Ruth 1-2 - Part A

You have in the book of Ruth an incredible foreshadowing of Jesus, of redemption, because essentially you have a man from Bethlehem who redeems a Gentile bride and brings a Gentile bride to himself.

If that's not a picture of Jesus in the church, I don't know what is. Today on Connect with Skip Heiting, Pastor Skip begins a short expound series on the book of Ruth, and shows you how the story of Ruth points directly to Jesus. But first we want to tell you about a resource package that brings you teaching from some of the most influential leaders Pastor Skip has invited to fill the pulpit at Calvary Albuquerque over the years.

As we approach the end of the year, here's a special resource package we have developed to say thanks for your support. Over four decades of ministry, Pastor Skip has been able to invite some excellent speakers to fill his pulpit. We want you to hear some of these memorable messages from teachers such as Josh McDowell. God said, I want you to be able to in the 21st century and open your scriptures and have a confidence, thus saith the Lord, it has not been lost. Also a part of this pulpit package, Dr. David Jeremiah. Jesus Christ shines in the world today by his reflection in the lives of his followers.

Nobody's going to see Jesus if they don't see Jesus in us. If you can make an end of your donation of $100 or more to support this program, you will receive this pulpit package of 10 excellent messages on CD or by download. You will want to hear what Joel Rosenberg said about remarkable conversions in the Middle East. That's the kind of door that when you pray, Lord, I'd love to go build a friendship in the name of Jesus with a king and with a Muslim president.

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That is connectwithskip.com or call 1-800-922-1888. Now we're in Ruth 1 as we begin Skip's teaching today. There are only two books in the Bible that are named after women and they're both in the Old Testament. The other one is the book of Esther and this book of Ruth.

The name Ruth means friendship or a companion or perhaps even more accurately compassionate friendship. So she is well named because she becomes somebody who is devoted to her mother-in-law, she is devoted to God's purposes, and she turns out to be a very compassionate, sweet, godly young woman even though she faces great hardship. So one of two books named after women, the book of Esther and then this one the book of Ruth. It is the only book in Scripture that is named after an ancestor of the Lord Jesus Christ. She does show up in the genealogical record, a lot of names show up, but this book named after her finds it's the only book in the Bible named after an ancestor of the Lord Jesus. Also it is the only book in the Old Testament that is named after a non-Jewish person. Ruth was not Jewish, she was Gentile. She comes from the other side of the river, other side of the Dead Sea, the land of the Moabites. So she is the only book named after a non-Jewish person in the Old Testament. Now there is one that is named after a non-Jewish person in the New Testament. Anybody know that? Book of Luke. We think some believe that he was a Hellenistic Jew, but probably he was a Gentile.

That's sort of the current idea. But this is the only one in the Old Testament named after a non-Jewish person. There are some great themes in this little book of Ruth. The theme of providence is probably the biggest one, where God takes natural events and weaves them together for a supernatural outcome. And how I love the providence of God, it is perhaps my favorite, one of my favorite attributes of God. One of my favorite ways that He works. He works so providentially. Some believers want miracles. Claim your miracle, look for your miracle. I like providence even better than the miraculous. I love the fact that God causes all things to work together for good to those that love Him. That in and of itself is miraculous.

But I love that. And providence undergirds this book. That is one of the themes of the book of Ruth. It is also a book of conversion. We have a Gentile girl who becomes a convert to the God of the covenant of Israel. Your people will be my people, she will say.

Your God will be my God. So it's a story of providence. It's a story of conversion. It's a story of redemption.

Really it's about how two people fall in love and one who owns the field, Boaz, redeems the land that has been lost by Abimelech and buys the bride, buys Ruth, gets the right to marry Ruth. And so there is a great theme a great theme of redemption. It was Augustine who first said concerning the Bible how the Old and New Testament work together. He said, the new is in the old contained, the old is in the new explained. That is the New Testament is hinted at in the Old Testament.

It's contained in there. There are shadows and types and prophecies. So the New Testament is anticipated by the old. So the new is in the old contained, the old is in the new explained. Once you get to the New Testament, you have an explanation of the Old Testament. When you read the New Testament, all that Old Testament stuff makes sense. You put Jesus in the middle of it. He unlocks the key to so much of that prophecy.

And it's all explained. But you have in the book of Ruth, an incredible foreshadowing of Jesus, of redemption. Because essentially you have a man from Bethlehem who redeems a Gentile bride and brings a Gentile bride to himself. If that's not a picture of Jesus in the church, I don't know what is.

So it's an amazing picture of that. Providence as well as conversion as well as redemption. The book opens up with a choice, actually several choices. One choice that leads to another choice that leads to another choice that leads to another choice. And one thing all of us eventually come to grips with is how precious and how precarious our choices can be.

One little dynamic, one little choice can be a hinge of so much. So in chapter one, Abimelech makes a choice to leave the covenant land and go to Moab. Naomi makes a choice to stay in the land after her husband dies. Her two sons make a choice to marry non-covenant, non-Jewish women, Moabitesses. And then Naomi makes the decision to go back to the land of Bethlehem once the famine has gone away. And Ruth makes the choice to go with her. So in verse one, 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 sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.

