The sermon on the Book of Ruth, delivered by Paul Carrington, delves into the themes of redemption, providence, and faithfulness. It begins with a description of the dire circumstances faced by Naomi and her family as they leave Bethlehem due to famine and settle in Moab. The losses they suffer there, including the deaths of Naomi's husband and sons, set a bleak backdrop for the narrative. However, the story of Ruth emerges as one of unwavering loyalty and faith, as she chooses to stay with Naomi and return to Bethlehem. Ruth's famous declaration of faith and commitment highlights her character, which contrasts with the moral decline of the time of the judges. The sermon emphasizes the providential hand of God in turning tragedy into a redemptive story, ultimately leading to Ruth's inclusion in the genealogy of King David and, by extension, Jesus Christ. The sermon encourages reflection on the consequences of choices, the evidence of God's providence, and the overarching narrative of redemption woven throughout the Bible.

Ruth, chapter 1. Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem Judah went to dwell in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech, the name of his wife was Naomi, and the name of his two sons were Malon and Chileon, Ephrathites of Bethlehem Judah. And they went to the country of Moab and remained there. Then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died and she was left and her two sons.

Now they took wives of the women of Moab. The name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. And they dwelt there about ten years. Then both Malon and Killian also died. So the woman survived her two sons and her husband.

Then she arose with her daughters-in-law that she might return to the country, from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited his people by giving them bread. Therefore, she went out from the place where she was and her two daughters-in-law with her. And they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, go return each to her mother's house. The Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me.

The Lord grant that you may find rest each in the house of her husband. So she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. And they said to her, surely we will return with you to your people. But Naomi said, turn back, my daughters. Why will you go with me?

Are there still sons in my womb that they may be your husbands? Turn back my daughters go for I am too old to have a husband If I should say I have hope if I should have a husband tonight and should also bare sons Would you wait for them till they were grown? Would you restrain yourselves from having husbands? No, my daughters, for it grieves me very much for your sakes that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me. Then they lifted up their voices and wept again and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her and She said look your sister in law has gone back to her people and to her gods Return after your sister-in-law But Ruth said and treat me not to leave you or to turn back from following after you.

For wherever you go, I will go. And wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die and there will I be buried the Lord do so to me and more also if Anything but death parts you and me When she saw that she was determined to go with her she stopped speaking to her Now the two of them went until they came to Bethlehem, and it happened when they had come to Bethlehem that all the city was excited because of them. And the women said, is this Naomi?

But she said to them, do not call me Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me I went out full and the Lord has brought me home again empty Why do you call me Naomi since the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has afflicted me? So Naomi returned and Ruth the Moabites her daughter-in-law with her who returned from the country of Moab. Now they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest. O Lord, we come before you to hear your word, Lord, to hear you speak. We pray that you would cause our hearts to burn within us as we consider the words that you have preserved for us to study and to learn from and to glean from.

Lord, I pray that you alone would be glorified, that you alone would be exalted. Lord, that in all of this tragedy, Lord, that you would be seen as so glorious as you've brought all of these wonders in the salvation of your people through the darkness and through the sin and through the difficulty Lord you have prevailed and We give you praise and thanks and now as we look to your word Lord We we ask you to to visit us and strengthen us through it and help us as we go through these few verses now In Christ's name we pray. Amen Amen, well, please be seated This morning we're we're gonna be looking only at the first five verses as we begin to really immerse ourselves in this little book of Ruth. It's really one of the most beautiful, one of the most captivating narratives of the entire Bible. But I want to start off by asking a question.

Is there a book in the Bible with the first five verses that starts off with as much devastation as these first five verses that we're going to be looking at today? In a time of moral decline and spiritual decline The Lord zooms in on a on a specific family We're told that it's the time of the judges and he comes in and he he gives us a window into his working even in one of the darkest and most difficult ages. And in these first few verses, just in five verses, we're met with famine. We're met with death. We're met with uncertainty.

We're met with crushing poverty. And You could ask, well, where in the world could we possibly go from here? Major decisions had led to a totally unexpected outcome. Well, how could this possibly go well? And as I mentioned, the times were also very, very much morally dark.

It was the time of the judges. And even though it was dark times, we see an even darker providence visit this little family here in Bethlehem. But I think what we'll see as well As we go not only through this morning, but as we go through the book of Ruth, are those wonderful words of our Savior Jesus Christ and John, when he says, my Father has been working until now, and I have been working. We'll see that amazing hand of God. And by the time we get to the end of the book, we throw up our hands and we say what a fine ending that out of the ashes God has brought forth this victory from a Moabite woman.

Who could have woven such a tale as this? Who could have put this together except our God? The family line is preserved. And we would say, wow, what a wonderful story. It started off terrible.

