Ruth message 1
1 Now it happened in the days when the judges judged, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the fields of Moab [a]with his wife and his two sons. 2 The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife, Naomi; and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem in Judah. Now they came to the fields of Moab and remained there. 3 Then Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died; and she was left with her two sons. 4 They took for themselves Moabite women as wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. And they lived there about ten years. 5 Then [b]both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and the woman was left without her two children and her husband.
I read this story this week. A gathering of friends at a wealthy English estate nearly turned to tragedy when one of the children strayed into deep water. The gardener heard the cries for help, plunged in, and rescued the drowning child. That youngster's name was Winston Churchill. Winston's grateful parents asked the gardener what they could do to reward him. He hesitated, then said, "I wish my son could go to college someday and become a doctor." "We'll see to it," Churchill's parents promised.
Years later, while Sir Winston was prime minister of England, he was stricken with pneumonia. The country's best physician was summoned. His name was Dr. Alexander Fleming, the man who discovered and developed penicillin. He was also the son of that gardener who had saved young Winston from drowning. Well, we'll get back to this story in a second.
Ron Hutchcraft, Wake Up Calls, Moody, 1990, p. 22.
We just completed a series of messages on love and today we begin a new series. In this series we are going back to the Old Testament to our Foundations of the faith emphasis. The last Old Testament book that we studied was the book of Judges, so now we come to the book of Ruth. It is a favorite of many. You probably remember the story of Ruth. But in case you don't here is a summary of the book
The book of Ruth takes place during the period of the Judges and follows an Israelite family, Elimelech, and Naomi and their two sons Mahlon and Chilion, from Bethlehem who moved to Moab during a famine. After the deaths of Elimelech and his two sons, his widow Naomi returned to Bethlehem accompanied by Ruth, one of her Moabite daughters-in-law. Ruth supported Naomi by gleaning grain in the fields, where she came to the attention of Boaz, a wealthy relative of Elimelech. Because Boaz was a qualified family redeemer, Ruth appealed to him to fulfill that responsibility. After a nearer relative declined his right to redeem the family property, Boaz legally acquired the right of redemption and married Ruth. Ruth later gave birth to Obed, who became the father of Jesse and the grandfather of King David.
I am familiar with the story as well. But as I revisited it this time, a question was gnawing at me. The question was, “Why is this book in the Bible?” I mean, think about it a little bit. The book of Ruth is unusual in the Bible. It is a small, deeply personal story. It tells the story of a single Moabite young woman going through ordinary hardships and eventually finding refuge under the protection of the God of Israel.... There are other biblical books that focus primarily on individuals—Esther and Job, for example—but even among them Ruth stands out. There are no kings leading armies, no prophets delivering great messages, no miracles dividing seas, and no great national crisis at the center of the story. On the surface, it is simply the story of an ordinary family struggling to survive during an extraordinarily dark time in Israel's history.
But why is this book here? There has to be a message. Well, there is. It just isn’t written in bold letters. It is an undercurrent throughout the narrative. It is the same story as that of Winston Churchill. It is the story of the need for salvation. The child Winston was drowning and needed a savior. The adult Winston was dying of pneumonia and needed salvation. Most people will need some sort of physical salvation at some time in their lives . But everyone needs spiritual salvation. Everyone needs spiritual redemption.
The story of Ruth begins with famine, leaving home, and the death of a husband and two sons. But it ends with this genealogy connecting Ruth, in lineage, to the greatest king that Israel ever had. Verse 22 of chapter 4.
22 and Obed became the father of Jesse, and Jesse became the father of David.
The story is a story of redemption And that is the greatest story that is told in scripture.
prayer
So, let me tell you where we are going with this study.
This whole series can be summarized this way: Ruth 1 — The Need for Redemption, Ruth 2 — The Providing of Redemption, Ruth 3 — The Request for Redemption, Ruth 4 — The Accomplishment of Redemption
This week we will look at the
The old saying goes that you can't get help for something until you know you need help. That's why so many say that you have to hit rock bottom with an addiction before recovery begins. And the same holds true for Spiritual Redemption; You have to understand your need before you will either ask for or receive redemption.
That message can be found throughout Scripture. For example,
Psalm 51:17 — “A broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” David's repentance begins with recognizing the seriousness of his sin and his complete dependence upon God's mercy.
Remember the story of
Luke 18:9–14 — The Pharisee and the Tax Collector. Jesus said that the tax collector went home justified because he recognized his sin, was broken hearted over it, could not lift his eyes to heaven and cried out to God.
