Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 8th, 2015 | Route 66 - Ruth

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March 8th, 2015 | Route 66 - Ruth · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, pretty good, huh?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Jack Campbell is at the airport in uh this memorable scene from um from the movie The Family Man, and he's saying goodbye at the airport to his girlfriend Kate because uh he has a bright career ahead of him in banking or something, and he's headed off to start that career in London.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: She herself has a bright future ahead of her.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: She goes to a prestigious law school, and and they've talked about it, and they're they've decided that, well, you know, they'll, you know, this will just be temporary and they'll get back together soon.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: But Kate now has a bad feeling about it, and she she doesn't like the choice that they've made.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: She thinks that if uh if they do split up like this, even temporarily, to advance their careers, they'll never get back together again.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And she thinks that this decision will make or break their future.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so she tells them she does not want to choose to separate.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: She wants them to make the choice to stay together.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And in that great line, she says, I don't know what the future holds, uh, but I choose us.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: I choose us.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: That uh movie clip, that scene reminds me of how important it is some of the choices that we make.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: We come to a fork in the road of life.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Yogi Bearer once said, when you come to a fork uh in life, take it.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: But we come to a fork in life, we know we can't just take it.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: We have to make a choice between one or the other.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Choice may be something about college or career or marriage or job or even faith.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: We make a choice, and then we find out that that choice turns around and it makes us for the rest of our lives.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And today I want us to think about the choices that we make like that, because that's where today's rest stop or stopping place along Route 66 takes us to a little book, the eighth stop, little book of the Bible called Ruth.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Open your Bible to the book of Ruth.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you're just visiting, just coming through, we're on a series, road trip to the Bible called Route 66, because there are how many books in the Bible?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that amazing?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we're uh now on the eighth book.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the littlest book so far.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the most surprising.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh follows.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm I need to hear like wrestling or or like uh iPads out, or yeah, there you go.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there you go.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is just uh 85 verses, four chapters, little book.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the first four words of this book remind us that um this story comes to us out of a horrific time in the history of Israel.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: The first four were the first six words of the book are during the time of the judges.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And immediately we shudder because, and especially if you were here last week, judges descent into darkness, uh, the country has descended into darkness and violence of the worst kind.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: The historian at the end of Judges twice describes it as a day in which there was no king, no leadership in Israel, and everyone did exactly what they wanted to do, what was right in their own eyes.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning that everyone lived for himself.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that uh that people pulled away from God, people pulled away from each other, even families uh fought with each other, uh, relationships had broken down, it seemed like everybody was feuding with everyone else for for, you know, uh loyalty was lost, faithfulness forgotten, everything was broken.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, uh it had disintegrated into something like a dystopia, we said, something like uh the Hunger Games, where uh it was a it became a society of savage brutality and betrayal and pain and poverty and injustice and violence.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you may say to me, well, in some ways that resembles our world today, because at least in some place in our world, we have uh descended into darkness.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly we live in a world of broken relationships.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh as you know, a break has appeared in our world between the earth and the sky.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: God meant for us to walk and talk in the garden with Him, and of course, we turned and went the other way.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Alexander Solzhenitsyn said it 20 years ago about America and Europe.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: He said, people have forgotten God, and man has pulled away from God.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, the statistics shows that today, uh, all the statistics show that uh we no longer have these sort of uh middle ground of people who say, well, maybe there's a God, maybe there's not, and I don't mind.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Those people have all moved toward atheism.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: There is no God.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: They've they've voted with their feet.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's why those numbers are rising so much.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a total breakdown in our world between man and God.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, we find breakage in between nations, between states, between parties, right, in America.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: This person dislikes that person, this party despises that party.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: So nations divide, uh, states split, churches split.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Good friends stop talking to one another.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: This even happens in families.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when the will is read, you find sometimes that brothers and sisters who've been friends their entire lives stop speaking to each other.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you find husbands and wives who should be walking hand in hand through life, that they pull apart and and they go different directions.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Families are crumbling.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh homes are fracturing.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the setting of our story, and to some extent, it's the setting of our day.