This is the last chance I’ll have to thank Marty Goetz, so Marty, thank you. This is our third time together at the Cove. It began well, and it gets better every time. I thank God for the privilege of being on your team.

My plan this morning after the previous message is to take this last chapter and to deal with it, and then in the 15 minutes we have before we end to read you a poem. I’ve written four poems on Ruth to tell the story, and they’re in this little book called Ruth: Under the Wings of God. For about 19 years, I’ve written four advent poems every advent season on different characters of the Bible, and I read them to my people as a Christmas present. It’s a high point of the year for me and a lot of them benefit from it. They tell me they do anyway. I brought them along in this little booklet thinking that I wouldn’t be able to fill up an hour with my material, and I’d have to read poems to fill in the gaps, but that hasn’t proved to be the case. It probably won’t this morning either, but I will, God willing, read you the last one because I want to put it in the context of the teaching of the whole book. So that’s where I’m going.

These are available online. Everything that I ever said in my life, I think, is available online. That’s a very dangerous way to live your life. Everything is taped and recorded and written down. So if you go to desiringgod.org you can get 20 years worth of sermons and do whatever else you want to do there with all the books. Somebody here told me they had a hard time finding the missions book — the little green book called Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions. Well, anytime there’s something that’s hard to find, just come on the web. We sell them cheaper than anybody else does and don’t make any profit. And so, go there and you can get everything you want there.

The Best is Yet to Come

The Best Is Yet to Come, that’s the title I want to put over today’s meditations. I wonder how you would state the main point now of the Book of Ruth. Let me venture a point. It would be something like this: The life of the godly is not a straight line to glory, but by the sovereign grace of God, they get there. I think that’s the way I would say it. The life of the godly is not a straight line to glory. It’s not an interstate across Nebraska; it’s a state road in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, with rock slides, mist, fog, and hairpin turns which make you go backward to go forward.

It’s a very hard place to be in life when you’re going away from glory, for all you can tell. You might think, “I’m supposed to be going that way to glory but I just took this turn, and now, as far as I can tell, God’s behind me going the other direction, and in front of me is one big hole in the wall.” I think this book was written to teach you that those roads, when you’re godly, lead to glory. In fact, if you want to continue the metaphor, there are signs along that Blue Ridge Mountain state road that say, “You will get to glory. Keep on this road.” And down at the bottom of the sign there are red letters, which is the blood of Jesus, saying, “As I live, says the Lord.” And this is one of those signs. We’ve been just reading the sign together here. Wherever you are on those torturous roads, Ruth is written to keep you on the road and to assure you that it does lead to glory.

An Overview of Ruth

Let me sum it up where we’ve been. The whole book is a book about Naomi. It begins with Naomi’s losses and it ends with Naomi’s gains, because when this baby is born — we’re going to read this in just a minute — do you know whose son they say it is? They say, “A son has been born to Naomi” (Ruth 4:17). Isn’t that an odd thing to say about Ruth’s baby — “A son has been born to Naomi”?

The point is very clear. The writer begins with Naomi, as she loses her husband, loses her sons, experiences a famine, leaves her land, and gains a daughter he gains, though she doesn’t feel very much like it’s gain at the beginning. Then she comes home and she says, “The Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. I went away full, I came home empty.” It begins with death and it ends with a birth. The birth is given to Naomi and the death is taken from her. The major lesson in this book is written on the storyline of Naomi. Ruth is a subordinate player, and what we’re to learn about is Naomi’s life. Naomi is the paradigm here, and Ruth is a blessing to the main character. Of course, the main character in this story is God, and under God, it’s Naomi.

She said, “I went away full and the Lord has brought me back empty.” That was a mistake that she made, and the book is written to correct it and show you that she didn’t come back empty. The little baby in her arms, who was the great-grandfather of King David, who is the father of Jesus the Messiah, is proof that she did not come back empty. In fact, one of the poems I wrote — I just reread them all last night to remind me of my own imagination five years ago or so — describes how I think, from Ruth’s standpoint, that God’s providence was to get Ruth into the line of the Messiah as a Moabitess, and to do it, he brought a famine on the land and took her husband so that she’d marry Boaz and be in the family that way.

God is always doing a thousand things more than you think He’s doing in your life — a thousand is an understatement. When God wanted to get a virgin to bear his Son in Bethlehem of Judea he orchestrated events in order to make it happen. Why in the world would he choose a virgin in Nazareth and make life hard for himself to get a prophecy fulfilled? Answer: so that he could cause Caesar to change the whole history of the Roman world by calling for attacks to get this girl from Nazareth to Bethlehem. That’s the way God is. God wants to do things. He wants to rescue a people out of Egypt, so He says, “Well, we have to have a famine now, and if we’re going to have a famine, we have to get Joseph to get down there.”

