Flight RUT01

You're a Christian.

You trust the Lord. But life has taken a turn for you. It's not what you thought it would be.

Getting pretty bad. And so you start to griping the plane and you worry and you fret and you wonder, how could a God of love allow me to go through these things? Stop there and just think of Naomi, bereft of her husband, her two sons, left wondering what's going to happen, crushed by the burdens of life. And here's the principle. The worst that God has for you is better than the best the devil has for you. Christian leader J.C. Ryle said, There is no such thing as chance, luck, or accident in the Christian's journey through this world.

All is arranged and appointed by God. Today, we continue our countdown of Skip's top 40 messages on the Connect with Skip Heitzig YouTube channel. In the number 16 spot is Skip's message flight RUT01, where he flies over the Book of Ruth and tells you a story of romance and grace that reveals God's loving providence in your life. But before we begin, we want to invite you to be a part of an unforgettable journey to Israel. You're in for an incredible time as we travel throughout Israel and experience the culture that's so unique to that country. Now, I've been to Israel a number of times over the years, and I can honestly say that visiting the places where the events of the Scriptures unfolded, where Jesus lived, taught and healed, it just never gets old. We'll start on the Mediterranean Sea and head north, seeing places like Caesarea and Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River. We'll spend several days in and around Jerusalem and see the Temple Mount, Calvary, the Garden of Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives and much more. This remarkable itinerary is made richer with times of worship, Bible study and lots of fellowship.

The Bible will come alive to you in a way it never has before. I hope you'll join Lenny and me on what is always an unforgettable trip. I can't wait to see you in Israel. This dream can come true for you. Start planning and saving now to tour Israel with Skip Heitzing.

Information at inspirationcruises.com slash C-A-B-Q. Now, we're in the Book of Ruth as Skip Heitzing gets into today's message. The Book of Ruth is a story of providence, and that's a word, that's a doctrine, it's a concept that you should be very familiar with.

And I'm going to talk a little bit about it at a couple of points in this study. Providence is something that you and I experience. We experience God's providence. Now, a lot of Christians I have noticed make a big deal about the miraculous, and God is a God of miracles. He can do everything he wants, but God most often works through providence rather than the miraculous. And I remember hearing a guy on television years ago saying, have you experienced your miracle today? You can have a daily miracle. And he didn't say miracle, he said miracle.

So I just thought, that's kind of weird. But anyway, what you really can expect is God's daily providence in your life. And providence is the idea that God takes natural events and he enacts supernatural results. Things happen in life, and God uses all those things to work out a supernatural outcome.

That's providence. Romans 8, 28, we know that all things work together for the good of those who love God and are the called according to his purpose. So God can take anything that happens to you.

It's not an impediment to him. It's never an oh no moment for God. God never says, oh no, what am I going to do now?

He says, this is perfect. I'm going to weave this for a supernatural outcome, these natural experiences and circumstances that we face. So it's a story of God's providence. The book of Ruth is also a story of conversion.

Here is a Moabitess woman, a Gentile outside of the covenant of God, outside of the covenant land of God, who comes to believe in Yahweh, the God of the Jews, the covenant God of the people of Israel. And so the story shows how a Gentile girl comes to believe in the Jewish God, the God of Israel. So it's a story of providence. It's a story of conversion. It's also a story of redemption. We have in the Old Testament book of Ruth a preview of a very cardinal, salient New Testament doctrine, and that is the doctrine of redemption. The doctrine of redemption is where one person, one party, pays the price to buy the freedom for someone else.

That's redemption. In the New Testament, the background is the slave markets of those times. In the Old Testament, it's the idea of the land that could be forfeited or it had to be sold if a person was poor, but it could be purchased back. It could be redeemed back. And the great story about Ruth, it's not just land, it's a person and land that gets redeemed, as you will see. It was Augustine, that church theologian from North Africa, who made this statement. The new is in the old contained.

Excuse me, yeah. The new is in the old contained, the old is in the new explained. Or as I think he put it, the new is in the old concealed and the old is in the new revealed. What does that statement mean?

