Ruth, The Moabites

It's good to speak to you. Good to be up here with the choir, my second family. I always get attached to them, and then they leave. That's the way it is every year. It's fun. I actually went to college with some of their grandparents, taught some of their parents, had a couple of them in camp when they were tea boppers in G1. And now, here we are with some nice young men and women. The title of my sermon today is Ruth Amoebaes, and I brought her along with me. I got that in Israel a long time ago. This sermon is a class for the students. It's kind of an ABC sampler and a sermon all together. I started giving it about seven years ago. Believe it or not, in nine months it's really hard to cover the whole Bible and do it justice. By giving this one, we kind of eliminate one book, get it done, and give them an extra hour of class outside of class and curriculum. But it's interesting. I thought about giving this. Normally, I've given this a little later toward Pentecost, which is when the Jews read the book of Ruth. But in reality, there's probably more to Ruth that deals with Passover than even Pentecost, although they're tied together very much so.

When we look through this book of Ruth, when we do the things that we do this time of year, I'd like for us to look at the book in a different way. I'd like to look at it in a way that looks at your life and says, Has God done that you don't understand? Maybe never, or maybe after the fact? Very few of us know what's happening in our life at the time, how God does the things that he does. I often wonder, why did God call me? In fact, I wondered about my calling because my parents, my mom, came into the church.

I wondered, did I have a calling?

Later on, when I was about the 1970s, we realized that the kids were sanctified by the parents, and your calling comes through your parents.

My wife's calling was different than mine, though. My wife's family was not in the church at all.

She grew up a Lutheran, which I always teased as being a rebellious Catholic.

She wasn't planning on anything religious at all in her life, but being born in the church, everything was first-hand to me. Being new in the church, everything was strange to her. For her, it was very difficult, but she always knew God called her. Looking back on her life, she realized that God was working with her before she came into the church.

She had some questions about the Trinity, and she went and asked her minister. He got very frustrated because he couldn't explain it. She just said, you have to take it on faith, which my wife didn't have any faith, at least not in them.

She went to a Baptist church and tried to get them to explain things. It was fun because her friends went there and young people and some singing and stuff. She went and did an altar call, and they were supposed to baptize her the next day.

That night she went home and said, what am I doing? I don't know anything. She called the minister the next morning and said, I'm not coming. So she didn't. Well, where did she go from here? It's interesting because her grandmother had just come to the church. Her grandmother was a big Christmas party, Easter party, all this stuff type of person. She came to the church and hadn't had a Christmas that time. The parents didn't know what it was, but her grandmother brought an envoy along with her that she had picked up at the feast.

Her dad, surprisingly enough, worked 19 1⁄2 years for Bendix and just got laid off a few months before. They didn't have enough money. They were planning to go to a local college and things. She wanted their daughter to go to some places. Here we are at the end of the 60s, the morality and drugs and things. Here's this beautiful book with these beautiful kids and these feasts. They were kind of health people. They had a farm in Texas. They had a work program. You could pay your way through college. This is God sending her to her.

She applied and got accepted. Didn't know anything about the Sabbath, Holy Days, anything. Flies down to Big Sandy with her dad and finds out that everybody disappears on Friday night.

She and her Catholic friend had come there, stayed, and talked every Friday night. Then they had this Feast of Tabernacles thing two weeks afterwards. They closed the kitchen number two weeks and she wondered, what am I going to eat? They said, well, here's 20 bucks. Go beg in the piney woods. She did. She survived. People were real nice. Everybody camped out then. It was real easy to get fed. But there was a new thing for her. Here she was with all these acronyms, the PT, the GN, the GTA, the HWA, the FOT, the UB.

What are these things? It was all language for her. But God had brought her there. So she knew that God had called her. None of us really know why God calls who He does. Traditionally, the Jewish people read the book of Ruth on Pentecost because of the Ruth of the Gleaner.

I'd like to go to Leviticus 23 just to read a few chapters there because it does include that. Of course, these are the feasts of God, not the feasts of man or the Jews or even the Israelites of that sense. But it's called the first-fruits feasts of weeks of Pentecost because of the counting, because it counts from the wave sheaf offering during that of the bread after the Passover. In verse 15 of Leviticus 23, "'You shall count from you on the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of wave offering.

The seventh Sabbath shall be complete, even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath, shall you number fifty days. You shall offer a new meat offering to the Lord.' In verse 22 He ends this section, "'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 hottest. You shall lead them to the poor and to the stranger.