He’s always planning in the most unheard of ways to get done his purposes. Who would move an empire to get a virgin girl from Nazareth to Bethlehem so that the prophecy of Micah would be properly fulfilled? And who, to include a Moabitess in the line of the Messiah, would bring a famine on Judah to get the family of Elimelech to Moab, let all the men die, bring the girl back, unite them with Boaz in a happenstance meeting, and then say, “This is the way we do it”?

You have no idea what God is doing in your life. You have no idea what he’s doing in your family. We murmur and grumble and get critical of God so quickly because we can’t see what he’s doing. We say, “Why would this happen?” and, “Why would that happen?” I just want to scream sometimes at how quickly people judge Almighty God as though they’ve never read their Bibles. There’s 10,000 things he is doing that we cannot understand and we do not know, and it is none of our business to know at this time. The secret things belong to the Lord (Deuteronomy 29:29). The Book of Ruth is one of those great books that show the secrecy of providence and to get us to trust him.

Then, in chapter two, the whole thing opens up with hope as Boaz comes on the scene. Naomi sees that yes, there is a kinsman, and yes, there is hope, and her plans and her dreams start to churn in her mind. Then chapter three is the working out of the plan that she and Ruth hit upon together to delicately move toward a marriage relationship. And then a massive boulder falls on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the middle of the night — namely, there’s another kinsman in the way. That’s where we are at in chapter four. There’s another kinsman in the way. He has rights, and Boaz cannot preempt him if he’s a just, holy, law-abiding Jewish man. No matter how much he loves Ruth and no matter how much he wants her, there is another man who has rights to her, and he plans to go to court the following day to see what will happen. That’s where we are as we come now to chapter four. So let’s read it.

Boaz Addresses the Elders in the Gate

Somebody asked me the version of the Bible I’m using. I’m reading the Revised Standard Version. I began in 1966 as a sophomore in college to memorize texts from the Revised Standard Version. So like some of you would never give up the King James Version because that’s what you started on, that’s where I am with the RSV. Although I do preach now from the NASB just because it’s so much more literal and careful, but as far as my own memory work goes and my own meditations, I’m stuck with the Revised Standard Version. That’s what I’m reading from. So you read carefully in your version, and I hope they aren’t different on anything significant. Ruth 4:1–4 begins:

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; sit down here.” And he turned aside and sat down. And he took ten men of the elders of the city and said, “Sit 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 Elimelech. 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 my people.’ If you will redeem it, redeem it. But if you will not, tell me, that I may know, for there is no one besides you to redeem it, and I come after you.” And he said, “I will redeem it.”

At this point we want to say, “No, stop the movie. This is not the right answer. You’re not supposed to say, ‘I will redeem it.’” So we get this suspense building up. You know what’s going to happen, but if you were reading this for the first time, you’d say, “No, don’t do that.” Ruth 4:5 continues:

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.”

Notice what Boaz is doing here. He’s no dummy. He says, “You get a Moabitess,” not, “You get a beautiful, righteous, young woman.” Instead, he says, “You get a Moabitess. You get a widow of a man who copped out and went to Moab when the famine struck and didn’t have the faith to stay here, and you have to lose your name.” Then Ruth 4:6 says:

Then the redeemer said, “I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I impair my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption yourself, for I cannot redeem it.”

Whew. Okay, so that boulder is off the road now. Ruth 4:7–11 continues:

A Custom in Israel

Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging: to confirm a transaction, the one drew off his sandal and gave it to the other, and this was the manner of attesting in Israel. So when the redeemer said to Boaz, “Buy it for yourself,” he drew off his sandal. Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, “You are witnesses this day that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Chilion and to Mahlon. Also Ruth the Moabite, the widow of Mahlon, I have bought to be my wife, to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place. You are witnesses this day.”

Then all the people who were at the gate and the elders said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman, who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah …

I wonder why they said Rachel and Leah. I think it’s because Rachel’s womb was closed and Leah’s God closed. He opened them both, and he shut them both over and over. He went back and forth. Do you remember how the story goes? When Rachel boasted over Leah, God shut Rachel’s womb, and when Leah boasted over Rachel, he shut Leah’s womb. They got 12 boys out of that process, and one girl. Remember, as far as we know, Ruth was barren. Maybe not, but she didn’t have babies for 10 years of marriage. Maybe it was her husband, or maybe it was her, we don’t know. As far as they were concerned, it was the woman’s problem in that pre-scientific day. If a woman didn’t have babies, then she was the problem.