And by the end of the book, we see that the family line is indeed preserved. We have a happy widow with a little grandson bouncing on her knee and we say wow, that's wonderful That's great. But but Ruth doesn't let us sit there our eyes are are lifted up even higher the very last Recorded word in the book of Ruth is the word or the name David. And so we find out that Obed is not just a boy born but he's a boy that is born that will end up being the grandfather of Israel's favorite their greatest king and yet you could imagine the Old Testament writer who wrote this feeling, wow, this is just amazing. What a wonderful work, where that early reader who would have read this account, getting to the end and finding out this is just beautiful that the Lord would allow out of all of these ashes, not just a boy to be born, but a boy who would be the grandfather of King David.

But even the author and even the early reader didn't actually understand perhaps what the author and the finisher was doing with this book. What do we find? Not only are our eyes lifted to David, but our eyes are lifted even higher still. And by the time we get to the New Testament what do we find we find this word in Matthew chapter 1 verse 5 in the genealogy of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ the one who would come and save his people from their sins it says this Salman begot Boaz by Rahab. Boaz begot Obed by Ruth.

Obed begot Jesse. And Jesse begot David the king. And so I wanna, as we go through this book, set two things for us to consider. It's only a book of about 85 verses. It's a very small book by comparison to many others.

But there's two things I just want us to consider. One is this. What is it that we can learn from the people, from the lives here? These biographical sketches as we take a look at their lives. There's great instruction There's reproof.

There's conviction. There's encouragement And I find for myself and you probably find the same is that when we see that the hand of the Lord at work in the lives of others. We see ourselves more clearly. Isn't that often the case when you read a biography or when you open up the scriptures? And it causes you to examine yourself and to see yourself in a light that perhaps you hadn't thought of previously.

Well, I want us to do that today. That's one of the things. We want to look at what we could call the trees. But we don't want to miss the forest for the trees. And This book is a book of redemptive history.

This book goes much further and much deeper than the people that we meet along the way as we go through these various verses. And it's telling of how the Lord will bring about the salvation of his people. That's really what this book is about. And I want to start us off by going all the way back to Genesis, the third chapter. Right after the fall we we hear these words spoken by God.

I will put enmity between you and the woman and Between your seed and her seed he shall bruise or crush your head and You shall bruise his heel And so this little book is really what this is focusing on. It's this foreshadowing or this this Foretelling of what will happen somewhere down the road you see right from the very beginning right from the fall the Lord is Weaving this amazing story of bringing about the salvation of his people, though he promised it right after the fall in the third chapter of the first book of the Bible. He brings it to pass at the end so that when we get to the end of the Bible, what do we find? Because of the coming one, we find an absolute ocean of souls that have been brought to the Redeemer, brought back to God because of what he had promised back in Genesis chapter 3. It's a story, the Bible really is a story of how God will make all things new in his son Jesus Christ.

And so Ruth is just a part of the bridge isn't it? How we get from the utter and complete failure of the first Adam who lost absolutely everything to the great salvation not only of a little family, not only of a nation, the nation of Israel, but a great number which no man could number of every nation Tribe kindred and tongue how they're brought to bow and worship Before the land that's what the book of Ruth is about It's a tiny book but it plays an outsized role in the whole plan of redemption. And so this is about a God who is able to save and mighty to save. He does preserve the line of Alamelech. That's wonderful.

He does give hope. Praise be to his wonderful name. He doesn't only cause us to shake our heads in wonder as he as he takes this brokenness and then brings this amazing beauty Astounding beauty out of it, But rather what he's doing is he's preparing us for the greatest King That is to come that's what this story teaches us one commentator says that Ruth quietly opens out like a stream into a great river of hope That's what this book is about and I pictured as I was studying it and going through it like Ezekiel's vision It begins with the water at his ankles have you ever read that in Ezekiel 47? But by the time the Lord is done. What does Ezekiel say it was a river that I could not cross for the water was too deep water in which one must swim a river that could not be crossed and this is what the overarching theme of the Bible is about and what we're going to be investigating as we look today at this opening scene this these first few verses are really a scene of the journey from the house of bread and then after we do that quick overview of the first five verses I want to spend some time just taking away what are what are four key things that we can learn And why we should spend time immersing ourselves in this in this book But I want to again just remind us as we look at these lives.

