Good morning. Good to see you here on the Lord's Day. I hope you've had a good week and are ready now to join in study in the first hour and study and worship in the second as we seek to come before the Lord, offer to Him the sacrifice of thanksgiving. I was reading about that in several places in the Psalms. I just began to move from one reference to another this week in part of my devotional reading. And it's amazing how many times that in the Old Testament economy, the saints were told to offer up the sacrifice of thanksgiving. And then usually defined as the lips of praise that praise his dear name. So God was putting emphasis even in that old economy where animals were still being sacrificed and flour and meal and incense and all those things to say primarily sacrifice praise to me. So may the Lord help us to do that today. I'll read from Valley of Vision and pray and then Barry will come and get us started in the second installment of the study of Ruth. This is entitled Man's Great End. O Lord of all being, there is one thing that deserves my greatest care, that calls forth my ardent desires, that is, that I may answer the great end for which I am made, to glorify Thee who has given me being, and to do all the good I can for my fellow men. Truly life is not worth having if it be not improved for this noble purpose. Yet, Lord, how little is this the thought of mankind. Most men live for themselves without much or any regard for thy glory or for the good of others. They earnestly desire and eagerly pursue the riches, honors, and pleasures of this life as if they suppose that wealth, greatness, or merriment could make their immortal souls happy. But alas, what false, delusive dreams are these? And how miserable before long will those be that sleep in them, for all our happiness consists in loving thee. and being holy as thou art holy. Oh, Lord, may I never fall into the tempers and vanities, the sensuality and folly of the present world. It is a place of inexpressible sorrow, a vast, empty nothingness. Time is but a moment of vapor and all its enjoyments are empty bubbles, fleeting blasts of the wind from which nothing satisfactory can be derived. Give me grace always to keep in covenant with thee and to reject as a delusion having a great name here together with all sinful pleasures or profits. Help me to know continually that there can be no true happiness, no fulfilling of my purpose for me apart from a life lived in and for the son of I love. Amen. It's powerful prayer. Lord, we pray that we will not be as worldlings, that we will indeed live on the higher plane, live in the spiritual realm in our daily walk. We pray, Father, that you'd help us today as we gather on this day you've appointed and given to us, that we might indeed see Christ and be drawn to him and see all things in the world, as this prayer has reminded us, as empty bubbles and nothing, not satisfactory, certainly not lasting for eternity. We thank you, Lord, that we have the eternal Son of God who gives eternal joy and happiness and peace through the forgiveness of our sins and the adoption into your family. We just pray now, Lord, that you'll help us as Barry opens the scripture to us. Speak through him. Use him as your mouthpiece today. And may we have ears to hear and hearts to respond rightly to your divine truth. Sanctify us, Lord, and cleanse us with the word. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen. Please turn to the book of Ruth, right after the book of Judges. This is our second installment in this small book, second of three. Next week, Lord willing, being the third one of the three. It is a joy to be able to teach and learn from this book. There's a lot in it. I've always marveled at the principles that God has put in the created order of sowing and reaping, in that we rarely, in fact, we could in some sense say never get out of anything what we don't put into it. The reason I say almost is that we put nothing into our redemption and salvation. But most other things, in fact, probably all other things say that we get out of something direct proportion to what we put in it. And I've often thought that when in the providence of God's time, God has me to do some teaching, that it's probably more for me than anybody else. And so I've gained a lot from it, and I've enjoyed it, and I hope that those things come through and are able to encourage you, because I find the most enjoyable part of presenting a lesson is not so much in reading the text, as good as that is, or in reading other books and commentaries and things about the subject or about the book, but in the meditation on the things that you've considered, as you just over and over try to get them in order in your mind and try to sort them out as to how you would best present them. And for me, the most difficult part is not finding what to put in, but what to leave out. Because there's always so much. And so, when I confess my sin just now, with Brother Sammy sometimes up here in my spirit, I'm thinking, he's really taking a long time in dragging this out. And you know, and I'm looking out that window and you notice I let the shade down a little bit this as a as an evidence of repentance, that when I begin to pine at those things, thinking, oh, I'm getting hungry and and all these things. I want you to know that I still believe it is my duty to hear the word when you prepare it and teach it. And it is your duty to hear it. Whoever that Brother Sammy and the church is allowed up here, it is our duty to put something into it, to put at