Expounds on Revelation 2:1, focusing on the church at Ephesus and its loss of first love. It draws parallels between the historical periods of Genesis, Israel, and the Church, highlighting how each period faced a similar temptation towards corrupted minds and alienation from Christ. The message emphasizes that the failure of one generation to pass on spiritual truth leads to the decline of subsequent generations, as seen in the book of Judges where a third generation forgot God's works. The sermon concludes by urging listeners to embrace their spiritual heritage and fulfill their responsibilities, whether ministerial, collective, or individual, to avoid the repeated cycles of failure.
Restored with Diffio
Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 1.62 → restored 4.45
And so we are going to finish with the book of the Revelation chapter two. And from the evening we read together the first letter. The letters from the Church of Ephesus, you will read chapter eight tonight. Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus writes, these things have to be and holdeth a seven stars in his right hand, and walketh in the midst of the seven golden lamps. I know thy work, and thy labor, and thy creation.
And how thou canst not dare them which are evil. And thou hast tried them which slay their apostles, and thou not, and hast found them liars, and hath borne and hath taken, for my name came hath labored, and do not know this. Some would translate that even to this front of angel. Nevertheless, I have come up against thee, because thou hast left, thou didst leave thy first love. Remember therefore, since thou art followed, with intention to do the first work.
And else I will come unto thee quickly and will remove thy lamp, stand out of his place, and have thou returned. But didst thou have? That thou didst introduce to the Nicolaites, which I also did. Be that hath an earlet in the ear, what the Spirit taught unto the clergy. And in that overcomers will I give thee to the tree of life, It is in the midst of the paradise of God. So I believe I do attention to the fact that these letters are not a part of the cause of church discovery.
The cause of the witness of the church to the truth of God has borne down through the nineteen hundred or more years. And sometimes that's true that human history is divided into three periods, each lasting about two thousand years. In the book of Genesis, we have the first. And which lived for God during those years were born by individuals, the family was real. Then when family unit was superseded by nation, God raised up Israel to be a witness among the nations of the world.
And when Israel was at the side, God raised up the church to be a witness. And when we compare the witness, as we have it in Genesis, and the course of that witness, as we have it in Israel, And in these heavenly waters, we find each one to be a deeper state of the other. The cause of the one is precisely the same as the cause of each of the other. Genesis begins, as we know, with the temptation of ease. And Paul draws a glimpse into that, in fact, in Corinthians chapter eleven.
I'm afraid that you, that as a serpent the guy leads through his supplication, though your minds are going to be corrupted, and you're going to be alienated from that simplicity and purity of heart, that is, towards Christ. You are perceived to act here on our own, and I suggest that I believe that you are the first president of the women's list. acting entirely on the Rome, in the end of the day of Adam, he held. In Israel's history, we have Dinah.
In the church, we have the king's virgin. Then at the conclusion of each of these periods, we have the overcomers. In Joseph, by way of testing and trial or at, and overcoming, arriving at the throne in a place of power. But at the end of Genesis, the end of this year's history, nationally is found with the crucifixion of Christ, and he affirms the throne. I also overheard Thirteen revelations, and I'm sat down with my Father in his throne.
And the overcomer in the letter to the Church of Nehru this year, it is promised that he, too, will be granted to sit with the Lord Jesus in his throne. For the beginning and the ending of each of these three periods are similar, and have we signed together for three weeks, we should It seems that each of these would be find an exact replica in the other. At the night, as I promised on Sunday evening, I want to show you something of the development of this in Israel, in the book of Judges and the book of Ruth.
These letters are striking me. There is nothing like them anywhere else in the New Testament. They are a pattern of all two ministers. Each letter begins with a revelation of Christ. And the revelation of the person of Christ in a way that meets the needs of each of the obvious emeralds. It's a ministry of Christ to begin with. And that's of tremendous importance for all of us. We seek the minister of the Word of God. to cultivate the ministry of Christ. And the ministry of Christ in such a way as it meets the need of the company to which you are witnessing in the ministry of faith.
And that ministry will be a ministry to have you to keep the ministry of Christ to the heart of God's people. Then there's a ministry. of congregation. In five of the letters, there is some engagement. Wherever there is anything to commend, the Lord commands. That the ministry of compass is commended by the Lord, or surely the ministry of encouragement. Then there's a Ministry of Culture or Honduran nature, Ministry of Red Rock Nation.
