Ruth: God's Forever Love

Well, if you haven't been here the last two weeks, we have jumped into this huge story of Ruth in this little Old Testament book.

And so this term I'm going to review a little bit, sort of if you haven't been here, so you can kind of come along with us.

And if you've been here, you're going to have to be a little patient with me as I review a little bit of the story so that we can come to some really good truths that I'm very excited about this morning in terms of we grab hold of these and if they grab hold of us, what this can mean for us.

So the story of Ruth is Naomi, right?

Remember Naomi, Mama.

Mama and Daddy and their two boys left Bethlehem because the food was running out, and so they moved to Moab.

They get to Moab, I'm giving you the cliff notes here.

They get to Moab and dad dies.

The two sons, they marry, Orpah and Ruth, and then the two sons die.

Right?

So mom is mom's destroyed at this point.

She's moved to a foreign country that's a little hostile.

She lost her husband.

Now she loses her sons.

Now it's her two daughters-in-law.

They have no hope.

They have no ability to provide for themselves.

A little bit of hope shows up, and that is there's food back in Bethlehem.

So they start the journey back to Bethlehem.

The three of them, they get down the road a little bit, and she says, Girls, y'all need to go back to Moab because you're Moabites, your future over here in my country is not going to be good for you.

The chances of remarrying are so slim, you're going to have a lot of hostility towards you.

Go home.

So Orpah, she doesn't, she doesn't like it.

She loved Naomi, but she she she gets it and she goes home.

And Ruth does this heroic thing, right?

And she says, No, I'm not.

I'm with you.

Wherever you go, I'll go.

I am with you.

And it says she clung to her.

This idea of like a covenant love.

I mean, she was, she said, I'm I am with you until the end.

So they get back to Bethlehem and they're walking around a little bit, and maybe she maybe Naomi has a little bit of hope here, sees some familiar streets, and then all this bitterness in her rises up, and she sees some friends, right?

We remember this, we talked about this a few weeks ago, couple weeks ago.

And her her friends come up to her and say, Oh, is this Naomi?

They're so joyful.

They haven't seen her in so long, it's just Naomi.

And Naomi means lovely.

And she says, Don't call me Naomi, right?

I mean, you want to talk about Downer Debbie that you see on the sidewalk, you come up to her.

I mean, don't call me Naomi, call me Mara, which says, Don't call me lovely, call me bitter.

And she says this, she says in verse 21.

I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty.

Nami's life had just broken apart into fragments.

And what felt secure at one time was in a million pieces of puzzle she could not put together.

So I have a six-year-old, a three-year-old, and a one-year-old.

So when my six-year-old was just born, uh, my first Father's Day.

So my first Father's Day, I got a grill, a really good grill.

Um, really, what that meant is I went to Lodes.

I bought the grill, I came home, and I told uh my wife and my little baby who didn't understand that I was giving myself a grill, a nice one, for my Father's Day gift.

Now, uh I'm a pretty smart guy.

Went to graduate school, like to think I can handle a few things.

So I'm gonna save the$50 of them putting the grill together at the store, and I'm gonna do this myself because I'm I'm a capable, smart human being, man.

So I break open the box on our front porch, and about 11,000 pieces are coming out, and I'm organizing, and then I open up the little booklet of the instructions, and y'all have seen these booklets because it's like a calculus book, and I very quickly have to go in.

I get Christy, I say, I say, babe, um, this is like a this is like a partnering project.

This is this isn't my project, this is a us thing because you know this is gonna be our food coming off of this, so this is a us thing.

And so here's what we're gonna do.

You're gonna you're gonna read, you're just gonna read the instructions, and I'm gonna focus on the parts, and I'll do the I'll do the part thing, you do the read thing.

We're just gonna reel, we're gonna go slow, we're gonna be patient, we're gonna be kind to each other, and all this is gonna work out so well, you know, and you know the story, right?

I mean, it's only an hour later, and I'm angry at her, she's angry at me, I'm angry at the world, I'm angry at the neighbors, I'm angry at God, I'm angry at Lowe's and Weber, the Grill Company, I'm angry at all of them.

