Answers in Genesis--Spring 2017--Lesson 8, God Blesses Ruth

All right. Let's, let's go ahead and pray, and we're gonna jump into this wonderful book. Lord, we thank you so much for your kindness to us, this morning and just allowing us to, be here to worship you, to study your word freely in our country. Thank you for your providence and overall of life, we acknowledge you as the God who controls, the universe, the God who directs kings, the God who directs our lives.

You control Congress to our kitchen. You, know every detail of the Taj Mahal and every toothpick in our home. we. Thank you, Lord, for just your sovereignty and control and providence, but more than that, your goodness in your providence to us, and we just pray that you guide us this morning as we study your word.

In Christ's name, we pray. All God's people said, Amen. so we're gonna do a little bit of review, and then we're gonna study the Book of Ruth and then give some applications. from last week, what stands out to you about last week's Lesson Anything stand out?

Say it again. The guy on the motorcycle. Yeah, we did talk about the guy on the motorcycle. We did a little review of Jeffha riding around, riding out of town like James Dean.

To go rebel rows. Good. I actually repeated that illustration twice, so that's why it stuck. Anything else?

So we did watch a movie. Yep. OK. OK, cool.

Oh, you did. Awesome, awesome. OK. Does anybody remember any of the content of that movie?

Yes. Yes, Excellent. Cool. Yeah, so just asking questions of people, they come up, they make certain statements.

How do that? Why do you believe that? What impact does that make on your life? And like the final question was Pascual's wager.

if you're wrong, what does this mean? what is, what, what's the real impact of this if you're wrong and, and we're right. so we, so we spent time on those questions. Some of them, we suggested overlapped with, like the Colombo questions.

Those of you guys that may have gone through tactics with us, some of those take off the roof, Colombo, that type of stuff, but really good. Good help in our, in our discussions with unbelieving friends and family. What evidence of moral relativism have you seen this week? So last week we spent a lot of time talking about moral relativism.

How to question people who are living in this culture. anybody identify any evidences of that this week, Larry? Right. So, I don't know if everybody can hear in the back.

So Larry's just bringing up the point about this all the discussion and disagreements about the media and what's being reported, what's not being reported, what's coming out of President Trump's mouth, disagreements with that. It's interesting to me in a culture that seems to really revel in, in absolute truth not existing and relative truth. That everybody from all corners seems to be really riled up about fake news, and that the truth ought to be reported, even though we're, as a culture, we're denying the existence of absolute truth.

We're all very, very riled up that truth be reported truthfully.

I just find that somewhat ironic. Right. Relatives that is like, yeah. Right, right.

Yeah, it's, it's pretty fascinating. I actually love it. I love hearing a bunch of people who don't believe in the truth talk about how we all need to talk about the truth. It's beautiful.

It's a beautiful thing. And it can be a springboard to talk about the gospel. Everybody's all riled up about the truth. How do, it's going back to our questions, how do what the truth is?

how do that? How is it that you are certain of the things that you think you're so certain of and bringing it back to the gospel? let's see, was there any other questions that you guys have about Last week or? Anything that we've done recently?

Yeah, Barbara. Yeah Yes, Yeah, Yeah, so what? So you believe that there is no absolute truth. So what?

Where does that, where does that lead? You don't believe that we can really know right and wrong. So where does that lead? one of the questions that, some of our, some of the young people that I work with have been taught is, is to ask people the question, is it, is it morally wrong to torture children for fun?

Is it morally wrong to torture children for fun? And most people are gonna say it is wrong to torture children for fun. And so the follow-up question is, how do that? On what basis is it wrong to torture children for fun.

And if people are being honest, they just, they'll just come up with something and say, well, I just, that's just wrong. You're just not supposed to do that. Well, how do that? And try to get them back to the idea of that there is something that's been put inside of us that says that, that, that's wrong and it's not just what our, it's not just what the culture says.

Most of us, when we hear what the Aztec high priest would actually do to children before being sacrificed to false gods, most of us. would say that that is wrong. And yet there seems to be a good deal of compassion towards the Aztecs these days. So, yeah, so those are good.

Yeah, Dave. Yes. Totally. Yeah, so Dave just brings up the point that even, even our, our speaker last week says you can use all these questions, but ultimately, you're dealing with blindness.

You're not gonna argue somebody into the kingdom. So you're trying to help them, you're trying to reveal their blindness and then bring them to the gospel. It's really the gospel that's the power of God and the salvation, and we're praying that the Spirit will just open up the eyes of the blind, right? So that they can see the truth.

