I appreciated that story, Jennifer.
I was thinking about those shark's teeth in southwest South Dakota, eastern Wyoming.
They have shark's teeth all over the ground.
In some places you can find them.
Several of us were up by a railroad bed.
We were looking for shark's teeth.
We found them.
I remember asking my friend, Dr. Chuck Franklin, what kind of sharks do you think these were
from?
He said, high desert sharks.
Anyway, I digress and I haven't even started.
We're in a strange world, a very strange world where it seems like the whole world goes according
to the emotions of the time.
So much of politics today seems based on emotion, certainly not on logic.
So much of our world, whether it's family relations, governments, the things that, the
policies that are put into place, so much of it seems to be based on just pure emotion.
And one, in fact, logic is often turned upside down.
It's just, I don't know, maybe you've thought like I have that we're in a crazy world.
I think it's interesting to see how things work when we follow God's principles.
And there is a book in your Bible, and it's in mine, that's a story, the whole book.
It's only four chapters.
And it's about a family where things may have started out on the basis of emotion, but they
turned into behaving on principle.
And it's fascinating to me to look at it because it's so different in some ways from today's
world and yet the people were so much like us in so many ways.
It's found in the book of Ruth.
Comes right after 2 Samuel.
There's been a lot of discussion about who wrote this beautiful story.
I thought it was King David himself, but nobody seems to think that but me.
Probably they think it was Samuel himself wrote it.
It all starts with a man, a husband, and his wife, Naomi.
Elimelech was the husband, Naomi the wife, and they had two sons, Malan and Chilion.
And if you're into biblical names, we like biblical names in our home, but I don't think
we ever thought of naming either of our children after any of these, except Naomi is still
used today.
Ruth, interestingly, does not have a Hebrew name.
Can you guess why?
She wasn't Hebrew.
She was Moabitess.
And she doesn't come into the story until we get into it a little ways.
It all starts with dad and mom and two sons, and apparently they were farmers and things
weren't going well.
They had a dry spell.
The Bible says they had a famine.
That's a bad dry spell.
And so they were trying to decide what to do, and they heard that over in Moab they
had food.
Apparently Moab was getting enough rain that they were able, and by the way, Moab today,
there is no country called Moab.
Today we call it Jordan.
And the Moabites don't seem to be around.
But the people of Jordan have that land, and it is today, well, to some degree, what it
was then.
It's a good land for sheep and cattle and that kind of thing.
Back then it was also good for dry land farming, and they grew quite a bit of, you know, there
was food available.
It was being grown in Moab.
And so they decided to go over to Moab.
Now whether that was a wise decision or not, I have often wondered why the people of God
would go to Moab.
It was a place where we know during the time of, well, from the book of Numbers that when
the children of Israel came through there, Balak, the king of Moab, had been very frightened
at the coming of the Israelites.
Even though they did not threaten him, he didn't trust them.
And so you know the story.
He hired Balaam to come and curse them so that if they could be cursed, then he could
make war against them and win.
Well, it didn't work.
And that's a whole other story.
But the two countries were never really close friends, but Elimelech and Naomi and Malon
and Chillion all headed for Moab because probably they were hungry and they got to Moab.
And the young men, of course, were interested in finding wives.
And what do you find in the country of Moab?
Moabites, right?
And so they married Moabite young women, Ruth and Orpah.
And again, that probably wasn't the originally good idea, but they did.
And then things went sour for them in Moab.
The Bible tells us that the three men of the family all died.
Elimelech died, Malon died, Chillion died.
And that left the three women together, mother-in-law and daughters-in-law.
And again, we're in a strange time when, well, I grew up hearing mother-in-law jokes.
You ever hear any of those?
In the biblical culture, mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law were expected to be very
close.
And Naomi and her two daughters-in-law were close.
And Naomi had been there about 10 years.
Now she had two daughters-in-law and she thought it might be better to go back to her people.
And she heard that there was bread, as it puts it in the Bible, there was bread back
home.
And so off they went to Bethlehem.
And you know the story.
They come to the borders of Moab.