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's the time of the judges, everyone was doing what they felt like doing.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Archaeology calls it the Iron Age, and you might say that people's hearts had become as hard as iron.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what God was looking for, what was desperately needed, is someone who would break out of that darkness, break out of that mold, someone who would bring back loyalty and faithfulness.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the person God found was not a person that you would choose, not a person that I would choose, not a muscular Jewish hero, in fact, not a Jewish person at all.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't even live in the land of Israel.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: This person was young, this person was a girl, and her name was Ruth.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's our story for today.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Book of Ruth, subtitled, God's Heart Goes Out to the Few Who Stay True.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So let me tell you a little bit about Ruth.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't come from a rich or an important family.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, her family didn't even worship the true God at all.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: They were Gentiles and they uh they lived to the uh to the to the southeast side of the Dead Sea, and they worshiped pagan gods.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Plural.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Worshiped the pagan gods of Moab.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and their gods were gods of magic, and gods that had to be appeased.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, their chief god, Shemosh, uh, was a god that required the sacrifice of little babies.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: They would heat him up, this idol, to white or you know, red hot, and have to put babies in his arms, and they would, and and so anyway, this is her home.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is Moab, and when we meet her, she is only 14 years old.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe 13, maybe 12, but 14 is what I'd like to think.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And she's just a little girl and she lives far from the big cities where important stuff happens.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: How could she do anything important?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: How in the world do we end up with a book of the Bible actually named after her?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer is that one day a family of foreigners moved in across the street.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's not unique today, happens in our world all the time, but it was really unique in that day.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't just have people leaving one country, moving to another, and you never had Israelites leaving the land of promise and moving, you know, to a cross, giving up their land, saying goodbye to their land even temporarily, uh uh, which they'd been given in perpetuity, and moving into another land.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the father's name was Elimelech, the mother's name, which meant uh uh my God is king, great name, and and the mother's name was Naomi, which meant pleasant or pleasure, and they had two teenage boys, uh, one was named Malon, one was named Kileon, and they, for some reason, Ruth said to her mom, what are they doing here?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: They had left their family and friends.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Why would an Israelite family pull up, leave Bethlehem, which is their hometown, and come this direction?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the fact of the matter is, back in Israel, there had been a break between man and God, as I said.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: They lived in a dystopia and a dark time.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone was doing what's right in their own eyes, and God brought a famine on the land, as he had promised that he would.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of Deuteronomy, he says, You leave me, if you neglect me, I'm going to stop the rain, I'm going to bring a famine, and that's how you'll know.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's just my reminder that you need to repent and you need to come back to me.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: So God sent no rain, so the fields are bare.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: So this is during the time of the judges, and there's a famine in the land.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And God had said, Listen, when there is a famine, it's supposed to remind you you need to pray, you need to repent of your sins, and I'll send rain.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: But Elimelech, this man, had decided that he knew better.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to do what's right in his own eyes and go his own way.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so instead of staying and praying and repenting, he just decided to pull up his family and leave his friends and land and community.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I assume that, just to be fair to him, I assume what happened is he's sitting in Bethlehem and he's steaming a little bit.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: I assume he's telling his friends, do you know what the name Bethlehem means?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: He says, this is called bread town, and yet there's no bread.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: How crazy is that?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he's sitting in his front door and he's looking off about 50 miles southeast to Moab, to the sort of bright purple mountains of Moab.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he would repeatedly see what you see in Israel even today.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: You see these little clouds come east from the Mediterranean Sea and they fly high overhead, and everybody's praying, please stop, please rain.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: They never do.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: They just keep going, they go over the Dead Sea, and as soon as they hit the 1,000-foot-high plains of Moab, you know, uh mountains of Moab, that warm air hits them, and the clouds begin to rain.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: So he's there watching these clouds go by and then rain on Moab.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Moab had become, I think, for him, sort of like a green um, you know, billboard saying y'all come or something.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and he's thinking, let me think, that's only 50 miles, that's two days, and we're hungry here.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and finally something in him snaps, and he does the absolute unheard of thing.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: He pulls up and and and goes across through Jericho, east, across the Jordan River, and down through Reuben's territory, and down into Moab.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Just astounding, astounding that he does that.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm guessing his neighbors said, What in the world are you doing?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you realize, I mean, you are an Ephrithite.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: You are one of the original, you're you're part of the blue blood here of Bethlehem, Bethlehem Ephrata.