The Story - Chapter 9

In the story this week, you've been reading about Ruth, this real short book in the Bible. There's a couple of things that are really unusual about this book. First of all, it's the only book in the Old Testament named for a non-Israelite person. This would be a rare thing for someone who's Jewish to recognize a Gentile as someone who was a part of their scripture. But that's the truth. The second thing about it is that even though it's named for Ruth, she's not the major player in this story. Someone counted all the words in the book of Ruth, 1,294 different words. They found that 678 of them were in dialogue, that is, there were people who were talking, not the writer writing something about the setting. They found that in this, Boaz was the primary speaker, 14 different times he has speeches in this book, 281 words are his. A great portion of this is about Boaz and what he has to say, so the book could be named Boaz. Then Naomi takes a big part in this story, too. She has 12 different speeches in this book and 225 words are hers, far more than Ruth had, and it could be called Naomi, that book, but it's called Ruth. She actually participates less in this story in terms of conversation or talking than anyone else in the major characters. She had 10 different speeches, only 120 words in the whole book, so 10% of the book is about what she had to say. Well, what is this about, then? It's not really the story of Ruth uniquely, it's not the story of Boaz, it's not the story of Naomi. This book is the story about God. It's a story about how people like you and me, living everyday life, encounter the presence of Almighty God. How ordinary people, there's not a preacher in this story, there's not a priest in this story, there's not a temple in this story, there's not even the mention of a Sabbath day in the story, nothing religious in this story. Some people thought it shouldn't even be in the Bible because it's really not a very religious book. But it's about God and how God interacts and confronts people in ordinary, everyday circumstances. One of the things that's interesting about the book is the different ways by which the people refer to the presence of God. In the very beginning of the story, of this chapter of the story, at least I should say, is the story of what took place in the nation of Israel. You see, in this book, it's about God's continuing presence with His people. The great covenant He made with Abraham and that was re-established at Mount Sinai where God said to His people, I will be your God. I will guide you to all the things that you need to know about, how to be able to live. I will provide the needs that you have. I will protect you from your enemies and I will make you a powerful influence in the world. Now, this is God's promise to all the people of Israel. In this book is a small picture of how God goes about keeping His promise to those who made the covenant with Him. The contract on His part was to say, I want you to promise me you're going to do everything I tell you to do. And when you do, I will do these four things for you. This was true of the whole nation. It was true of the individuals. The story opens with the failure of God to keep His promise to the people of Israel. In those days the judges ruled. There was a famine in the land. You remember how the judges were? People drifted away from God. He took His hand away from them. Trouble came. Problems of all kinds. They were invaded by others. In the very beginning of this story, the failure of the people of Israel is declared. And the covenant of God is at work. Now we might say, you know, whenever these things happen, the drought comes and there's a low pressure over Kansas or Canada or somewhere and we can't get any rain and we just say, well, I hope the weather changes. Well, these people were a church. They were the nation of Israel, we call it, but they were really a church. They were all people who'd made a commitment to live in submission to the authority of God. And He said when you do that, then I will provide for you and guide. Now we know the story of the judges. They did this a little while and then they would drift away and begin to be unfaithful to God and give their lives in service to other gods and then God would do something to let them know that He'd removed His hand from their presence in the very beginning of this story. God has said, you are not doing what you told me you were going to do and I will not provide for you. And so there was a famine. Now the family we're talking about here, they decided they'd leave and go to a different place in Moab. Moab was their arch enemy country. I mean, you're not going to go there to live as a Jewish person unless you are so desperate that you can't find anything else to do. So they leave the comfort of their own home and their own people to go to a place where they will be seen as illegal aliens and enemies the rest of their days. A risky thing to do. Now the story continues because Naomi understands that something has changed. In verse 6, Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to aid His people by providing food for them. There is the first word she uses to reference God. You know, if you know a person, you might use a lot of different words to describe who they are. If you're married, you may say, say, your husband, you may say, that's my friend, you may say, that's my lover, you may say all kinds of things to describe the person. The same thing is true in the Bible about God. The words that are used in this story unfold for us something about the nature and character of God and how they saw God. This word Lord capitalized, all the letters capitalized, always refers to the personal covenant name of God. You know, when you go to somewhere and you get a, make a loan, for example, they want you to write your name on there exactly as it really is. I grew up in a family where my middle name was the name everybody called me by. And when I came to the place where I had to get Social Security and Medicare and I go to the hospital and they call me by the other name, William, that I never went by, it took me a while to get used