Let's not miss the forest for the trees But let's see the grand narrative of what God is doing and so in verse 1 of this book we see this Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land and a certain man of Bethlehem Judah went to dwell in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. And so this opening scene largely takes place in a pagan country and it spans a period of about ten years and and what we find is a reverse exodus of sorts where where God had delivered his people from Egypt. He marked the deliverance of the people from Egypt by the greatest time on the Hebrew calendar, which is the time of Passover. It actually marks the beginning of the Hebrew year. And we know the story how the Lord brought Moses right to the very edge of the promised land after 40 years of Wandering because of the rebellion and then right before entering into the promised land the Lord appoints a new leader Joshua and they go through Into the promised land and it's the beginning of a new era filled with with amazing hopes.

We have our own land We have the commandments God has proven himself strong all the way from delivering us from Egypt through the wilderness He carried us in now to the promised land It's an amazing account of hope And Joshua ends the book of Joshua with that declaration, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. But it wasn't only Joshua. The people said, we too will serve the Lord because He is our God. They were to establish a holy nation to go through with the seven nations that were currently in that land and wipe out their idolatry and lift up the name of their God. They were to be a beacon, a candle to the rest of the world.

Well, of course, over the course of time, before this is accomplished, Joshua passes away. And so we come to this point, this time marker, now it came to pass In the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land well well This is that time marker this period of about 200 years from 1250 BC To about 1050 BC it marks the period of the death of Joshua to the coronation of Saul So it gives us an indication of when this came to pass. But amazingly what we find is as you go to Judges chapter 1 and then Judges chapter 2 that there came up another generation who did not know the Lord nor the things that he had done for Israel and they quickly went out of the way and embarked on some of the most evil schemes as running as far as they could from God moral and spiritual rot began to set in and you you get into these wild cycles these sin cycles of plunder and then captivity and then restoration only to go all over it again because the people's hearts hadn't changed a new land hadn't actually changed the heart of the people.

But it's more than a time marker, isn't it? It's a theological marker. When an early reader of this book would have opened it up and said these first few lines, it was the time of the judges, immediately It would have dawned on them what the conditions were of the time Theologically speaking and you might have heard the book a tale of two cities where Charles Dickens He he opens this book up and the words are it was the best of times. It was the worst of times Describing Victorian England. Well, this was the worst of times of all Israel's existence judges 2125 ends with in those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes And so this was the prevailing climate of the time that men looked and trusted in themselves.

There was disobedience and unfaithfulness on a local small level all the way up nationally. Even some of the judges had done some things that we cover our mouth in shame because of the things they embarked on and so you could ask yourself at the at the finish of the book of Judges can anything good come out of judges that would be an appropriate question well it says there was a famine in the land and we're not told the the specific circumstances but a limelight decides he's gonna leave Bethlehem Judah. The motive seems to be preservation, right, as he's watching perhaps his possessions melt away right before his very eyes and perhaps conceives the fact that his family is now endangered. He chooses to immigrate. It's a man's duty, isn't it, to provide for his family.

We read about that in the New Testament. Otherwise, you're worse than an infidel. And so who can blame a man for wanting to provide for his family? I wouldn't fault someone for that. Especially as the shells in his home and his pantry became increasingly empty and the grocery became increasingly bare, he decides maybe now is my time, maybe now is my opportunity to go and make a life.

Many of you dads could probably relate to this. The pressure oftentimes that we face can sometimes even skew our judgment and we make wrong decisions because of that. Well, they make a major decision of major consequence. They decide to leave Bethlehem, by the way, which means the house of bread. They leave the house of bread in order to find Bread.

Pragmatism seems to win out over faith. And his name was Elimelech. And that means my God is King. But things are getting hard and it's just like us, right? I know Lord you reign.

I know God is in control. But you notice that but? We throw in that but. And that's exactly what happens so often. And so this man, he walks by sight.

He designs his own solution to the problem. And so they make their Exodus from the land or from the house of bread and there was a reason for the famine see this wasn't just something arbitrary that was happening and if you are prone to think that this is just something that happened well verse 6 of the same chapter tells us that the Lord visited his people. We know the Lord is the one responsible for the famine in verse 1 because he tells us he lifted it in verse 6. So it wasn't incidental. It was a time of terrible sin as I already said and the family must have known these words that because it was only a generation or two earlier that we read in Leviticus 26 if you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments and perform them then I will give you rain in its season the land shall yield its produce And the trees of the field shall yield their fruit God is warning his people in Deuteronomy 28 We read this in verse 15 to 18 But it shall come to pass if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God To observe carefully all his commandments and his statutes which I command you this day that all the curses will come upon you and overtake you.

Cursed shall you be in the city and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle, and the offspring of your flocks." And so it appears that that God is simply being true to His Word. Remember we're dealing with the covenant people of God in the covenant land that God had ordained. And so it was as though through the conditions of the earth, the Lord would speak.

And what they were receiving here was a famine call to repentance. The land was actually calling them to repentance, to make them face up to their sin and to the hardness of their hearts with the offer of forgiveness. That's what was happening here. And we're not told the family's disposition to this famine call. We don't have a lot of details, but we see their actions.