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and you're upper middle class, and you're a civic leader, and and and you were raised differently than this.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: A limelech, for heaven's sake.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's who you are.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why what in the world would you be doing leaving?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm guessing he said, you know, get off my case.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know, Bethlehem, God's not blessing us, he's not not doing anything about it.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and he said, I'm I'm going.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just a short vacation.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'll be back.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be back.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: So he takes his family out of the promised land.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: He says goodbye to God's land, he says goodbye to the community of believers, he says goodbye to the will of God, and and he takes his family away and and and moves to Moab.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: You make choices like that.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And even though you think that that choice will be a small choice, oftentimes those choices turn around and, like I said, they make you, and it becomes a big choice.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see that here.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: You see, in verse 1, he told them, I'm just going to be gone for a while.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: In Hebrew, it's just a short little sojourn, it's just maybe a couple weeks, maybe a maybe a month or two at most.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: But we find that uh by verse three, they've entered the land of Moab and then they settle there.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: They settle there.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's not just putting up a tent, they're settling there.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're buying a house.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then we find two verses later, they've lived in Moab.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Get this.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Ten years.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Ten years they've been away.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what happens.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's happened to you, I'm sure.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: You've had a close friend who moved away, I don't know, where college or whatever else.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Someone you were really close to, best friend, and they moved away.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: They said, We'll be back soon.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: We'll stay close.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: But but it's been ten years, you know, and the only time you see them is is on Facebook, right?
• 13:36
  unknown: Right?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: You have many people like that?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: If all your friends are on Facebook, you're in trouble.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully you still have still have some.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: But but but that's what happens.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: You make a decision, and and so now every important relationship has broken down for Elimelech's family.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Relationship with God, that's broken down, that's fractured.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Relationship with his with his relatives back home, that that's done for.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Relationship, you know, with his friends and and the homeland.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you wonder, can this breakdown ever, ever be repaired?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is yes.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: It comes in the person of this young Moabite girl, Ruth, who's 14, the one who says to her mother, What in the world is that strange family doing moving in across the street?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in Moab, uh like in ancient Israel, girls were given in marriage by their parents, and they were given in marriage uh at about age 14.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Some a little younger.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Age 14 was 13 or 14.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we know a 14-year-old girl, we can tell later, was a quiet girl, a submissive girl, you know, obedient girl, hardworking girl.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing though, and it's not a hard guess, that when her parents said to her, We've decided that you are going to marry one of those boys across the street, I am sure that she sobbed.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Those foreign boys, yeah, you can you can understand their language, mom, you know, because Moabite and Hebrew, by the way, are relatively close languages, so you can understand each other, but they have a different accent, and they use different letters in some of the words and and so forth.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And but he's different.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: That 18-year-old boy mom is so different.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: He comes from a different place, he worships a different god, but she was submissive and and they got married.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And and then she moves over there to live with his family, because that's what she did.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it didn't take Ruth long to discover that his family, husband family, seemed to be under some kind of a curse.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because um, because you know, first uh the father, Elimelech, died.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: He died, leaving Naomi her her her mother-in-law without a husband, and with really uh without any prospects, and with a couple of teenage boys to raise.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and without any father to guide them or to take them back to Israel so they'd marry in the faith.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Both of the boys now are married to Moabite girls.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and and Naomi would say to her daughter-in-law Ruth, well, I'm just looking forward, you know, to life with my grandchildren.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hint hint.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: And and yet Ruth and Orpah couldn't produce any.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: We have a hint as to why the names of the two Israelite boys were Malon, which means weak, and Kilion, which means sickly.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so so the boys, the boys couldn't, you know, they couldn't have any kids.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so after ten ye long years go by, it's still just the one, two, three, four, five of them in the house staring at one another with no happy little faces.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly one winter disaster struck.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not one, but both of the men died, leaving Ruth and her stepmother, her stepsister with her world in shambles, no income, no children.