Lessons From the Book of Ruth, Part 1

Good to be with you today. Enjoyed the drive over. I think I should have brought my motorcycle driving through my last little bit of road. So nice. I love country roads. That's so much more fun than riding in the city. And safer, too. Except you hit a deer. I guess that could do it. Actually, I saw yesterday when I was driving, I saw a giant buck, about a 12-point. That's the biggest rack I've seen here in Ohio. It was really nice. But I'm sure it'll come hunting season. No one will be able to find it. But that's probably how it got that big.

I'm going to cover the book of root today, but I'm going to do a little background in setting the book up for you. It's interesting. I gave this as a sermon, actually, a couple years ago. The students, since a lot of ABC students there, I thought they'd covered it, but I found out they didn't know that much time to cover all the books. Again, trying to cover the whole Bible in nine months is a challenge, and they enjoyed it. So I turned it into a class, which I generally give when the class is out.

I visit another church. I give it to them so it doesn't take class time, because it's almost impossible to cover everything. Since a lot of our faculty go out to the church areas and visit, I'll set the market down, and I gave it here so I don't give it again to you. But we go out and do that.

So I do it for them, because church is a classroom, so to speak, too. I think Ruth has a lot to offer to all of us in the way it's written and who the people are and the players. We often wonder why God calls us and why God does what He does. I've asked why God calls me. In fact, my biggest problem is the child, because back in the fifties and sixties we didn't have a full understanding of 1 Corinthians 7, where it says, you're redeemed through your parents.

So I heard all the stories in the fifties of the people that came in by hearing the radio program in the middle of the night, or playing Truth in the Trash Can, or all these wonderful stories people had. I kept wondering what my story would be because I grew up with the truth. Did God really want me? I didn't have anything special to point to, because in my case I went to Imperial Schools for 12 years, which was the church's grade in high school, and I went to Ambassador College. All I learned was the truth. For me, the calling was a little different. Of course, in 1974, when we started understanding a bit more in 1 Corinthians 7, how you're sanctified by the believing spouse.

If one of your parents has God's Spirit, then you have the option of choosing to accept the truth and go in. So it's a different thing. I know we have some second generation here as well. You wonder about that. If you're born in the church and you're like me, if you weren't, then you're more like my wife. My wife couldn't be here today. My son-in-law is visiting. He's over 20 some accounting and the CPU credits. He leaves this afternoon, so she stayed there with him. In her case, she didn't know anything about the church when God called her.

Her story is unique in the sense that she was Lutheran. Again, Lutherans are basically rebellious Catholics. They don't have much different other than that. Week after week, she would ask the minister to explain the Trinity to her. This three-in-one thing didn't bother her. It didn't make any sense. It still doesn't make any sense. Finally, he got so frustrated with her that he just said it's a mystery. He just accepted on faith. She didn't want to accept his faith.

She had some friends who were Baptists, actually. They had a real good youth group and things. They were fun people and nice. She went to the Baptist Church. It was one of the altar call things in the evening. She actually went up the altar call and gave her heart to the Lord. Then they were going to baptize him all the next day. That night, she went home and said, I have no idea what I'm doing.

She called the minister the next morning and said, I'm not coming. I don't understand what this is all about. She didn't get baptized at that time with them. She kept searching. She was graduating from high school and was going to go to college. It was at this time in her life that she was trying to figure out where to go to college.

Her father, the year before, worked for Bendicks for 19 years. He had been the 101st Airborne. He worked as a policeman in New York for a few years. They worked for Bendicks and were laying him off. He had to find another career. He didn't have much money to pay for college.

They were concerned about the 60s that had just finished. We were in the early 70s, and the morality and drugs and things were a problem. They wanted a school to go to, but they didn't have money to send her to some of the private schools. It was right about this time that her grandmother came into the church and had gotten an envoy. She sent the envoy over to the family.

Here's this beautiful envoy with all these wonderful young people. It's a Christian college. They even liked it because she was going to Texas and they had the dairy and the farm there. They were willing to help foods and organics and things, even back then. This looked like a wonderful place to go. She flew down to college with her father because she had accepted.

The funny thing is, her grandmother, the envoy didn't say anything about the Sabbath Holy Days, and her grandmother didn't say anything about it. The two ministers that came to visit her accepted or didn't say anything about it. She came down there and flew in with her dad. They went to see the campus. It was funny because when they visited the campus, Mr. Armstrong was there and his son Ted Armstrong. He didn't know who anybody was necessarily, except he knew Mr. Armstrong was the chancellor of the college. He has the camera to Ted Armstrong and asked me to take a picture of him and Mr.

Armstrong, which was kind of embarrassing. Everybody else was concerned because it wasn't quite the appropriate thing to do in the sense of a lot of people's minds. He had the picture. Then he went out and found out that she was staying in these little metal booths because they said she's in B.C. number whatever it is. They didn't know what B.C. stood for. So then they went out and heard, I think you're staying in one of these little booths, which she was. She was in a little booth. It was interesting because he left and she was there.

