The Old Testament Book of Ruth is a short story. It's often overlooked, sometimes considered a book of the Bible that's mostly for women. But as we conclude this series today on Truth for Life, we'll explore why everyone needs to hear and understand Ruth's story. Alastair Begg is teaching from the closing verses of Ruth chapter four.
Now, I don't know if you've thought much about. Ruth's family. I haven't. But she had a family. And she had a family and more.
And when she married, her circumstances were altered because the two will become one, and for this reason, a man will leave his father and his mother, and the two will become one flesh. And so they established a new family unit. But she had to walk away from that when she came back into Israel with her mother-in-law. And doubtless the family that was left behind as a result of the geographical separation would have said to one another, you know, I don't know what is happening here. What will we make of our daughter?
What's to become of Ruth? Again, if you think of it in terms of Fiddler on the Roof, you see that dramatic scene there at the railway station. And he's there and the train is coming and you can hear it in the distance. And he knows that she's going, and he knows that she must, and he longs for her to stay, but still she must go. And in all of the emotion of that.
Now these are real people living real lives. 12 centuries BC. And God is working His purpose out. Go home and read the story for an afternoon siesta. Read it and then fall asleep and dream about it.
And read of the famine in chapter 1. And the family decision by Elimelech: I'm going to have to take the wife and the kids, we'll have to get out of here, there is nothing left for us here. Bad decision, wasn't it? Certainly to go to Moab they weren't to have relationships with the Moabites. He could have stayed where he was and trusted God.
Easy for us to say now, but he determined I have to provide for my family. It doesn't seem as though anything's going to come here.
So off he goes into Moab, takes his wife, takes his sons. He dies there, his sons die there. Fortunes pick up in Bethlehem. Naomi decides she'll go back to Bethlehem. After all, I might as well be miserable amongst people that recognize me as be miserable here so far from home.
She suggests to her daughter-in-laws that they stay. One says fine, the other says no. Ruth is converted. I can put it no other way. She had worshiped to that point with her family, the god Kimosh.
She must have come to the understanding that Kimos couldn't hear, couldn't answer, couldn't do anything at all. You may have a God that you worship and he can't hear, and he can't answer, and he can't do anything at all. I don't know why you worship him. I don't know why you worship her. I don't know why you worship it.
Five times this week I've read in the press. about somebody and his God.
Somebody and her God. That's fine, I understand. Everybody has their own God. They can carry them with them in a suitcase. They can prop them up when they move from hotel room to hotel room.
Whatever it is, carry it along. For the gods of the nations are nothing, they are idols. They're set up with wood, they topple, they're fastened with chains to prevent them from coming down. That was Ruth's background. Ruth, somewhere along the line, as a result of the influence of Elimelech or Naomi, or these men, the one she marries.
comes to trust in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Jacob.
So she's committed to the God of Israel, she's committed to the people of Israel, and she's committed to staying committed. That's actually what's involved in being converted. If you are converted and changed by the power of God through the Lord Jesus Christ, let me tell you what happens to you. You become committed to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You don't go out and talk about your faith journey.
You don't go out and talk about your personal God. You don't go out and talk about what it means to you. You go out and say, the amazing thing is this, that I have met the God of all the universe. And people say you're half crazy. Say, well, I think you probably think I may be.
But I have to tell you, I am committed to the God who made the universe. And secondly, I am committed to the people who are committed to that God. That's why I go to church. Because I'm committed to God and I'm committed to His people. And furthermore, I'm committed to staying committed, and that's why thanks for the invitation, but I won't be joining you.
See that's conversing, that's different from just kind of hooking up with a religion. And something dramatic had to have taken place to Ruth in order that she would then make this great dramatic statement: hey, Naomi, where you go, I'll go. Where you stay, I'll stay. Your people will be my people. Your God, my God.
Where you die, I'll die. And there I will be buried. And may the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me, that's commitment. And they move back. And they're broke.