the very least, when Brother Sammy sends out an email, we should we should read the text. And I hope that you have taken the time to read this short book. We read it last week and will not read it again this week. But the first lesson last week, We just did a brief overview and reading of the book of Ruth, and this week our subject is the people, the place and the principles of the book. And then next week is going to be the prophetic imagery and the pointing to Christ that is found in the book. This week, we're just going to look historically at the place of the book. and historically, and who the people inside the book are, the characters, so to speak. And I do not like that word, Bible characters. It kind of makes them like part of a cartoon. I don't even like cartoon Bible books. These were people just like you and me that were born, lived, and died, and faced the judge of the whole earth. They were people, and these words are true. So that being said, we'll wade into the place, the people, and principles of this book. The book is God-inspired. It is briefed by God. It is part of the whole Bible. The Bible that we have that has been handed down through us for a long time. And we're thankful for that book. But sometimes, you know, the scripture, the purpose of the scriptures point to Jesus to always show that that scarlet thread throughout the whole scripture that shows us who who we are. what God has decided about who we are and how that He is redeeming His people throughout history. It's not to give us all the details and leave all the questions unanswered about the day-to-day activities of the people inside the Word of God. But it does help us sometimes to kind of look behind the cloudiness of other historical evidence and try to find out who they were. And we may find that we're a whole lot more like them than we think. And in fact, I know we're a lot like them than we think, and in many ways, maybe even worse. But so multiple readings of the book of Ruth will produce that type of thing. It's it's like looking at a there's a there's a painting in our bedroom that my wife bought. She probably don't even know I do this, but I often stare at that painting. This is this is kind of this scene of the ocean and some land and maybe some little islands like a coastline looking up from real high and it's kind of dark. purples, a little bit of green, but kind of a hazy color. And sometimes I think, oh, that is some coastline in the moonlight. And then other times I look at it, oh, that's some coastline and that's really the sun. But it's really cloudy from that perspective. So it is when we read, you know, books in the Bible, we often see things differently from time to time reading it. And God illuminates our minds. So we're trying to lift up, lift up that a little bit, maybe point out a few things that you haven't seen from the book. And maybe the next time you read it, it'll appear somewhat different, just like that painting in my room. So there's several lessons that we want to frame down and narrow down in looking at this, and those three have already been mentioned. The place of the book, the people of the book, and the principles of the book. Certainly this lesson is not exhaustive. There's so much in here and in the whole Word of God that even in the first verse of this book could take several weeks to examine and think about what is contained in there. So first, we'll start with the place of the book. Now, my grandchildren aren't here. Neither are my children, which I find actually disappointing. So pray for me. I often play with the grandkids when they use words. I will take those words, and my wife will tell you this, I do this probably more than just the grandchildren, probably more than I should. And I will take that same word and use the same word in a different context to confuse what they were saying to me to see if they will catch it. And it often gives them wrinkles, and they'll just kind of look at you, and then they figure it out. And then I'll usually take time to explain to them that words have meanings. And one word may have many meanings. And the context, how it's used and where it's used, defines the word. Not the other way around. And we must use words carefully. As God tells us, every word that comes out of our mouth will be judged. That's reason enough, certainly. But when we use words and I use this word place for that reason, because the word place has many meanings depending on the context. So certainly we may say that the place of the book of Ruth might be where it is found in the canon of scripture. Canon is just an old word that means some orderly rule of how something is arranged. The Canon of Scripture, I remember when I was a little kid, I would hear that and I would think, you know what little boys think about cannons, right? Oh, you blow stuff up with cannons and you shoot them over here and all the way across that lake there and you tear things up as boys are wont to do. So the Canon of Scripture in this case is one end. And it is an orderly structure of how the Bible is laid out. So we find it immediately after the book of Judges. That's telling in and of itself. And then place also might mean the locale of where the narrative of the story is taking place, like what town, what city, what geographical region. Did you know we're almost at the same parallel as Bethlehem? It's not even a quarter of a degree difference between us and Bethlehem. Except it's kind of arid there and here it's a lot more humid. But from the angle of the sun, we're about the