So, yeah, I, Brian's been asking me for years. In fact, sometimes Brian will call me up. On my day off at home. I'm joking.

And Brian would call me up and say, Mike, why don't they believe? Why don't they believe? And so the first like 34, or 5 times Brian asked that question, I give him the same answer. And then about the 50th time, I was like, Brian, we've, we've talked about this.

You tell me, why don't they believe? And so Brian would tell me the answer. They don't believe because They're blind, right? They've been taken captive just like, is it 2 Timothy?

They've been taken captive by the devil to do his will, right? And so we're praying that people will be released, that God will release them and that their eyes will be opened. 2 Corinthians 4:4, yeah, we've got the God of this world has blinded their eyes so they would not come to the truth, right? So, anyway, let's, let's go ahead and move into the book of Of Ruth.

Is that Brian, is that, Oh no, OK, that's the audio that I have. Oh, OK. So we didn't add the audio that I attached in there, did we? Oh, I see.

OK. That's cool. That's cool. All right.

So let me set this up first and then we're gonna go into Ruth chapter one. When you look at the book of Ruth, we're, we're actually gonna read through the entire book and then we're gonna make some, several comments on it. Has, has anybody, did any of you get a chance to read any portion of Ruth this week? Raise your hand if you did get the chance to read Ruth.

OK. raise your hand if you've read Ruth at some point in your past. OK. What stands out to you when you read the book of Ruth?

Anything stand out? Just a big idea. We're not talking about little details of the book, but anything a big overwhelming idea that stands out? Well, we, we named our daughter that.

Yeah, nice. But the, the thing that stands out to me is. Naomi is, is raised as, as a Jewish person and is very strong in her faith and, and Ruth is raised as probably as an adult. I know, yeah, and, and yet Ruth gets it, he doesn't, yeah, yeah, so they're raised in different, different backgrounds, and, but Ruth seems to, seems to get the Lord, yeah, Cynthia.

Yeah, awesome. So Cynthia's talking about how that just God works in the lives of everyone, even like some of these are very small details that we would know anything about if it wasn't recorded in scripture. And yet here's the Lord giving us details. The, the other thing that jumps out to me, no, go down, Dan.

because of what it says. Yeah. Yeah, God just using ordinary dances, ordinary people, normal things in life, broken people, people with problems, and yet using them in significant ways for His kingdom. yeah, that just, that really stands out, God's providence.

And one of the things that hits me in reading a story like this is how foreign this story is. Sometimes, especially if you've grown up in the church, we can like, we just think of like white Caucasian Ruth up there on the flannel board with all of her Caucasian compatriots, and they all speak English, right? And so they're all speaking English up there on the flannel board in your Sunday school class. And you hear these stories over and over again.

And so the idea of liver at marriage doesn't seem to strike us all that strange cause we've heard this story a million times, gleaning, going out for the barley harvest., Alimelech even traveling down to MA, where is MA? Why is he going to MAB? If we've heard this story many times, we can lose the foreignness of it. And.

Say it again. Oh yeah, Brian says yes, it is in English, yeah. But this is a story that is approximately 3200 years ago, 3200 years. I was playing for my children, I think I may have mentioned this, this last week, I played for them some Old English of the Canterbury Tales and then some Old English of Beowulf, and they were just like, is this English?

And I'm like, yeah, it's very difficult to understand, but this would be Old English. imagine hearing this story for the first time in Hebrew, and not just in Hebrew, we're talking about ancient Hebrew. This is pre-Babylonian captivity Hebrew, when the script, what, the way they wrote was completely different from what we even have in our Hebrew Bibles. so the language is unique.

The culture is unique. And I just want to encourage you as we listen to chapter one and then move to this book, Let's try to set our culture aside for a second and not just assume that American Western culture is biblical, right? There's certain things about our culture that we could say are biblical, but there's other things, they're just the way we do it. Schaeffer says that we catch our cult we catch culture like you catch the measles.

It just happens. We don't really always evaluate it. We don't always think about why we do certain things the way we do it. Why do we do marriage the way we do marriage today?

In American culture, there are certain commandments that you dare not violate. One of those commandments is, is every person has the individual right to marry whomever they wish on the basis of romantic love. And if you violate that principle, woe be unto you in our culture. Every person has the right to marry whomever they wish, solely on the basis of romantic love.

And when you read the book of Ruth, you find out that's not the way all cultures have done it. in fact, most cultures, for most of world history have not gone, have, have not married for that sole purpose. And so, let's take a look at, let's, let's set aside our cultural biases for a second. Let's try to get into the culture of Ruth and let's evaluate it on its own basis, and then we'll come back and start making some, some deductions.

