Ruth: Hope In The Dark

If you have a Bible, I'd invite you to take it out now and begin to open it to the book of Ruth. Ruth is right after Joshua, which is, what's the eighth book in the Bible, I think, or seventh book? No, no, it's the eighth because right after Joshua judges Ruth. Eighth book in the Bible, that helps you with a road map.

If you don't have a Bible, maybe somebody close to you does and you can look on with them. As you are turning there, I will tell you that one of my least favorite jobs, parts of my job here at the Summit Church, is the fact that a lot of the sports games that I want to watch take place on a Saturday night while I am doing the 4 and the 5.30 services here at the Briar Creek campus. And I always set my DVR to record them at home, but I never, never seem to be able to get home without finding out who won the game.

Something will come on the radio, I'll be in a restaurant and somebody will talk about it, somebody will tweet about it. Some overzealous fan at church will be like, oh, who was watching it during the service? I get that. And we'll say, oh, pastor, too bad, maybe next time.

But here's the thing that I figured out. If my team wins and I learn that, then I still enjoy watching. In fact, it kind of makes it more fun because even when bad things happen in the game, I'm like, oh, who cares? We still win. But if I find out my team did not win, then I have no desire at all to watch because then even when the good things happen to the team I'm pulling for, I think, well, who cares about that?

They're still going to lose anyway. If anything, it just makes the good plays that they make more depressing, kind of like the NCAA National Championship this year. If UNC had won, I would want to watch Marcus Page's wild, out of control three-pointer continually. I did get to watch that game live when he made that in the room I was in.

We were laughing and hugging and crying and making vows to God and all kinds of stuff. Now, I don't want to ever see that shot again ever because I think, yep, awesome. But in four seconds, they still lose. I know, by the way, for some of you Duke fans, it is exactly the opposite.

You watch those 30 seconds over and over and over again. And when Page makes that crazy three, you're like, who cares? You guys still lose anyway. But that's just because you have sin in your heart. And I have a verse here in the transcript to prove that.

But I cheered just as hard for Duke when they won the previous year, so come on. All right, well, anyway, the Book of Ruth is a hopeful glimpse of the end. In the midst of a depressingly dark chapter in Israel's history, this book declares to Israel, you win. And here's how you're going to win. Incidentally, the Book of Ruth is the first time that the word hope is used in the Bible.

Now, I've tried to teach you this before. The word hope in English usually implies something that we want to happen that we're not sure is actually going to happen. I sure hope the Carolina Panthers win the Super Bowl next year and don't choke again like they did last year and break our hearts. Biblical hope, by contrast, is not something that you are unsure about. Biblical hope is something you are very sure about that simply has not happened yet, and something that you look forward to with expectation, and something that reshapes your entire outlook on life. That's what biblical hope is. The Book of Ruth is about that kind of hope. The setting, as I mentioned, is an incredibly dark time. If you remember from last week, the end of the book of Joshua, Joshua had told the people that they were never going to be able to be faithful to God.

And sure enough, just like Joshua said, they don't. So the book of Judges, which is what's right after Joshua, traces this continual cycle of idolatry and disobedience that's followed by a time of oppression and judgment, which is followed by a time of repentance, where God raises up a deliverer to deliver them, one of the judges, which then leads to complacency, which leads back to idolatry and disobedience, which leads back to oppression. And just the cycle just gradually goes downward until things are totally out of control. The book ends in total moral chaos with Israel as bad, if not worse, than the Canaanites that they've driven out. You might remember this, we went through the entire book of Judges last summer. Well, the story of Ruth takes place in the last of those dark cycles. It's right after the story of Samson, who is the last identified judge in Israel.

Things seem as bad as they can possibly be. This is at the very end. If you want to know where Ruth goes, it's right after Samson's story in the book of Judges. Ruth chapter one, verse one.

You ready? In the days when the judges ruled, there was no famine in the land. And a man of Bethlehem, that's kind of a famous city in Israel, in Judah, went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.

Now, did you catch that? The promised land. The land that God had promised to bless Israel in and the land from which God had said he would make them a blessing to all the nations around them. That land is under such severe famine because of the people's sin that the people of God are literally fleeing it. Do you see how far they've fallen? This was the land that was supposed to flow with milk and honey.

