Sunday School: The Ruin of a Family (Ruth 1:1-5)

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You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

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New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. We did our introduction to Ruth last week but we're really not getting much further than about verse 5 today so some of this will even be a little bit of what we talked about last week.

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We're going to look at some connections between Ruth and the book of Judges and Deuteronomy.

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How some of those things will play into the story as it opens up for us here. So let's look at Ruth chapter 1 and I'm going to begin by reading verses 1 through 5 and then we'll pray.

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In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem and Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.

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The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were

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Mallon and Killian. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there, but Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died and she was left with her two sons.

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These took Moabite wives. The name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both

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Mallon and Killian died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

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Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we look at Your Word today, I pray once again that we see the sovereignty of God working all things out to ultimately lead to the coming of the

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Christ who was going to give His life as an atoning sacrifice, as the

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Savior of mankind, so that all people anywhere who would call upon the name of the

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Lord would be saved. You are working even to fulfill these things out in the deaths of these men that we read about here at the beginning of this story, such a grim beginning to the book of Ruth, but we know as we look toward the end, the light that we see at the conclusion, pointing to the coming of a king who is

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David, pointing to a greater king who is Christ. So we see Christ in these words today, and we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.

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So, kind of how we're going to look at the story today, we're breaking it up this way, so we're going to look first of all at the days of the judges, that's the way we open the book of Ruth, then we're going to consider the days of Elimelech in Moab, and then lastly the days of the coming

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Christ that are promised to us even in these passages. So at the very start, and we talked about this last week at the opening of the book of Ruth, this is happening in the days of the judges, when the judges ruled, so these are the judges that God had given to Israel to deliver them out of the oppression of those pagan nations and cities that were around them.

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And when we read about the judges in the book of Judges, these things are for the most part given to us in chronological order, but some of the stories of the judges overlap.

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So while one judge is in Judah, another judge is in Israel, releasing the people of God from the oppression of whatever nation might be afflicting that part of the land.

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Now we don't know exactly when the story of Ruth takes place, we get a pretty general idea, especially considering the genealogy that's given at the end,

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Obed is the grandfather of David. So you have Obed, the father of Jesse, who

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Obed of course is the son that is born to Boaz and Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, Jesse the father of David.

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So given that you have just a couple of generations, a few generations given there at the very end, then we would have to conclude that this is more toward the end of the time of the judges, but still even somewhere around the middle.

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So about the middle to the end of the time of judges is when the book of Ruth takes place. So the pattern of the book of Judges is given to us in Judges 2, verses 11 through 23.

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Keep your finger here in Ruth. Let's go to the beginning of the book of Judges, it's just the next book over to the left.

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Let's look at Judges 2, and you see kind of the way things went for Israel and how

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God dealt with Israel there in the promised land. So this is

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Judges 2, and starting in verse 11. Now first of all, kind of looking back a little bit before I get to verse 11 here.

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So you read about the death of Joshua in verses 6 through 10, and notice that in verse 10 it says, and all that generation were gathered to their fathers.

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We're talking about the generation of Joshua, the generation that received the promised land when they came in, conquered the nations they were assigned to defeat.

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And then Joshua appoints the allotment of land to the different tribes. All of that generation were gathered to their fathers.

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They all passed away, and there arose another generation after them who did not know the

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Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. So how long did it take for Israel to fall out of faithfulness to God?

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A single generation. So this generation receives the promised land. Their children forget about God, and they're not worshiping

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God. I think sometimes we don't really think about how quickly things can go awry.

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We have a church here, First Baptist Church of Lindale, that's been here in this town for a hundred years, right?

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What faithfulness to the Word of God that a church has been here for this long, and it's been committed to the preaching of the gospel.

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We have a pastor even now who is expository, right, taking us verse by verse through scriptures.

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We just started another book in the book of Ephesians. We're going to go verse by verse through that book so that the people of God sit under the

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Word of God. We're being sanctified by this Word. We're being grown in holiness. This is a tradition that started here at this church generations before us, right?

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There's nobody at First Baptist Church of Lindale that was of that generation that started this church.

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And yet we have in the judges, we have in Israel, a nation that didn't last that long.