to that, but they call me by my medical name, I call it, and everybody else calls me by my real name. You have different kinds of names that mean things to people. And this word, Lord, is a reference to the personal name for God. That's how he signed his contract. And it is the name Yahweh. Now sometimes you'll see translated this word Jehovah. Yahweh is really the way the Hebrews would pronounce it. They don't have hard J's, you know, like we don't have, like the Spanish say Jesus instead of Jesus. They didn't have in their language a hard J, so they called him Yahweh. Now your personal name, your name, you can look over a whole sheet of paper and your name jumps out at you. You can be a crowd of a hundred people and somebody says your name and you turn and you listen. You hadn't been listening to them, but you hear their name. This name, as she references God, is the personal name of God. And if you know him, you can call him by this name. She heard that Yahweh was now changed his direction toward her people. Big news. Now whatever they'd been doing wrong had been reconciled, a new judge had been raised, whatever the circumstance was, and now it was safe to her to be able to go home. Great news for her in this foreign land. In this book, the book of Ruth, the personal name for God is used 16 different times. It's filled with a personal reference to God. These people have a relationship with God that allows them to talk about him by his first name. If you go into the president's office, you say the president before you say his name because he has such an exalted office. They didn't like to print or say out loud the name of God. So that's why they have Lord in there. But when they were thinking about God, they were thinking about his personal name. Here is a book of people who know God personally, who have a relationship with him that allows them to think of him as their personal friend. And this word Lord is a primary word that's used throughout this book by these characters, all of them. They make reference to that. Now the story takes, as you know, Naomi decides to go home. Her husband's dead, her two sons are dead, their widows are living with her. She decides she's got to go back to her homeland and she asks the girls to stay. And one of them does go back, but one of the most famous parts of this story is found as Ruth, told to go back, decides that she doesn't want to go. This is a powerful, powerful story. When Naomi asked them to go back, she said, your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods go back with her. Here's another word for God in this passage. It's small cats, gods. It's like the word that we use for something generic. My wife may say that's my husband, but she also might say I'm a man. That's generic. It's true of a lot of different people. The Bible uses the word gods in small and with no cap at the front of it to indicate that there are many different people that believe in gods and they're out there. They don't deny it. They're out there, these gods. In response to this, Ruth replied, don't urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you will go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God, capitalized, my God. All of a sudden she's used this word for a general generic group to specify this God of Naomi will now be the God that she recognizes. And then in a very bold statement, she says, where you die, I will die and there I will be buried. May the Lord, here's that personal name for God. This Moabitess now addresses the God of Israel by a personal name. It's what we might call a profession of her faith in God. She has changed from the worshiper of idols in the country she came from and now professes to say from this moment on, I will not say God or gods, but I will say Yahweh is my God. This is a powerful transformation for this young lady. Not only is she leaving behind her family and all the people that she knew in a country she grew up in, but now she's accepting a whole new ruler of her life. She has opened herself up to all the things that the God of the Bible has to say to her and direct her with. Her life is now changed. And this word or statement that she makes gives us insight into the relationship now she has with God. So she becomes a part of the community of faith which she hadn't been before. Now throughout this story, these three words for God, the word God is used three times here and that's the end of it. No more is it mentioned that way. From now on, Ruth, Naomi and all the characters in the story talk about God as Yahweh, except for one time. One time when Naomi went back home, she came to her friends and they knew she had left and they see she's come back and they talk to her about what's happened to her. She said, don't call me Naomi, she told them. Call me Merah because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but Yahweh or the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? Yahweh or the Lord has afflicted me. The Almighty has brought misfortune on me. Here she uses a different word for God, the word Almighty. Now this word is different. It reflects not the name of God, but it reflects a characteristic of God, powerful and Almighty. You may have heard this if you've gone to church somewhere and they've sung a song about all the names of God and one of the names is El Shaddai. This is the word Shaddai. Not El Shaddai, but Shaddai. El means God and fastened with this word it means God Almighty. Here it's just Almighty she uses. She's referencing the fact that the power of God has come to play on her life in a negative way. He's taken away everything from her. Here a woman of faith has lost her husband, her two children. She's had to move out of her home country. Now she's trying to move back and she comes back empty, broken with nothing. Now a widow in those days, no means by which she could make a living for herself. No way by which she could count on support for her children. They didn't exist. All she had was this one lady who was her daughter-in-law who was with her. And she came back broken and empty. But she still calls God by his name. Twice in the story she says Yahweh, my God. Here's an