Ruth: Hope in the Dark

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. 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. Have you ever come to a point in your life where it seems like everything had fallen apart? Maybe it was a cancer diagnosis or the death of a loved one. Maybe your business went under or you lost your home in a natural disaster. Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer is walking us through the story of a woman who lost everything.

Her home, her family, her financial security. The darkest of seasons. It's a well-known passage that's part of our teaching series called The Whole Story. And that's walking us through the entire Bible one story at a time. So grab your Bible and join us expecting to hear from God right now.

Here's Pastor J.D. Greer 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. 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. The end of the book of Joshua. Joshua had told the people that they were never going to be able to stay faithful to God.

And sure enough, just like Joshua said, they don't. They have a time 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. 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 1, verse 1.

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 2, 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 3, 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. 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 Marah 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.

But in Jewish literature, it always signals a romance. Second, that phrase, it just so happened, is going to 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, 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 four, and behold, Boaz. Now, really dramatically, that's the way that's written in Hebrew.

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. 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. Boy, everybody loves Boaz. This guy is great.

Everybody's a fan of him. Verse five. 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 going to 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 want to 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 going to 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 pickup line.

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

He wants me to do the same. You okay with that? You know, those were our lines. So they were good. They were good, but they never got me that reaction right there.

So you might want to 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, you know, slimy and gross. Do not touch her. 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 will 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. Her mother-in-law, when she gets home, sees what she's gleaned. And she says to her, where did you glean today? 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. 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 3. Chapter 3, verse 3.

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 7. 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 4, 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 going to 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 4, 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 5, 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. It's kind of like saying, hey, do you want to 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 want to start moving here, and then I got to take care of him.

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.

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, and 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. 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 going to have ramifications for thousands of years, and it's going to totally rewrite history. This is going to impact people in Raleigh-Durham.

It's going to be massive. 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. 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, man, 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 said, not that one, not that one, not that one, not that one. Goes to 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 is 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 are 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. God sees us like Boaz saw Ruth. He loved us just as we were and rescued us in our time of need. Thank you for joining us for a hope-filled message from Pastor J.D. Greer on Summit Life.

To listen again, visit us online at jdgreer.com. Today's message is from our teaching series called The Whole Story. And we've gone from Genesis to Ruth so far. And we'll be continuing to go all the way to the book of Revelation. And as we go, we're noticing the overarching theme of the Bible. The whole book is really just one story.

It's the story of Jesus. In Scripture, Jesus promises, Or consider God's word to Jeremiah. He said, It's an invitation to a conversation with the God of the universe.

He's very clear. He says, In his newest book titled Just Ask, Pastor J.D. shows us how prayer was a non-negotiable, daily staple in Jesus's life. It was more essential to him than eating or sleeping, and therefore why we need to pray as well.

So start small. Don't get overwhelmed by stories of great saints like Martin Luther praying for four hours before breakfast. Just get up and spend five minutes with God. Realize that God is more excited about meeting with you for those first five minutes than you are. And then try that twice a day. Then make it 10 minutes. Prayer is like an appetite.

The more you feed it, the more it grows. We'd love to get you a copy of this new resource today as our way of saying thanks when you donate to support this ministry. This book is designed to help you deepen your prayer life so you can truly experience the power of the Holy Spirit through prayer. Request your copy of Just Ask when you donate today at the suggested level of $25 or more. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or give online at jdegrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us again Wednesday. Through the romance of Boaz and Ruth, we see a picture of Jesus, and we're learning that God can restore any situation for our good and His glory.

Come back for an encouraging message about having hope in the dark. Wednesday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.