Ruth Chapter One

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between Judges and 1 Samuel.
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And as we said, we're gonna take a couple of weeks, go through the Book of Ruth.
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It's four chapters and so we'll take one a week and then one week just to summarize some different thoughts that come out of it and then brother Mike's gonna take us through 1 Samuel.
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So again, we're gonna try to stay in this period of history which is certainly interesting, different, but also instructive.
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So as we come to consider the book, how many have never, is there anybody who has never read the Book of Ruth? Okay, good.
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Let's just read the first chapter because that's where we'll be today and then we'll go from there.
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So Ruth chapter one, now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land and a certain man of Bethlehem, Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.
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Name of the man was Elimelech.
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Name of his wife was Naomi.
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Names of the two sons were Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrodites of Bethlehem, Judah.
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And they went to the country of Moab and remained there.
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Then Elimelech, Naomi's husband died and she was left and her two sons.
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Now they took wives of the women of Moab.
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The name of one was Oprah and the name of the other Ruth.
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And they dwelt there about 10 years.
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Then both Mahlon, Chilion also died.
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So the woman survived her two sons and her husband.
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Then she arose with her daughters-in-law that she might return to the country of Moab for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and giving them bread.
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Therefore, she went out from the place where she was and her two daughter-in-laws with her.
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They went on their way to return to the land of Judah.
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And Naomi said to her two daughter-in-laws, go return each to his mother's house, to her mother's house.
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The Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me.
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The Lord grant you that you may find rest each in the house of her husband.
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And she kissed them and they lifted up their voice and wept.
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And they said to her, surely we will return with you to your people.
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But Naomi said, turn back my daughters, why will you go with me? Are there still sons in my womb that they may be your husbands? Turn back my daughters, go your way for I am too old to have a husband.
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And if I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband tonight and should also bear sons, would you wait for them to labor grown? Would you restrain yourselves from having husbands? No, my daughters, for it grieves me very much for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.
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And then they lifted up their voices and wept again.
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And Oprah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
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And she said, look, your sister-in-law has gone back to our people and to her gods return after your sister-in-law.
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But Ruth said, entreat me not to leave you or to turn back from following you for wherever you go, I will go.
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Wherever you lodge, I will lodge.
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Your people shall be my people, your God, my God.
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When you die, I will die.
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There I will be buried.
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The Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts you and me.
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And when she saw that she was determined to go with her, she stopped speaking to her.
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Now the two of them went until they came to Bethlehem and it happened when they had come to Bethlehem that all the city was excited because of them.
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And the women said, is this Naomi? She said to them, do not call me Naomi, call me Mara.
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For the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.
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I went out full and the Lord has brought me home again empty.
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Why do you call me Naomi? Since the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has afflicted me.
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So Naomi returned and Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab that they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
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So there's the opening introduction to the book itself.
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And again, I don't wanna, I wanna try to get through the chapters one a week.
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So not too many points outside of what the narrative has, but just some different thoughts to consider as we go through the book.
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It's written earlier in the book of Judges.
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It's not written, but it covers the period earlier in the book of Judges.
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And there's some different thoughts on how early.
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Some say it could have been as early as Gideon.
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If you remember in Judges, Gideon speaks about the land being ravished and there was no food.
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So some will say that it happens then.
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Others have different thoughts.
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The one thought that I think that helps us to understand things is when we realize who Boaz is.
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Anybody realize who Boaz, who's Boaz anyway? Who's he from? Okay.
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Sir? Okay, well, who's his daddy? His mother's that harlot lady.
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Yeah.
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You got it.
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No, you got it.
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Right.
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He is from Solomon and Rahab.
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He's the son of Rahab the harlot.
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So when you start to put that into perspective and you start to think about the time where that would have took place.
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Anyway, what I guess what I'm just trying to say is as we look at this and think about it, it's somewhere early in the history of the Judges.
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Not at the beginning, at the very beginning, but not at the end either.
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And as far as who wrote it, as best I understand, Samuel probably penned it later on after it took place.
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But those things are for, they're not really the most important thought as we go through it.