We read this verse last week at the end of our study in the book of Judges to show you that just like the last few chapters of the book of Judges anecdotally show you how bad it was in Israel during that time, Ruth said also during the time of Judges shows you that though it was really, really bad, God was doing something really good. And God often works that way. Sometimes God is working when you don't see him. You don't think he's working. It looks so bleak.

It looks so horrible. God is at work. And God has a really good plan though most of the people in the land cannot see it and don't know about it.

But God is at work. Now it says, it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled. So we know it was this took place during a time of rebellion. The book of Judges was one of the darkest stains in Israel's ancient history.

And we spent weeks looking at that and we're glad we did and we're glad we're done with it. It was also a time of anarchy. Every man did what was right in his own eyes, the book says. There was no king in Israel. Everyone did what he wanted to do.

So people were breaking off restraints. They don't want to obey God. They don't want to obey God's laws. They don't care about civil authority because there really is no central civil authority.

There's no king in Israel. So people were making it up as they went along, doing whatever they pleased, whatever they did. And that's what's ironic. The more they did as they pleased, the less they were pleased with what they did. They became more in bondage, the freer they got.

We're free, we're free, they said. And they were in bondage to their own sin and to the peoples around them as we saw during the sin cycle of the book of Judges. There's an interesting passage in the book of 2 Chronicles.

Let me just read it to you. And I say it's interesting because the author is giving a summary statement of that era, but he is also evidently pointing back to the time of the Judges and how the judges reigned. And so it says this, for a long time, Israel has been without one true God, without a teaching priest, and without a law.

And if you're taking notes and you want to just look at it later, I'm reading out of 2 Chronicles 15. But when in their trouble they turned to the Lord God of Israel and sought him, he was found by them. And in those days there was no peace to the one who went out or the one who came in, but in great turmoil it was on all the inhabitants of the land. So nation was destroyed by nation and city by city, for God troubled them with every adversity.

That's the time of the judges. The author in 2 Chronicles is harkening back to this time that we have been dealing with. Now I just read it to you in the translation that I read every week, the New King James Version. I want to read what I just read to you, at least a couple of the verses, out of a translation called The Message. The Message is a paraphrase written by Eugene Peterson, but it's very colorful and I found it to be very contemporary, so I wanted to read it to you. Same passage but out of The Message. But when they were in trouble and got serious and decided to seek God, the God of Israel, God let himself be found. At that time it was a dog-eat-dog world. Life was constantly up for grabs.

No one, regardless of country, knew what the next day might bring. Nation battered nation, city pummeled city, and God let loose every kind of trouble among them. That sums up the era of the Book of Judges. So the first verse of Ruth lets us know during the bleakest time, God was doing one of the brightest things. So it was the time when the judges ruled, and it says this, that there was a famine in the land.

Now this is noteworthy. Famine was pretty typical in the Middle East. There were so many reasons that you could have a famine. You could have a famine because of drought, you could have a famine because of locusts, you could have a famine because of hail, you could have a famine because of unrelenting winds. All of that could lessen the amount of rainfall or the productivity that rainfall brings. But you could also get a famine when people attacked you, besieged you, and would take your crops and burn your crops or destroy your crops or take the harvest for themselves.

All of that could bring hardship and a famine to people. But all of those things God promised He would control. So way back in the law, when God was giving them the land and setting up the nation, He said now, Deuteronomy 28, if you obey me, I'm going to bless you in the city, I'm going to bless you in the country, I'm going to bless you in the kneading trough, I'm going to bless you at the dinner table. I'm going to bless your crops, I'm going to bless this.

Just a whole list of blessings. However, if you disobey me, you're going to be cursed. You'll be cursed in the city, you'll be cursed in the country, you'll be cursed where your crops are growing, you'll be cursed in the kitchen, the dinner table, the kneading trough, everything. But listen to this out of Deuteronomy 28, that chapter that I referred to, and you shall become an astonishment, a proverb, a byword among all the nations where the Lord drives you. You shall carry much seed out to the field and gather but little in, for the locust shall consume it.

He's speaking of famine. And you shall plant vineyards and tend them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worms shall eat them. You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives shall drop off. What God is telling them in this chapter, what God is promising them for their future, is that the productivity of the land will be directly proportional to their obedience of God.

That was the covenant he made with the Jewish nation. If you obey me, you're going to dig it. I'm going to so bless your crops, your families, your land.

If you disobey me, you're going to live to regret it. And so productivity was directly proportional to their obedience to God. So it was during that time a famine broke out in the land. So it says this, a certain man of Bethlehem, Judah. Now this is interesting because there's a famine in the land and the city in question here is Bethlehem. Bethlehem is a Hebrew word that means the house of bread.

It's the bread basket of the land. It's the place where the crops in Judah grew. So there in bread land, in the house of bread, beit lechem, there was a famine.

In the bread basket, even there, there was a famine in the land. A certain man of Bethlehem, Judah, went to Sojourn, or he went to take a trip, a journey in the country of Moab. He and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech. The name of his wife was Naomi, Naomi means pleasant.