And I want to ask the question, how can it be right to leave the only, the single place that God had designated for His covenant people to leave? How could that be right? But notice they don't just leave. They leave and they go to a place called Moab. We go from famine to leaving to Moab.

He and his wife and his two sons. That word used that says they went to dwell, it's kind of a word that means sojourn. They're going to check it out. They're not necessarily going there permanently, but maybe until this whole thing blows over. And we're not going too far so that If we need to get back, we can go back at any time.

It wasn't supposed to be permanent. Moab is only about 50 or 60 miles away from Bethlehem. But they get to Moab, and what often happens is the concrete, so to speak, begins to harden, and they begin to settle over time and it becomes home. This is where they make their exodus. Matthew Henry says his removal into the country of Moab could not be justified.

Why is this? Well Moab represents absolutely everything that Israel was supposed to be for. If you remember their beginnings in Genesis 19, it was started, the nation was started by the incestuous relationship of Lot with one of his daughters. And the child happened to be called Moab. And then a few generations before this book is written in numbers we find that the king of Moab, Balak, what did he do?

He hired Balaam to curse Israel and when that didn't work They got the people of Israel engaged in all sorts of immorality. And if you recall when we looked at Revelation, that the Lord Jesus refers to that experience and calls it the Doctrine of Balaam. A little bit later after that, in the early part of Judges, if you look in Judges, Eglon, that obese king, he actually oppressed the people of Israel for about 18 years until Ehud came, one of the Judges, and Ehud killed him, and the people were freed. They worshiped a false god. Their false god was Chimosh, or you might know him by the name of Malik.

And if you know anything about the god Malik, Malik is the god of child sacrifice. These were some of the things that describe the nation of Moab. I don't think there's a single reference that mentions them in a positive light. And when you look at Deuteronomy 23, this is what the Lord Himself says about Moab. It says, An Ammonite or Moabite Shall not enter the assembly of the Lord even to the tenth generation None of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the Lord forever What is what is he saying here?

It's it's as though this word ten generations a generation is 40 years so for 400 years a Moabite should not have any inheritance among the people of God in other words until the Moabite the Moab spirit and the Moabite is totally obliterated and erased That is the only time in which they will be accepted into Israel. And so this wasn't simply a move from Raleigh to Roanoke or I'm gonna move from Charleston to Chattanooga. That's not that's not what we're talking about. You might have been moving as much as a million miles. That's how far Moab is spiritually from what Israel was intended to be by God.

And so this wasn't a missionary venture, is it? They're not going there to go and preach the gospel. This wasn't the pilgrims in the 17th century fleeing European persecution to make and establish a land that would honor God That's not what's happening here But a family is leaving in the midst of God's judgment and famine to go and for their own way in a new land. They're looking for life but in all the wrong places. It says in verse 2 that the name of the man was Elimelech.

The name of his wife was Naomi and the names of his two sons were Malon and Kilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem Judah. And they went to the country of Moab and remained there. Well again before we go too far I want to ask us a question, ask you to be honest, have you ever taken matters into your own hand instead of waiting? If I were to roll up my sleeves, so to speak, you'd see all the scars I have of taking matters into my own hands over the years and running into walls because my will be done. It's a tragedy.

How many times have you forged your own plans for deliverance? Think about that. How many times have you been lured away to other fountains? Maybe even to Moab. How many young women even here in our midst today might be tempted to take matters into their own hands in hopes of a husband or maybe reverse a young man looking for a wife?

You could see there's famine. There's famine. There's nothing on the horizon Let me just take matters into my own hands God has probably forgotten me and I can probably do better if I act I was talking to a lady just last week Out at Friday night on white and she was lamenting there She was out on Friday night on white with her son and as we spoke about the gospel She said she was a believer and I have no reason to doubt it but she says you know I married an unbeliever and she began to lament and not complain about him but the sorrow and the difficulty of trying. She tried to make things work, tried to make it right, but it didn't work out well. Well how many times have I sought my own will?

You could ask yourself, you know we're masters of self-talk aren't we? We persuade ourselves to take a course of action and then oftentimes what we do is we find counselors That will corroborate the decision that we want to make or we read a book or a blog we we try to find Assurance that this is this is the will of God or this is the right way and I should go in it But there's a niggling something in your conscience or maybe another good friend a real friend tells you that's not the way don't walk in it But so often we we do these things well for this family. It's possible things went well for a time sure there was no church Sure, there were no ordinances. There was no public worship. But at least there's food in the pantry.

