If you haven't already, you can take your Bible and return to the Book of Ruth, which is where we will meet. This is very much an introductory message to our study of this book, so we're really not going to be looking at the story specifically. More kind of on an overview, looking broadly at just kind of the main events that go on, some of the major characters, the major themes that are running throughout to take us into June, God willing. Many of the ladies perked up, finally, to the story in the Bible about us. But let me assure the men here that what God has to say in this book is for both men and women. And it is timeless truth that I trust will be a blessing to you and hopefully will even inspire some of you to go on your This wonderful, but short, story in the Bible. And when Pastor mentioned that after the Joseph study concluded, he was going to give me the opportunity to speak for a few weeks, I really wanted to cover one short book. And that's hard to do with some of these longer books. into Romans or Ephesians or these other books. And so I thought, why not do it? And I've heard so from many pastors and friends who have said this has been one of their favorite books to preach through. And so I followed suit and thought, I think that could be something I'd like to study together with Faith Baptist Church. And that's what we're going to be here today. One of the best films that I know I've seen, I've seen a lot that I really enjoy, one that I've seen that I really probably recognize it. It's called Life is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni and it's about, if you haven't seen it before, it's about an Italian Jewish family and it's set against the backdrop of the World War II, Holocaust, so if that's not your cup of tea and you don't enjoy those kinds of isn't the one for you. But I know I enjoyed it just as a story. In the film, the main character is a waiter who falls in love with this young girl. They get married. They have a son. And when their son is about eight or nine years old, the Nazis move into Italy. And they occupy their town. And they begin rounding up the town and the Jews to take to the concentration camps. While wanting to shield his son, around the Holocaust are part of this grand, exciting game that he and his son get to play. And as much as it strikes us as, you know, how can you trivialize something so serious that happened in history, millions of people slaughtered, the story really portrays this beautiful family dynamic where this father is seeking to protect the innocence of his son. during this very dark time in the world. The story, more importantly, shows that people are capable of overcoming all kinds of tragedy, oppression, and suffering through the power of love. The story of Ruth centers on this one family that undergoes some severe tragedy. The central character of chapter one, Naomi, experienced a series of losses that caused her to feel great sorrow, even bitterness, toward God. Ruth, who the book is named after, is Naomi's daughter-in-law. And she endured many of those same hardships along with Naomi. Now, the fictional characters in that movie, Life is Beautiful, experience a malicious kind of evil that we understand from the Holocaust and history. But Ruth and Naomi experience a different kind of evil, a more natural evil that befalls all human beings. We can never completely escape or prevent pressure and loss and tragedy in this life. experience it at some point. When we suffer, though, we can be comforted with the truth that God is still good, that he still keeps his promises, that he still loves his people. Just as the father's love and imagination in the film protected his son from the worst horrors of the Nazis, our father's love protects and sustains us when we go through trials and tribulations. While God does not act directly in the story of Ruth, we see his hand guiding his people toward his intended purposes. And this is going to be, for us, the central theme of Ruth that we'll look at together, that God's love redeems human tragedy. The characters we will look at face It's tough a little bit. We see how God provides for this suffering family. But then once again, Ruth and Naomi experience another unfortunate setback, another series of circumstances that is going to be a test for them. Will they trust God? Will they trust His faithfulness? So each time the family endures hardship or loss, Many of you are probably familiar with Ruth, but if you're not familiar with it, then I hope this will be a little bit of help to you and give you the introduction to the book that you may need. The book of Ruth follows a family that is from the town of Bethlehem in Israel. Naomi is the wife of her husband, Elimelech, and together they have two sons. We don't teach her a whole lot of the story. Maelon and Apilion are their names. This was a tumultuous period in the history of Israel when there was no king over the whole nation. There was no King Saul. There was no King David. This is before there's any ruler over the whole nation. But also, during this time of the judges, the people lived in outright apostasy and rebellion against God. There were cycles of this. We'll talk about this next week. powers because the people of Israel were just worshipping the gods of the nations around them. Just taking all these false idols and worshipping them for themselves instead of worshipping the one true God. This is the backdrop in which we meet Naomi and her family. Looking at the story, we see a clear falling and rising pattern in the plot. What I mean by that is the book of this family. And this causes Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, with their boys, to move out of Israel to the land of Moab, a neighboring nation. While living in Moab, the family suffers its first major loss. Because not only do both boys die, right? I say boys, but they were men, they were married already. The