same. So it could mean the exact locale, the place. Or it could mean the place in the warp and woof of the fabric of that time. What was going on during that time? So place can have many reasons. So we want to use that word in all three of those reasons and look at that in a very broad sense. So also, as we understand that words have meaning, we look in 1 Corinthians 14 concerning tongues in the church. Paul says, if a trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for the battle? So we have to be careful what we say, be careful how we use a word. So it is with this word place. It might be the geography, it might be its time in history, or it might just be the three or four pages that this book is, where it is in the Bible. So look at Ruth. We'll look at first Ruth chapter 1 verse 1. And it came to pass in the days when the judges judged that there was a famine in the land and a certain man of Bethlehem Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. There's a lot in that verse. But it tells us the place. And there's another word in there we should be thinking about the meaning of the word. It says in the days when the judge is judged. Now, days is plural. It could mean, you know, a week has seven days, a month has 30 days, a year has 360 some odd days. But this is the days when the judge is judged. It was quite a long period of time. It was a long period of time. So the context determines it. What it means is just the flavor and the spirit of the days in which the judges judged. Not only that time in history, but there's a little more meaning there to the word days there in that it was a particular type of time and days when they judged. But historically, the period covers about 400 years. The judges ruled about 400 years from around, most historians would agree, and I'm indebted to them, I don't know how they figure this stuff out, from 1367 BC, not BCE, BC, before Christ, to 1000 BC. So that's around 400 years, plus or minus, before Christ. 400 years before Christ. A thousand years, it ended a thousand years before He was here. We've barely been knowing about the United States and its current modern history for 500 years. Barely. A thousand years is a long time. A thousand years ago, we would not have understood our own language. The English tongue has changed so much, we have to have special people, special studies, in order to be able to translate the writings from a thousand years ago into English language. So time changes things very quickly, and we are greatly indebted to the godly and to the mercies of God for preserving His book throughout a long time. Think about this, from the time that Abraham was promised that his descendants would be as the sand of the sea, the stars of the sky, to the days of the judges, to begin, it's only about 600 years. You think 600 years, a lot can happen in 600 years. A lot did happen in 600 years. So historically, this time of the judging, the time the judges judged began with it or around the death of Joshua. Joshua, the son of Nun, who was Moses' right hand man. Joshua, who was not of the tribe of Judah, by the way. So it is a significant time, a historically significant time. We look in Judges 3, 1 through 3. This best describes this whole book of Judges, these 20-some-odd chapters of Judges, this 400-some-odd years. This describes it. In Judges, two scriptures, Judges 3, verses 1 through 3 says this. Now these are the nations which the Lord left to prove Israel by them, even as many as had not known the wars of Canaan. The wars of Canaan were the 40 or so years before the time of the judges. The wars of Canaan. Only that the generation of the children of Israel might know to teach them war. at the least such as before time knew nothing thereof, namely the five lords of the Philistines and the Canaanites and the Zidonians and the Hivites that dwelt in Mount Lebanon and from Mount Baal Hermon unto the entering of Hamath. And then Judges 17.6 sort of describes it as well. In those days, during that 400 years, there was no king in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes. So the Judges wasn't so much a time when there was lawlessness, although it might appear that it is, But it was a time when there was a kind of ferreting out, a kind of resolving this issue that God had told Joshua, Moses and Joshua and those that followed, you go in and you remove all of those people from the land. Told them to do that. But then he said, but you're not going to be able to do it because I'm going to leave them there so that you won't forget how to make war. It's a very interesting time. When you read the book of Judges within that context, you see, oh, this is kind of working out of these things. And it really doesn't get resolved until after the Kings, when David comes along and finally puts to end most of these kingdoms that would rise up against them and fight against them, and only ultimately to be divided themselves, always because of difficulty. So we see it. The time of judges in which Ruth is set is all about setting the stage for the advent of David, which is setting the stage for the advent of Christ. This is the purpose of these books from a Christian perspective and from a historical perspective. It's one of the problems of using the Greek commentator, I mean, I'm not the Greek, the Jewish commentators in these books is they ignore They ignore Christ. They know it points to thee or a Messiah, but they reject the stone. But we see it differently. There was no king at that time. There were no clear and long-term permanent