Good morning. It's great to see you guys. My name is Tony Wolfe. I direct the Pastor Church Relations Department of the Southern Baptist of Texas Convention. I'm honored at your presence. Some of you are pastors. Some of you are children's pastors and youth pastors. Some of you are very important lay leaders in your respective churches. And I'm so thankful that you've taken today and set aside this time to come and be encouraged and be equipped preaching, especially from Old Testament narrative. You know the lineup. We've got an incredible lineup of preachers today. This is organized to be a preaching conference like probably you may have never been to before. This is supposed to be very practical so that you can walk away not just with tangible resources, but with ideas, with thoughts, with processes that you can put into place in your preaching schedule, in your preparation, and in your pulpit. So I hope that this is a great blessing to you. Understand that we're thankful that you were able to pay a little bit to come, but understand that all this is made possible because of 2,680 churches who participate together through the cooperative program of the Southern Baptist of Texas Convention. It's because of them and their giving that stuff like this is made available for pastors and churches across the state of Texas, and for missionaries and their families all across the world. Again, honored at your presence. I do want to introduce our first speaker and then our worship leader and we'll get started because I know you didn't come to see my face, so we'll get rolling with it. Our first speaker is David Allen. Dr. David Allen is the Dean of the School of Preaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is going to focus on Ruth chapter 1 this morning and Old Testament narrative structure. So that's our first sermon. But before he comes up, we have Ryan and tell me your name one more time. Day Day, Ryan and Day Day are gonna lead us in some worship. So honored that they're here to lead us in worship this morning, so we're thankful for you guys. Let me pray for them, for Dr. Allen, and for you, and then I'll hand it over to them and we'll start worship. Lord God, you are so, so good to us that you would allow us the great privilege, first of all, just to be called. Sons and daughters of the King. God, what a high calling that is. Lord, also that you would allow us the great privilege of serving your bride while you prepare her for that great wedding feast that's upcoming. God, and I pray that this conference, that this preaching conference is a time where we are equipped, where we're encouraged, and where we're made more able to step into our pulpits and preparation during the week and Sunday morning so that we can proclaim your word with accuracy and with truth Lord that your Holy Spirit might anoint the proclamation this morning that comes from this pulpit God we ask for that special unction on dr. Allen as he comes and preaches Ruth chapter 1 this morning Lord that you would speak through him to us God because yeah, we're here for a preaching conference. We're here for to hear some of our favorite preachers preach your word, but really, God, we're here to meet with you. So Lord, I pray that when we leave this place today, whatever else happens, God, that we would be secure and be able to say that no matter what else happened today, we met with the living, loving God of the ages. We walk out of here changed because of it. That's our prayer in Jesus' strong name. Amen. Great to see you here today, and it's wonderful to come home. This is home for me. Let me tell you why it's home for me. In 1975, I graduated from high school in Rome, Georgia. God had called me to preach. and uh... i turned my the nose of my ford maverick into the western wind and took course greeley's advice go west young man came to dallas texas to attend that a new college that had been started by a doctor crystal in the first baptist church here in dallas called the crystal college the college had a brand new president who had just started a couple of months before my rival his name was doctor page patterson And I pulled up here at the age of 18 and became a new student at Crystal College in 1975. Well, that was 43 years ago before many of you were born, and I call this place home. Not only do I call it home because of my time here from 75 to 78, but one of my sons, Jared, attended college here as well, earned his degree here, and became a missionary. And though he lives here in the United States, he still serves as a missionary to the Middle East. In fact, he and his wife and my five grandchildren are currently in Egypt. for three months working with people there helping that uh... disciple the believers there are working to help plant churches and so forth and so he's back and forth from the states over to the middle east on a regular basis and his degree was from this institution right here not only that but my wife kate is a graduate of this institution those of you who've been around for a few years will remember that back in 2003 I was still teaching here. It was one year before I was called to Southwestern as the Dean of the School of Theology. I was in my last year teaching here full-time at the Crystal College. I taught adjunctively here when I was a pastor. From 1985 to 1998, 13 years, I taught almost every semester one class while I was pastoring. During those years, I taught Greek, I taught introduction to New Testament, and I taught hermeneutics in those early years, and then I also came here and began to teach preaching full-time in 1998. But in 2003, There was a lady who showed up here to go to college. Her name was Kate Finley. And she was already an established businesswoman, a vice president of a metals company in Longview, Texas, who had taken a year off in order to come here and study Greek under Roy Metz. She decided she wanted to study the Greek New Testament. She was only going to take a year off from work to do that, and that was her original plan. And she and her friend were talking, and she told her friend her idea. And her friend said, Well, if you're going to study Greek, the place to do that is the Crystal College under the finest Greek scholar anywhere, Roy Metz. And so she came here and studied under Roy Metz. Of course, Roy Metz was my Greek professor when I was a student here. In fact, Very first class, Roy Metz taught in Greek at this institution in 1976. His first class, having earned his Ph.D. in New Testament at Southwestern Seminary. His first class he taught. I sat on the front row. I was in his class. He taught me Greek. He got me started in the Greek New Testament into discourse analysis. That would ultimately lead me to do a PhD in linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington, primarily through the instrumentality of Roy Metz. So in 2003, I was teaching a hermeneutics class, and in walked a gorgeous lady named Kate Finley. She was in her first class she took here, she took with me. I had never met her before, she had never met me before, but we got acquainted there. And the president, Jerry Johnson at the time, realized that Kate was very sharp, particularly in finances. And so not only did she stay here as a student, they convinced her to do that, but they made her vice president of development. And she became the first woman in any administrative capacity in any Baptist college in the Southern Baptist Convention. Although we're not technically a Southern Baptist college, but Kate holds that distinction. She's the first woman in the administration. of any school. She served here for seven years as a VP for