interesting picture of someone who believes in God and has lived their very best trying to do what they could and little by little everything that she valued was taken away from her. She came back broken but not in rebellion to God. It's easy to serve God when things are good but boy I tell you when it doesn't go the way you want it to sometimes it's really difficult to take. Now it could be that whenever these things happen to you you begin to question yourself. She never says I'm worried about my life and what I've done to deserve all this. She doesn't really think she deserves it. Same with the people of Israel. Whenever God took them into captivity their thoughts weren't here's something wrong with us. They wanted to fight the enemy off. There's a great lesson for us here. In the church if things go bad in the church sometimes we think well what do we need to do differently? We need to have more music or different kind of music or we need to have more different building or we need to have something changed about our programming as if there was something we could do to make God bless us. You see in the Bible it teaches us something about this. If God puts you in a difficult spot where things go down instead of up when things are bad instead of good it's not that he wants surface changes. He wants inside changes. God blesses because he chooses and he withholds because he chooses. And whenever a church or a person goes through difficult times like the nation of Israel or Naomi you have to ask yourself a question. Why is this happening? You see what the people of Israel believed was that God was active in every single part of their life. Naomi didn't believe that it was simply fate because her husband died and her two sons died. She saw this as something God was leading her through. God has taken away all these things from me. I went away full and God has brought me back empty. Even though he is almighty and could have done anything he wanted to do he has led me back empty. I tell you this is a picture of faith beyond imagination. Most of us would have said I'm through with that. I meet people all the time that quit church because of one thing or another. The heat or the temperature or the looks or whatever it is you know they quit. They're not going to take it anymore. Here's a woman that lost everything and she still acknowledges God as the ruler of her life. It's the kind of faith that God needs in us. Sometimes we go through these difficult trials because God is strengthening our trust in him. You know how you develop faith? That's by having your faith challenged. It's easy to have faith if you pray and the answer is to pray. Do this and God does good things for you. But whenever you keep doing the good things and everything you think God wants you to do and good things don't come to you in fact the good things start leaving you it's awfully easy for us to forget God and want to turn away from him. But the faith that God values is the faith that trusts him regardless of circumstances. She came home empty. She trusted God and the one with all the power has used his power not to give her what she needed or to keep what she needed but has taken it away from her. What's going on in a world like that? When you look back at the story of Judges and whenever God began to take away their food and began to take away their strength and let the enemies overcome them he was trying to say to them would you quit trusting in yourself and these other gods around you and would you come back and trust in me? There was a purpose in all of this. I don't think sometimes we listen to the purpose God has in the bad times. I think we want to get rid of them so quick because we don't like them but often times they are the greatest schooling times that we have. Jesus went through his own temptation in the wilderness. He set himself the nature and character to be able to succeed in his ministry. In a church that goes through those difficult and trying times and remains faithful to God and intensifies their trust in him will find the strength that they have to do anything in good times or bad times and whenever you go through difficult times and you ask God have I done anything wrong and he never tells you anything and you realize I'm in this hard time not because it's punishment but because it's training. The important thing you do is you train for the difficult times. An athletic team before the season starts trains they run and run and run and run and they shoot and shoot and shoot. I read a story about some guy who was a basketball player and he could shoot a hundred shots every day at the basket. He was good. Painful but it prepares you for the events that you need to face. Here's a picture you see of ordinary people going through difficult times but they never stopped trusting God. They believed that his covenant promise was reliable. God said if you will place your trust in me I will guide you, I will provide for you, I will protect you, and I will make your life powerful, meaningful, and influential. But here she is back home broken. Ruth goes out to be able to find some food as a custom for poor people they could go along behind the harvesters and gather the grain off the ground one grain at a time or maybe get a stalk with some grains on it. The owner came over and he was kind to her, said that the guys leave a little grain so she can get some. She comes back with a whole basket full and Naomi then expresses her great appreciation for that. And she tells her, asks her who it was, and she says that's our redeemer friend, our close relative. And she concocts a plan. She tells Ruth to wait till the harvest evening, he's eating his meal, laid down to sleep, to take a bath, put on her best clothes, put on some perfume, and go and lay at his feet and when he wakes up to ask him to cover her with his blanket. This was a marriage proposal. That's how you did it if you were a person of ill repute. It was sort of acting like a prostitute. How difficult would that be for a young lady to do? But she did. In this story, everyone in the story is guided by God, as a man who could take advantage of this young lady. She didn't