So they had to have some miracle-working God ready to go to work here, because if Boaz was going to marry this woman who had never had a baby after 10 years of sexual intercourse, then she’s probably barren and that doesn’t hold out a lot of hope for Naomi or them. So I think there’s more behind that statement, “May you be like Rachel,” than we might think at first.

Like Tamar and Perez

Ruth 4:11–12 continues:

May you act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem, and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman.

Just pause there a minute so we can think about Perez, Tamar, and Judah. Do you remember that story from Genesis 38? It’s a very seamy story. Judah married a Canaanite woman, a daughter of Shua, and he had two sons, Onan and Er, then his wife died. So Judah is like Naomi with her two boys, and God killed them both. It says God killed them because they were evil. He killed Er first, and then Onan did the levirate thing and married Tamar, but he didn’t want to lose his name, so he spilled his seed on the ground, and God killed him, leaving Tamar in the position of Ruth, with a father-in-law who was a widower, and he had no son to give her.

He then went down and looked for a harlot, and she dressed up like a harlot with a veil, because he had been unfaithful not to provide her with a husband. She planned on getting offspring that way. Judah slept with his daughter-in-law and the child born was Perez, a twin. So that’s what’s here. That’s ugly. That’s gross. It’s incest. What’s the point? I mean, they didn’t have to say that. They didn’t have to bring that up. They could have just left that history alone. People don’t want to know their parents were horse thieves. Well, I think that one of the things going on here is that when Boaz marries a Moabitess, a lot of people in the city are going to say, “Boaz, you’re wealthy. You could have who you want. There’s a lot of Jewish girls. What’re you doing marrying this Moabitess?”

Then think back a little farther. Where did the Moabites come from? They came from Lot. And how did Lot have a child? He slept with his daughter. Moabites are all children of incest. Now the link with Perez and Judah and Tamar, in other words, is, “Boaz, you’re going to marry a Moabitess. Do you know about the Moabites, what they’ve done to Israel, and where they come from? They’re all born of incest.” And then these promoters of the marriage say, “Yeah, and so are we. Everybody in the tribe of Judah through Perez is born the same way the Moabites were.” I think there’s a sense of it. They’re basically saying, “Watch out, all your finger pointers. Watch out, all you people who are pointing your finger and saying, ‘This is wrong. Don’t do this Boaz.’” And so, there’s more going on than you think.

I doubt that in our little four hours together we have even begun to plumb the depths of the delicacy and the nuances and the subtlety of the skill, artistically and inspirationally, that went into this book.

The Giver of Life

Next, Ruth 4:13 says:

So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went in to her, and the LORD gave her conception, and she bore a son.

Notice who gave her conception. It says that Boaz went into her, yes, but the Lord gave her the power to conceive. So God did it. They had said, “May he make you like Rachel.” Yes, he made her like Rachel, and that Rachel had to have God’s supernatural work in order to conceive. This baby is born of God — everything in this book is born of God.

Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.” Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse. And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” They named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

As if the story weren’t happy enough with just Naomi’s complete recovery and happy ending, the writer catches it all up into this bigger redemptive historical purpose, saying, “He was the father of Jesse and the father of David.” And as if the earlier point had not been driven home enough, he connects Perez, the child of incest, with the messianic line. If anybody in this room looks back at a seamy past and feels dirty, they might miss the point: The Messiah is also of that line.

You may put out of your mind any history in your ancestry that you think would contaminate you and make you unfit for Christ, because Christ’s ancestry is seamy. The writer went out of his way to tell it in Ruth 4:18–22, which says:

Now these are the generations of Perez: Perez fathered Hezron, Hezron fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab, Amminadab fathered Nahshon, Nahshon fathered Salmon, Salmon fathered Boaz, Boaz fathered Obed, Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David.

And we, now from our standpoint, say, “And of David the Christ was born.” Christ came from that seamy, adulterous, incestuous situation with Judah and Tamar. And so, Ruth, dear Moabitess, though you are an unclean foreigner, born of the uncircumcised, it’s all right. It’s all right.

A Circuitous Path to Glory

That’s the chapter. Boaz goes to the gate now and a kinsman comes by, and he says, “Naomi is giving up her property. It’s your duty to buy it. Will you buy it?” And he says, “I’ll buy it.” But then he changes his mind; he won’t buy it, so the way is clear for Boaz to buy it. And here the people are cheering, being happy, but there’s one more bottleneck we’ve already mentioned — Ruth didn’t have any children for all those 10 years of marriage. Now she’s going to marry another man, and the whole thing hangs on her having children here. That’s what they’re after. That’s what they always after anyway, and the writer and God — they want David to be born here.