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Didn't even last 40 years. And here they are now worshiping the gods of the pagans around them, exactly what

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Moses warned them not to do. What Joshua told them not to do. And yet here they are doing that very thing.

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Didn't take very long at all. In fact, we'll even read, so we're going through Ephesians right now, of course, in our sermon series.

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When you get to Revelation chapter 2, the first church that Jesus addresses there is which church?

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The church in Ephesus. What has the church in Ephesus, by the time you get to Revelation, which is within, you know, the same generation that the church of Ephesus was planted, what is it that Ephesus has forgotten?

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Their first love. Just within decades of the planting of this church and they've forgotten their first love.

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So how quickly it is if we do not remain steadfast, if we don't cling to Christ, how quickly can a people fall away from listening to the word of God and being in the fear of God?

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That's what's happened with the Israelites here. Very quickly, they've forgotten God and what He has done for them.

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So what's the result of this then? What is the pattern we're going to see throughout the book of Judges this same time in which the book of Ruth is set?

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Look at verse 11. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the

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Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt.

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They went after other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them and bowed down to them.

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And they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the

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Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtoreth. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.

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And he gave them over to plunderers who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies so that they could no longer withstand their enemies.

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Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the

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Lord had warned and as the Lord had sworn to them, and they were in terrible distress.

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Then you go on from there. Verse 16, the Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them.

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Yet they did not listen to their judges for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them.

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They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the

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Lord, and they did not do so. Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the

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Lord was with the judge and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge, for the

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Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and opposed them.

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But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them.

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They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways. So before going on here, does it look like the people of Israel and the people of Judah, does it look like they repented?

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No, they groan like we're being oppressed, help us, oh God. God gives them a judge, but in their hearts, they're not really repenting of the evil that they have done.

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And as long as the judge is there, they don't go after the false gods because they know they're being watched over by a judge.

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They don't want to make the judge angry. The judge is the one who's freed us from the tyranny of these people. But when the judge dies, the people of Israel go back to worshiping the false gods again, picking up in verse 20.

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So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel and he said, because this people have transgressed my covenant that I commanded their fathers and have not obeyed my voice,

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I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died. In order to test

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Israel by them, whether they will take care to walk in the way of the Lord as their fathers did or not.

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So the Lord left those nations, not driving them out quickly, and he did not give them into the hand of Joshua.

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So what is the reason why God left those nations around them to even lead them astray with this idol worship?

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To test them, right? Why is the church surrounded by such wretched depravity that we see going on all the time?

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As we talked this morning about this bill that had passed in Canada that is now going to make it illegal for pastors to essentially speak up against LGBTQ issues.

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That you even have this kind of pressure that's coming against the church in America and it's gradually increasing.

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It's almost like whatever we see happening in Canada, we know the United States is only about 10 or 20 years behind that.

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So why would it be that God would allow so much paganism to go on right around where a godly church would be located?

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To test our faith, precisely. Do we love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength?

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Or when we face these tests, will we turn away from the word of the Lord and start following after the word of the world?

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Will we be enticed by them? Will we be bullied by them? I can't handle this pressure.

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I can't handle the way the world makes fun of me or is going to take away my rights if I don't do what they're doing.

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So I'm just going to adopt the ways of the world. It makes life easier for me to live if I know that people are not making fun of me or are going to take away my livelihood.

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This is a test. Do we love God? Do we trust Him? Or are we going to go after the gods of the pagans who are around us?

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So this is the test that is set even before Israel. And you see within them that they don't ever really truly have a repentant heart.

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There's a judge that frees them. It says that God is with the judge, but Israel's heart remains after these false gods.

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And the progression, it's like here in chapter two of the book of Judges, it's telling us exactly the way the rest of the book is going to go.

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That the people are going to get worse and worse. So the more that God gives them a judge and frees them from the tyranny of their oppressor, and then the people go back to gods, the deeper into those false gods the people are going to get than they were before.

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It says in the text they will do even more evil than their fathers before them. So this continues to be the pattern.

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This is the climate in which the story of Ruth takes place. Now that's important to consider, to remember that, because as we read about this man named

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Boaz, right, we're going to hear about a guy named Boaz who takes notice of Ruth right in chapter two is when he comes into the story.