leaders, although the judges did often stay in place for many years, sometimes decades. So, it's kind of a time, not of lawlessness, but of just flux and change and a laying down of the old order and an emerging new order. Think of it, for instance, what has happened. Here we are, two hundred and some odd years into the settling of this country by Europeans, northern Europeans, and look, we're still, there's still issues concerning the natives that were here. So we can see this is not so much unlike us, and these things can take a long time, but God is eternally present and he is not bound by that measure of time. So God has had a purpose in setting this stage that is there, and but judges can be narrowed down to kind of a theme of four things, and they're easy to remember sin. We all know about that sin, servitude, supplication and salvation. Sin, servitude, supplication and salvation, the people would become faithless and sin, both in worship and in personal lives. God would send in someone to punish them, an enemy to punish them, that they would repent. cry out to God, and He would save them. He would send a judge, a savior, a ruler, a defender to lift them out of that. So we see that pattern recurring over and over in the book of Ruth. And the book of Ruth is set so we get a little view of the interaction of people right in the middle of that time. And it's actually in the earlier part of that time it's believed to be. So in Judges 3, chapter 12 through 26, I want to read you this passage. And this passage is very necessary for us to understand the place of the book of Ruth. Judges 3, beginning at verse 12. And the children of Israel again did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. That's sin. The Lord strengthened Eglon, the king of Moab, against Israel because they had done that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. What's that second one? Servitude. And he gathered unto him the children of Ammon and Amalek, and went in and smote Israel, and they possessed the city of palm trees. And the children of Israel served Eglon, the king of Moab, eighteen years. But when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, supplication, the Lord raised them up a Savior, Ehud, one of the judges, the son of Gerah, the Benjamite, a man left-handed like me, And the children of Israel sent a present by him unto Eglon, king of Moab. And Ehud made him a sword, which had two edges, a cubit of length, and he girded it under his raiment upon his right thigh. And he offered the present to Eglon, king of Moab. Now Eglon was a very fat man. The Bible's not always sensitive to people's esteem. Eglin was fat and sloppy and obese and did not take care of himself, right? He was probably everything that You think that someone who's rich and ungodly and just always, that's the picture we get, always receiving and never giving out. And when he had made an end of offering the present, he sent away the people that bear the present. But he himself turned back from the quarries that were at Gilgal and said, I have a secret errand done to thee, O king. And he said, keep silence. And all that stood by him went out from him. And Ehud came to him, and as he was sitting by himself alone in the summer parlor, and Ehud said, I have a message from God for you. And he arose out of his seat. Now why he arose, I want to hear this. And Ehud put forth his left hand and took the sword from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly. And the half went in and the blade, and the fat closed upon the blade, for he drew not the sword out of his belly, couldn't get it out. And it came out behind. Then Ehud went forth into the porch and shut the doors of the parlor upon him and locked them. Now when he was gone out, his servants came out and they saw and behold, the doors of the parlor were locked. And they said, surely he covers his feet in the summer chamber. They thought he was in the bathroom. That's what covering the feet means. And they tarried till they were ashamed. And behold, he opened not the doors of the parlor. Therefore, they took the key and opened them. And behold, their Lord was fallen down dead on the earth. And Ehud escaped while they tarried and passed beyond the quarries and escaped unto Syrah. Ehud took down the head, which at some level ended some manner of domination of Moab over Israel. So something happened after that and I guess it was quite peaceful for a while. So the book of Ruth is set likely right after this period. That's what most of them believe. It was essentially covering the life of maybe a hundred years of several people. Elimelech, Naomi, Boaz, Ruth. up to the birth of Obed, who was the grandfather of David, king of Israel. That's the setting. That's the place of the book of Ruth. Then we go into the people of the book of Ruth, and there are several. And we could spend days exploring their characters or their system of understanding and belief, who they were, but we can't do that. There are several main persons in the book, and we'll name them. Elimelech, Naomi, Melon, Chalion, Orpah, Ruth, and Boaz. Of these seven, three become the focus of the narrative. But we will examine them all a little bit. Now, Elimelech was the husband of Naomi. That's really about all we know. He's the husband of Naomi. And they had sojourned in the land, they had moved to Moab, which really wasn't that far away, maybe a couple of days journey away from Bethlehem anyway. It wasn't that far away. We think, oh, it must have been like moving around the world. It really wasn't that far