development and also vice president for development for KCBI radio station. Well I went on to Southwestern in 2004 and she served here and then she went on her way and she's now a financial advisor with Edward Jones and has her own office in Allen, Texas but we parted ways and really didn't see each other for quite some time. Many of you know that a few years ago The Lord in his providence called my wife home to be with him after a three-year, nine-month battle with cancer. My wife used to teach at Canyon Creek Christian School. The president of that school, pastor of that church, sitting right there, Brother Terry. and one of the faculty members who was a colleague of my wife sitting right there, who's here from the Dominican Republic, Earl Hammonds, and my sons went to school under Earl, studied there, and under Dr. Terry, who was pastor of the church at that time. at that time. And so there's that connection as well in all of this. But nevertheless, my wife taught there for a number of years. Dr. Terry was kind enough to allow her to do that. And by the way, at the time, you had to be a member of the church to teach at the school. But I was a pastor and he made an exception. He said, OK, you're a pastor. We won't make you be a member here. And he allowed Sherry to teach there. So we're grateful for that. But nevertheless, Sherry died. A little over a year ago, or almost two years ago now, the Lord brought Kate and I together and we were married. And so she has wonderful memories of Crystal College here as well. So here I am, having this opportunity, thanks to the Crystal College and the Southern Baptist of Texas Convention. Both of you, I've come home. and grateful for the privilege of being here today. And I'm glad you're here. You're going to enjoy this time. My, what a lineup. Got some great people here on the platform. You need to pray that they all get here. You need to pray because our next speaker on the program is coming from Zambia. and he's been in zambia and he's returning and so you may need to pray that when he does get here is flight supposed to be landing here about right now and he's next after me and so you pray that he gets here that he gets here safely and that he's awake i was just in zambia last may for over a week teaching in the seminary there and uh... uh... doing preaching conference there and working with pastors in that area and trust me it's a long flight from Zambia to Dallas and so you want to pray for our brother who's coming in here to preach here just a little bit and then for the other two brothers who are on the program it's just a great honor to be on the program with HB and Nathan and Jeff I call him Jeff, he's Dr. Campbell now. He was my PhD student in preaching at Southwestern. So, honored to be on the program with all of these great men of God. Turn with me to the book of Ruth. Ruth chapter 1. It is my assignment to address this chapter today in this message, and I look forward to doing so. Ruth chapter 1, beginning in verse 1. Hear the word of the Lord. During the time of the judges, there was a famine in the land. A man left Bethlehem in Judah with his wife and two sons to stay in the territory of Moab for a while. The man's name was Elimelech and his wife's name was Naomi. The names of his two sons were Malon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They entered the fields of Moab and settled there. Naomi's husband, Elimelech, died. And she was left with her two sons. Her sons took Moabite women as their wives. One was named Orpah and the second was named Ruth. After they lived in Moab about ten years, both Malon and Kidion also died. And Naomi was left without her two children and without her husband. She and her daughters-in-law set out to return from the territory of Moab, because she had heard in Moab that the Lord had paid attention to His people's need by providing them food. More older translations say the Lord has visited His people, which is true to the Hebrew as well. She left the place where she had been living, accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, traveled along the road leading back to the land of Judah. Naomi said to them, each of you go back to your mother's home. May the Lord show kindness to you as you have shown to the dead and to me. May the Lord grant each of you rest in the house of a new husband. She kissed them and they wept loudly. They said to her, we insist on returning with you to your people. But Naomi replied, Return home, my daughters. Why do you want to go with me? Am I able to have any more sons? Who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters. Go on, shoo, for I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me to have a husband tonight and to bear sons, would you be willing to wait for them to grow up? Would you restrain yourself from remarrying? No, my daughters, my life is much too bitter for you to share, because the Lord's hand has turned against me." Again, they wept loudly, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. Naomi said, Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people, to her gods. Follow your sister-in-law. But Ruth replied, Don't plead with me to abandon you or to return and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people. Your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die. There I will be buried. May the Lord punish me and do so severely, if anything but death separates you and me. When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped talking to her. The two of them traveled until they came to Bethlehem. When they entered Bethlehem, the whole town was excited about their arrival, and the local women exclaimed, Can this be Naomi? Don't call me Naomi, call me Mara, she answered, for the Almighty has made me very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has opposed me? Literally in Hebrew, the Lord has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me. So Naomi came back from the territory of Moab with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabitess. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. There is one book and only one book in your Bible bears a Gentile name. You just read from it. It is the book of Ruth. A fascinating story. We don't know who is the writer, the author of the story, most likely Samuel, but nobody knows for sure. We know the timing of the story, roughly when it occurred. It occurred according to verse 1, during the period of the judges. That was a period of time of roughly 1375 B.C. down to about 1050 B.C. It was an interregnum, an interior period between two outer periods. The period of the exodus and the entrance into the promised land under Joshua, and then later the period of the monarchy under Saul and David and Solomon. And that in-between period is called the period of the judges. It was a time of uncertainty. It was a time of idolatry where the people of Israel had fallen away from the Lord. It was a time of political turmoil. It was a time of economic up and down, economic turmoil. It was during this time, the period of the Judges, a time where the last verse of the last chapter of the book of Judges, one page left in your Bible, says in that day there was no king in Israel Everybody did that which was right in their own eyes. It was a time of chaos. And in the middle of that time, there in the little town of Bethlehem, Bethlehem, the house of bread. One day there was a wedding, and there was a handsome young Jewish man by the name of Elimelech. And he was marrying a beautiful Jewish girl, whose name in Hebrew, Naomi, means pleasant one. And what a wonderful day for the nuptials it was as they got