And she gets up in the morning and she says to Naomi, I think I better go and try and find something to do. Because what she actually does is she goes out to work behind the people who are actually gainfully employed reaping. And the law of God made provision for really poor people. saying that the reapers could not go through and reap a second time and pick up the bits they'd missed. Nor were they to reap the totality of the borders of the field, but to let things fall on the sides in order that those who were poverty stricken would be able to benefit from that if they were prepared to put in the effort.
So, you don't see Ruth on the corner of the junction in Bethlehem with a sign that says, I will work for food. She is in the field working for food. There's quite a difference. Let me go and find favor, she says. She goes and she finds favor.
Boas takes a shine tour. May I continue to find favor, she says in verse 13 of chapter 2. I am hoping to find favor. I have found favor. I want to continue to find favor.
She's a smart girl, Ruth. She conjures up a nighttime conversation on the threshing floor, which you need to read in chapter three. As a result of that, Boaz tips his hat, goes to the town elders, and tells them: I'm going to marry if everything goes according to plan. 70 verses cover a few months, and by the time you get to verse 16, verse 13 of chapter 4, you discover that 15 words cover 9 months. And the Lord enabled her to conceive and she gave birth to a son.
And here it was.
Now let me say something to you. History matters. Your history matters. You are, to some significant degree, who you are. Because of who your parents were and who your grandparents were.
You can't disassociate yourself from that. You are the product of that lineage. And it matters.
Now, I say that to you because we live in an environment in which. History is debunked at the highest academic levels of our nation. Those who teach history in the Ivy League schools. who are the proponents of history. are at pains to teach their pupils that there is no history that is knowable.
That we cannot know history in any pure form. Because after all, we view history through the clouded lens of our own circumstances and presuppositions and so on. Therefore, it is impossible for us to know history. George Harrison, in some of his final words, as reported in one of the magazines I read this week, said, You know, all of our past is gone. And the future we don't know anything about.
All that we have is now.
Now you say, well, there's some measure of truth in that. After all, Jesus said, don't worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow's got enough trouble of its own. And concentrate on today. Yes.
But Jesus said that, not in an existential sense. Jesus wasn't saying that history has gone away and is irrelevant and tomorrow is just in never-never land and all you can do is you know with Chris Christofferson help me make it through the night you know No. Ironically, At the same time as a generation is growing up. With history debunked. The generation that is paying for their education is going online.
Responding to the little icons that are calling us to find out where we came from. They're everywhere. Have you noticed that? Find your genealogy. Fifty-five dollars and we'll tell you.
That just as you hoped, you're from Scotland. We can trace it all the way back. We can give you a tartan, we can give you a kilt, we can give you a bagpipe, we can give you a plaque, we can give you a chart, a scroll, everything. Oh, let me find out where I'm from. Why?
Well, because innately we know that it matters where we're from. This is the mystery. of history. And what this story really says is this. And I can give it to you really in three statements.
Is that here we have a striking indication of the purpose of God from all of eternity? What purpose is that? To put together a people that are his very own. Genesis chapter 12: in the word of God to Abram, he says, And through you, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. In other words, the comprehensive appeal of the gospel as a result of Abram believing in God and it being credited to him as righteousness, and then the lineage of Abram going out, it would lead eventually to Revelation 7 when John on the island of Patma says, And I looked and I saw a company that no man could number from every tribe and nation and tongue and language.
So, from Genesis all the way to the book of Revelation. You have this great panorama of redemptive history. As God is putting together this amazing composite gathering. And the engrafting of Ruth into the line which gave rise not simply to King David but to Christ himself speaks to the comprehensive nature of the gospel. God takes a heathen woman of a nation hostile to Israel.
reaches her through Naomi. Takes a bad decision on the part of Elimelech. Who, as a dad, failed. by letting his sons marry Morbites women. Not allowed.