away. But there was a great gulf between the religious practices of the two, generally. And we don't know. All the reasons they went there, but the scripture does tell us that they went there because of a famine. And we know that famines, anybody that's, I don't know if you haven't, I've read deeply on famines, that what are really the causes of famines? We can say there's three. Weather, war, and government. Those are the three primary causes of famine. And weather really is not the first cause. Usually it's the cause of over-governing. In other words, trying to control the land, telling people what to grow and what not to grow. This is not something I'm making up. There's plenty of evidence out there that this is always and has always been a ticket for famine. But weather does play a part. Long droughts, long and extended droughts. play a part, and certainly war does. We're not told in the narrative exactly what the reason for the famine was. It could have been a judgment of God, or it could have been something else that was going on at the time. We're not told. But we might draw from it that it might have been because of the recurring wars that were going on at that time. In the book of Judges, there is a couple of times when the Amalekites and different groups of people, the raiders, would come in and raid the fields and farms of the Jews and then leave. They were kind of viewed like locusts and kind of had nicknames for locusts. So we find other people in the book of Judges, you know, they would harvest food in the evening and hide them, hide them in caves and different things like that so that they would be able to live because they knew that these hordes of people would come in and steal their food. violently, and this could have been a cause of some of the famine. Maybe not. We're not told in the scripture. So we find a limeleck there in Moab with his wife Naomi and two sons, Malon and Chalion. So we must probably deduct from that that when they moved there, these kids were probably pretty young, hence they had never married. They didn't have anyone else to take with them. But we see some level of faith, depending on which perspective you look at. Elimelech was seeking the survival of his seed because of the famine, and so they sought refuge in Moab. They were likely young boys. Now, according to the Jews, the ones I've read, that Elimelech, who was a Bethlehemite, was very wealthy. And he was a prominent man. Now, Scripture does not mention this, but it does generally take some wealth and resources to be able to pluck your family up and move them into another place. It also generally takes relationships in those places that may have been established previously. Even though there was often warring between nations, just like we do today, we at some level trade with Iran and we fight with them. So it's always been that way. There are business dealings that are peaceful, but then officially the governments or officially the militaries like to fight. So we don't know that that's the case, but we do know it takes a lot of nerve. I don't know if any of you have ever considered immigration and what it takes for someone to uproot themselves and their families and move to another nation for whatever reason may be driving them, whether it's economic or, you know, political persecution, religious persecution, whatever the reason, it takes a lot of pluck to do that. It also takes foresight to do that. One of the most important things I think we can glean and understand from human intelligence or our minds is that the class of people is not so much where they find themselves economically, but where they are in their ability to connect cause and effect, meaning their foresight. In other words, if I do this now, I may preserve this later. rather than just staying and cowering back or for whatever reason. And we're not told any of those things, but they're just things to consider and questions we ask ourselves when looking at this, at this book. Now, Limelech, after going there, they die. He dies, leaving Naomi and two sons. And then you wonder why they just didn't go back. These boys, that says they were there 10 years. So these guys, they're probably getting of marrying age about now. We ought to go back there and get some wives, some Hebrew wives for these boys. We don't want to marry these more Bidish gals. We know about their history. But that's not what she does. Perhaps there's some undercurrent there of why she can't go back right now. Maybe it's embarrassing. You know, when she does finally come back, you read some of the narrative of the things she said, and you think, you know, if I come back now without my husband, they're going to say, God, see there, we told you you shouldn't leave. That could be an undercurrent of what's going on there. But anyway, so they take wives from the daughters of Moab. Now, many, many Jewish scholars view this with much disdain that they married these Moabitish women. They accused them of faithlessness, of devil or idol worship, even from leaving in the first place, but much less to marry women of the Moabites. And the Moabites were worshippers, we know from history, of a god called Timosh, who was the god of war. These guys liked to fight. You know, they're kind of like the barroom guys, they get a couple of brews in them and somebody's going to get hurt. They just was a fighting group. They like to fight. A god of war and contest. Perhaps Naomi planned to stay in Moab for that reason. She just didn't want to suffer the embarrassment of having to go back