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: But listen, even though Ruth got no children from the marriage, she got something that we know is far more important.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: In that marriage, she learned about the true God.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: For though her husband had sort of slidden away from God, didn't have a close relationship, he did believe that there was only one God, not many, and that the true God's name was Yahweh, and he was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and he was the God who had brought, through Moses, brought Israel out of Egypt, and through working miracles, they'd crossed the Jordan River.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: And now they lived in the promised land over there, and he'd done even more miracles for them.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And she heard about this God, and this was a God who didn't require the sacrifice of little babies.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm guessing that Ruth had long been looking to worship a God like this.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Still, her husband was now dead, and she's a young widow, now only 24, with no children.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: She has she has no prospects, no future.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, who's gonna marry her?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so here we are at the really still at the beginning of the story in the little book of Ruth, and things are as bad for Ruth as they can possibly be.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she she's married a foreigner, she's now a widow, she's living with her mother-in-law, who's Israelite, and with her stepsister and their three widows living together.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if I mean, if you've never read this story, you're going, wow, is this gloomy?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't see how things can improve.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no income and there's no hope.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And and by the way, that that's the attitude that uh that Naomi has as well after after these deaths.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Notice notice notice how Naomi has has starts complaining.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: In verse 20, she says, Don't call me Naomi, pleasant, call me Mara, bitter, for the Almighty has made my life very bitter.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know what's worse than a mother-in-law?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: A better mother-in-law.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's just, I mean, uh, did you hear the joke about the woman who um who went to the doctor, and and she'd been informed that that, you know, she'd she just for a physical, and then he'd informed her, horrible news, that she only had six months to live.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And she was just gasped, she was so broken down by the news.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, listen, you need to think.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: You need to make sure the will is in order, you need to do this, you need to do that, and so forth.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And by the end of the appointment, she'd suddenly perked up and he said, What's going on?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: She said, I think I made a decision.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: She said, What is it?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: She said, I think I'm gonna go move in with my mother-in-law.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Why?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, Because it'll make it the longest six months of my life.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Terrible, terrible, but um, but true.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened is that this seems to be an exception to that rule that Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi, got along.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Ruth Ruth was submissive to her and and she loved her.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: So she got along with a bitter mother-in-law, but still, this is a negative story.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever read a book, ever started reading a book, a novel, or something, and it was so dark at the beginning, you thought, I'm just putting that down.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then you thought, you know what, maybe it gets better, and so you flipped over to the last page to see.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever cheated like that?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing how many books you can tell people that you've read if you just read the first and last page, by the way.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Good advice.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're gonna do that for a second because this book's so gloomy, you know, we're not sure we want to read it.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: So let's turn to the last five verses.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: And there we read an amazing thing, Ruth 4, 13 through 17.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Boaz, don't know who he is yet, but he took Ruth into his home, really.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: And she became his wife.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, she gets remarried.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: When he slept with her, the Lord enabled her to become pregnant.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And she gave birth to his son.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the women of the town said to Naomi, Praise the Lord, praise Yahweh.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: They must be back in Israel, who has now provided a redeemer for your family.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: May this child be famous in Israel, may he restore your youth and care for you in your old age, for he's the son of your daughter-in-law, Ruth, who loves you and has been better to you than seven sons.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Naomi took the baby in her arms and cared for him.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the neighbor women said, Now at last Naomi has a son again, and they named him Obed.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: He became the grandfather of Jesse and the grandfather of David.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're kidding me.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: This Moabite girl who's stuck, a widow, age 24, who's never been out of Moab, we find at the end of the book has married someone named Boaz.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they have a little boy named Obed, who has a little boy named Jesse, who grows up to have seven sons, and the youngest of those sons is David, the greatest king of Israel, who brings Israel back together.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Correction, the second greatest king of Israel, because in his lineage is Jesus, the greatest king who not only Brings Israel together, but the whole world together and Ruth, hold it.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: How in the world does this happen?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we have a hint that somebody's working behind the scenes because you'll notice in those last five verses, not once but twice, you have a mention of the Lord.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the Lord doesn't speak at all in this entire book out of 85 verses.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: But in 85 verses, his name now occurs 23 times.