But a passage, I think that best shows that redemption comes to those who are broken, is John chapter 9. Jesus just healed a broken man, a man born blind, rejected by his society. Then some Pharisees asked Jesus are we blind to? And Jesus says,
" If you were blind, you would have no sin, but now you say we see so your sin remains."
This means that you've got to know you are blind in order to ask for sight. You've got to know you need salvation. And this story in the story of Ruth demonstrates that God brings us to that point of knowing.
The context and beginning of the book of Ruth is a setting of Death, emptiness, exile, and bitterness. But it is out of that bitterness that Redemption comes to Ruth. So, we are going to start this book study by considering chapter one of the book; The need for redemption. It's first few verses can be broken down by the bad circumstances that This family found themselves under; The judges, the charactors, the famine, the departure, the funerals, and the marriages.
Let's go back and read the first few verses again.
1 Now it happened in the days when the judges judged, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the fields of Moab [a]with his wife and his two sons. 2 The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife, Naomi; and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem in Judah. Now they came to the fields of Moab and remained there. First,
1 Now it happened in the days when the judges judged.
This is such a simple phrase but it means a lot. First it tells us when this story happened. In the time of the judges.
You remember that we just finished studying the book of judges. It was the time in Israel's history when Moses and Joshua were gone, the Children of Israel were settled in the Promised Land, but they had no centralized government. They didn't have a king or a government capital that kept all of the individual tribes following a common itinerary. And remember that during this time , over about 300 years , Israel was drifting away from God . God who brought them out of Egypt. At first they followed a leader who encouraged them to be faithful to God and his law . But the leader would die and they would drift back into the worship of other gods. They did this repeatedly. That's why we have these phrases repeated in the book of Judges.
Judges 2:11 Then the sons of Israel did what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh and [d]served the Baals,
This phrase is repeated seven times in the book of judges.
They would go after other gods , the Baals , and the Asheroth, , the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the sons of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines; thus they forsook Yahweh and did not serve Him.
That is what characterized the time of the book of Judges. And as you read the book, you see this downward spiral. They would return to God with the guidance of a new judge then they would fall away again. And it got worse and worse as you progress from the start of Judges to the end. We didn’t go into detail about how the book of Judges ended In our series on judges, but let me summarize.
After the last judge, Samson, things went south quickly. Judges 17–21 forms a dark and disturbing conclusion to the book of Judges, showing just how far Israel had fallen spiritually, morally, and socially. These chapters are not primarily about foreign enemies oppressing Israel; instead, Israel has become its own enemy. The repeated theme, “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit” (Judges 17:6; 21:25), explains the chaos. And then we are given two examples of how far they fell.
Judges 17 begins with a man named Micah and his household. This is a convoluted story full of people just following their sinful inclinations. Micah steals eleven hundred shekels of silver from his mother but later returns it after hearing her pronounce a curse against the thief. His mother uses some of it to make an idol. Micah then Uses the idle 2 establish his own private shrine. He makes an ephod and household gods, and appoints one of his sons as a priest. Well, when a wandering Levite arrives, A member of the tribe who were appointed by God to be the nation's priests, Micah hires him to become his personal priest. And the Levite agrees to become the priest of an idolatrous shrine.
Judges 18 expands Micah's corruption from one household to an entire tribe Of the twelve tribes. The tribe of Dan, dissatisfied with its allotted territory, sends spies northward looking for land they can conquer. They discover Micah's shrine and instead of destroying the idols as God's Law commanded, the Danites steal them. They also persuade Micah's Levite to abandon him by offering him a promotion: instead of being priest to one household, he can become priest to an entire tribe. He takes idol worship on the road. The Danites eventually establish Micah's idols as their own system of worship. What began as the corruption of one man's household becomes institutionalized within a tribe of Israel. False worship has moved from the home into the nation. That's the first story of the downward spiral of the nation of Israel in the book of judges.
The second story is in judges chapter 19. Judges 19 reveals an even deeper level of depravity in the nation through the horrifying story of the Levite and his concubine. While traveling through the territory of Benjamin, A certain Levite , again, a man of the tribe of the nation's priests. the Levite and his concubine spend the night in Gibeah. The men of the city surround the house where they are staying and demand that the Levite be brought outside so they can sexually assault him. The scene strongly resembles the wickedness of Sodom in Genesis 19, except this time the city is not pagan Sodom—it is an Israelite city. Eventually, To save himself and the Levite, the man turns over the Levite's concubine to be thrown outside, where she is brutally abused throughout the night and dies. In the morning she is clinging to the doorstep of the house. Here are two of the most callous verses that I have ever read in the Bible.
