Ruth: Hope in the Dark, Part 2

Today on Summit Life, a message about hope in the dark from Pastor J.D.

Greer. The one who would come save us would come as a meek obedient servant like Ruth and like the runt kid David. And a lot of people miss Jesus for that very reason just like they overlooked Ruth and they overlooked David because they were looking for a Samson. But what God sent was a little shepherd boy. What God sent was somebody that was poor and despised that nobody thought twice about. Y'all listen, the Bible turns prejudice on its head. Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of Pastor, Author, and Theologian J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Benovitch. Today our journey through Scriptures points us to a short Old Testament book. It's only four chapters long and that paints a beautiful picture of God's redeeming love. The main character is Ruth, a Moabite woman who had married an Israelite. And when her husband and father-in-law passed away, she and her mother-in-law, Naomi, were left with nothing.

They were impoverished and vulnerable. But then Ruth catches the eye of a man named Boaz. I smell a romance in the making, don't you? So grab your Bible as Pastor J.D. picks up the story today in Ruth chapter 2. Verse 14, And at mealtime Boaz said to her, Come here and eat some bread. And she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over. When she rose to glean, Boaz instructed his young men, saying, Let her glean even among the sheaves. Also, pull some out from the bundles for her, and leave it on the ground for her to glean.

Just throw it on the ground for her. So she gleaned in the field until evening. Then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. Then she took it up and went into the city. Scholars say an ephah would have been a big old thick pile of wheat.

It would have been really heavy. Her mother-in-law, when she gets home, sees what she's gleaned. And she says to her, Well, where did you glean today?

And where have you worked? Naomi is so excited she's stumbling over her words. See, she asked the exact same thing twice. So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked.

And here again, the drama. Because Ruth doesn't know the connection of Boaz to her relatives. But Naomi does. The man's name with whom I work today is, in Hebrew, the name Boaz is left until the very last word in the sentence. And the audience anticipation is building because you, the reader, you know this guy is a relative. You know that he's wealthy.

You know that he's a good romantic match. And so you're watching Naomi's eyes as Ruth builds up to the last word in the sentence. And she says, His name is Boaz. Verse 20, And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead. My Ra, bitter, just got Naomi sweet again. Because she realized that God had not forgotten her after all. And Naomi also said to her, This man is a close relative of ours. He's one of our redeemers.

Now, let's talk for just a minute about that word redeemer. In those days, if you were in debt, you could sell your property, your family inheritance, you could deed it out to somebody else in order to pay off those debts. But here was the deal. You had the right at any point to buy back that property back into your family. You just had to have the money to pay off the debt.

If you couldn't do that, then a family member could do it for you. That family member was called a kinsman redeemer. Well, Boaz is a relative and Boaz is wealthy. So he's got the right and he's got the resources.

Does he have the resolve? Let's see chapter three, chapter three, verse three. Watch therefore, Naomi says to Ruth and anoint yourself, put on a little perfume and put on your cloak and go down to the threshing floor. But do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. But when he lies down, observe the place where he lies.

Then go and uncover his feet and lie down and he will tell you what to do. Verse seven, and when Boaz had eaten and drunk and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. Then she came softly and uncovered his feet and lay down. At midnight, the man was startled and he turned over and behold, a woman lay at his feet. This was interpreted in Boaz's day as an official request for marriage.

And it worked. Boaz wants to marry her and he can reclaim the family inheritance. But there's one small complication. They discover that there is a closer relative and the closer relative, of course, has first dibs. So Boaz, chapter four, finds out who this guy is and he goes to the city gate to wait for him. And behold, the redeemer of whom Boaz had spoken came by. When Boaz sees this guy, he goes up, he explains the situation to him. Verse four, and the guy said, I will redeem it. But then Boaz very deftly says, verse five, well, here's the deal, man. If you take the land, you also got to take this Moabite woman and her mother-in-law. And she's kind of ornery. I mean, she named herself bitter. And so he says, nah, you know, I just prayed about it and I got to check in my spirit.

