THE RIGHTS OF CHRIST AS CREATOR AND REDEEMER

^[p. 16] THE RIGHTS OF CHRIST AS CREATOR AND REDEEMER

Ruth 4: 1 - 22; Exodus 30: 11 - 16

I desire to say a word about redemption. There is only one Person who has the right of redemption, and that Person is the Lord Jesus Christ. As believers we stand in relation to Him as our Redeemer. But Revelation 4 shows that He is also entitled to us as the Creator, a title which the creation, as made to live by Him, fully recognises. The creation is represented in the living creatures; they fully recognise God’s title. The believer is entitled to regard himself as in relation to God’s creation, and made to live by Christ. He recognises Christ as his Creator. Then chapter 5 shows that a believer stands in relation to Christ as his Redeemer. The Lord has title to him as having redeemed him. We are to hold ourselves as believers in these two connections. Firstly, we are the first-fruits of God’s creation, a wonderful position to occupy. The Lord Jesus Christ, as the Head of that creation, has breathed into us the breath of life, so that we are made to live, and as living, we represent the creation, so that already He is owned in His creation. The testimony went out to the creation; the Lord Jesus says in Mark 16: 15, “Go into all the world, and preach the glad tidings to all the creation”, and then as having accomplished redemption, He was received up and sat at the right hand of God (verse 19). He sat there, so that all creation should hear. He directed the apostles to preach the gospel to every creature; and in order that every creature should hear, He sat at the right hand of God. He is in a place of supremacy, and so, as His emissaries went forth to preach, it says, they went everywhere and the Lord went with them, “the Lord working with them”

(^[p. 17] verse 20). So that the Lord Jesus Christ is in charge of the gospel. He is the Head of the creation. He has wrought out redemption, too; accomplished the glorious work of atonement, and satisfied God in respect to all the sin of creation, and has gone on high, so that all creation might hear. We believers own this, we own His rights over us as Creator. He made us to live, and it is His thought that every creature should hear the glad tidings.

But He would have you to know something of His appreciation of you, and it is in that connection you need redemption. Redemption is the right that belongs to one who is a kinsman. Now I want to show you how redemption evidences the Lord’s appreciation of man. He would secure man as a right as a property, and therefore I have read the passage from Ruth as showing how the Lord was set in motion (if I may use such an expression reverently). Naomi says (chapter 3: 18), “Be still, my daughter ... for the man will not rest until he have completed the matter this day”. That is to say, Ruth came to his attention. She came on to his field; we are told that it happened that she came on to his field, she became acquainted with him. I could enlarge on that in chapter 2, but I only touch on it now. She became acquainted with Boaz on his own field. That is the most wonderful field that man can put his foot on. It refers to the present situation. Christ is risen and there is a platform in resurrection, which is available for man. Ruth becomes acquainted with Boaz on his field, and from that moment Boaz became interested in her. She happened to come on it, under God’s direction, as it may be with some individual here. You are in a wonderfully favoured position. It is like Boaz’s field, a position of privilege, and the Lord would introduce Himself to you. Read chapter a and you will be struck with the grace of Boaz. If you see Christ on His own field, so to speak, you will see Him at His ^[p. 18] best. There is a beautiful touch in chapter 2. He greets his reapers, “Jehovah be with you!”; he was a mighty man of wealth, but a gracious man, and they had full confidence in him; their reply was “Jehovah bless thee!”. The point is to establish confidence in the soul that is enquiring. So if you have come in here as a matter of ‘happening’ the Lord would disclose Himself to you. Following on that Boaz speaks to Ruth, he speaks words of comfort to her; he encourages her, with no reproof for being a Moabitess; he speaks of what was commendable in her. The Lord will never discourage you with reproof. Whatever there may be of God in you, He will take account of it. You may think you are very poor and despicable, but He has other thoughts of you. Ruth felt so. “I am a foreigner”, she says, but Boaz says, “Jehovah recompense thy work, and let thy reward be full from Jehovah the God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to take refuge”. There is no evidence that she had come to trust the God of Israel, but he gave her credit for it, he gave her credit for more than she would accredit herself with. I speak of it to show the dealings of God with man. The result is she has confidence and goes down to the threshing-floor to see him. She claims him as a kinsman, and that is what Christ appreciates. She goes down to that threshing-floor at the expense of her dignity and that is what we have to do. At the expense of her dignity as a woman she went down and the Lord appreciates it. “The man will not rest”; one had come into evidence whom he would have as his own, and he would redeem her. “Shall I not seek rest for thee?”, Naomi says. You know you have not got rest. You have no certain dwelling place. Ruth had none; she was dependent on the leavings of the reapers; her property was mortgaged, and she was a beggar dependent on the benevolence of others, but the light of God in Naomi suggested rest. You know you have not got ^[p. 19] rest. You are interested in Christ and in His people.