And Naomi turns to her daughters-in-law and says, look, I can't do anything for you.
I can't produce any more sons for you.
You need to go back to your people.
You're still young.
Go back.
And they say, oh, no, we don't want to do that.
And she urges them.
And finally Orpah goes back.
And Ruth has that famous saying.
And I want to point out that this is probably one of the high points of this book.
It is a book with several real high points in it.
And she says, by the way, this was sung at our wedding, wasn't it, dear?
These words, entreat me not to leave you or to turn back from following after you, for
wherever you go, this is what they sing, wherever you go, I will go.
And wherever you lodge, I will lodge.
Your people shall be my people, your God, my God.
Wherever 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.
Now this is a presentation of love that we don't hear much in the modern world.
This is not emotion.
This is principle.
I'm going where you go, your God will be mine.
Where you die, I will die.
This is total commitment.
I'm going to take care of you.
And she was.
I mean, this is something so pure and unselfish.
It just touches my heart.
See there are two stories in the Old Testament that just can bring tears to my eyes every
time I read them.
One is Joseph and his brothers and this is the other one.
Because when one young lady makes the decision that she is going to do the right thing no
matter what, God is in a position to work mightily on her behalf as well as on behalf
of her mother-in-law.
Now they get to Bethlehem and it's interesting because in Bethlehem, well it's a small town.
It's still not huge.
It's about five or six miles southeast I think of Jerusalem.
And we all know about Bethlehem, every Christmas we hear about Jesus being born in Bethlehem.
We have wise men and shepherds and all of that.
But back then it was just a little farming community.
And it's over 3,000 feet above sea level.
It's a place, maybe I got that wrong, but it's well above sea level.
And it's a place where it's been agricultural for millennia.
And they get back and like small towns everywhere, people were talking.
They're a little hard up for news.
Hey, have you heard?
Have you heard?
Naomi is back.
Naomi's here.
Wow.
And the whole town is a flutter over it because that's the biggest thing that's happened since
Naomi left with her husband.
And of course the story has changed.
Now she's back without her husband, without her sons.
You ever wondered why they all died so close together?
I've wondered if maybe there was a little bit of COVID going through the country or
something.
Maybe the flu.
But the men all died and the three ladies lived.
Anyway they're back in Bethlehem and they found a house to live in.
Maybe it was Naomi's old house.
I don't know.
It doesn't say.
But Ruth is determined to do something to support them.
Now you've got to remember these were times when women didn't work outside the home.
I'm not making this up.
It was in fact in parts of the world that's the way it still is when a woman loses her
husband becomes a widow if she's fairly young.
She often doesn't have any way to make a living.
Women can get into very bad lifestyles because there's nothing else they can do.
And we heard the story last weekend at the faith camp.
They were talking about this one woman in India who had that happen.
She was a widow and when the Jesus for Asia people came they not only led her to Jesus
but they taught her how to sew and they bought her a little sewing machine.
She set up her own tailor business and her house which was considered a place that good
people stayed away from has now become a place where the whole village looks up to her because
she's the village tailor and she has been able to support herself.
And she also encourages other women and leads them to Jesus, reads scriptural promises to
them.
I heard that and I said yes, go for it.
Jesus can make a difference in people's lives.
And in this case Naomi wasn't by herself.
She had her widowed daughter-in-law with her.
And immediately, well you've got to remember they had in the Hebrew system a plan to help
people in Naomi's and Ruth's condition.
When they had a harvest they were told not to harvest, not to pick the vines clean for
instance if it's a grape harvest.
I don't know if you've ever picked grapes.
My uncle had 25 acres of grapes and I remember picking grapes.
And you can miss some of them that are hidden back in the leaves so after you've done a
vine you go back through and you look under all the leaves and try to get it picked clean.
They were not to do that.
They were to leave, they were just to go over the vine and leave all those hard to find
ones there for people like Ruth to come and get the extra grapes that were left.
And if they were harvesting grain they were not to harvest the corners of the field.
If they dropped a little they weren't supposed to go back and get it because there were people
like Ruth who needed food.
And of course they had to work to get it but it was there for them.