alone, you know. took these wives, we're not going to go back now. What do they really say? Not only have I gone back empty-handed, but I've gone back with my sons and I've got these small white wives and we'll just stay here and have children. So then finally, Milan and Chilean die. And they don't have any children. This is an important principle in Scripture. When you're reading through Scripture and you see there's not seed being sprung off of people and of the main characters or persons in the book, something's going on. God is at work. God often works in these types of mysterious ways, and these are something for us to observe. So they marry, Ruth and Orpah, they die. And some scholars believe that Ruth and Orpah were not just any Moabite women, but they, which kind of lends to the idea that Elimelech and Naomi and those boys were rather well-to-do people. even after moving to Moab, that these might be none other than the daughters or granddaughters of Eglon, the guy that Ehud killed. Many of the scholars believe that. Eglon was slain by Ehud, remember, from the scripture with the knife there just a little bit earlier. But that being bad enough, they were Moabites. But the Moabites were kinfolks of the Jews. They were kin. That's something that's important for us to know, that family fighting is always bad, right? Civil wars are always the worst kind of wars. There's a lot of animosity between them for other reasons that were just historical and may go back a thousand years. So the Moabites, they were kinfolks with the Jews, but they're not the kind of kin you'd be proud of. You know, everybody has something in their family tree that they might which were better hid, but these come out in the scripture for which we're thankful. These Moab, the Moabites, were one of two nations that sprung out of a very difficult situation. They were the descendants of Lot, who was the nephew of Abraham, and these women were, well, we'll just let the Bible describe what that situation was if you turn to Genesis 19. We see what the story of the Moabites is. Where did they come from? And you know, this blood is flowing through Abraham's direct descendants to his future wives' veins. Genesis 19, 32-38 says, Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him. These are the daughters of Lot. And we will lie with him that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night. And the firstborn went in and lay with her father. And he knew not when she lay down nor when she rose. And it came to pass on the morrow that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesterday night with my father. Let us make him drink wine tonight also. And you go in and lie with him that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night also. And the younger arose and lay with him, and he knew not when she lay down or when she arose. Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. And the firstborn bear a son and called his name Moab, the same as the father of the Moabites until this day. And the younger, she also bear a son and called his name Ben-Ami, the same as the father of the children of Ammon until this day. We see that this was a repulsive thing. This is repulsive to us in our day. It was repulsive to them in that day. Another good reason not to take these more white wives that I've got my son with back to Bethlehem. We are going to be the talk of the town. Although we saw from last week that this intermingling and intermarriage was not extremely unusual. But the higher you were up in the hierarchy of society, the more likely it was for you to receive ire about it if you participated in it. You know, let the rabble intermarry, but my children are going to marry the best, right? We see a little bit of that even in our day. So this was the heritage of the wives of Mahlon and Chilion. This is the heritage of the remnant by which God in his infinite wisdom brings forth the Messiah. Hundreds of years later, in Romans, Paul describes this God that we serve, that thinks in this fashion and does in this fashion. 1 Corinthians 1, 25 and following, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For behold your calling, brethren, how that not many, wise after the flesh, Not many mighty, not many noble are called, but God chose the foolish things of the world that He might put to shame them that are wise. And God chose the weak things of the world that He might put to shame the things that are strong. And the base, the base things of the world. This was a base relationship in many aspects. And the things that are despised, God did choose. Yea, and the things that are not, that he might bring to nothing the things that are. The last verse, 29, tells the story that no flesh should glory before God. Now just suppose for one minute that Elimelech and Naomi and Mahlon and Chilion would have kept everything nice and good, and she said, oh, we're here in Moab because of a thing. We need to go back and get wives for our sons that we might preserve a godly heritage. They could have done that. I suppose they could have done that. But that's not the way it played out. And that's not the way that God would have it to play out. Because it played out that way, we have to believe that God was doing it, that no flesh should glory. So, now in Ruth and Orpah, narrowing it down, we see of two people a picture of true and false faith. We see this works out in Ruth when she clung to Naomi after the sons were dead and Naomi was preparing to go back to Bethlehem. I mean, there's many reasons for her to do that. So