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As far as this location, and you remember that Brother Mike had drawn, drew a little bit of a understanding.
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If you were to do Israel again, and again, whatever you think of my Israel, and the kingdom is divided like that, let's just say, and Judah would have been somewhere in here.
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And Moab would have been somewhere down here.
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I guess as I looked at it and tried to understand, this whole thing will take place.
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They will leave from up here and they're gonna journey down this way.
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They're gonna cross the Jordan.
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And there's another, they gotta cross the Arnon, which was another piece of river.
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This whole thing, as best I understand, is 50 something miles.
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So this whole story of Ruth takes place, and it just covers this area.
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And here's the only thought I wanna say on that.
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If you think about it, if we're in the history of the judges, and you think about what we've talked about in the past, where there's judges here, here, and the judges are all over the place, right? And some of them, that God is working in the midst of all of this.
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And it made me think, even just in an opening thought, how we read this story, and it's a wonderful story.
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I mean, this is one of the most enjoyable stories in all the Bible, if you think about it, because it's really a story of what? Redemption.
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And it's a story of how God, in his amazing grace and providence, brings to pass what ultimately becomes a great example of redemptive history.
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And not only for Ruth, but who else? If you know anything about the book of Ruth, well, Naomi certainly is gonna find redemptive grace, especially, so to me, and again, I don't wanna get too much into the summary part till the end, but it's a picture of redemption, not only of the Jew, but also of the Gentile.
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And that's why, and it's a wonderful story, it really is.
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There's really nothing to say in your heart as you read the book of Ruth, except as you read the opening, what takes place.
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So it is a story of grace, it is a story of redemption, and it covers Jew and Gentile, and the providence of God is amazing through this book, by the way.
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So with that, I just wanna walk through some of the verses, and so I'll outline it this way.
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In verses one through six, basically we get the setting and the departure, and then after that, we'll see the return of Naomi, and then at the end, we see the reception that Naomi receives when she returns.
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So let's just walk through some of the thoughts, and again, if you have any thoughts to bring up, that's fine.
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Now, it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled it was a certain, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem, Judah, went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons, and that's what I said, they kind of make this excursion down south, it would be southeast, down to Moab, and as you think about that, well, let me read verse two.
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The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife was Naomi, and the name of the two sons were Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrodites of Bethlehem, Judah, and they went to the country of Moab and remained there.
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So here's something to think about.
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Would you agree that Elimelech is probably the one who made that decision, right? And basically, his wife would have, what, followed, and therefore, the sons would have followed.
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So really, just something to keep in mind as we go through this, that this really would have been Elimelech's, that's not the easiest, I'm almost tempted to call him Joe, I'll hold off.
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It's his decision, and he takes his family, and if you think about it, he's going to leave the land that God gave to them, and where's he gonna go? He's going down into a nation that serves other gods.
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Well, keep that in mind as we go through the book, in that, in one sense, Naomi is, she's, I don't wanna, maybe say trapped, she's trapped in this situation, and I'm not saying she doesn't find, we won't find issues, especially in the beginning, with some of her thinking, but this really was Elimelech's decision as the head of the household, as the father, and so he moves his family down because of the famine, and it's not gonna turn out the best in the beginning.
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Elimelech means, just in case you wanna know, God is king, or some variation of that, and Naomi means, basically, pleasant, and then Melon and Chileon, which I thought was interesting as I looked it up, and it's not that I know it in and of myself, I certainly needed the help, but Melon really kind of means illness or weakness, and Chileon, kind of like wasting, and the names of the sons, maybe they indicate to us that they weren't of the roughest kind, that maybe they had a weak constitution, and maybe that's why they only last as long as they last, but I thought it was interesting to state, because if you think about this, was Elimelech right or wrong for doing this? Was he right or wrong for taking his family and leaving the place of his birth and where his people were and traveling down to Moab? Was this a right move or wrong move? He's trying to save his family.
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He's under famine? Were you saying? Are you asking, is it a sin? No, no, I'm just asking, what do you think about it? Do you think it's right or wrong? You say he was just...