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, how in well apparently someone's working in the dark behind the scenes to get things accomplished.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: So let's keep that in mind.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he's using this 14-year-old girl to do it.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how does he use her?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer is that this girl, who's now 24, this girl makes one of the greatest decisions that we read of in the entire Bible.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: That she makes a choice that turns around and not only makes her, but makes the whole nation.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm reminded as I read this of the famous poem by Robert Frost, the poet laureate here in America, about remember the story about the road that diverged in a wood?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a long poem, but it goes two roads diverged in a yellow wood.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it was lost, to where it bent in the undergrowth.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Then he says, I took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim because it was grassy and wanted wear.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, he chose the path where there was higher grass, so it hadn't been walked on as much.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: It had didn't have the ruts in it.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: He just decided he would choose the path that most people didn't choose.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so he ends in the last stanza by saying, I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages, hence.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: So Naomi and her daughters-in-law got ready to leave Moab to return to her homeland.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: She's the only one returning.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: The others have never been there.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it's Naomi's going to return.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: With her two daughters-in-law, she set out from the place she'd been living, and they took the road that would lead them back to Judah.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: But on the way, Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, go back to your mothers' homes, and may the Lord reward you for your kindness to your husbands and to me.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: May the Lord bless you with the security of another marriage.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Then she kissed them goodbye, and they all broke down and wept.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: So Naomi's decided to return to Bethlehem.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpa, go with her part way.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And when Naomi begins to take the trail down, and you can take that trail even today, down at the northern point of the Dead Sea, out of the Moab, down into the Jordan Valley, then she stops and she tells them to go back home.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Naomi's argument is that nobody over there, girls, is waiting in line to marry a Moabite.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're supposed to marry in the faith, much less are they going to marry a Moabite widow who was married 10 years.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so I advise you to stay right here in your own homeland to see if you can snag yourself another man from here among your own people.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: And she even makes a lame attempt at humor in verses 11 through 13 by saying basically, the only guys that I know would marry you would be ones that I would give birth to.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And by the time I get remarried myself, as if, and have babies, and they grow up, to marry you, you're going to be uh old enough to go into the Presbyterian manor.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: So she says it like this.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: They say politely, we want to go with you to your people.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And Naomi says, Why should you go on with me?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Can I still give birth to other sons who could grow up to be your husbands?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, my daughters, return to your parents' homes.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm too old to marry again.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: And even if it were possible, I were to get married tonight and bear sons, then what?
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Would you wait for them to grow up, refuse to marry someone else?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: No, of course not, my daughters.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Things are far more bitter for me, and we have her bitterness coming out again, uh, than for you, because the Lord himself has raised his fist against me.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And again they wept together.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung tightly to Naomi.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: And Naomi says to her, Hold it.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: I have nothing to offer you, Ruth, except loneliness and misery.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Don't come with me, because uh uh God is against me, and your life will be as bitter as mine.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And Ruth says, I'm not sure I want to leave you.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And now Ruth faces this incredible decision where everything has got to be telling her to go back to her home, not stay with Naomi.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: For if she stays with Naomi, that means leaving her own family, perhaps forever, and her land and people.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: To stay with Naomi means locking in her widowhood and childlessness for what Hebrew men would ever want to marry a foreign widow.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: To stay with Naomi Naomi means going to an unknown land where she's never been, with a new people who speak with a different accent and have new customs.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: And most important, to go with Naomi means completely turning her back forever on all of her religion, her faith, the gods of her people, and making the God of Israel her God.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Think back to when you've come to a major decision like that.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: How did you make that decision?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for Ruth, it's her moment of truth and her moment of choice.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Naomi tries one last time.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Your sister's going back, go back with her.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Going back to her people and her gods, go back with her.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Ruth replied, in those famous, deservedly famous words, some of the most famous words in the Bible, beg me not to leave you, entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following after you.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: For wherever you go, I will go, wherever you live, I will live.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Your people shall be my people, and get this: your God, my God.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ruth has a decision to make go back home or stay with Naomi.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: She made the hardest decision of her life.