Please turn now in your Bibles to the book of Ruth, chapter one. You can find this on page three hundred and twenty six. If you're using the pew Bible, I'm going to be reading from the New King James Version this morning. Find the book of Ruth, the eighth book in the Bible, just after the five books of Moses, then you have Joshua, Judges and Ruth. Actually, the order of the book of where the book of Ruth is placed is different in the Hebrew Bible. It's not grouped with the history. It's grouped with what we would call the wisdom literature, things like Psalms and Proverbs and and the Song of Solomon and things like that. We're going to spend the next six weeks studying this little book. And then our plan is to start a series on the minor prophets, taking just one sermon per minor prophet. And we hope to couple that with some fall midweek Bible studies, probably starting in October, that will coincide with our sermon series on the minor prophets. Let's give our attention to God's word now from the book of Ruth, reading this morning just the first seven chapters. This is the Word of God. Now, it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem, Judah, went to dwell in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech. The name of his wife was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to the country of Moab and remained there. Then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died and she was left and her two sons. Now they took wives of the women of Moab. The name of one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. And they dwelt there about ten years. Then both Malon and Kilion also died. So the woman survived her two sons and her husband. Then she arose with her daughters-in-law that she might return to the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited his people by giving them bread. Therefore, she went out from the place where she was and her two daughters-in-law with her, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. And there will end our reading of God's word. May God bless his word. My family got back from our trip last week. I learned that one of our neighbors died. This was a man who was 74 years old and he was quite a character in our neighborhood. In fact, I would have to say he, more than anyone else in our neighborhood, tried to get people from the neighborhood together. He hosted two parties every year in which he invited all the families from around to come and get together. And he was often seen walking in the neighborhood and, you know, waving to everybody and trying to talk to everybody. But his story really is a pretty sad story. After a career as an academic in Illinois, he and his wife planned to move to Bloomington to retire. And so they bought a piece of property and built a house. And about the time they were supposed to move, his wife developed cancer and died before she ever moved here. So he came as a widower. And then has been in the town, in the community, in the neighborhood, getting to know people. And then last spring, he also developed cancer and died just this last week. And in some ways, as I read the man's obituary, he was he was one of the world's experts in a number of the things he did as a part of his profession. And it sort of made me think here is a guy that in one sense did everything he could to do did it right. He made plans. He was very good at his work. And and yet when it came to the most important things to him, he wasn't able to control. the things that he might have liked to control. So he couldn't keep his wife from dying prematurely, couldn't keep himself from dying when he came over and lived in Bloomington, and was only here about five years or so. And really, his situation is a lot like your situation and my situation, in that we would like to think that if we make the right decisions, make the right moves, we can control our lives. And the reality is that we can't. We can't. And there are things and situations that we have to deal with that we can't deal with on our own. Because we are, after all, fallen sinners, and we live in a world that's fallen. And so we are people who need help. We need redemption. And the redemption has to come from outside of ourselves. And in the book of Ruth, this little book, we have a beautiful story of not only our need for redemption, but how God fulfills and meets that need that we have for a Redeemer. And so as we start this series this morning, just looking at the prologue to the book, just the very beginning of the book, I want us to see how it does show us this, that you and I need a Redeemer and that God has sent a Redeemer for us so that we need to trust in Him. and find joy in Him. And children, if you're going to draw a picture this morning, you might just draw a picture of this family that we read about. The father and two sons and the mother as they go off to a foreign land and what happens to them. You could put that in your picture. And if the rest of you would like to follow along, I've given you an outline as an insert in the bulletin. You'll see the first thing I want us to notice is that redemption is for people like you and me. The Book of Ruth is perhaps one of the most beautiful in the Bible. Commentators and children agree on this. I was reading this to some children over the time we were gone. They love this story. It's a great story. And you've got love and loyalty and heartbreak and joy. It's just a wonderful story. It's very short. It's almost like a little play with four scenes. And it starts out in Moab in the first chapter. And then we move to a field in Judah in the second chapter. And then it's at this threshing floor at night. in the third chapter, and then the fourth chapter, the gates of the little city. Just four little scenes and this story about these people. And the story is especially beautiful