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He was trying to save his family.
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He was trying to save his family, save his famine.
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You were gonna say something, bud? I just gotta change it.
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Okay.
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Here's something to think about, and we'll hold off, because we're gonna come back to this one little thing.
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Other people's thing.
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So here's the way I look at it, and again, you can have a discussion with me at any point on it by ourselves, but I'm kind of mixed in my thoughts about whether he did what was right or what was wrong.
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I'm not saying provided for your house is wrong.
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It's right.
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I'm gonna suggest at least in some way to me, it was the wrong move.
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I'm not saying what he was desiring to do provide for his family was wrong, but I'm not so certain that leaving here, because again, other people stay, and going down to a country that's serving other gods, it becomes a bit of a snare as you start to unfold in the book.
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So you can form your own thoughts on that, and I just don't understand it from a couple of different perspectives, and I think it kind of works out, because you look at verse three, eliminate Naomi's husband died.
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Now, you could say, did he die because he did something that was absolutely wrong? I don't know if I wanna go to that point, but, and it doesn't say how long he lived, by the way, unless somebody knows something that I don't know, but somewhere along the line, early on, I'm gonna suggest early on, eliminate dies, and now Naomi, who has followed her husband, and taken the sons uprooted, now they find themselves here and daddy's missing.
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So something to think about, and as you go through it, maybe that'll come back in our minds.
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So verse three, eliminate Naomi's husband died, she's left, and the two sons, and then verse four, now they took wives of the women of Moab, the name of one was Opa, and the name of, I call her Opa, cause it's easier for me, and the name of the other was Ruth, and they dwelt there about 10 years.
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Now, it's just a couple of quick thoughts, and by the way, Opa, as far as I can understand, means gazelle or some kind of fast moving critter, and Ruth really means friendly.
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She was just, she was, and I think you'll see that, but I wanted to ask us to think about this, says they married the, they married Malon and Chilean, and by the way, if you're reading Ruth four, Ruth marries Malon.
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So Ruth marries the older brother, if you want to think of it that way, but what do you think when they married? Do you think that they had married two women who had converted? Were they proselytes? Did they go down to the land of Moab, and while Lemlech was still there, he counseled his son not to take ungodly wives, and then somehow they met two women who converted into following the God of Israel, and so something to think about, I mean, because it'll play in later.
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In other words, think about it, Opa, first of all, she decides at a later point, we'll see it, she decides to head home.
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Now, if you say that she was a proselyte, and she had converted into the faith of Israel, well then, what happened when she went back home? Did she apostatize? Were they really converted? Was Ruth really converted when she married? Was Ruth brought to understand the God of Israel somewhere later on? Again, there's a lot of things to think about as you go through this, because there's a couple of things that the Bible clearly says, or let me ask you to look to Deuteronomy real quick, Deuteronomy chapter seven.
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I wanna show you this, and then maybe it'll help you form some thoughts, because there was laws about these kinds of things.
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In Deuteronomy chapter seven, when the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites, the Bergesites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them, you shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy on them, nor shall you make marriages with them.
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You shall not give your daughter to their son nor take their daughter for your son, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods.
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And so the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly.
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So here's a thought.
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Did they go down and marry two women that they should have not married? Is that why the two sons died? Some people would say that's true.
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There's also the reality of, while you're in Deuteronomy, let's just look in Deuteronomy 23, because not only was this the instruction not to marry, but they weren't allowed to bring them into the congregation.
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Look in Deuteronomy 23, he who is emasculated by crushing or mutilation shall not enter the congregation of the Lord.
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One of illegitimate births shall not enter the congregation of the Lord even to the 10th generation.
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None of his descendants shall enter the congregation of the Lord.
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An Amorite or a Moabite shall not enter the congregation of the Lord even to the 10th generation, nor to his descendants shall enter the congregation of the Lord forever.
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Something to think about.
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What did they do when they went down there? Did Illuminex kind of set them up in a wrong way? That's why, again, I have some reservations about what was driving Illuminex.