I am the Lord your God.'" Everyone's included. The poor, they could come and glean. They could take from that. God includes everyone in what He's doing. And we know we as the church, the people who have God's Spirit, are the first-fruits. The harvest that God has. But without a Passover, we wouldn't have a Pentecost, because it's about redemption. So this is a wonderful book about love, about kindness, about redemption. And it shows many of the laws of the Old Covenant, but indeed it shows a lot of the New Covenant as well when we look at that.

It's not only about Ruth, but about Naomi, about Boaz, a family that would be the genealogy of Jesus Christ. A very special thing. And so again, look at the book of Ruth in light of your life and how God was dealing with you, and see if you can see some parallels, perhaps. It should bring encouragement to you if there's any hardships and things that you go through, and all of us do. Of course, the historical setting of Ruth is about 1100 B.C., the time of the period of the Judges, when you had Samson, and you had Gideon, and you had Deborah, and Barak, and the various people.

And Israel was going up and down. They would fall off from God, be taken captive, or put enslaved a bit. Then a hero would rise up, and they'd come back, and then they never seemed to make it more than about 40 years without messing up and having to come back again. The interesting thing about the book of Ruth is that she was not an Israelite. Ethnically, she was a Moabiteus. And we know about that.

We know it was Lot's daughter. We first read of Lot with Abraham being with him in John 11. But Genesis 19 shows a bit more where the Moabites came from. So let's look at that to see what Ruth was about. Remember, Solomon Gamora were destroyed, and Lot, he came out with his wife and two daughters. His wife turned around and became a pillar of salt.

None of the other family would come out, but his two daughters went to a small town. They wouldn't leave. They knew that their city was destroyed. And it talks about them going to their father because they wanted his seed to be preserved. So verse 36, we'll start there. So they got their father drunk, and they decided the older one would sleep with him one night, they'd get him drunk the next night, and the younger would win.

Verse 36, so both the daughters of Lot were the child by their father. So this is incest. Their firstborn, Borosan, called his name Moab. He is the father of the Moabites to this day. Younger also, Borosan, and called him Benami, the father of the sons of Ammon to this day. So that's how those two tribes started. Go to Numbers 25, if you would, and we'll read there a little more about what God says about the Moabites. And think about this, this is Ruth's genealogy, and the background that she came from. Some people say, I have such a bad background, obviously God doesn't want me.

Let's look at this. Numbers 25, verse 1, Israel lived in Sodom, and the people began to fornicate with the daughters of Moab. Now, that's not a good thing. And they called the people to the sacrifice of their God, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. That's idolatry. That's not a very good thing. And Israel joined himself to Baal-Pior, and the anger of God was kindled against Israel.

So this is the background. Ruth didn't grow up worshiping the God of Israel. She had a very tough genealogical heritage to overcome. Incest, fornication, idolatry. She had other gods, not the God of Israel. We, when we think about our lives before conversion, had other gods. We had other things that we wanted to do, other things that we had to give up. So in a sense, we're seeing a conversion as we go through this.

She was a foreigner, a Moabite. In fact, her name is mentioned 12 times in the book. Five of them are directly Ruth the Moabite. Others are the foreigner. And they talk about that. It's very specific that her non-Israelite esherages is always emphasized in the book. It's constantly stressed. And her status is that of an alien. She was a stranger. She was not one of the covenant people. Throughout the entire chapter, we're constantly being reminded that she's not an Israelite, not under the covenant.

Following are some of the people excluded from the covenant people. Turn to Deuteronomy 23. And let's see another thing about Ruth that may make you question and wonder. Deuteronomy 23 in verse 3, it says, "'An Ammonite or a 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.'" These were cousins. "'And because they hired against you Balaam, the son of Beor from Pethor, of Mesopotamia, to curse you. Nevertheless, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam, and the Lord your God turned the curse to a blessing, because the Lord your God loves you. But you shall not seek their peace nor their prosperity all your days forever.'" Okay, so how did Ruth ever come into the congregation of Israel?

She was a foreigner. It was interesting. My wife, when she came to college not knowing anything about the church, they let her read her file at the end of her first year, and it said she was part Gentile. And she had no idea what a Gentile was. She wanted to know which part. My arms, my legs, you know, what was Gentile. She came and asked me since I grew up in the church, and I said, no, it's not your body. She said, your dad is French and British, and your mom is German and Italian. So that's the Gentile half, and that's the Israelite-ish half, which didn't mean anything to her. And then she asked me, do you have to marry someone who's half Gentile? I said, no, no, because I wanted her, so I told her it was okay.

Which it was anyway, so I wasn't lying.