have a defender, she didn't have a protector. But instead, he actually responds to what she does with evidence that he sees this now as what the Lord has done for him. The Lord bless you, my daughter, he replied. This kindness is greater than what you've shown earlier. The personal name of God interjected in this very sensitive story at the time in which sin could have been easily the ruler. Here you see people, ordinary people, faced with great temptations who are guided by the Lord of their life, his ruler. Well he marries Ruth and then at the end of this story, at the very end, Naomi holds the child that was born to them. The ladies around her say, praise the Lord who this day has not left you without a guardian redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel. He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. So now she's taken care of, she's been provided for. God guided her back home, guided her through this, and now the covenant is being fulfilled. He will sustain you in your old age. He will protect you. He will provide you. For your daughter-in-law who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons has given him birth. Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. The women living there said, Naomi has a son, not Ruth, Naomi has a son. And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse who was the father of David. This man and this woman went on to make Naomi a relative of Jesus Christ himself. She thought she had come back home empty and broken and hopeless. She had nowhere to turn. But here this foreign girl comes to her and says, I will stand by you till the end. She gives her dangerous and strange instructions to go out where the harvest and only men are and risk herself. And God intervened and guided. And now the story closes and the covenant of God is fulfilled. All of us live as individuals in the presence of God. He makes the promise to us that he will make a covenant contract with us. If you will give me your life and live in obedience to me, I'll make you this promise. I'll guide you in the choices that you make. I will protect you from the things that will destroy you. I will provide your needs and I will make you an influential and powerful person in the world. What a promise. Now whenever you make this commitment to God and say, OK, I'll live for you, you may think that God is not keeping his part of it. You may go through times of emptiness and hollow. You may go through times when everything seems to be going the wrong way. Don't ever despair. That's what this story is about. God does not forget his promises. You may go through a time in which it looks like there's not a way in the world, Naomi did, not a way in the world I'll ever have any influence in my life. No way I'll have protection. No way I'll have provision for me. But then by this act, she goes to Boaz's field, the guidance of God. Naomi has a plan, the guidance of God. Boaz wakes up the guidance of God and then the ancestors of Jesus are formed. Now in this story, there is a very important word that is used by Naomi to talk about the events that have taken place in her life. It's a word in this story that's simply translated as kindness. But in the story, and this is Naomi speaking, the Lord bless him, Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. He has stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead, she added. This man is our close relative. He is one of our guardian redeemers. And the word that's here, kindness, is used three times in this story. All three of those times, it references something in the nature of God. And this characteristic of God is so unusual and unique that it has many different translations as you go through the Bible to read what those are. And it's translated so many different ways. I had to write it down because I couldn't remember all of the ways in which this word is translated. It's translated here as kindness, but it's the word hesed, H-E-S-E-D in Hebrew. And it stands for covenant love. And what that means is when God chose the people of Israel and said, I want to make a contract with you, and I want to guide you, I want to provide for you, I want to protect you, and I want to make you a great nation. His desire to help them at great expense to himself is encompassed in this word. And so it's often used for the word love and covenant love specifically and especially. It is love that grows out of the covenant or contract that God has made with his people. And it's used for the word kindness in this section. It's used for the word love. It's used for the word for God's care for people. All kinds of different ways in which this word is used. I'm having trouble finding the list that I had for it. Too many things in this book. I'm going to have to forego that. Oh, here it is. Maybe it is. Yeah. It's love. It's translated in these ways in the Bible. Love, mercy, grace, kindness, goodness, benevolence, loyalty, covenant faithfulness. All these qualities that move a person to act in the benefit of another without any benefit to themselves. So when he's talking about kindness here, he's talking about events in which the actor does something in behalf of another person that doesn't help them. Now that's what the Bible calls love. In the New Testament, this word is not used very much, but instead the biblical word for love is used. And it's not the love like we would have for a friend or someone else. It's a unique word that describes God's love for us. You may have heard it. The word agape. It means that this self-denying sacrificial service to other people. All characterized by these words. In the Old Testament, it's described as God's covenant love for us. The contract that he makes with us. In the New Testament, we see it the same way. I say to God, I give you my life and he says I will love you. And so I'll do all these things for you. It's a kindness. It's all these different words wrapped into one thing. What this story tells us is the very heart of the nature of God. Over and over in this story, kindness is shown from one person to another. And the kindness that comes from God is lived out in the lives of these people. This