two sons die and Naomi Now, the two boys had married multiple women. Their names were Ruth and Orpah. Both ladies offered to travel with Naomi back to Bethlehem, but Ruth is the only one who stays in Israel to take care of her mother-in-law. Now, the loss of male providers in the family is a big deal, right? You have two women living together. So without a male provider, they need help. Well, this problem gets resolved when Ruth finds work in the harvest fields of a man named Boaz, who happens to be a relative of Naomi's late husband. Boaz shows special favor to Ruth. He gives her special treatment, which Naomi takes as a sign that maybe they're Because there is another relative closer to Elimelech than Boaz who would feasibly be able to marry Ruth instead of Boaz. Now, Boaz wants to marry her. He loves her. He cares for her and her family. And so he seeks out this relative and pursues every legal means in order to marry Ruth and have her off together. Now, this beautiful romantic story, as you see, falling and rising throughout the narrative. On both occasions, when the family has some loss or a setback or an unexpected complication, it's Boaz's kindness and love and generosity that provides the solution. All the major characters show this selfless love and grace to one another. perhaps the greatest example of love. Because it seems all his actions are motivated by his genuine love and concern for this family. Now what also makes Ruth so compelling is this is probably, in my study, this is the thing I take most away from the book. It's an ordinary story. There's no healing of a blind person or a lame person or a leper. There's no rising from the dead. There's none of those kinds of extraordinary supernatural things we expect from a Bible story. There's no man getting swallowed by a whale, right? There's no giant that's defeated. But God, despite him not working directly in the story, In the story, we find people who move to a new home, who get married, have children, lose loved ones, provide for elderly family, and work a job to make ends meet. This is all normal, everyday, ordinary life that we're familiar with. And that's what makes this story so captivating, I think, to many of us. Why we enjoy reading and why there's that sense of satisfaction. All the main characters recognize the hand of God at work in their circumstances, and it gives them the credit for what goes on. Now let's talk a little bit about just getting an idea of the date and authorship of this book. Pinpointing when this book was written and who wrote it has proven difficult. There are many books in the Old Testament as the events they recorded. Genesis would be an obvious example, right? No one was there to record the creation story in Genesis 1 and 2. So these things were passed on later, written down much later. For many years, there were scholars who believed that Ruth was written after the Jews returned from the exile. That time timing would be not all that long before the time would come. believe that it was written before the exile, perhaps sometime between 1,000 to 500 BC. This would place the writing of the book during the time of the kings, maybe even as late as King David. Now, how we date the book of Ruth has to take into account this idea that the people of Israel already had an understanding that the judges was its own period in their history. Look at verse 1 with me, not to study it in depth, just look at how it's phrased. Chapter 1 of Ruby, verse 1. Now, it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled. You notice that? There's an implicit understanding. that if you're reading this book, you know the judge's period he's referring to. They know what the judge's period means, right? So it's probably not in the time of the judges that this is being written. Also, if we're going to study this book a little bit more, you'll find that the author likes to highlight anything that has to do with King David. His ancestry, his author would have to be writing sometime after the Judges' period and during a time when the dynasty David's name and reputation were especially important to the Jewish people. So that means, again, not to nail a date down or anything, but the early mark, the time of King David, would be an ideal time for this book to have been composed. There have been some speculation of, oh, he might have written it, maybe even prophets like Samuel or Nathan said, all right, the first one is Genesis. The second one is Exodus. It wasn't like that at all. It was very intentional how these books get ordered in our bibles and how they're put together. We typically call the list of books that are in our scriptures, the 66 books, the canon. It's an idea of there's a rule or a standard for how many books there are. Ruth, we know is part of the Old Testament, and it's specifically in the history section. Ruth, in our English ordering, follows the book of Judges. And this comes from the same placement of the Septuagint, which is a Greek translation of the Old Testament. There was no king, and every man did that with his right and his own eyes. That gets contrasted. The whole nation rebelling against God is contrasted against one individual Gentile woman. Not an Israelite. Not a member of a covenant community. A Gentile, white woman who lives However, before the English order of these books, believe it or not, Jewish people who wrote these scriptures originally had their own order of books. So if you picked up a Jewish Bible, the Hebrew scriptures today, the order of the books would look quite different than from what we're used to. Some of the orderings are the same, like the five books of Moses are still first, Torah, the law, that's important to them. But the rest of the books are quite different. The Hebrew Bible has three sections. the writings. Within the last group of writings is this separate group of five books, almost like a subgroup, called the