Ruth — Jacob Prasch

Shalom Lachem, Kol Tov, Shabbat Shalom Lekulam. Open with me please to the book of Ruth. The book of Ruth. If you don't have a Bible, please share a Bible with the person next to you. Share a Bible with the person next to you if you don't have a Bible.

Open with me please to the book of Ruth. God, our Messiah, we thank you for all the blessings we have received from you. I, the Lord, now ask you to open your eyes to us. Also open our eyes to the story of your words.

Give us strength to get closer to you. Not only to hear your words, but also to strengthen you. Also with strength from you. Heavenly Father, we thank you for all of your goodness and your blessings to us, Lord God.

We ask you now, Father, that you would, by the power of your Spirit, open our eyes, our minds, and above all our hearts to the glory and meaning of your words. And in your grace and in your strength, Father, that we'd not be only hearers of your words, but doers also.

We ask these things in the name of your Son, our Messiah, our King, our Redeemer, and our Righteousness, Yeshua. Amen. The book of Ruth. I've been asked to speak on the theme today in three messages of the prophetic relationship between the Church and Israel.

The Bride, the Autumn Feasts, and Israel's Prophetic Future

The prophetic relationship between the Church and Israel. We'll be looking at that today in three sections. The first section, I've been asked to address from the point of view of the Bride. What is the Bride?

Who is the Bride? And what does it mean for the Church's relationship to Israel and the purposes of God for the Church concerning Israel and the Jews? Secondly, I wanted to look at biblical prophecy in a broader sense.

And it was suggested we look at the Autumn Feast. The typology of the Fall Feast of Israel. How they are an outline of God's prophetic program and how they point to the return of Christ. Israel is God's timepiece for the nations.

And we understand the typology of the Jewish calendar, what we call the Ruach. We understand what it means for the return of Christ and how to prepare for it. That'll be the second message. The third one I've been asked to look at is the situation today.

I was in Israel just a few days, really, before Yitzhak Radim was assassinated. What is the situation in Israel now for the Messianic believers, for the indigenous body of Christ? One major problem you have in South Africa is this.

We have four kinds of churches in Israel. It goes by language, really. You have the Hebrew speaking, the Arabic speaking, and the Russian speaking. Those are the indigenous churches. Those who speak Russian, those who speak Hebrew, and those who speak Arabic.

Those are the indigenous churches. But then you have an expatriate church, mainly English speaking, made up of foreigners from England, America, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand. Most of the information about Israel and what God is doing in Israel does not come to you from the indigenous body of Christ.

You usually don't hear from the Hebrew speaking, from the Arabic speaking, or the Russian speaking congregation. As a matter of fact, I've met so many people in South Africa that they don't even hear from Jewish believers like Jews for Jesus.

They usually hear from this expatriate church. And this is a very big problem in Israel. Many of the believers in Israel do not like the fact that someone else comes to their country and makes themselves the spokesman, the self-appointed spokesman, for what God is doing for the rest of the world.

Why can't the Israeli believers and the Jewish mission organizations speak for themselves? And so what I'd like to do on the final message is help share the perspective of the local believers. Most of what you've heard has come from foreigners.

People who are not Israeli, who don't speak Hebrew, who have spent a year or two in Israel, and they come back and they write books and make themselves the big know-it-all. When in fact, they know very little.

So those are the three messages. The first will be Ruth. The second will be the typology of the Jewish calendar, looking at the autumn feasts, not the spring ones, but focusing on the autumn ones for the return of Christ.

And finally, the situation in Israel today, what it means prophetically in the aftermath of Mr. Rabin's assassination, and what the response of the body of Christ should be to it. With these things in view, look with me first of all, please, to the book of Ruth, chapter 1.

The book of Ruth is read in the Jewish synagogue at the Feast of Pentecost. We call it in Hebrew, Hav Shavuot, or the Feast of Weeks. It is the birthday, as it were, of the Gentile Church. And it's what's read in the synagogues.

It's the story of a rich, powerful Jewish man who takes a Gentile bride and engulfs her the way that Jesus, on the day of Pentecost, as it were, gives rise to the Gentile Church, the Bride of Christ. Nonetheless, let's commence in chapter 1, verse 1 in the book of Ruth.