It means this. In the Old Testament, there are truths of the New Testament, seeds of the New Testament. There are predictions that anticipate the New Covenant, anticipate what we experience in the New Testament. It's there in the old. It's predicted in the old. When we get to the Old Testament, we see all of those predictions, all of those anticipations blossomed and coming to fruition in the new.

So the new is in the old concealed, the old is in the new revealed. There's four chapters in this book. And you can outline the book based on these four chapters. Chapter one is love's resolve. There is a young Moabite woman named Ruth who makes a resolution to follow her mother-in-law to the land of her ancestors, the land of Canaan, the land of Judah, the area of Bethlehem, the land of Israel.

She makes a resolute promise that no matter what happens, she's going to follow Naomi. That's love's resolve in chapter one. In chapter two, we have love's response.

Ruth goes out and gleans in the fields in Bethlehem during the barley harvest. She will encounter a man by the name of Boaz. She will respond to Boaz. Boaz will respond to her and a romance will start in that chapter.

In chapter three, we have love's request. You'll see a very, very interesting twist of events in chapter three where Ruth asks Boaz to marry her. It's sort of a very different kind of a setup from our culture and even that culture, but what she does is she asks Boaz to redeem her. As Boaz to redeem her.

She asks the question. It involves a marriage, but she asks Boaz to redeem her. Then in chapter four, we have love's reward.

Love's reward is where there is a wedding. They both wed, Ruth and Boaz, and a little bit of the family is then mentioned. So the book of Ruth opens with a famine and closes with a family. It opens with a funeral and it closes with a wedding.

Very great little story. We begin in chapter one, verse one. We won't read all the verses of the book, but there's enough to get the story. It came to pass, verse one, Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem Judah went to dwell in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. Now, there's a lot in that verse, and since we have time, I want to unravel it. If you look at verse one, it's giving us the setting of the book of Ruth. First of all, it was a time of rebellion. It says it was during when the judges ruled. Now, we've studied the book of Judges a few weeks back, and we saw how in that book of Judges, Israel turned away from the Lord. God sent them these warriors who were like little messiahs who would temporarily deliver them from the hand of their enemy. It was dark days, days of apostasy, days of war.

So that is the setting. The setting is the book of Judges. And if you wanted to put a fine point on exactly when it takes place, most scholars believe that you could fit the book of Ruth in Judges chapter 10. That's the chronology where it fits. Judges chapter 10, one of the judges named Yahir or Jair, as we like to mispronounce it in our language, that is the judge that probably was ruling during the time the book of Ruth takes place.

Also, notice something else. It was a time of relativism. We didn't say that in the verse, but how does the book of Judges end? It says there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. So it was a time of humanism. It was a time of existentialism. It was a time of relativism. People just sort of didn't follow God's statutes. There was no rule over them.

They just sort of made up their own rule as it felt good to them. It was sort of like, dude, just do whatever's in your heart to do. That's like the worst advice ever.

It is? Yeah, it is, because the Bible says the heart is wicked, deceitfully wicked above all else who can know it. Don't do what's in your heart. Do what the word of God tells you to do.

Have that as the standard above you. If you don't, and if you just do whatever is in your heart to do, you're in the book of Judges. There's no king, no authority, and everyone does what is right in his or her own eyes. So it was a time of rebellion.

It was a time of relativism. And it was a time of judgment. We know that because it says that in the days, verse one, when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. God had predicted in the book of Deuteronomy, if you obey me, I'm going to bless you. I'm going to pour out rain from heaven. I'm going to give you abundant crops.

I'm going to give your families and your cattle and all your flocks abundance. If you don't obey me, if you sin against me, I'm going to send famine to the land. There's a lot of different reasons mechanically or naturally why famine happened. Sometimes it happened because lack of rainfall.

That's the typical reason. Sometimes it happened because invaders came into the land, destroyed crops so they weren't as productive. Sometimes it was high winds along with no rain from heaven. Sometimes it was insects like the book of Joel that would destroy the crops. But the real reason is the children of Israel are in the midst of a cycle that we talked about in the book of Judges.