So let me just say again, the main point of this story is that the godly are on their way to glory, and the way is not straight. It’s not a straight line. It curves all over the place. There is setback after setback after setback, and books like this are written to prove the best is yet to come. The best is always yet to come. And who gives birth here? Ruth 4:13 says: “So Boaz took Ruth, she became his wife; and he went into her and the Lord gave conception.” The Lord gave conception, and she bore a son. And yet all the focus then turns to be on Naomi.

I had a man come into the office a few years ago, very shabby. We were right downtown with the church, where there are a lot of street people around, and I asked him, “What’s your name?” And he said, “Hard Times.” That’s all he would tell me. He just said, “Hard Times.” I think Naomi would have answered the same early on. We could write a poem called Hard Times Naomi. My son’s email address is rainy-day-aber.

It began with Naomi’s losses, and it ends with her gain. It begins with the death of her husband and her sons, it ends with the birth of her son. He’s called Naomi’s son in Ruth 4:17:

And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.”

It says he was born to Naomi, stressing that this book, and the storyline of the providence of God, the sweet and bitter providences, is written about Naomi’s life with Ruth serving that subordinate role.

We learn to wait. Oh, may you take that lesson away. Learn to wait and trust God, and all your complaints against him will prove to be unfounded. So the aim of the book, I think, is that the path of the godly is not a straight line to glory, but they do get there by the sovereign work of God. A son has been born to Naomi. God opens wombs and he shuts wombs. He’s in charge of bitter providences and sweet providences.

Roaming Over the Eternal Hills

Now, I chose the word glory in that sentence on purpose. The point of the book is that the life of the godly is not a straight line to glory. I chose that word intentionally though it sounds, perhaps, like an overstatement, but I want to try to show you why I chose it and where I get it from the text.

Let me do that with an illustration from John Henry Jowett. He was a preacher back in 1912 with Fifth Presbyterian Church in New York City. He gave the Yale lectures on preaching that year, and there was a passage in those lectures that I read some years ago to describe good preaching, and it goes like this:

A great preacher is one who seems to look at the horizon rather than at an enclosed field or a local landscape. He has a marvelous way of connecting every subject with eternity past and with eternity to come. It is as though you were looking at a bit of carved wood in a Swiss village window, and you lifted your eyes and saw the forest where the wood was nourished and the higher still everlasting snows on the top of the mountains. Yes, that was Binney’s way, and Dale’s way, and Bushnell’s way, and Newman’s way, and Spurgeon’s way; they were always willing to stop at the village window, but they always linked the streets with the heights and sent your souls a-roaming over the eternal hills of God.

In other words, good preaching deals with nitty-gritty things. It doesn’t just deal with ethereal, high-sounding things. It gets down in the nitty-gritty of people’s lives, but it never stays there. It moves in there, it takes hold of the nitty-gritty things that everybody deals with from day to day, and then — this is what makes preaching preaching — it lifts it up into a big context, a universal and eternal context, and relates it to God. That’s what preachers ought to be doing week in and week out, not just getting down and trying to help people feel good in their little problematic lives and relationships, but getting there, taking hold of problems and blessings, and then lifting them way high up into biblical history and great purposes and glorious designs in relation to God.

That’s what I see this writer doing in these last verses by connecting this simple story to the line of David. It’s like a little out-of-the-way family story, except that God is behind it everywhere, and at the end, his purposes are messianic. They’re all about Jesus. This is a book about Jesus.

The Curse of Triviality

The very structure of the writer’s mind and how he functions is a lesson to me, so let me dwell on this lesson for a minute. The lesson goes something like this: One of the greatest curses on American culture, in the church and outside the church, is the disease of triviality and banality. TV is the worst culprit of all. The problem with television is not sex and violence — the Bible is full of sex and violence. The problem is absolute silliness, which is constantly trivializing everything with silliness. Everything is sold with silliness. Newscasters are silly. Drama is silly. Sports announcers are silly. Everybody is trivial and silly, which means that if our people sit in front of that box one or two hours a night, do you know what happens to their souls? It’s not that their souls get contaminated with sexual innuendo and violence, that is not the main problem. A big soul can manage sex and violence and put it in its right position, but do you know what happens? The soul shrinks down to a stick figure with the attitude, “Let’s be silly.”

So preachers start to preach this way. They tell little stories or little jokes, and have little funny things they say. Did you know what Albert Einstein, who died in 1955 and stopped going to church long before that, said was the reason he stopped going to church? He said as far as he could tell, all the preachers were blaspheming, because he had seen so much more glory in his math and through his telescope than they seem to be remotely acquainted with.