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Not that he wanted to provide for his family, but could he not have found some other place rather than going down to a nation that had all kinds of gods to serve? Something to think about.
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So, going back to Ruth, nevertheless, they take their wives, they dwelt there about 10 years, which is, that's a bit of time, and then both Malon and Chileon died, and so the woman survived, her two sons and her husband.
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So we kind of get the scene, right? They've calmed down here, been down here 10 years, somewhere along the line, daddy dies, somewhere along the line, after a certain amount of time, the sons died, now you got three widows.
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And that's not a good situation, right? That's something that they're gonna have to deal with, and it's not gonna be easy for them to work through.
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So, I'm gonna suggest that the women are not in the best state of mind or situation, that basically being three women and being three widows, this is gonna be an issue.
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Okay, so that pretty much is the setting.
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Now, verse six, then she arose with her daughter-in-laws that she might return from the country of Moab, for she heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited his people in giving them bread.
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So, somewhere along the line, news comes, and again, if I'm close to it, where it's 50, 60 miles, even in that, that you would think news would have traveled down to Moab, that the famine is kind of over, and so the news reaches them, and now we're gonna see that Naomi decides it's hard to head home.
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Here's another thought to think about, and again, I'm just trying to provoke you to think a little bit.
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Was this really the desire of Naomi from the beginning, never to have gone down to Moab, but following her husband, she followed her husband, and as soon as she hears that the famine is gone, and so it's been, what, at least 10 years? I don't know how much more, but at least 10, that she desires to head back up.
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Is that meaning that she never really wanted to leave? We'll read later on, and Naomi says, we went out full, and I think that's an interesting point, too.
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It'll say that they went out, she went out full, whether she means I went out with husbands and sons, and I returned a widow, but here's the thought, and again, I know I'm going through the whole book, because I've been reading through the whole book.
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Elimelech, he was not poverty-stricken.
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They had land.
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I'm gonna suggest they were pretty prominent.
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Not only that, Elimelech is related to Boaz, and Boaz certainly is a prominent man in this.
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So just something to think about, because as she hears the news that the Lord has visited a people, his people, therefore, verse seven, therefore, she went out from the place where she was and her two daughter-in-laws with her, and they went on their way to return to the land of Judah.
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Again, another thing to think about.
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Somewhere in this relationship, the daughter-in-laws and Naomi formed a strong relationship, and you could imagine 10 years in the situation where there's the sons and the daughter-in-laws, and again, if Elimelech dies early, maybe that even enhances the relationship between the daughter-in-laws.
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But anyway, the daughter-in-laws decide that they're gonna go back with Naomi, so again, there must have been some sort of pretty solid relationship, wouldn't you think? For them to leave their own country now and return with Naomi, they had to be motivated.
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They had to be motivated.
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So something to think about as we go through this.
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So verse eight, and this is where it starts to develop into this conversation.
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Naomi said to her two daughter-in-laws, go return each to her mother's house.
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The Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and me.
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Again, maybe they're coming to the, they start to leave, by the way, and maybe they start to get closer to the border of Moab, and all of a sudden, Naomi starts to realize what this means for Oprah and Ruth, that they're gonna leave their land and their family and their culture and their gods and all those other things, and Naomi begins to try to dissuade them, and maybe we could talk about that for a minute, but she tries to tell them, return to your mother's house and Lord bless you.
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And verse nine, the Lord grant that you might find rest each in the house of a husband, and she kissed them and they lifted up their voices and wept.
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So again, you can imagine, this is a sad scene.
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This is a rather intimate scene.
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They have this relationship, it's been building.
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And so verse 10, they say to her, surely we will return with you to your people.
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Verse 11, but Naomi's thinking through all this again, and we'll see how it develops later on in the book.
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If they return with Naomi back to their home, it's not gonna be an easy thing for Oprah and Ruth.
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They're Moabitish women.
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That's not gonna go that well with them as they return.
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So Naomi's thinking, and I believe she's thinking out of concern for them.
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And so she again says, turn back my daughters.