Violation of the law. Messed up, dad. Guilty. And God in the immensity of his purposes and his providence sweeps the ineptitude of Elimelech into his great panorama of redemption and crosses racial lines. The interracial marriage of Boaz and Ruth.
provides the lineage out of which King David comes and Christ comes. Did nobody read the book of Ruth in Alabama 50 years ago? Or was there a prevalent? Do you think that you can teach racial apartheid from the Bible? No, you can't.
The issue of purity about which God was concerned was doctrinal purity, not racial purity. Otherwise, Ruth the Morbitess, having married once into the nation of Israel. would be violating every commandment of God by marrying Boaz, but she wasn't. Why?
Because the issue was not the racial distinction between Moab and Israel. The distinction was that Moab had now the Moabites had now been converted. And trusted the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Boaz trusted in the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and that was where the unity lay. Not in their ethnic background or the color of their skin or their certain social predilections. May God forgive every one of us that has given grounds to that notion and tried to substantiate it from the Bible.
It is erroneous, it is harmful, it is just flat out wrong. And here the Book of Ruth. in the strangest of places. God's purpose is worked out. It's a story then of God's purpose.
It's a story of God's providence. It's a reminder, too, is as in our studies with Joseph, that we're not held in the grip of blind forces, we're not swept along on the sea of chance, we're being trained in the school of God's providence. The book of Ruth says this to you this morning: God cares, God rules, God provides. God cares, God rules, God provides. A Christian understanding of the world introduces us to some great, wonderful perspective.
You see, the message of Ruth is not that the people who trust in God, none of their family ever dies. No. Because Naomi had no husband and both her boys were gone. The story of Ruth is not the people who trust in God always live in the lap of luxury because she was essentially looking for soda cans to try and make eek out an existence. The message of the book of Ruth is far grander than that and far more wonderful to be conveyed to our friends and neighbors.
In other words, we're able to say to our friends and neighbors that the glories and the tragedies of the events of nations. The joys and the sorrows, the pains and the disappointments of family life do not ultimately find their meaning. Within human history. Do not ultimately find their meaning ultimately within the framework, sorry for two ultimate least, within the framework of personal biography. But they find their significance.
Within the purposes of God, who has made Himself known as loving and holy, as personal and infinite, as Creator and Redeemer, as Sustainer and Ruler. And this is good news. Did you read the article this week that came out of MIT? Concerning the the a decade of suicides? And the tragic stories of some of the brightest and best university students in the whole world, let alone North America, taking their own lives.
That a young man at the very top of his field. Writing his final farewell. I refuse to live in mediocrity. And then he jumps from fifteen floors to his death. and triggers a whole sp uh span of others who follow along.
Now what do you need to go and say to that boy? You see, because he's so bright. You're not going to be palmed off with some happy, clappy, Christian, quotey, doty, flimsy, dimsy thing. He can beat you at chess without even putting chess players on the board. He can finish the logarithms before you grab your pencil.
He's so smart. that he has seen to the end of his MIT degree. And his postgraduate degree. And nothing tastes. Because he is either Atheist?
There is no God. Beist Somebody started it off, but we're spinning hopelessly. Pantheist God is all, and I are God, and we are God, and if I am God, God help us. And what do we go and say to them? Say, you know what?
I'd like to meet you just for a coffee. I got a great story to tell you. It's a 12th-century BC story. It's about a lady. The great thing about it is this, that She just happened.
She just happened to work in a field that was owned by a guy called Boas. The fact is, if she got a wrong field, there would be no story. In fact, the mathematical probability of this lady getting the right field or the wrong field is very interesting. I think you might like to think about it with me for a little bit. But beyond that, I want to tell you this.
That God cares. God rules. And God provides. And the sense of intellectual emptiness that you feel The sense of moral angst that pervades your being. Surely has not been met in anything that you've discovered yet for religion's sake.
But have you ever considered the possibility? That God, the Creator, your personal Creator, No is your name. She has a kind of ordinary story. Yeah, it is an ordinary story. It's about ordinary people.
It's a story of the Bible. Story of Ruth. story about God's purpose. story about God's Providence. Story about gods.
