. He goes to the city gate to the place of official business. Leon Morris says, the gate played a large part in the cities of Judah, of antiquity. Excavations reveal that Palestinian cities were generally very closely built together and they had no large open space like the Romans or the Greeks for a forum or an Agora. Instead, room was found at the gate and at the gate, accordingly, business was tended to and it became the center of life. It was the place for any important assembly and all legal transactions and many spiritual moments. The gate was the normal place for public business and specifically for the kind of business described in this chapter. Boaz comes along and he says to the elders, I'd like you to sit down here, ten of you. He says, as the Goal comes, now we don't know if he just happens to walk by or we know is that this meeting is going to take place. He's certainly not surprised by this. He's been farming the land for ten years and looking forward, according to the text of redeeming it himself. He comes by and because there are ten elders, we believe that that probably was what we consider a legal quorum. It took ten men to form a synagogue. There probably were more than ten elders in the city of Bethlehem but he assembles ten because it more than likely was the representative quorum required to witness any kind of legal business. Boaz, which was his duty representing his relatives, Naomi and Ruth, breaches the subject which is the retention both of Naomi and Ruth.