Then Friday night everybody left. She went to where they went and found out they had a Bible study on Friday night and a church on Sabbath. She called home and told her parents that she wouldn't be coming over for Christmas, which they had planned on. They said, why? Isn't it a Christian school? Yes, but they don't keep Christmas. They keep those Feast of Tabernacles things in two weeks. How long are they out? They're out for two weeks.

What do you do during that two weeks? What do you eat? They said, they gave me $20 and told me to go beg for food out in the piney woods. You got lots of food out there at the time. Everybody camping in the woods in Big Sandy. For all the old timers, you're laughing at the kids if you had to be there to know that. She survived the Feast very well and didn't come home for Christmas.

She knew God was calling her. She knew that that's where she should be. God knows who he calls and why he calls them. When we look at the book of Ruth and we think of that, we think, why did God bring Ruth into the family of Israel? What was the purpose there? I think that's something we can look at when we look at our calling and why God wants us.

Traditionally, the Jewish people read the book of Ruth around Pentecost. It's a good reason for that. Turn to Leviticus 23, if you would, and we can see what the feast says there. Several things happen on Pentecost. Tradition says that Noah offered his offering after he came out of the Ark on Pentecost, which makes some sense. Tradition says that Mount Sinai, the Tenkamam, which were given on Pentecost as well. They're all great events planned by God, and I have no reason to think that's not historically true. When you look at the calendar of the flood and the things on Pentecost, it travels.

But it's interesting that they read the book of Ruth around Pentecost because it occurs at the time of the harvest, the time of the first fruits, the feast of weeks. Leviticus 23, verse 15, it says, "...you shall count unto you from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the wave-sheaf offering. The seventh Sabbath shall be complete. Even to the morrow after the seventh Sabbath you shall number fifty days, and you shall offer a new meat offering to the Lord." Now, it's interesting, though.

In verse 22, it says, "...and when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not make clean riddance of the corners of your field when you reap. Neither shall you gather any gleaning of your harvest." Now, leave it out there on the corners.

"...You shall leave them to the poor and to the stranger. I am the Lord your God." Again, that's another reason Ruth is read at Pentecost, because Ruth was a gleaner. She had to glean in this story, and you've read that before. And again, it was a time when the first-right grains are coming out, and they cut those grains and waved them before God, and then they could begin the harvest at that time.

Of course, it's the first fruits. God calls His people the first fruits. You read that in James 1.18, where it says of His own will He begat us a type of first fruits. So there's a symbology between the old and the new, and you learn that from that. In Revelation 14.4, we also learn that we're redeemed from among men, being the first fruits to God. It says that there. You can read that later in verse 4, chapter 14. And so we are special to God, because He's harvesting us, His first fruits as well as that. But God has a description in Leviticus, the Feast of Weeks, with the instructions to leave the corners of your field for the poor. Everyone is included in the Feast of Weeks. Everyone.

The poor and the stranger. So Ruth is read at this Feast. It's a wonderful little book about a love and a kindness that we often don't see, and then the redemption of that as well. It shows a lot of the laws of the Old Covenant in that book, the things that Israel had to do. But it truly describes the New Covenant, when you really understand it and look at it, and the promises that God gives to us as Christians. It's about redemption, being redeemed. Just as Christ is our Redeemer, we read that.

And as you read the book, I want you to look at God's hand in Ruth's life. Look at it like a movie in your head, where you see it. And not only Ruth's life, but in the life of Naomi, the life of Boaz, and all those around. And also, think about how God worked in your life, the things that happened. If you wonder if they happened by chance, or did God actually do a lot of things in your life that you don't know about?

Just as I believe He has in mind as well. So God is dealing with her, and you have to see how He deals, and that they don't necessarily understand it. And as you read it, it should bring encouragement to you, especially if you've gone through trials, and all of us do. Things happen, hardships, various things. And so, you should think about that and see that not everything is as it appears. The historical setting of Ruth is around 1100 BC. It's a time period of the Judges. The Judges period, if you've read that, the different stories, which we've all read of them as children, Samson, Gideon, the various deliverers that God gave.

We know that Israel seemed to repent, and then get close to God. God was sent a deliverer. Then they would, usually about every 40 years, they would go back into sin, and then be taken captive again, and then another deliverer would come. And they would just back and forth, back and forth. So there were things that happened where there's major suffering that they had. They'd call on God, and He would deliver them. And it's a special time, and we see Ruth is born during that time, and the book is set in that setting. Ruth is very interesting for a number of reasons.

The most unusual reason is that, ethnically, Ruth was a mulbitist. She was a foreigner. She was not an Israelite. She's distantly related to them through Lot. And again, we'll look at how she's related, because Lot was Abraham's nephew. We see where the Moabites came from. In fact, in Genesis 19, we'll read about the Moabites there, because if you know the story of Abraham, you know that Lot needs separated.