she decides to leave Moab and return to her people. And this is not very far away, but this is religious, mainly a very spiritual and religious difference between these two people. So Orpah originally, Says that she'll go with her. Notice that she does really cling. But in the final case, bears it out, she returned to her people. Now, that just says, oh, she decided not to go. But there's more emphasis in it than that. She returned to her people. And we just told you who her people were. We just told you. in reading who her forefathers were. Those are the ones she returned to. She stayed with Moab. She stayed with the Moabites, who had a false and idolatrous religion. But Ruth clings to her, and we see an oath. Ruth makes an oath where she says in Ruth 1, verse 16 through 18, and Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave. In other words, please don't make me go back. And to return from following after you. For whether you go, I will go. And where thou goest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people. And thy God, my God. Where you die, I will die. And there will I be buried. And the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me." And when she saw that she was steadfastly minded to go, She left off speaking, that's the ninth way of saying she gave up, she's going. Ruth made an oath. There's more in that than we can ever imagine. She was making a commitment to turn her back on Moab, turn her back on her gods, possibly, maybe she had already rejected those. But we see that this is the difference in the character of Orpah and Ruth. That one was after the flesh, after the world, one was after the Spirit. And we see that it is always and has always been a faith that saves. So it's also telling that Malon and Chilion died quite early in their marriages to Orpah and Ruth in that there were no children. I find this very unusual that there were no children from these marriages. I mean, children were like, that's what you have. One of the primary purposes of marriage is to continue the species, to continue the seed, to continue everything that we know to be right and good in the pale of this body. But this is certainly an undercurrent in the reasoning as to why Naomi was so willing to leave. Think about this. I go in my land. My husband dies. My sons don't have wives. I don't have any. OK, my sons will take care of me. They don't have any wives. Who's going to take care of them? So they get wives, not of the Hebrews, but of the Moabites. Well, we better stay here. This could be a scandal when we go back. But then they die. Now you've got three women with no man to take care of them. This would be a big deal back then. So maybe in As a last resort, I better go back home. I don't want to stay here anymore. It's not going well for me here. Maybe I should leave." And we see that God many times uses circumstances of life to push us to the places where He intends for us to go. No husband, no land, no children, no grandsons. That equaled no future for Naomi. So likely all these things were in her mind and they were indications that God was against her and not for her. So in some sense she was repenting by going back. She was changing direction. And there were no heirs. So she knew she had land there. Because Elimelech had an inheritance that likely would have passed to her sons. But because they're dead too and childless, it's going to pass to her, because there are no heirs. It's going to be hers. It's one of the few ways that women could get an inheritance in that time. And then we move to Boaz. Boaz, of course, we all see is the hero of this book. We see in him the character of an ideal man. He's everything good. He's a man of wealth. He's a man of generosity, of keen observation. He's a man of strategy. We see that in his handling of the other of the other kinsmen of piety and of duty. All the Jewish commentators I consulted presented him in that light, and he was a Bethlehemite of the tribe of Judah. He was in the right. He was in the right tribe. So they also believe that he was a cousin of Elimelech. That's why he wasn't the first Redeemer. It's likely that Elimelech's father, I mean, Elimelech and Boaz's father were brothers, were making him a cousin. But there was probably someone closer to Elimelech that could perform the act of redemption that was needed to resolve all these issues. And we also see that he was a very respectful and a very concerned man. He was concerned for his servants. He was concerned for the poor. He's everything we would want to see in a godly man, that's for sure. Now, a little extra bit of information. One of the books in the Torah, in the Jewish books and collection of these times, say that on the day that Ruth and I'm sorry, Naomi and Ruth returned to Bethlehem was the day that they buried the wife of Boaz. That he was indeed a widower. That his wife had died and they had no children. Which I also find unusual. But we don't see any record of there being children of Boaz. So, but this return, when they came back, caused quite a stir. So, we know that the people of Bethlehem, it's a small town, they know what's going on. Sort of like, you know, some small town somewhere in the U.S., if one person, everybody talks about it for days, or somebody moves away, is gone for years and comes back in a difficult situation, it's kind of the scuttlebutt of the town. So in Ruth chapter one, verse 19, we say we see. So they went until they came to Bethlehem, talking about coming back. And it came to pass when they would come to Bethlehem that all