But it's interesting that Ruth was very special, and throughout the book God accepted Ruth. She's lauded and praised by the end of the book. She's an ancestor of King David, the greatest king and future king. She's in the direct line of Jesus Christ. She's specifically mentioned by name in the New Testament. When it talks about Christ, it talks about Rahab the harlot, Ruth the Moabites, and the wife of Uriah the Hittite. It doesn't even say Bathsheba's name. But it's interesting that the two that are named weren't Israelites.

So why is Ruth able to come into the congregation of Israel? And how does this play in? So let's turn to Ruth 1. We'll stay in Ruth now for a while, so you don't have to flip your pages back and forth. Again, it's about kindness. And we have a word for unkind people called Ruthless, which works in this language, but it doesn't work in other countries.

Ruth 1. It came to pass in the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land.

Now, you had to wonder, did God cause this famine? Because it caused people to do things. And a certain man of Bethlehem Judah once had dwelled in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. Why was the famine in the land? Well, we know in the times the judges, God caused a lot of things to happen to them. It seems to me that God probably created this famine to send them away.

God allows things to happen to bring people back to Him and to fill out His plan the way He wants it to work.

So God allowed this famine and may have even caused it, so that the story of King David and Christ would be part of this story. Just like when Michelle's grandmother brought the envoy. Is that part of her story? Was that a coincidence? All that? You can't prove anything. But when you look at your life, there's a lot of coincidences that lead you down a certain path.

So we go to verse 2.

God caused the famine in the land of Elimelech and his family to journey to Moab. And the name of the man was Elimelech. God is king. The name of his wife was Naomi, which means prosperity or sweetness. And the name of his two sons, Malon and Chillian.

Effortites of Bethlehem Judah. And they came into the country of Moab and continued there.

In Elimelech, Naomi's husband died. It doesn't say what happened, why he died, but he died, and she was left with her two sons.

I can relate to that. My dad died when I was three and a half years old.

In fact, I bought this Ruth statue and gave it to my mom.

She died a few years ago, and I got all my stuff back.

But she thought about Ruth because here she is alone.

A couple of boys, what do you do?

But then we read.

Verse 4, they took wives of the women of Moab.

The name of one was Orpah. The name of the other, Ruth.

And they dwelt there about ten years.

And Malon and Chillian died, also both of them.

And the woman was left over two sons and her husband.

So now you have these three women.

Verse 6, she erodes 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, covenant in God, Yahweh, had visited His people by giving them bread.

So the famine's over. I have no husband.

Let's go back to Israel.

Now it's interesting that their daughters-in-law wanted to go with her.

They must have had a good example.

They must have been learning a bit about the way of life of Israel.

God seemed to have caused the famine, and God seems to have caused the prosperity back in Judah, in Bethlehem, to make her family move back there, minus the three men.

She's going to return as a widow.

With her two daughters-in-law, it would be with her widows as well.

Verse 7, she went out of 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 Naomi said to her, two daughters-in-law, Go, return to your mother's house.

May God be with you and deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.

You've been kind to me. You've done that. Go back. Go back to your homes.

You did well by me.

What she is doing here is asking God to show a blessing, because these two Moabite-ish women had done what they knew to be right.

By her and by her two sons and their father-in-law.

They had done what was right, and now Naomi was asking God to bless them in a return, to have families and things.

Verse 9, may God grant you that you may find rest, each in the house of her husband.

So get married. You're still young. Have a life.

She kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept.

And they said to her, Surely we'll return with you to your people.

And Naomi said, Turn again, my daughters. Will you go with me?

Are there yet sons in my womb that can be your husbands?

She knew the loss of redemption.

But they had been in their twenties, and any child she could have, if she was old enough, wouldn't be able to marry them.

Turn again, my daughters. Go. For I am too old to have a husband. And if I should say, I have hope that I should have a husband, even tonight, and bear sons, would you wait for them until they were grown?

Will you shut yourselves up not to have a husband?

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

That was her thoughts. God has gone out against me.

We often think that about something that happens in our life. God has gone against me, and it may just be the opposite.

But that's the way she saw it.

They lifted up their voices and wept again. Orpa kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.

Naomi says to Ruth, Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people, and to her gods.

Return after your sister-in-law.

She's gone back. She'll find a husband. You need to go back.

Israel is not your people.

Michelle, when she was in college her first semester, her Catholic friend left.

She didn't believe this.

She asked Michelle, do you believe this? They're saying that this is the only truth and all these other churches are wrong.

Michelle said, yeah, I see it. She didn't.

When she left, she told the roommate, don't let Michelle leave. She believes this stuff.

Now, she may get lonesome and homesick and things, but don't let her leave.

