Christ Church Leavenworth
Ruth 4:13-17
June 21, 2026
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OT READING: Psalms 127-128
NT READING: Ephesians 6:1-4
Babies Are the Best Revenge
READING OF THE TEXT
Our text this morning is Ruth 4:13-17, these are the words of God:
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. 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.
The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of our God stands forever.
PRAYER
Our Father and our God, we come before You this morning through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit. Thank You for Your Word. Help us to hold it in high and reverent esteem, persuaded that by it we live and not by bread alone. Fill us now with Your Spirit that we might hear it, believe it, and do it. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.
INTRODUCTION
Good morning! Today we are continuing our study of the book of Ruth, but we are nearing the end. All the wedding preparations are completed. The only thing left to do is to say, “I do” and roll the credits, right? Not exactly. A wedding is not just the end of a story, it is the beginning of another. As the nursery rhyme reminds us, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage.”
Up until now in this series, we’ve focused a lot of our attention on the details of Biblical courtship; today, we turn that attention to Biblical marriage and family. When a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, he and her become one; and that oneness then leads to little ones. In the end, life is simple: if you’re single, get married; if you’re married, make babies; and if you have babies, make them disciples. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, let’s get to the wedding.
SUMMARY OF THE TEXT
:13 “So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife.” Note that Boaz took Ruth to be his wife. This is significant. A man takes a wife and a woman is given away. Men take the initiative and women respond to it. A man must choose whom to pursue, and how and when to do it; and a woman must choose how to receive the kind of attention she gets from whom; she must then make sure he knows if it was welcomed or not. So, young man, you will need to win her over, but you will also need to win the respect of her father. That’s one thing the dating gurus never tell you. They focus on the girl and forget her father. But you cannot take what is not yours and she cannot give away what is not hers. So, you will need to know how to win the heart of the woman you like and the respect of her father who loves her. One without the other is not enough. Your mission then, should you choose to accept it, young man, is this: be the kind of guy a good woman can admire and the kind of a guy her father can respect.
If that sounds hard, it’s because it is. Marriage is not for the faint of heart. So, don’t get discouraged if the father of the young lady you like is a bit standoffish at first. His job is to protect her purity, not your ego. He should be hard to impress. Would you prefer a father-in-law with low standards? No, you wouldn’t. That said, fathers, do not be impossible to please. Be hard to impress, but not unreasonable. The same can and should be said for you, young lady. A girl that is hard to get is worth the work. Precious gems are never just laying around. They are hard to find and take work to get to. Be like that. Diamonds are not made in the microwave, they are formed over years of enduring pressure and being content.
So, wait for a young man to pursue you and when he does, make sure that your first response is, “Talk to my dad.” If you like the guy, but he never ends up getting ahold of your dad, good riddance. God did you a favor. If the young man does go to your dad, he will have to answer some questions before your father follows up with you. If you don’t even like the guy, your dad can relay the bad news. This protects you and your reputation. If Johnny thinks it’s your dad’s fault, he will aim all his colorful language at him instead of you. (and your dad won’t care). But if you and your dad both like the guy, your dad can guide the process of getting to know him better while giving him permission to get to know you better. In the end, you cannot give yourself away, so do not begin by giving your heart away. Wait for your father’s approval and welcome his involvement. Do not despise the armor that God has given you. Sure, it is uncomfortable at times and yes, it makes some things more difficult, just like real armor; but it also protects your heart from getting bruised or broken, just like real armor.
Consider the refrain from the Song of Solomon: “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, do not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.” (2:7; 3:5; 8:4) Notice, it does not say, “Never stir up or awaken love.” Don’t be dramatic. What does it say? ”Not until it pleases.” Not when you please, when it does. So, how do you know when that is? Ask your mom and dad. Seriously. I’m not dodging the question. I’m answering it. They know you and they know if you are ready and they are the ones responsible for determining if this is the right time or if this is the right guy. Until you have the green light, your job is to guard your heart. Enter every relational intersection with caution and more often than not, come to a complete stop.
This does not require you to be cold or indifferent, but it does require you to be willing to be called that. Better to be considered a challenge than to be considered easy. So, be a wall, not a door. Walls protect. They have entry points, but they are well guarded and there is a watchman assigned to check the credentials of anyone asking permission to enter. A swinging saloon door, on the other hand, does not. It lets things in and out without discretion. Don’t be that girl. Don’t be a door.