little picture of these people and their lives is a sort of example for us about what God has been doing from the very beginning of the Bible to right now in your life and mine. Calling people to say, I want to enter into a contract with you. I care more about you than I do anything in this world. I would give even my life for you. All I want from you is to say to me, God, I will live my life in obedience to you. And if you do, then all the blessings I want to give you, I can give you. You don't earn them by doing good things. All the blessings are here. It's like the table is set. But all you have to do is to say, you're my Lord and the table is yours. You don't earn it. It's given to you. In this word for covenant love, Chesed. God's love for us. And whenever Jesus was living on earth, he said that this love was the most important thing that we could do. John 3, 16 years, for God so loved the world. It's that word. He loved the world more than even his own life. That's what God wants to do for every one of us. When Jesus was getting ready to leave, he said to his followers, a new commandment I give you, love one another. It's that word, Chesed of the Old Testament, Agape of the New. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. All men will know that you are my followers or disciples if you love one another. What I want to do for you, he said, was I want you to look at my own life and how I've lived and given it for you. It's because I've loved you. I give you more than I take. And I want you to go around this world and I want you to love people around you. I want you to love the jerks. I want you to love the fools. I want you to love your enemies. I want you to love those that hurt you. I want you to do more for them than they deserve and expect nothing in return for it, just like I've done for you. And when you do this, people will know what I am like. Here you are, a hundred people, a thousand people, every one of us this week, love those around us as Christ loves us. They would say, wow, why are they doing that? And you can say, because this is what God is like and what he's done. And everyone will know God then in his kindness and in his nature. The story of Ruth is the story of God, who he is, what he's like, and what he does. That's Ruth's story. And when she tells it, it's the story of God and who he is and what he's like. And your story should do the same thing. If you will say to God, I give you my life, he will change the way you think, he will change the values you hold, he will change the motivation inside of you until you want to give this chesed love to everyone you know. And when they see the love of God lived out in you, then they will stop and say, this is unbelievable. And you can say, God wants to give this to you. Could you bow your heads please for a moment to pray? I want to ask you if you've never made this contract with God. I want to invite you to do that right now, just to say to God, I believe this story. I believe if I turn loose of controlling my own life and said to you, take control of everything that I am, that my life would change. And I'm prepared today to say I'm going to leave the things in my life behind, the gods that I have in my life that control my behavior and attitude and action. And I'm going to latch on to you and hold on to you with all my might. And I'm going to live the way you tell me I should live. And I will do this even though it doesn't work out like I thought I would because I trust you that much. You've never made that kind of contract with God. I want to tell you it's available to you now. If you felt in your own mind that that's something you should do, that's God talking to you. God here is my life. And He will become for you personal, someone that you know, and you can call by name as a part of your life. And His contract will begin to work in your life. And when your life is over, you will know exactly what Naomi did. God has kept His promise. If God calls you to do that, He'll want you to become part of a family of God where Naomi was away from her family, the people of Israel. She wanted to get back because that's where her family was, the spiritual family she had. And every person needs a spiritual family, which is a church. If you've ever made that promise to God and you're not a part of a church and God wants you to be, if you know this is where you should be, God will tell you that. Maybe God has in your life, in your mind, something that needs to be changed about you. You made this promise to Him, but you're not keeping it. In these moments, maybe He said to you, here's what I want to be different about you. This is just a time in which Almighty God, Yahweh, who's living and alive, speaks to people, just like He did Naomi, just like He did to Boaz, and like He did to Ruth. What will you do? The moment I'm going to ask a pianist to play, I'm going to be here at the front and others will stand here too. But we're here because if you feel that you're ready to make some kind of promise to God, we kind of represent that person that you want to make that promise to, and you can come and make the promise to us. God knows what you're making, and it kind of helps you seal the deal with Him. If there's any kind of promise you need to make today, we invite you to do that now, silently with Him, or if you feel led to do so, with us. This is the time Yahweh God, the Creator of heaven and earth, in your mind will say, here is what I want you to do. So please do it. Your whole life depends on that. Would you stand, please, for a moment of prayer together? It's hard to imagine someone of your majesty and power and significance caring about individuals who are insignificant to the world, but you've shown that you're a God of great love. And so we know from these stories that you care for us. Help us to be conscious day by day that you're here, speaking to us, guiding us, directing us, and always available as our Lord and Master to direct our lives. In the name of Christ, we ask that the love you've shown to us would be demonstrated in all of our relationships, that the world might know of the God who loves people. Amen. Amen. Amen.