We've all made these calculations haven't we? Along these lines decisions of the flesh and you see the last two words of verse 2 remained there They stayed in this land in verse 3 we read these words then a limelight Naomi's husband died and she was left and her two sons and so devastation comes to this little family here they are far away as Sojourners, maybe now permanent residents And we don't know why he died but the limelight dies and so Naomi Experiences the second most traumatic experience that a person can face the death of a spouse She wasn't left entirely without hope But it was a devastating time At least she had her two sons still. There was some consolation here. And the limelight dies and life continues onward. In verse 4, now they took wives of the women of Moab, the name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth, and they dwelt there about ten years.

Well this is another error, This is a sin, an outright sin. There's no way around it. No commentator says this was not a sin. The Lord could not have been clearer, not only before the book, not only before the time of Naomi and Nalimelech, but even all the way after the Lord says this for example in the Bible in Deuteronomy Nor shall you make marriages with them You shall not give your daughter to their son nor take their daughter for your son for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods. So the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly." Could that have been what was happening to Maolan and Kilian?

Doesn't really say, But this is what we read. And so we're introduced to these two young women, which will feature in the rest of chapter one. And in verse chapter four, verse 10, we find out that it was Ruth that was married to Malon. And of course, as a result, Orpah was married to, to Killian. And So things continue for a little while and then we meet verse 5 it says then both Malan and Killian also died and The women survived and the woman survived her two sons and her husband.

Well, this is utter utter Devastation I mentioned earlier that the second most traumatic experience that someone can face is the death of a spouse. Do you know what the number one traumatic experience anyone can ever face is? It's the death of their own child. To be, somehow to over live or outlive your own child. Not because the relationship between husband and wife is less, but because we hold out such hopes, there's so much trauma as a result.

And she not only loses one, but she loses two of her sons her husband had already passed away what do you make of this what do you think this woman would be like can you imagine after this situation her lying on her bed at night, looking up at the ceiling? What's going through her mind? Well, I think John G. Peyton might help us a little bit. Here was a man who in the 1800s, he left his home in Scotland and he traveled to the New Hebrides because he heard of the need of the gospel and he set up in a place called Tanna and he made his house a little bit too close to the swamp infested waters and his young wife and their child got sick and he did all he could he he himself got sick he would go up and down but he did everything he could to try to sustain them until it became apparent that he couldn't and his wife passed away and then his son two weeks later passes away He's there on an island with cannibals over 10, 000 miles from home, and he writes these words.

He says, my reason seemed for a time almost to give way. I Felt her loss beyond all conception or description in that dark land It was very difficult to be resigned left alone and in sorrowful circumstances But for Jesus and the fellowship he vouchsafed to me there, I must have gone mad and died beside the lonely grave. That which she had feared most had come upon her, isn't it? She's left bereft, She's in a foreign land. This isn't just like being a widow in 2019.

Being a widow is utterly just, you have nothing, no one to go to, no sustenance. There's no welfare, there's no programs. She's left. For us to conceive of her situation is almost impossible. But I want you to picture here, they are standing over that third grave and what's going through her mind.

Are there any more tears left to shed? They went looking for life, but what did they find? A harvest of death. Had the journey accomplished what they hoped it would Ten years earlier does the sin ever really give? What it promises?

It's a good question to ask And so the curtain seems to fall on this scene, this first scene in the book of Ruth. We were left with famine, a dead husband, two dead sons, no heirs, and a widow. Seemingly no possibility of seed, let alone godly seed. You're living in Moab. And where do we go from here?

What do we do with this opening scene? It's impossible, as I said earlier, to find a book in the Bible that gets off to a worse start. We see the historical and the theological setting. It's a time of the judges. It's so difficult to even go home and find a lot of hope.

And these ways of devastation just keep rolling over this family and we're left with just one member now I want you to imagine the book ending here imagine that we we just read the account verses one to five and we close our Bibles and that's the account could you imagine but it doesn't end there does it We were singing a song last night, one of the lines of the song, but do you know that all the dark won't stop the light from getting through? These first five verses, you know what they do? They set, they serve as a black backdrop against which the rest of the story is going to be told it's as though the book of Ruth it's gonna shine as a pearl but you needed this beginning in order to actually comprehend the beauty of salvation, the beauty of redemption. This is how the Lord is going to set off one of the greatest stories of redemption in the entire Bible. And so it is with our redemption, isn't it?