So no, I don't feel like I'm going to be able to do this. So Boaz marries Ruth and they all live happily ever after. But that's not even the climax of this story. In fact, that's all there just to set up the last four verses. So Boaz, verse 13, took Ruth and she became his wife. Then he went into her and the Lord gave her conception and she bore a son. Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse. And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name saying, a son has been born to Naomi, to Sweet.

They named the son Obed. We get this really sweet picture of Naomi who's become Sweet again, holding Obed and saying, God is alive. He has let me hold my grandson. God has redeemed me and my family. He's given us back our inheritance. He has turned my bitterness. He's turned it back into sweetness.

Here it is. Number one, in the gospel, God is about the business of redemption. The word redemption is used 23 times in Ruth's four short chapters. In Ruth, we see the unloved or loved again. We see the poor are restored. The inheritance that has been lost because of sin is reclaimed through the generosity of another who is related to us.

Bitterness becomes Sweet. The book of Ruth starts with death. Naomi losing her husband and her sons, but it ends in a genealogy, recounting a list of births.

That's going backwards, right? For the world, life starts with birth and ends in death. But for the Christian, you turn that story around because we know that life begins, we're born in death, but God rewrites our story in life. Naomi goes from barrenness to blessedness.

She starts the book as a forsaken, sonless, husbandless beggar, and she ends the book as the grandmother of the Son of God. That's the theme of the book of Ruth. It is the theme of the Bible. It is the heart of the gospel, and it is God's message to you. You see, the gospel is not God rewards the successful after a life of victory.

The gospel is not God grants heaven to the righteous few who are able to overcome all temptation. The gospel is come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. He who has no money, come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without price. You're like, well, if I ain't got no money, how am I supposed to buy food? The answer is God buys it for you. God, your kinsman redeemer says, you don't have any money.

I'll pay for it for you. You see, we were created to be children of God. We were created constantly to be in His presence in His house, to have a blessed eternity in heaven that was joy upon joy and blessing upon blessing. But we, we sold that away through sin.

We went into the famine of destruction. Yet Jesus, our kinsman redeemer, He loved us and He redeemed us, redeemed our inheritance, and He bought it back for us. God sees us like Boaz, Saul, Ruth. He loved us just as we were, oily, slimy, grimy, poor, all of it. It wasn't even that God loves some future version of us, by the way. I hear people say that sometimes, like, oh, well, God loved us. He didn't, you know, we couldn't love us just as we were. He had to love the future.

No, He loved you just as you were. He loved you in all your sin and all your defilement. I've always loved that old hymn. We used to sing it all the time in my church, every other service, just as I am. The song's got like 914 verses in it.

But I remember like six of them. But the story behind the hymn is just amazing. The song was written in 1834 by a woman named Charlotte Elliott. Charlotte Elliott had a brother who was a pastor. And their pastor was starting a school for underprivileged girls in the community, orphans and girls that were poor. And so this whole church got involved trying to raise money to build this school.

And so everybody was doing something on this, like, they said this weekend for everybody to do all these work projects. But Charlotte Elliott had very poor health. She was bedridden.

And so everybody else was sowing and baking and building stuff. She just sat there in a room and didn't do anything. And she just got really depressed because she thought, I'll never be able to use my body for God.

I'll never be able to do anything for Him. She said, it made me so upset that I stayed up the entire night just thinking I have nothing that I can offer to God. She said, but in the morning, the Holy Spirit, as the sun came up, seemed to remind me of my salvation. And I thought about my salvation, how God did not accept me because I had something to offer. He took me in my sin just as I was. And I learned, I figured that if He took me out of my sin that way just as I was, then that's how He would use me also.

He would use me poor health and all just as I was when I gave myself to Him. And so the next day she wrote the text to Just As I Am, the song that has arguably been used to bring more people to faith in Christ than any other song in history, because it's the song they used at just about every Billy Graham rally. During the invitation, they sang Just As I Am. Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bids me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come. Just as I am, poor, wretched, and blind, sight, riches, healing of the mind. Yea, all I need in thee I find, O Lamb of God, I come. Just as I am, thou wilt receive, wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve, because thy promise I believe, O Lamb of God, I come.