We look at the example. Here we're seeing Ruth's conversion.

She doesn't want to return to her people. She doesn't want to return to her gods.

She has something different. And she says to her in verse 16, Ruth says, and treat me not to leave you or turn back from following after you.

Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried.

Listen to this oath. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death, part you and me.

Wow, what a statement. She's changing. She's being converted. She's being called.

She's renouncing her gods, her people. She wants to be part of the congregation.

She makes an oath to do that.

Naomi, when she saw that she was determined to go with her, she quit asking her about it.

Naomi saw this woman is coming to Israel.

And most importantly, Naomi's God would be her God.

She was giving up her ancestry, her history, what it was to be part of God's.

Verse 19, both of them went till they came to Bethlehem. And it happened when they had come to Bethlehem, all the city was moved about them and said, Is this Naomi? And she said to them, Don't call me Naomi. Don't cause me prosperity or sweetness.

Call me Mara. Call me bitter. For the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.

I went out full, and God has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi? Since the God has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me.

Oh, the bitter woe is me that we probably had at various times in our lives, thinking that God's that way.

I look back, I realize my mom probably felt that way.

Because my dad had been healed, he was supposed to die two years before that. She was disowned by her family. And God healed him. He went back to work. And so it was great. And then he dies two years later in an accident. That actually was a murder. They think they had a trial, but they couldn't prove it. But why did he heal her and then take her away? Things like that, we wonder.

So we see what's going on here.

It's a special thing to see what God does in your life with that.

So we look at that now, and we turn to Ruth chapter 2.

Naomi and Ruth had returned just as the barley harvest had begun. So now it was time to introduce redemption, the type of Christ that we have. We take the Passover.

And only after we received Jesus Christ and His sacrifice do we have access to Him.

Verse 1 of chapter 2, there was a relative Naomi's husband, a man of great wealth, of the family of a limilec. His name is Boaz.

Boaz means in him his strength.

So Ruth the Moabites said to Naomi, Please let me go to the field and glean heads of grain after him, in whose sight I may find favor.

She does not know where he's going. She just kind of gleans from grain. And hopefully God, the God of Israel, your God, my God, will show me where to go so I can find favor. And Naomi says, Go, my daughter. Then she left and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers. And she happened to come upon the part of the field belonging to Boaz, of the family of the limilec.

Now again, she happened upon it. I wonder, did she really just happen, or was God leading her that way? God's like that. You can't really know how much He's directing you at the time that it happens. And He's often in those details without our knowing it. So here on the very, very first day she goes out to glean, she lands in Boaz's field.

It seems that God was trying to get these people together. Ruth, a type of church, and Boaz, a type of Christ.

We should learn something from this.

You know, we know that no man can come to God except the Father draws Him. And He draws us in ways that we don't know. Always. It's a calling. It's special. You know, God, I don't think any of you heard a voice saying, I'm God, please join my church.

That's not how we're called. You don't hear it, but those are things. They're not random acts. God knows who He calls and why He calls you to give you His Holy Spirit, to make it like that.

King David and his example, other kings, particularly Jesus Christ, whose life has touched us the most, came from these two people. And I don't believe it was a random act, this early on things. I think God was putting them together. Let's notice all the things that Boaz does for Ruth, just like Christ does for us. In verse 4, it says, Now, behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem and said to the reapers, The Lord be with you. Interesting. Emmanuel is God with us.

God be with you. And Boaz said to his servants, who were in charge of the reapers, Whose young woman is this? This is someone new. We haven't seen her before. And the servant, who was in charge of the reapers, said, It's the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. Again, a Moabite is not an Israelite. In verse 7, she says to him, Please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.

She has for the lowest position, that of a gleaner. Her humility shows here. We're admonished to take the lowest seat. And she is willing to be that. And she says, Can I glean behind the reapers? She had learned from her mother-in-law that she could glean. She could get sustenance for them to help her mother-in-law.

And she knew the rules, so she asked for that lowest seat, if you will. The leftovers. Verse 7, She came and continued for mourning till now, though she rested a little while in the house. She had been working diligently all day, just for a little bit of rest, to make sure she had something for her and her mother-in-law. In verse 8, Boaz noticed it. She says to Ruth, he says to Ruth, Do you not hear my daughter? Do not go and glean in another field. Neither go away from here. Stay here close to my maidens.

Boaz says, Hear me. Listen, like Christ told his disciples, My sheep hear my voice. And Boaz is saying, Listen. Verse 9, Let your eyes be upon the fields that they reap, and go after them. Have I not commanded the young men that they shall not touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink of that which the young men have drawn. So Boaz essentially has said to Ruth, Don't go to another field. Don't leave here. Stay close by my women, my servants.