married. And then they started their life together there in the little idyllic town of Bethlehem, five miles outside of Jerusalem. And things had to go fairly well for them because they had two boys. wonderful to have children, to be blessed by children in the Old Testament, and they had two. And their names are given, and the two that they had were given names, unusual names that imply some sort of sickness or difficulty. But nevertheless, we have Daddy and Mama, and we have two boys, and the world is seemingly good. But we read, during the time of the judges, there was a famine in the land. It was not unusual for that to happen on occasion. The Bible simply records the historical fact. It doesn't say God sent it. It doesn't explain circumstances that the white came. None of that is given. We're just told there was a famine in the land. And famines can be severe. And fathers have to feed their families. And it was a difficult, difficult time in the land. And so, a man left Bethlehem in Judah with his wife and his two sons, that's Elimelech and Naomi, leaving their home, leaving their little farm, or their little house, or their job, or whatever the circumstances were, leaving their friends, leaving their worship at that point, and where are they going? To stay in the territory of, and every Jew who read this story, or heard it read when they read the next word, just shivered. to the territory of Moab. It even sounds bad. Who wants to go on, where are you going on vacation? We're going to Hawaii. Oh, wonderful. We're going to Bora Bora. Oh yeah, the four seasons there is outstanding, isn't it? Where are you going on vacation? We're going to Moab. Oh, Moab. You have to understand what that means to a Jew so that you can understand the significance of this story. The last place any Jew in destitution would ever want to go for refuge, the absolute bottom rung on the ladder, the worst people socially on the scale for Jewish people would have to be Moabites. And here's why. You got to go back to Genesis chapter 19 to understand the history. In Genesis 19, you read about, a little bit prior to that, how Abraham had a nephew traveling with him named Lot. And Lot took his family and they pitched their tent toward Sodom. Sodom is one of the five cities of the plains in what would later become Moab. And he pitches his tent toward Sodom, then he moves in. And they establish a residency there. And they're living there. in Sodom. But you know the rest of the story, God decides to judge the city, and Lot and his wife and his children barely escaped, but Lot's wife lingered, she was still too drawn to the city, and she was destroyed, and only Lot and his two daughters escaped. They first went to the city of Zoar, down there on the tail end of the Dead Sea. But then they went up to a cave to hide during all of the turmoil that was happening. And Lot's two daughters hatched a plot. They knew that daddy was bereft of his wife, and they weren't having any opportunity for husbands in their circumstances. And so they decided to go in, in an incestuous relationship with their own father, in order to try to become pregnant and have children. And so the oldest went, and then the youngest went, and that's exactly what happened. They both became pregnant. And they both gave birth. One gave birth to a son, Ben-Ami, who became the father of the Ammonites. The other gave birth to a son named, whom she named Moab. Moab, literally from my people. Yep, that's right, incestuous relationship. And Moab became the father of the nation that settled in the area that was located just east of the Dead Sea in the mountainous region, plain and mountain area up there that is called from that point on Moab. And so Moabites are related to the Jews. There's a relationship there. Well, years elapse and now we're at the time of the Exodus. And at the tail end of the Exodus, God is about to lead the people of Israel into the Promised Land. And the route that they had to take in order to get into the Promised Land, they had to go up through Moab, cross the Jordan and come in in that direction. And in so doing, they petitioned the king of Moab to allow them to come through. Hey, we're not going to eat any food, we won't raid your villages or anything, just let us pass through and everything will be fine. But Balak said, not on your life, won't let you through here. And furthermore, he hired the false prophet Balaam to pronounce a curse on the children of Israel. But God intervened, you remember all of that story, and all Balaam could do was pronounce a blessing on the people of God. And so the Moabites didn't want them there, wouldn't let them pass, even though they were kin. And nevertheless, they were finally able to pass through and enter the Promised Land. But while they were waiting to do that, Numbers chapter 25 verse 1 tells you an important, crucial piece of information you need to know to understand The book of Ruth. It says that the women of Moab enticed the men of Israel, many of them into harlotry, and then they brought them to the high places of worshiping their false gods of Moab and embroiled the men, many of the men of Israel, into idolatry. Who did that? It was the women of Moab. The women of Moab. Hey, these weren't like Jewish girls, nice little dainty Jewish girls, no. These were pagans with Harley tattoos, you know. And so here you go, and you've got these women of Moab enticing. God's anger was so kindled against his people that we read in the Old Testament that he sent a plague among his people and 24,000 died. because of the sin of Israel in idolatry brought on by the women of Moab. Oh, the last place you ever go on vacation if you're an Israeli is Moab. The last place you're ever going to go even if you're in dire straits because of a famine. Moab, no, don't go there, Elimelech. That's what he did. And so we read. They entered the territory of Moab. And notice the next three words, for a while. The plan was temporary, an extended vacation, just enough until the famine is over. We might be there six months, maybe a year, perhaps two, and then we're coming back home. And so Elimelech, God is my king, his name means, took his wife and his kids to Moab. Elimelech, why would you do that? Notice the play on words. The end of the book of Judges. That day there was no king in Israel. But notice the name Elimelech. God is my king. No, there was no physical earthly king in Israel, but there was a king there. There was indeed the king there. And there was no reason to leave, even during tough times. Elimelech violates, as it were, his own name. God is his king. Oh, there's no king in Israel at the time, but that's all right. God is my king. We'll hang on and trust God. That's what you do. No, what does he do? He leaves Bethlehem. He leaves the town, House of Bread, where there is a famine. He leaves Bethlehem. And they traveled, verse 2, to Moab, and they settled there. And there Naomi's husband, suddenly things turned south. verse three naomi's husband died she's got her two boys well things are too bad because now she is a widow has no hope of remarrying there you know pagan man's gonna have her and so now she's got two sons and somebody's gonna have to provide we have to do something and so her sons marry moabite women verse four her sons took moabite women as their wives that was a direct violation of the Word of God in Deuteronomy 25. You do not marry foreign women. You marry girls in Israel. Don't marry foreign girls. He took her sons, took Moabite women as their wives. One Orpah, the other named Ruth. after they lived in Moab about 10 years now that's not from the time they