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He's going to take notice of Ruth and how she is taking care of her mother -in -law Naomi. And his favor is going to be with her, and there's going to be this romance that's going to develop, and they're going to get married, and it's even from this union that we're going to have the promise of a king, which will come later on.

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Boaz is such a good man. There's nothing negative that's ever said about Boaz in the book of Ruth.

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He is a law -abiding man. He is not just good morally, but he wants to be sure that all things are handled exactly as the word of God has established it.

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He wants to follow the law. He even wants to follow the law when it comes to how Ruth and Naomi are being cared for.

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Now, when we read that about Boaz, he's an anomaly in the midst of the evil that's going on in Israel at that time.

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It's not that, well, there was kind of a period in there, this must be one of those times of repentance, right, where the people have turned from their false gods and now they're worshiping the true

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God. No, there's still evil that's going on all around them, and we'll see hints of that even here in the story of Ruth, of the wickedness in the land at that present time.

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Boaz is a man who fears God and even trembles at His word. Isaiah 66, 2, this is the one to whom

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I will look, he who is humble and contrite in spirit and who trembles at my word. That's Boaz.

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So this guy is a light in a dark place, just as we have been called to be as Christians in the world.

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We're called to be as lights in the world, Philippians 2 .14, that we do all things without grumbling or disputing so that we may be children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and depraved generation among whom we shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life.

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So we see that example even that's given to us in the character of Boaz. And so we have an idea now of the setting of the book of Ruth in which these things are taking place.

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The book concludes with the anticipation of a king, as I mentioned. So how does the book of Judges start?

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We just read a section there out of chapter two. How does it start though, chapter one? Is it happy or sad?

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It's at the beginning of Judges it's sad? In the beginning, did

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I say Ruth? Okay, man. So at the start of Judges though, how do we start?

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Like what's the atmosphere? What's kind of the tone? Yeah, right, they're happy there.

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The Lord our God has given us the land that he promised to the descendants of Abraham. We got it.

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And even Judah continues in obedience to God by driving out some of those nations that are around them.

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But then you get to chapter two, Joshua dies, the people forget God. They forget what

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God had done for them, even releasing them out of slavery in Egypt and giving them a land that is flowing with milk and honey.

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So we start on a high note. How do we end the book of Judges? Chaos, oh yeah, it's bad.

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It's so bad. That's exactly right.

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It's so bad that everybody's doing what is right in their own eyes. That's not good.

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That's the moralism of even our present day. Follow your heart. Do what makes you happy.

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That's what Israel was doing. There was no king in those days and everybody was doing what was right in their own eyes.

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So we start on a high note. People fearing God, obeying God, happy and rejoicing that God had given them the promised land.

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We end the book of Judges really low. One of the darkest times in the history of Israel.

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How do we start the book of Ruth? We start kind of grim, right? What did we read here?

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We read about a family who's in the midst of a famine, goes to another land, which as I mentioned last week, is a land that God told them not to go to.

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Don't seek the prosperity of Moab. We'll look at those scriptures specifically here in just a moment.

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They go to a land that God told them not to go to. And do they find prosperity there? Everybody dies.

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Almost everybody. Elimelech and his two sons, Malan and Kilian, they had come to the land of Moab to seek refuge in the midst of a famine.

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To seek the prosperity of Moab when there was nothing to eat in Bethlehem. And instead, what they find was quite the opposite of prosperity.

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So we start the book of Ruth on a grim note. But we end the book of Ruth on a high note, right?

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While the book of Judges concludes with no king, the book of Ruth concludes with the anticipation of a king.

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We even have his genealogy that's mentioned there. And the book of Ruth would have been written at a time when everybody knew who

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David was. So this is foreshadowing the coming of David and how

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God was working, even in the midst of an evil time, to bring about salvation for his people.

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Now since Ruth takes place sometime, Ruth takes place during the days of the

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Judges, this would put it between 1350 and 1050 BC. So that period of about 300 years there, that's what the book of Judges covers.

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Now there's not anything that's given to us in the book of Judges about a famine. You can do your word search, you won't see a famine that's mentioned there in Judges.

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But in history, there is actually a mention of a famine that would have been going on in that portion of the world at that particular time.