That’s the way I feel when I visit a lot of churches or listen to tapes. I think, “Have these pastors been watching TV all week? Is that the problem?” The souls of our people and many of our pastors have shriveled up that they no longer have any great capacities for worship, any great capacities for the magnificent things about God. They can’t even taste the magnitude of Christ and the glories of Christ, let alone become contagious, exulting over them in front of their people. When you watch some church services happen you want to say, “Does this have any connection to the universe, let alone heaven and eternity?”

One of the men in our church, thank God for people like this, said, “John, I hear your homepage on your computer is Google. I got a better one for you, try Refdesk. At the top of Refdesk, there’s an astronomical photograph of the day.” So I went onto Refdesk and made it my homepage, and it’s still my homepage. Every time I go on, I can go to this astronomical photograph of the day and click to see galaxies and suns and eclipses and these little solar flares that are three million miles long at about 6,000 degrees Centigrade, and I can feel as small as I ought to feel and stand in awe that this universe is about one thing: “The heavens are telling the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). Hardly anybody who spends time watching television has the capacity to feel those things anymore. Turn it off, folks. Turn it off. We don’t have one. We haven’t had a television in our house for 32 years — no, that’s an overstatement. We haven’t owned a television. I bring one in for the Final Four.

I have some things to say about sports here too, but before I say that, let me just finish the story about television as long as I’m rapping on television here, which is one of my favorite things to beat up on. All my people know about it. They smile and roll their eyes whenever I get on this topic. I’ve raised four sons in the inner city, and Noel and I used to worry when we were just married wondering, “Should we get a television or not?” And we didn’t. But then when we began to have children, we said, “Well now, are they going to be weird, or square, or out of it? Will everybody be talking about something and they’ll not know anything about it?” And we said, “Well, let’s just see what happens.”

You know what? I have sons at ages 29, 25, 21, and 18, and not once have they ever complained about not having a television. Not once have they ever felt out of it because they were able to pick it up. You know what the programs are if you’re a kid, I guess. I don’t know anything about it, but they do. I don’t say, “You can’t watch it at other people’s houses.” And I don’t say, “You can’t go to Pizza Hut because they have TVs there.” There’s nothing like that. The reason for it is that I do not want the curse of triviality and banality in my house. I want to read to my kids at night. I want to talk to my kids at night. I want them to read great literature at night.

And when it comes to the question, “Well, aren’t you afraid that they’re not going to know the real world?” my answer is that I live in the real world. You want to get to know the real world, move in, not out. There’s all this talk about, “Well, they won’t get to know the real world if they don’t see those movies or watch those TV shows.” That’s baloney. People sleep with each other in my front yard. I had to pull guys off of girls. There’s drunk people everywhere. There’s drugs everywhere. There’s gunshots a block away. There’s the way to know the real world: Live in it. Don’t play games with it. Don’t turn it into a little drama.

So when that thought comes to me, I don’t have a lot of patience with that argument. God wants us in the real world. He wants savvy sons. But you don’t have to sell your soul to stick figures and silliness in order to become passionate for God in the city.

Preoccupation with Sports

I’ve got a bone to pick with sports too. See that little bent finger right there? It’s just healing up. On February 8th, I split the tendon on this thing while playing basketball. So I haven’t played basketball since February trying to heal up this finger, and it’s about as straight as the doctor says it is going to get. So when I praise God now, it’s a bent praise.

I like sports. I’ve always been a C-plus player in just about every sport. I never could do anything good in high school or college, but I play everything there is to play — football, basketball, softball, baseball, fast pitch, slow pitch, soccer, etc. Everything I’ve ever touched, I play, and I love it. I think sports are meant to be played, basically, not watched. But here’s the problem with sports in America: It occupies an entire section of the newspaper, and God gets nothing. God doesn’t get a section in the paper. I tell you without fear of being accused of overstatement, it is madness the level to which we have elevated sports in America.

It is madness that we build a culture, billions upon billions of dollars, around sports and idolize these jerks who live loose, horrid, un-exemplary lives. They go up on my son’s wall, and I say, “Barnabas, I know you like basketball, but do you know anything about that man?” And he’ll say, “Why? He’s a great three-point shooter.” And I’ll say, “Who cares about his three-point shots? Does he sleep with women? How many women does he sleep with? How many kids has he had in every city? How about putting William Carey up there?” Carey may have had a bald head, but he left a legacy and nobody will remember any of these fellas. I know there are a lot of Christians in the professional sports world too, but I sometimes wonder how in the world they do it.