were married the Hebrew indicates from the time they moved there we don't know how long they were there until they married and then after some time after they had married but from the moment they arrived 10 years later you see they weren't going to stay that long but that's been 10 years 10 years later they die and oh my goodness look at the last statement in verse 5 Naomi was left without her two children and without her husband. If you ever watched Survivor, and many of you did, during the many seasons that it was on television, you well remember the words of Jeff Probst to an undesiring person to hear these words, or one of those teams being voted off the island And he would say to them, I got nothing for you. Go back to camp. And Naomi, as it were, hears God say to her, I got nothing for you. So she thinks, I got nothing for you. She's left without her two children, without her husband. This is scene one. Scene two begins in verse six. There are basically three scenes in Ruth chapter one. Scene two begins in verse six. So she and her daughter's-in-law set out to return from the territory of Moab. Now what would motivate her to go back home? She heard in Moab that the Lord had visited, had paid attention to his people's needs by providing them food. You see, God never abandons His people. Oh, He's never going to abandon you. If you're His child, He will never violate or break His covenant promise to you. The salvation that you have through Christ, God is going to make sure that He brings that to full fruition and glorification in heaven. He will never abandon you. You may think you're abandoned. You may not like the problems you're facing. You may not appreciate the circumstances that you are in, but God always visits His people. He always does. So she left, verse 7, the place she had been living, accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, traveled along the road leading back to the land of Judah. Depending on which road you take from Bethlehem to Moab, or from Moab to Bethlehem, the shortest route is 30 miles. It's like going from downtown Dallas from Crystal College over to downtown Fort Worth. It's 30 miles. The longest route, if you would take, is 60 miles. Either way, if you go the long route, you're looking at about an 11-day, 12-day journey. The shorter route may be even shorter than that. And so they're on the road leading back to the land of Judah. Now the Hebrew tends to indicate here that Naomi did not ask her two daughter-in-laws to go with her, but that they just decided to go with her. And verse 8, Naomi stops them as they're traveling and she said, girls, each of you go back to mama's house. Don't come with me. May the Lord show you kindness. Hebrew, chesed. Loyalty and faithfulness based on love. Powerful, important word in Ruth and in the Old Testament. May the Lord show you His loyal and faithful love, the kindness to you as you've shown kindness to the dead, to my sons, and to me. May the Lord grant each of you rest in the house of a new husband. Maybe you can start over, girls. There's no hope with me. Girls, go back. She kissed them and they wept loudly. Girls, I got nothing for you. They said to her, We insist on returning with you. But Naomi replied, Return home, daughters. Shoo! Why do you want to go with me? Am I able to have any more sons who could become your husband? There's the law of leveret marriage. Which says that when a man dies, his brother, if he's able, is to marry the widow and raise up children, raise up a son to continue the family line. It's called the Law of Leverant Marriage. It's going to play a powerfully important role in the book of Ruth. Am I able to have more sons? No, girls, verse 12, return home. Go on, shoo, for I'm too old to have another husband, even if I thought there was still hope for me to have a husband tonight and to bear sons. In other words, if I were to get married today and enter the marriage bed with my husband this night and conceive this very night, would you wait for them to grow up? Would you restrain yourself from remarrying? No, my daughters, my life is much too, mark this word in your Bible. Her perspective, my life is much too bitter for you to share. Bitter for you to share. Why? Oh my, look at this. Because the Lord's hand has turned against me. Sometimes when you're in the depth of pain and suffering, you can't think straight spiritually. And what you think is the Lord's hand against you. That's just the outward circumstances may look to be against you, but you are misinterpreting. If you're one of his children, you are misinterpreting the Lord's hand against you. The Lord's hand is actually not against Naomi. We don't know that now. And I don't want to give it all away because you got three more preachers to tell you the rest of the story. But the Lord's hand is not against her. She thinks that's the case, and so now she gives terrible advice. She tells two pagan girls, her daughter-in-law, to go back to their gods. Absolute worst advice you could possibly give. Hey, when you're bitter and in the dregs of all kinds of suffering and problem and turmoil, and you've kind of gotten bitter at God, and you think God's the cause of it, you're in no shape to give counsel to anybody else. She does the wrong thing. She says, now go on, go back home, girls, back to your gods. Go on back to your gods. I don't have any children, I can't have kids, you're going to wait on them? No, you're not going to do that. Verse 15, look, your sister-in-law's gone back. Ruth, Orpah's gone, you go too, shoo. Follow your sister-in-law. And then comes one of the most beautiful poetic passages in all of the Bible. It's probably the most familiar passage in the book of Ruth because it is read at countless weddings. Ruth replied, don't plead with me, I wish you could see the poetic structure, I can't reproduce it in English, but there are three lines in 16, three lines in 17 in Hebrew, with the structure 3-2-3, 3-2-3, 3-2, stuff like that, and then you've got the same poetic, there's a poetic cadence, I can't reproduce it in English, not possible to fully reproduce in English. Ruth replies in poetic fashion, Don't plead with me to abandon you or to return and not follow you. Wherever you go, I will go. And wherever you live, I will live. Your people will become my people. Watch it. And your God will be my God. Here is Ruth's conversion. She is now officially converting to the God of Israel. No longer is she a follower of Chemosh, the false god of Moab. Now she is a follower of the God of Israel. Your God will be my God. Not only that, Naomi verse 17, where you die I will die, there I will be buried. It was very common for someone in a foreign land, if they were to die, to make serious preparation for their bones to be carried back to their homeland. Remember Joseph? But here she says, hey, where you die, I will die. And then she says, that's where I'll be buried. Don't bring me back to Moab. I belong with you, girl. Where you die, I will die. And that's where I will be buried. Then she says, she closes it with a curse formula, which you find all over the place in the Old Testament. May the Lord punish me. And there she uses the name Yahweh. She uses the Lord's name. She's now a follower of Yahweh. May Yahweh, may the Lord punish me and do so severely. If anything but death separates you and me. Oh my goodness. What a powerful statement. What a wonderful confession. Here is her conversion. When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped talking to her. The two of them traveled, and here comes scene three. The two of them traveled until they came to Bethlehem. You see the shift