the city was moved about them. And the women said, is this Naomi? Seeing that the Lord has testified against me, where she said, and I'm sorry, I skipped some. And she said unto them, call me not Naomi, call me Mara. Bitter for the Almighty hath dealt bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home again empty. Why do you call me Naomi? Seeing the Lord has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me." So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law with her, which returned out of the country of Moab, and they came to Bethlehem in the beginning of the barley harvest. This is probably early March. So Boaz is the great-grandfather of David. It's around 80 years old at this time, Ruth around 40. We could spend a lot of time examining and drawing from the people of the book lesson after lesson, but we have to stop there and move to the principles of the book. And there are lots of principles in this book, both very small ones and very large ideas in the book, and I've taken Three that I want to speak about, but there are many in reading the book you will see. So principle number one that I see in the book is that the difficulty of one generation may be the planting of bounty for the next, and that we should not expect that we are always to receive good and not evil from God. Think about that. Think about if you were just Naomi after the death of her husband. What perspective did she have? She looked to her sons to take care of her. Then her sons die. What hope? I mean, at some point she's hopeless. She even said so when she came back. I'm bitter. God's dealt bitterly with me. But we see what comes from it when we read to the end of the book. We see this principle in Job, a lot through the scripture in Job. You know what happens to Job in there? Consider the end of Job in Joseph. Think of Joseph in the pit there. You know, not knowing what's going to happen to him next, right? Consider Daniel in the lion's den, but we see this very clearly in Ruth. We see it in Ruth. We see it in the book of Ruth. So the difficulty of one generation is the bounty for the next. The second principle of the book, God rarely uses what we would consider proper methods or pedigree to accomplish His ends. In my own experience, and it's very narrow, that when I prescribe the way I think God should do something, it never comes to pass. It's almost never like I thought it would be. I plan and connive and do this and do that, but it just doesn't turn out like I think it's going to. It's because God has His purpose. And the best thing we can do is try to get on that wave and run it. Take note of the lineage of Christ and that it contains the following people, just to name a few. Rahab the harlot. She lied in order to save the people of God. But not only so, look at her life. She was a Canaanite. Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah, who is in the line of Christ, who was with child by Judah, her father-in-law, Tamar, of Bathsheba, a wife of another man who bore Solomon. who had many foreign wives, who is in that land, and Ruth, a woman of Moab. These are listed in the lineage of our Savior. So it's never about the lineage or the training or heritage, but it's about faith and faith alone. This is the gift of God, faith and faith alone. God saves by faith. He saved by faith in God sovereignly. And of his own volition puts that faith into a soul and they are his irreversibly, irrevocably, forever, eternally present in Christ. This is a wonder. This is the lesson of the book of Ruth. It's encouragement to me. It's a great encouragement. The third principle of the book. And this is kind of for our immediate edification here. Even in the midst of political uncertainty, of wars and rumors of wars, the people of God may take heart and do well. We may prosper in the midst of that. The ways of God transcend the political factions of the world. God, the gospel, prospers in any form of government. We do not need the Democratic Republic of the United States to prosper the gospel. The Democratic Republic of the United States needs the gospel in order to prosper. It is that way. The gospel prospers in communist nations. It prospers in Islamic nations, the gospel prospers. We have to define prosperity and we have to understand that God's people may suffer, but at the same time God's people often prosper and do well under those foreign systems. We can take heart of this. Note the prosperity and the bounty in the fields of Boaz during a very tumultuous time that the times when the judges judged was. Seem like they're happy to me. Look at the greetings. God bless you. Oh, I'm so thankful. Oh, here, take this bounty. Let's enjoy it as we as we're threshing out the barley on the floor. Let's enjoy it and have a meal and a drink and they're happy. Note the greetings and the blessings and the language and the speech in the book among those people in this history. So we can take heart that our inner peace and supply is not dependent on the state. or its former fashion of government, but it is dependent. Our security, our contentment, our peace, our provision, our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. Let's pray. Our Father and God, we're thankful for your mercies. Thankful for the mercies of your word. Thankful, God, for Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, our Alpha and Omega. Oh God, we love Him. We love You, Father. We pray that You would be with us and visit with us in worship. Hear our cries. Pull our hearts toward the Word. We thank You in Jesus' name. Amen.