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Now when it comes to determining exactly when that famine was going on is a little bit difficult because of course in the times before Christ there wasn't really an adequate dating system by which we can go back through their calendar and figure out exactly in what year some of these things were going on.

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Everything was dated according to the reign of kings in the days of so -and -so who was reigning over whatever territory.

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The most accurate dating system therefore we have to kind of judge a great deal of the history that was going on in that part of the world is

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Egypt's calendar system because they had chronicled so well, or at least better than anybody else in the area, the dynasties.

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Which king, which pharaoh it was that reigned at what particular time. Now the Egyptian record was not preserved perfectly though.

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We have a gap of about 300 years. So because of that gap, there's still a lot of uncertainty as to what pharaoh ruled at what time.

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That's part of the reason why whenever you listen to like a history lesson on the book of Exodus, you don't often hear a historian tell you, well the

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Exodus happened when this pharaoh was ruling over Egypt. We don't know exactly which pharaoh it was.

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We have a general idea but we don't know for sure. We don't know what pharaoh it was who was over Egypt at the time that Joseph was in Egypt.

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These things are guesses and that's because of the gap of several hundred years that we have there in the

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Egyptian calendar. We don't know exactly what pharaoh was in what year.

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So because of that, we get a general idea of when certain things take place in the ancient world but not exactly.

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So sometime around 1200 BC, the king of the Hittites wrote to pharaoh in Egypt and he said, there's no grain in my land.

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So history records that there was some sort of famine that was happening in the world at that particular time.

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We don't know exactly what year but even history will show to us there was a severe famine.

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And for the king of the Hittites to write to pharaoh, that's a pretty big deal because the Hittites were way to the north of Israel and Egypt was of course far down to the southwest.

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So the Hittites are writing to the Egyptians and all that area in between, there's no food in the land.

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We know that it was a pretty significant famine because how long does it say here that they were in Moab?

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Ten years, right. So it had lasted for a little while. Now it apparently was just between about the

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Dead Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. So in that strip of land right there on the western coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

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Since Elimelech takes his family to Moab, which was on the other side of the Dead Sea, so they would have crossed around the

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Dead Sea to the land of Moab that was there to the east. As Judges ends with, in those days, this is the way that the book of Ruth begins.

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In the days. When the judges ruled. How did we end the book of Judges? In those days there was no king, right?

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Everybody did what was right in their own eyes. Judges also ends with events that are out of chronological order.

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What we read there in Judges 17 to 21 doesn't actually happen at the end of the period of the

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Judges. It happens more toward the beginning to the middle. And Ruth is also out of chronological order.

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So it's not happening at the conclusion of the book of Judges. Again, it's happening somewhere around the middle to the end.

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It is likely the story of Ruth happened there toward the conclusion, just not at the very conclusion.

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Conflict with Moab is mentioned in Judges chapter 3 led by Ehud the

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Benjamite, the second judge of Israel, but it's unlikely that the story of Ruth would have been happening at that particular time that Israel was fighting with, or Judah in particular even, was fighting with Moab.

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It would have been sometime after that. So that kind of gives us the setting, that gives us the idea of some of the things that were going on in the land at that particular time as we're looking at this story.

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What about the immediate context of this episode that we're reading right here at the beginning of the book of Ruth?

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Let's consider that. So we've looked at the broad scope of where this story is placed. Let's look at the story itself.

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So in those days, there was a famine in the land and a man of Bethlehem and Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.

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So we're setting up with characters here. The story doesn't tell us exactly their names just yet, it's just kind of giving us almost like we're in a film where the movie starts and maybe there's a group of people there that the story is going to center on, but as the credits are rolling at the beginning of the movie, the camera's kind of zooming in.

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You've got the setting, the city, the land, or wherever they are, the camera zooms in and then you're focusing on these individual characters.

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That's kind of the way the story of Ruth is beginning. So before we had great cameras and cinema, we're even telling stories that same way.

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We get this broad overview, land of the judges, time of the judges. There's a famine in the land, a man of Bethlehem.

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We're getting a little bit closer here. We're zooming in on Bethlehem in Judah. He went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.

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And now we get to know exactly who these people are. Verse two, the name of the man was

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Elimelech and the name of his wife, Naomi. So we have a husband and a wife here.