Judges 19:27-28: 27 Then her master arose in the morning and opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his way, and behold, the woman, his concubine, was lying at the doorway of the house with her hands on the threshold. 28 And he said to her, “Get up and let us go,” but there was no answer. Then he took her on the donkey; and the man arose and went to his [a]home.
The Levite then cuts her body into twelve pieces and sends them throughout Israel as a shocking summons to action. And the implication is devastating: Israel, the covenant people whom God had called to be different from the nations, had become morally indistinguishable from Sodom.
And Judges 20 shows that Israel's response to the atrocity produces still more bloodshed. The tribes gather and demand that Benjamin surrender the guilty men of Gibeah so that their wickedness can be punished. Benjamin refuses and instead chooses to defend Gibeah, leading to civil war between the tribes. In that civil war, Tens of thousands of Israelites are killed in the fighting. Eventually Benjamin is almost completely destroyed, with only six hundred men surviving.
Judges 21 brings the book to an especially troubling conclusion. After nearly exterminating Benjamin, the Israelites suddenly realize that one of the twelve tribes may disappear. But they have already sworn not to give their daughters as wives to the surviving Benjamites. Rather than humbly seeking God's direction, they attempt to solve one sinful disaster with increasingly disturbing human solutions. They attack Jabesh-Gilead, an Israelite city, because its inhabitants had not come when called to fight Benjamin, killing nearly everyone and taking four hundred young women for the surviving Benjamites. When there still are not enough wives, they devise another plan allowing the remaining Benjamites to kidnap young women who come to dance at a festival in Shiloh. And the tone of these final chapters in judges is slaughter, kidnapping, and moral rationalization.
That is why the book ends with the statement that summarizes not only these chapters but the entire downward spiral of Judges: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).
So, the story of Ruth takes place during this time. This time of the downward spiritual and moral decline of Israel. This was not a great time to live. I can't imagine what life would have been like. I’ve often wondered what it would have been like to live at different times in history, or even to have been born in a different country. We often talk about what a blessing it is to have been born in our country. But the greatest blessing is not to be born with privilege, but to be born under circumstances that lead you to understand your need for redemption. It is in these times of darkness that God shined the light of redemption to a young moabite girl. John 15 says that when Jesus came the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it then in verse 11 in the same chapter it says he came to his own, but his own did not receive him this describes the general rejection of Jesus by Israel. But then John 3:19-21 says this
19 And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light lest his deeds be exposed. 21 But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been done by God.”
Ruth came into the light, so she could be seen and made clean.
So, Back to our scripture And our second point; the famine. when in the book of Judges does this story occur? It says,
1 Now it happened in the days when the judges judged, that there was a famine in the land.
The story happened some time during the 300 years of the judges and then this is the only other clue we have as to win this occurred. There was a famine in the land.
And talk about God bringing someone to redemption by showing them their need. In this story the setting begins with a nation full of godlessness and corruption and this story begins with a time of famine.
This family, Elimilech, Naomi, Mahlon, and Chilion leave Israel because of a famine in the land. So, when was there a famine during the time of the judges? Here's the problem. There is no famine mentioned in the book of judges. Now, what is a famine? It is a shortage of food, that can and does lead to death. What causes a shortage of food? It could be drought, heat, floods, crop disease, insects, war, economic collapse, overpopulation, soil erosion, vermin, the death of livestock and many other causes.
Were any of these things happening in the time of the book of judges? Yes. In judges chapter six for example there was an invasion in which the enemy destroyed crops and livestock. That was when God raised Gideon to judge and deliver Israel from its oppressors. So, There was a famine in that time though it wasn't specifically called a famine. Could that have been the time. When Ilimaleck and his family left Israel? We don't know because similar conditions happened, Invading armies and destruction, in chapters 3, 4, 5, 10 and, 13.
In fact, much of the time in the book of judges, when they abandon God, and foreign invaders came, there was famine. So we really can't pinpoint exactly when the famine of the book of Ruth occurred but this family left Israel during a famine. Again it is a dark beginning of the story.
Who are these people?
And a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the fields of Moab [a]with his wife and his two sons. 2 The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife, Naomi; and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem in Judah.
Elimelech Means " my God is king." Great name for a man who lived during the time of the judges when Israel had no king. His name at least implies that his family were God worshippers. Naomi Means pleasant, delightful, lovely. Those two names give us a picture of a strong faithful couple, blessed by God. But they have two sons. Their names are Mahlon and Chilion. Mahlon's Name means sickly, weak, or illness. Chilion Means failing, wasting away, frailty or destruction. Now why would you name your kid sickly or frailty? Well, we don't know. Maybe it had to do with their health when they were born Or maybe they were called those names later because of what eventually happened to them. But here at least it is a foreshadowing of things to come.