again in the story. Now we're on the road again and we're coming to Bethlehem. When they entered Bethlehem, the whole town was excited about their arrival. Now be careful here, Bethlehem is not Dallas. Bethlehem is a little country hamlet. You know, two or three hundred people, Bible scholars tell us. I mean, it's just a small place, two or three hundred people, you know, one red light town. So, the whole town is excited. Why? She's been gone ten years, and here she has returned. And the local women exclaimed, it's interesting, it doesn't say anything about the men, and it's easy to know why men don't give a rip. I mean, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, so-so, I mean, oh, but the ladies, the local women explain, can this be Naomi? And Naomi responds in verse 20, don't call me Naomi, pleasantness in Hebrew, but call me Mara. Listen to that word, Mara. It sounds like what it means, bitter. Oh, wait a minute, I think I saw that word back in verse 13. Yep, there it is. The Lord, my life is much too bitter. for you to share, girls, don't follow me. And now, here she is, the Lord, Mara, call me Mara, why? For the Almighty, El Shaddai, here in Hebrew, the Almighty has made me very bitter, second time that word bitterness occurs. The Almighty has dealt bitterly with me, my life is no longer sweet, it is bitter. Uh-huh, it also sounds like Naomi's a little bitter, doesn't it? Maybe a little bitter at God. She's understanding the sovereignty of God in all of this. She's correct about all of that in either what God causes or what God permits because He is the Sovereign Lord. He is El Shaddai. But she's not interpreting all of the situation correctly. Don't call me Naomi, call me Bara, bitter. Verse 21, I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. The key about chapter 1 is the play on those two words. Full and empty. I got nothing for you. Naomi says, God said to me, I got nothing for you. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back Do you ever feel you went away full and then some things happened and all of a sudden you're coming back empty? You ever feel that way? When you feel that way when you're away, the first thing you need to do is what Naomi did, you go back to Bethlehem. First thing you do. You get back to Bethlehem. The Lord has left me empty. The Lord has, look at this, the Lord has opposed me. Literally, in Hebrew, the Lord has testified against me. Who is that on the witness stand? Well, that's the Lord. What's the Lord saying about you, Naomi? I don't know. Let's listen. Oh my, the Lord took my husband. He took my boys. He left me bereft. The Lord is testifying in the witness box against me. Is He, Naomi? Is that really what's happening? And furthermore, she says, the Almighty, there's El Shaddai again, has afflicted me. Really? Really? And then the scene shifts to the closing scene of this segment before you come to the next major scene of chapter 2. It's verse 22. So Naomi came back from the territory of Moab. With her daughter-in-law, Ruth, watch it, the Moabites. Twice in the verse, we read the word Moab. So Naomi returns from the territory of the hated Moabites, Moab, and lo and behold, she's dragging one of those pagan women with her Ruth, the Moabites. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. Odd little circumstantial statement. Famine in the land had been passed, but now they arrived just at the beginning of the barley harvest. The beginning of barley harvest was anywhere from late March into April and the very beginning of May. that too you get two kinds of grain you have rich man's grain which is wheat but the poor people couldn't afford wait for their bread and so most of the people unless you are the up-and-up you ate bread made from barley barley is the poor man's food poor man's bread and so they arrived destitute widows No social security, no extra money, no way of providing, nobody providing for them. They arrive with nothing in their pockets. Back in Bethlehem, the house of bread, at the beginning of a barley harvest. And oh, in chapter 2, are things going to turn around? Not yet, but yes, things are. Now the hero of chapter 1 is not who you think it is. The hero of the book of Ruth is not who you think it is. The hero is not Ruth. She is a heroine, as it were, in the story, but she's not the real hero. Nor is the hero Naomi. The book begins and actually ends with her and God's provision for her, a big part of the plot of the book of Ruth. But she's not the hero. Nor is the hero Boaz, who is not introduced until the next chapter, though he plays a wonderful role. He's not the hero. No. The hero of the book of Ruth is God. The sovereign Lord. And the first thing we learn in chapter 1 and we see all through the book of Ruth is the sovereign hand of God. There may be a famine in the land, but God's on His throne. You may leave and you may go to Moab, but God is on His throne. You may lose your husband. You may lose your wife. You may lose your children, but God is on the throne. And God is still sovereign over your life and everybody else's. He is the sovereign Lord. And He's not the sovereign, inactive Deus Absconditus who made the world and then went off and drank coffee somewhere while the world goes to hell in a handbasket. That's the way a lot of people think about God. But oh no, He's still in control. Genesis to Revelation makes that clear. The King sits upon the throne. And He ultimately is in control. And He will verify that one day when the King of kings comes again. So number one is God's sovereignty. Number two, the hero of the book is God. And we see that in God's faithfulness to His covenant with Israel. Because you see, God has not forgotten His people. Oh, they're in the land of the time of the judges and everybody's doing that which is right in their own eyes. But hey, at least there was a man named Elimelech whose name got it right even if he messed up and went to Moab. God is my King! There's still a king who's still in the land. It may be the time of the judges, the turmoil and chaos of the judges period, but God is my king. God's faithfulness to his covenant. God's people may be unfaithful to him. He will never be unfaithful to them. He will fulfill that Abrahamic covenant that he has made. And by the way, that leads to number three is God's redemptive heart. He's also made a new covenant. A new covenant, Jeremiah 33 talks about. Jesus said, I'm the one fulfilling that new covenant. This is the new covenant in my blood at the Last Supper. And that new covenant of salvation He has made with all of us who know Christ. And he will be faithful to that new covenant, and we see God's redemptive heart revealed in the book of Ruth. Not only his faithfulness to his covenant people, but his interest and desire for the salvation of all nations, which was the purpose of the nation of Israel being chosen in the first place. They weren't chosen because they were special. They were just like everybody else. Abraham was a moon god worshipper in Ur of the Chaldees. When God came to him and said, I'm going to do three things for you. Give you land, give you a son, make you a blessing to all the nations. Not just Israel, all the nations. It is through your seed that all the nations would be blessed. That would be the Messiah. The book of Ruth is a key peg, it is a key link in the chain of God's redemptive salvation, of how He is working out His plan of salvation. In fact, the book of Ruth is the Abrahamic covenant in reverse. Because the Abrahamic covenant says, through you I'm going to bless all the nations. But in the book of Ruth, it's Israel is blessed through a