That before you get to beauty, before You actually can see the good news you have to come face to face With the utter tragedy with with the fact of who you really are not as how you think you are But it's how God declares you to be and to show us our great need, our loss, our blindness, our nakedness, our guilt, all of these things so that at the end of it all no flesh can glory in his presence but to God, to him, there is maximum glory. And speaking of Christ and putting him in the ministry you know the Apostle Paul as far as he went in all of his theology and in his knowledge of God you know the amazing thing about God about Paul is he never got far From the cross if you ever want to be an evangelist if you want to be a minister of Christ That simple phrase don't get far from the cross that will be something that will carry you through He says this in Timothy. He's writing to Timothy toward the ends of his ministry, he says, although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man, this is the black backdrop of my life, but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love, which are in Christ Jesus.

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am The chief not was the chief he was constantly living in light of what Christ had accomplished for him on the cross And So in verse 6 we meet someone we meet someone who hitherto up to this point has been in the background And it says this then she arose with her daughters-in-law that she might return from the country of Moab for she had heard In the country of Moab that the Lord had visited his people by giving them bread. We meet the Lord, Jehovah, the self-existent one, the Lord who never leaves his people indefinitely in adversity. He might bring sorrow and sickness and trouble and death even but he never leaves his people and so what does he do he turns the famine away and Naomi you could imagine her hobbled and broken she decides she's gonna go back to her land Providence is at work And just like in your life right now, you look at your life and you don't know quite what God is doing, do you? There's no way of you actually really knowing right now all that God is orchestrating right now in your life.

There's just no way. You see so narrowly. You don't know what he's going to do with the third generation from now in your family. You have no idea about that person you spoke to two weeks ago if they'll come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ without you even knowing and you meet them in glory. We don't know we're so we're so small And so all you can know is that all things work together for good to those who love God not to everyone But to those who love God and who are the called according to his purpose and so pertaining to Ruth and our own lives by extension of this though hidden to all involved God is at work in astounding ways you look at your life and it's mundane But he's gonna in the book of Ruth bring about the reversal of the ages that out of the ashes He's gonna bring probably the most spectacular end that could ever be conceived and it's not a gurgling grandbaby bouncing on her on his grandmother's knee we were so easily satisfied we would finish the book of Ruth and if it ended like that we would say what a what a wonderful story we're so easily satisfied but it's not good enough for God behind this hill if you imagine it a hill the wonderful ending there's a mountain and as I mentioned earlier who's behind the mountain King David and we're blown away by this connection just as the early readers would have been blown away but that's not good enough for God we're further baffled as as we see this connection to Jesus Christ it's like you get to the top of that mountain and It's like you go out west to the western part of the state, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and you get to the top of one of those mountains, and as far as you can see in every direction, it's mountains and hills rolling and rolling and rolling until it fades off the horizon.

And that's what God does, taking this tiny little life and bringing it to the point where the redemption and salvation of the entire human race is brought to pass. God is an awesome God. And so the side of the tapestry that's visible to us, it's an absolute tangled mess. That's what you see, a mess. But in the hands of the skilled weaver, what is he doing?

He's putting together something that in eternity We're all going to be Worshipping and bowing before him for great things that he has done things we could never have imagined And so everything is meaningful the suffering that you're going through the the disappointment in yourself or your disappointment in others. You could look at the monotonous gleaning in the field. There's Ruth in chapter 2. What is she doing? Stooping over.

That's her job. Picking up the gleanings that fell from the reapers. Monotony, nothing's really happening. Everything is meaningful from the person that you will marry, to the children that you will have, to the grandchildren that you will have. It's the elderly people that you visit in the nursing home.

Those that you cry out to when you go and preach at the abortion clinic or on the corner of a street. See, we have the mindset, nothing happened. The person that you speak to at the checkout counter as you leave or the fellow student that you witness to. The children that you wake up and you take care of in the night when no one else is awake. The job that you go to as a man day in and day out, everything is meaningful.

It all contributes to the glorious temple that God is building. And so the rest of chapter 1, what do we find? That Naomi as we read, she returns to Bethlehem. And we meet those daughters-in-law at the crossroads somewhere along the way between Moab and Bethlehem. This discussion takes place.

And after, What do we find? A young lady by the name of Orpah, she literally walks off the pages of Scripture forever. But we find this amazing exchange that culminates in the most well-known words of the book. Entreat me not to leave you says Ruth or to turn back from following after you for wherever you go I will go and wherever you lodge I will lodge your people will be my people and your God my God where you die I will die and there I will be buried the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts you and me and I want you to get something right here see when I was reading this the thing that jumped out at me, the thing that was most fascinating in this early account of the book is that we find an Israelite family walked into Moab by sight With the promises of a brighter future But here We find a previously pagan Moabitess walking into Israel by faith With no promises with nothing nothing evident in the flesh, but only clinging to God. This is the story of the ages, because it's gonna foretell something that we're gonna get to in a minute.