So, this family decides to leave Israel. Let's go back to the scripture.
1 Now it happened in the days when the judges judged, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the fields of Moab [a]with his wife and his two sons. 2 The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife, Naomi; and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem in Judah. Now they came to the fields of Moab and remained there.
Elimelech and his family “go to sojourn in the country [fields] of Moab” (Ruth 1:1), They are fleeing hunger. This means that they physically left their home in Bethlehem of Judah because of famine and went across the Jordan into the territory of Moab, east of the Dead Sea, intending to live there temporarily as resident foreigners.
Now, to help you understand this, this is just a journey of 50 to 70 miles. But it wasn't just a change in geography. This wasn't just a departure, this was an abandonment. To go to Moab was to walk away from God's people and God's land, and to join yourself to a pagan land.
Spiritually, the move carried great significance. Bethlehem was within the land God had given His covenant people, while Moab was a pagan nation with a long and troubled history with Israel.
Remember where the Moabites came from? Moab was the child born of the incestuous union of lot, Abraham's nephew and Lott's own daughter. From Moab came the Moabites. They lived in the area around the promised land.
And when Israel was returning from Egypt, The Moabites had opposed Israel. You might remember the story of Balam in the Old Testament? The King of Moab was afraid of Israel and hired Balam to curse Israel in hopes that that would give him the edge in battle. And when that didn't work he sent Moabite woman over to seduce Israel into idolatry and sexual immorality and the worship of false gods such as Chemosh. And they worshipped Chemosh by sacrificing infants to their god.
Thus, although Scripture does not explicitly say that Elimelech sinned simply by moving to Moab, the decision meant leaving the covenant land in search of provision among a people historically hostile to Israel's God. The spiritual danger soon becomes evident: what apparently began as a temporary “sojourn” became a stay of about ten years, and Elimelech's sons married Moabite women (Ruth 1:4). The story therefore begins with an Israelite family seeking life and security outside the Promised Land, only for Naomi eventually to return to Bethlehem empty, widowed, and grieving.
But this wasn’t the end of the darkness that begins this story.
Look again at verse 3.
3 Then Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died; and she was left with her two sons.
Elimelech dies. Now, the order here matters. It says first that he dies. It sounds like he dies shortly after they get into the land of Moab. Then, the two sons of Naomi still having left Israel because of a famine remain in the land of Moab. But then the Suns do something that would not have been acceptable according to Jewish law.
3 Then Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died; and she was left with her two sons. 4 They took for themselves Moabite women as wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth.
Mahlon and Chilion, then married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth, and the family remained in Moab for about ten years (Ruth 1:4). While the Law did not explicitly forbid marriage to Moabites in the same terms as it did certain Canaanite peoples, Moab was associated with idolatry and had historically led Israel into spiritual compromise. To better understand this let's look at Deuteronomy chapter 23. This passage list individuals who were excluded from participation in assemblies of worship in Israel. It also had a broader interpretation as individuals who were to one degree or another excluded from the full covenantal blessings in Israel. Listen to who is excluded.
“No one who is [a]emasculated or has his male organ cut off shall enter the assembly of Yahweh. 2 No one of illegitimate birth shall enter the assembly of Yahweh; even to the tenth generation, none of his seed shall enter the assembly of Yahweh. 3 No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of Yahweh; even to the tenth generation, none of their seed shall ever enter the assembly of Yahweh,
The wives that Mahlon and Chilion Took were moabites. And Moabites were excluded from the assembly of Israelite worship and from the privileges of the Israelite community for 10 generations.
now what does 10 generations mean? Well, that has been taken literally and figuratively. If it is taken literally it meant that from the time of Balam when the Moabites seduced Israelite men, it would be 10 generations before any of them would be allowed into the Assembly of Israel.
But that interpretation ignores the whole of Deuteronomy twenty three three.
3 No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of Yahweh; even to the tenth generation, none of their seed shall ever enter the assembly of Yahweh,
This interpretation would say that the 10th generation was spoken as hyperbole, Meant to say that they are excluded forever.
So why were they excluded forever. Look at the next verses in Deuteronomy 23.
3 No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of Yahweh; even to the tenth generation, none of their seed shall ever enter the assembly of Yahweh, 4 because they did not meet you with [b]food and water on the way when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of [c]Mesopotamia, to curse you.
Despite the fact that they were distantly related to Israel, they fought against Israel when Israel was coming to the promised land. Then they attempted to curse Israel and seduce Israel away from the god that protected them.
By the way, This exclusion from the assembly, was taken to mean That you don't marry a moabite. That's how it was interpreted in the book of Nehemiah and Ezra.
