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Love

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The theme for this Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Advent, is Love. The Scripture reading is Ruth 4:1-17.

The story of the first Christmas morning is a story of love – God’s love. It’s a story of God’s love for a people that he made His own even though they didn’t always love him back. It’s a story of God doing for His people what they could never do for themselves. It’s a story of God giving of Himself because of love.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” John 3:16-17

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Christmas is ALL about God’s love. And that love is pointed to in Ruth 4.

In love, Boaz goes to the town gate where the business of the town is conducted and presents Ruth’s case to the nearer kinsman-redeemer. However, the nearer kinsman-redeemer refuses to take redeem both the land and Ruth (because redeeming Ruth with the land meant that he would not benefit materially from his investment).

In love, Boaz marries Ruth. In doing so, Boaz redeems Naomi and Ruth from an uncertain future to one where they, and Boaz and Ruth’s children, are well provided for.

In love, Boaz and Ruth provide a ‘son’ for Naomi – an heir for the line of Elimelech. Naomi is restored.

In the course of the events of the book of Ruth the transformation from emptiness to fullness, sorrow to joy, from death to life, anticipated by God’s gift of food (1:6) and Boaz’s gift of grain (2:14-16, 3:15), comes to rich and overflowing fruition. By God’s gracious love a broken family is reestablished, a marginalized outsider is brought into the community circle, a new life comes into the world, the atmosphere is permeated with blessing and rejoicing. (Katharine Sakenfeld, “Interpretation: Ruth,” pg. 67)

God’s love shown to Naomi (and Ruth) through the actions of Boaz and Ruth is a foretaste of the love to come. Eventually Ruth and Boaz become the grandparents to King David. And from the line of David, as God covenanted with David in 2 Samuel 7, God sent his own Son as the eternal king and our kinsman-redeemer.

In true and selfless love, God sent Jesus Christ to redeem the world. In love, Jesus rescues us so that by his faithfulness and his righteousness we are rewarded with eternal life.

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13

True love was born in a manger at Christmas.

 

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