I want to say, “Wake up. Wake up.” You can go anywhere you want with this, differently than I go, but I’m just waving a flag here that we Americans are suckered into a lot of stuff with our televisions and with our sports that make it almost impossible for us to feel what this writer of Ruth wants us to feel when he links up this little family with eternity.

Small Things for the Glory of God

I mean, the average American would probably read this book and just get excited about the sex scene, thinking, “Whoa, there’s a conniving mother and a sexy girl; that’s a cool story. I didn’t know that was in the Bible.” They don’t even have the potential of understanding what’s going on here because they’re so soaked with banality and triviality and sensuality and small-mindedness. I just plead with you to consider that. It’s a lesson that I see in this book. In those last five or six verses, when he links this one simple, lowly, out-of-the way family in a little town in a little country in the near East with the Messiah, he means to say, “Nobody’s life is insignificant. Nobody was meant to live an insignificant life.”

There was somebody who asked me about The Prayer of Jabez yesterday. I haven’t read the whole book, but I’ve heard enough and I’ve read enough to say that, putting the best face on that book, that’s probably the point — that we all settle for too little. We all think too small about our families and too small about our lives. I mean, is it an accident? Is it an accident that Paul said:

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Could you write an essay on how to drink Diet Coke to the glory of God? You should. I mean, if you drink it, you should. I wrote an article for our church called How to Drink Orange Juice to the Glory of God, because that’s what the text says you’re supposed to do. In other words, when you take a glass of this wonderful orange juice, or all that spread of food they give us in there, and you take a forkful or a glassful, that should be connected to the galaxies and beyond.

There’s nothing trivial in life for those who are God-besotted people. Everything is connected to what is great and glorious. Famines, the death of a husband, the death of sons, homecomings with a daughter-in-law, happenstance meetings, births of babies, and meetings in courtrooms — it’s all about God, if you will have it. Of course, if you want to just wrap yourself up in a robe of triviality and small-mindedness, you can live your life that way, tragically. America is a tragic land. It’s a tragic land. It’s one of the most tragic countries in the world because of the blessings that we have turned against God.

Psalm 67:1–7 says that we have been blessed that we may be a blessing to the nations. How many churches care about the nations? How many churches really care about the unreached nations? And I don’t mean political states, I mean peoples like Canaanites, Jebusites, and Hittites. There are about seven thousand of these folks, these peoples yet to have a strong, self-propagating church. How many churches burn with our prosperity, watching it ruin our hands and our kids instead of pouring our lives out for the nations?

I was on the phone with the pastor the other day and he said, “John, I’m so concerned about my denomination.” It’s probably not one any of you belong to, except maybe one or two. It’s not unique. But he said, “I’m so concerned because I was talking to a pastor the other day and he said, ‘I’m so tired of hearing about this unreached people crap.’” A pastor said that.

I said to him, “Well, is that because his church is doing such a gangbuster job of it he doesn’t need anymore encouragement?” He said, “No, they don’t do anything. He just feels threatened by it.” That’s where a lot of churches are. They’re just so wrapped up in their problems that they don’t have any capacity for the great, global purposes of God.

To Gray Hairs I Will Carry You

Well, let’s see, how should we wrap this up? All that was an attempt to tell you that I didn’t think glory was too strong a word when I said the life of the godly is not a straight line to glory. So I’ve been trying to explain to you what I mean now by glory. It’s not a straight line, it’s a circuitous line. All of you are on some turn in the road right now and you wonder, “How in the world does this relate to glory?” And it does. This book says it does. So the best is yet to come. Let’s finish the link with Jesus and then I’m going to read you this poem and we’ll be done.

David, the great king of Israel, a man after God’s own heart, the sweet Psalmist of Israel, gives way to the son of David, the gospel bringer and atoner, Jesus Christ. Now, just like David foreshadows Jesus, Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection and foreshadows my rising from the dead and your rising from the dead. Which means that we in this room can say to every believer, from the youngest who may die young or who are in some way disabled and don’t seem to have a very great prospect in this life to the oldest who’s just ready to die after having 10 years of Alzheimer’s, “The best is yet to come.” That’s the great thing about Christianity. I love being a pastor, and I like funerals better than marriages for preaching because I have such a spectacular gospel. I can look right into so many grieving faces or hospital beds where they’re about to die and say, “Oh have I got good news for you. The best is yet to come.”