Follow along, please. Don't take my word for anything. Be a Berean. Check it for yourself. Now, it came about in the days when the judges governed that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem, Betlehem meaning a house of bread, in Judah, went to sojourn in the land of Moab with his wife and his two sons.

And the name of the man was Elimelech, which means, My God is King. And the name of his wife, Naomi. And the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. That's the place of Bethlehem in Judah. Now, they entered the land of Moab and remained there.

Then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. And they took with themselves Moabite women as wives. Now, we read in Deuteronomy that the Moabites were particularly despised of the Jews because of the maltreatment of them during the Exodus period.

The name of one was Orpha, and the name of the other was Ruth. And they lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion also died. And the woman was the rest of her two children and her husband.

Then she arose with her daughters-in-law, that she might return from the land of Moab. For she had heard in the land of Moab that the Lord had visited his people in giving them food. So she departed from the place where she was, and her two daughters-in-law were with her.

And they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, Go return, each of you, to her mother's house. May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me.

May the Lord grant you that you may find rest, each in the house of a husband. Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. And they said to her, No, but we will surely return with you to your people.

But Naomi said, Return, my daughters? Why should you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands? Return, my daughters, go, for I am too old to have a husband. If I said I have hope, if I should even have a husband tonight, and also bear sons, would you therefore wait until they were grown?

Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is harder for me than for you. For the hand of the Lord has gone forth against me. And they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.

Then she said, Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods. Return after your sister-in-law. But Ruth said, Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you. For where you go, I will go, where you lodge, I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people, your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me in words, if anything but death separates you and me. When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.

So they both went until they came to Bethlehem. And it came about, when they had come to Bethlehem, that all the city was stirred because of them. And the woman said, Is this Naomi? But she said to them, Do not call me Naomi, call me Marah.

For the Lord has dealt very bitterly with me, Marah, or even Mary, Marie, coming from bitterness. I went out filled, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has witnessed against me and the Almighty has afflicted me.

So Naomi returned with her daughter, with Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, who returned from the land of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. Again, this was read in the synagogue at the Feast of Weeks, when the barley harvest is underway in Israel.

Ruth, Boaz, and the Right of Redemption

Now Naomi had a tinsman of a husband, a man of great wealth of the family of Elimeric, whose name was Boaz. Boaz in Hebrew means, In His Strength. It is also the name of one of the pillars of the temple, Boaz, In His Strength.

And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, Please let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain. After what and whose side I may find favor. And she said to her, Go, my daughter. So she departed and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers.

And she happened to come to the portion of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimeric. Now behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem and said to the reapers, May the Lord be with you. And they said to him, May the Lord bless you.

Then Boaz said to his servant who was in charge of the reapers, Whose young woman is this? And the servant in charge of the reapers answered and said, She is the young Moabite woman who returned with Naomi from the land of Moab.

And she said, Please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the trees. Thus she came and has remained from the morning until now. She has been sitting in the house for a little while. Then Boaz said to Ruth, Listen carefully, my daughter.

Do not go to glean in another field. Furthermore, do not go from this one, but stay here with my maid. Let your eyes be on the field which they reach and go after them. Indeed, I have commanded the servants not to touch you.

When you are thirsty, go to the water jars and drink from what the servants draw. Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground and said to him, Why have I found favor in your sight that you should take notice of me since I am a foreigner?

And Boaz answered and said to her, All that you have done for your mother-in-law after the death of your husband has been fully reported to me. And how you left your father and your mother and the land of your birth and came to a people that you did not know.

May the Lord reward your work and your wages. May they be filled from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you've come to seek refuge. Then she said, I found favor in your sight, my Lord, for you've comforted me and indeed have spoken kindly to your maid servant.

So I am not like one of your maid servants. And at mealtime, Boaz said to her, Come here that you may eat of the bread and dip your piece of bread in the vinegar. So she sat next to him and reaped and served her roasted grain and she ate and was filled and had some left.