Megillot. Each of these five books were read every year during the Jewish holidays. They were read publicly for the whole nation to hear. heard every year throughout history. Now Ruth is the first of this group of five, and it so happens that just in And so you can't say this for sure, but it certainly seems plausible that Proverbs and Ruth are placed together, perhaps, to send the implicit message that Ruth, you know, we just talked about the virtuous woman. Here's a real-life example. are positioned the way they are. And if we had time, we would find many connections between Root's character and her actions throughout the story, as well as the actions of the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31. Now, while the book of Root is primarily about this family, it is also a book with several important messages. And these messages get conveyed to us through major themes that run throughout these four short chapters. And as we look deeper at the story in the coming weeks, I hope that you'll notice these themes that pop up throughout the narrative. Pay attention to these themes because they offer special insight into the book and its interpretation. Now, the first major one that we will look at today And the reason I include this word, I'm not trying to flaunt my Hebrew knowledge or anything, I don't know Hebrew all that well, but it's important that we understand this particular concept because it factors into this book and really throughout the story of the Old Testament. This Hebrew word, tset, appears only a handful of times in Ruth. Yet, it is a major theme that the Spirit inspired as really a critical part of this story. And God says, Moses, come up to the top of the mountain. I'm going to reveal myself to you. I'm going to reveal my name to you. And what is the name? Kwasa's translations refer to the same Hebrew word, chesed. Apparently, God thought enough of this attribute of his that he wanted to mention it twice in his name. One dictionary defines chesed love this way, it is an unfailing kind of love, kindness or goodness, often used of God's love as related to faithfulness to his covenant. So notice all of these ideas are kind of compounded into this one word, one English equivalent. We can say love, but, I mean, we know what we think of love, right? Love can be cheap, love can just be talk. But it's more than translated love in the Bible, it's translated mercy, it's translated kindness, it's translated goodness, it's translated loving kindness, right? There's so many ways encapsulates so much of God's loving nature. When we think of God's love, we should not think that he merely has warm, fuzzy feelings for us. Like a toddler has warm, fuzzy feelings for his teddy bear or something. That's not the kind of love God has. It is so much deeper than that. It's not half-hearted. It's not shortchange. He always gives his love out in full measure. In the story of Ruth, Don displays his love amid tragic circumstances. After Naomi had lost her family in Moab, she hears news from back home, we read this in chapter 1, that the Lord had visited his people by giving them bread. The family was over. They could return home to Bethlehem. This overturning of the famine is the whole reason Naomi goes home with Ruth Bacher's side. Now, when something good happens in a story, the main characters, without fail, acknowledge God's hand behind those circumstances. They don't chalk it up to good luck or good fortune. They say, the Lord blessed you. steals, when Ruth and Moaz are pursuing each other, when Ruth gives birth to a son at the end. In all these ways, God shows kindness to his people after they experience significant loss. And believe it or not, God is not the only one showing his same love in the book of Ruth. Because God doesn't intend that, oh, I'm the only one who can show this kind of Now, even though Naomi, if you know the story, Naomi kind of loses her faith a little bit, has some unbelief she has to wrestle with at the beginning of the story. She still demonstrated love to Ruth, an outsider, and said, hey, you know, and she was reluctant a little bit at first, but she said, you can come home to Bethlehem with me and be part of my family and take care of me. Ruth herself models this same love, which she insisted against Naomi's wishes. I don't want to go back to Boaz. She wanted to stay in Israel. And while she lived with Naomi, Ruth took care of her mother-in-law by working to provide for their needs, and she even complied with Naomi's wishes about pursuing a relationship with Boaz. We cannot ignore Boaz's loving motivation in this story. When he discovered Ruth working in a steel, and he learned more about who is this person, She showed her special favor that none of the other workers got, right? She got the special treatment they lost. And that was really special for her. When she approached him about marriage in the next chapter, he did everything in his power to make sure that they could be together, right? Because it wasn't so easy as, you know, you love me, I love you, let's make this thing happen. It wasn't quite that simple, we'll find, in our study. Boaz took on the role of the kinsman-redeemer to rescue this family by dire circumstances. So we see God has sent love to tribes for many of the events in this book, both through divinely ordained circumstances, but also through Speaking of the Kinsman Redeemer, let's unpack this term because it's going to become important to the story, especially at the very end, when there's a complication that arises with Emboaz's relationship. What is the Kinsman Redeemer? Well, he refers to, and this is in a dictionary definition, I'm kind of compiling some of the different things that I've gleaned from It is the legal responsibility of the closest male relative to protect the family's interests, especially in the sale of property or debt in the family. Now, let's explore this a little more. As