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: She made the decision to leave her country, to leave her people, to leave her gods, and to commit herself to be loyal to this woman and to this woman's God.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: She basically says, I choose us and I choose God.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: And she gave up her gods, her gods of magic, her gods of anger, her gods, you know, that you won your way with by working really hard and being noble and being better than the person around you.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And sometime in your life, if you're ever going to be happy and make your peace with God, you have to do exactly the same thing that she does here.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: You have to give up whatever things have sort of been your idols or your gods up till now.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: You have to give up that whole idea that somehow you can appease God by your behavior.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: You have to realize that somehow there is only one God, and this God has a son, Jesus Christ, and he gave that son to die for your sins and for mine, because we're helpless to save ourselves.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: If we throw ourselves with a reckless abandon upon him, he will save us, this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And God blesses her for this decision.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same decision, though, sometime you have to make.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, um she makes the decision to go with Naomi and she goes back to Bethlehem, and uh here's where we realize the importance of God in this story.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't have the time to go through chapters two and three.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: But my favorite verse in chapters two and three is this verse in verse three, because Ruth realizes uh that um that she's going to, I mean, they're gonna starve unless she she works.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: She's the younger one.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: So she decides to do what the only thing you can do if you're starving, if you're poor, and that is you go out to find a field where people are harvesting grain, wheat, or barley, and you follow around the harvesters.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: If the if the owner of the field is nice enough to let you do this, you follow them around and you pick up pieces of corn or barley or wheat, whatever you know they've dropped.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've seen a picture, a famous painting by uh by uh Jean Francois Millet called the gleaner.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a picture of three gleaners who who all day long, this is a picture of what Ruth had to do, are bent over, it makes your back hurt just to think about it.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: And they're leaning over, just picking up a stray piece of corn from the ground.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it says in chapter two that that's what Ruth did.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: She went to the fields and she followed them and she gathered the grain and she worked so hard, it said that the field hands would just stop as they were wiping off their sweat.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: They would stand up and they would just, they were amazed at how hard Ruth worked.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: And she was doing it for the sake of her mother-in-law.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: And she worked all day long.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And they told their boss about it, and his name was Boaz.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And here's my favorite line in the book, and it just so happened that the field belonged to Boaz, a close relative of Elimelech.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: It just so happened.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you love that?
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: You hear people sometimes say, you know, I don't believe in coincidences.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you got to be careful about that, because four times in the Bible you have a phrase like this, it just so happened, or coincidentally.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: So God's comfortable with using that line.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: But on the other hand, you and I know that this is kind of a joke.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: That, yeah, it just so happened that it started raining after Noah got in the ark, right?
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: It just so happened that when Abraham was in the process of about to sacrifice his son Isaac, a sheep wandered along and nuzzled him in the in the in the rear, whatever.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: It, you know, it's sorry, it just so happened that Pharaoh's daughter is bathing in the Nile, you know, as as baby Moses floats by.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: It just so happened that David Stone found the only unprotected place in Goliath's armor, right?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: It just so happened that she goes to the field of Boaz.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Boaz, Boaz, the the civic leader, Boaz the wealthy landowner, Boaz the noble employer, the kind and generous man who allows people to glean in his fields.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Boaz, the incredible man of faith, who's always talking about the Lord in this book.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: And Boaz, the older guy who can still recognize a cute little girl when he sees her in the mid-twenties.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: But and so what happens is that you have this linking as God brings them together and you suddenly realize that this book is actually the story more than of a girl who is loyal.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's even more than that, a story of a God who behind the scenes, secretly and silently, is working to bring out his plan in the lives of those who respond to him.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: And she doesn't have to respond that much, but she made that choice.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: She said, I choose us, I choose God, and as a result, what you find happens is just this remarkable thing where God brings them together and Boaz marries marries her, this girl half his age, and he blesses them with a child and with a grandchild, and you go, Thank you, God.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to say, Thank you, Ruth, for being such an amazing example of loyalty.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Of loyalty.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's an old, old story that I've told you before, a brother's grimm story, a story of two little girls who are fleeing for their lives from people who want to kidnap them, and they're in the forest and they're hiding behind trees and they're hiding in bushes.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: And one girl in the story is always saying to the other, they're trying to encourage each other and help each other be brave.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the one little girl says to the other, Don't forsake me, and I'll never, and I will never forsake you.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the other is always saying back, I will never forsake you as long as I live.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you listen to country music, which is a which is a good thing, I now believe, yeah.