when you understand the context in which this story took place. Look at verse 1 in our text. Now, it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled. This is why our Bibles put Ruth next to Judges, because this is the context. So what were the days of the Judges like? Well, turn back to Judges chapter 21 and look at verse 25. The very last verse of the book of Judges summarizes the whole book. In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. That, by the way, is not a good thing. That is not a good thing. We think today, that would be great if everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Wrong. It was a disaster. And if you read the book of Judges, what you see is this repeated cycle where the people rebel against God, doing what's right in their own eyes. God sends judgment. The people repent. God then shows mercy and delivers them from some catastrophe. And so they enjoy God's blessing. But what happens all over again? They rebel against God once again. And the cycle just gets repeated. And as you go through the book of Judges, it gets worse and worse and worse. So that the end, there's just this horrible situation that even leads to civil war and death within the land of Israel. It's a depressing situation. Really, you could describe it as a time of spiritual and moral chaos. And it's in that context that we have this story, this story of everyday life in a small Jewish town. And in some ways, the book of Ruth is really striking in terms of its ordinariness. Think about it. It's not about kings. It's not about armies. It's not about great miracles of God. It's not about empires. Not about prophets. It's about ordinary people living ordinary lives in a small, ordinary town. That's what it's about. Think about what it deals with. Getting married. Leaving home. Having children. Heartache. There's death and bereavement. Infertility. joy just the kinds of things that you and and I deal with in our lives just everyday life and maybe that's why this book is so relevant to us it's a book about regular people people like you and people like me and it's also a book about people not necessarily considered a part of God's people. And we're going to say more about this later, but obviously one of the important people in this book is Ruth, the person for whom the book is named. Ruth is a person from the land of Moab. She's an outsider. She wasn't raised in the church. She doesn't have a good family tree. And yet God is concerned about her just as he's concerned about Naomi, the woman who grew up in the covenant community. This is a book about people like you and people like me. When we were out in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, we did a little sightseeing and we went down to the downtown area and went to Independence Hall and, you know, saw the Liberty Bell and it was extremely hot. And so it was easy to sort of be forced into thinking, man, I wonder what it was like. to be here when they were writing the Declaration of Independence and going through all these things. But as I tend to do when I'm at historical sites, as I was there in Independence Hall, I'm thinking about what it would be like if I was one of those people. I never am thinking about what would it be like if I was the guy whose job it was to clean up after the horses or something like that. I'm always thinking, what would it be like to be these guys in here making the decisions? The fate of so many hangs in the balance. Are we going to form this new nation? And this happens to me whenever I go to historical things usually. I'm putting myself in the place of the movers and shakers. And then I have to remind myself, and maybe you do the same thing, that's not who I am. And I wouldn't have been one of the people in this position at all. And I'm not now. I just have a basically ordinary kind of life. But that's okay. That's okay. This book shows us God cares about people like that. Yes, the Bible tells us about great men like David and Moses. Leaders of thousands and hundreds of thousands. But it also tells us about people like Ruth and Naomi. People like you and me. Jesus told a very simple people in Matthew 10, verse 29, are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin and not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's will, but the very hairs of your head are all numbered. God does care about the ordinary. The book of Ruth is about redemption and it shows God is interested in redeeming all types of people. And that's good. Because the passage of the text also shows us that redemption is absolutely required for all types of people were introduced in this book to a little family, a man, his wife and two sons. And they're having a problem here. Did you notice that in the in the land of Bethlehem, which literally means the house of bread? That's the that's the name in the house of bread. There is no bread. There's a famine, we're told, in verse 1. And this man named Elimelech, his name means, my God is King. We have no reason to think this is not a faithful man of God. He has a decision to make. How will he feed his family? And the text tells us his decision is to take his family out of the land of Judah into the land of Moab. Now, this means going east across the Jordan River, getting to the other side, the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. That's where the land of Moab was. And he takes his family there and then he dies, we're told. And after a period of 10 years, Both his sons also die and this poor widow named Naomi is left with her two daughters-in-law. Now, the book of Ruth is fascinating in its brevity because you notice the narrator doesn't tell us anything in terms of commentary. It just tells us what happens. I don't know about you, but as I read this, I'm thinking, OK, they left to go to Moab. Was that good or was that bad? The