Ruth Explained: Covenant Love, Redemption, and the Family of Promise

roger ferguson: May the Lord bless you and keep you and make his face shine upon. May he be gracious to you and turn his face toward you and bring you peace, Modern Mind, Ancient Book. Presented by Modern Mind Ancient Book, we're going back to move forward. We're finding a love for the law, the prophets, and the writings. So that we can know Jesus more. We're gonna do ⁓ today the Book of Ruth, a survey of the Book of Ruth. So we we just finish with Judges. And this particular book actually happened somewhere during the time of Judges. So we kinda can't date it, and we kinda can't tell you the author, but we can say that it may have been Samuel. Or it may have been some scribe in David's court. ⁓ but this was definitely a story that was carried from the time of judges in Israel until it was written. So we're thinking, what was it, somewhere around 1100 BC, something like that, is that right? Yep, right around that time frame. Yeah, somewhere somewhere around that time. ⁓ previous to Gideon? Right, yes. Which was yeah, almost 1200 and then. Yeah, and it's it's quite interesting. So the Hebrew ⁓ the Greek the the it's I'm sorry, the title is the major character of the book. And she was from Moav. Not Israel. Right. No, I was I was raising the eyebrow because I heard the V sound and I was like, ⁓ wait a second, okay. Yeah. And it's about God's loyal covenant love during the dark days of Judges. And so the rabbi suggests that Samuel wrote it, and perhaps that's the case. David was mentioned, so maybe that was a scribal thing. Right, added after the fact. ⁓ but we ⁓ just we just don't know. Right. Right. There's there's problems. This story is about Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz. And it takes place during Judges. Every generation had to learn the necessity of obedience during the time. Naomi, she's she's not even Jewish. But the whole story is about her and Boaz and Noam Noemi. Which is interesting, especially considering she ends up in the line of Jesus. Right. So And it turns out so Naomi is interesting because she gets bitter. Calls herself better. Yeah. And then She goes back to the land and she tells the other girls, just go They're Yeah, I'll go back to my dad's house. What did what did Naomi mean? I th I think that when I was reading rereading this book, I I it meant something along the lines of like joyful or sweetness, and so it went to the the opposite the exact opposite. Yeah. It's it's God's way. It's the play. Right. Right. And that's what makes these books so worth reading, even if you're not faithful. They're just great reads, if you understand ⁓ Right. It's the it's the it's the turn of events, it's the switch up, it's the ⁓ character and story developments. It's how all of the law before it is summarized in Boaz's actions. So you actually have to know the law to understand Boaz. You have to know the law to understand how gleaning from the edge of the field, showing favor by bundling and throwing out bundles to the edge of the field for that was a process which they would have understood and yeah. Well and they would have seen he kind of took sweet to her. Yeah. Right? Right. Because his servants were like instructed to look out for Yes, specifically. And they were don't don't instructed to bundle up fruits, the good stuff, and drop it out at the edge of the field so she had something to take back. Right. Now, what kind of man was Boaz? An interesting, interesting guy. Yeah. And then the story also records something about her uncovering his feet in the middle of the night. Which is a strange detail. Which we'll go into at a later date. Right. So it's it's a great book. The the the best part of this for me Is that it's one of those stories like Job, where you don't know from where it came necessarily, but you do know why it's there. Right, okay. I understand what you're saying there, yeah. Yeah. So you know, you you see this character who, though being a foreigner, lived for the sake of obedience, love. She had great character. And so God adopted her. Right. And she adopted God. It's a conversion story. It is. It's Jacob to Israel. It's Avram to Avraham. It's Just exactly as the Bible tells us these things happen. It's all the stories of Jesus where some foreigner comes up to him and he's like, gosh, I wish this faith were here. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's all throughout history. So it's it's one of the books that, like Job, tells me that God is not the God of Israel, he's the God of all men, and he chose the nation to bring the Messiah. He chose a people to give us the law, to teach us who he is, and to bring about his purpose. Well, it was about him working through a people who are just stubborn enough to be alive today, still worshiping him. Right. Even having been removed from the land three times, scattered throughout the nations, and now gathered back in it. And fighting for that piece of land. It's the Bible is a very, very well put together book. It that's an amazing thing, and I appreciate how people who don't necessarily b believe that what it says is true will say it's great literature. And it is. But I'm still amazed that someone can enjoy the great literature and and th and not see it for what it you know. Well there there are people like Jordan Peterson started that way. Yes, he did. And now he's crying on television. Because he he saw it and it and and one of the things that I appreciated that he said and and and maybe it's something that you can grasp best if you follow some of his other work because I d I do. But he somebody said, Is it true? You know, the Bible's a good story. And you can glean good lessons from it, but is it true? Is it true? And he said, after having the the crying fits on on social media, he said, it's not only true, it's truer than just