part of God's covenant with his people, he gives them his law, he gives them the promised land. Part of that covenant was that he made it illegal for any sale of a property to become permanent. So when the children of Israel first get into the land of Canaan, he gave them this land, they had to defeat many enemies in order to establish themselves there. takes a piece of land, gets a piece of property, and you get to keep that plot of land within your family line basically forever. It's always yours. It always belongs to your family. But here's the thing. What if your family, for whatever reason, became impoverished and you needed to sell your property? Well, that would be fine. That's legitimate to do. But what you are also able to do is, if there is a male relative, a wealthy male relative, who is capable and willing to buy the land back for your family name, that person who does that, the relative, is called the well in Hebrew, otherwise known as the kinsman redeemer. And the purpose of this, the intention was to preserve the inheritance and family name for every family in Israel. this family in Manasseh to be extinguished from the face of the earth was the idea. We want to preserve every family line among the people of Israel. So if you have to sell your property because you're in dire circumstances, you lose your job, there's a death in the family, then your family can still be taken care of. They can still have your inheritance. That was the purpose behind it. So you can look at Leviticus 25 for more information on that. The story of Ruth depicts this practice for us in the time of the judges. don't want this family to be extinguished, to be just gone from the genealogy of Israel. So the Mosaic Law allowed for a close becomes the hero of our story because he willingly redeemed Elimelech's estate, which, by the way, he did not have to do. This wasn't like a legal obligation or anything. It's not like levered marriage, if you understand that concept a little bit. This was something he had to choose to do. He willingly offered to do this. And his relationship with Elimelech, by the way, did not make the marriage to Rue automatic. Like I said before, it just But he did give us the legal means available to him. Marrying Ruth was the pinnacle of his redemption, because he's showing this unusual kindness to a Gentile woman and to her widow. how Jesus welcomes estranged sinners, you and me, people who don't belong in the family of God, who are separated from God's heavenly family. Jesus welcomes the sin as the kingdom redeemer. He redeems us by giving his own life to satisfy the Father's wrath against the sin. Now, those were the two big themes, the blessed love of God, the kingdom redeemer. And in the story, Naomi suffers the most early on, right? After being forced to leave her home in Bethlehem and move to Moab. Naomi lost her husband, she lost her sons. When she returned home with Ruth ten years after leaving, what did Naomi tell her old friends? Look down at chapter one in verse 21. What does Naomi have to tell all her friends who are welcoming her back? Naomi, it's been so long, how are you doing? You experience a period of fullness in your life, and then, seemingly without warning, everything just gets swept out from under you. Your whole life just goes into shambles. That's what Naomi felt like. She left home, she left Israel, thinking her life was ahead of her. Meanwhile, she lost everything that she knew. Except, of course, for Ruth and her faithfulness to her. They returned as paupers, right? They had no male worker in the home. And yet, Ruth was able to work the fields, collect the scraps from the harvesters. And though Naomi was initially bitter about her bleak prospects, we see that over the course of the story. picks up from there, where Naomi felt this deep sense of loss and tragedy at the beginning, only to realize the fullness of God at the very end. She encouraged Ruth to pursue Boaz as his redeemer, and that resulted in their marriage. By the end of the story, Naomi was blessed with a godly son-in-law who rescued her family from poverty and a virtuous daughter-in-law in Ruth who gave her While living as a pauper in a small town, Dawn rewarded Ruth's faith with fullness. She got a job to care for her elderly mother-in-law. She received a favor of O.S., it is hand-in-marriage. God restored for both of these ladies the losses which they suffered at the beginning of the story. And I hope we'll see how God can do that for us as well. The final theme we'll look at today is the Ancestry of Eden and David. This final theme might feel a little less obvious, but as we go through the story, you're going to see how it kind of gets pronounced. At the end of the book, if you read chapter four, you come to the end of the story, you're like, wow. Paul as a hero, Ruth as a son, and Naomi as a grandson, this is great. And then by the end of chapter four, you're like, what is this genealogy doing here? What does this have anything to do with anything? But no, the genealogy is quite significant, because it kind of gives us explicitly what the author is driving home all along, the line of King David. This genealogy in chapter four, 12 patriarchs. Now, how do we know that the author is trying to magnify King David's kingship and his ancestry? Well, the only family we know is from what town? Bethlehem, right? Where is King David from? Bethlehem. And by the way, we'll see in Chapter 1 how the author of Ruth explicitly from. That distinction is important. From Ruth, we learn how did King David even come from Bethlehem, right? Why was his family there? Because of Ruth and Boaz. The family, in the beginning, leaves the famed written town of Bethlehem to seek better fortune in Boaz. Of the original family members, Naomi's the only one who comes back with Ruth as her caretaker. And then when they return, they experience favorable circumstances, and this rise