Thank you. There are plenty of books available today on marriage, but today on Truth for Life,

Alistair Begg turns to a 3,000-year-old story to consider God's countercultural design for marriage,

and he traces the hand of Providence through Boaz and Ruth's lives and beyond.

We're looking at Ruth Chapter 4, beginning with verse 13.

We need to affirm for the well-being of those who are as yet unmarried,

as well as for the continuing instruction of those of us who are married,

that there are, according to the Bible, three elements in the covenant of marriage. First of all, we recognize that there is a promise

of committed love which is between the husband and the wife. The second element is simply

the fact that this covenant making in marriage takes place in a public forum.

And a new family unit is created so that the society can say,

there is a single man and there is a single woman.

That single man has fallen in love with that single woman. She is committed

in love to that single man, and they have come together in the public forum to declare

their commitment of love to one another. And we know now that they've gone off on their honeymoon.

And on their honeymoon, the third element of the

marriage covenant will come into place. And in biblical terms, not until their honeymoon will the

third element of marriage come into place. Namely, the development of the personal communion

between the husband and wife, which sexual union

symbolizes and deepens. You do not, in biblical terms, have marriage without each of these

constituent elements in place. Each of these three elements are present

in Boaz's life. His committed love for Ruth, the public witness of the same on the part of the

elders of the community, and then in

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