And you can fit these into what we have in First Corinthians chapter fourteen and verse one. You just prophesy it in addition to edification, Red Rock Nation and the Compton. Although we don't have The prophet of New Testament, J. H. Willis, that should be the aim of all who seek the minister, the word of God, the minister to edification, to exalt nature, and to compass. These are these letters. It is a letter from the head, from Christ himself, the source of all ministers, the source of all ministry that will be edified according to Colossians and the Jesus.
He is the one who gives the gift and he is the one who gave the Spirit and he is the one who now ministers the world. There is a reason he let us come with the power of the Spirit. Even after the year, I didn't know what the Spirit had come to the church. All the ministry that comes from the head, that they depend upon it will come in the power of the Spirit of God. That it doesn't come from the head, from Christ's intent. It will not come in the power of the Spirit.
Then this ministry comes through the one addressed with angels. To the angel of the church at epic. To the angel of the church at murder. Now there are different interpretations of who the angel represents. Something going to be an actual spiritual healing. It's like that impossible to accept. Because the angel in the letter to the church at epicenter is charged with having fallen. Remember when Sawa? So, of a fallen angel, you see to have a demon looking after that.
That, as it is, to have brethren in cleverly contested areas, recognized areas. It would be a terrible thing to have a demon looking after the affairs of an earth. One of them has an angel lived and is dead. There will be a kind of a spirit being that is it. Though I cannot see any ground for believing that there are spirit being. The objection to seeking to interpret the word is based upon that word in verse, in verse twenty of chapter one.
The stars are the angels of the church. The lamps are the surface and tell. So they ask the question, why did you interpret an interpretation? The star is the symbol. The angel is the interpretation of the symbol. Why do you try to interpret an interpretation? That's a very valid objective. Now the answer to that is that In the book of Malachi, both the priest and the prophet are spoken of us, messengers of the law of the Holy Spirit.
They should seek knowledge at the lips of the priest, for he is the messenger of the Lord of the Holy. You see, angels. I will send my messenger before my face. prophecy of John the Baptist, and the word Malachi, Malachi. It is just an easy word for an angel. In Haggai, I say, that he is the Lord's messenger in the Lord's message. And so the eternal angel is a prize in the Old Testament for those who are the perfect leaders in Israel.
the priest and the prophet. They were the spiritual leaders in his prayer. From time to their fault. But that was their, they were the professed leaders of his prayer. And I'll tell you that what we have in the original here. We represent those who are, those who take the place of leadership among God's people. Those were the channels of communication between the head and the assembly. And on Sunday evening, as such, the responsibility, the defender upon such was made simultaneous.
You will have taken an error. I hope we'll not be lost and forgotten when we come to compare it with what we have here. Now in this letter we have the reference, the first reference to that word, Nicolaeus. It used again in the letter to the church at Pergamos. And the division of this date is to what that means. Now the book of Revelation is a book of symbols and words are symbolic. The word Nicolaeus is just like the word Antipas. In the letter to the church at Purgamoth, we have a man named Antipas.
And church historians have never been able to find any master by that day. But the name is symbolic. It was a veritable Jeremiah. Jeremiah stood alone. An Antipas means a man who stands alone against everybody and against every. If this is suggested that he may represent Athanasia, who when he was facing the error of Arianism was told, you stand me alone and all are against you.
Then by God's grace I'll stand alone. Antipas standing against the tide of error. Nicolae Levy. conquerors of the people. They undoubtedly, according to the letters of the church at Pergamon, encouraged licentious living. They encouraged something similar to what Galen encouraged. Galen thought Galen had to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel. the Church of Pergamon, Peruz, that they condoned the doctrine of the Nicolaeus, which was similar to the doctrine of Gola.
There were those who turned the case of God into a mediator. But along with that, we return back for a moment to Second Corinthians, chapter eleven, before we go back to Jewel chapter. Second Corinthians chapter eleven. And we'll follow this according here to those in verse three and verse four, those who came to the apostles to an of eternity degree.