Gentile named Ruth. And God brings her into His covenant plan. And oh, guess what? Get over to Matthew chapter 1, long about verse 5, I think, or so, and you get a genealogy of Jesus, and He comes through David, and the ancestor of David, there's a woman named Ruth, who's there. Whoa. Lots more going on in Ruth than meets the eye. I got nothing for you. Hmm. Naomi says to Ruth and Orpah, I've got nothing for you. Naomi says about God, God says to me, don't call me Naomi, call me Mara, because God has said to me, I've got nothing for you. Oh, how wrong she was. And oh, how wrong you are when you say, God has got nothing for me. Holy Father, I pray that this great, wonderful, precious story of Ruth in the Bible that you have given us that you would use it to speak to our hearts today about how sovereign you are, how faithful to your covenant promises, first to Israel and then in the new covenant to us, you are, and how your redemptive heart beats for a lost world such that the story of redemption from Genesis to Revelation is the coming of a Savior who died on the cross for every sin of every person for all people around the world. Father, teach us how your heart beats in that direction and let us learn from Ruth the lessons you have for us. In Jesus' name we pray. And all God's people say it. Amen. Amen. Let's give the Lord a hand for God's word that he brought to Dr. Allen. Okay. Wow, thank you so much for that. That was powerful. And Dr. Allen's focus here, now to just kind of get practical, is on Old Testament narrative structure, so the structure of Old Testament narrative sermons. And Dr. Allen, what we're looking for is some things that we can take away from the sermon in particular that you just preached and also that we can apply across all kinds of Old Testament narrative texts as we prepare and preach. So my first question for you is on this particular sermon on Ruth chapter 1, how did you go about preparing the structure? I think everybody in here probably wrote down the structure. We heard the three scenes, that was powerful. Can you kind of walk us through that, how you prepared the sermon? Sure, I will. The structure of the book of Luke A book of Ruth, sorry about that. We can talk about Luke too, I wrote a little dissertation on how he wrote Hebrews. But the structure of Ruth is really 1, 1 through 5 is your introduction and then 1, 6 through 22 is the next scene. Chapter 2 is the next scene. Chapter 3 is a scene. Chapter 4, 1 through 12 is the next scene. Chapter 4, 13 through 17 is the next scene. And the final scene functions as the conclusion for 18 through 22. So technically, there are seven scenes in the book of Ruth. So, before I started my sermon here, I looked at the big picture. This is what we do in linguistic analysis, discourse analysis. You start with the forest, then work your way down to the trees. Most preachers do just the opposite. Oh, I'm preaching on Ruth 1. Who cares about the rest of it? I'll get to that. So let me just focus on Ruth. That's looking at the tree. No, look at the forest. Start with the big picture of structure. Figure out how chapter 1 fits into the bigger picture structure. There are seven scenes there. So I identified that. And then I looked at my structure, the structure of my text that I was assigned, which is Ruth 1. and there are technically 3 scenes in Luke 1, in Ruth 1, 1, 1-5, 1, 6-22, and 1, 6-18, and 1, 19-22. Those are the 3 key scenes that develop. Now, there are some sub-scenes in there, 1, 1-5 is a unit, 1, 6-18 is Naomi, Oprah, and Ruth, and then 1, 19 through, or 1, 6 through 15 is Naomi, Oprah, and Ruth, and then 1, 16 through 18 is just Naomi and Ruth. But you put those together, but you need to see the distinction of what Naomi says to both girls, and then what she says to Ruth after Orpah has gone. so you got two sub scenes in that and and then you come with 119 through 21 is the next sub scene in chapter 1 and then verse 22 is the conclusion that ties it all together and provides the foreshadowing into the next chapter and they came at the time of Barleyhock So, I think this is essentially the structure, the Hebrew text, the way the conjunctions that are used, the shift in scenes from the Hebrew text, you can actually see it fairly clearly even in English, but that's how I determined my structure. And you notice that I laid that out then in scenes. Why? Because this is a narrative, it's not like Romans 8. You see, I don't take a narrative and chop it up into points. You know, the power of prayer, the people of prayer, the purpose of prayer. Don't even do that with the expository sections either. Okay? Chop it up like that. No, it's a story. You don't break up a story and chop it up into points. You know, Naomi and Elimelech in Moab, and then Naomi and the girls in Moab, and then Naomi returns. No, that's chopping that one, two, three. No, stay with the narrative. It's a narrative. Narratives are stories. So your sermon, to be truly text-driven, needs to stay true, not only with the substance of the text, but the structure, the scene structure, and then the spirit of the text. The spirit reflects the genre. The genre is a narrative. So you want to preach it in a narrative. Preach it in a narrative fashion. And that's the way I attempted to do that today. Just walk you through, show you the transition in scenes, but try to keep that as seamless as possible so there aren't many big gaps or big humps in the road. You know, road bump here. You don't want that in your sermon. You want it to be as seamless as possible. Walk through the story from beginning to end. The story, the way you represented the text had such a great flow to it. It was really nice. We retold the story all the way through and then even used some modern language thrown in there to make it a little more interesting or appealing or contextualized in a way. Then at the end, you said, here are those three points. That was almost like the application. You may not have said three points. I didn't mean to take it away from you. There are three lessons here, three things to notice that not any one of which are overtly stated in the text, but all three of which are clear, not only in the text, but in the whole book. The sovereign hand of God, the covenant faithfulness of God to Israel, and the redemptive plan of God, not only for Israel, but for all the nations. Those are the three key things that you gotta get out of Ruth. They're there in every chapter and they're sure, for sure they're at the end. Everything in me wanted to jump to the end. Everything in me. But I didn't want to steal the thunder of Dr. Campbell. So... He appreciates that. Yeah, well, answer me this, since we're talking about narrative structure and maybe not just the book of Ruth, but in general Old Testament narrative, we divided the book of Ruth up into four chapters because that was just the easiest thing to do. Right, exactly. But is that always the best thing to do? If you're going to preach through an Old Testament narrative book, how would you go about deciding which sections of the text to preach? Yes, don't necessarily go by chapters, though with Ruth, it's a perfect thing to do, just identify the scenes. When I preached through Ruth and the two churches I pastored, I did it in four sermons, one for each chapter. You could do it in five, where you have the opening introductory sermon, you spend a lot of time on the connection of Moab, which is crucial. You've gotta make that connection in this sermon, or English contemporary people in our Western culture, they don't get it. Oh, who cares? Moab, you know, who cares? Well, you've got to put