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Why will you go to me in verse 11? And she adds this in, are there still sons in my womb that they may be your husbands? Turn back, I'm too old to have a husband and all that.
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She says, would you wait till they are grown? I mean, that's a legitimate thought, right? I mean, again, there's this relationship.
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Naomi's really thinking in many ways about the welfare of Ruth and Oprah.
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As I would say, Oprah and Ruth are thinking about the welfare of Naomi, but something's gotta give or something's gonna give as we go through this.
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And in verse 13, as she finishes, and this is an interesting statement.
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She says, for it grieves me very much for your sakes that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.
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I thought that's interesting because if it was that Illuminati made the decision to go down there, Ruth, I mean, Naomi is not just saying my dumb husband did this, but she's actually saying that the Lord has testified against her.
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And the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.
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And then she lifts up her voice and weeps again.
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And Oprah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
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Verse 15, look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods.
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Return after your sister-in-law.
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Well, just stop a minute.
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Remember what I said before? When Malon and Tillion married these two women, what state were they in as far as their relationship to the God of Israel? Were they conversions? Was Oprah just an outward, someone who just gonna acknowledge things outwardly? Was she truly brought into understanding of the God of Israel? But that's kind of difficult because, and it's interesting what Naomi says, brothers and sisters.
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Look what Naomi says.
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It makes you wonder where Naomi's head is.
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She's kind of twisted up.
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In verse 15, she said, look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods.
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Return after your sister-in-law.
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I'm not sure that Naomi's of the greatest of minds here.
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She's basically telling Oprah, go back and serve your gods.
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I'm not so sure that would be the best rather than serve the God of Israel.
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So Naomi's got some, there's, again, 10 years, lost your husband, lost your sons, been moved out of everything that you know.
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And now you're gonna tell your daughter-in-law to go back and serve her gods? And there was a bunch of gods in Moab, Kimosh, and all kinds of weird, strange gods.
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But nevertheless, that's what she tells her.
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Go back and serve your gods.
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And there it is.
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Oprah kisses her, says bye-bye, probably gave Ruth a kiss, and she gone.
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And so verse 15, she says, look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and the gods, return after your sister-in-law.
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And we'll deal more with this statement of Ruth, but this to me is one of the most beautiful statements in all the Bible if we understand it in light of relationship to Christ.
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Because look what she says.
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And this is based on her relationship with Naomi.
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And I'm gonna say at some point, her relationship in understanding about the God of Israel.
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Because she says this, entreat me not to leave you, to turn back from following you.
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Wherever you go, I will go.
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Isn't that cool? Wherever you lodge, I will lodge.
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Your people shall be my people.
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Your God and my God.
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Where you die, I die.
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There I will be buried.
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The Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts you and me.
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Here's a vow.
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Here's a commitment.
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Here's something, here's a conviction.
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And again, I'll come back to this week five a little bit because I really think this is, if you put this in perspective about even in our day, a Christian following the Savior, that's a glorious statement.
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Where you go, I go.
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Where you die, I die.
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Where you lodge, I lodge.
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Nothing's gonna separate us.
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And so something to think about.
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And again, is this at the point where Ruth is truly brought into a right understanding of the God of Israel or one that will grow and blossom? And verse 18, when she saw that she was determined to go with her, she stopped speaking to her.
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And so there is the, if you will, we've kind of had the setting in verses one through five and then this whole discussion of, and think about this.
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This must have been a tough track.
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This wasn't just getting on the interstate and going down a couple of exits in an SUV with the air conditioner on.
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I mean, 50 miles is 50 miles, right? And that's a lot of, now Naomi's got to do this by herself where the daughter-in-law's.
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Or at least thinking that, I can't tell you what I was thinking.
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I was thinking about naked and afraid.
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Don't ask me why, but you know how they put those people out into these settings that are not the simplest? I mean, this is no easy thing.
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I don't think it was easy for her to go this way.
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And I don't believe it's, I think it's even harder for her to go from here to here.
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And maybe she's thinking about that.
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Maybe she's thinking about that, about her daughter-in-law's.