Chapter ten, eleven and ten, how this epitome. The Apostle contrasts himself with these false apostles. Now look at them down in verse thirty. For such are false apostles, the faithful worship, transforming themselves as into the apostles of Christ, and no marvel of Caesar himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore, No great thing, it is ministers we conform as the ministers of righteousness. Now here are the wolves in sheep's clothing.
Here are the grievous wolves that Paul spoke about. To the church and to the elders of heaven. The grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not there in the flock. The Lord called them wolves in sheep's clothing. Chaitan's later aim was to capture the pushes. They capture the minister. As I was finding out in Maplewood on Tuesday night, you have in the letter to Ephesus, the ministers of Chaitan, the false apostles. In the letter to Smyrna, you have the synagogues of Chaitan, Judaism, Jews divided by the apostles of Chaitan.
In the letter to Pergamot, you have the throne of Caper in idolatry. And when it comes to Cairo, you've got the deep kings of Caper, the counterfeits of the deep kings of God. The counterfeits of the true church. The true church is spoken of by Paul as the deep kings of God. Caper's counterfeits is the deep kings of God. Rome's hypothesis is the counterfeit of the deep things of God. It began with the false apostles. You tickled ages.
Look at the verse, look at them down in verse, in verse twenty-two days. Are they gibberish? Across they were. The devil wouldn't put a Gentile into his apostolate. All the laws of apostles were a few brutes. Though when the devil wanted men, it would be his apostles. He didn't expose three brutes, too. But look back into verse twenty. You suffer as a man bringing into bondage. How a phrase that. You suffer as a man robbed of your liberty. You suffer as a man ruling over you.
You suffer as a miscellaneous. Even you're in the bondage, robbing you of your liberty, robbing you of your presidency. That's what these false apostles were doing. You suffer as a man devour you. This is the very meaning of the word jailer. Here then were the Nicolares. A false sin is made. They are saved very early. But in the church of the ethicists, they were condemned. In the church at Bergover, they were controlled. But in the church of Cairo, they were in control.
That's the development of Egypt. It's interesting, in the reading of these letters, you see the rise and the growth and the development of territory and the processes. And see that it's the emergence of the days of the Reformation. But now time will not allow it. you So we turn back to this piece to the book of Judges.
The book of Judges and the second chapter. The book of Joshua is often compared to the official to the Ephesians. That's true doctrinally. But historically, the book of Joshua be compared to the Book of Yath. For in both of them, we have the history in Joshua of the first twenty-five or thirty years of his reign of the kingdom in the land. In Yath, we have the conquest of the gospel, the establishment of the kingdom of God, the spiritual kingdom of God, through the teaching of the Apostles.
got to a book of conquest. The book of the act, the book of conquest. When you come into the book of judges, we have a history of the next generation. The first generation died out in the wilderness. That we read. Just look in the judges' chapter two, please. And verse ten, and also all that generation worked out of this under their power. And there arose another generation after that.
Here is the third generation. A third generation. And the Book of Judges is a history of relapses and revivals. It's a history of departures. and deliverance. It's a history of apostasy and awakening. Seven apostasy. Seven relapses into idolatry. Seven departures. And seven awakenings. Seven times God raises up deliverers for us.
Now let's look at this third generation for a moment. See the four things that are said about this. They knew not the law, nor yet the works which he had done for his friends. That's a Muslim master who stayed there. For here is a generation, only the third generation, they have no knowledge of the Lord. And what is more remarkable still is there is no knowledge of what God had done for Israel. Whose fault was it?
The fault of the second generation. Here's what may be called a generation gap. And I'm confident today that this is happening throughout this country. That a failure that keeps the growing generation the truth that brought a family in the building. The truth that was, that resulted in the formation of a family. Truth with regard to a family testimony. There is nothing taught sufficiently. The failure of the second was responsible for the failure of the third.
The failure of the third must be placed at the feet of the second. And I hope, brethren, those that are here tonight with responsibility will take note of this. Nice receipt of any young people here. But let me charge you, brethren. I've been fifty-five years or no now, Peter. If we are going to see this assembly function and continue to function, then there must be teaching given with regard to an heavenly testimony as we see it in the New Testament.