All right, so, everybody open to the book of Ruth. If you, if you prefer to listen. My son tries to convince me that he's better at listening than looking down at his Bible. I, I'm not sure I completely buy it yet.

but if you like to just listen, that's fine or read along with this. I think we're, this is the NIB dramatic version. I'm reading from a King James, but let's go ahead and listen to, Ruth. Chapter one.

OK, Brit. If you If you're actually looking for a good dramatic reading, my, my favorite one right now is the NIV dramatic Bible. the NIV is not my favorite version, but this is my favorite dramatic reading of the Bible. They just do a great job with the music and the acting and, and so on., so let's remind ourselves, at what point in history are we dealing with here?

According to what we've read and, and heard. Yeah, Larry. Period of the Yeah, so we're talking about the period of the judges. Different commentators placed this different places, probably around 12, some would say around 1270 BC somewhere in there.

And so, and the period of the judges as we've just learned is what period? Yeah, there's moral relativity, there's a lot of chaos, cycles of sin, judges rising up, delivering, so on and so forth. And, and then what type of literature do you think this is just by a first pass of chapter one. Yeah, so we're, it looks like we're looking at historical narrative.

so, in historical narrative, one of the hermeneutical principles we wanna be aware of is historical narrative. A lot of times it's about the big idea. a lot of times, things will be reported that, the writer doesn't necessarily comment on favorably or unfavorably. so we're not necessarily supposed to take every single aspect of the story and say we should practice it exactly the way it is in this historical narrative.

In other words, like, so we all shouldn't feel like, the next time harvest time comes around, we should all run out to the fields and start gleaning the wheat, the edges of the wheat, right? We understand that this is a story about that time period. so we're looking for what's the big ideas here. What is God, why has God put this historical narrative into holy scripture, for God's people, Israel, but also for God's people of all time.

And those two those two applications might be different. There might be something that Israel was meant to learn that for their time, and then there may be something that all of God's people are meant to learn for their time. what drove Alimelech and his family away from Israel? Famine.

And so we have them moving away. Anybody remember, where in the, we know that in this period of history, Israel's already come in, they've taken the land, but God had told them if they do not obey Him and then if they fall back into idolatry and they begin to follow false gods, then he will bring famine and other things upon their land. Anybody remember where those Blessings and cursings are stated. Yep Exodus, close but no cigar.

Close but Yes, Deuteronomy is one place. Yup. There's actually two givings of the blessings and cursings because you have two different generations, right? First generation dies off.

So this would be, we'll probably be primarily talking about the second generation that came and took the land. Anybody know what chapter just for the heck of it? Close. It's right in that neighborhood.

So Deuteronomy 28. So you got 28, and then there's 30, there's like the land promise, the Palestinian covenant, stuff like that. Yeah, so there's these blessings and cursings. If you come into the land and you, you follow the Lord and you, according to the covenant, all these blessings are gonna happen.

And so we would assume that since famine is now in the land, this is a cursing period. that, that people have, fallen away, fallen into idolatry, could be. there seems to be a direct connection in the Old Testament between famine and, and flourishing. and then what events happened while, the family was down in MAB?

OK, right. So Alimelech dies, the sons die, Malo and Kon, their names actually mean sickness and pining. kinda like, these days, in our culture, we just kinda tend to name people just something that sounds good. We like, maybe it sounds cool or good or maybe it's, we didn't, there's, maybe there's a relative that we liked.

I wanted to name my son Daniel because I like Daniel in the Bible. my wife had a bad, a person who used to pick on her in school named Daniel, so she didn't want to name him Daniel. And so she wanted to name him Joshua. So then after this huge contraction in the hospital, she turns to me and says, are you gonna let me name him Joshua now?

And so I said, whatever you want, baby. So, so he became Joshua. whereas in a lot of cultures, there's a little bit more connection maybe to a life situation as to why they would name children certain things and so sickness and pining might mean that these, these babies were sick when they were little and so they took on those names. so we're not really sure.

I, I probably already told you guys the little story that my father-in-law gives, right? I'm gonna have to save it cause we're running time. I really wanna tell it, it's a joke, but if we have time at the end, remind me and I'll come back to it. so, so we have, so basically, Elimelech and the two sons die.

We don't know exactly how they die, but they die within that 10-year period. if you watch the 1960s, Ruth, has anybody ever seen the movie Ruth from the 1960s, actually from the year 1960. Watched on YouTube a couple of nights ago. Amazing movie.