Of course, you had the Sodom Gomorrah, and Lot lived in the city. And Abraham lived up in the mountains. He let Lot choose, and Lot chose the easy way, which often we do, and the easy way often turns out to be the hard way spiritually. And so God was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and set the two angels to Lot. He told them to leave town. He left town, of course. He and his wife and two daughters, the other children he had, did not leave. And, of course, his wife looked back longingly and turned into a pillar of salt.

And there's a big salt wall along the Dead Sea now that they call Lot's wife, which isn't Lot's wife, but it's a lot of salt in that area. But it's interesting, because the daughters then went with their family and went out to a small town of Zor, and they were afraid that nobody was there.

If you look at the story in Genesis 19.36, we read about them getting their father drunk. I don't know if they thought there were no more men left on the earth, or if everything was destroyed, but they were going to raise up seed to their father. It says that this seed be preserved. In verse 36, and again, what happened is they got him drunk, and the first night the older daughter went into him and conceived.

And the next night the younger daughter went in, and he was drunk and conceived. And so in verse 36, we read, so both daughters and Lot were with child by their father. So it was incest. The first borest son, and called his name Moab, the father of the Moabites to this day. The younger also borest son, and called his name Ben Ami. He's the father of the sons of Ammon to this day. And so we see that the genetics of Ruth and the genealogy is not that good.

That's not something most people want to have in their family. Most people don't go advertise, hey, my great-great-grandfather fathered me through his daughter. That isn't something you'd like to talk about very much. We read Moromova in Numbers 25.1.

If you go to Numbers 25.1, you'll see that another problem with Moab, again, not too good a light here. It says in verse 1, that Israel lived in Shittim, and the people began to fornicate with the daughters of Moab. Now that's not a good thing to do. And they called the people to the sacrifice their gods. So not only did they commit immorality, but they were sacrificing to the wrong gods.

And the people ate and bowed down to the gods. So Israel joined himself to Baal-Pior, and the anger of God was kindled against Israel. So again, Ruth didn't grow up worshiping the God of Israel, and she had a pretty tough genealogy to overcome as far as her history in that. And so that makes Ruth kind of unusual. Also, Ruth, the setting of the book of Ruth is in Bethlehem. And Bethlehem, of course, is where David and Jesse were and where Christ was born. And so the history there of Christ our dear, being born there as well, makes it unique as well. So Ruth, we say, was a foreigner. She had Moabites, and her name is mentioned 12 times in the book. Five times it's not just Ruth, but Ruth the Moabites. Or it talks about a foreigner. She refers to herself as a foreigner. And it's very specific about that through the book. That her non-Israelite heritage is stressed. And you may wonder, you know, why? So her status was that of an alien, a stranger, not one of the covenant people. And yet it's a book in the Bible, and God brought her there.

So we see that her heritage is stressed in this thing. Constantly reminding chapter 2, it's mentioned about five or six times, that she's not an Israelite. She doesn't come under the covenant. And why? Why was she not under the covenant? Okay, let's look a little more at the history of Moab, and you'll even ask more questions of why Ruth's in the Bible.

If you turn to Deuteronomy 23, we have people that are excluded from the congregation of Israel.

So if you go to Deuteronomy 23, and we'll read verses 3 through 6 here, it says in verse 3, "...an Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the Lord forever." Why? Verse 4, "...because they did not meet you with bread and water on the road when you came out of Egypt. Because they hired against you Balaam, the son of Beor from Pithor of Mesopotamia, to curse you." Remember, you asked him to curse him, and God wouldn't let him? Nevertheless, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam, but the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you. Because the Lord your God loves you, you shall not seek their peace, nor their prosperity, all the days forever. Okay, so how did Ruth get into Israel? You've got to ask that. It seems kind of funny. My wife, it was interesting, she got to read her transcript when she was transferred to Pasadena. Dr. Torrance was registered and gave her her file. And she read in her file, said she was part Gentile. Now, she didn't know what that meant at all. She was struggling just to stay in college, because she had no biblical background at all, which most of the students there came from church families and did. But she didn't know which parts were Gentile, arms, legs, whatever it was. And she came to me and asked me what that meant. And then she asked me, do I have to find somebody to marry this part Gentile? And I said, no, because I wanted her. But, which was true, also. Both of them, she didn't have to marry Gentile, and I did want her.