I woke up one day as I thought, as my family, seven of them sat around the table. Some of them in their teens. And I realized one day that they would never learn anything. I could never recruit them any knowledge. The only way they'd ever learn anything was for me to teach. I remember the occasion quite well when that came home to me with tremendous force. Anything that I have learned, I could never be teach today. There's only one way I could pass it on to him, and that's by teaching him, by instruction.
You brethren who are here in responsibility, I trust God will give you grace. You see to it that the assembly get instructed with regard to assembly life and death deliverance. It's religious and it's ministered, it's ordinal, baptism of the Lord's Father. The things are not taught. A growing generation will never learn. They can only learn how they have taught the word of God. I suppose I was talking to I, John Smart, as you read my book, The Lord and the Churches, a copy of which is available at the back, told me that he had bought one of these copies to give out and wished that there was a copy in the hands of every elder in every assembly in the country.
because it's just your teaching with regard to assembly life and destiny, as well as teaching relative to revelation, too and so on. Look at a little lower down here. Look into chapter, into the end of verse MD. They turned quickly out of the way with their fathers walking, obeying the commandments of the law, but they did not go. The third generation, they knew not the law, they knew not the works of the law, and they failed to obey the law. Now the last of them you have in chapter three in verse one.
These are the nations which the Lord blessed to prove Israel by them. Even as many of Israel has had not known all the wars of Caden. It was a generation that had never known battle. They had never known any conflict. They had never had to fight for anything. Others had fought, and they were living in the enjoyment of the conquest they had accomplished. They were living in the enjoyment of the labors of others. To quote the words of our law, others have labored, and they are entered into their labor.
And those that are here tonight younger, in Asian experience, need to remember this. You've got a marvelous heritage, tremendous heritage. Jesus of believers, divinely obtained way of ministry and of gathering. A marvelous heritage. But a heritage that cost many a great yield to bring it intervene. Now turn back into the same chapter for a moment. Verse, verse eleven, and the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and they served daily.
Verse fourteen, and the anger of the Lord was huffed against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them. and he stole them into the hands of their enemies round about. For they could not any longer stand before their enemies. It is as though ever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil. As the Lord had said, and as the Lord was poured unto them, they were greatly distressed. Nevertheless, the Lord gave subjection. It delivers them out of the hand of those that spoil them. Now that's a brief history of the book of Judges. Failure on their path, mercy on God's path.
Raising up deliverers to deliver them. You see in the early part of the chapter that the angel of the Lord came down, left Gilgal and went to the bokeh. Gilgal was the center in the book of Joshua. But in the book of Judges the center is bokeh. on Gilgal, the place where they came back for self-examination, to come back as it were, for self-examination. And they came down to Judges, this book in the time of meeting, the Valley of Zaka. They called the faith meeting.
Look at verse four. And it came to pass on the angel, the Lord's faith each word unto all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice and death. called the name of that place Vokish. They called it Vokish. That name gives character to the book of Abjadish. It's a book of weeping, of crying, crying unto the Lord, that you turn when you cease now to the When we come into the, from chapter two right on to the end of chapter sixteen, we have national failure.
Of the, I should probably draw much attention to that, except the last in the matter of Samson, in chapter sixteen. He is the last judge that God raised. National failure. That's what we have in the first sixteen chapters. Failure on account of being attacked by the enemies on every hand. The Moabites, the Ammonites, the Bibyanites, the Philistines.
And for over a hundred years in the aggregate, they became subject to gentilization. And that period is not reckoned in the years of Israel. Some of you may have wondered, when you read in Second Kings, that the word, the period from Moses to Solomon and the fourth year of Solomon's reign was four hundred and eighty years. When you reckon up, there's more than that. Over a hundred years more than that. You say, well, that's a mistake in the Bible.
Somebody made a mistake. But when you add and take into consideration the years that Israel was subject to Gentile nations, then you get it correct. But time is lost, time, wasted time. Time when they were in bondage to various Gentile nations. One died for forty years under the Philistines. In the beginning, whenever they got under in bondage to some nation, they cried to the Lord. And the Lord raised up a judge. And whenever, if you take them at this level to begin with, if you take them, say, at this level to begin with, then they go down.
And they come up. But they never come up to this level. They only come up to this level. And when they fall again, they fall lower still. And when there's a recovery, they never recover even to the second place. And go down and down and down and down. And never do they get recovered to the original position. Recovery to what they were at the beginning is not peace. There's partial recovery, but never a full recovery. Never a complete recovery.