And so why should we study this book? There's four things I want to bring out here as we enter into this series. Well, I wanna start off by saying to each and every one of us, beware of our choices. We see a man lead his family to Moab, don't we? We see in this choice, spiritually speaking, everything you do, you men, you fathers, you young men that are preparing your life, everything you do hinges on a choice between these two places, Bethlehem and Moab.

And one of them is constantly calling for your attention and seeking to distract you and turn your head to lure you away and lure you and like this man in this case his entire family Consider this as you walk through life, that this is the battle. We see a young lady, as I said, she named Orpa, she walks off the pages of the scripture forever. But we see another young lady that the Lord had saved. We don't know when exactly. But you see this conviction, where you die, I will die.

The Lord do so more so to me if anything but death and life parts this is conviction this is choice we know God gave her the ability But you see the conviction and the desire to cling to the thing that she most valued. And so we live in a day of rampant individualism, don't we? We live in a day of moral relativism. It's not dissimilar to the time of the judges, where every man is doing what is right in his own eyes, even in the church, even in the church. And so I just want to appeal to us as we go through this, let us resist the prevailing spirit of this age to be your own man and just do what you want to do without counseling with God, without counseling with the scriptures, without walking with counselors, men, women that can help you and direct you.

I want to make a promise to you as well. You will never find life outside the house of bread, guaranteed. And there are consequences to our actions, but the beautiful thing is that while we do err as this family errs, God can overrule through our sinful choices. Even the Lord can do amazing things. He shows himself strong through all of this situation.

So why should we study this book? Well I want to also point to another important piece and nowhere else in the is the providence of our sovereign God so clearly seen, so beautifully condensed in just 85 verses. We see it all packed in and you're going to need, you have needed and you're going to need this doctrine of the providence of our sovereign God in your life. You must have it. Charles Spurgeon said that when you go through a trial, the sovereignty of God is the pillow upon which you lay your head.

What else can you rest in? Do you know what the man who doesn't know God rests in, when he goes through trial. It's terror. There's nothing. There's no peace at all.

And so he is working. His providence is moving. He's moving, he's ruling, he's reigning. Sometimes it's imperceptible like the course of about a 10-year period in five verses. But God is actually doing things that you can't see.

And so when you're in a black room and There's no light and you're saying maybe God's done with me or maybe it's there's nothing else I don't know what how much longer can I wait all these questions that come to mind or that decision that you made that turned out bad and it backfired and Now you're reaping the harvest The definition of Providence is that nothing in the universe Happens by chance by luck by fortune by accident nothing nothing is happening All of it is ordained by God who's bringing it to an end and it's against this black backdrop that the first five verses of the rest of the book are gonna come into full light you know William Cooper who was a friend of John Newton he was a man who suffered ups and downs depression he was a believer but he seems sometimes just to be so wavering Well, he wrote a book a song or him called his God moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform in one of the stanzas says this judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace? Behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face.

And so sometimes you say the Lord has brought me home again empty, just like Ruth Naomi says when she comes back to Bethlehem but but you don't realize something that the very means of your deliverance Ruth is standing right beside you see Jesus says I will never leave you nor forsake you. We need to cling and hold to these promises. You could look at Peter's betrayal of the Lord that led to his bitter weeping. But it didn't end there, did it? This man turned out to be one of the boldest, most joyful men for God.

Sometimes I think about the Apostle Paul and his encounter the first time he meets Stephen. And Stephen dies at the hands of a mob. He's stoned to death. And they come and they lay his clothes at the feet of Paul. How many times do you think that entered into Paul's mind?

Maybe even when he wrote I am the chief of sinners but you see out of that ash heap God takes and produces his greatest apostle. It's an amazing thing. Speaking of Obed at the end of the book, and may he be to you a restorer of life. This is what the women say to Naomi. And a nourisher of your old age for your daughter-in-law who loves you who is better to you Than seven sons has borne him God took that sorrow in verse 1 to 5 and Produces this immense joy in his great and grand providence.

Well, what's another reason we can study this book? The third one is we want to consider the character of the individuals here. And remember, the backdrop historically is that it was during the time of the judges. And we could also sometimes be tempted living in the culture and in the time that we're living in to despair, but realize that there are still 7, 000 so to speak that have not bowed the knee to bail. Notwithstanding the catastrophic moral decay and decline that exists right now in our age.

There are still people scattered all across the country and not only in this country but across this world that this very day, this Sabbath day, have lifted up the name of Jesus Christ among every nation kindred tribe and tongue and so even if there's national apostasy as there was in the time of judges we get this little zoom in picture here And we begin to meet people like Boaz. We begin to see people like Ruth, that God is working and doing things for the salvation of His people. Where Boaz, where Elimelech left, Boaz stayed. And God blessed this man. He becomes a type of Jesus Christ and we'll get to that as we get to Ruth chapter 2.