But don’t take my word for it, hear the Word of the Lord from the Song of Solomon 8:9, “What shall we do for our sister on the day when she is spoken for? If she is a wall, we will build on her a battlement of silver, but if she is a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar.” This is the chief concern of those who love you and are responsible for you. Will she be a wall or a door? So, your mission should you choose to accept it, is this: see to it that you are able to respond like the young lady in the Song of Solomon in the very next verse, “I was a wall; and I was in his eyes as one who finds peace.” I was a wall. That is the target. Give your people peace. Do not be boy crazy and do not encourage that behavior in your friends.
Contentment is good armor. It keeps your heart and your head safe. Do not allow yourself to get so thirsty for love that you are willing to drink poison just because it comes in a heart shaped bottle. Hear this word from Proverbs 27:7 ”One who is full loathes honey, but to one who is hungry everything bitter is sweet.” When you are full, you can turn down dessert. In the same way, those who are full of faith can turn down sweet nothings. Contentment is the ability to say, “No,” even to good things, in order to say, “Yes,” to something even better. But if you are starving, you will have a hard time saying, “No” to anything – even a stale french fry you find under your car seat. That might sound gross right now, but if you’re hungry enough, it might not. Hungry people, as Solomon points out, have a bad habit of calling things by the wrong name. They call bitter things “sweet” and gross things “good.” Contented souls can see the difference between good enough and great, but discontented souls cannot even see the difference between bad and worse. So, do yourself, your father, and your future husband a favor and be content in Christ and wait the right way for the right man at the right time.
And when that time comes and you hear the pastor say, “And who gives this woman to be married?” you will hear your father say, “I do” as he takes your hand and places it into the hand of a man you both respect. You and that man will then get your turn to say, “I do.” But that is just the beginning. Everyone emphasizes the marriage ceremony. A lot of time and money and energy go into making that first day special. But the most important day of your marriage is not the first day, it is the last day. How happy you are on that first day is not nearly as important as how happy you are on the last day. But that takes work. As much work as it is to have a storybook wedding, it is much more to have a good book marriage.
A good, godly marriage is built on oneness: one God, one church, one last name, one address, one bed, one bank account, one meal time, one, one, one. As much as possible, a good marriage reinforces by routine what is already true in reality: oneness. And where there is oneness, there is multiplication.
:13 “And he went in to her and the Lord gave her conception, and she bore a son.”
Brokenness and sin may lead to division, but oneness and faith lead to multiplication. Without going into more detail than necessary, it is worth noting that the description of the marriage bed provided by Scripture here is instructive. “He went into her” is not merely a euphemism, it is a description of the way God made men and women to complement one another. There is a reason it works this way and not the other way around. Men and women are not simply interchangeable. As Douglas Wilson once famously, if not somewhat notoriously wrote, “The sexual act is not egalitarian. A man conquers, colonizes, and plants; a woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is of course offensive to all egalitarians.” Reality does not respond to memos from HR. Men plant seeds and women grow them; she is a lock and he is the key. They are different, but they go together. God made man first and from the dirt of the ground and He made woman second and from the rib of the man. There is profound theological significance to both the order of their creation and the material from which each was made.
Consider 1 Timothy 2:12-13, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve.” The evidence Paul provides in support of his conclusion is that the order of creation is theologically significant. It has practical implications. For another example, consider 1 Corinthians 11:7-9, “Man is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” So, again we see that the order of creation here has direct theological implications. But we also see that material from which they were made is significant. Man was made from the ground and so he is made for the ground. Woman was made from the man and so she is made for the man. God made man to tend to the garden and He made woman to tend to the gardener. So, is this saying that men are better than women? Yes! Men are better than women... at being men. But it is also saying that women are better than men… at being women.
Just as a triangle is better than a circle at being triangular and a circle is better than a triangle at being circular, so men are better at being masculine than women and women are better at being feminine than men. It reminds me of Chesterton’s poem, Comparisons: “If I set the sun beside the moon, And if I set the land beside the sea, And if I set the flower beside the fruit And if I set the town beside the country, And if I set the man beside the womanI suppose some fool would talk About one being better.” When something goes bump in the night, call a man; when something goes “waaa” in the night, call a woman. Each is great in the place God has put them and a disaster when they try to replace the other.
Another reason this mention of marital intimacy in Ruth is instructive is because it reinforces the reality that the marriage bed is an essential part of a Biblical marriage. It is not an optional add on. It is not something married people are merely eligible to do, it is something they are obligated to do. Consummation is necessary to establish a marriage, but it is also necessary to maintain one. It is an act of covenant renewal. Just as we gather regularly to hear the Word preached and to partake of the bread and wine at the Lord’s Table, husbands and wives should regularly come together to partake of each other.
Hear the Word of the Lord from 1 Corinthians 7:3-5, “The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” You do not belong to you. You belong to God; and if you are married, God says that your body belongs to your spouse. Regular covenant renewal is obedience to God and a blessing to your marriage.