But when you come down to the days of Samson, they never even cried for deliverance. God raised up Samson in sovereign grace. The people never cried even for deliverance. And when God raised him up, they were almost, they were prepared to hand him over to the Philistines. and actually it gives on one occasion, bind him and hand him over to him. They fail to recognize in Samson a deliverer that God has raised up for.
They've become blind to their own shared spiritual state and blind to the hand of God in sending a deliverer. And at last, Thompson, a sad character in many ways, one of the saddest in the Bible in many ways, he began to deliver his trail from the Philistines, a man who could do a tremendous amount on his own. And that was his weakness, and that was his downfall.
He didn't see the need of of defending of another. He was so powerful, he grew so much of his own. But at last, you see him there, with his eyes gouged out, his hair cut off, his Nazaraiship gone, he was forced to look in this time. That's the picture of Leia this year, the end of evangelicalism. the fourth of the world. Samson was once a drag of the Sinistine world. They were terribly afraid of Samson at one time.
They have lost their fear of it. Evangelical Christianity was at one time a tremendous power. But where is it today? Where are we today? What is our condition today? Are we coming nearer to the end when evangelical Christianity is very similar to the Testimony of Temple? A Nazarite from his mother's womb, but not a Nazarite to the end. He lost his Nazarite.
And a movement like that with which we are associated was a movement of tremendous Nazarite character in his early days. Man of godliness, man of devotion. It was undoubtedly a spiritual movement with a true Nazarite character to him. To what extent is that two of us today? I throw it out of the question that we might examine ourselves and search our own heart. And now turn on with your piece to chapter seventeen. And there was a man in Mount Ephraim, whose name was Micah.
And he said unto his mother, The eleven hundred shepherds of silver that were taken from thee, about which thou cursed, and takest of also in mine year. Behold, the silver is with me. I took it. His mother said, Blessed be thou of the Lord, my son. What a wonderful mother. Here's the failure of the whole man. A son doing some money. And when he acknowledges he says, Oh, blessed be thou of the Lord. And then she goes on to say, I had intended it to make a grave an inmate.
An idolatrous woman. And so the money is used to make some terrapins, to make some house idols. Then a little later, we have in verse six in those days, there was no king in his hill. Every man did not reach his right in his own eye. There was a young man of Bethlehem Judah, of the family of Judah, who was a Levite, and he sojourned there. And the man departed. out of that city from Bethlehem Judah to sojourn where he could find the place. And he came to Mount Ephraim, to the house of Micah, as he journeyed.
And Micah said unto him, When some is thou? He said unto him, I am a Levite of Bethlehem Judah, and I go to sojourn where I may find the place. Micah said unto him, Well with me, be unto me a father and a priest. Thy will give thee conjectures of silver by the year, and a suit of apparel that is destined in the cross, and thy zittles. So the Levites are there. This is fact-stating. This is not the failure, thou, of the people. This is the failure of the Levites. A failure of one which will be a teacher of the Word of God.
Failure of one We should be a teacher of the law. And he comes along and he's hired by Micah. He's given a salary, investment, and food. He went around looking for a place. And he wasn't hired to teach the word of God. If Micah said, well, I have a large family here, I would like somebody to teach the word of God. If you stay with us a while, there would be something for God in that. But Micah had a graven in it, and this man came in.
There is those two words, the father and the priest. Very modern, isn't it? Very up-to-date. The father of Christianity and so it's a little bit of concern. Then a little later, a tribe of Jan passed by there. a number from the tribe of Dan passed by. They were looking for a place to live. And then they were going up to the north. And when they came along, in verse thirteen, and they passed. They passed then from the Mount Eupram and came to the house of Micah. Then answered the five men that went to spy out the country of Leish and said unto their brethren, You know that there is a new house, and he's caught a caratim and a graven image, and a molten image.
And they turned over and came to the house of a young man, to the new life. Oh, what happened? The chapter tells us what happened. Verse nineteen. Verse eighteen. When they went into Michael's house, that's the... the calves in it, the leaf foot and the carotene and the motor in it, then said the priest and the devil, what are you doing? He said unto him, Hold thy teeth, lay thy hands upon thy mouth, and go with us, and be to us a father and a priest. He told him, but some would say to him, you button your mouth.