sons married women from Moab. Was that good? Or was that bad? Elimelech died. Why? How? Malon and Kilion died. Why? How? We're not told. It doesn't tell us. But one thing we do know, that at the end of this, we're left with Naomi as a widow with no offspring. And we know that is bad. Very bad. And in the Jewish culture, a widow without children would have been seen as the neediest type of person, especially an older widow like she was. In James 1, verse 27, James says, Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. Isn't that interesting? That's true religion. visiting orphans and widows. Now, why is that the case? Because those are the people who need the most help in this type of culture. These weren't the days when a woman just goes off and enters the workforce and is able to support herself. She can't do that. And she has no children, no male children to help care for her. So she's in incredible economic peril. And she's not even living in her native land when all this happens to her. So she's in a situation where her very survival is at risk. But that's not the only problem she has. She also has the problem that her ancestral land, may have to be sold because the fact that she's now impoverished and has no mail to help work and provide means that it's quite likely they have to give up their land, their place in the promised land. And again, for us, that may not seem like a big deal, but it was a big deal. I gave you on the back of your outline a cross reference from Leviticus chapter 25. And here it's talking about the land. These families were given land by God in the promised land. The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is mine. This is God speaking. For you are strangers and sojourners with me, and in all the land of your possession you shall grant redemption of the land. If one of your brethren becomes poor and has sold some of his possession, and if his redeeming relative comes to redeem it, then he may redeem what his brother has sold. See, the book of Leviticus is pointing us to this concept of the Jubilee, when every 50 years all the debts would be forgiven. We don't know if they ever actually celebrated that. But the point was the land was important, and your peace in the land was important. So much so, that if you were forced to sell it, if it was possible, another relative could come and buy it back for you. And it wasn't just that you would have a place to live, you see, because the land represented the people's place with God. Their possession with God. Jesus picks up this language in John 14 when He says, in My Father's house there are many mansions. If it were not so, I would not have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. Each one of God's people has a place in heaven. And that's what this land was showing them, their place. And Naomi's in big trouble now without her husband and sons because she's not going to be able to keep her land. But there's something even worse than this that she's facing. And that is the extinction of her family line. Now, in my family, my dad had four sons. But his four sons have had so far seven daughters. And so while we didn't think maintaining the family name in this line of the family was going to be an issue with four sons, very quickly, it seems like that might be a real challenge. Not to put any pressure on my sister-in-law, Christy, but We remind her of this from time to time. But really, as much as I joke about this, none of us are staying awake at night, at least no one that I've talked to, staying awake at night, you know, upset about the fact that we don't have someone to carry on the family name. We just, we don't think of it that way. We understand that, yeah, that's nice, but it's not the most significant thing. But it was different in these days. And when a man died without sons, in a sense, he and his presence among the people was extinguished. This is in a time when the concept of eternal life was not as well developed. They didn't have the information that we have now in a complete Bible. And so part of your living on was through your sons. Living on. And this is so much an issue that we have what we would consider bizarre provisions in God's law. Listen to Deuteronomy 25 verses 5 and 6. If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband's brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. The first son that she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother. so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel. That's how serious this was. That in a situation where a man died without a son, his brother was supposed to marry his wife, his widow, and have a son that would be reckoned the son of the dead man to keep the name alive. So Naomi is in an absolutely desperate situation. She's lost her livelihood. She's lost her land, her place in the promised land, and she's on the verge of having the family extinguished because there are no heirs coming after her sons have died. She needs help. She has problems she cannot solve. And in this way, Naomi is just like you and me. You have problems that you cannot solve. Sometimes you face these in your economic situation. Sometimes you face these in your relationships. But you definitely face these in your spiritual life. The Bible tells us that we are all going to die and face the judgment. I've been watching some YouTube videos of an evangelist named Ray Comfort. He's a guy from New Zealand. And Ray Comfort's approach to the gospel presentation is a little different than ones that I've seen before because he thinks it's important that people hear the law. Right? Not just that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, that Jesus is therapy for you or something like that, but the law. And you wonder, well, how does that work? Well, he's got videos where he comes up to people, gang members, people