Now they don't even have enough grain to feed people. Verse two, the name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Melon and Chilean. In Hebrew, sickly and spent.

Now, most likely those were nicknames, but still, that's a tough way to grow up. Verse three, but Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with sickly and spent. These took Moabite wives, and the name of the one was Orpah. She was kind of a mouthy talk show host. And the name of the other was Ruth.

By the way, did you catch that also? Now they're marrying foreign pagan women who worship by the gods. This was directly forbidden by God. Well, these two guys lived about 10 years, and then sickly and spent died.

No real surprise there. Then she arose, Naomi arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard that the Lord had visited his people back in Israel and given them food. But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, Go, return each of you back to her mother's house.

May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead, my two sons, and with me. I got nothing for you girls. Why don't you just go back home? Verse 14, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, in other words, to leave and go home, but Ruth clung to her. But Naomi said, See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Why don't you just go with her?

I got nothing for you. But Ruth said, Do not urge me to leave you or return from following you, for wherever you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your gods shall become my God. That is a great summary, by the way, of a conversion. Verse 18, When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more. Verse 19, So the two of them went on until they came back to Bethlehem.

And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred up because of them. And the women of the town said, Isn't this Naomi? Then she said to them, Do not call me Naomi, which in Hebrew sounds like sweet.

Call me Mara instead, which means, in Hebrew, bitter, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Ruth chapter 2, their widows, they got no food, they got no jobs, their pets' heads were falling off. So Ruth does what poor people did in those days. She set out, and she went and gleaned the field after the reapers. You see, God had commanded in the book of Leviticus that reapers should only pass through the fields that they were harvesting one time, picking up the grain. Anything that they dropped, anything they couldn't carry out on their first time through, they were not to go back and clean up. They were to leave that for poor people who would come behind them. It was a very simple way of caring for the poor.

God has always had a way of caring for the poor, and it's always through the simple generosity of his people. Well, Ruth is one of those gleaners who's coming back in to pick up what's been left behind. And she just so happened, verse 3, to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech, who was, of course, if you remember, Naomi's deceased husband.

Now, two things that you should see there. First, saying that Boaz is a relative of theirs is a really good thing for them, because that means there might be somebody around who's willing to help them. Plus, furthermore, it's a signal to a Jewish audience that a romance is afoot. Now, I realize that in today's culture, when you say so-and-so is your cousin, that does not immediately set up a romance for you.

Unless, of course, like I've told you, you're from that part of Georgia where Hank Murphy is from, then maybe it does. But in Jewish literature, it always signals a romance. Second, that phrase, it just so happened, is gonna be repeated a couple of different times in the book with intended irony. She just so happened to stumble into this particular field?

That's the kind of coincidence that is way too random to just happen. You know, guys, it's kind of like when it's your wife's turn to pick out the movie, and so you're watching a chick flick, and there's some major plot turn that hinges on some totally random, lucky coincidence, and you're sitting there watching it. And in your mind, you think, come on! That kind of stuff never happens in real life.

Who writes this garbage? This is so absurd! And you turn to your wife, and you were about to point out, said Absurdity, when you notice she's sniffling and wiping a tear from her eye.

And in one of the few brief, shining moments in your relationship, you think, you know, maybe now is not the best time for me to point out this Absurdity. And instead, you just kind of shake your head and say, mm-mm, wow, baby, isn't God good? Isn't God good?

Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Jireh. Well, see, that's what's happening here. A totally random coincidence, but it's all being woven together by a sovereign God. There is not one dramatic miracle, not a single one throughout the Book of Ruth. All there is is sovereignly controlled circumstances because both miracles and sovereign control are both ways that God works supernaturally in the world and in your life. Maybe you have heard it said before that coincidence is often just God's way of remaining anonymous. That's certainly what's happening in your life.

Things that just seem random are being directed by a sovereign God to get things where he wants them to go. Verse 4, and behold, Boaz. Now, really dramatically, that's the way that's written in Hebrew. At this point, you're supposed to cue the dramatic music in your mind.