But, you know, and she didn't know she was insulted by that at the time. But I explained to her all the tribes of Israel. She's a quarter French, quarter English, a quarter Italian, a quarter German. So she was kind of the war put together there. But it was interesting. She was part Gentile and like Ruth, she was a Gentile as well. But God accepted Ruth. And by the end of the book, she's lauded and praised. And she's also praised because she's the ancestor of David, David to come from, or the greatest king of Israel and also Christ. And it's fondly mentioned, not only in the Old Testament in the book, but also in Christ's genealogy in Matthew 1. It mentions three women in his genealogy and their Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah the Hittite. It doesn't mention Bathsheba by name because that was kind of an awkward situation. But it's interesting. It talks Rahab and Ruth are both by name right there in that. And so, so yes, the question then why was Ruth able to come into the congregation of Israel? Because it wasn't 10 generations yet for that Ruth was written. And it wasn't that. And it said forever and all these things that you see. So let's go to Ruth now, the book of Ruth, and let's actually look at it with that background. And so in Ruth 1, again, the book's about kindness. We have a word that works in English for unkind people. They're called Ruth-less. And that only works in English. It doesn't work in the other languages, but it's kind of fun that we have that. And I'm not sure what the roots of that is, but it certainly fits. So verse 1, it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem Judah wanted to dwell in the country of Moab. He, his wife, and his two sons. Okay. Why? Why was there this famine in the land? Again, the times of the judges, there were all sorts of things happen. Israel would turn from God. God would send famines. He would send armies, different things. And he did those other disasters to bring people back to him. And so we see that they left because of the famine. Now, did God allow this famine? Did he cause it to happen? It doesn't really say exactly, but it's kind of like my grandmother's envoy that she brought over there. Is that a chance or not? You can't really prove some of these things, but you look at it. And it seems he wanted this history to be written.

So it seems that he had caused the family to a famine in the land, so a limon like in his family would move to Moab. In verse 2, the name of the man was Elimelech. And the name means God is king. It's kind of interesting. The name of his wife was Naomi. And Naomi means prosperity or sweetness.

You know, pleasant name. The name of his two sons were Malon and Chileon. They were Ephrathites of Bethlehem Judah, and they came into the country of Moab and continued there.

In verse 3, Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died and she was left and her two sons. Now, I can relate to that. My dad died when I was three and a half years old, and my mom had the two of us as kids.

And we were told to move to Big Sandy, so my mom did that because the widows were all down there. So that's why she went. And so in verse 4, we see now that she has her two sons. But the two sons took wives of the women of Moab. The name of the one was Orpah, the name of the other, Ruth.

And they dwelt there about 10 years. They were there for about a decade. And what happened in those 10 years? Verse 5, Malon and Chileon died, both of them. And the woman was left of her two sons and her husband. Again, she's probably thinking it was a curse of Moab or what caused this? You know, who knows what she thought at that time. And it doesn't say how they died either, whether it was a disease or whatever. So now they're left with just the women. Verse 6, Then Naomi rose with her daughters-in-law that she might return from the country of Moab.

Why is she returning? Because she heard in the country of Moab that the Lord, the covenant God, Yahweh, YHVAs, the tetragrammaton, or Jehovah, or whichever way that's pronounced, had visited His people by giving them bread. So now the famine's over. And so they'd say, hey, I'll go back to my country. Because she knew about the laws in the country and she could probably be taken care of.

So it seems God seemed to have caused this famine and now brought back prosperity in the land so that Naomi would and her family would be moving back. Again, her family with just her and her two daughters-in-law, but not any sons, minus all the men. And so God seemed to be working this out.

Again, God worked out things in your life, possibly in similar ways, but you don't know it. They certainly didn't know it at this time. In verse 7, she went out of the place where she was, her two daughters-in-law with her, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah.

In verse 8, Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, Go, return each of you to your mother's house. May God deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. So what she's doing here is she's asking God to bless them. They've dealt kindly to her. They've helped her. They've been with her. They've had a loyalty to her. And because they'd done what is right before God and man and their husbands, and she's trying to put a blessing on them. They'd done what was right, and she wants God to bless them for that. And she doesn't have anything to offer them, so go back to your homes. In verse 9, she says, May God grant that you may find rest, each in the house of her husband. And she kissed them, and they lifted up their voice, and they wept. So this is a woman scene, everybody weeping, crying, which you tend to do there.

And they're wondering what they should do, and she wants them to find rest. She wants them to find husbands. That's what you'd want for your daughters-in-law. They'd be good to you. You want them to find someone. And they said to her, Surely we'll return with you to your people.

Well, she's probably thinking, you know, you return to my people, you're Moab's. You're probably not going to be accepted too well, because, you know, the thing that was said in Deuteronomy. But she says, No, turn again, my daughters. Why will you go with me? Are there yet sons in my womb that they may be your husbands? Now, if I can have more babies for you so they can grow up. Verse 12, Turn again, my daughters. I am too old to have a husband. And if I should, if I should have hope, you know, I'll be like Sarah. If I should have a husband tonight, and bare sons, would you wait for them till they were grown? I mean, you're going to spend the next 20 years waiting for somebody to grow up if I even got pregnant tonight and had a son.

So it's a problem. Are you going to shut yourselves up not to have a husband?

No, my daughters. For it makes me very sad for your sakes that the hand of God has gone out against me.

Okay, she's thinking that God's gone against her here. That's her thoughts. And that's what we think sometimes. Something to happen is bad. Oh, God's against me.

Okay, but that wasn't what God was thinking. Verse 14, they lifted up their voice and wept again, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. And so Orpah decided to go. And she says, Naomi says, Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods.