yourself in the place of a Jew. These were the scum of the earth. These were the worst people in the world. And if you don't convey that somehow, then you miss the power of the book that God would choose a Gentile woman, you know, to be in the genealogy of the Messiah. It's unbelievable that God would do this, according to a Jew, from a Jewish perspective. So, you've got to look at the thing from the big picture, look at the scenes that are there, and remember it is a narrative, and so you've got to follow it, you've got to develop it in that narrative fashion. I think that's the crucial thing to see what's happening there. Lots of the Bible, roughly 70% is narrative. You know much of the Old Testament outside of the wisdom literature, much of the prophetic literature is technically narrative. All you know Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy most of that is narrative. Some expositional stuff and other discourse genre thrown in but that is narrative. You got the historical section that is narrative. The Gospels are narrative with some expository woven into it. Book of Acts narrative. Finally you get to the letters. Now you are in non-narrative literature. Romans through Jude, then you get to apocalyptic. So narrative is crucial. You've got to learn how to preach narratives. That's vital in what we're doing here. I love it. Going back to the idea of not stealing the thunder, you know, waiting until the end and letting the narrative flow. You did something really cool in scene two. I'm going to read it because I wrote it down. You never know what, you know, what people are listening to when you preach. Dr. Allen preaches without notes, so Lord knows, you know, what's actually going to come out. But this is something that was good that I wrote down. But in the middle of scene two, I mean, it's almost like you just seamlessly kind of switch to a point of application. That just nailed it. I mean, it hit home right in the middle of the scene. You said this. Sometimes when you're in the depth of pain and suffering, you miss things spiritually and you may think the Lord's hand is against you. But as a child of God, it's not. And then you said, by the way, when this is true of you, you're in no shape to counsel anyone else. And, you know, I just heard that resonate with a lot of guys. And I just want to know, when you were working through the text and you were preparing to preach this narrative and let the narrative flow naturally, was that something that you said, I'm going to say that? Remember, this is all practical for us. You say, I'm going to, that's something I worked on. I worked on that phrase, wanted to say it just right. I'm going to say that when I get to scene two. Or was that something that just happened extemporaneously? Actually, neither, there's a third option. What happened there... That's why I'm just a facilitator, brother. When I prepare sermons, the first thing I do is I deal in the text. I don't do anything but the text. Then after I mess with the text in the original language, look at the big picture, then I broaden out to commentaries. And then I check my work so far and I add in what I learned from the commentaries, and I'll do that. Then, number last, I mean there are a lot of other subsidiary things too mixed in here, but I read and listen to anybody and everybody that's written or preached on that text that I can find. Now many of you know I have a large library of about 25,000 volumes in my personal library. I collect sermon books. I have thousands of them. We've got those catalogued. In my own personal library I have over 100,000 sermons out of books catalogued. And so what I do is I'll choose those that I want to read who preached on Ruth 1. G. Campbell Morgan, Spurgeon, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, or whomever, Calvin, whatever. I pick, you know, the ones I have time to read and I look at what they're saying and then I listen to people online who are preaching on this. So Dr. Patterson in 2010 has a series on Ruth that you can download on preachingsource.com. That's the preaching website that Southwestern operates that I am the editor, chief editor of. It's all things preaching. We try to put sermon structures up there based on the discourse structure of the text. We also link to over 400 preaching websites. and link to hundreds and hundreds of other sermons that you could listen to, and on that, anybody that we have in our link that's preached on Ruth, you could go check, anybody, and we're trying to link to that, so I listened to some of those, and so I got that idea. It was already, I was thinking it in rough fashion, not fully formed out, and then Dr. Patterson made that point. And I said, exactly. So I took what he did, wove that in. I did it a little differently than he did, but the idea came from listening to another sermon. Now, I wish I could take credit for the I got nothing for you. But to be candid, I cannot. I stole that. I stole that from my colleague and preaching professor, Dr. Barry McCarty, who in his sermon on Ruth 1 that I downloaded and listened to, He made that connection from the words of Jeff Probst. Now, I took it and applied it in ways he didn't. I took it further than he did, but I just walked through the text. So every time Naomi tells the girls, or says, you know, go on back, what do I have? I got nothing for you. And then God is dealt bitterly with, I got nothing for you. So I just tried to let that walk all the way through the text. And then come back to the end. When you think you hear God saying, I got nothing for you, you better think again. Now that, that communicates. So I actually stole that. Remember that when you take something from one person and use it, that's plagiarism. But when you do it from ten different people, that's research. So Dr. Allen, what I hear you saying is, any particular phrase that stuck out from your sermon, they're free to go back and use in their sermon this Sunday. No, they can absolutely go back and use it, absolutely. Remember Solomon said there's nothing new under the sun. And there's nothing new under the sun. You think you found something new, you probably haven't. Somebody's used it somewhere. And by the way, a sermon is not a research paper. So you don't footnote. Well, as so and so in their commentary said about Moab, no, no, no, don't do that in a sermon. That bores everybody out of their skull. You're gonna have, I've probably got 50 different sources behind that sermon. But I'm not gonna footnote them all in my preaching. I may rephrase what Spurgeon said or what Calvin said or what Luther said. And by the way, read the sermons of the great masters of the past. That will improve your preaching if you want to learn how to do it. Amen. Well, I think we've got time for one more question, so I'll let you two on this one. As a preaching professor and just maybe in your own experience, what are some common mistakes? I mean, if we're going to decide to preach through a book of Old Testament narrative, what are some common mistakes that pastors might make whenever they're deciding the structure of the narrative and deciding which verses to bite off at a time? Which book to preach through? Those kinds of things. Well, first of all, when you're preaching through a book, particularly a long Old Testament book, you don't need to do like the Puritans did, where they preached through Genesis and took 14 years to do that. Or they preached through Romans and took 12 years to do that. I can show you Puritans that did. John Howe preached on one verse in Romans of 14 different sermons, on one verse. Now, here's what's happening, by