Let your eyes be on the fields that they're in, and glean there. We're just stay close to God and to Christ. Boaz is saying, Stay close to me. Stay close to my people. I don't know if it was safe or not, but he was giving her protection. When you're thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn. I'm going to give you water. Christ gave his Holy Spirit on Pentecost, like water. He provided those things for him. Boaz gives what would be a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Notice the parallel between Ruth 2.9 and John 7.37.

I'm going to keep your place in Ruth. John 7.37 talks about the Feast. On the last day, that great day of the Feast, Jesus stood out and cried, If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

And he spoke concerning the Spirit, For those who believing in him would receive, the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Pentecost wasn't here yet, and Christ hadn't yet died. God wants us to drink freely of his water, his Holy Spirit. So what does this water do for Ruth? Well, it gives her refreshment, it gives her encouragement, it gives her strength. It helps her. It enables her to do more gleaning. It enables her to have constant contact, even with Boaz. She didn't have to go away from that field. She could stay right there. She didn't have to worry about the other people. She was refreshed. She was helped. Just as we are refreshed by Jesus Christ through his Spirit and God's Word.

He supplied the food, he supplied the drink, he supplied the work, he supplied himself. Everything. Verse 10, So Ruth 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?

Why did you pick me? Like I said with we something to ask God, why did you pick me? She knew Boaz did not have to do this for her. He gave her all these additional blessings. Isn't that the type of grace that Jesus Christ gives us, and God the Father? Verse 11, Boaz answered and said to her, It's been fully shown to me all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and that 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.

He's your painting. She is a foreigner. Remember Naomi had said, You've done all those good things for me, for the living and for the dead? May God deal kindly with you? And now Boaz is saying, It's been fully shown to me what you have done to give up your people, to give up your pathway of life, to come into a new way of life. And this is the answer as to why he had blessed her, even though she was a foreigner, a people you did not know. But she had been doing her obligation to Naomi and to God.

Verse 12, The Lord repay your work, and for war be given to you by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge. A church is our refuge. Verse 13, She said, Let me find favor in your sight, my Lord, for you have comforted me. You have spoken kindly to your maidservants, though I am not like one of your maidservants. She is a Moabites, a foreigner, not of the Lamb. She was also a woman, which did not help her at all, in that society.

And Boaz says to her, verse 14, At mealtime come here, and eat the bread, and dip your bit in the vinegar, and sit beside the reapers. He handed her roasted grain, and she ate and was satisfied. She is now sitting beside the reapers, not necessarily a gleaner now. She has moved up a little. She had passed the parched grain to her. He is handing her those things to help her out, to be satisfied. The Master is serving her, giving her things she needs.

Just as Christ and his death are what we need. He never rebukes her. Verse 15, And when she rose up to glean, Boaz commanded these young men, saying, Let her glean even among the sheaves. Adopt her, buker. I don't know if she noticed it or not. I don't know if she knew he was doing that. The things that happened in your life, we may not notice. Things that go well, things that happen.

God does things for you that we don't know. And he says, Don't rebuke her. Let her glean those things. Do it on purpose. So she gleaned in the field until the evening, and beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephile barley, which is a very lot for a gleaner.

Now she's back with Naomi, and she's telling Naomi what happened. Verse 21, Ruth the Moabites said, He also said to me, You shall stay close to my young men, until they have finished all my harvest. So not only did he say, Stay in my field, glean among my reapers, but stay here the entire harvest.

Not just one day, one week, but the entire harvest. God wants us for the entire harvest. Not just a week or a day, but until he returns.

Verse 22, Naomi says to her daughter-in-law Ruth, That's good, my daughter. Go out with his maidens, so that they do not fall upon you in any other field. You wonder if we're to be safe somewhere else. We don't know. We're safe in God's spiritual body. Yeah, there are things we face. 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 had listened. A type of Christian, staying with her mother-in-law, a type of the church, God calls us. Christ has given us permission to glean in his field, to learn his word and to help us to stay in the church. Don't leave the house of God. So he says to stay among his women, to fellowship with his people. Stay by it. It's the best place to be. And we're told by God in Hebrews 10, not to forsake the fellowshipping of ourselves together.

We need to have that same type of contact. It's time to stay with the reapers. It's time to stay assembling and speaking and working together as gleaners in God's field. And Boaz warns the young men not to harm her. He's protecting her. How often do we see in the Bible God warning the shepherds, take care of your flock? Don't abuse your authority. All of us need to be careful with God's people, with each other, and help each other. So we see all the things that Boaz does for Ruth without even telling her.