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: 106.9.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know that one of the one of the great uh themes in country music is faithfulness and loyalty and loyal love and I choose us, you know, that kind of a thing.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and and the number one rated country song of all time by the late great George Jones is entitled, He Stopped Loving Her Today.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's about a man who said to his bride, I'll love you till the day I die, and he kept his word.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Well, in time you'll forget me.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: But he never did.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: He only stopped loving her when he died.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: And George saying, He stopped loving her today, they placed a wreath upon his door, and soon they'll carry him away.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: He stopped loving her today.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the kind of loyalty and faithfulness in a world where relationships are broken that God is looking for.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, there's a more recent song that you may well have heard a couple of years ago by a guy named Eric Church.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: She loves me like Jesus does.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: He's speaking about his wife and how he always worried that when she found out the dark side of his character and how much, you know, what he was really like that that she would give up on him.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: I always thought, he sings, that she'd give up on me one day, wash her hands of me, leave me staring down some runway.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I thank God each night and twice on Sunday that she loves me like Jesus does.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning that she loves him and won't ever give up on him like Jesus.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what God's looking for in our broken down world.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's looking for people who will be loyal, who'll say, I choose you, and I choose God.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so important, by the way, that you choose God and that you take advantage of this moment to choose him.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not sure where you are, let me share with you a quote I've never shared on Sunday here by C.S.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis, because it's a little long, two screens long.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: But listen to this.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: When the author walks onto the stage, Lewis said, the play is over.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: God is going to invade, all right, but what is the good of saying you're on his side then?
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: When you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream, and something more, something it never entered your head to conceive, comes crashing in.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: For this time it will be God without disguise.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: It will be too late then to choose your side.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's no use saying you choose to lie down when it's become impossible to stand up.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: That will not be the time for choosing.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: It will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, today, this moment is our chance to choose the right side.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Hollywood likes to say that your life is determined by the dreams that you dream.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard that?
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: But you and I know that's not true.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Your life is determined by the choices you make.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: For those choices that you make turn around and they make you.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what God's asking for us today is He says, I'm I'm back behind the scenes.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: You don't see me.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in the dark, but I'm going to bring about my plan.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't ask much from you, but I would ask for you.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: I would ask for you to be loyal, to be faithful.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: I would ask for you to choose me and to choose those who I've given you.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: Stephen Curtis Chapman sang that great song that's been sung so many times at weddings.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow morning, if you wake up and the sun does not appear, I will be here.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be true to the promise I made to you and to the one who gave you to me.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what God's looking for.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's looking for people who'll be faithful.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Brett Butler in 1990 was a free agent, and he he chose to leave the San Francisco Giants to go down the coast to the hated LA Dodgers.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: He put on Dodger Blue in the first game back, up in Giant Stadium.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Half of the fans cheered their old hero and half booed.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: But what Brett Butler then did caused everyone to boo because in front of everybody he went over to his new manager, Tommy La Sorda.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: He threw his arms around him and he hugged him.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: After the game, the press said, What in the world were you doing?
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: You had so many of the fans behind you.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: He said, No, I've turned a page in my career.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm no longer a giant.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm now a dodger.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted everyone to know it.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: You've turned a page in your life, I hope, from the gods of Moab to the God of heaven and to his son Jesus Christ.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be loyal to him.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: You need to let people know it.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then you need to turn to the people around you, those people that God has given you.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you need to say to them, I choose us.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I choose God.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Father, for being there behind the scenes.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: For your providence, which cares for us and works everything for good to those who love you.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: May it be, Heavenly Father, that we are the kind of people who like this girl from the Old Testament.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Stands true.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because we know how much your heart goes out to the few who stay true.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.