The names of his two sons were Malon and Killian. They were Ephrathites. Now Ephrathites, Ephrath or Ephratha is a region where Bethlehem is located. So if you remember the prophecy in Micah chapter 5 verse 2, but you Bethlehem Ephratha, though you are small among the clans of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me, the one who will be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old from everlasting.

A prophecy of Jesus birth. Bethlehem Ephratha, that's the county seat, so to speak, Bethlehem was the city. So they were Ephrathites. They were from that region originally.

Of Bethlehem, Judah, and they went to the country of Moab and remained there. Now let's consider their names for just a moment. I find Bible names interesting, sometimes weird, sometimes goofy, sometimes unfortunate, but I find them interesting. People would name their children in those days based on, number one, their own personal conviction, their thoughts, their world views, their ideas of God, or with that, the conviction of or the hope of what they wanted their child to become.

So either based on personal conviction or upon conditions going on around them at the time of birth. So if something happened when the baby was born, they might name that child that. So when Isaac and Rebekah got pregnant, finally Rebekah got pregnant, she was barren, she couldn't have children, he prayed and she became pregnant. And she said, you know, sweetheart, this pregnancy is weird. It's hard.

I'm having a tough time with it. And so they prayed about it. And the Lord told them, well, the reason she's having a tough time with it, there's two nations in her womb. In other words, she's going to have twins. And two people will be separated from her.

The older will serve the younger. So nine months go by, she has the live birth. The first one out of the womb, the first child out of the womb is all red and hairy. So they named the child hairy.

Because that was the circumstance of the birth. That's what Esau means, hairy. So hairy is born first, they wipe hairy off. But as soon as hairy comes out of the womb, there's a hand of the second child reaching out, grabbing a hold of the leg of the heel of Harry's heel. And as that child was coming out, they said, look, he's grabbing the heel. So they called him heel catcher.

Jacob means heel catcher, one who trips his brother up or catches the heel. So these were the names that these kids had to grow up and live with. That's why I say, you know, it can be a blessing.

It can also be a little wonky and weird to have that name. When Benjamin was being born and Rachel gave birth to Benjamin, in Bethlehem, she also died during that. She was waning in her health. And as the child was delivered, and they showed her the child and said, it's a boy trying to encourage her to bring her spirits up. She looked down at the child and named the child Ben-Oni. Ben-Oni means son of my sorrow. And then she kicked the bucket.

She died. Well, her husband thought, my kid can't live with that name. That's going to be tough when he goes to school and he's called son of my sorrow. So he renamed the child Ben-Yamin, son of my right hand.

So anyway, enough of that. Alimelech is a great name. It means my God is king. So wherever he would go, he would say, my name is my God is king. His name was his testimony. And yet he didn't live up to his name because if your God is king, why aren't you trusting your God and staying in Bethlehem instead of going outside of the promised land to the land of Moab? But this guy who had the name my God is king, he was a great man. He was a great man. But this guy who had the name my God is king didn't believe that his king God could take care of him in Bethlehem. So looking over from Bethlehem across the Dead Sea, he could see the highlands of Moab, 3,500 feet in elevation, 16 inches of rainfall per year, porous soil. So he goes, we're moving, man.

Let's go over there. And so he goes over there with his wife, Pleasant, Naomi. While they're there, they have a couple of kids and the kids are mentioned here. They don't have good names. The name of his two sons were Malon, which means sickly. And the second child, Kilion, means pining or weeping, crying.

So sicko and crybaby. Not great names, right? I did mention that people name their kids based on the condition of the birth. This could simply be dad's reaction to seeing his kids being born.

You know, for a new father, for a young father to see a live birth can be daunting. It's like, really? That looks like an alien. That's my child. I mean, look at that head, you know, put a Chiquita sticker on there.

It's just so, right? It could have been his reaction, ooh, sick. And then the next one came out crying, oh, crybaby. Well, those were the names, sicko and crybaby. Then verse three, then Elimelech, Naomi's husband died, so he wasn't healthy himself. And she was left and her two sons. Now they took wives of the women of Moab. The name of the one was Orpah, which means fawn, like the animal. And the name of the other, Ruth. And they dwelt there about 10 years. Then both Malon and Killian died.

So the women survived, her two sons and her husband. world through Connect with Skip Heitzig. If you're going to hold firmly to biblical truth, then you must study God's Word. That's why we share these Bible teachings to strengthen you in God's Word so you can stand on His unchanging truth. And when you come alongside this ministry with a gift of support, you do the same for many other listeners around the world. Now this year, I'm praying that God will open doors to reach more people in major cities across the U.S. with these teachings.

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800-922-1888. Thank you for your generosity. And did you know that you can find full message series and libraries of content from Skip Heitzig on YouTube? Simply visit the Connect with Skip Heitzig channel on YouTube to watch or re-watch your favorite teachings or find new ones to dive into more solid biblical teaching to help deepen your walk. And be sure to subscribe to the channel so you never miss any new content. That's Connect with Skip Heitzig on YouTube. Be sure to come back next week as Skip continues his teaching on the book of Ruth from his series Expound. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.