the way, when you do that, just a little aside, just stop me if we get too long here. You're no longer preaching the text, you're preaching your theology. You're preaching a theological system. That's what the Puritans were doing. You say, wait a minute, I thought the Puritans did expository preaching. Well, they did, but they also, in the midst of what they were doing, sometimes you go read their sermons, I've read hundreds of them. They're minimizing the exposition, and they're preaching a theological system. It's what they're doing. Now, by the way, I don't want to offend anybody, or don't want to get on anybody's nerves, or make you jump over the chair and throttle me here, but a lot of modern preachers are doing the same thing. They're not preaching the text, they're preaching their theological system. Through every sermon, just listen, you listen to them, every sermon's got the same key phrases, you know, it's all about the glory of God. The word glory of God is not even in that text. But it is all about the glory. And they are off on the glory of God. Everything is the glory of God. Wait a minute. Now there is a sense in which everything is the glory of God. But what they are doing is they are preaching a theology. There is a grid. And they are not preaching the text. Stay with the text. Stay with your wingman. Okay. That is rule number one. It is what I teach my students at Southwestern Seminary. Under no circumstances do you leave your text. You notice that in this text, how many other verses did I bring in, or elaborate on, or have you turned to? Virtually none. I had to do the last verse in Judges, it's key to the understanding of the book. I had to do the numbers 25, they committed adultery with the women of Moab, that's key to the book. But I just referenced it, told it, and moved on. I didn't have you looking, doing what we call, and this is a major mistake lots of preachers make, even in narrative, when they're preaching a narrative, it's called proof text preaching. Now, I'm not going to name any names, but there are some famous preachers today who are very well known. If I named them, everybody here would know who they are. And their method is proof text preaching. So whatever text they have during their sermon, they're going to bring in a dozen other texts. Turn to, turn over here. Or they may not say turn, but they'll go over here in Genesis, and they'll talk about it. And then they'll be in Psalms, and then they'll be in Revelation. That's called proof text preaching. No, that's leaving your wingman, Maverick. Don't do that. If you've ever watched Top Gun, you may have learned to stay with his wingman. That's the first rule of naval aviation. You don't leave your wingman. Last thing you say to yourself when you're writing that sermon, last thing you say to yourself walking up that pulpit to preach that sermon, you say after you breathe the prayer of God's anointing on what you're doing, you say to yourself, I'm not leaving my text. I'm not leaving my text. That's the big mistake many preachers make. So they're off in Never Never Land and all over the place, and they don't stay with your text. Look, there's more content and more creativity in your text. You don't have to go to somebody's seminar on how to do creative preaching. I mean, it's good to learn how to do that. I hope I exemplified that today. But my point is there's enough in your text. Just take the creativity in your text. The play on words in Ruth 1 is enough to give you the creativity that's there. The use of the name Yahweh alternating Jehovah, Yahweh, and El Shaddai. The fact that Ruth utters the name Yahweh, shocking to any Jew. All of that's there, and you figure out how to weave that in. Don't call me pleasantness, Naomi, I'm bitter. It's all emptiness, I got nothing for you. I went away full. She doesn't know at the end of chapter four, she's gonna go away full. And so is the world. See, tie all that together, but whatever you do, stay with your text. Now, follow the structure of your text. Lots of people think they're doing expository preaching. They ain't. Now look, trust me. I eat, sleep, live, and breathe this stuff, okay? I've written in this field. I've studied this field. I've been teaching preaching since the mid-1980s, all right? And I've done it a few times all over the world. So this is what I do, okay? I live this stuff. I'm telling you, you ask everybody, just ask the average person out there, tell me about your preacher. Oh, I'm an expository preacher. Everybody and their dog is an expositor these days. And then listen to their sermons. Nah, you're not. You think you are, they think they are, but they don't realize. And usually it's because they are imposing a structure in their sermon. Listen, I tell our students at Southwestern, you're not preaching sermons. We're preaching texts. Now technically it is a sermon, all right? But we're preaching texts, not just a sermon. These are some of the mistakes that I see we make a lot. I would encourage you not to make those. Follow the trajectory of your narrative text. Find out what the scenes are. Develop your sermon according to that. We argue that text-driven preaching is preaching that stays true to the substance of the text, what it's about. It stays true to the structure of the text, the development of the narrative structure. And number three, in this case, a narrative. And number three, it stays true to the spirit of the text, its narrative genre. So preach it in a narrative fashion. Those are the mistakes, I think, that we often make in preaching. And I would encourage you, if you stay with the text, your people will rise up and call you blessed, I promise. Invaluable insight dr. Allen. Thank you. Would you guys give the Lord a hand for the word? He's brought through dr. Allen again Thank you for joining us today. It's our honor to have you hold on. I'm gonna have you pray for us if that's okay West dr. Allen just kind of closed the session in prayer. We'll have a 15 minute break and start chapel at 11 Thank you. So Tony father in heaven. We are in awe of you Lord. You are marvelous. You are wonderful. You are sovereign You hate your hand controls all father you are the God who has a plan of salvation. Not just for Israel, but for the whole world. You are a God who is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Father, help us to be faithful men of God and women of God, preaching and teaching the Word of the Lord. Opening up the vistas of all that you're doing in your panoramic picture of salvation from Genesis to Revelation. And thank you for Ruth. Thank you, Lord, for the precious story of Ruth. And thank you for these men and women who are here today and especially my brother preachers. Father, I know they're on the front lines where they are. And I know ministry is war today. And I pray that you would encourage them and strengthen them. And may you mightily use them in the pulpit. Lord, when they get discouraged, don't let them interpret you as saying to them, I got nothing for you. When nobody responds to their faithful preaching, don't let them interpret that as I got nothing for you, because you have already promised in Isaiah 55, your word will not return void. It will accomplish its purpose. Teach us, oh God, like Ruth, to have a heart of full faithfulness. I will not leave you nor desert you, though I be destitute. though I have nothing, though my church doesn't grow, though people aren't being saved right now, Lord, I will remain faithful to you. Father, let that be our heartbeat, our prayer of commitment to you right now. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.