And what I want to just point to here is in Ruth chapter 2 verse 11 we see Ruth's reputation has preceded her and Boaz says these words now think about this Ruth had no idea that people were saying this about her. But this is what Boaz says the first time he meets Ruth face to face. It has been fully reported to me all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband and how you have left your father and your mother and the land of your birth and have come to the people to a people whom you did not know before the Lord repay your work And a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel under whose wings you have come for refuge She had no idea But this was her testimony her life example does your life speak of? Jesus Christ well as we go through this book. Let's let's learn what we can from these people, these individuals here.

We see Orpah turning back, but we see Ruth clinging. When life gets hardest, We don't see bitterness, but she's stooped over gleaning picking what she can to feed herself and her mother-in-law When she couldn't see what does she do she believed? She believed in chapter 3 verse 11 Boaz calls her a virtuous woman long before Proverbs 31 is written a virtuous woman is on the scene and so we can learn much from the example of this godly couple they're worthy to emulate on many levels and I pray that some of the things that I've seen in here I would be able to take both from Ruth as well as from from Boaz. But we turn from the forest, don't we? And we look at the trees.

We go from the hill to the great mountain rage like the Greeks that we met last week, you remember them? In John chapter 12? Sir, we would see Jesus. That is the plea. Why is this book so significant?

Because of the last verses, the last two verses. Aminadab begot Naishon and Naishon begot Solomon. Solomon begot Boaz and Boaz begot Obed. Obed begot Jesse and Jesse begot David not only is is Christ foreshadowed in Boaz Not only is he foreshadowed in King David, the grandson of Obed, but really the entire book is about him. Boaz and David are just mere shadows, mere trees.

He is the forest. He's the one that we're looking to. And because we see Christ, because we see Christ, we also see these two key things. I want you to just listen to this. We see the bringing in of the Gentiles.

We mentioned earlier that Ruth makes her way into the actual genealogy of Jesus Christ. She's converted and a Moabite, a Moabites, is brought into the nation of Israel, into the lineage of Christ. If you're a child, if you've ever been outside, and if you've ever put out your hand like this as it's about to rain, have you ever done that? And you feel a couple drops of rain? Well, what is Ruth?

Ruth is one of the first few drops of rain that will be a torrential downpour of souls That the Lord Jesus Christ is going to save in time among whom are you and me? That by grace we will be saved this is the amazing thing and the second thing I want to say about Jesus Christ in all of this is that through the most unlikely and broken of circumstances the power of God is on display It's as though you're driving along this highway of redemption that began in Genesis chapter 3 verse 15. Well, the promise of the Redeemer, of the Messiah, runs through this little book that you're tempted maybe to just go past because it's so obscure it's a town that you would otherwise never stop to see but the Lord has put it here to speak of his grace and his ability to take the most broken hopeless of circumstances not just in her life in the lives of these people but in your life also and I just want to ask you think about all the carnage that our sin our bad choices have wrought just Just think for a moment of all the pain in this little sanctuary here on this Sunday morning as a result of bad choices, sin and vice, the years Perhaps in your marriage that the locusts have eaten you could go down the line and Add up all the sin and all the pain and we would all be amazed at how high it mounts but where sin abounds What do we find the grace?

Does much more abound you see that's what Paul was saying when he says that this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the chief. This is what the book of Ruth is about. It's about redemption. And so what makes the grace of God so beautiful, so astounding, is this black backdrop of our own wretchedness. If we could first start there and then the pearl of God's salvation shining off of it, we would look at each other differently.

We would look at what God has wrought in us differently. We would look at an unsaved and a dying world differently if we were able to conceive of the backdrop of what God has shown us in these first few verses because you are By virtue of being a Gentile a Moabite But you've been brought in You've been brought in to the lineage of Jesus Christ You've become a son of the living God through faith that has been given by grace, the grace of God. And so this is what Ruth is about. This is what we'll be looking at over the next little while. I've broken it into about five sermons and this is the first one so about four more but I pray that we'd be able to see more and more the glory of Christ and the beauty of the gospel and that we would be changed by it as we examine all that God has for us here so let's pray together.

Oh Lord we give you thanks and praise. Lord, who could bring an unclean thing? Who could bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing, Lord, only You. And we praise You, We thank you for your great redemption on display for us. Oh Lord.

Thank you for sending your son Jesus Christ our Savior Thank you for the grace that you've shown Lord We we revel in it we we thank you for it and ask you to To continue to Show us your glory and your grace as we look into your word as we seek to know you more. Lord, may Ruth, this little book, show your marvelous hand at work. And may all the glory and all the praise be unto your great name. Amen.