And when she rose to glean, Boaz commanded his servant, saying, Let her glean even among the sheaves. Do not insult her and also you shall purposely pull out for her some grain from the bundles and leave it that she may glean.

Do not rebuke her. So she gleaned in the field until evening. Then she beat out what she had gleaned and it was about an ephah, a barley. And she took it up and went into the city. And her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned.

She also took it out and gave Naomi what she had left after and she was satisfied. And her mother-in-law said to her, Where did you glean today and where did you work? May he who took notice of you be blessed.

So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, The name of the man with whom I worked today is Boaz. And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, May he be blessed with the Lord who has not withdrawn his kindness to the living and the dead.

Again Naomi said to her, The man is our relative. He is one of our closest relatives. Krovin. Then Ruth, in the Hebrew idea of Karo, Krovin means close. It does not simply mean related. It means somebody who is close to you.

The idea of the family was based on a tribal model of an extended family. Then Ruth the Moabitess said, Furthermore, he said to me, You should stay close to my servants until they have finished all my harvest.

And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his maids, lest others fall upon you in another field. So she stayed close by the maids of Boaz in order to glean until the end of the barley harvest and the wheat harvest.

And she lived with her mother-in-law. Then Naomi, her mother-in-law, said to her, My daughter, shall I not seek security for you, that it may be well with you? And now is not Boaz our kinsman with whose maids you were.

Behold, he winnows barley at the threshing floor tonight. Wash yourself therefore and anoint yourself and put on your best clothes. Go down to the threshing floor, but do not make yourself known to the man until he is finished eating and drinking.

And it shall be when he lies down, you shall notice the place where he lies, and you shall go and uncover his feet and lie down. Then he will tell you what you shall do. And she said to her, All you say I will do.

So she went to the threshing floor and did according to all her mother-in-law had commanded her. When Boaz had eaten and drunk and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain.

And she came secretly and uncovered his feet and lay down. And it happened in the middle of the night that the man was startled and he leaned forward. And behold, the woman was lying at his feet. And he said, Who are you?

And she said, I am Ruth, your maid. So spread your covering over your maid, for you are a close relative. Then he said, May you be blessed with the Lord, my daughter. You've shown your last kindness to be better than the first by not going after young men, whether rich or poor.

And now my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you whatever you ask. For all my people in the city know you are a woman of excellence. And now it is true I am a close relative. However, there is a relative closer than I remain this night.

And when morning comes, if he will redeem you good, let him redeem you. But if he does not wish to redeem you, then I will redeem you. But as the Lord lives, lie down until morning. So she lay at his feet until the morning and rose before one could recognize another.

And he said, Let it not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor. And again he said, Give me the cloak that is on you and hold it. So she held it and he measured six measures of barley and laid it on her.

Then she went into the city. And when she came to her mother-in-law, she said, How did it go, my daughter? And she told her all the man had done for her. And she said, These six measures of barley he gave to me.

For he said, Do not go to your mother-in-law empty-handed. Then she said, Wait, my daughter, until you know how the matter turns out. For the man will not rest until he has settled it today. Now Boaz went up to the gate and sat down there.

And behold, the close relative of whom Boaz spoke was passing by. So he said, Turn aside, friend. Sit down here. And he turned aside and he sat down. And he took ten men of the elders of the city and said, Sit down here.

So they sat down and then he said to the closest relative, Naomi, who has come back from the land of Moab, has to sell the piece of land which belonged to our brother Elimeric. So I thought to inform you, saying, Buy it for those who are sitting here and before the elders of my people.

If you will redeem it, redeem it. But if not, tell me that I may know. For there is no one but you to redeem it, and I am after you. And he said, I will redeem it. But then Boaz said, On the day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you must also acquire Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of the deceased, in order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance.

I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I jeopardize my own inheritance. Redeem it for yourself, and you may have my right of redemption. I cannot redeem it. Now this was the custom in former times in Israel, concerning the redemption and the exchange of lands, to confirm any matter.

A man removed his sandal and gave it to another, and this was the matter of attestation in Israel. So the closest relative said to Boaz, Buy it for yourself. And he removed his sandal. Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, You are witnesses today that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimeric, and all that belonged to Shimeon and Machlon.