Return after your sister-in-law. Go back with her. She's doing the right thing. The senator asked if my wife was in college, her first semester. She had a Catholic friend named Mary Bop. I'm not sure what ever happened to her. But she and Michelle would have their own Bible studies on Friday night. And this Catholic girl didn't really believe anything was right. And finally she said, Michelle, she says, Do you know what they're saying here, don't you? They're saying that all these other churches are wrong and they're right.

And Michelle said, Yeah, that's what they're saying. And she said, Did you believe that? She said, Yes, I believe that. And so it was interesting because Mary actually had come to college ever because her boyfriend from back home had come to college a couple of years earlier. And she came to college and found out her boyfriend had a new girlfriend, which didn't expect her to follow her to college because she had no church background at all either.

And so she left and she told all the roommates like that, Make sure Michelle doesn't leave. She says, Michelle believes this stuff and she might be homesick and she might miss me in our studies, but you make sure she stays here. And it was interesting to watch her leave. And again, my wife, she followed all the rules. She came there. They didn't tell her any of the dress codes or anything. She came with miniskirts and then they had a forum on clothes and said, You can't have anything that's that short. And she'd already sewed trim and stuff on them. And then everything she could. She only had, I think it was two or three dresses she could wear. And she went home and was throwing them all away because they said that. And, okay, that's what you're supposed to do. And then her roommate came in and said, This is ridiculous. And talked to the student body president. And then she got permission to slowly weed them out because basically she was willing. She said, If I'm going to wear two clothes, two dresses, all I have, fine. So it's kind of unusual. But she got to weed them out, which made most of the girls upset because they didn't get to wear miniskirts. But that's another thing. Such is life. Test all of our attitudes. So again, we have a wonderful example here of Ruth, at her conversion. What's going on? She wanted to follow Naomi. She wanted to learn about her gods and do that. In verse 16, here's what she says. Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave you. Quit asking me to go back. I'm not going to. So don't entreat me not to leave you or turn back from following after you. For where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people. Your God, my God. Where you die, I will die. And there will I be buried.

And now she gives an oath. Listen to this. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death, parts you and me. And when she saw that she was determined to go with her, then Naomi quit speaking to her about it. Interesting. How determined she was. Kind of like Jacob wrestling with God all night. I'm not going to quit until you bless me, even though I put his hip out of joint.

So here we got Ruth, a woman. Now, she couldn't be circumcised into the congregation of Israel.

But what she did was she made an oath that your God is my God. She renounced all her gods. She renounced her people. And she's saying that she would follow Naomi wherever she went.

Now, if you look at Naomi, Naomi is a type of the church, in a sense. Your people, meaning all the members of the church, will be my people. I've left my people. I've taken your people as mine, she's saying. And most importantly, your God is my God. They'll be one and the same.

She renounced everything that she stood for before. Verse 19, That's what God did. Why? So why are you calling me pleasant? It's not what happened. We tend to see things that way. And we think that. And God doesn't necessarily tell us any differently. When my dad died, it's interesting, my mom came into the church. She was listening to the radio program. And my father was in construction. And he wasn't interested in the Sabbath or the religion. He was a good man. Everybody liked him. But he didn't want anything to do with the church, necessarily. And he actually had a stroke and was supposed to die. He played a lot of football and sports in college and high school. So I think that was part of it. But he had a stroke. And the doctor said he's going to die. He hardly moved or anything. And my mom started praying for him, asked for anointing and things. And the rest of the family, the dean side of the family, he had four other brothers and a sister in the family. And they made fun of her, mocked her for praying. He's going to die. He can't come out of this thing. And so my mother actually kind of got disowned out of this whole episode from that side of the family. So I never really knew that side of my family very much. But it was interesting because after a few weeks, God healed him. And he went back to work. Kind of shocked everybody. But then two years later, he gets killed in a construction accident. And they thought it was a murder. They had a murder trial because he was run over by a crane. Those big balling cranes that go three miles an hour maximum speed. And so they had a trial. They took all the pictures of him. I don't have hardly any pictures of my father, even because it all went to the course somewhere in Pennsylvania, maybe in that same storage warehouse where Indiana Jones and the Ark is. I don't know, but somewhere there. But it was interesting. I'm sure my mom thought, why did you heal him just to have him die a couple years later?

I mean, it strengthened her faith having him healed, but certainly shook her a little when he died and left her with the most two kids. So you can understand how Naomi felt when she's saying these things. In verse 22, in root chapter 1, it says, "'So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabidus," again, not just Ruth, but Ruth the Moabidus, her daughter-in-law with her, "'who returned from the country of Moab. Now they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.'" So we're getting the time sitting there. Again, the barley harvest begins right after the wave sheaf offering is made, the day after the Sabbath and the days unleavened bread.

And they cut the wave sheaf, they offered it, and only after that could they harvest. So we know when the time frame of this is right after Pentecost, when she's coming back. So Ruth and Naomi returned to Israel right at that time. Now we're coming to chapter 2. We're going to be introduced to Boaz, Ruth's Redeemer. Again, a type of Christ, our Redeemer. You see the parallels here. In root chapter 2, in verse 1, it says, "'There was a relative of Naomi's husband, a man of great wealth, of the family of Elimelech," again, Elimelech meaning God is king, and his name is Boaz, which means in him is strength.