Thinking of older people who really need to be reminded of that reminds me of one closing illustration. I went to the Caroline Center a few years ago, which is a nursing home. Nursing homes are a sad place to go sometimes, but sometimes they’re very happy. This was both. I got in the elevator and here came a wheelchair, and in it sat a woman, goodness knows how old, I couldn’t tell, and her head was trembling out of control and her hands were shaking and her hair was a little bit fixed but disheveled. She was very old and her mouth drooped, probably after a stroke, and she had a little bit of drool. She was babbling in some incoherent way, and I just looked at the carnage of this fallen age, and we stayed there together. And then I looked up and noticed that the wheelchair was being pushed by a man, probably in his upper sixties, who looked like a very dignified, well-groomed man. I wondered, “What’s the connection here?” And as he turned her around and was going to get out on the next floor, he pushed her out and said, “Watch your foot, sweetie pie.”

I just about exploded with sadness and happiness. I just about exploded. Here was a woman who looked like she was just about as far gone and yet still alive as you could get, and here was a man who could marry again easy as pie and leave this whole thing, and he said, “Watch your foot, sweetie pie.” I walked out to my car and I thought, “If a marriage covenant and commitment between people can produce that kind of allegiance, that kind of love, and that kind of staying power, then God’s superior mercy and superior covenant with his people through Messiah Jesus will make it possible for him to say to me, when I’m old, my brain is gone, my back is gone, my knees are gone, my hips are gone, all my hair is gone, and maybe I’ve outlived my family and nobody remembers me at all, God almighty will say, “Watch your foot, sweetie pie. Don’t bump your foot on the elevator ridge there. You’re on your way to glory, and I’ll see to that.” So the best is yet to come.

Departing Words

Now, let me read this and we’ll be done. This is poem number four from my book. Let me give you the background for it. This is my way of sending you on your way. We’re supposed to do the last 10 minutes or so as something for you to take home. Well, this closes with what I want you to take home, then Ron is going to come up and bring it all to a close. But here’s the setting as I read. You can just close everything up and listen. You don’t need to look at anything.

In this poem, King David is nine years old. His grandfather is Obed, and I’m not sure how old he is here. I wrote this as though his great-grandfather Boaz is still alive, but Ruth is dead, and so is Obed’s wife. The two old men, Obed and Boaz, live in a little shack down by the barley field where Boaz first met Ruth. Boaz is blind now; he’s almost 100 years old. The little boy you’ll hear talking is David, and the two old men are Boaz and Obed. The conversation takes place in a cart that Obed built a long time ago, and they’re on their way to the barley field to show David the place where it all happened. The little boy’s going to learn something about his background here from his blind great-grandfather.

Ignite in Us the Faith of Ruth

Blind and lame, the old man drew
     The blanket close and clutched the shoe
That he held in his lap and sat
     Beside his faithful son. And at
The back, the boy rode bumping down
     The same hill from the quiet town
Of Bethlehem. The wooden cart
     Was witness to the master art
Of Obed’s craft. When he was ten,
     He built it for the poorest men
And women who would glean the sheaves
     That every godly farmer leaves
In Judah for the ones who own
     No land. His mother, Ruth, had shown

Him how she used to gather grain
     And beat it out, and what a strain
It was to take the winnowed seed
     And walk it up the hill. “They need
A cart,” she said. “Don’t you believe,
     My son, that Moses meant to weave
Together with his law that we
     Leave something for the poor, a plea
That, if we can, we help them bear
     It up the hill and take it where
They need to go? It seems to me
     The holy Torah ought to be
Interpreted to see as much
     Compassion as we can. The touch

Of love from this great Book
     Once wakened me from death and shook
Me to the bottom of my soul.
     Why not make something that can roll
And let the gleaners use it when
     They’re tired?” And so the boy, at ten,
Built them a cart. He thought, “Perhaps
     My cart, made out of love and scraps,
Will help the poor to see the hand
     Of God and trust in what He’s planned.”

Now sixty years have passed. Tonight,
     The aged craftsman drives his bright
And eager grandson and his blind
     And failing father down to find
The place he promised David they
     Would go when it was dark. The gray
Of twilight turned to night. The boy
     Could see on Boaz’s face a joy
That broadened to a wrinkled smile.
     He knew the ruts of every mile,
Especially the final two
     Around the fields that led down through
The hollow where he used to sift
     The barley seed at night and lift

The spirits of his workers there.
     He used to sing a song, and wear
The same clothes as the working men,
     And rake and toss his share. And when
The other owners asked him why,
     He said, “The Torah says that I
Should love my neighbor just the way
     I love myself. And would you not say
That if you labored for a boss,
     It would be good to see him toss
The barley every now and then?
     We ought to read the Torah, men,
To see as much compassion as
     We can. Go read, and find it has

More mercy than you think.” But these
     Were not the only memories
That made the old man smile that night.
     “Stop here, Obed,” he said. “The light.
How much is there tonight? Is there
     A moon? Are there stars?” “It’s fair,
My father, and the moon is full.”
     “That’s good,” he said. “Obed, let’s pull
The cart down to the cedar at
     The end.” “Great-grandpa, isn’t that
The one where all the people go
     To watch the play?” He laughed. “You know
About the play?” “I don’t know much.
     They say it’s all about the touch
Between you and Great-grandma Ruth.”

