Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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*Intro*
Hello EFC!
We are glad to be back with you.
Thanks for your prayers for us last weekend.
We had a good trip to NY, though it did take us 17 hours to get back to Illinois, while just 13.5 hours to get there.
Abbie was a good sport both ways, but this might be the last of our road trips like that for a while, anyway.
Driving back to Illinois, we decided to drive straight through Pennsylvania (the never ending state) so that we can get to Ohio.
This was because from our experience in the past, Ohio had great service plazas.
It was 2pm and we were all pretty hungry.
So we were so excited to get to Ohio (road trips will do that to you) and were anxiously looking for the next service plaza.
The only problem was that everyone else on the road with us that day traveling after the holiday also wanted to stop at the first plaza.
All we wanted was fast food from McDonalds to eat on the road.
I saw a large number of people waiting in line in one area and a shorter group in another.
So I went to the shorter line and put in my order.
After I placed my order, I realized that the large group that was next to me were not people putting in their orders, but people /waiting/ for their orders!
One lady walked by saying, “Good luck.
I waited half an hour for this Big Mac.”
I waited and waited and waited.
My patience was growing thin and so were the people around me.
Everyone was angry.
Some people went up to get their money back.
Others simply just walked away.
Some went to those in the line making their order to warn them about the wait.
But most waited there making friends with others who were in the same predicament.
It is good to have community in a crisis.
It was pretty funny actually to see people interact.
One guy said, “I don’t know why I am waiting this long for something that will taste like cardboard.”
30 minutes went by.
Apparently, the reason for the delay was because they were short on staff.
At one point I wanted someone to pop up from the back saying, “You’re on Candid Camera!
This was a joke!”
But that did not happen.
Finally I got my order…50 minutes later.
This was supposed to be /fast/ food!
Looking back on it, yeah we lost some travel time and it was frustrating, but it was really not a big deal.
We made it home safely and were not food poisoned.
I am sure there are longer lines in places like Darfur and others of people waiting for a cup of rice.
But the more and more I live I am realizing that our culture is one that focuses on the immediate.
Instant gratification.
We all want instant meals, instant connection to the internet, instant service on the phone and at restaurants.
What can I get /right now/?
What I can I feel /right now/?
What works /right now/?
No concern over the consequences or what it means in the long run.
No thinking about patience or waiting.
No worries about who is going to get hurt in the process.
No worries about what God thinks.
It is time of the judges!
Everyone does what is right in their own eyes (Judges 21:25).
But the Word of God is counter cultural.
God seems to like to take His time with things.
He seems to love teaching His people about patience and waiting.
Sometimes we may want to ask for our money back.
Other times we may be tempted to quit and run away.
But really in the end if we hold on, we see that unlike the Mcdonalds at the Ohio service plaza, God is in control and has greater purposes behind it all.
He is never short on staff!
Today I am excited to be back in the book of Ruth for the last time.
It has been a great journey traveling with these two widows through their tragedy and now to get into their triumph in Ruth 4. One of the major themes running throughout this book is the providence of God.
In this we see that God is both sovereign and good.
He is powerful yet very personal.
His fingerprints are everywhere!
In Ruth 1 we saw God was in their wandering and in their weeping.
In Ruth 2 we saw God in Ruth’s working.
In Ruth 3 we saw God was in the two widows’ waiting.
Today we will see God is in their watching, as they wait and watch for God to intervene not just in their immediate situation, for their future generations.
Not only did we see the providence of God in this short book, but also the obedience of man, embodying the hesed of God, to put it in the terms of Ruth.
When the providence of God interlocks with the obedience of man, it produces a result.
In Ruth 2, we saw the providence of God bringing poor Ruth to the fields of Boaz and allowing them to meet at the right time.
At the same time, we saw Ruth was obedient in deciding to go out and glean for the family.
Boaz is abundantly generous and kind, showing us he is a man of hesed and exemplary character.
In Ruth 3, we see more of the obedience of man as taking risks by faith, maintaining integrity and trusting God with obstacles.
We see the providence of God bringing Boaz to sleep at the right place so he and Ruth could speak.
So throughout we have been seeing providence and obedience working together.
Now we are going to see the results.
What is the masterpiece that is created when God brings our tangled threads of life together?
” What is the end result when God’s people step out in faith and live lives devoted and trusting the God of providence?
In one word: legacy!
The title of the message today is “God in my watching: the legacy of legacy makers.”
There is no greater blessing than that.
We will see that throughout this chapter.
We will see the legacy of the legacy makers.
What does it take to make a legacy?
Ruth 1 had begun with 3 funerals, but Ruth 4 will end with a wedding and birth.
Praise God that for the believer in Jesus Christ, God writes the last chapter!
We were left with many questions at the end of Ruth 3. Will Naomi have an heir?
Who will or will anyone marry Ruth?
Will Boaz lose Ruth to the unnamed kinsman redeemer?
Remember that in the book of Ruth, two laws come into play.
One is called the kinsman redeemer law found in Lev.
25:23-34 and the other is called the levirate marriage law found in Deut.
25:5-10.
The purpose of these laws was to keep the name of the deceased alive in the land.
For a widow, the nearest relative is supposed to step up and buy the land along with marrying the widow and keeping the name of the family alive.
In this case, although Boaz is interested in being the kinsman redeemer, there is someone else ahead of him in the line.
As a man of exemplary character, he will do it the right way and ask this man first.
This is where we left off in Ruth 3.
There are a few of you in law here and you might appreciate that the first twelve verses of Ruth 4 is a legal process, using a lot of legal terminology.
There are witnesses, two parties, a contract, property issues, inheritance issues and widow issues.
Unlike Ruth 3, the setting in Ruth 4 is not private and secretive like in the dead of night at a threshing floor, but very public in broad daylight at the town square.
With that in mind, let’s get to the story.
Jot this first thing down:
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