He sets it up so she succeeds, just as God says he won't forsake us. The weak will succeed as well. And he's done this on his own. He's given us out of his love and his grace. Chapter 3, we enter another thing. Her mother-in-law Naomi says to my daughter, shall I not seek rest for you, so may be well with you?

Shouldn't you have a husband? Shouldn't you have a family? And now is not Boaz our kindred, he with whose maidens you were? He winnows in the barley tonight in the threshing floor. Therefore wash yourself, anoint yourself, put on your clothing upon you, go down to the floor. And we should clean up before we go, before God and Christ as well.

And she says, do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. And when he lies down, mark the place where he lies, and you shall go in, uncover his feet, and lie down, and he will tell you what to do. And she said to her, all that you say I will do. She agrees with everything. This is a strange custom. This is not what she was. Now, if Michelle had done that to me in college, we would have been kicked out.

But that's part of the thing of the day. She went down to the grain floor, and did according to all her mother-in-law, told her. And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, and I daresay it was very merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap, and she came softly and uncovered his feet and lay down. And he didn't know it. And it happened at midnight, the man trembled and turned to himself, and behold, a young woman laid his feet.

That would shake you up. That would probably take you out of whatever you drunk. Well, it happened at midnight. And he said, Who are you? She answered, I am your handmaid Ruth, and you shall spread your skirt over your handmaid, for you are a kinsman redeemer. Her mother-in-law taught her some of the rules, what God had, just as we learned the rules when we come in the church, the commandments of God, what it means. Then Boaz says, Blessed are you of the Lord, my daughter, for you have shown more kindness at the end than at the beginning, and you did not go after other young men, whether poor or rich.

He was an older man. She was doing her duty. She took care of Naomi. She was humble and selfless. And Boaz is saying that Ruth, a foreigner, had fulfilled what the law is all about. Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. That's what Ruth was learning. And now she's asking him to be her redeemer, to help her. She had done what the law required to go to your kinsman and asked to be redeemed.

And this older man, Boaz, has shown abundant kindness to her along the way. It doesn't look like he expected her to want to marry him. Boaz answers in verse 11, Now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do to you all that you ask, for all the city of my people knows that you are a woman of virtue. Our actions show what we believe stands out.

And now it is true that I am your kinsman-redeemer, but there is a kinsman nearer to you than I. Stay tonight. It shall be in the morning, if he will redeem you. Well, if he will redeem, he can redeem. If he does not delight to redeem you, as God lives, then I will redeem you. Lie down until the morning. So she lay at his feet till morning, and she rose up before one could see another. It was dark. And he said, Don't let it be known that a woman came to the floor. Don't talk about it. And he said, Bring the veil that you have, hold it.

And he held it. He measured six measures of barley, laid it to her, and she went to the city. She filled it. He knew Naomi would know what this meant. So when she came to her mother-in-law, she said, Who are you, my daughter? Still dark. She didn't know who it was coming. And she told her all that the man had done to her. And she said, These six measures of barley he gave to me.

For he said, Do not go empty to your mother-in-law. And she said, Sir Ruth, Sit still, my daughter, until you know how the matter will fall. For the man will not rest until he has finished this thing today. What did Christ say in Matthew 26, 29?

I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of this vine until the day that I drink it new in my Father's kingdom. Christ said He's going to take care of us, too. Philippians 1, 6, He says, Paul writes, Be confident that he who has begun a good work in you will finish it and complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Very strong parallels. Ruth was a beautiful woman of character.

Boaz thought it a great honor that she had come to him and asked him to redeem her. Do we honor Christ, thanking Him and God the Father for the calling? Ruth had gone above and beyond. You've done more now than you did in the beginning. Christ would love to see us go above and beyond in our lives, to have that first love and to carry that through, to show more fruits in the end than in the beginning, so that He can present us blameless before His Father.

Most people show a first love, then it wanes. Here Christ wants to see us grow in zeal, the first love. He said He's the bread of life. He gave us exactly what Boaz was giving Ruth, bread. And like he said, He who has my bread will never hunger. Ruth never hungered because of Boaz. Chapter 4 shows the redemption of Naomi and Ruth.

Now the Redeemer, a near kinsman, come in. The near kinsman comes from the law in Deuteronomy 25, where it talks about, you can write that down, Deuteronomy 25, 5 through 10, tells about it, and I'll paraphrase it a bit. So if someone dies having no child, then a brother or a near kinsman would come in and raise up a child so that that name would not die out.