in their economic and social status. They were hoppers in the beginning, but returning to Bethlehem turns their situation around. When Boaz, a righteous man in Bethlehem, who, by the way, is from the line of Judah, he gave Ruth this special treatment. And so Naomi jumps at the opportunity. Let's get these two together. Let's make a marriage happen. When they're finally married, Ruth bears a son, and from her line will come King David, making Ruth the great-grandmother of the king. So the family history of Ruth and Boaz highlights for us the grace of God in David's line. He used the great apostasy in the Judges period. This could happen any other time. This is happening in the Judges, when everyone else is sitting around him. But there's one faithful God-honoring thing we want to focus on in this book. And that's a beautiful thing. There's the apostasy of the Judges period, a Gentile, a Moabite woman named Ruth, and then a widowed mother named Ruth herself, who was also widowed. None of these situations reflect an ideal scenario for producing a king wine. Right? It's this kind of, wow, this family is really struggling here. How can a king come from this? Not to mention the fact that David, Boaz, come from the line of Judah, one of the 12 patriarchs who is infamous for his moral failings, having illegitimate children. Once again, Christ is hidden in the details of this powerful and amazing story. I want to close here with just a few applications we can draw away from the Book of Ruth. We're going to go through a whole Old Testament narrative together over the next two weeks, and it's easy to treat these Old Testament narratives as But Ruth's story reveals several ways that as Christians we should behave and live in the world, especially when tragedy strikes and darkens our path. Number one, we need to demonstrate the Chesed love of God in our lives and in our relationships. This love is portrayed throughout Ruth, and it's indicative of how we need to treat each other. Christians are called to follow the two great commandments, which are love. and love your neighbor as yourself. Christians are also called by Jesus to love one another, and what's the standard? As He loves us. In Ruth, we discover the different forms that this love can take. We love one another through This is how Ruth showed love to Naomi by staying with her at Harryburg when he got back into Bethlehem. And this is how Boaz showed love to Ruth and Naomi by taking on this role of the kinsman for the family. Let me mention this, because said love is also evident in how we treat the downtrodden and the destitute. that our society often neglects and forgets about. God desires his people to care for these groups, to pray for them, to show practical love to them, to people who are different from us, recognizing that love for the stranger is really a love for Christ. If you're familiar with this passage in Matthew chapter 25, where Jesus is telling all the people he's welcoming to his kingdom, thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me." And they ask the Lord, when did we ever do these things to you? Assuredly, I say to you, Jesus tells them, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these, my brethren, It did to me. Whenever I exercise this kind of love for, again, the downtrodden, the forgotten of our society, of our community, we are really showing love to the Lord Jesus himself. And that is a great way to apply, like I said, love of God. of their own accord, like if a person loses their job and becomes homeless because of a drug abuse problem or something like that. While the church is not responsible for helping every single person in these desperate circumstances, we should strive to show love to these kinds of people with legitimate means. That is showing the love of God. The second method we see in this story is faithfulness in seasons of loss. The beginning of the story focuses on Naomi's tragic response to the loss in her life, the life she once knew. She left behind everything, with her husband and sons, to go to Moab. But she returns to Bethlehem, having lost everyone important to her. Convinced that God had punished her, she tried to compel her two daughters-in-law to go back home to Moab. She said, there's nothing for you here. and led to this jaded heart toward God. Ruth responded to the loss quite differently. Though she also loses someone important to her, she did not allow that to quench her faith. Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you watch, I will watch. Mom, I'm sticking with you. I'm not leaving your side. I'm not going back home to Moab. More than being with her mother-in-law, Ruth did something even more amazing. She based her decision to stick with Naomi not just on loyalty to her mother-in-law, but more importantly, on loyalty to God. That was Ruth's response to the loss she had in her life. When we experience tragedy in our lives, we can still trust God in His faithful promises and unfailing goodness. of the story serves as a powerful reminder of what Jesus has done for us. In his redemption act on the cross, Jesus brought a sinner into his heavenly family, thus welcoming us where we didn't belong. I don't belong in your family, God, I've been there to you. But the only way we can someone accepted and loved and spiritually wealthy, a pride of the Messiah, our Redeemer. Like Ruth, we can only respond to this amazing demonstration of chesed love and favor with faithful love and loyalty to Him, because He is worthy of it. I hope our seder group over the next few weeks will inspire that kind of joy and gratitude in their own hearts. and love and redemption. The characters model for us how to show this love to others that have forgotten to be exploited. And ultimately, the story points us to Christ and his redemption on the cross. I hope you'll enjoy studying this book for the next few weeks together. Let's bow further and pray.