Moreover, I have acquired Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of Machlon, to be my wife in order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance, so that the name of the deceased may not be cut off from his brothers or from the court of this birthplace.

You are witnesses today. And all the people who were in the court and the elders said, We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah. Rachel and Leah, both of whom built the house of Israel.

And may you achieve wealth in Ephrathah and become famous in Bethlehem. Moreover, may your house be like the house of Perez from Tamarbor to Judah through the offspring which the Lord shall give you by this young woman.

So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. And he went into her and the Lord enabled her to conceive and she gave birth to a son. Then the woman said to Naomi, Blessed is the Lord who has not left you without a Redeemer today.

And may his name become famous in Israel. May he also be to you a restorer of life and a sustainer of your old age. For your daughter-in-law who loves you better to you than seven sons has given birth to him.

Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her lap and became his nurse. And the neighbor women gave him a name saying, A son has been born to Naomi. So they named him Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.

Now these are the generations of Perez. To Perez was born Hizron. To Hizron was born Ram. And to Ram, Aminadab. And to Aminadab was born Mashon. And to Mashon, Salmon. And to Salmon was born Boaz. To Boaz, Obed.

To Obed was born Jesse. And to Jesse, David. This obviously begins the lineage of David. The Messiah would be the Shoresh Esai, the root of Jesse. Matthew's genealogy of Jesus does not begin in Matthew chapter 1.

It begins in Ruth chapter 4. All of this is typology. All of this is central to understanding the purposes of God for Israel and the church and the relationship of one to the other. As a kid in New York, I went both to a Roman Catholic school and to the Jewish Community Center.

When I was a kid, they named me James when I was a baby. But then I found out my name was supposed to be Yaakov, my father's grandfather's name. My family is a combination of Jewish and Gentile. Spoke to my wife last night.

Her parents are Holocaust survivors who were refused to come to the Communists in Eastern Europe. Our children are both born in Galilee. My wife and myself tell people we've seen two false religions in our lives.

Nominal Christianity, which does not teach salvation, comes from the New Birth. And we've seen Rabbinic Judaism, which denies and rejects its own Messiah. The truth of Christianity and the truth of Judaism, the real truth, is not found in the traditions of Popes or Rabbis, but in the Word of God.

Naomi, Ruth, and the Church's Relationship to Israel

Let's look carefully. You have an old woman who feels that God Himself is against her. She was forced out of her land for some time. Her husband dead. Her children died tragically. She's alone. She's bereft.

She's embittered. She feels rejected. She feels that the hand of God Himself is against her. This is my wife's parents. Jews who were in the Holocaust. The family were murdered by people who claimed to be Christians.

So my wife's parents came to Israel. This is their experience. God hates us. Read some of the Jewish writers like Elie Weschel who wrote after the Holocaust. One and a half million children kicked into ovens.

God must hate us. Why us? Why the Holocaust? Why the Inquisition? Why the Crusades? Why always us? Why the pogroms? Jews know they're different from other people, but they don't know why. Now pay attention.

There is nothing special about Jews. There is nothing unique about Jews. Jews are people who need to be saved the same as anyone else. But there is something very special and very unique about the God of the Jews.

There's something very special about the covenant of the Jews. There's something very special about the book of the Jews. And something very special and very unique about the Messiah of the Jews. But until they see Him, they don't understand the rest of it.

And so it is. The Jewish people today are in the character of Naomi. They feel rejected, cursed by God. They're out of their land for nearly 2 ,000 years scattered from the time of the Emperor Hadrian.

And then are regathered, they come back to Israel out of a desperate situation because they heard things have begun to get better in Israel. They come back the same as Naomi did. But they come back with this burden of rejection, of pain, of a sense of anguish and agony of soul.

Which, if you talk to them about God, they will even feel that God Himself is against them. Even many religious Jews. And so it goes. But there are two Gentile women. Every Gentile Christian and every Gentile church will come in either the character of Ruth or Orpha.