So Ruth the Moavites, and again, here we are, Ruth the Moavites, not just Ruth, said to Naomi, "'Please let me go to the field and glean heads of grain after him and whose sight I may find favor.' She doesn't know where she's going to go glean, but she's going to go gleaning because they need food, and that's part of the law of the Lamb. So she's going to go out in the field, and she's going to try to find someone's favor and glean and get grain for her and Naomi so they can feed themselves. And she doesn't have a plan necessarily other than to go out looking. And Naomi says to her, "'Go, my daughter,' and then Ruth left and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers." In verse 3, "'And she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz of the family of Al-Amalek.'" Now, it's interesting. It says, "'She happened upon.'" Did she really chance on Boaz's field? Again. Do you really know? God has liked that a lot of times. He's actually directing something, but you don't know it. And you can't really know what he's doing in your life, necessarily, sometimes. But you know that he says he has a purpose in you, and he's going to fulfill that purpose. So you have to look at it, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. You have to look at it the way he does. He often deals with us. So here, the very first day that she goes out to Glane, she winds up in whose field? Boaz's field. She winds up in Christ's field. God seemed to be working with this woman to bring these two people together. Again, Boaz is the type of Christ which ends up redeeming her. And I think God wants us to learn something from this book, from all this, the way he laid things out. This line of David that was going to come. The line in which Christ was going to come from these two. You know, we read in John 6, 44, I heard that often, Mr. Armstrong quoted a lot, no man can come to me except the Father who sent me draws him.

And God does draw things, and he does it in ways that we don't know.

Your calling is a special. Out of the millions of people, he called you. And he called me. He called my mom, my wife. Now, again, God doesn't just call out and say, Hi, hey, I'm God. Please come over here and join me. I mean, that's not the way I was called. And I doubt the way you were called either. I've not heard voices, at least not without a person there.

But I don't think these are random acts that God does at random acts in Ruth's life, or in yours or mine, these things that happened to us. Just like I don't think Michelle's grandmother's envoy was a random act in that sense, because it led to a whole series of events that led her a totally different direction than she would have gone on her own. And so if you have God's Spirit, God is probably doing things in your life that you don't recognize as such. And in this case, with Ruth and Boaz, King David's going to come, and Christ is coming. And I don't think it was a random meeting. I think God was actually working to bring these two people together. And so now we start noticing the things that Boaz is doing for Ruth that we see here. So in verse 4, Now behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and he said to the reapers, The Lord be with you. It's interesting. Of course, Emmanuel needs God with us. Of course, Christ is going to come from this union. Verse 5, Boaz said to his servant, who was in charge of the reapers, Whose young woman is this? He's asking, Who is this hot-glaining? He didn't know who it was. So the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered and said, It's the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab.

Again, you always see this Moab thrown in there all the time. So it's interesting, too, we see that the servant was in charge of the reapers. And so he had someone in charge.

Boaz has people in charge. Leaders are necessary, whether for physical gleaning like that or for the spiritual health of the church. Oftentimes, we don't see things that way. But again, we need that for the congregation. And Moab divides this again. She's not an Israelite. She says in verse 7, Please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.

Again, her humility shows out here because she's asking for the lowest position. I mean, the lowest position there, the gleaning on the corner of the field is for the poor and the stranger and whatever. And so it's kind of like us being asked, don't take the chief seat, take the lowest seat. So you know that. This shows Ruth's character in a sense. She's saying, Please, can I just glean on the corners of your field? Can I just be one of the poor and the stranger and just pick up some scraps along the way? And so that's what she asked for, the lowest seat. And again, you know, she's even going after the reapers a little bit. Nothing said they could go after the reapers. It was just the corners usually they could do. But she's asking, you know, for help. So she came and continued from morning till now, it says. And it says she rested for a little while. And so she was a hard worker. She was working from from morning until the evening.

It's interesting. You know, my wife in college, she had to work really hard to study. I didn't have to study hardly at all in college because I'd already had all the classes in Imperial High School because all the staff from the faculty of the college taught Imperial. And I had classes five days a week and they only had them three days a week. So I didn't have to do much. But Michelle, she knew nothing. In fact, she almost failed out. Very intelligent. She even took her SATs and took some Latin SATs and different things. But she never studied the Bible. So her first year in college, she had great grades in all the non-biblical classes and had no idea what was going on in the Bible classes. But she was willing to learn. And again, whatever it took to do with her, when she went back home that summer, her parents lined up a job for her that paid a lot of money so she could afford to go back to college. And it worked on the Sabbath. She said, now I won't do that. And they said, fine, you're on your own. We're not going to help you. And she ended up taking three jobs to make enough money to come back. And even then, she didn't have enough to come back. She had to actually get a loan. A man in the church actually had a gym. It was one of her jobs at night. She did some aerobic classes and things. And he offered if her grandmother would co-sign that he'd get a loan for. Another lady there that applied for college three or four years in a row had been turned down and offered her money to go to college, too, which really shocked Michelle. She didn't take it. But the fact that someone would give their money for you to go have this opportunity. And so, hard work. And again, God's calling and you're saying things. He expects you to do some work to understand that. So she'd been diligently working all day long with just a little rest that says there. And so that was it. So verse 8, Boaz says to Ruth, Do you not hear my daughter? Do not go glean in another field.