A final reason this mention of the marriage bed in Ruth is instructive is because it mentions conception. Godly offspring, according to Malachi 2:15, are one of the primary reasons God created the covenant of marriage. It is the only context in which more people can lawfully be made. But note, what does the text say? “The LORD gave her conception.” The Lord opens and closes the womb. The Lord decides who is conceived and when. Pregnancies are not automatic and babies are not a guarantee.
God sometimes gives children to people who go about it the wrong way and He sometimes withholds them from people who go about it the right way. This can be hard to understand, but rest assured, God is not robbing anyone. No one is owed a child. Now, it may feel like that sometimes. If you’ve done things the right way, but you’re stuck staring at another negative pregnancy test, it can feel like God is not holding up His side of the bargain. But faith is joining Job in saying, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” We praise God when we get what we want and when we don’t. We pray for more children and then we say, “Not my will, but Yours.” And if He says, “No,” or “Not right now,” we say, “So be it,” and when He says, “Yes,” we say, “Thank you!” That’s what Naomi and her friends do next.
:14 “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!” Babies are a blessing, but they are not an automatic blessing. Note that the fact of the baby was celebrated (Yay! babies!), but the future of the baby was prayed for (may he be renowned). Babies are great, but they do grow up and if they are not parented well, they won’t be a blessing to you or to anyone else. All of our enemies are someone’s children. They were raised by someone and somewhere. So, while we do want to celebrate the fact of new life, we also want to emphasize the importance of the new birth and the responsibility of every parent to raise his or her children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
This is where our Old and New Testament readings come in. Consider Psalm 127. Lots of people get married and have kids, but only those who build their lives on the Lord will have houses that stand. Lots of people worry about their kids and watch over them, but if they’re not calling on the Lord and pointing their kids to Him, their oversight is all in vain. You can lose all the sleep you like, but you will never find rest that way. Those who place their faith in the Lord, however, do. They sleep soundly knowing that their labors are not in vain. They know that most blessings begin as responsibilities. In that sense, children are a lot like arrows. They start off as sticks, but with a lot of work they can be fashioned into weapons. Some sticks are more gnarly than others and some are a bit more crooked, but by the grace of God, the gift of good parents, and some grit, they can be sanded into something smooth and sharp. The man who has a lot of sharp kids who all have his back is a lot like a man with a quiver full of arrows. He is not scared of his enemies.
That leads to Psalm 128. The man who loves the Word of God and walks in a manner worthy of that high calling is blessed from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head. “You will reap what you have sown” is not a threat he hides from, it is a promise he leans into. His wife is like a fruitful vine in the heart of his home because he waters her well and his children have him surrounded every evening when they come to the dinner table because he provides for them. And he does not take any of this for granted, he takes it with gratitude. He worships his father’s God with his son’s sons and he teaches them to someday do the same.
And as our NT reading from Ephesians 6 reminds us, the promises of God to us extend to our children. When we honor the Lord and our children honor us, we both inherit the world. If we make it easy for our children to honor us, we will make it hard for our enemies to divide us. Together, we will possess the gates of those who hate us. God will build His church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. “‘Vengeance is Mine,’ saith the Lord” and babies are the best revenge. Nothing disturbs the death cult like new life. The stench of death trembles before the smell of a newborn baby. Nothing sends a chill down the spine of our enemies like fathers who love their sons and sons who love their fathers. That is the antivenom to his poisonous darts.
So, hear this: taking time to raise godly seed is not sitting the battle out; it is the battlefield. Our children will either be like arrows in our hands or they will be like thorns in our sides. Inconsistent, half-hearted Christian homes are simply breeding farms for secularists. There is no blessing in simply having a lot of kids. We have to love them and nourish them and bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. If we don’t, someone else will discipline and instruct them in something else. The world is full of secular boot camps for kids – from public schools to sports teams to tv shows to dance squads, there are any number of people willing to influence your children. As Ben Merkle once observed, “You may not be paedobaptist or postmill, but the Left is, and that is why they are winning.” Whether you know it or not, the Left does, babies are the best revenge. So, do not let your children become arrows in the hands of God’s enemies. Do not send them off to a secular mill for shaping. Keep your kids.
Back to our passage. Naomi’s friends prayed for her family name to be renowned. The word literally means re-known, as in known again. It is a blessing to be well thought of and remembered, but it is the kind of blessing you can only have by faith. You cannot be renowned while you are still here. So you have to work hard and hope that someone will take the time to honor you when you’re no longer there to remind them. You cannot be renowned until you are gone, but you can live in such a way as to give your descendants a good reason to remember you well. That begins by honoring your own ancestors and ends with blessing your descendants. If you want your descendants to honor you, show them how. Be the kind of descendant you want them to be.