Listen, you can be redeemed. Sin has messed your life up. It's made a mess of your heart. It's destroyed your relationships. It's put you into the famine of a bad marriage.

It's put you into the famine of an unhappy life. You got things that are destroyed. You got a career that was lost. When you repent, God begins to redeem. He begins to rebuild.

He begins to restore. The gospel is not a reward for the righteous. It is salvation for the sick. And all you do is what Ruth did is you turn and you say, just as I am, I'll come just as I am, and I'll come and let God do all the work. You can be used in the kingdom of God. Though your life up to this point has done nothing but cause harm and pain to other people, He can begin to rewrite your story for blessing, just like He did Ruth's.

Here's number two. In Ruth, we see number two that God uses the least likely as His instruments of redemption. Ruth has everything stacked against her, does she not? She is a poor childless widow from a hated race. Meanwhile, meanwhile, Samson, you know, back in Israel, an Israelite hero is strong enough to knock down the walls of a huge temple by himself.

Meanwhile, he's off messing around with Delilah and swapping out his country's safety for some cheap thrills. While that's happening in one part of the country, in another part, you got a little Moabite girl who forsook everything to follow God and save the nation. It was she, not he, that brought salvation into the world, that brought Jesus into the world. So Naomi says of Ruth, maybe the second most important verse in the whole book, Ruth 4.15, you are better to me, says Naomi to Ruth, than seven sons. Sons in those days would have been considered ultimate.

Seven was the number of completion. It was like saying infinity. So in other words, through Naomi's mouth, listen to this, the Holy Spirit says to Ruth, Ruth, because of your faithfulness, you are more valuable to me than an infinity of the strongest heroes. Summit, when will we learn that God works through availability, not ability? God does not need your ability at all. He does not need your money. He does not need your talents.

I know that our culture is like, oh, you're unique and you're special and there's a part of the world that'll, that's just all garbage. God doesn't need you. He doesn't need you. God doesn't need you at all. God can create 10 of you tomorrow if He wants, right?

What God calls for is not your ability. He calls for your availability. He wants your complete and total obedience. See, the point is not how much money you give. The point is whether you give what He tells you to give.

He doesn't need your money. He wants your obedience. The point is not how eloquently you speak. The point is whether you speak when He tells you to speak. The point is not what you do or how well you serve. The point is are you serving where He's told you to serve. So listen, some of you, you need to have the conversation today.

You need to write the check today. You need to get involved in the ministry today. You need to make the decision today because you can scarcely overestimate what God will accomplish through simple acts of obedience. And of course, all this points to the fact that the one who would come and save us would ultimately not come as a mighty conquering warrior riding on a horse like Samson, knocking walls down. The one who would come save us would come as a meek obedient servant like Ruth and like the runt kid David.

And a lot of people miss Jesus for that very reason, just like they overlooked Ruth and they overlooked David because they were looking for a Samson. But what God sent was a little shepherd boy. What God sent was somebody that was poor and despised that nobody thought twice about.

Y'all listen, the Bible turns prejudice on its head because what the Bible shows us is that those who are considered weak, those who are considered poor, those who are considered lower class by society are those. They're the ones into whom God chooses to put the riches of His grace and the powers of His salvation. It is not many mighty, Paul says, that were called. It's not many strong.

It's not many wise. God has chosen the poor and the despised. They're the ones He puts His power into so that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of men.

Number three, those who experience the gospel become like the gospel. You see, this whole book gives you a picture of how Israel was supposed to love others in response to God's love for them. That's why the central question is in chapter 2 verse 5, whose young woman is this woman? You see, that's the question that we who have been redeemed are supposed to ask about the people in our lives. Who really is the refugee and the immigrant? Who really are they? Are they mainly a political problem to be dealt with?