Neither go away from here, but stay close by my maidens. So he's telling her now to stay close by his maidens that are there. Boaz is saying, Hear me. Listen. And what did Christ continually tell his disciples and tell us at the church? To listen. To listen. Again, here we have a type of Christ saying, Listening, my daughter. Again, my Christ, he said, my sheep, hear my voice.

And Ruth was willing to listen, willing to hear. Verse 9, Let your eyes be on the fields that they reap and go after them. Have I not commanded the young men that they should not touch you?

And when you're thirsty, go to the vessels and drink of that which the young men have drawn. Okay, so don't go elsewhere. Just stay right there and help yourself with what they're picking up.

So Ruth is telling her, Don't glean another field. Just stay close by my servants. Now again, I don't know if there was a protection factor in there as well, what would happen to her being a Moabites in other areas. But he doesn't want her eyes to be on any of the fields, but the fields that his reapers are in. And again, we're supposed to take close to God and Christ. Just like Boaz is a psych stick close to my people. We stay close in fellowship with God's people. And also he says, When you're thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from the young men of Dron. I'm giving you water. Again, Christ gave us his Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Boaz is giving her water, a symbol of the Spirit a lot of times. And there's a parallel between Ruth 2.9 and John 7.37. If you go to John 7, you read there. John 7, verse 37, it says, on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture is said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. But this he spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in him would receive, because the Holy Spirit has not yet been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. God wants us to drink of his Holy Spirit freely.

How does the water benefit Ruth? How does what he's doing for her give her refreshment, gives her encouragement, gives her strength so she can go on gleaning?

Does those things for us, just like spiritually. God's Spirit helps us that same way and enabled her to do more gleaning and enable her to have constant contact with Boaz as well.

She didn't have to go down to the city, to the community well, to get a drink. She was right there in the field. She didn't have to go away from Boaz for any of these things. And so she'd be among his people, among the other Reapers and the gleaners and the young men. And she could be refreshed. She could be strengthened. And she would stay right there where he was. So we look at Boaz and we see that he supplied the food, he supplied the water, drank, he supplied the work. He's applied himself. Christ supplies those things to us spiritually speaking. So we see the type of the Holy Spirit given in the Old Covenant here through the water. So verse 10, So she fell on her face, bowed down to the ground, and said to him, Why have I found favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me since I am a foreigner? She even acknowledges the fact and brings with it the fact she's a foreigner. She knew Boaz didn't have to do this for her. She knew that. He gave her all these blessings that she didn't have to give. And it's kind of like a type of the grace that Christ gives us in dying for us.

But verse 11, look what it says, Boaz answered and said to her, It has been fully shown to me all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband. And how you left your father and your mother the land of your birth and have come to a people whom you did not know before now. You're the press that she left her people. Remember what Naomi said?

You have done all these good things for the living and for the dead back in chapter 1.

May God do a kind, kindly with you because of that. And here Boaz, will you say, it's been fully shown to me about the kind things that you've done for your family. Yes, he's a foreigner. He acknowledges that. She acknowledges that. And this is the answer to why he blessed her, even though she was a foreigner. Because she came to a people that she did not know before. But she had been doing the obligation that God would want you to do for her mother-in-law and for God. So in verse 12, he says, The Lord repay your work, and a full reward be given to you by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge. Then she said, Let me find favor in your sight, my Lord, for you have comforted me and have spoken kindly to your maidservant, though I am not like one of your maidservants. Yes, I'm a Moabites, a foreigner. I'm not of the land. I'm a woman. And none of those things helped her cause. As far as Deuteronomy, as far as Israel will be concerned. Verse 14, Boaz says to her, At mealtime, come here and eat of the bread, and dip your bit in the vinegar. And she sat beside the reapers, and he handed her roasted grain, and she ate and was satisfied and left. So she sat beside the reapers. Now, she's not just a gleaner anymore, but she's been lifted up. She's with the reapers, and he's passing grain to her. He's handing her food to be satisfied, and he's giving it to take care of her. He's actually serving her food. In Christ, in our lives, he brings things along to us to help us. Verse 15, When she rose up to Glyn, Boaz commanded his young men, saying, Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not rebuke her. So let her glean among the sheaves. So there's a lot more grain. He says, Let her go into that. And he says, Let handfuls fall on purpose for her. Go ahead and drop a little extra. Make it a little easier for her. And leave them so she may glean them. And don't rebuke her. Don't stop her. Don't say anything to her. Don't tell her you're doing this.