And the land was given back at East Jubilee, where it would stay in the family, stay in the tribe. And if a man takes his brother's wife and raises up a child, the firstborn becomes that child as such. But they didn't have to do it. If they refused to do it, it says in Deuteronomy 25, what they're supposed to do is take off their shoe and say, I don't want to redeem it in front of a bunch of witnesses in the gate of the city.

He can do that. And it says you can spit in his face. Naomi doesn't do that. He's a lot nicer than that. And it says that you'll spit in his face and say, sure shall it be done to the man that will not build up his brother's house, and his name shall be called in Israel the house of him that has his shoe loosed.

That's what you'd call it if you didn't do this. Israel became gods by redemption as well as by creation. They could trust God to deliver him, all of them in the future. We also count on Jesus Christ and God as our Redeemer. He's made us, and his will is to be and deliver us. So chapter 4, let's look at how this happens. And Boaz went up to the gate in the sight of all, sat down there. Again, he wasn't ashamed to be there. Behold, the kinsmen of whom Boaz spoke came by. And he said, such a wand, turn aside, sit down here.

And the man turned and sat down. We don't even know his name. It's the house of him who had his shoe loosed. I guess we can call him that. He took ten men of the elders of the city and said, come and sit down here. And they sat down because you needed witnesses to see what was happening when you're redeeming. And he said to the kinsmen, Naomi, who has come again out of the country of Moab, sells a partial land, which was our brother, Elimelechs.

And I said, I will tell it in your ear, saying, buy it before those who live here and before the elders of my people. If you'll redeem it, then redeem it. If you will not redeem it, tell me so that I may know. For there is none to redeem it besides you, and I am after you. And the man said, I will redeem it. Oh, oops! Is this what God wanted? And, oh, by the way, Boaz says, verse 5, In the day that you buy the field of the hand of Naomi, you must buy also from the hand of Ruth of Moab, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance.

You have to take the foreigner. It's Moabites. That's your wife.

Oh, boy, he wanted the land. Hey, that's good. I'll take that. But I don't want the woman. And the kinsmen said, I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar my own inheritance. You redeem my right to yourself, for I cannot redeem it. I don't want it. You didn't have to redeem. God and Christ do want us.

And this was the custom in the former times in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing to confirm everything. A man plucked off his sandal and gave it to his neighbor, and this was the testimony in Israel in front of those witnesses. Therefore the kinsmen said to Boaz, Buy it for yourself. And he took off his sandal. And Boaz said to the elders and all the people, You are witnesses this day that I have bought all that was a limalax and all that was chileans and malons from the hand of Naomi.

And also Ruth of Moab, the wife of Malon, I have purchased to be my wife to raise up a name for the dead on his inheritance, so that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers from the gate of his place. We are dead without Jesus Christ. And Boaz ends, You are witnesses this day. And all the people in the gate and all the elders said, We are witnesses.

May God make the woman who has come into your house like Rachel and like Leah for those who built the house of Israel. And may you be blessed in Ephrata and be famous in Bethlehem. Turn to Luke 24. Keep your place there. Luke 24, verse 45. We see something there. Christ, He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. Verse 46, And He said to them, So it is written, And so it be whos Christ to suffer and rise again from the dead the third day. And that repentance and the remission of sins should be proclaimed in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

Verse 48, You are witnesses of these things. Christ was redeeming us. He needed witnesses. He had witnesses right there. And behold, I send the promise of my Father on you. Sit in the city of Jerusalem until your clothed with power from on high. Stare till the Spirit actually comes on Pentecost. But you're witnesses now. I'm redeeming you. He didn't say that word so much so, but he's doing exactly what the levered law said.

Let's go back to Ruth 4, verse 12. And let your house be like the house of Phares, whom Tamar bore to Judah, and of the seed which God shall give you of this young woman. And Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife, and when he went into her, God made her conceive, and she bore a son. And the woman said to Naomi, again, this woman who once thought she was cursed, call me Mara, call me bitter, Blessed be God who has not left you this day without a redeemer, so that his name may be famous in Israel.

And he shall be to you as the restorer of life, one who cheers your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you has borne him, she who is better to you than seven sons. I always told that to my daughter when she was second in line. You can be better than seven sons. And Naomi took the child and laid it near Boazim and became nurse to it.

And the woman, her neighbors, gave it a name, saying, This is a son born to Naomi, and they called his name Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David. Christ said, Anyone who leaves a house, mother and father and brethren, comes to me, shall receive a hundredfold. And also everlasting life. Boaz acted as the Old Testament kinsman-redeemer. His actions were based on the levered law. The near kinsman had to be a blood relative.