Think the Rocky Balboa song or something like that. Behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. Boaz in Hebrew literally means strength.

Boaz is a man's man. He comes in riding on a horse with his cape flapping in the wind. He's flinging his hair out of his face.

All right, get this kind of image right here is how I see this going down. He's not wearing a sweater vest. He's not drinking a wine spritzer. He's not listening to Celine Dion. He's a dude. He's rich. I mean, he owns all these fields, right? And everybody loves him.

Everybody loves Boaz. Here's how I know that. Look at the next verse. He says to the reapers, the Lord be with you. And they all answer in unison, no, the Lord bless you. Now, how many of you, your boss walks in and says, the Lord be with you. And you all pop up out of your cubicles like moles and say, no, the Lord be with you. You're like, that's not how I respond to my boss.

Something else pops up when he walks in. That's what Boaz, everybody loves Boaz. This guy is great.

Everybody's a fan of him. Verse 5, then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers, the nerd with the clipboard who actually went to college, whose young woman is this? Now, if you underline stuff in your Bible, underline that question, because that is the question. That is the fundamental question of the whole book. Whose woman is this? Who is she, fundamentally? Is she mainly a Moabite to be despised?

Is she a stranger to be shunned? Is she damaged goods, which is how the culture would have seen her in that day? You see, to a Jewish audience, Ruth had three strikes against her. Strike number one, she was a Moabite, which the Jews regarded as a cursed people. The Moabites were the offspring of an incestuous relationship between Lot and his two daughters, and so Israel regarded them as cursed.

They despised the Moabites. Second, she was a widow, which meant that they would have regarded her as used goods. Third, she was poor, which they saw as a sign of God's judgment. Furthermore, by the way, there is no way that Ruth even looks that good in this chapter. I mean, she's rummaging through the weeds looking for food. Her face is all oily and grimy.

Her one dress that she owned is all dirty and torn. This is not how a girl wants to meet a guy, right? I mean, most girls, if they know they're gonna be meeting a significant guy, disappear upstairs in the bathroom for like four hours. And they're spray painting and sandblasting and things that are totally unknown to the male gender that are going on up there. Girls, when you meet Mr.

Perfect, you don't wanna be all slimy and grimy and dumpster diving for food, right? In other words, she's not a picture of attractiveness and beauty. But Boaz represents a different kind of man in Israel.

He's gonna give us a picture of God's love. So Boaz tells her, do not glean in another field or even leave this one. I think that's kind of like an Old Testament pick up line.

Hey, baby, I'll leave some extra grain out for you. Seems kind of strange to me, but it worked better than any pick up line I've ever used. Verse 10, then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground. Guys, you might wanna try that one. I mean, in my day, we had some great Christian pick up lines. Like, girl, I heard Jesus called you. He wants me to do the same. You okay with that?

Or girl, you are breaking the Old Testament law because you are working it on the Sabbath. Those were our lines. So they were good. They were good, but they never got me that reaction right there.

So you might wanna try this one. He goes on, verse 9. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you? He was like, hey, fellas, you know that new girl down there?

The one that's all kind of slimy and grimy? Do not touch her. I'm serious.

I'm in a lot of fields that would never find your body. Don't even think about it. And then he says to her, when you're thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn. You see, as a Moabite woman, if she were tolerated at all in Israel, she would have been expected to serve any Jewish men present like she was a slave, to get them water. But Boaz says, you don't have to be our servant. We will treat you like family. We'll serve you, in fact. Verse 14. And at mealtime, Boaz said to her, come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine. This is, I think, an Old Testament version of going out for appetizers at Applebee's.

Nothing serious, just a casual day, coffee with a friend. 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. Don't stop her or criticize her. Let her come in the barn and take stuff out of the piles that we have. 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.

Now, real quick detail, just because it's interesting to me. Scholars say an ephah would have been a big old thick pile of wheat. It would have been really heavy. And Ruth just hoists it up on her shoulder and carries it into town. Evidently, Ruth was pretty jacked, all right? Her mother-in-law, her mother-in-law, when she gets home, sees what she's gleaned. And she says to her, 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.

Where did you, how did, blessed be the man who took notice of you. 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. In Hebrew, the name Boaz is left under 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.