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Oh, they have a whole family. They have two sons. Their names are Malon and Kilion, and they were

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Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. So what we have is the town, we have the clan, and we have the tribe.

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And this is exactly as prophesied later on in the prophets, it is exactly the same town that David is from and where the

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Christ is going to be born, exactly the same place. So we even see foreshadowing and hints and a tease of the coming

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Messiah, who we know was born in Bethlehem. So what happens with this family?

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They went into the country of Moab and remained there. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died and she was left with her two sons.

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Now, it's pretty significant that we read about them going to Moab. Where are they from?

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What town are they from? Bethlehem. What does Bethlehem mean? Anybody remember?

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House of bread, exactly. Was there bread there? Apparently not.

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Did Elimelech trust God to provide them with bread? He did not. In the book of Deuteronomy, God says to Israel, if you trust me, if you obey my statutes,

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I'll provide for you. I'll give you rain. I'll give you crops. But what do we know was going on with the

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Israelites and Judah? Were they trusting in God? They were not trusting in God. They did not fear the

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Lord. They did not obey his word. Let's go to another place here. Let's turn to Deuteronomy chapter 11.

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So, finger in Ruth, you don't have to keep your finger in judges anymore. We're done there. So, go to Deuteronomy right before Joshua.

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If Joshua judges Ruth, Deuteronomy's before Joshua. Let's go to Deuteronomy 11, and I'm going to start here in verse 8.

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Deuteronomy 11, beginning in verse 8. Here is the Lord, through Moses, speaking to Israel.

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You shall therefore keep the whole commandment that I command you today, that you may be strong and you will go in and take possession of the land that you are going over to possess, and that you may live long in the land that the

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Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their offspring a land flowing with what?

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Milk and honey. Yeah. That's the two things that we know are present in the promised land that, you know, people that are even not accustomed to the

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Bible, they don't even know the Bible very well. If you were to ask them, hey, what do you know about the promised land? They would say, well, it's a land flowing with milk and honey.

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I mean, that was the reputation of the promised land. So overflowing with richness and goodness and prosperity.

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Verse 10, for the land that you are entering to take possession of is not like the land of Egypt.

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I remember when stuff started going hard for the Israelites as they were in the wilderness.

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They need food. God provides them manna. They're tired of the manna. God gives them quail.

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They need water. God gives them water from the rock. But then it's all the same. It's the same manna.

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It's the same quail. It's the same water. They get bored. They start to complain. I mean, one of the complaints that the

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Israelites make against Moses is we had it better in Egypt, which just goes to show that the people of Israel did not trust what it was that God was going to give to them.

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And then even when the spies go into the promised land and they spy out the land and they come back with that massive cluster of grapes, right, that was even bigger than a man.

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It took several of them to carry these grapes back to them. Look at how much is in the land.

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Look at the land that God is giving to us. The people still doubted. We can't defeat these people. The warriors are too strong.

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They're too mighty. There are too many. God has led us out of Egypt into this land of Canaan so that we might die.

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They don't trust in God. God curses them to wander in the wilderness for 40 years until that generation dies.

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And then it's their children, those who are 20 and younger at the time that Joshua and Caleb and the spies had spied out the land of Canaan, those that were 20 and younger and then their offspring were the ones that were to receive the promised land.

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So they come into this place that was a place of milk and honey and God even says it's greater than Egypt.

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You complain. You said you had it good in Egypt. I'm telling you what you're going to receive in Canaan is far better than even what you saw the

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Egyptians enjoying in their empire. It's even better.

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It's not like the land of Egypt from which you have come where you sowed your seed and irrigated it like a garden of vegetables.

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Verse 11, but the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the

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Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the

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Lord your God are always upon it from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

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Well, what a bountiful land. As we go on to read in verse 13, if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today to love the

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Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil.

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And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock and you shall eat and be what?

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You'll be full. Take care lest your heart be deceived and you turn aside to serve other gods and worship them.

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Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, just as we read in Judges 2, and he will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain and the land will yield no fruit and you will perish quickly off the good land that the

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Lord your God is giving you. So what is the reason for the famine that is going on at the time that we read about Ruth?

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It's judgment, right? They've disobeyed. They've gone after other gods. And so God has shut up the heavens that no rain is falling on the land and are the people full?