Because you you know the story what happens is like part 12 CFQR into part 11 C FQR, and you go to do that, and then you realize you had you skipped something at some point, and you have to start backtracking of where where you missed.

And there's all this frustration, and there's conversation about divorce, and there's conversation about a lot of stuff, but there's all this frustration on that porch.

How does this how does this come together?

You know this feeling because you bought something at IKEA and you regretted it later in the store.

It looked so great, and it was clean and beautiful, and the lines were so nice, and then you got it home.

And all right, but you know the feeling.

Because the feeling is will this ever come together?

Will this mess on my living room floor ever come together?

And maybe you're asking this, or we're not asking it with IKEA desk or Weber grills, but maybe you're asking it with like the position at your job.

Like, like how's this working?

And I'm getting worried about maybe my job's being threatened, or if that deal's ever gonna go through, and I don't, and I don't even know if I'm happy here, and I don't know how this puzzle of me having fulfillment work comes together, or much less fulfillment and romance.

I mean, I look out and I see a lot of single people out there, but I don't know how that, how do how do I ever connect with somebody else and that come together into a family, or maybe you got the family, and you're I never imagined 10 years in, 20 years in, 30 years in, we would be at this point where we have all this fragmentation and peace is all over the place.

And how would this, how does this ever come together?

Or maybe it's in you, this fragmentation, this anxiety, this fear, and you're going, how did how does the inside of me ever come to any peace and wholeness?

Okay, now we know how Naomi felt.

I mean, think about it, she lost her husband, she lost her sons, she had lived away from her home, she had starved.

She gets home, she can't, she she has some land there, she can't, she can't farm it.

She doesn't have the resources, she doesn't have the manpower, she can't guard it, she can't harvest it, she is so helpless, she can't understand how any of this could ever come together.

These two, Naomi and Ruth, they are so helpless, they're so needy, they have they have no ability to get this puzzle together.

And Naomi is just, she's out there, she's saying, I went away full, and I'm coming back empty, and I this is feeling like a puzzle I can never put together.

And then Ruth goes out to the fields.

We talked about this last week, and Ruth says, Well, we've got to have something to eat.

So Ruth goes out to the fields to do some harvesting.

The poor and needy were allowed to harvest along the edges of fields, and so she goes out, and it's a great story.

But anyway, so Boaz owns the field, right?

Remember this from last week?

Boaz owns the field, and he's showing, man, he's showing great kindness to her.

She comes home, remember that?

She comes home with her shawl filled with grain.

These two haven't had anything.

She comes home with her shawl filled with grain.

And I read over this last week because I knew this week was coming, chapter 2, verse 20.

Naomi says this.

She sees Ruth coming in and she sees all this grain, and Naomi says this.

The same lady who just said, Don't call me Naomi, call me Mara.

She says, He, the Lord, has not stopped showing kindness to the living and the dead.

I mean, this is her saying, he has never stopped loving me.

This word kindness is this word Hasid.

It is not just the emotion, it is what God does.

It is his action toward us.

It's the strongest possible term of loyal, steadfast love that's based in his character, not what we do.

Oh, that's good news.

So it's based in his character toward us and not what we do and earn or something like that.

His love toward us.

It never stops and it never fails.

So when we were in Colorado this summer, we right after we flew into the area we flew into, we went to the Canyon of the Black Gunnison.

Anybody been in the National Park, the Canyon of the Black Gunnison.

It's like nobody's been to that national park.

It's like the forgotten national park.

Has anybody been to the canyon of the black gunnison?

All right, we have we have a few.

It's great.

It's just up in the hills.

It's small, it's a hole, is what it is.

It's a canyon, it's a big hole.

I get into that kind of stuff.

It's beautiful.

Walk out, you look around, you're looking around.

So we do the lookouts and we do that kind of stuff, and then we're leaving the ranger station where I bought my patch.