Cue the soaring classical music and the flock of doves that takes off in the background. 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. Kinsman is just a fancy word that means relative redeemer. A kinsman redeemer had to have three things. First, they had to have the right. The right meant that they were the closest living relative who was willing to do this. Second, they had to have the resources. They had to be willing to pay off the debt. Third, they had to have the resolve. They had to want to do it. 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. Now all I can say to this is, what? Girls, let me just say to you, the Bible has a lot of great examples in it for you to follow. I would not suggest you imitate what Ruth did here.

Guys, I will tell you, if you do this with a girl, if you sneak into her apartment and lay at the foot of her bed, you will go to prison. Okay, so you have heard it from me, I promise. But 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.

This poor guy's never given a name by the way because his lack of generosity is gonna make him be totally forgotten on the pages of history. But when Boaz sees this guy, he goes up, he explains the situation to him. Verse four, and the guy said, I will redeem it. This guy is thinking, hey, I get some land, I can add it into my family stash, this is great. They ain't making no more land in Israel. But then Boaz very deftly says, verse five, well, here's the deal, man. If you take the land, you also gotta take this Moabite woman and her mother-in-law and she's kinda ornery.

I mean, she named herself Bitter. It's kinda like saying, hey, you wanna buy this house? It's a great deal but there's this cranky old woman who lives on the second floor and she goes with the house. Plus, this guy thinks she's a Moabite. What if she's got some crazy Moabite cousin and they all wanna start moving here and then I gotta take care of him.

And so he says, nah, you know, I just prayed about it and I gotta check in my spirit so nah, I don't feel like I'm gonna 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.

The most important part of the book, it was 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. But that's not even the really good part. The really good part is verse 17. Again, he, Obed, was the father of Jesse, who was the father of David.

Obed grew up and he had a son named Jesse and Jesse had a whole bunch of sons. And one day God speaks to the prophet Samuel in another part of the country and says, Samuel, I'm about to begin a brand new era in Israel. This new era is gonna have ramifications for thousands of years and it's gonna totally rewrite history. This is gonna impact people in Raleigh-Durham in 2016.

It's gonna be massive. And Samuel says, this sounds great. God says, first thing I need you to do is go find me a king to begin this new era. And Samuel says, well, where do I find a king? And God says, go to the house of Jesse, the son of Obed, the grandson of Naomi, the mother-in-law of Ruth the Moabite because I have chosen one of his sons to be king. Now men, when somebody shows up at your house and says your son will be king, you don't even care which one. So Samuel starts bringing out his sons one by one or Jesse starts bringing them out one by one and each one, Samuel's like, not that one, not that one, not that one, not that one, goes through all seven sons. Finally, Samuel said, God didn't want any of these.

You got any more sons? And Jesse said, well, there's one more. He's a little runt kid.

He's out in the field. I can promise you though, he's not a king. And Samuel said, we will not sit down until you bring that kid in. And they bring that kid in and onto the pages of history walks David. Years go by, David becomes king. And another prophet, this time named Nathan, comes to that King David and says, 2 Samuel 7 16, David, your house and your kingdom are gonna endure forever.

Your throne is gonna be established forever. And so the Israelites waited because they knew that if the Messiah, a king, were gonna come, it was gonna come from David. And so David has a son who has a son who has a son.

And about 25 pregnancies later, or to use the biblical term, 25 begots later, we have Jesus, Jesus, the son of David, the son of Ruth, who was born in Bethlehem, the city of Naomi. And Jesus has the right. He's got the resources and the resolve to be our kinsman redeemer.

He's got the right. He was our relative, born of a woman, just like we were. He had the resources. He was without sin, with power over sickness and death. He had the resolve.

He said, I'll undergo even the curse of death itself to buy them back. In Ruth, we see the entire gospel displayed before our eyes. By the way, do you see how beautifully all this is written together? People say, why do you believe the Bible's the word of God? Because this was written 1300 years before Jesus came.

And you could not tell the story any better. In Bethlehem, God says, this is what it's gonna look like right here, and I'll go ahead and describe it for you before he ever shows up. 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 and 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 unlovely and pagan as we were, 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. You know, we couldn't love us just as we were. He had to love the future version.