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No, they're hungry. And even the place that was named house of bread, where God would provide for his people, where even the bread of life himself would come,

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Jesus Christ the Messiah, Elimelech did not trust the Lord, but he went instead to the land of Moab and he went there with his wife and his two sons.

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Now as you're here in Deuteronomy, turn a little bit over to the right to chapter 23. Let's go to Deuteronomy 23.

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Deuteronomy 23, beginning in verse 3. God is talking about who will be excluded from the assembly.

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And there's different laws, different rules about who will not be allowed to enter into the assembly of the

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Lord. And look what it says in verse 3. No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the

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Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the

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Lord forever because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way when you came out of Egypt and because they hired against you

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Balaam the son of Beor from Pether of Mesopotamia to curse you. But the

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Lord your God would not listen to Balaam. Instead the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you.

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Read about that in Numbers 23. Because the Lord your God loved you. You shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days forever.

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That's what God says about Moab and Ammon. Those are two nations that are right next to one another.

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Now I mentioned this last week in our introduction to the book of Ruth. But what's the significance of Moab and Ammon?

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Who are they descendants of? Anybody remember? Lot. Right.

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The incestuous thing that happened between Lot and his daughters after God had destroyed

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Sodom and Gomorrah. And his daughters panicked. They say we don't have husbands anymore. We don't have anybody who's going to give us children.

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So they got their father drunk. And because of knowing their father and getting pregnant by him, they gave birth to two sons who would become the fathers of the land of Moab and Ammon.

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So there's a kinship there, right? There is a distant relation between Moab and Ammon and Israel.

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And even Edom, which is down there as well, Edom were the descendants of Esau. So that's right neighbors with Moab and Ammon.

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So these lands, there's kind of a kinship there, distantly related.

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But it's the reason why God, when he sent Israel into this land, said, you're not going to take

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Moab's land. I've given Ammon and Moab that land. That's theirs.

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So the land of the Canaanites, that's the land that God was giving to Israel. Seven nations he mentions in the book of Deuteronomy that the

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Israelites are supposed to conquer. They cannot intermarry with their daughters or take any of their goods except for that which they are going to inherit out of their land.

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They're supposed to destroy them and completely wipe them out. But Moab was not to be touched. Nevertheless, Moab and Ammon are not allowed to come into the assembly of the

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Lord, nor are you to go into those lands and seek their prosperity. But where does Elimelech go?

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He goes to Moab. He goes to the place where God told him not to go in the very display then that Elimelech does not trust

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God. Does not trust that God had said that if you seek me, you will prosper.

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What should have Elimelech's response have been? We're hungry, we're starving, there's a famine,

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I need to provide for my family. What should have Elimelech done? Repent.

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Right? Seek the Lord. It would have been hard. It would have been difficult. But would Elimelech have still been alive?

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I really think that's what the story is suggesting to us. Elimelech left the protection of God in the land that he gave to his children and he goes to another land where God told him not to go.

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And because he went there, he and his sons die. They don't prosper in the land.

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They perish. Had God or had Elimelech remained in Bethlehem and trusted in God, God would have surely provided for them.

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That seems to be the way that the story is setting that up for us here at the beginning of Ruth. But it also goes to speak about how the people of Israel did not trust

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God and went their own way, even going after a people who worship false gods, which the

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Moabites surely did. Though there's a kinship there with the Israelites, they didn't worship the one true

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God. They were pagans, just like everybody else. So let's go back now to Ruth as we kind of finish up this section here.

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So they go into the country of Moab and they remain there, but Elimelech, the husband of Naomi died and she was left with her two sons.

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Now we get the impression that Elimelech wasn't, he wasn't moving over to Moab to make that a permanent residence.

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That's why it says he sojourned in Moab. Sojourn is a, it's a temporary stay. So Elimelech goes over there for however long the famine is going to take, just enough time for me to be able to eat and fill my family and know that we're being taken care of.

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Elimelech's taking matters into his own hands instead of trusting in God. But however long they were there before Elimelech died, he leaves behind his wife and his two sons.

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His two sons then do something that appears to be a more permanent move than Elimelech was making.