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Maybe she truly is interested in their welfare, but at what expense? At the expense of the God of Israel? I think there's something else to think about as we go through the book.
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Naomi's faith.
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We're gonna talk about Ruth's faith.
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We'll talk about Boaz's faith.
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What about Naomi's faith? You think it's taking a shot? You think she's spiritually depressed? You think she's in some sort of anguish? I mean, we look at characters in the Bible sometimes, some of the greatest characters in the Bible.
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And many times we think of them almost as if they're superheroes, right? And they're just like us.
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I just wonder what Naomi's spiritual state is.
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Because I think we should be able to relate to that.
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Because which, is there anybody here that wants to publicly lie before all and say that you are always on the spiritual mountain above every other mountain? Anybody? No.
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Many times in many different ways in God's providence, he does this to us.
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He takes us from where we are, comfortable, situated, set up, something comes into our life and God does one of these in his providence.
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And we gotta, and leaves us there.
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Doesn't, it's not like it's an overnight, 10 years is 10 years, friends, right? And now she's gotta work her way back.
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I wonder the state of Naomi as she makes his journey.
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And then she loses Oprah on the way.
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Then she's got Ruth.
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And that's gonna be a very strong relationship.
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To me, when people start talking about their mother-in-law and their father-in-law, just go to Ruth.
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I mean, Ruth is a good example of a relationship with a mother-in-law.
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Something is really connected between these two.
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And again, maybe it's the history of it.
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Lost the two sons, lost the father, basically in the same boat.
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And so now we'll come as we finish this to the reception at home.
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So verse 18, when she saw that she was determined to go with us, she stopped speaking to her.
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Now the two of them went back until they came to Bethlehem and it happened when they had come to Bethlehem that all the city was excited because of them.
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And the women said, it's Naomi.
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Made me think about it.
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They must've been somewhat known when they left.
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Because I don't think it's just somebody kind of just moved out on their own and disappeared for 10 years.
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Then it might go unnoticed, but it doesn't go unnoticed about Naomi.
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Again, if you think about it, Boaz is a prominent man.
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And I'm gonna say a woman that had some prominence, therefore Naomi would have had some prominence.
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And as she returns, some, maybe not all of them, but some, and by the way, some that were there when she left are still there when she returns.
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They say to her, it's Naomi.
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And then in verse 20, and this is where you start to get a glimpse of the mind of Naomi and her spiritual state.
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She said to her, don't call me Naomi.
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Don't call me that anymore.
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Call me Mara or bitter, for the almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.
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Again, she's not in the best of state, state of mind.
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And she's gotta be thinking, I got Ruth with me now.
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That whole thing is gonna have to be dealt with.
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A Moabitish woman coming back and the glorious thing is what? God's behind it all, right? And again, that's why it's such a beautiful story about redemption that God takes, even as we talked about Rahab, God took Aholod and did what? Used to in the lineage of the Savior.
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God's gonna take Ruth, who is gonna be married to Boaz, who's the son of Aholod.
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It's even in the genealogy in the beginning of the chapter, beginning chapter of Matthew.
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So there's some recognition and she says to them, so don't call me pleasant.
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Don't call me any of that.
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Call me bitter.
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Again, I think she's pretty worn out.
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And then she said, verse 21, I went out full.
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Lord has brought me home again empty.
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Why do you call me Naomi? The Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has afflicted me.
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And here again, she takes ownership, doesn't she? Regardless of the fact that whether it was a woman who told her, honey, pack your bags.
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I remember telling my wife that.
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She's not gonna acknowledge it.
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She's not gonna raise her head.
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I told her, honey, pack your bags.
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We're moving to Florida.
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Regardless of that, Naomi, she acknowledges it as if it is the Lord himself that has afflicted her.
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In verse 22, Naomi returned, Ruth the Moabitess, daughter-in-law, returned from the country of Moab and they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
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By the way, the barley harvest, best I understand would have been somewhere at the end of March, beginning of April, partly March, partly April.
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And we'll see as we go through the book, it'll continue.