Provision. We have a Saviour to whom we may go. Naomi and Ruth were redeemed as a result of the outstretched hand, as it were, of Boaz, who went to them and took all of their poverty and credited them with all of his riches. And the future significant events of their lives. And the future significant events of the life of David.
And the arrival of Christ Himself were directly tied. to the story of Ruth. And here's my final thought. It is in the ordinariness of the events of life. And it is in the ordinariness of people.
That God unfolds His plan for you and me. How extraordinary that God would come to such an ordinary couple. Who the world is Joseph for crying out loud? Do you think if we were putting together the incarnation? We choose a no-name carpenter from some backwater town on the edge of a who-knows what province in the middle of nowhere.
And a slip of a girl called Mary. Who left school at the age of 12 if she ever went. And by means of this physical descent and arrangement, we will bring God Almighty down to earth. They say, this is unbelievable. I say to you again.
It is the very unbelievable nature of the Bible that makes it so compellingly believable. It's ordinary. But boy am I encouraged. Cause I'm ordinary. And not many of us, if any of us, will even be a footnote in history books.
Our great-grandchildren may not even be able to spell our first name. They may never even know anything about us at all. Forget our great-grandchildren, our grandchildren themselves. You never know. And what are you going to do tomorrow anyway?
That's extraordinary. Because even if you have an extraordinary job, you still go through it in an ordinary way, don't you? I mean, even the people here who have significant medical jobs, they'll tell you. I mean, they play music down there when they're cutting you apart. I'd been there, I saw them.
But that's the great wonder. That an ordinary mother. with ordinary kids. Doing ordinary stuff. Routinely.
Makes an impact. For the gospel. And for eternity. Then a grandpa. Because of the stories he tells.
That a father, because of the faithfulness of his love, That a thinker, a tailor, a soldier, a sailor, a rich man, a poor man, a beggar man, a thief. Doing all to the glory of God. living an ordinary life. in an ordinary place called Cleveland. May under God.
become the means of extraordinary impact. For the sake of the gospel. Father, I pray. That for some of us who've been thinking that we're not doing much, or we can't do much, or we're not well known, or whatever it is, whatever lie the devil fires at us. Remind us that long after human wisdom is forgotten.
Mental, intellectual brilliance, long after the ability to speak is over because the person. can't speak anymore that Faithfulness. Kindness. Integrity. Love, gentleness.
All of these things. Or proof. To have been so dramatic. in the lives of men and women. Thank you for the story of these ordinary people.
Thank you for the mystery of history. Thank you for the reminder today. That you, O God, are working your purpose out as year succeeds to year. That you're working your purpose out, and the time is drawing nearer. And nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that will surely be.
When the earth will be filled with the glory of God. as the waters cover the sea, So help us then to lift our eyes and look up. Fill us, Lord, with joy and with peace. And may your grace and your mercy And your abiding love be the apportion of all who believe. Today and forevermore.
Amen. God cares, God rules, and God provides. Those are important reminders from Alastair Begg on Truth for Life.
Next week we begin a study in the Old Testament book of Daniel, and to day we'd like to recommend a book to you that is a great supplement for that series. It's called Brave by Faith. It's a book that Alastair wrote to help us find God sized confidence in a post Christian world. This book dives into the story of Daniel to explore his faith and courage in an anti God culture. And if you, like Daniel, find yourself swimming against the tide, Brave by Faith offers a comforting reminder that this isn't the first time God's people have had to live in a society that opposes him.
Learn how God, who enabled Daniel to be brave and live by faith, still empowers us today. Brave by Faith comes with a chapter-by-chapter study guide. You can work through it on your own or use it to deepen your discussion with a small group. Ask for your copy of Brave by Faith, the book and the study guide when you donate today at truthforlife. org slash donate or call us at eight eight eight five eight eight seven eight eight four.
I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening this week. I hope you can join us Monday when we'll consider how believers should behave in a culture of opposition. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