Or are they people made in the image of God that Jesus died to save and that He's put into our lives and our communities for us to love? You know, I realize the government has its own questions that it's got to ask about refugees. They are charged with keeping us safe and we need to pray for them that they make wise decisions. But see, here's what I know. I'm not the government. And I know that when they show up down the street from me, regardless of how they got there as a representative of the church, I know what my job is. And my job is, regardless of how they got there, to love them and care for them as people made in the image of God that Jesus died to redeem that are really no different than I am.

Or how about this? The divorcee or the girl who's had an abortion, who is she really? Is she an example that we hold up of what not to be? Somebody that we hold up and despise and say, don't become like her? Or is she somebody that Jesus never stopped loving and that He gave His blood to redeem and whom we have to go tell that because she probably didn't know it anymore? Or the orphan, whose son really is the orphan? Are they just a problem to be cast aside? Are they a statistic that we deal with through higher taxes and government? Or are they people made in the image of God that God says, why don't you love them because they were like you?

Those who have been redeemed by Jesus ought to become redeemers of others. In the most powerful adoption testament I've ever heard, a couple in our church told me this, they decided that they were going to adopt a child and they arranged for the domestic adoption. Somebody that had a pregnancy, an unplanned pregnancy, a girl out of wedlock, she gets pregnant, they arranged that she'll carry the baby to term and then they'll raise it as their child. And so about five months into the pregnancy, the social worker pulls this couple in and says, I've got terrible news for you. We just did an analysis and this baby is going to be born with a severe case of spina bifida, maybe one of the worst that we've seen. And if the baby survives the pregnancy, the baby is not going to be normal. No amount of operations is ever going to be able to fix what's wrong and child's always going to be disabled. If it survives, it probably won't be more than a couple years.

It's never going to have a normal life. And listen, we know that when you got into this adoption process, this is not what you were thinking and maybe probably overwhelming for you. We're not really sure what we're going to counsel the girl to, whether she should have an abortion or what, but we realize this is not what you signed up for and we understand if you just need to back out. Well, that's a difficult question because the couple, yeah, they hadn't gotten on into the adoption process thinking that was going to be the future. So they went home and they prayed about it and they just kind of assumed that, yeah, they were going to very politely back out because that was a different thing than what they were thinking.

They prayed about it, went to sleep, next morning they'll get up. And the wife looks at the husband and says, we need to take this baby. And the husband said, why? I don't understand.

We were praying about it and I'm open to it, but why did you change your mind? She said, well, last night I had this dream. She said, in this dream, I was in this arena, like a sports arena, 100,000 people in the stands.

And they're kind of in the middle. They would bring out these children one by one, beautiful children, healthy children. They'd hold them up and they'd say, who wants this child? Somebody would stand up in the audience and they'd say, I want that child.

I want that child. She said, at the very end of the line, they brought up this child that was ugly. It was deformed. It was diseased.

It was just completely messed up. And they held the baby up and said, who wants this baby? And she said, the whole place felt deathly silent. She said, after several minutes of silence, finally, a man stood up in the front row and said, I'll take that child. And he walked forward and picked up that child. And she said, the man turned around and she said, it was Jesus.

It was Jesus. He took that child. He said, I want this child. She says, and then it was like, I was able to see, I was able to see right down into this baby. And I looked into the face of this baby.

She said, it was, it was my face. She says, I was the child that Jesus got that I realized that when I was ugly and scarred by sin, when I had completely messed everything up, that Jesus stood up and said, I'll take her. And he bought me and redeemed me back into my family. And if that's the way that Jesus loved us, then that's what I want to do for this child.

And as long as this child is alive, I want to show it the love that God has for it or he or she, regardless. You know, listen, I know adoption is a very complex process and I'm not trying to give a simplistic answer. And I know that there are many people that really is not what you were cut out for.

And, and, and, and so I'm not saying that's the decision you always make. What I'm trying to say is that when you really experience the redemption of Jesus Christ in your life, it totally changes how you look at everything and everybody. Because see, you start to say, God, you have redeemed me and now I want to be used to redeem others. And maybe it's not an adoption or foster care. Maybe it's with prisoners.