In fact, I went, I did some reading on the actress. she was being touted for some Academy Awards in 1960 for her role in of playing Ruth, Elena Eden. and I was, yeah, they, they totally messed with the biblical story like Hollywood does, but normally I don't like that, but I was so enthralled with the story and the acting. I didn't really care that they didn't completely follow the biblical tale.

but they got, they got a big portion of it. But in the movie, they portray the father and the son die, because of some political stuff that's going on down there in MOAB, and they, they, so they get killed, for political reasons. But what happened, when Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem. So she decides she's gonna return or what is, one of the reasons why she decides to return?

Yeah, so she hears that the Lord has visited them with, with bread again. She's acknowledging God's sovereignty in this. And so she decides to head back. At first, both Opa and Ruth begin to follow her, but it's, Ruth that, That moves forward with the, all the way to the land.

And that statement many times is used in weddings and whatnot. In fact, my wife took that portion, your God will be my God, your people will be my people, and she put it in a card and sent it to me, I think, right before our engagement, that I was trying to figure out whether she could follow me to Mexico because I was absolutely certain God was gonna send me to Mexico to be a missionary and as you can see, I'm in Mexico as a missionary. And but we needed to figure out whether she was willing to follow and whether we could be together.

So I said there's 3 things that we would never do.

I'd never be a pastor in the United States dealing with facilities, and then eventually I became a pastor in the United States, and for a while, at least, I was doing facilities. So God's providence. and so then, so then we see Naomi arrives in Bethlehem. Probably, commentators would say, we're only talking about 2 or 300 people in Bethlehem.

It's never been a large town. so she comes back in, people are like, oh man, is this Naomi? Why do you think they would be, it sounds like there's some, some shock in their voice. Why would they speak this way about Naomi returning?

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

Yeah. So it's been 10 years, she's probably gone, maybe not eating well, and she's coming back into town with no husband, no sons, and, and she's got a foreigner by her side. You were gonna bring that up. Yeah, so she's bringing in a mole bite., who is this?

He says, don't call me Naomi, call me Mara, bitterness. And, and, and just by way of reminder, as Ruth is coming in, she is from Moab, the, Israel obviously does not have good relations with them. in fact, back, even back in Judges, a few chapters, that's one of the groups that Jephtha was attacking, right? Remember we were talking a few weeks ago about Jephtha and Moab had come in.

They were brought in actually by the hand of the Lord to oppress Israel. Jephthah rises up, delivers them from Moab, and so, this is fairly fresh, blood. between the two tribes, not to mention that the Moabites worshiped Kamash, which was a god that would require, human sacrifice, child sacrifice, and so, the movie, the 1960s movie actually portrays this very well. I was surprised how much they got into the Moabite worship and the human sacrifice that was involved.

And so on as Ruth, and then Ruth coming up from that background. Let's see here. What else do we want to mention? The.

Many people comment on just the fact that as Naomi's coming up or coming back, that she is, she expresses the hand of the Lord being against her. she's been through a lot. some people raise the question, how should we think about Naomi's theology? And I wanna read just a section from the John Piper sermon that I sent you guys.

he says this, what do you make of Naomi's theology? He says, I would take Naomi's theology any day over the sentimental views of God which dominate evangelical magazines and books today. Naomi is unshaken and sure about three things. God exists, God is sovereign, God has afflicted her.

What you don't see Naomi saying is, God is not here. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go worship Kamosh. What you don't see her saying is, why, why is this happening to me? This is complete circumstances outside of the control of God.

What she does say is God's hand has been against me, God is involved in this affliction. and she expresses that. And, and I, I agree with Piper here that, that they're, sometimes as Christians, we can have this attitude of every trial that comes into someone's life, we just say, hey, turn lemons into lemonade. God's in control and you should just smile and grin and bear it and no, there's an aspect of life where times we, we don't always understand everything that's coming and, and the Lord does bring hardships and through His providence brings very strong difficulties into our life.

One thing that we can say is that perhaps Naomi has forgotten about the story of Joseph. That Joseph went through such hardships. And yet we see God's hand moving in a very providential way and, and using the hardships of Joseph to actually deliver the people of, of Israel. And so, as, as we see in the Psalms, there are times where the psalmists cry out in anguish and then turn right around and praise the Lord in the midst of the anguish.

And so, there does seem to be an anguishing going on in the heart of Ruth. Let's go ahead and, and, and listen to the rest of the book on what Brian start chapter two, and then we're gonna make some some other comments as we move through. And, and if you guys could particularly make note of some of the cultural things that to us might just seem strange and odd and In counter cultural for us. All right.