“This is my favorite spot,” the old
     Man said, “and now you shall be told
About that touch and where it led.
     Here seventy short years have sped
Way since that great night. Because
     The heat was great by day, and I was
Down winnowing at dark. And when
     The work was done, I told the men
To fetch the food and wine so we
     Could eat and rest. I couldn’t see
What God was just about to do.
     When I was full and tired, I threw
This blanket over me and lay
     Down underneath that tree. Today

It must be twice as big. I fell
     Asleep and dreamed about my belle.”
“You mean Great-grandma Ruth?” “I do.
     And, David, then my dream came true.
At midnight something stirred beneath
     My blanket at my feet. My teeth
Clamped like a vice. I carefully
     Unsheathed my knife and tried to see
Where I could strike the beast to kill,
     Lest I should miss the head, and still
Be bitten by some snake or worse,
     I knew not what. It is a curse,
I thought, for dreaming of my Ruth.
     And as I raised the knife, the truth

Rose like a hand against my wrist.
     I looked and thought, “This moonlit twist
Beneath the blanket at my feet
     Is not a snake, nor will it eat
My leg. This is a human form.
     A child in search of being warm
Perhaps. Or worse, some woman of
     The street who hopes to sell me love.
I whispered, so as not to wake
     The men, “Who are you? Do not make
A sudden move or you will die.
     If you’re a child and cannot buy,
You shall be fed. But if a wench,
     You will find nothing here, nor quench

Your hunger in my bed. I would
     Not touch a woman, be she good
Or great, outside of covenant,
     Though there is one I truly want.”
I pulled the blanket gently back,
     And there, as still as night, the black
And piercing eyes of Ruth. “My name
     Is Ruth,” she said. “Your servant came
Because Naomi told me I
     Should lie down at your feet and by
This action say you are a kin
     To her in hope that she may win
Your willingness to raise up seed
     To Mahlon, if you are agreed”

“These are Naomi’s words, I hear.
     I know her mind, but not, I fear,
Her daughter’s heart. This too I would
     Be pleased to learn. I hope you could,
Besides this well-taught speech, reveal
     Your own designs and how you feel
About the prospect in her mind.
     Or have you no emotions unassigned?”
“She lay there motionless, then said,
     “My heart’s desire is that you spread
Your holy wing and cover me.”
     “Great-grampa Boaz, I don’t see
What all this means.” “Well, David, now
     You know why they do not allow

The kids to come down to the play
     Each year. But listen, here’s the way
It ends. My heart was beating in
     My throat, and crouching there was sin,
Awaiting one misstep. I spoke
     The hardest words and almost broke:
“There is another kinsman still
     More close to you than I. He is
Given legal right to take
     You if he will. Tomorrow, make
Your prayer, and I will settle this
     With elders in the gate.” No kiss
That night. But when she left, still dark,
     She took my hand and drew an arc
And said, “The God of Exodus
     And flood at dawn will fight for us.”
That was our only touch.

And so
     As soon as light shone on the low
Gate leading into Bethlehem,
     I gathered elders and to them
Laid out my case, and to the head
     Whose right preceded mine I said,
“Naomi’s land is yours. The claim?
     You marry Ruth, and keep the name
Of Mahlon in your line. Declare
     Your will, for I am next, and swear
That I will take her if you can’t.”
     I wondered how the Lord would grant
The longing of my heart and by
     Another providence comply

With Ruth’s appeal and my desire.
     And then I learned. He said, “Acquire
It for yourself. The land I would
     Have had, for it is very good.
But Ruth? She is a Moabite,
     And we are Jews. It isn’t right.
The land is yours, and Mahlon’s name
     For what it’s worth. And Ruth. And shame.”
He took his shoe and gave it to
     Me in the gate. I turned and threw
It to Ruth among the crowd.
     She caught it like a wreath and bowed.
I quieted the shouts and cried,
     “What do you think of this, my bride?”

And she replied, “I think the Lord
     Has fought today and with his sword
Has stuck a sin up on the gate
     And hung on it our wedding date.
As for the badge of shame, you tell:
     The line of Judah bears it well,
And will for generations yet
     To come. The book of Moses set
Me free. There is a mercy in
     The law of God beyond my skin:
By faith God makes a person right,
     Be she a Jew or a Moabite.
Come Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth;
     Ignite in us the faith of Ruth.