Ezra 9 Now when these things had been completed, the princes approached me, saying, “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, according to their abominations, those of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians and the Amorites. 2 For they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy seed has intermingled with the peoples of the lands; indeed, the hands of the princes and the officials have been foremost in this unfaithfulness.”
So, what does this mean in terms of the book of Ruth? It means that Mahlon and Chilion Not only left Israel and moved into Moab they also separated even further from their heritage by marrying Moabite women. But the story didn't end there
Then tragedy struck again: both Mahlon and Chilion died. After 10 years in the land of Moab the two sons of Naomi die. This leaves Naomi without her husband or either of her sons. Some interpreters have therefore understood these deaths as possibly representing the judgment or discipline of God upon a family that had left the Promised Land, settled among the Moabites, and established marriages there. Whatever the cause, Naomi was now in a desperate condition: One commentator I read said this, Pulpit commentary: “Poor woman! "Of the two sexes," says Fuller, "the woman is the weaker; of women, old women are most feeble; of old women, widows most woeful; of widows, those that are poor, their plight most pitiful; of poor widows, those who want children, their case most doleful; of widows that want children, those that once had them, and after lost them, their estate most desolate; of widows that have had children, those that are strangers in a foreign country, their condition most comfortless. Yet all these met together in Naomi, as in the center of sorrow, to make the measure of her misery pressed down, shaken together, running over. I conclude, therefore, many men have had affliction - none like Job; many women have had tribulation - none like Naomi."
Naomi summarizes it this way.
“I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty” (Ruth 1:21).
Well, now we leave Naomi, Ruth and Orpah in a very dark and deep place. But as I said at the start, because of darkness, the light becomes all that more visible. This dark hour opened an awareness of the need for redemption.
But this is really where the story of redemption always begins it begins with recognizing the need for redemption. Redemption means to buy back it is the act of releasing, recovering, or restoring a person property or inheritance from ****, loss, danger, debt or judgment. It occurs often through the payment of a price or the intervention of a deliverer .
In the very definition of redemption itself is the truth that we are redeemed out of something bad. Slavery, loss, judgment, debt or danger. But spiritual redemption is such that we must recognize our slavery, our loss, our low state, our debt, our danger and judgment and we must cry out for redemption. Ruth eventually bows before Boaz and asks for redemption. And that is a beautiful picture of how we must bow before the Lord Jesus Christ in repentance and ask for our redemption.
Titus 3:3-5 3 For we ourselves also once were foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, despicable, hating one another. 4 But when the kindness and affection of God our Savior appeared, 5 He saved us, not by works which we did in righteousness, but according to His mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,
Isaiah 55:1-3 “Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no [a]money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without cost.
3 Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that your soul may live; And I will cut an everlasting covenant with you, According to the faithful lovingkindnesses of David.
Isaiah 9:2 — “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, The light will shine on them.”
Psalm 107:10, 13–14 — “There were those who lived in darkness and in the shadow of death.... Then they cried out to Yahweh in their trouble; He saved them out of their distresses. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death.”
Consider the story of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Born in Russia in 1918, Solzhenitsyn grew up embracing Marxism and communism and eventually abandoned the Christian faith of his childhood. During World War II, he became a decorated officer in the Soviet army. But in February 1945, Soviet authorities intercepted private letters in which he had criticized Joseph Stalin. For that offense, he was arrested and sentenced to eight years in the Soviet Gulag.
From 1945 to 1953, Solzhenitsyn experienced imprisonment, forced labor, deprivation, and humiliation. After completing his sentence, he was not permitted to return home but was sent into internal exile in Kazakhstan. Then he developed cancer and came close to death.
Yet it was through these terrible circumstances that Solzhenitsyn began to reconsider everything he believed. Prison forced him not only to confront the evil of the Soviet system but also the evil within his own heart. He eventually rejected communism and returned to the Christian faith of his youth. Looking back upon those years, he made the astonishing statement, “Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!”
Solzhenitsyn was not saying that imprisonment, injustice, or suffering were good. He was saying that God had used circumstances he never would have chosen to reveal truths he might otherwise never have discovered.
And perhaps that changes how we think about blessing. The greatest blessing is not always to live the easiest life or to be spared suffering. Sometimes the greater blessing is to experience circumstances that strip away our self-sufficiency and cause us to recognize our need for God and redemption. That is something we are about to see in the story of Ruth.
Ruth 2 — The Providence of Redemption
God leads Ruth to the redeemer.
Ruth 3 — The Request for Redemption
“Spread your wings over your servant.”
Ruth 4 — The Accomplishment of Redemption
Ruined → Returning → Refuge → Redeemed → Restored → Royal Line