Come along with us. Be quiet about your. And he goes. Michael loses his seraphim and his image and everything. This man goes and becomes. He becomes a priest, a Levite father. He introduces idolatry. Just look on into chapter, the end of the chapter. Verse thirty-one, and they said, set them up. Michael's grave had image, which he made all the time that the house of God was in China.
So who was it? Verse thirty. And the children of John set up the grave and he lived. And Jonathan the son of Gershom, the son not of Manasseh, but the son of Moses. He and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land. The grandson of Moses, the third generation of Levi. Here he is introducing idolatry. Very soon, isn't it? We've seen the third generation nationally. Here we have the third generation Leviticalists.
Turn on to chapter nineteen. Verse one, and he came to pass. in those days that there was no king in Israel, a certain Levite, no journeying on the side of Mount Ephraim, who took to him a concubine of Bethlehem Judah, and his concubine praised the whore. Chapter nineteen and twentieth, tad chapters. When you read it, you think you're reading about Sodom and Gomorrah. It's a very sad chapter. the moral conditions of Gidea of Paul, or Gidea of Benjamin, that we read there in the end of the chapter.
In verse fifteen, and they turn aside, they go in and log in Gidea. Gidea is mentioned three or four times there. This man now turns in with his concubines of staying in Gippeah. The moral conditions of Gippeah were terrible, and in the morning the woman is dead. The conditions morally were as low as they were in the days of, in the days of Genesis. But what about this man?
There is a Levite. The first Levite introduces idolatry. This man's immorality. Here's the trail of the serpent that we have in connection with the Nicolaes. Things offer to idols and fornicates. The trail that began at the foot of Mount Sinai is such, they worship the golden calf and they rose up the trail. For there are idolatry and there are adultery together. Here we have it here.
You come into the Corinthian epistle, you have the same two things there. But here is the Levite. It's the failure of the Levite. That's what I want to emphasize. National failure, national failure, sad failure, collective failure. But the collective failure was due to the failure of the Levite. When the Levite failed to do what they should, then you can't expect the people to do what they ought to. It's a failure of those who teach the word of God. The failure of those who stand to minister the word of God.
It's a failure in the ministry. That's what we have here. The sad departure of those, these are not, these are not false men, like the men that Jeroboam made peace out of. He made peace out of the common people. But that's not what these men, these are genuine Levites. They were Levites by birth. They belonged to the Levitical family. It's the Levitical failure. That are not with the taste of the Book of Ruth. The little Book of Ruth.
The last verse of Judges in those days, there was no king in Israel. Every man did that. It just writes in his own eyes. Now he came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem Judah went to swordyard in the country of Moab. He and his wife and his two sons, in the name of the man, Mrs. Limerick, and the name of his wife, Naomi. In the name of his two sons, Melon and Shilio, after the types of Bethlehem and Judah, and they came into the country of Moab and continued there. Now here we have the third picture.
The picture of what I drew attention to on Sunday night. Ministerial responsibility. That's illustrated in the Levi. Collective responsibility. That's illustrated in the national failure. Here we have individual responsibility. Now because Judges seventeen follows chapter sixteen, and the record of the Levites follow the record of Samson. People may quickly conclude that those events were after the days of Samson, but they're not.
They were in the days of the third generation. The second Levite, by whose sin There was a fratricidal war, and the tribe of Benjamin was the early white man. The priest that officiated at that time was Phinehan. It was the third generation. Aaron, Eliezer, Phinehan. In the days of the third generation, So it's not consecutive pictures we've got here.
But pictures that go along at the same time, concurrent pictures. Pictures of concurrent events. Three pictures obviously of chisera. Of course, the national period covers a long period. The period covered by the Levite covers a short period. And the period in Ruth covers a short period. But Ruth... covers of the third generation too. Elimination. We are not told, of course, his age, nor when he lived. But we know that Boaz, the main character in the book, was a son of Rahab.
He was a son of Salman, the prince of Judah, who married Rahab. So Boaz, possibly a man of fifty years of age by this time, old enough to speak of roots of my daughter. He was also of the third generation. There was another man in chapter four. He was a close kinsman, the dearer kinsman. And he was given the first opportunity to redeem draft a part of a king's man and restore Naomi to her inheritance.