This is a great story. I've just fallen in love with it again. So, we have Ruth goes out to provide for her household. The assumption would be that Naomi perhaps is older and it'd be very difficult for her to go out and glean.

And if you guys are familiar with some of the laws in Leviticus, particularly, if you owned a field in Israel, you were supposed to leave the edges for the poor to come and glean, which is a couple of, there's, there's some good things about that. One is you're providing for the poor, but two, the poor actually have to come out and work to get their food. And so, Ruth says, I'm gonna go out and I will do the work of cleaning. This is, I haven't partic, I haven't done this myself, but this is hard work.

I, I can remember years ago, my dad, he had a lot of property out behind their house and he wanted me to go out and cut down all of the weeds of about 1 acre of property. And I didn't have a lawnmower. I'm just out there hacking weeds down. I'm not even threshing anything.

I'm just hacking it down. And I've got bad allergies and all this stuff. And let's just say it wasn't one of the best days of my life. And so here's Ruth going out on a regular basis.

gleaning barley and then later wheat, for her needs and for her household because they are poor. Boaz comes and, and notices her and, and actually blesses her. How does she respond to Boaz's kindness out on the field when he says, hey, stay with me, make sure that you stay with the women? What is her response to the kindness of Boaz?

Yeah, she prostrates herself and, and says, why are you treating me this way? I'm a foreigner. I'm, I'm from MOAB, and so, she seems to be taken back with his kindness. And, And then he also warns her, this tells you a little bit about what the culture was like.

Make sure you stay with my men. I've told my men not to harm you, stay with my ladies. She goes home, she says that, that Naomi says the same thing. If you were to go to another field, who knows what could happen to you.

The implication would be that she's a woman who's unprotected but also a foreigner that she could be taken advantage of. And so, that's the type of lifestyle that we're, we're dealing with here. I don't know if any of you guys have ever woke, you put, put your cans out on a particular day of the week, your trash cans, and you wake up and you hear somebody going through your trash cans. That's what this reminds me of this gleaning is, is people that would get up.

I know people that come through our neighborhood early in the morning and they're just looking for bottles and cans and things like that, and they grab them and then they take them to recycle them. And it's the same folks, and they're getting up several hours while I'm still in bed, and they're working hard to, to get out and get some, get some food for their family. And so that might be a modern equivalent of what Ruth. is doing here.

And so then, when, when Ruth gets home, Naomi reminds her, lets her know that, hey, this is a close relative. And the idea here is difficult to translate in English. The Hebrew is Goel, and some translations say close relative, kinsman redeemer. It's, it's not a real easy, you, you kinda have to do research on the whole concept.

The idea is that this is someone who is related. To Ruth and Naomi, who would have the ability to come and provide protection for them, also to protect their property rights, and also could fulfill what we would call, lever right, marriage. write down a couple of references, we're not gonna have time to look them all up, but you could write down, Deuteronomy 25. Where do I have it?

Yeah, Deuteronomy 25 is one of the places in the Old Testament where it talks about what we would call the brother-in-law marriage or Leite marriage. You could also look at Matthew, I believe it's chapter 22. Remember where the Sadducees are asking Jesus a question and they say, according to the law of Moses, Moses taught us that if a husband dies without any children, that the brother should marry his widow and provide children. But, so this guy died and the next guy died and 7 of them died, so whose wife shall she be in the resurrection?

That whole question comes out of Leverett marriage. Is the responsibility of the brother-in-law to marry the widow so that a couple of things. One, his name won't just fall to the dust. in our culture, we don't really think a whole lot about that.

if I didn't have a couple of sons that are gonna carry on the Barry name., I don't know that it would be that big of a deal. My wife's, neither of my wife's brothers have had sons, and so, unless something changes and they're up there around my age, the seller's name will end with Grandpa Ken, at least in that, in that part of the family. If, if you're in Israel and you're in Jewish, and this also it, it associates itself with family property rights. It has to do with covenant connection to the community.

that's a big deal to suddenly just lose your standing, your name in the community. And, and we have to be careful about assuming that this is merely cultural because it is in Deuteronomy 25. It's something that God is commanding. And so, it is not unique with Israel, however, if you look at ancient peoples, the Jews weren't the only ones that did this.