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And it kind of finishes out in June.
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So there's a couple of months of this harvest and harvesting the crops.
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And that's when all the things will take place between Naomi and Ruth and Boaz.
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So thoughts, ma'am? In verse 19, it sounds to me like she, you know, because of her depression and the 10 years that have gone, is this Naomi, it sounds kind of incredulous, like, could this really be her? Maybe she, I'm thinking maybe she looked worn out.
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Oh, I would totally agree with you, sister, that I don't think she looks as good as she did when she left.
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I thought about, she robed, worn, and put away wet.
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I mean, honestly, 10 years, this is not, she's not had it that easy, sister.
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That they were married for 10 years, and they have two daughters, and even more, she doesn't have grandchildren.
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Naomi's gone out full, and that's why I think she says, I went out full, I had a husband and kids.
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I'm coming back, I don't have a husband.
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And I don't have sons.
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I have no seed.
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And I got a Moabitish woman with me now.
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This is a, because that plays into it, because the seed becomes so important, certainly as Boaz enters into the mix.
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And here's a thought, and I'll leave you with this.
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I've read through this book a number of times, right? Just trying to think about it.
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I have yet to find a conversation between Boaz and Naomi.
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There's something to think about as we go through this.
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It seems to be everything between Naomi and Boaz comes through Ruth.
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She's the in-between.
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I couldn't find a single word that Boaz speaks directly to Naomi.
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He speaks of Naomi, Naomi speaks of him, but it's always through Ruth.
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Just hold on to that as we go through the book.
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And I've got to believe they know each other.
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Boaz has been a little like the brothers since Boaz has been born, or a limineck.
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So there's something, he knows who she is, and ultimately she knows who he is, but they never speak.
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And I think that's an interesting point, because Ruth becomes the mediator in that sense.
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Because she's the only one that can really see Naomi.
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I would like to make a statement going back at the beginning where I'm trying to get an idea that Mary and Mary Magdalene were still under that banner of they were still doing what was right in their own eyes.
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We're still in that time of the Judges where they didn't care what God said, they were gonna do what they were gonna do, and the famine was in the land.
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Anytime famine was in the land of Israel, it was a judgment of God.
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We go back to the Levitican legislation.
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When the famine was in the land, it's because they had been disobedient to God, and he was gonna send persecutors to the people, he was gonna send desolates, disease, famine, so for whatever reason in that region, this was the judgment of God.
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Yep, I agree with that, and that's why I made the point.
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If you think about it, from this whole historic, from this block of history, right? There's so much going on.
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And again, there are places where things seem to be better than in other places, just as God raises up a judge here, and he raises up a judge there, and then he raises up an enemy from this side and that side.
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So I agree, and that's why I say, I'm not certain what to do with Elimelech.
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I'm not certain whether I would really wanna say he was right or he was wrong.
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I think there are some issues because he definitely should have had clear understanding that he wanted to give his sons to the Moabitish women, and he wasn't to do those kinds of things.
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And even if he did, they weren't allowed to enter into the congregation of the Lord in that way.
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Brother? I think it's interesting that Naomi and them obviously had been in Judah, and then after they journeyed to Moab, he died, her husband died, that they stayed as long as they did.
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And I knew that there was a famine, but they stayed, it's just interesting to me that they stayed as long as they did after he died.
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Well, again, I don't know exactly when he died.
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I don't know exactly when he died.
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I don't know if he died before they married.
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Well, I mean, it was 10 years.
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It was 10 years, no, it was absolutely 10 years, but they haven't heard that the famine was relieved.
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Remember it says, it says, when she heard, as soon as she heard, I believe as soon as she heard that the famine was gone, she's ready to go back.
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And that's why I say I'm fairly certain that her heart was there from the very beginning.
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How long did the famine last 10 years? I don't know how long the famine lasted.
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Okay, we got to close.
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We'll pick it up chapter two next week.
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Let's pray.
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Our Father God, thank you for who you are.
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Thank you for this beautiful account of redemptive work on your behalf and how you move through history, Lord.