literally true. And th I I thought that was an excellent answer. Because yeah, we do believe that these events took place, that these were real people and these situations Yeah, I think if you spend time reading it, you're eventually gonna be confronted with the fact that the stories have much more meaning than you thought they did. It and that's what I think he was getting at. Yeah. Yeah. And in this case, with Ruth, it like you were saying, it's it's not It's a motif. It is a motif and it and and it matters that she's outside of the of the Jewish group that even though technically that wasn't supposed to be how it went, she's in the line of Jesus. Nothing in the Bible like i i it's not enough that it's great literature. Nothing that's in there is a mistake and that's that's amazing too. Well the cool so I love this book because it's an overturning of the point of judges. So judges says foreign oppressors are gonna come and oppress them, but I will send you a judge that will destroy them. Yeah. But this is just one woman who is a foreigner that didn't seek to overcome, but to become part of, to be obedient to, to lay down her life. She when she said, I will stay with you, your gods will be my gods, what she said is I surrender. Right. So you don't need to conquer just by force. No. And she didn't have any force. It wasn't Samson, it was the exact opposite. Right. And she was what success she had wasn't by force, it was by the mercy and of it was love. Yeah. It was kindness, compassion, great character. ⁓ a heart that was ploughed in a seed that was planted until it grew and became an Israelite. Yeah. A foreigner became an Israelite. And isn't it funny sh she was redeemed through Boaz, but then Naomi through her. Mm-hmm. Naomi who was. She stopped being bitter and she started rejoicing. Yeah. And then the king of Israel came from Naomi too. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's ⁓ it's it's quite an interesting thing. So ⁓ let's go back to the date the date part there, because we'll just talk about ⁓ kind of some of the story here. So second paragraph down. This was a period when every generation or first paragraph, I'm sorry, second. I had to learn lessons of obedience to the Lord. So Israel would forsake the Lord and choose idolatry. The Lord would send foreign nations to oppress them. Israel would cry out in prayer for deliverance, and the Lord would send a deliverer to liberate them. Which is the exact opposite of what Ruth is, right? So the book itself even gets turned upside down by a story that takes place within it. That's also recorded outside of it to help navigate the book of Judges, but at the same time, it's we call it a spirit thing. Right. Right? It's a God intervention moment through the heart of a person who was not like the nation, the direction of the nation, but was like the nation because Boaz. Boaz and her are the same. Yes. That's why they found compatibility. It's the law keeper without knowing the law. Mm-hmm. So the story begins with Israel under the judgment of God's God by evidence of a famine. That's how the sons died, right? So ⁓ Elemilech Takes his family from Bethlehem to Moab to escape the famine. They are in the land at least ten years. And this is the thing too, right? The faithful get dispersed. Right. Right? Because of sin or whatever, right? Some problem. Then they go out and they have this experience and then God brings them back. ⁓ that that is also a motif. The story ends with the birth of Obed and a reference to him being the grandfather of King David. The prominence that is given to David and the lack of reference to Solomon indicates that the book is finalized during the early reign of David. Finalized, right? Right. ⁓ and before the birth of Solomon, Shlomo. The fact that Ruth is the great grandmother of David provides a setting of three generations before the birth of David. David is born around ten forty one BC, when the Philistines were harassing Israel. David was the youngest of many brothers, indicating that his mother gave birth to him later in life. Ruth had been married for ten years before moving to Bethlehem and marrying Boaz. Taking all these ages into account the story of Ruth. Probably takes place somewhere between 1140 and 1100 BC. Some commentators suggest that the book took place during the period of Gideon, but this seems a little late. I let's side note for a minute. Okay. So, this book sheds light on the past, and because of the law, already gotta know the law to understand what Boaz is doing, it sheds light on judges, which is the part that it takes place in, but it also looks forward to David. Right. Totally organized. Absolutely. I mean phenomenally written. Yeah. It it's astonishing. The first recipients were probably Israelites living during the early days of King David's kingdom. So, and that makes sense because David basically loved God enough, was faithful enough, was planning to build the temple, right? Mm-hmm that he would, by the work of his scribes, begin to organize and place things into like a royal library, right? The history of the people. So That's kind of the backstop. When when we read the Bible, we d we shouldn't look at it as like a c a loose collection of books that people somehow put together. This was all contrived. Yeah. This was all planned. There was this is all had purpose. Every word, every line, every dot, it was all for the sake of an actual kingdom administrated by, in this case, kings before judges. And the kings were sinned. Right. Well ⁓ And it and it it is it's it is crazy i if you understand even even a fraction of how well organized it is. You you you can't look at this and say, ⁓ this was just written by a bunch of ⁓ desert hacks that didn't know anything. It's it w well yeah, those people couldn't do this. Yeah. People people today with all the technology being able to reference things, could