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 sewing 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.

You see, for you this weekend, 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 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, meanwhile, he's, you know, an Israelite hero, 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. And in other parts, 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 and 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 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 two, verse five 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? Y'all, I realize the government has its own questions that it's gotta 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's gonna 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 gonna be able to fix what's wrong. This child's always gonna be disabled. If it survives, it probably won't be more than a couple of years.

It's never gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna be the future. So they went home and they prayed about it and they just kind of assumed that, but yeah, they were gonna 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? Well, I don't understand.

We were praying about it and I'm open to it, but why'd you change your mind? She said, well, last night I had this dream. She had this dream, I was in this arena, it was 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 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 wanna do for this child and as long as this child is alive, I wanna 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 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 wanna 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 the person across the street that you're just gonna keep loving even though they're a bad neighbor to you and maybe you're gonna keep telling them about Jesus or maybe it's a boss that you just keep praying for and you're just gonna 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 taught 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. Means it 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 in wonder and say, I just don't understand. Russ Moore who wrote a great book on adoptions spoken here a couple of times. Think of how revolutionary he says it is for a Christian to adopt a young boy with a cleft palette 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? What if, what if right now they're in Durham and Wake County there are more kids awaiting foster care than our families to take them? I don't know if God's not calling everybody to do this, but here's my question. What if there was such a response in a church like ours that Durham said we got more families waiting to take them than we do kids that need to be taken?

Because there's a group of people to line up and just say, hey, I'll take that one, I'll love that one. And again, maybe it's not adoption or foster care. I don't know what it is for you. I'm not the Holy Spirit, but I know that God has called all of us who have been redeemed to be involved redeeming others, to be involved in whatever it is that God leads us to.

Here's another one. Next weekend at our church is what we call Compassion Sunday. Compassion is a worldwide mission organization that we work very closely with here at the Summit Church. But what they do is they take kids in impoverished countries and they help them get education, basic food needs, grow up in leadership schools and become leaders in their country.

It's one of the best organizations I've ever been involved with. Our family personally is deeply involved with them. The way it works, you sponsor a child in one of these countries. Our family has four children that we sponsor. You have one for each of my kids.

They have essentially a pen pal that they write. We get birthday gifts for, we sponsor this amount every month to just help them know the love of Jesus and grow up to know that there's hope. Well, they're gonna be here in full force next week, Compassion is. And I know, listen, I'm not the Holy Spirit, but I wish that every single family, every single single here at our church would have one child, at least one child that you were involved sponsoring. It's a way that you can make a real impact. It is a way that you could be involved in some of the front lines of what God's doing in the most strategic places around the world. That's something you can pray about. If you're interested in the foster care or adoption thing, on Tuesday night, this week, we got a meeting, an interest meeting for those that wanna find out more about it and how we can help you involved.

That's information's on the website. On our website, you'll see tons of ministry, ways that you can be involved in this. I don't know what it is, but 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? Let me ask you to bow your heads at all of our campuses. If you would, would you bow our heads? Bow your heads and let me just ask, have you been redeemed by Jesus? You see, if not, it's a simple invitation.

He says, I love you right now, just as you are. You're Ruth, you're poor. And your kinsman redeemer says, I had the right, I had the resources, I had the resolve. You just gotta receive it. Will you say yes? Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, and that you bid to me, come to you, O Lamb of God, I come.

If you know that you've received that, have you become a redeemer of others? Maybe right now, you could just spend these moments, just ask the Holy Spirit. Maybe take your hands and spread them out and say, Jesus, where do you want my love to become marvelous? Where are you leading me to get involved?

Kids' ministry, student ministry, working with the homeless, the orphan, the prisoner, the unwed mother, the high school dropout, where? My answer is yes, Jesus. Is it to go on one of these church plants? To walk across the street and share Christ? Yes. Whatever the question is, God, the answer is yes. Why don't you just listen to the Holy Spirit at our church, at all of our campuses? You listen to the Holy Spirit for a few minutes, for a few moments, and our worship teams will come and they'll lead us, they'll lead us to sing and to celebrate the love of God given to us in Christ.