T.B. Macaulay said it this way, “People who take no pride in the noble achievements of their remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by their remote descendants.” Note the connection: the kind of person who cannot find anything good to say about his ancestors is the kind of person who will not look to do anything good for his descendants. He is self-centered. He is disconnected from his people. He resents his ancestors and despises his descendants. He either ignores them both or he steals from them both. But not the one who honors his fathers and mothers. He is given new life and fresh energy as he brings up his children in the faith of his fathers.
:15 “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.” So, children are a lot of work, sure, but they are also a lot of reward. They require a lot of energy, but they also energize things. You might be thinking, “That sounds nice and all, but I’m tired.” It is easy to see the costs when it comes to kids. Anyone can do that and that’s why many people don’t want kids. But what they refuse to see and what’s sometimes hard for us to see is that God gives the energy when it’s needed. Sure you don’t have that kind of energy now, but it’s not being asked of you now. So, don’t be anxious about what you might have to do tomorrow, attend to the chores you have today and trust that God will provide what you need when you need it. This is what Naomi’s friends observed: the old are refreshed by the young.
Consider Proverbs 20:29 “The glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old men is their gray hair.” God has made the generations to benefit from each other. The glory of youth is its energy and the glory of age is its wisdom and experience. When they work together, everyone benefits: the young know where to aim all their energy and the old get to see their ideas put into practice. Everyone is blessed when everyone contributes their glory to each other. When the young spend their strength and ambition foolishly on themselves, everyone suffers. When the old hoard their wealth and wisdom for themselves, everyone suffers. But when each gives their strength to the other, everyone is stronger. One child who listens to you and loves the Lord is worth more than seven who don’t want anything to do with you or your God. Naomi had two faithless sons who died in Moab, but now she has a faithful son–in-law who lives with her in Bethlehem.
Our story ends with :16-17 “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.” Next week, we will finish our series by covering the last few verses of the book of Ruth which serve as a sort of epilogue and focus on the ultimate genealogical significance of this story. And while your legacy will likely pale in comparison to this one, it will still be your legacy. Legacies are, after all, inescapable. You cannot avoid leaving something behind. So, what will that something be? What will you leave behind? And to whom? What will your name mean? And who will wear it? And what will they think of it?
Naomi came back to God empty and embittered. She had nothing but God and a bunch of baggage; and now, at the end of our story, she has a family and grandbaby, who, in many ways, is the point of this story. He is not the et cetera, he is the crescendo. Again, that will be teased out more next week when we consider exactly who Obed’s descendants were, but for our purposes this week, the point is that being fruitful and multiplying are part of God’s plan.After all, who is Obed? Before this study of Ruth, when was the last time you thought about him? In the grand scheme of things, is Obed all that important? We know nothing about him except whose son he was and whose grandfather he became. We don’t know what, if any, adventures he had or what trouble he got into or out of. What we do know is this: he grew up, got married, and had a son named Jesse. That is what we know about Obed. And that should comfort and encourage us.
We are probably more like Obed than we are like Ruth or Boaz or Naomi. Most people won’t remember us. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a part to play.
The redemptive arc of all human history is contingent on making babies. When God promised our first parents that a serpent crusher would come to smash the skull of the deceiver, how did He say that would take place? Through childbearing. A seed of the woman would come to destroy the works of the devil. That meant Eve had to have children and that she had to teach those children to do the same. The birth of Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas was the result of many births before it. And as famous as His birth was, most of those that led up to it were not. Just men and women following God’s design by loving the Lord, getting married, having kids, and teaching them to do the same.
As Douglas Wilson once noted, “Cultures are built by men with families to feed.” And that is one of the best ways to heap burning coals on the heads of God’s enemies. It is not flashy, but it moves the world. It was the way God used to bring about the Messiah and it is the way He is now using to conquer the world. He promised He would never again flood the world with water, but He has also promised that He would someday flood the world with the knowledge of the Lord. Hell has built a dam to hold back the flood of God’s glory, but it is leaking and soon to be damned and under water. One of the primary means He uses to hammer down that dam is Christian marriage and childrearing. So, get married, have some kids and help us storm the gates of Hell.
And with that, we end up where we started – life is simple: if you’re single, get married; if you’re married, make babies; and if you have babies, make them disciples, because babies are the best revenge.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word. Help us to store it up in our hearts that we might not sin against You and help us to apply it to our lives as we leave this place that we might not be guilty of hearing without doing. We ask these things in Jesus’ name and we offer up the words of the prayer He taught us to pray singing...