There were other peoples that did it, but the Jews were the only ones that did it this particular way. And God seemed to have taken it seriously enough that in Genesis 38, he killed, is it Onan? He kills Onan who refuses to carry out his duty as the brother, the next, the brother next in line. So, whatever we're gonna say about it, we can say we don't really like the fact that God instituted this for Israel, but God thought highly enough of it that he killed the guy who refused to do it.

He commands it in Deuteronomy 25. And Naomi knows the situation that she's in as a husbandless widow without any sons anymore. and so that's part of, I think, what makes her feel so bitter. So we, you don't get the impression that Naomi is joining the Red Hat Society and saying, hey, I've done my part now and I'm just gonna live my life out as a single widow, widow.

All right, rock on. No, she's, she's concerned that there is no son. this, this means our property is threatened, the name of my husband's threatened, our connection to the Covenant community is threatened. And so, and she doesn't even seem to really remember that Ruth, that Boaz is there.

It seems like she's so caught up in her depression when she comes back that all she can describe herself as Mara and bitter, it doesn't even dawn on her that Boaz is around until Ruth goes out into, into the property. if you read carefully the way chapter two starts, it says, There was a relative of Naomi's husband, a man of great wealth of the family of Alimelech. His name was Boaz. That's told to us by the narrator, not by Naomi.

And then the next verse is ambiguous. Some of the translations actually, I don't think handle this properly. When Ruth goes out into the land, she's just going out hoping that somebody, not him, but somebody will find favor upon her. And we know this partially because of the language in Hebrew.

But because when she reports back to Naomi, she's surprised, right? So she's like, hey, let me tell you who Boaz is. And suddenly now, it begins to dawn on her that, hey, this is a relative of ours that could take care of us. if those of you that are maybe above, out of your 20s, into your 30s, 40s, you probably have some memory of doing something like this.

Where something happens in your life and all you can think about is the tragedy, all you can think about is how upsetting it is, and, and maybe there's some solution out there that just isn't dawning on you at that time. and then suddenly the Lord brings it to mind through circumstances. Wait a second, we've got, we've got the body of Christ here. They've got an Agape fund.

Never even dawned on me, but what? I've never been in these dire straits before, but maybe the church could help out. suddenly something, something, occurs to you of, of ways that the Lord can provide, and that seems to be what happened here. And so then we have, so we have the whole scene of Of Ruth, gleaning and then the chapter 3 scene.

Of, of Naomi's instructions. What to do with Naomi's instructions to Ruth. Go to the threshing floor and find out where Boaz is gonna lay down, lay at his feet, uncover his feet. When he awakens, he'll tell you what to do.

to us, this just seems really strange. Even when you read commentators, they have no idea what to do with it. there are things in the text here that even the narrator has to tell his original readers back in the time of Samuel what it means, like the whole sandal thing. He says, here's, it used to be way back in the day, the, the writers telling us that people would take off their sandal in order to decide that a contract had been agreed upon.

And so there's things here culturally going on that we, we really don't understand other than the fact that it did happen. And so, there seems to be because there was, and I'm giving you the short version here cause we're getting really close to being out of time, there was somebody who is, was a closer relative who had first rights of refusal, so to speak. You guys understand first rights of refusal. Back over at Lindon Street, if they were gonna sell the property in our, in our lease, if they were gonna sell it, we had the first rights to buy it.

And if we decided we didn't wanna buy it, then they could go offer it to somebody else. And so there was somebody that was a closer relative to Naomi. And so, it seems like Naomi knows that, and by implication, you guys can tell me if you think differently. By implication, she's not all that excited about the closer relative, and so she sends Ruth on a mission to at least let Boaz know, we would prefer you begin the negotiations on this.

And almost every commentator says Boaz is an older gentleman who probably would not have approached Ruth on his own because of his age. Probably would not have thought that Ruth would be at all interested in him exercising his leveret, right. And so, he's just providing for the family from a distance. He's trying to be a good gentleman, but he's not approaching the family about Leverett marriage.

So, that puts Naomi and Ruth in a situation, and I'm just guessing here where they're thinking, we really don't want that other relative to approach us. let's, let's approach Boaz first and see what happens. And so you guys know the story. Ruth, is, as the custom would have been, they're ending their barley part of the harvest probably.

Boaz goes to his lump of grain to protect it from, probably from being stolen in the middle of the night. they've all eaten and drunk and he goes and he lays down, he falls asleep. She approaches into an area where it sounds like women were not supposed to be, the threshing floor. We don't know if that's Impropriety because of a woman and a man alone together at night, that could be part of it.

Or it could just be, this was kinda like the locker room, hey, this is where the guys hang out. You're not supposed to be here. But she enters into this area that's supposed to be men only. For some reason, takes the, covering off of his feet and then lays down at, at his, at his feet.