And that was a good plan.
Nobody was just going down and picking up a check.
They were expected to get out and work but it was there for them.
I think that's a pretty good plan.
God just comes up with such good ideas doesn't he?
And so Ruth goes out to, it's barley harvest, and she goes out to pick up grain and she
ends up in a field that belongs to a relative of Naomi's husband and he's a man of great
wealth.
Actually the Bible says that mentions one of, I think it was his grandfather was actually
a leader in the tribe of Judah.
So it was a family of nobility in the tribe of Judah and he was a fairly wealthy man and
closely related to Elimelech.
So Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, please let me go to the field and glean heads of
grain after him in whose sight I may find favor.
And of course she found favor in Boaz's sight.
By the way, we don't generally, I knew someone who named their kid Boaz.
He resented it all his life.
Some names just aren't that popular.
But the reason he did it, you know when Solomon built his temple he put two big pillars, one
each in front of the temple and the one on the left was called Boaz.
They named those pillars and this guy wanted his son to be a pillar in the house of God.
So anyway, it's interesting we use some of those names today.
Like I said, Naomi is still one that's around.
Anyway, she went out and went gleaning in the field of Boaz and Boaz comes out after
a while and his workers are out there working.
Who's the young woman out there?
She's a stranger.
Oh, that's Ruth the Moabitess.
Oh yeah, I heard about her.
Sure, the whole town was talking about her.
She'd come back taking care of her mother-in-law and everybody thought she was, even though
she was a Moabitess, she's still a pretty good young lady.
And so he gives them directions.
He says, drop a little extra grain for her to pick up.
And when it's time for everybody to eat, they're sitting there and he invites her over.
He says, we all have heard how good you are to your mother-in-law.
Please join us for lunch and they shared the lunch with her.
And he told her she was welcome to dip her bread in the vinegar that everybody was doing.
And that didn't sound that good to me.
But anyway, their diet was different.
A lot of things about their culture was different.
But remember, cultures change, but emotions and people are still emotions and people.
You understand that.
And so when she goes home that night, she beats out her grain, takes it home.
Naomi says, you've done pretty good.
Whose field were you in today?
And she says, oh, a man named Bo asked, oh, he's a near of kin.
Keep it up.
Don't be seen in anybody else's field.
In fact, he had given his workers special directions.
Don't you dare touch her.
Be good to that young lady.
She's a good woman.
And so everybody was looking out for her there.
Now the fun really begins.
Naomi says he is a near of kin.
And God also had a plan for young widows.
You can read about it in Deuteronomy chapter 25.
Well, maybe we ought to look at it.
The way they word it in the Bible is kind of interesting.
It kind of hits you between the eyes.
Deuteronomy chapter 25 starts in verse 5.
If brothers dwell together and one of them dies and has no son, the widow of the dead
man shall not be married to a stranger outside the family.
Her husband's brother shall go into her, take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a
husband's brother to her.
And it shall be that the firstborn son, which she bears, will succeed to the name of his
dead brother, that the name may not be blotted out of Israel.
That was very important.
But if the man does not want to take his brother's wife, then let his brother go to the gate
to the elders and say, my husband's brother refuses to raise up a name to his brother
in Israel.
He will not perform the duty of my husband's brother.
Then the elder of his city shall call him and speak to him.
But if he stands firm and says, I do not want to take her, then his brother's wife shall
come to him in the presence of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, spit in his
face and answer and say, so shall it be done to the man who will not build up his brother's
house.
And his name shall be called in Israel the house of him who had his sandal removed.
Boy, that's pretty brutal.
That would ruin the man's reputation big time.
And this was the plan that God had in place.
And it seems to have been a custom in the Middle East, we find in Genesis, that it was
in place during the time of Jacob's sons, Judah, and so forth.
So anyway, and if there wasn't a brother, it would be the nearest of kin.
Anyway, at the end of the harvest, they have this big pile of grain.
And Naomi takes her daughter-in-law and says, look, I've got to give you some advice here.
Naomi knows her people.
She knows her culture.
She knows what goes and what doesn't.