And he was quite prepared to do that. But when it came to Mary and Ruth, he said, oh, no, no. That will not my inheritance. I can't do that. The game is plotted out. The game is subject. I can just imagine him saying, why ever did he leave? Why did Elimelech leave here? We stayed here. We lived through the famine. Look at all the trouble he's brought upon. Of course Elimelech was wrong. But here was an opportunity for this man to live according to his responsibility as a kinsman redeemer.
And he failed to rise to it. And his name is plotted out. And Boas takes his faith. Trendly of opportunities today for service, unfortunately there are many like Naomi, many like Ruth. Poor Naomi, poor Ruth come back. Two lonely, helpless widows. I know, I believe they are a picture, undoubtedly a picture of the remnant in Israel. And if you want a comparison that you want to read and enjoy, compare these two with the two disciples on the way to Amnaya.
There were two women who had hoped that this followed up by the grain. The husbands had been buried way back in Moab. The past was three ten long years of widowhood, ten dark years. And if you want a very interesting comparison, I suggest you that you read with Ruth, the book of Lamentation. How has the city become like a widow, a widow? She weep as sore in the night. Her tears run down her cheeks. She has no finds no comfort in her.
Naomi and Ruth coming back. The past dark is anger. The grave has swallowed up their husbands. The future, no hope. That hope had gone. Like the two on the way to Amir, they said, We hope that it's been here which have redeemed Israel. But he was crucified and he's dead and buried. They say he's alive, but they've never seen him yet. Him they saw not. They didn't believe the stories they heard. They feared they were just hallucinations. Him they saw not. There are two women.
They arrived back in the time of the Bali harvest, the time that was prophetic and symbolized the resurrection of Christ. But what individual failure. But what individual faithfulness on the part of Boa. Elimilic a failure. There was no king in Israel. Ah, but he said, Elimilic, God is my king. That's the meaning of his word, of his day. Why he's saying, God to be his king. And if he did believe God was his king, and God was king, as far as he was concerned, why didn't he live up to his day?
Oh, it's so easy, isn't it, to make a profession. It's so easy to claim that we recognize the lordship of Christ. It's so easy to fail to carry it out. It's easy to make claims to live by faith and then send out circular for the appeal for money. It's one thing to make claims, another thing to live up for causes. Here's a limerick. God is my case. And then when the test came, down he goes, crosses Jordan back to the place where twenty-three thousand of his grandfather's grandparents died under the hand of God.
It was dark and difficult in Israel, but it was darker in Moab, darker there. Conditions among the families may not be all that they should be, but it's darker in the world, brother. It's darker outside, darker there. Let the message of Eliminate sink down into our hearts. There's a price, of course, to pay for following the Lord. Of course there is the price to pay, but there's a much bigger price to pay if we don't follow.
To follow the Lord is costly, but not to follow the Lord is much more costly. The question is, which are we going to pay? We'll pay something if we're Christians. If we are believers and don't follow the Lord, we'll pay far more than we will if we are prepared to pay the price of following and obeying the law. And Boas is the individual. He that has an ear. He listens to the word of God. Because of one little scripture which told them that a stranger was to be allowed to glean After the reapers, he allowed Ruth to glean, and to glean among the reapers.
Here I hear for the word of God. Boas might have said, his mother, his mother harlots. But Boas stands in oath that his background is very poor, parentage, nothing to be proud of. But here he is, a pillar. Later Solomon, when he wanted to name a pillar in the house of God, in the temple he called it, we called one of them Boas. For Boas was a pillar. Boas was a pillar. Boas stood another's face. It wasn't a caterpillar, a true pillar.
Everybody else sailing. national failure, liturgical failure, eliminate failing, the other kinsmen failing to do his duty. Boa went and said, well, I'm not going to bother. Why should I bother? But Boa, by the grace of God, measured up to his opportunities, measured up to his privileges, measured up to his privileges, by God in his grace, he was grace to follow. Ministerial responsibility, collective responsibility, and individual responsibility.
May God write this word upon our hearts. I'm sorry we're only together tonight. The dice have been together for a week over these letters. That is prayer for the days that lie ahead. Shall we pray? Thank you.