Orpha seems to be quite humane and quite polite and quite pleasant. But when push comes to shove and her own interest is at stake, she goes back to her people and to her gods. Notice to her gods. What happened in the post-Mycenaean church after Constantine Christianized the Roman Empire?

The church looks lost sight of its Jewish roots. As Paul warned, should never happen in Romans 11, they lose sight of their roots. And what happened? Paganism invades Christendom. And you have the emergence of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and all these things perverting and departing from the original Christianity of the New Testament, which was a Jewish agrarian faith.

They go back to their own gods when they lose sight of their Jewish roots. The same as you see here. But then there's Ruth. Your people will be my people. Your God, my God. Will you go? I will go. Over and over, the New Testament speaks that kind of language.

Let's look at it among other places. And Paul's epistle to the Ephesians. Chapter 2, verse 12. Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, from the Messiah, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

But now in Hamashiach Yeshua, Christ Jesus, you who formerly were far off, have been brought near. Drawing on the Hebrew concept again of Karo, like a relative, one who is close to you. You've been brought near.

Romans 11 speaks the language not of replacement, but of incorporation. Yes, it is true that Gentile Christians who repent and accept Jesus through the new birth replace Jews who reject him. But the tree stays the same.

It's not a different tree. The church is not the new Israel. By a sovereign act of God's grace, Gentile Christians are spiritually grafted in and become descendants of Abraham by faith. This is the meaning of Ruth.

So it happens then that this Jewish woman comes back to her own land in this terrible, terrible state. A state of despondency. And she comes to Bethlehem at the time of Parvus. Now to go further, we have to understand certain things about the Torah.

Torah, Levirate Marriage, and the Genealogy of the Messiah

The Torah had juridical and legal provisions. Remember, this book begins the lineage of David that we read in Matthew. However, when you read the genealogy of Yeshua, of Jesus and Matthew, and you read it in Luke, you have certain discrepancies, don't you?

There are two main ways to account for those discrepancies. But one of the ways is what we read here. In Ruth, it is called leatherite marriage. Let's look at Deuteronomy 25. Chapter 5 of Deuteronomy 25.

In Hebrew, we call Deuteronomy, Dvarim. Dvarim, the things of God. When brothers live together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside of the family to a strange man.

Her husband's brother shall go into her and take her to himself as wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. And it shall be that the firstborn whom she bears shall assume the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be brought out from Israel.

But if the man does not desire to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate of the elders and say, My husband's brother refuses to establish a name for his brother in Israel.

He's not willing to perform the duty of a husband's brother to me. Then the elders of his city shall summon him and say to him, And if he persists and says, I do not desire to take her, then his brother's wife shall come to him in the sight of the elders, pull his sandal off his foot, and there were ten of them, that's the mignon, and spit in his face.

And she shall declare, This is done to the man who does not build up his brother's house. And in Israel his name shall be called the house of him whose sandal was removed. Let me explain the following.

Kings had to be descendants of David. Priests, high priests, had to be descendants of Aaron. The tribal inheritance appropriated and allocated by Joshua had to be preserved, according to Torah. So therefore, a legal descent always had to be perpetuated.

How would you know who the high priest was going to be? How would you know who the king was going to be? How would you know what your inheritance is of your family? And ultimately, how would we know the Messiah?

The lineage had to be established and perpetuated. So you have a biological bloodline, and a legal one. With love of right marriage, one of the genealogies in the New Testament gives the legal descent.

The other gives the biological descent, the genetic descent. Do you understand? That's one of the ways you account for the discrepancies. The reason for procreating was to have relations with your brother's widow was to procreate offspring on his behalf for two reasons.

The first reason was financial and social provision for his widow. The Hebrew word for honor your parents, kavod, comes from the Hebrew word kevi, keved. It's also the name for liver, the heaviest organ of the human body, keved.

Similarly, the Greek word honor your parents has to do more with honorarium. It doesn't mean you agree with everything your parents say because they're your parents. But it means there's something heavy for you that you're expected to carry.

The same as this delightful mother is responsible to take care of this little baby when he's little. So too, when she's old and gray, that baby is going to be responsible for her in God's economy. You understand?