Ruth was. Naomi represents His people. I am speaking of the book in a practical way. Naomi represents those in whom light is, the people of God. Her word is always right, she understands the situation. I refer to that so that you may understand the point of redemption. The Lord redeems what He prizes, so chapter 4 is redemption, and in the passing over of the first kinsman we get what refers to the law. It could not give life, it had no power to redeem such an inheritance as was Elimelech’s; there was not only a necessity for redeeming the land, but life was necessary, so Boaz accepts the position accorded to him. He accepts the right of redemption.

Now that is the position of the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of Israel. The remnant came to His attention. He valued them. So also in a wider sense man came before Him. He would have man. He has most of us tonight. He valued us before He bought us or He would not have paid the price. So the Lord valued Israel. He valued the remnant, and He gave Himself for them, for He died for the nation, and not for that nation only, but that He might “gather together into one the children of God who were scattered abroad” (John 11: 52), those that were of value, those that were worth having.

Redemption is a transaction in public, not a private one. The Lord desires that the saints should be known publicly as His property, hence the transaction took place in public, “in the presence of the inhabitants, and in the presence of the elders of my people”. The Lord would have a people on earth as His, and hence He redeems them in public.

There are different lights in which redemption is spoken of. In Genesis 23 you get the redemption of a field; that was also public, but the principal point there was that the price paid was current with the man who knew the value of it, with the merchant. That is ^[p. 20] not the point in Ruth, however; the point in view there is that it was done in public and after the manner and custom of Israel. I want you to get the light of this. It was legal. Things must be legal if they are to be established. You do not want the title deeds of a house to be questionable. That is the point of view in Ruth. The Lord died for us publicly so that there is universal witness to it, and secondly what He did was legal. He had the right to do it. The first kinsman gave way in His favour. Applying that to the antitype, the law had to give way. The power of Christ made it manifest that it was impotent, the law gave way morally. Christ’s works gave Him the first place. He is the only One who has ability to redeem, and the first kinsman gives way. Firstly, He redeems publicly; secondly, legally. So it says, “This was the custom in former time in Israel”. It is what was necessary for confirming things. Death was the great means by which everything was established. I need not enlarge on it. Even the books of the law and all things under the law were sprinkled with blood. All was confirmed under that principle. The custom was there had to be death. The Lord by dying has secured His inheritance and established it on legal ground.

Boaz’s title to Ruth was indisputable. Christ’s title is also indisputable. So Boaz took off his shoe and gave it to his neighbour. The Spirit is alluding to the death of Christ. He came to a point where He stooped and took off His shoe, He exposed His foot, He died, and has paid the price. That was all I wanted to show from Ruth. He has established it on legal grounds, according to the requirement of what God had established in Israel. I want you to question your own soul, as to whether you are on that basis with Christ, that He has secured you. Boaz called the attention of the witnesses to it, that he had that day redeemed the inheritance, and taken Ruth to be his wife. The christian, who recognises the rights of ^[p. 21] Christ over him, realises that he belongs to Another and that Other takes you to Himself so that you may be “to another, who has been raised up from among the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God”, Romans 7: 4.

Now to refer to Exodus 30. Each believer has to appropriate redemption for himself. When the people are numbered in Scripture it means God is taking account of them. It is precious to think God is taking account of us. He takes account of each of us. Your name is written in heaven. He makes known to your soul that He is taking account of you and you respond and recognise at what cost you have been taken account of. Now here is half a shekel (verse 13), what is current, not with the merchant but with the sanctuary. Many believers never arrive at this, they are satisfied to know their sins forgiven, but God takes account of you, and the answer in your soul is you recognise at what a cost you have been secured, at half a shekel, and Jehovah says, “The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less”. You have cost the Lord Jesus as much as Paul cost Him. He said, “Who has loved me and given himself for me”, Galatians 2: 20. That was the price, the half shekel of the sanctuary. Paul understood it. How much do you understand it? It was to be a heave-offering, referring to the affections begotten in the believer in the light of the price at which he has been secured. Do you understand you cost the Lord as much as the apostle Paul? “The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less”.

One word more: that offering which you give (which refers to your affections), the answer to the price, is used for the sanctuary. The aggregate of half shekels is appointed for the sanctuary, “and thou shalt take the atonement-money of the children of Israel, and devote it to the service of the tent of meeting”. I only indicate that to show the connection between ^[p. 22] the redemption and the sanctuary. You will remember that the sockets of the tabernacle were embedded in silver, meaning that the divine structure is founded in redemption; and the appreciation of the believer who is in the fight of the half shekel, who responds to the price paid, which is not less than Christ Himself, that appreciation of Him which is really the fruit of the Spirit, is interwoven into the sanctuary. The believer, so to speak, is woven into it, for the aggregate of the half shekels of the 603,550 males in Israel (Exodus 38: 26) was used for the tabernacle. So, I say, as believers we are woven into the sanctuary, “the assembly of God, which he has purchased with the blood of his own”, Acts 20: 28. As such they are precious and are built into the divine structure.

May the Lord give us fully to own His rights over us, and not to fall short of the sanctuary!