Don't worry about that, I'm gonna get my patch, and we're walking out of that, and there's a ranger out there, and he's got his uh, I don't know, it's not a telescope, I'm guessing like a sunscope or a telescope with a filter on it or something.

And he's looking at the sun, it's bright, and I'm going, I'm pretty sure I was told not to do that.

Um and I say something completely rednecked, like, that's a big ball of fire up there, and and I can tell he did look that was offensive to him because apparently this, you know, he's staring at the sun all day, so it's important to him.

And he says, Well, actually, it's a you know, it's a ball of gas, and you know, he explains it all to me.

And so we start talking, and I'd look, and I'm like, I'm not sure I'm supposed to look at the sun.

No, you're allowed to look, I have the filter.

So I look, and you know, but it I was thinking about this week, and said, How do I talk about love that never stops and never ends?

Yet, yet, we experience great silences.

Right?

Well, my three-year-old will ask me, she's at the age where she says, where's the sun go?

Where'd it go?

Why don't you go?

Okay, um, not quite ready to talk about like the Earth's rotation and all that.

So um, it's shining on another part of our world.

So it's dark here, you know this, but let me just review it for you.

It's dark here, but the rice you will eat for lunch, it shined on on another part of the world two weeks ago.

You see what I'm saying?

Is so so your world can be dark, and yet the sun can be shining on another part of your world that you will receive benefit from later on.

This is Hasid.

That there will be dark nights of the soul.

There just will be.

Days and seasons when tragedy hits, when the sun is shining on another part of your world, and you won't understand it, and maybe it's weeks and years, or I don't know how long later until you understand, oh, it was just shining on another part of my world, and I didn't see it, and I couldn't see it.

I can't see it.

So that grain comes in, and Naomi finally sees it.

She says, I didn't see it, he was silent, but he was still working.

I lost my husband, I lost my sons, but he never stopped loving me.

So, I mean, these verses are talking about God's love within his sovereignty.

So, sovereignty is God's control and authority over all things, and we don't understand all that, and that's okay.

You can be okay with that.

It's real easy for me to kind of just throw this term at this story, but then kind of back up and realize like Naomi's experiencing this as a human being, as a person.

Like, it wasn't a term.

This was personal.

The grain was in Ruth's shawl.

She had been hungry for so long.

There had been there had been no sunlight into her world for a very long time.

And then Nahan was just like, he never stopped loving me.

I think last year I taught some about my friend Kyle, who they had two children, and then the the the third, the baby was born and started having seizures as an infant.

And they they didn't even know to what extent the seizures were gonna affect, but but as this baby was getting into a few months old, they could start to tell developmentally, not a lot going on.

And so eventually they decided they were gonna go in.

Maybe some of you were here last year, you remember me talking about this, and so that they went into the baby's brain and shut off part of the brain that was causing the seizures.

Now, at this point, this was about six months ago, at this point, they said, hey, you know, we don't even know what the seizures were causing, and now we don't even know what the surgery will cause.

We don't we don't even know, um, we don't know what your child will or won't do.

We we don't know if if your child will ever be able to crawl.

And the little boy crawled this week.

I mean, he's he's way behind the curve of crawling.

You think my friend Kyle cares?

He's ecstatic.

I mean, yeah, I mean, this is a little sunlight into his into his world.

It's a little bit of kindness into a world of difficulty.

So the story is when Ruth went out to those fields, she met Boaz, and eventually, and we talked about last week, I'm not gonna re-preach, although I'm very tempted.

Uh, Boaz agrees to buy back Naomi's land and marry Ruth.

And so Boaz steps in with great kindness and buys the land and marries Ruth.

And Naomi and Ruth are secure, someone strong for them.

That's what we talked about last week, providing for them.

And Boaz announces to the elders, the town elders, like, I'm I have married Ruth.

And so we get to chapter 4, verse 11.

Then the elders and all the people at the gate said, We are witnesses.

May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the family of Israel.

May you have standing in Ephratha and be famous in Bethlehem.

Through the offspring the Lord gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.

Alright, so in this, we get kind of this blessing coming to them.

So there's a there's like this wish of fertility onto Ruth.