And she says, tonight, I want you to go down to the threshing floor.
And I want you to look, just kind of stay out of sight in the background.
I want you to pay attention to Boaz.
And when he has, they're going to have a party because the threshing will all be over.
They've had a great harvest.
You go down there.
And when he has had enough of the party, and he goes and lies down, pay attention to where,
and go lie at his feet.
Now we're getting into something that is totally out of our culture.
It's not immoral, but it sure is different.
And if he wakes up and wants to know what you're doing there, you just tell him to cover you.
And because he's the next of kin.
You follow what's happening here?
And so she does that.
And he wakes up with a start in the middle of the night.
He's at his feet.
Who is that?
I'm Ruth, and you're my next of kin.
Would you cover me?
Well, he says, go back to sleep.
In the morning, I'll take care of things.
And he did.
He gives her six bushels of grain.
I've wondered how she hauled.
She must have been a strong lady.
Well, it says six ifas.
I'm not sure.
An ifa's quite a bit of grain.
And she carries it in her garment back.
And he says, there's another relative that's closer than me.
And so she goes home.
And of course, she's got enough grain to last her and Naomi for a long time.
And she tells Naomi what happened.
And Naomi says, well, the man will not rest until he's taken care of that today.
She knew men.
And sure enough, he waits by the city gate, gets some of the men together, because that's
where all the decisions are made of a legal nature.
And when the relative who's nearer than he is comes by, he says, come over here and have
a seat.
He said, our brother Limelech left a field, and it needs to be redeemed by the nearest
of kin.
The nearest I'm after you.
Will you redeem it or not?
I'll redeem it.
He says, you need to know that when you redeem that field, with it comes our brother Malon's
wife Ruth to raise up posterity for Malon.
And the guy says, whoops, can't do it.
I mess up my own inheritance.
Thanks for offering, but I can't do it.
And so this is where the scripture gets very interesting.
Boaz, remember what we just read in Deuteronomy.
The close relative said in Ruth chapter 4 and verse 6, I cannot redeem it for myself
lest I ruin my own inheritance.
You redeem my right of redemption for yourself, for I cannot redeem it.
Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging.
To confirm anything, one man took off his sandal, gave it to the other, and this was
a confirmation in Israel.
Well, things had mellowed out some since Deuteronomy was written, but they still took off the sandal.
And they made this agreement.
And now we see Boaz said to the elders, verse 9, and all the people, you are witnesses this
day that I have bought all that was a limanlex and all that was Chileans and Malons from
the hand of Naomi.
Moreover, Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of Malon, I have acquired as my wife to perpetuate
the name of the dead through his inheritance that the name of the dead may not be cut off
from among his brethren and from his position at the gate.
You are witnesses this day.
And the people who were at the gate and the elders said, we are witnesses.
This is the little ceremony here.
The Lord make the woman who is coming to your house like Rachel and Leah, the two who built
the house of Israel, and may you prosper in Ephrata and be famous in Bethlehem.
May your house be like the house of Peretz, whom Tamar bore to Judah because of the offspring
which the Lord will give you from this young woman.
Now there is some real issues here that you need to understand.
First of all, Ruth is not a Hebrew.
And by the way, Boaz's mother was not a Hebrew.
Did you know that?
His mother was Rahab.
She was the one, she and her family were the only survivors of Jericho.
So it probably didn't bother Boaz as much as it might have some of the Hebrews to be
marrying someone who was not a Hebrew.
And now his wife, like his mother, has become by adoption a Hebrew.
She has been taken into the family.
Her God is, Naomi's God is Ruth's God.
Her people, Naomi's people are Ruth's people.
Now we have a little, we have some very interesting things here because it tells us about how
she bore Obed, who bore Jesse, who bore David.
You've heard of him.
I mean this young man, or this old man by the way, you know he said of Ruth when he
woke up that night and she was at his feet.
He said, blessed are you for not going after the young men.
So he apparently was quite a bit older at the time.
What is fascinating to me is this whole system of the Redeemer.
He had redeemed Ruth, took on her mother-in-law in the process, and was glad to do it.
And God blessed greatly.