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Right? Elimelech's just there to sojourn. It doesn't say that he got

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Moabite daughters for his sons, it's just while they were there he died. But then his sons decide to take

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Moabite wives. That's a little more permanent commitment to the land than Elimelech was intending.

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So they took Moabite wives. The name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other was Ruth. So we talked about what

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Elimelech's response should have been, right? He should have stayed, he should have maybe even led repentance among his brothers and sisters in the

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Lord so that they would return to God and God would provide for them in the land that he had given to them.

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Elimelech didn't do that. He goes to Moab. While they're there in Moab, Elimelech dies. So what should be the response of Elimelech's sons?

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Well this isn't working out for us. Let's go back to Bethlehem. Let's go back to the place that God had given to us.

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But that wasn't his son's response. They took Moabite wives. They lived there about 10 years.

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They're there for longer than Elimelech had intended to be there. And then both Mallon and Killiam died.

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So that the woman was left without her two sons and without her husband. So now what is

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Naomi's response going to be? She does not remain in the land. She returns back to Bethlehem.

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But does she return in a spirit of repentance? No we actually don't have that said about Naomi's spirit.

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Just that she's mourning. She's of course grieved. She changes her name from Naomi which means pleasant to Mara which means bitter.

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I had asked Betty Poe who is leading the Naomi Joy class here at First Baptist, why did you guys decide on Naomi Joy instead of Mara?

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That was a joke. Name the class Pleasant instead of naming the class Bitter. I didn't realize this but there were actually two classes.

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There was a Naomi class and a Joy class. And then they combined and that's why it's called

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Naomi Joy. Anyway, you get some back story as to one of our Sunday school classes here at First Baptist Lindale.

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But Naomi herself doesn't really display a spirit of repentance. She's of course grieved.

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She's of course mourning. And yet God is faithful to her anyway. See that's what you see with the

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Israelites even in the book of Judges. They don't truly repent. They don't truly leave the false gods that they started worshipping and come back to the one true

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God. As soon as the judge who's over them dies, they go right back to serving the false gods of the pagans around them.

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And yet God is faithful to them. And though he would have been completely just to wipe them out, he doesn't.

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But he's faithful to the promise that he made to Abraham that through you all nations of the world will be blessed.

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And how are all nations of the world blessed? People from every tribe, tongue, and nation on earth worshipping

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Jesus Christ. It is through Jesus Christ that we see a people from around the world have been gathered in one name, under one name in heaven, and that is the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And so God working even in the midst of this, even in the midst of an unfaithful people to bring about a goodness and a grace that is beyond compare.

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It is beyond our own comprehension. A peace that surpasses all understanding the way

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Paul puts it in Philippians chapter 4. This is what God is doing even in the midst of all of this chaos that's going on in the world, going on among a people that God had called to himself and for himself under his own name.

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They're not worshipping God, they're worshipping false gods and yet God is faithful to his promise. He's good to Naomi though her heart is not truly repentant.

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He's good to the children of Israel so that even though their hearts are not truly repentant that through them a savior would come and that savior is

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Christ. So this massive tragedy in the life of this family including rebellion, having to suffer the consequences of that rebellion, yet the

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Lord has chosen this calamity to bring about the salvation of many. Remember that during a, it was during a famine that Joseph said of the wickedness of his brothers, right?

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Remember this? So Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery. He goes to Egypt. Over a decade later, he gets appointed to become the second in command over Egypt.

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Right before what happens? Seven years of plenty and then seven years of famine and it's in the middle of the famine that Joseph says to his brothers, as for you, you meant evil against me but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.

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Genesis 50 20. So God intends even this tragedy that we're reading about here at the start of Ruth to save the souls of many people.

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The greatest evil in the history of man is the murder of the Son of God.

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And yet this was ordained by God for our salvation. Acts chapter 4 verses 27 to 28.

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The disciples prayed for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant

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Jesus whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate along with the

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Gentiles and the people of Israel to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

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And here in Ruth, the Lord would soon take this broken family and make a new family and through that family would come the

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Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ to do whatever the hand of God and the plan of God had predestined to take place.

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And it is through this Savior, through this tragedy that comes the

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Savior, through the tragedy that happens to the Savior, it's yet through these things that we would come to know