Which is this is normal at the time.

Um, for us, I mean, for us, I mean, when we think about a really big family, like we're thinking dollar bills, right?

We're thinking dollar bills like braces, colleges, weddings, like like I mean, cars, car insurance, the wreck that happens, and all that.

Like we're thinking through like all the dollar bills out, like like every child, you're going, well, that's another 200 grand, 200 grand, like that's how much each kid costs.

Like, that's what we're thinking.

Now, for them, it was the opposite.

Big family, more money.

I mean, this is really what's going on.

It's prosperity for them.

More workers, more security, more uh, more people in the family to protect the land.

So, so blessing for family is a blessing for families, a blessing for prosperity.

So they valued big families, big families.

Yeah, I mean, this was all tied into economics, this was tied into culture, so this was very normal.

And then we get this really strange verse 12.

Because if you kind of know a little bit of your Old Testament, I'm not real good at Old Testament, I'll have to read a little bit to understand some of this stuff, but that this idea that they would be blessed, like the like the family, the like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.

Now, Tamar was married to Judah's son.

The son dies, right?

Maybe you don't know this story.

This will freak you out.

The son dies.

Judah should have given another son to Tamar to marry, and Judah doesn't do it.

So Tamar, right, this is class act.

She goes and dresses up like a prostitute and sleeps with her father-in-law.

And then has Perez.

Whew, man.

I mean, this is insanity.

I mean, this is like, this is brokenness and depravity and bitterness and revenge and sexuality gone wrong.

I mean, what's Perez calling Judah dad, gramps, dad, gramps?

We don't know which one.

What are these ladies saying?

These ladies are saying this.

Uh would would, as bizarre as this situation is with Ruth coming in from she's a foreigner and Boaz and Mary, like this bizarre situation.

Would the line keep going?

Will the family line keep going?

Would Ruth help rescue this family line situation?

Then we get verse 13.

So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife.

When he made love to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son.

Now that's a lot in one verse, not sure what your verse says.

They married, they made love, praise God.

Now, this is sexuality and goodness, right here.

Right?

We just talked about Tamar and Judah and all the sexuality is messed up there.

This is good sexuality.

No shame, no hesitation in the confines of marriage, made love to each other, conceived.

Nine months later, we pick up this story, and the scene is probably in Naomi's home.

Verse 14.

The women said to Naomi, This little child's been born, they have a son.

The women said to Naomi, Praise be the Lord, who this day has not left you without a guardian redeemer.

May he become famous throughout Israel.

He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age.

For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who's better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.

Then Naomi took the child in her arms.

Broken, bitter, helpless, no hope for the future, Naomi.

Takes the child in her arms and cared for him.

Can you imagine her there in her, I don't know, rocking chair?

I mean, she's she's had some journeys at this point.

And her caring for this little baby.

And her just being able to think, he never stopped loving me.

This Hasid.

This kindness.

All week I've just been thinking about this mix of life, like the losses we feel, the confusion, the uncertainty, how the puzzle's gonna come together at work or in our family or our future, and all this uncertainty, and yet at the same time, these moments of joy.

Last week we were in our kitchen, it was after dinner, the three girls, they are at the kitchen bar, they were all coloring, they were not fighting over crayons.

It was an amazing moment.

All three in their own seats at the bar, all coloring peacefully.

Christy and I are doing the dishes.

We have Zach Brown band going on the radio.

I mean, it is it is a moment.

And I just looked at Christy and I said, I said, we're gonna miss this.

And we both started crying.

It was just that like one of those little moments of joy, right?

Like a moment of joy that you have.

But those moments and those days and those seasons of joy, they don't do away with losses.

They don't do away with difficulty.

For Naomi, this caring for this child, it didn't do away.

She's holding the child, but when Naomi goes to sleep that night, there's no husband to hold her.

She still doesn't have a husband.

She still doesn't have her two sons.

So it's no it's no fairy tale.

It's life.

Right?

Like great moments of joy and redemption and rescue, and at the same time, the reality that there's there is still loss.

