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LINEAGE OF DAVID THE KING (3)
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21
Ruth 4:11-22

Matthew 1:1-6

 

“Boaz begat Obed of Ruth.”

 

LINEAGE OF DAVID THE KING (3)
 
The lineage given in 1 Chronicles 2 gives us a glimpse of the lineage of David. This glimpse shows us how God honoured Boaz and Ruth, granting them grace to be included in the messianic lineage. The focus on the lineage is that it traces God’s plan of redemption, which becomes clearer in the lineage given in Matthew 1.
 
“…he is the father of Jesse, the father of David” (Ruth 4:17). G Campbell Morgan in “Life Applications from Every Chapter of the Bible” sums up the Book of Ruth as follows: “The story ends with poetic simplicity and beauty. ‘Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife.’ Naomi at last was comforted indeed. The women of her own people spoke words of cheer to her which unquestionably were full of comfort, as they set forth the praises of the one who had chosen to share her affliction, and had become the medium of her succour. There is a stately simplicity in this story of the issue. It constitutes a record of the Divine movement in the history of the chosen people, for thus the kingly line is ordained, in the midst of infidelity (Judg 21:25), through faithful souls (Ps 40:4). All the period of the Judges was characterised by the failure of the people to realise the great ideal of the Theocracy. They had no king because they were disobedient to the One King. Presently we shall hear them clamouring for a king ‘like the nations,’ (1 Sam 8:5, 19, 20) and one will be appointed by whose reign of forty years they will learn the difference between earthly rule and the direct government of God. Then the man after God’s own heart will succeed him (Acts 13:22); and that man will be David, descended from these souls who, in dark and difficult days, realised in their own lives the Divine ideal, as they walked humbly with God. But this Book flings its light much further on. After centuries had run their course, there sprang from this union of Boaz and Ruth in faith and love, the Man of Nazareth, Jesus, the One and only King of men, because He was not only a Child born to Mary, descended from these, but also the Son of God in all the fulness of that title.”
 
THOUGHT: “God, in love and might, ever moves on through human failure in cooperation with human faith.”

PRAYER: (Read Mark 9:24.)

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