Jesus Christ was born of Mary, so he could be a blood relative of all humanity. The Redeemer also had to be wealthy enough to purchase and redeem it. Jesus Christ created everything we see as the Word. His life and never sinning paid that price as the Redeemer. And the other thing that we see is you had to be willing to do it. The one man who took off his shoe wasn't willing to do it.

Turn to John 10. What did Christ say in John 10? Again in verse 17. Therefore does my father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it up again. No man takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have the power to lay it down. I have the power to take it up again. This commandment have I received of my father. He chose to do this. He wasn't like the other man. He was willing to die.

This man didn't even want to, because he didn't want to mar his inheritance by marrying a motorbikes. Christ suffered a painful death at the Passover, so you and I could be redeemed. We would not have a Pentecost if we did not have a Passover.

It wouldn't have happened if Christ had not done what he did, except in that plan of God. Ruth chose to carry burdens. She chose God's way. God accepted Ruth, and I'm sure there was talk about Ruth, enough so that that man didn't want to marry her.

In the early New Testament church, they had a problem with the Gentiles. There was not a surprise that the Jews would take a skeptical look at Gentiles with some of the things we read in Deuteronomy, etc. One of the things that certain people were not allowed to be in the Temple. They had the court of the Gentiles, other courts, they had a place. But yet God accepted Ruth just as he accepts all Moabites, all people, no matter what.

God accepts those people who fear him and do what's right in his sight, regardless of race, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of what country you're from. It's irrelevant. It doesn't make a difference. Is your God my God? Is my God your God? Have you turned from your past? Did you repent and get baptized and say, I'm changing my way of life? That's what Ruth did. God's Spirit helps us and does that.

We are accepted if we repent. And that's what Christ, the message he came to tell you. We were once Gentiles in the flesh, Paul writes in Ephesians. But now we're called by the circumcision. The uncircumcised, circumcised, that's irrelevant. What's your heart? Christ. God the Father is the one who calls us. His Son redeems us. He pays that price. God calls whoever he would. It's strange. We were like Ruth before we were called, before we knew any better, becoming one of God's children.

We were estranged from the covenant, and yet we became part of the new covenant by His mercy. God called us. Christ paid the price and grafted us into His church. He redeemed us. Ruth was an Israelite because of her character, because of her belief. She was more Israelite in character than most of the Israelites were. Yet she didn't grow up with it. Boaz had no problem taking her to be his wife because of her character. Christ has no problem making us His bride. When we were a panther covered and received the Holy Spirit, all our past is forgiven.

We start anew. We become that new man. We renew that covenant this coming week, once again, to become part of the natural allotry, part of the family of God. Ruth shows that in God's sight, conversion to God's way of life is incomparably more important than your history, than your ethnicity.

Where you came from doesn't matter.

Ruth, as a Gentile, shows what God had in mind all along. He was going to save the world, the whole world. Well, they're just about Israel. It's about spiritual Israel, which everybody can be part of. Those Gentiles who had not yet physically been part of the covenant, He always had the door open to them even before Christ came.

But most of them would not be like Ruth. Most were like Orpah. Go back to your family and your gods.

Ruth chose not to. These things are written for us to understand. We do have hope as long as we're in God's spiritual body in His church, that eternal redemption.

Christ alone had the price to pay for all humanity, and they had to be willing to buy back that inheritance.

By sin, we forfeit our inheritance. And if it wasn't for Christ's sacrifice, we couldn't do it.

The kismun had to be willing, and Christ was more than willing to be our Redeemer. He wants you. He wants to help you. He redeemed by death, the Passover.

Yes, the Holy Spirit did come on the Day of Pentecost. That's what it pictured, the church and the firstfruits.

And one of the functions of the Holy Spirit is to bind us together in unity. And Satan throws all sorts of things at us to create disunity and problems.

It doesn't matter what race, or what gender, or whatever you were before, everyone who receives the Holy Spirit and is baptized repents.

Christ redeemed with His blood. He made us brothers and sisters when He gave us His Spirit.

On the day of Pentecost, or the day you were baptized and had hands laid on you.

Were we not aliens and Moabites before God called us, and before we accepted Jesus Christ and His sacrifice?

We were not part of the New Covenant until we accepted that.

And did we not come to the feet of Jesus Christ so He could cover our sins with His blanket of forgiveness?

Ruth made herself ready. She purified herself as we think about this Passover and going on to unleavened bread and to Pentecost and beyond.

Will we let Jesus Christ be our kinsmen Redeemer?