Do you remember it? Called the sin cycle. And there were four phases to the sin cycle. Rebellion was the first stage. They rebel against God. Retribution was the second stage. God allowed Israel to be tormented by enemies. Repentance was the third stage, and restitution was the fourth stage. That's the sin cycle. It happened over and over and over and over and over and over again in the book of Judges. By the time we get to the book of Ruth, which takes place during the time of Judges, the book opens up by telling us we are in stage number two. There is God's retribution because of their rebellion.

There is a famine that has hit the land. The name of the man, verse 2, was Elimelech. Great name. His name was a testimony. Elimelech is a Hebrew name that comes from two words, Eli and Melech. Eli means my God.

El is the generic term for God in the Hebrew language. When you add an I to it and you personalize it, Eli is my God. So his name was My God is King. Great name, right? His parents had high hopes for him. Here's a kid who's going to be named My God is the King. Now, if you live up to that name, that's awesome.

If you don't, it ain't so awesome. But he had an opportunity at every stage of his life to give a testimony. Imagine, Elimelech at work in the PA says, Elimelech, line six. And because you're saying in Hebrew, My God is King, line six. So he had an opportunity to tell coworkers how God was his king. Just keep that in mind that that is what his name means. The name of his wife was Naomi. Naomi is a word that means pleasantness. And the names of his two sons, Melon and Kilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem, Judah.

And they went to the country of Moab and remained there. Now, when couples had kids in those days, they would name their child either their hopes and their aspirations for that child to fulfill or they would name that child based on something that happened during birth, circumstances around the birth. So for example, when Elimelech got his name, his parents were naming him with high hopes.

So here's a kid who's going to live up to that testimony that he's going to carry around with him, My God is the King. However, sometimes things happened at birth and the kids were named based upon that. So when Isaac and Rebekah had two children, the first one that came out of the womb was kind of all red and he had hair all over his body, so they called him Harry. Right?

That's a good name. Look at how much Harry has, Harry. That's what Esau means. And then his brother, the twin, followed right after him, grabbing the foot, grabbing the heel of his brother, Harry. So as soon as little Jacob came out, Yaakov means heel catcher. So he's grabbing, look at that, he's trying to trip his brother up.

Let's call him heel catcher. So they were named based on circumstances of their birth. When we come to these two boys that are named, it's very interesting. Melon means sick or sickly or weakling.

And chilean means pining or wailing, weeping, crying. So when I read this, I can just think, you know, we're dealing with some very honest parents here. I'm sure that, you know, every couple has a fear, a kind of a morbid fear that if I'm going to have a child that's going to be like really weird, weird looking, you know, or some deficiency, I don't know if I'll be able to handle that.

That's a fear that probably most every parent has. Now, when these two kids were born, it probably, they weren't that bad, but this is dad's reaction. He sees the first one being born and goes, sick.

That thing looks sick. Looks like he's just like a sick old man or something. So they named him sickly. That's what his name means.

That's a tough tag to have to carry around with you your whole life. So they named the first one sicko. They named the second one crybaby.

So you got sicko and crybaby, an overreaction, but nonetheless, it's what they were called. Now keep something in mind. Elimelech, Elimelech means my God is king. Too bad he didn't live like it. Too bad he didn't trust the Lord and stay in the land of the covenant, the land of Israel. And the first hint of bad times, there's famine in the land, and he hightails it across the Dead Sea to the area of Moab, the hills of Moab. He didn't stay put like Abraham when there was a famine in the land. He went down to Egypt, didn't trust God.

It was a mistake. Likewise, Elimelech goes to Moab. Moab, if you were to stand on Bethlehem, on a hill, if you go right to the eastern side of Bethlehem, you can stand and look on a clear day, and you can look down and see the Dead Sea. And then on the other side of the Dead Sea, the hills rise up, and you see the plains, the plateau of Moab. Moab, the high hills are about 3,500 feet. The lowlands of Moab are about 2,500 feet. The soil is very porous, so it brings in a lot of the rain at that high plateau as opposed to the low desert. So it can be lush.