they see on the street. He works in Southern California. And he asks them, do you consider yourself a good person? And everybody I've seen says, yes, in some way, yeah, basically. Not perfect, but yeah, pretty good. Well, can I ask you some questions about that? OK, sure. Well, if if if you die, are you going to go to heaven? He asked him sometimes. Well, yeah, I think so. Why? OK, you get a little understanding there. He said, well, let me ask you some questions. Do you think you're a basically good person? Have you ever told a lie? Have you ever told a lie? I haven't seen one person on these videos say, no, I have never told a lie. What happens, right? There's kind of a, well, yeah, I've told a lie. What does that make you? It makes me a liar. Yeah. Have you ever taken God's name in vain? Have you ever used God's name as a swear word? Yeah. I don't want to be a liar, so I'll tell you, yes, I have. Right? So what does that make you? A blasphemer. You ever stolen anything? Oh, no, no, never. Not even anything little that you've taken that wasn't yours? Well, yes. What does that make you? A thief. Now, if God is going to judge you based on His standard, which is the Ten Commandments, are you going to be guilty or innocent? These people say, I'm going to be guilty. And so, if God as a just judge has to send you to heaven or to hell, Where is God going to send you? And you can see people on these videos saying, God should send me to hell. When he approaches it that way. Every single one of us needs a Redeemer. We have a problem that we cannot solve. And that problem is our sin. And God is a righteous judge. And God will judge sin. And He will send sinners to hell. That's what His Word tells us. Redemption is absolutely required. And by showing us Naomi's plight, that's what this book is telling you. Redemption is required in your life as well. But this book also shows us that redemption is completely God's work. It's completely God's work. We might be tempted to read the book of Ruth and say, you know, this is the story of two plucky widows who are resourceful and they put their resources together and they're able to snag a man and solve all their problems and live happily ever after. I mean, if you look at it, they're really only three primary characters in the whole book. There's Ruth. There's Naomi, and then there's Boaz, who's going to come and help them. I'm sorry if I'm ruining the story for you. But that's it. God is hardly mentioned. I mean, He's mentioned, the people refer to Him, but He's not mentioned as doing anything or saying anything. And yet, that's what this book is really about. It's really about God. redeeming people who cannot redeem themselves. Let's think for a minute what Naomi's efforts at redemption have produced. Naomi, with her husband Elimelech, decided that the way to save the family from impending starvation was to go to Moab. Now, I said before that the narrator doesn't comment on this. So how do we evaluate that decision? We evaluate it by comparing it to the rest of Scripture. It's called the analogy of faith, right? We compare Scripture with Scripture. What does the rest of Scripture say about leaving the promised land to live in Moab? It says that's not a good idea. Because in Moab, the people worship a God called Chimash, and who sometimes requires child sacrifice. The promised land was given to the people as a sign of heaven and God's presence with them. And they left that to go to Moab, a place that hated God, the true God, and did not worship him. In fact, I gave you a quotation from Deuteronomy 23. It says something fascinating about the land of Moab. It says no Ammonite or Moabite or any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, even down to the tenth generation, for they did not come out to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt. And they hired Balaam, the son of Baor, from Pether and Aram Naharim to pronounce a curse on you. However, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam, but turn the curse into a blessing for you because the Lord loves you. Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them as long as you live. God was not sort of wishy-washy on Moab. Moab was a place that had been born out of Lot's incestuous relationship with one of his daughters. And they were seen as enemies of the people of God. But this is Naomi's solution. Let's go. Let's go to Moab. Her effort at redemption results in the loss of her whole family. Now, you might be saying, well, certainly this was all a limolex idea. Naomi just had to go along because, you know, in those days, a woman didn't have much say. I don't think so. Because what does the text tell us? It says they stayed there for 10 years after a limelight was dead. Naomi tries to solve her problem another way, let's let my sons marry women from Moab. Now, the narrator doesn't evaluate that, but can we evaluate that? Were they supposed to marry pagans? No, they weren't. Even if the idea of raising up children was good, doing it that way was not good. Naomi tries to save herself and the result is disaster. There are no grandchildren. And in fact, there's no husband and there's no children either. Naomi's problem. is one that she, in some ways, has created. And this isn't to say that whenever we have these struggles in life, it's because we did something wrong. God is sovereign over these things in our lives, but the book of Ruth is showing us something important, which is that you cannot solve the problem yourself. You cannot solve your need for redemption by your own efforts. And this is a huge challenge that we have to wrestle with every day of our lives. You do not save yourself. I'm reading a book by Michael Horton called Christless Christianity. I may have referred to it before, and it's an analysis of the church in our country, which shows