Maybe life for you is altogether kind of like Mayberry.

It's just working.

It's great.

Man, it's so great.

It's so great when it's like that.

And enjoy it, soak it up, right?

Or maybe it just feels like a battle in Syria, just feels like warfare.

This kind of brings me to if I have points today, these are kind of my sermon points.

Some of you like sermon points.

You can write these down.

The point is not that life is moving toward increased comfort and perfection, but the acknowledgement that we exist in a broken world yet we're perfectly loved.

This is what Naomi's telling us.

This is what the book of Ruth is telling us.

Let me rephrase it a little bit, maybe clean it up a little bit.

Naomi's gift to us is not that every undone thing in your life will be resolved in you.

Right?

This is not Naomi's gift to us.

I mean, I think we could read it and get like come to that conclusion kind of quickly, but that's not really what's going on here.

Naomi's gift to us is that in all things there is hope because God is sovereign over all things.

And he has Hasid for us.

Never failing, never.

Going away, love for us.

So what it means is it means that this idea of if I can only perfectly control my situation, if I can only get to perfection in this area, if I only get this completely finally resolved, then I will be at peace.

If I only come to complete peace and healing of all finality, of all the universe, about something in my past, if I can only come to that then, then I will, then I will be at peace.

But what Naomi is telling us is telling us that that perfect control and that perfect ideal is a little bit of a it's an illusion.

The gift here that she's telling us is Hasid.

That there is a love that comes to us when the moments of joy, when the sun is shining during the day, and when the sun is shining on another part of your world at night, and the dark night of the soul, and then also in the most wonderful moments of your life.

So that's the scene that we would kind of, if this was a movie, we'd just shut it down right here, right?

Like that last verse, like she's Naomi's there, their baby, the baby, and you know, and the scene, just the camera backs out.

But the author includes a couple more verses kind of to make sure we get the point.

Verse 17, the women living there said, Naomi has a son, and they named him Obed.

He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

Now we know David's an ancient grandfather of Jesus.

So what's the point here?

Well, remember the family line continued through Tamar, dressing up as a prostitute with her father-in-law.

I didn't mention this.

Boaz's mom was a harlot, Rahab.

It's all scandalous grace on the way to Jesus.

And Jesus is scandalous grace to you.

Because the message of Jesus is I take all your sin on the cross, and I give you all my righteousness to you.

And so this idea of keeping score on yourself of your righteous doings and behaviors and presenting them to God, it's gone.

In a world that record keeps all things for value, grace is scandalous.

Naomi knows scandalous grace because every time she sees Ruth, she remembers that moment when she told Ruth, go home, don't come with me.

And Ruth clung to her with covenant love.

I'm not going anywhere.

And for us, it's a picture of God's scandalous grace to us.

He's not going anywhere.

See, Naomi knows scandalous grace because when Ruth and her were helpless and needy, Boaz shows up and he marries the helpless foreigner and redeems them and gives them strength.

For us, it's scandalous grace.

We have nothing to offer, and he comes and he gives us his strength.

In the dark night of the soul, or the brightest day of joy that we could ever have in our lives, he never stops loving us.

Let's pray together.

God, we thank you for this story.

We thank you for reminding us of our low estate.

That we are Naomi.

That we've taken journeys far from you.

And that you cling to us.

And that with covenant love you hold on.

When we don't hold on, you hold on.

You are you are faithful.

God, for so many of us we get uh very upset.

Great confusion in our hearts, fear, anxiety, because our lives are puzzles.

And for some of us, our lives are dark.

And would you help us to trust in your Hasid, your steadfast, strong love that is even there in the quiet, even in the silent, working for us.

God, for many of us who don't have faith in you, we haven't placed faith in you, we're still placing faith in ourselves, I pray this morning that we would we would surrender over.

We would surrender over to you, we would we would place faith in you.

Even now, as belief in Jesus as Savior and deliverer and rescuer is is coming into hearts, would we give over our lives to you?

God, we thank you for your scandalous grace toward us.

In Jesus' name, amen.