Maybe it's with high school students. Maybe it's with a person across the street that you're just going to keep loving, even though they're a bad neighbor to you. And maybe you're going to keep telling them about Jesus, or maybe it's a boss that you just keep praying for. And you're just going to keep doing this thing of redemption because you've been redeemed. Those who've been redeemed by Jesus, they just feel like they have to become redeemers of other people. That's the way that the gospel works. Those who become, those who receive the gospel, become like it. Y'all listen, a life of gospel generosity is not easy.

I understand that. Adoption's not easy. Foster care is not easy. Getting involved in student ministry is not easy. Walking across the office to share Christ with somebody in the cubicle across the hall, that's not easy. Any kind of real ministry is tough. But like one person in our church here engaged in adoption said, you know, taking a child with fetal alcohol syndrome is probably not nearly as glamorous as some people make it look like on TV.

That wears off really quick, the whole storybook picture of it, the photo album, that wears off fast. It's tough, and it may inconvenience your life, but that's not really anything compared to what it was like for Jesus to take me, this guy said, who had the corruption and poison of sin flowing through my body and bring me into his family. Y'all, we sing about Jesus's love here.

It's one of our favorite songs. He took my sin and my sorrow and he made them his very own. He bore my burden to Calvary and he suffered and died alone. How marvelous, how wonderful and my song shall ever be. How marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior's love for me. You see, Jesus's love for us was marvelous.

It was wonderful. He created wonder in people. They couldn't understand why he would do it. What that means is that those of us who have tasted of that love, our love for others ought to be wonderful also. It ought to make people stand back and wonder and say, I just don't understand. Russ Moore, who wrote a great book on adoptions, think of how revolutionary he says it is for a Christian to adopt a young boy with a cleft palate from a region in India where most people see him as defective. Think of how odd it must seem to American secularists to see Christians adopting a baby whose body trembles with an addiction to the cocaine that her mother sent through her bloodstream before birth. Think of the kind of credibility such action lends to the proclamation of our gospel. And then he asked, listen, what if we as Christians were known once again as the people who take in orphans and make of them beloved sons and daughters? I know that those who've been redeemed by Jesus become redeemers of others and those who really believe the gospel become like the gospel. Has that happened to you?

So has that happened to you? Have you accepted Jesus as your redeemer? If not, we'd love to help you take that step today. There's no better decision that you could make with your life than choosing Jesus. Please get in touch with us by visiting jdgrier.com or giving us a call. You're listening to Summit Life, the Bible Teaching Ministry of J.D.

Greer. So I think it's time for some real talk. I think it's safe to say that many of us don't have a healthy, happy prayer life. We struggle with prayer, the what, the when, and sometimes even the why.

So J.D., help us out. What do you think keeps people from praying? Yeah, Molly, I feel like a lot of people don't want to say this out loud. A lot of Christians aren't convinced that prayer actually does anything. They're like, well, sometimes I pray and things happen. Sometimes I pray that don't. Sometimes I forget to pray and the thing I should have prayed for happens anyway.

So how was this really, how is it really effective? What I want to show through this book, Just Ask, is exactly how God has hardwired the universe through prayer so that that prayer is the means by which it's the vehicle by which he does his work on earth. So if you're a parent looking for help with your kid, if you're a spouse looking for help in your marriage, if you're trying to share Christ with a friend, you just ask. You ask because that's the means by which God will infuse his power into you. And it's such a necessary relationship that Jesus himself was driven to it.

And if it was necessary for him, it's going to be necessary for us. And I wanted to help equip you and move you down that path. Be sure to get in touch today so we can get you a copy of Pastor J.D.

's book titled Just Ask. It comes as our way of saying thanks when you donate to support this ministry. Summit Life wouldn't be possible without the generosity of friends like you.

And we're so grateful to call you our partners. Ask for this prayer book when you give a donation today of $25 or more. You can also request it when you join the team of monthly gospel partners.

It's quick and easy to sign up, and it makes giving automatic each month. Just call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or you can give and request the book online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovich. Thank you so much for joining us today. Join us Thursday as we look at the underdog story of David and Goliath. We're continuing our bird's eye view of the whole story here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.