not write fiction that self-references this way, that fits together so well. Everything a a couple different meanings on motifs that follow. And there's some phenomenal writing out there. And and if those people couldn't do this Then the very people that they criticized and and you disregard the Bible, it's well, no, that's actually more evidence that this is all by design, because we're we're we're we're taking the the different opposite ends of the conclusion from the same point. You're saying there's no way that these people could have written everything of value. And I'm saying, yes, you're absolutely right. That means that that that they weren't the one the masterminds behind it. Well, let's take- let's take this little snapshot in history, right? So you get like this 1300 BC to 1100 BC thing. judges didn't realize that there was gonna be a king. During the time of the judges, they were just praying for deliverer, deliverer would rise up, they would do their thing. Right. But the kingdom itself was already planned out in Ruth and Boaz during the time of judges. And they couldn't have known that. And how did they know that? But David, on the other hand, had a time of national safety and international expansion. So he actually could be purposeful in in the pulling together of Could of all putting all this information together. Right. And remembering, and this gives you the motivation for remembering Ruth. She was his grandmother. Great grandmother. Yeah. So David was uniting the twelve tribes under his military leadership. Just like Samuel said would happen. So take your young men and your young women as servants and of your crops to feed, right? Everything everything happened as it was supposed to and was prophesied to happen. So he was leading the nations in victory after victory over the Philistine, the Moabites, the Syrians, the Edomites, the Ammonites, the The Ark of the Covenant had been brought to Jerusalem, and the capital and nation were expanding under the blessings of the Lord, which in this case comes from a Moabitus names Ruth. Right. Unfortunately, some difficult days lay ahead for David and his kingdom. So these are the people who are reading this. So you have to you have to kind of Remember that when we get into these books, they were they happened, then they were compiled, then they were recorded. for a further gener the the the generation after. Right. So when we're when we're reading these we gotta realize that it's it's very it's just very purposeful. Yes. Yeah. So this is this is this is how we want to read it. You live in the kingdom period. You're living in a time of national security and prosperity, meaning kind of the wars are outside of your kingdom gates now. You you've actually you're living now in the land of milk and honey with cisterns that you did not dig and homes that you did not build. Everything's good. David, the Davidic king, the one who conquers and leads the people, who now has a covenant all his own called the Davidic Covenant, is running the show. You you you have The real kingdom. Yeah. And you're looking back. They're The obedience, there's obedience in the nation, and it's it's brought blessings. And so now you're recording the former things. This there's always been uncertainty that the good times will not last. You you want to read Ruth and and learn about the loyal covenant love of the God that you serve. That the God that you serve was faithful to Naomi, and when she was unfaithful, he made a way. He was loving to Naomi even when she thought that the hand of the Lord had gone out against her. He he had a purpose in bringing Ruth, a Moabitus, somebody from Moab. That's a total turn of events. It it's an example of God's love for the whole of the nation. It's an example of God's love for the whole world. So now you have to be the light, and you have to draw the nations, and you have to conquer the evil, and you have to always consider what God has done. So you you're learning about the loyal love of Ruth towards Naomi, and God, that she changed, right? So you're looking out at these nations going, Well, they can change. Right. Right. So godly character matters. Boaz was the man who had the godly character. He reached out to this Moabitis. She had changed her ways and came into the kingdom, became an Israelite. God never forsook his people for the people outside. Instead, he changes them and makes them like you. Right. Yeah. He brought her in, yes. Yep, he has steadfast, loyal, covenant love. That's the point of this book. The argument is that Yahweh delivers, redeems, and restores his people, in this case Naomi, and her family, and her lineage. Because of his loyal covenant love. The key verse, if you want to read it, Ruth four fourteen. Sure. The women said to Naomi, Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a kinsman redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel. He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth. There we go. Yeah, that's and that's that's a strange term that when I was rereading the book of Ruth, the Kinsman Redeemer. Like we don't go around saying that. And that's right. And so I was I was looking into that a little bit and it it it well it pulls the story together. It's a motif that considers to the that goes all the way to the kinsman redeemer who redeemed all the people. Exactly. And it goes back to the kinsmen redeemers who redeemed all the people. It's it's forward and backwards. Right. But we gotta go, Mr. K. Good talking to you. And thank you for joining us. Please follow Modern Mind Ancient Book and share this teaching with the people you love. Find the way, meet Rabbi Jesus, walk the way. Modern Mind Ancient Book May the Lord bless you and keep you and make his face shine upon. May he be gracious to you and turn his face toward you and bring you peace. Walk the way. Modern mind, ancient book.