And we find this in the New Testament, a term that is used for Jesus.
He is our Redeemer.
After all, our first father and mother got into trouble.
They could not bequeath to us eternal life because they didn't have it.
They gave it up.
They were tricked.
They were, well they followed their emotions.
We talked about that in Sabbath school.
And so the whole human race was left without our inheritance.
We got cheated out of that too.
And along comes a Redeemer.
Did you know that Jesus is called first of all in Job chapter 19 verses 25 and 26?
Have you ever heard that?
I know that my Redeemer liveth and he shall appear.
I shall see him in my flesh.
That is even though my flesh has been turned to worms.
Job was looking forward to the resurrection and the coming of Jesus.
And he knew that he had a Redeemer.
And when Jesus went to the cross, he paid the price.
I looked some things up.
I didn't have room to write them all.
For instance, Isaiah follows this theme of a Redeemer who will die for our sins.
Isaiah 53 for instance.
Just as Boaz was a Redeemer for Ruth, Jesus is our Redeemer from the results of sin and
Satan.
And I don't know about you, but that's the sort of thing that can bring tears to one's
eyes because this is not based on emotion.
It's based on a very intellectual acceptance on the part of one of the persons of the Godhead.
In fact, all three persons of the Godhead because Jesus said to his father, Behold a
body you have prepared for me.
And he came down and became one of us and became our Redeemer.
We find for instance in Galatians chapter 4 verse 5, he came to redeem them that were
under the law.
You know what it means to be under the law?
Do you?
Have you ever been under the law?
We all are.
And you see that little blue light behind you?
You're under the law, right?
You get in trouble with the law.
Seems like there's a lot of things we can get into trouble and be under the law for.
We are all born under the law.
Because Jesus died for us, we don't die.
We go to sleep.
And I've said this before.
Do you know what the difference is between sleep and death?
When you sleep, you wake up again.
And because Jesus died for us, we don't die.
We go to sleep.
And yes, we will awaken.
That's what Job said, Job 19.
Titus, Paul writes, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity.
The idea of a Redeemer to step in on behalf of his people who are suffering because of
death comes all the way down from the time of Deuteronomy and Leviticus and Ruth, down
to our day.
We have another brother who has never succumbed to temptation, but has succumbed to the results
of sin.
And he died on the cross for you and me.
And I don't know where you stand on this, but I think it's the most exciting thing.
He died once for all of us because he made us.
He can do that.
We read the word redeemed again in Galatians, he hath redeemed us.
Us, that means me.
From the curse of the law.
I don't mind the law.
I believe in the law.
I'm driving down the freeway and I'm doing 80 and everybody's passing me.
And some guy goes by me doing at least 100 miles an hour and I say, yeah, I believe in
the law, that guy's driving dangerously.
But I'm breaking the law too, right?
Okay.
We have all broken the law.
We have all been born under the curse of the law.
We all without Jesus can look forward to a final and eternal death.
But don't worry, we've been redeemed if we want to be.
And I think that's pretty exciting.
That's what gets me so excited every time I read the book of Ruth and I see how she
was redeemed.
Oh, there's so many talks about redemption in the Bible of him.
Are ye in Christ Jesus who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification
and redemption.
This is one of the themes that we find in our Bibles.
Actually Leviticus 25, it's easy to remember.
You've got Leviticus 25 talking about the redemption of property and then Deuteronomy
25, the redemption of the wife of the man who died.
That's pretty exciting.
It's easy to remember.
I like things that are easy to remember.
And I could go on and on.
There is so much in our New Testaments about Jesus our Redeemer and it's based on a very
solid Old Testament and New Testament principle.
Jesus has died for you and me.
He has paid the price and now he offers us life.
And if that isn't pretty exciting, I don't know what else is.
Just like Boaz did much greater than what Boaz did for Ruth and Naomi.
And he's done it for you and me.
Let us pray.
Father in heaven, when we think of what you have done to redeem us, it takes my breath
away.
I'm just amazed at what you have done and your great love for us.
And now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before
the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.
To God our Savior who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power both now and
forever.
Amen.