Verse 17, So she gleaned in the field until evening, and beat out what she had gleaned. It was about an ephah of barley. That's a pretty sizable amount of barley. It's more than a normal gleaner would get. So now she's going back to Naomi and telling her what had happened. Because when she brings this big basket of rain back, the man was thinking, wow.

So verse 21, again, Ruth the Moabites, she said, He also said to me, You shall stay close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest. God wants us to stay by his people and by him until the harvest is done. So not only did Boaz say, Stay in my field and glean among my reapers, but stay here for the entire harvest. Not just one day, not a week, but the entire harvest. This first harvest and the second harvest through the whole time. God wants us through the entire harvest as well. He wants to make sure that we are scripturally gleaning in his book and his word, so that we are there to be harvested at the end. Verse 22, Naomi says to her daughter-in-law, Ruth, that's good, my daughter. Go out with the maidens so that they will not fall upon you in any other field. Again, was it unsafe somewhere else or things could happen? I mean, oftentimes you don't treat foreigners as well as you do your own. You shouldn't be. God made one law for all, but we don't know. Verse 23, so she stayed close by the young men of Boaz to glean until the end of the barley harvest and the wheat harvest, and she dwelt with her mother-in-law.

Ruth listened. She heard. She's a type of a Christian. She stayed with her mother-in-law, type of the church. I like Michelle when she said, I'm not leaving. I'm staying. I'm going to do what they takes.

It's kind of hard on me because she is so obedient every time they had a farm. I transferred to Pasadena after we were together one semester. And her freshman year, my sophomore year, and you weren't supposed to get together that young, but hey, when you like somebody, you like somebody.

And I transferred in the middle of the year about to Pasadena, and she was going to transfer at the end of the year, and they wouldn't let her transfer. And in every farm they had on relationships, they said, you should be going with someone. I got a Dear John letter, and I didn't like that.

And I had to write back to my other friends I knew back there and ask if she had another boyfriend and thought she didn't, and I'd kind of talk her into coming back again. I convinced her we couldn't commit fornication 1,500 miles apart, which was a technical improbability.

So we get back together, but I got about three or four Dear John letters because they had forms about every couple of months. So she was real obedient, but like Ruth. Ruth did what she was told, like her brother-in-law. And God calls us. Christ gives us permission to glean in His field, and He tells us not to stray. A lot of people do stray. Some people try to go out on their own, and it's really hard to be out there on your own. I know people that are, I'm just going to stay at home. They get tired of organized religion, and I don't blame them. There's a lot of problems. There always have been. For 2,000 years in the church, there have been problems. All you have to do is read our current history or read a biblical pastry history. You see that, but you've got to stay in the field. You've got to stay there. And Boaz is telling her, don't stray. Stay by the church. Don't leave the house of God. He says to stay among His young women. Fellowship is very important. It's important to all of us. And he says that those young women are going to be able to help you. They'll be able to protect you. And again, they might correct you or admonish you, because they will. She's a Moabite. She doesn't know all the rules and all the laws, but it's the best place for her to be. And we recognize that. In Hebrews 10, verse 25, if we go there, we see that we're not supposed to forsake the assembling of ourselves. Verse 25, not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together. As does the manner of some.

People forsook assembling back then, 2,000 years ago. But enduring one another, and so much the more as we see the day approaching. Yeah, there's some enduring. Sometimes we get on each other's nerves. Sometimes we get upset. But that's not a cause to leave. In Malachi, we see the same thing, and the prophet's there. Malachi 3, verse 16. Another scripture that tells us that.

Verse 16 of Malachi 3, Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, the Lord listened to them and heard them.

And so a book of remembrance was written before him for those who fear the Lord and who meditate on his name. We need to speak about God to each other. It's time to stay with the reapers, the assembling, speaking, working together as cleaners in the same field. We're all looking for the same future. Boaz warns the young men not to harm her because she's under his protection.

He tells the ministry members not to harm one another. It's better for a millstone to be around her neck than to harm a little one. We're not supposed to harm each other. How often do we see God warning his shepherds to take care of the flocks, take care of his sheep, don't abuse your authority? Again, all of us need to be careful with each other, with God's people, all of them.

Just like Boaz, be careful. Glame with my glaners. We're to help one another.

Now, the wheat harvest usually ended just before Pentecost again, so it was during this time that we're looking at Boaz as he's doing for Ruth. Again, without telling her, he's setting it up so she can succeed. Without telling Naomi and Ruth, he's setting them up so they can succeed.

God doesn't tell us when he's setting us up, but he wants us to succeed, and he wants us to be close to him, and he wants us to know that he's going to help us, whether you think he's helping you or not. He's doing that. How much is done for you and for me out of his grace to help us glean? Because he loves us. And it's lunchtime, and so we'll break there halfway through the book. There's two more chapters to go, and we will come back at one, and we'll finish Ruth.

Should I ask a blessing on the meal? Okay, let's do that. By your heads.