in stunning detail that all branches of the church, no matter what side that you're on. This concept of saving ourselves has grown in and Jesus is just there to help out. Jesus is to be our example. Jesus is to give us encouragement. And it doesn't matter if you're on the liberal side of the spectrum, where salvation is through social activity, social justice and helping people with needs, or if you're on the more conservative side of the spectrum, where salvation is through having your best life now, Right? Or deepening your prayer life or following seven steps to this or that. It's all different forms of the same thing. Trying to save ourselves. And Horton's book is pretty challenging in terms of pointing us to the fact that the good news of the Gospel is that God has saved people. That God has brought redemption through the Lord Jesus Christ. And the book of Ruth helps us see this. Naomi has made a wreck of her life. And despite that fact, God does send a Redeemer to save her and to rescue her, which is what He's done for all of us. You may have made decisions in your life that really affected your life in a negative way. And yet, God sends Jesus Christ to come and take those sins upon Himself, to give you His righteousness, to redeem you from the products of your works and your efforts. And this book is showing us that, dramatically showing us. Our faith has to be in the Redeemer that God sends to save us. And because God is the one who does the work of redemption, we have to recognize our need for redemption and we have to embrace and trust the Redeemer that He has sent. This passage we read ends with a little glimmer of hope in verses 6 and 7. She arose with her daughters-in-law that she might return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited His people by giving them bread. What should they have done when famine hit the land? Hey, it's a cycle of judges, right? It's pretty obvious. If judgment comes, repent and seek the Lord and He delivers. And they didn't do that. They ran away. They tried to solve the problem themselves. But here's God graciously visiting His people. And that word visit is actually a word that's pregnant with meaning. The word in the Greek version of the Old Testament is the word from which we get Episcopalian. It's Episcopus. The verb form of that. God visits His people. It's the same word that Zacharias uses when he praises God for visiting His people in Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary. God comes to visit His people and to give them bread. This is what they need. And so in God's providence, Naomi, we're told in verse 7, returns. She goes back to God's people and God's land. And it's very interesting. Some commentators view Naomi as a sort of prodigal daughter who's left and been wiped out. And now God's bringing her back. Sinclair Ferguson commenting on this Book says, in this way, God is saying to us, this is the kind of God I am. This is the kind of thing I do. And this is precisely what you may expect me to do in your lives, too. Trust me, I know exactly what I'm doing. Have you realized you need a Redeemer? Not just once, but every day of your life. that you can't solve your problems on your own. You realize God sent the Redeemer to rescue you in the person of Jesus Christ. He asks you to put your trust in Him and to rest in Him. It's counter-cultural. The idea in our culture is if you need redemption, what do you do? You go and get it. I was watching a show just last week about the guys in the military. And the commander in this particular group of soldiers did something that was just awful. And later in this show, he himself, his life is on the line. And he's saying over and over again, I betrayed my men, I cannot be forgiven. I betrayed my men, I cannot be forgiven. And what he had done was literally unforgivable among soldiers. And yet, at the end of the story, he was forgiven. Even he knew he shouldn't be forgiven, but he was. Why was he forgiven? Well, because he risked his life to save somebody else. And isn't that the way we like to think of how redemption works? Yes, I've done some bad things, but if I just do enough good things, I'll make up for those bad things and we'll weigh the scales. And if the balance tips in my favor, I have redemption. And this beautiful little story of the book of Ruth flies in the face of all of that and shows us, you know what? Your best efforts are worthless. The Bible calls your best efforts filthy rags before God. That's your best stuff. The best stuff you have before the Lord will get you nowhere. And God says, I'm going to send the Redeemer and I'm going to take care of your problem. And you're going to know true redemption. Redemption not based on what you do, but based on what the Redeemer has done for you. And that's the message of the book of Ruth. You and I need a Redeemer. You've got to trust in the Redeemer that God has sent, the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for this little book You've put in the Bible. It just seems like a nice little story. And yet we see here pictured for us graphically some very important truths about who you are and who we are. Lord, we're no different from Naomi, a woman who sought to solve her problems in her own way and in her own strength. We recognize just like she came to recognize she couldn't do it. We pray, Lord, for your work in our lives, that we would understand we're utterly dependent upon You, that we need the Redeemer that You sent from heaven to save us. We need the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray that we would not only trust and love Him for our salvation, we would trust and love Him for the way we live our lives every single day, that You would give us the grace we need to live in faith and hope because of what Jesus has done for us. And we pray this all in His name, Amen.