Having children was a form of social welfare provision for the aging. So that was the first reason. It was designed to be sure your brother's widow would have provision at old age. The second was, again, the inheritance.

The offspring would perpetuate the family inheritance. If the land went out of the family line due to debt in the year of Jubilee, there'd be a repatriation of it, a restoration of it in the Jubilee and so on.

Now, let's look further. Jesus, of course, goes after it. The Pharisees were saying, anything that can be given to help my parents is korban. It begins nullifying the commandments of God with the teachings of men.

Your responsibility for your parents was built into Jewish thought and it's perpetuated in the New Testament. It says that it won't go well with you. You won't have a long life in this world if you don't look after your parents when they're old age.

Don't expect to live in old age yourself. Nonetheless, let's look further. As we read in Ruth, he would not raise up children on behalf of his brother. That his brother's name would not be cut off. This is a typology of Jesus.

You understand? The Jews who died faithful to God under the Old Covenant needed somebody to come after them to redeem them. It's called a right of redemption. When you procreated the children on behalf of your brother and took his land, it was called the right of redemption.

A Jew who died under the Old Covenant needed someone to come after him from his kinsmen who would redeem him and prevent his name from being cut off from his father's and to prevent him from losing the inheritance of promise.

You understand? It points to Jesus. How were the Jews in the Old Covenant saved? The same way we are. It says in Hebrews, the blood of these animals could never take away sin. They only would cover the sin if accompanied by faith and repentance until the Messiah came and took them away.

So the Jews of the Old Covenant, the Tanakh, were reliant on somebody to come after them to bring this redemption. It all points to Jesus. Nonetheless, let's move on. Another form of social provision was gleaning.

Ruth was going around gleaning the corners of the field. Now, you have to understand this. The same as you cannot say Christians shouldn't practice birth control based on taking this verse out of context, which some people unfortunately do.

In fact, in America and in New Zealand, there's a magazine called Ruby's Above or Something, and it's a whole magazine built almost on this one verse, telling Christians to have kids one after another or else you have something wrong with you.

When you understand the Jewish context of the verse, it's absolutely absurd what they're saying. It's a matter of individual conscience. However God leads you as a couple is up to you. You have no biblical basis to put what you think God's leading is for you on another person.

No biblical basis. Nonetheless, let's look further. The other is the gleaning. Pathways, narrow pathways, would separate the fields of the different farmers or the different families. But the Jews at harvest time were forbidden from harvesting the corners of their fields.

Why? So the poor, the widows, the orphans, the socially disenfranchised, even sojourners, would have the right to glean. Again, it was a form of social welfare provision of the haves looking after the have-nots.

Such it was, and this is what we see transpiring in the book of Ruth. But let's look further. Ruth comes with her mother-in-law, who says, Don't call me Naomi, call me Mother, for the Lord has dealt bitterly with me.

Again, these Jewish people come back to their own land with dissent after the Holocaust and after what happened with the Communists. God did this to us. Orthodox Jews, Hasidic Jews, will look at Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 and they'll even admit it's the curse of the law.

That what happened to them is somehow God's hand. They'll admit it. Not all Jews, but the Orthodox certainly will. Now let's look. This Gentile man sees her and says, Who is she? And he says, in verse 9, Let your eyes be on the field which they reach.

Go after them. Indeed, I commanded the servants not to touch you. When you were thirsty, go to the water jars and drink from what the servants draw. Continuing on in chapter 2, let's look again more closely.

Why have I found favor in your sight in verse 10? And Boaz said, All you've done for your mother-in-law after the death of your husband has been fully reported to me. I will bless them that bless me and curse them that curse me.

Not because the Jews are special, but because the God of the Jews and his covenant with their fathers is special. God will honor his covenant. It does not depend on the faithfulness or unfaithfulness of man.

His covenants depend on the faithfulness of God. It's illustrated for us in the story of Abraham. Remember, Abraham is the father of all who believe, Jew and Christian. Look at the book of Genesis. There is sheath in Hebrew.

Chapter 15, verse 17. And it came about when the sun had set, it was very dark. And behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. That flame is called Shal-Hevith-Yah, the flame of God.