That might be some culture, it might just be just to wake him up because of the coldness of the night. Who knows? There's no explanation whatsoever other than some commentators try to say that this is euphemistic, which I've done the research on it and I don't buy it at all. If, and you guys can go read those commentaries.

I've looked up all of the references that they say feed is euphemistic for something else, and I don't see it anywhere other than their, in their own strange minds. so if you disagree with me, go do the research, see what you think. It's just, I looked them, I looked them all up and there's nothing that demands what some of the commentators suggest. So anyway, he wakes up and what's his attitude when he, when, when she says I'm here and she says, would you please put your covering over me?

How does he respond? Yeah, Cynthia. Yeah, so he sees this, even though it's hard for us to figure out what's going on, Boaz views this as amazing kindness and graciousness. that one, that you've come out here, that you've asked me to put my covering over you, which most commentators seem, that seems to be an indication that she's asking him to provide a covering of marriage and Lever right, love right marriage.

Would you please provide this for us so that, one, we can raise up a, a child for Naomi, 2, so that our property will be secure, and so on. And so he sees this as you are, this is a blessing that you would approach me. This is a great blessing, yep. Yeah, he's he's probably madly in love with her and like you said, he's, he's an older gentleman.

Yeah, and he's He's excited because, she's showing him this kindness. Yeah, so Larry says that she's, don't forget that he's madly in love with her and so he's, he's excited that she's shown this kindness. I would say we know that he's excited that she's approached him. I don't know from the text that we could say he's madly in love with her.

I think definitely the Hollywood movie that I saw the other night says that they're kissing and everything, so they're madly in love in the 1960s movie. but what seems to be going on to me is that Because of, I'm just guessing, because of his age, he would not exercise his right tolerate marriage. The fact that she's willing to approach an older gentleman as opposed to the nearer kinsman, he's like, this is extending a great kindness. Who am I?

She had previously said, who am I? I'm a foreigner, right? He says, Who am I? I'm an old guy.

I'm, almost thinking, at least without the romantic elements of sense and sensibility. If you guys remember that. It starts off with what's his name, he's interested in the younger gal. She couldn't care less.

She wants the, the young James Dean guy. There's James Dean again. And, but eventually it, it works out where the old guy marries the younger gal and it all works out in the end. Yeah, Barbara had something.

Yeah, there's, so that's a lot of people do think that the, the idea of, would you place your covering over me would be a request for marriage, the leveret marriage. and there are some Arabic, even to this day, there is, an Arabic practice, where when a, a man considers himself officially betrothed to his, his wife, he will put his garment over her. But we're guessing. we do know that she's asking for covering and they do eventually get married.

So, at the very least, he does enter into negotiations in the very next chapter concerning his right as Goel and the Leverett marriage. So we know that it has something to do with his Goel rights. Yeah, question. Yeah Yeah, totally.

Laying at his feet, almost like she had prostrated herself before, right? When he came and said, please lean on my field and she lowers herself down and says, Who am I? I'm a foreigner. Now she comes, uncovers his feet, and, and just lays at his feet, just to, waiting to see what he, how he's gonna react.

And I don't know that neither her or Naomi know exactly how he's gonna react. He could wake up and say, what are you doing here? I'm not the next of kin. he could wake up and say, don't you realize this is the locker room?

This is the guy's locker room. This is the threshing floor? What are you doing here? But no, he says, this is very gracious for you to be here, stay until morning, and, and then he loads her up with between 40 and 60 pounds of, no, no, that was the previous time.

We don't know exactly. How much it was this time. The previous time he had loaded, loaded her up with an IA, which is about 40 pounds of barley. I'm not sure, the commentators are not exactly sure how much is given this time.

And then just to bring it to a, a swift end. You've got the whole negotiations with the other kinsmen, and we don't get a name of him, do we? I don't remember any name. It was the closer relative.

at first, he says, hey, you've got the rights here. would you like to redeem the land? He says, you betcha. I'll take that land.

And he says, oh, by the way, Along with the land, you also get a Moabite whom you will marry according to Leverett law. Oh, what, I won't redeem it, so he backs out. And so, obviously, he backs out because if he were to have children through Ruth, now he's got two competing interests for the inheritance, right? the first child would be, Alimelech's child, but then after that, now you've got competing interests.

And so, he's a little concerned about dividing up the family property, perhaps. Maybe even just the fact that she's a Moabite. Notice that Boaz spells out. He could have said, hey, by the way, you get Ruth, but no, he says, by the way, you get the Moabite.