It can be great for farming. And obviously, Elimelech and his boys were farmers, so they leave the place of famine, and they go to find higher ground. But there's a problem with Moab. If you remember your Bible, you remember back in Genesis 19 that the Moabites were the descendants of Lot, and they were false worshipers or idol worshipers. They worshiped a god called Chemosh, C-H-E-M-O-S-H. He is found written in the Bible in the Old Testament.

And Chemosh was a very fierce, angry god whom they believed required blood sacrifice, so he was worshiped by killing people, especially children, as part of their worship. That's where he's going. He's leaving Bethlehem, and he's going over to Moab. How many of us are like Elimelech? There's pressure in our lives. Finances aren't good. You know, the mortgage seems to creep higher and higher, so we make a reaction instead of waiting on the Lord, being renewed, like Isaiah said, those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength.

We can quickly react. Verse 3, it says, Then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died. So evidently, he was sickly himself. The whole family must have been sort of had a tendency toward Elimelech, Naomi's husband died, and she was left and her two sons. Now they took wives of the women of Moab out of the covenant. The name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth, and they dwelt there about 10 years. They're there a decade out of the land in this foreign land of Moab. Then both Melon and Killian also died.

It was a matter of time, I'm guessing, you know. Sicko and Crybaby, they were sort of destined to a short-lived life, I'm guessing, so they died. And so the woman survived her two sons and her husband.

Now there's a lot of heartache compressed in those three short verses. I can imagine them going to Moab. It was great at first. They settled into a nice four-bedroom tent, went to Camel Garage, joined the Donkey Lodge. You know, they were involved in the community. Things were looking up for them.

They were good. Then one day, Naomi gets a phone call from Moab General Hospital, the emergency room. Ma'am, I hate to tell you this, but your husband of Limelac, my goddess king, just croaked. He died, broke her heart. Time goes by, her two children die. Now this woman is in the position of having lost everything. Her covering, her husband, her provider, her children, her sons, who could provide in his absence.

Now she has two daughters-in-law, no way to earn living in those days. They've walked away from their land in Bethlehem. They're in danger of losing the inheritance that they would have had in Bethlehem. So, a Limelac found a grave where he sought a home. He was seeking his livelihood, and he lost his life. Remember Jesus said, whoever seeks his life shall lose it.

Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Now at this point, it's good to pause and bring up a point. You're a Christian, you trust the Lord, but life has taken a turn for you. It's not what you thought it would be.

It's getting pretty bad. And so you start to griping the plane, you worry and you fret and you wonder, how could a God of love allow me to go through these things? Stop there and just think of Naomi, bereft of her husband, her two sons, left wondering what's going to happen, crushed by the burdens of life. And here's the principle, the worst that God has for you is better than the best the devil has for you, or the world, if you will. That's Skip Heitzig's number 16 message from his series, The Bible from 30,000 Feet. Find the full message and more Skip's teachings, as well as full length sermon series anywhere, anytime, on any device at youtube.com slash Calvary ABQ. Now we want to let you know about a resource that will encourage you even more in your faith. There's a top 10 list for just about everything. But what about a top 10 list that can actually impact your faith?

Skip Heitzig's top 10 messages will really make a mark. Here's a sample from what most people don't know about heaven. Somebody once said there are going to be at least three surprises in heaven. First of all, who's there that you thought would never make it?

Second, who's not there that you were sure would make it? And then number three, the fact that you yourself are there by God's grace. Hear Skip teach on heaven, hell, and the end times, and topics like the Holy Spirit and true happiness. And when you give $35 or more today, we'll also send you Reload Love, Lenya Heitzig's book about the founding of a ministry that's been helping children victimized by terror for nearly two decades. Visit connectwithskip.com to give today and get Skip's top 10 messages on CD, plus your copy of Reload Love by Lenya Heitzig, or call 800-922-1888. God is using the generosity of friends like you to reach people around the world with His truth.

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Again, that's 800-922-1888. Thank you. Next week, Skip Heitzig shares another top 40 message and shows you what the beloved Psalm 23 says to you today and why it speaks so powerfully to our hurting souls. Make a connection Make a connection at the foot of the crossing Cast all burdens on His word Make a connection Connection Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.