And so he's like, yeah, on second thought, why don't you go ahead and fulfill the duty here for us and And so then they do the whole sandal thing, take the sandal off. It seems to be a pleasant exchange. I get a feeling from the text. In the movie, sandals taken off and thrown and they make it real dramatic and stuff like that and of course, Hollywood has to do that.

And, and then they get, they get married and they have a child, and then what we find out at the end here is we lead to the fact that Ruth is the great grandmother of David. And it's interesting that now in the line of Christ, we have characters like Tamar. We have characters like Ruth, we have, who is the, heart Rahab, and so, so right in the line of Christ, we have these women who have been involved in sin and brokenness and, things like that, and the Lord is publicizing this for everybody to know that by the way, here is how the line of Christ has come down to this day.

Which, which most would argue is, is the Lord reminding his people of His mercy and his kindness that he's including very, very broken people in the line of the Savior.

So, I, to me, I, I, I love this book. I love, I, I think, as Christian interpreters, as Bible readers, we should revel in cultural diversity. When we look at things on the page of scripture that are just really different from our culture, we should be like, whoa, look, for one, it's one of the proofs that the Bible is an ancient book, it wasn't just made up by somebody who decided to write some things down in the 400 BC or 400 AD. This is ancient stuff that goes way back to the, 1250 BC and, and it should be different from our culture, and yet you see the same types of problems, Providence.

Bitterness, difficulties, afflictions, and how God is moving. And God will move through our circumstances, Piper in his sermon this week, he, he, he, he said, what, God is, he is in charge of Congress. He is in charge of your kitchen. He is, he oversaw the building of the Taj Mahal, the toothpicks that are in your kitchen cupboard.

God is involved in all of the details of our life, and we're just reminded of the beauty of His providence in a book. Like this. I think it should also remind us to hold our own cultural, Our own culture with loose fingers. I don't think there's anything in here that says, OK, all of us now as Christians in this era in the United States should practice lever at marriage.

I don't think that's the message of Ruth at all. but neither do I think that the message of the Bible is that everybody should only marry the individual they individually want for romantic love. we need to hold those types of things loosely. There's lots of reasons for marriage, not just in the book of Ruth, but all throughout the Bible.

There's God's concerned about seed. He wants to see children born. He wants to see, his kingdom spread. here we're talking about inheritance and land.

Well, God wants the kingdom of Christ to be spread. And so that should have an impact on, on how our kids and how we think about marriage, right? There seems to be the community, traditionally, how it's happened in different ways in different places, but the community has been very involved in marriage decisions throughout the history of Scripture. It's not just Mike Barry fell in love with Katie Sellers and irregardless of what anybody at Cornerstone thinks, we're getting married.

No, there is a community involvement in, in decisions like this, because there's bigger things at stake than just Mike and Katie's romantic relationship. There's the kingdom of God, there's the devil, there's angels, there's his glory, there's producing of children who will grow up to spread his kingdom, and who knows what will happen many generations from now. And then even within all the brokenness, things, how do you think Ruth felt, how do you think Naomi felt when her children married Moabites?

Do you think she was like, oh, the world has come to an end?

Do you think that part of her bus her, some of the things that she experienced was that her son, her, her husband dies and now her sons marry Moabites? I gotta think that impacted her just tremendously. Where's my life gonna know, my hope as a Jewish mother was in my children that they would propel the line of Yahweh and now they're married to Kimosh worshippers. Little did she know that her children would die, that Ruth would come to know the Lord, and that Ruth would be the great, great grandmother of David leading to the Messiah.

These are just things that we just don't know, things outside of our control, even, we, we would, so, so much, so much hope in our own children and their spiritual heritage, and when things get off the track, what do we do? we, we can, we can feel the bitterness and the affliction of the Almighty, but we can also look to His providence and say, God is in control, right? God is moving this ship along. He's ultimately in control.

We're way over time. Let's go ahead and pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your kindness and goodness to us this day, and we see your providence and mercy on the pages of Scripture. We're so grateful, Lord, that, for the ways that you move in our lives and the way you've moved historically.

Thank you for the encouragement that, Lord, it's, it's difficult to see why Alimelech should have moved to Moab. It's disheartening to see. his sons marry Moabite women, and yet we see you moving through the brokenness and even bad decisions and, and writing this story of redemption from Tamar to, to Ruth to, Just moving in, in the lives of your people. We pray God that you'd be with us the rest of this day as we worship you are instructed by your word.

We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.