Overview of Ruth, Adult Discipleship Class

So if you turn in your Bibles to the book of Ruth, we’re gonna take a look at Ruth in our Sunday school today, Sunday school class. And I know for those online, it’s probably, looks like we’ve been doing this consistently. Part of the difficulty is we have been picking up on this with big gaps in between each class, like expository preaching, sometimes it’s difficult to Remember the background so that we better understand the book. I’ll make sure to review some of that, but if we take a look at the book of Ruth, it’s not a very long book. It’s four chapters.

If we were to think about the author of Ruth, Jewish tradition says Samuel, right? Ruth is during the time of the judges and Samuel is the last judge, even though not in the book of Judges, and so it’s very plausible that it was Samuel. It’s most likely written during David’s reign, especially when we take a look at the end of the book. This would have been around 1030 to 1010 BC.

And the theme of this book I take from one of my professors is the God who redeems. I have some notes in the back. This is sort of an experiment that Pastor Ron recommended. If you want to see some of my notes, some of my own research for my students at Olive Tree, we have some papers in the back that we’ll hand out at the end.

But today we’re in this book of Ruth. If we were to think of it from a structure standpoint, kind of keeping it, each title pretty similar to remember, the first chapter is the return of Ruth, second chapter, the reaping of Ruth, third chapter, request of Ruth, and fourth, the redemption and wedding of Ruth. Let’s take a look at verse one.

Ruth 1.1.

Now it came about in the days when the judges governed, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem and Judah went to sojourn in the land of Moab with his wife and his two sons. So we see that this is taking place during the time of the judges. Our last Sunday school lesson was on that time. And as if you remember, you likely remember, it was a very turbulent time spiritually. The consistent refrain of the book of Judges was that everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

And there was no king in Israel at that point. As even mentioned earlier in the sermon today, God has been faithful to Israel. What we’ve learned in the Old Testament is that God’s the creator, not of particular one land specifically and other gods as well. No, there’s one true God who’s created the universe. And this God created everything very good, and man sinned, and the sin and death were introduced into the world through this sin. But even in the midst of that, God was faithful.

And in Genesis chapter three, promised that the seed of the woman would come to crush the head of the serpent, which we know from a New Testament context, that is Jesus Christ. We see that God’s faithful to the patriarchs, the fathers of Israel, through Genesis 12 through 50, God’s faithful to Abraham, calls him out, From the pagan idolatry that he knows to serve the true and the living God gives him the Abrahamic covenant, land, seed, and blessing, right? And he reaffirms these promises with Isaac and Jacob.

And Jacob’s name is then changed to what? Israel, right? His name’s changed to Israel. And so when we think of the tribes of Israel, they all descended from Jacob’s, Israel’s many sons, and God is faithful. God is multiplying Abraham’s descendants just as he said he would, right? And the question is then, what about the land? What about the blessing that God promised Abraham? And that’s where we find ourselves in Exodus, as we reviewed that God was faithful even in Egyptian oppression.

Even when the Pharaoh decided to make their slavery worse, God was multiplying the population at a supernatural rate, unprecedented, to show that he was faithful. It’s different than the baby boomer generation. They added trials to the Hebrews and yet their population exploded. And the Hebrews cried out to God. God heard their cry. God raised up a deliverer, Moses. Moses to deliver the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt.

And he told Pharaoh to let my people go. God says that, and what does Pharaoh say? Sure, take everyone, right? No. He doesn’t say that. He says no. And we see through ten plagues that God executes his judgment upon Egypt, not only on Pharaoh, but as well on the false Egyptian gods. God is faithful.

He’s faithful to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. and giving them the Abrahamic covenant eventually delivers Israel from that slavery and draws them to Sinai, where they were given a rule explicitly stated in Exodus chapter 19 of two titles. Anyone remember those important two titles? Kingdom of Priesthood and a holy nation, absolutely. In other words, as Israel would seek to worship the true God, the holy God, who is other and different, separates, and as they sought to live holy lives in worshiping him, being different from the nations around them, that God would bless them. in that in their blessing, the nations would see and desire the same blessing and come to the true God.

But as we see, Israel is sinful. They have left physical bondage, but they still haven’t left spiritual bondage. We see that in the Golden Calf incident, and we see God’s grace interceding through Moses, and God reveals himself to be compassionate and gracious, right? Slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness, and yet he won’t leave the guilty unpunished.

And so the question at the end of the book of Exodus, with all of the details about the tabernacle, they’re supposed to build this tabernacle, which was a tent, whose special presence would dwell in? Who? God’s, right? God’s special presence before the temple, And the question at the end of Exodus we should be asking ourselves is how can a holy God dwell in the midst of sinful people, right? How can a holy God dwell in the midst of sinful people, which is where Leviticus comes in, right?

I know I’ve made this joke several times, but it’s not necessarily the first book you think of probably when you’re doing your Jesus and coffee devotion time in the morning, the book of Leviticus. I’ve heard many people say, oh, I’m just so glad I didn’t live in the time of Leviticus. And that’s not how Leviticus was meant to be interpreted. In fact, it was God’s grace.

Israel, a sinful people, God would dwell in the midst of a sinful people through sacrifice, through the right, the way to God, which is seen in the first section of Leviticus. as well as an obedient lifestyle, the walk with God. Out of their love for what God had done in the Exodus, they would want to obey him and live differently. Towards the end of the book of Leviticus in chapter 26, they affirm the covenant with God, the Mosaic covenant, right? And God promises them something for obedience and something for disobedience. What does he promise for obedience?

Blessings, yes. Thank you. I have to try now after saying, for blessings, they’re promised what? I have to remember. OK. For obedience, they’re promised blessings. And for disobedience, they’re promised what? Curses, absolutely. So Israel, corporately, as mentioned today, as a nation, will be blessed for obedience to God, worshiping him as the true God, and will be cursed for disobedience. In the book of Numbers, we examined how Israel had been unfaithful to God, how God had been patient in the midst of their complaining, but yet even seen in the sin of Peor, that they still had that idolatrous bent, and that many of them had disobeyed God.

And then even Moses himself as their leader, the leader they had known for their whole history post-Exodus, right? That they had realized that he would been their sort of spiritual father. He struck the rock and then disqualified himself from going into the promised land. So even Moses himself wouldn’t enter the promised land.

And in the book of Deuteronomy, we saw Moses giving his final address to the nation of Israel, the Hebrews. And he affirms that God has been so faithful to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to us, the Hebrews. We see the many descendants Moses talks about, and we see that God has promised us this land that you are going to go into that I won’t, that the first generation of Israel has died out, and now the second generation is going to. Joshua is named as Moses’ successor, and Moses continually reminds Israel in warning them to never forget. Don’t forget what God has done. They have all of these feasts, and they have their worship, and all of these things are supposed to remind their children of God’s faithfulness to them, delivering them from Egypt. And so Moses dies, and Joshua takes leadership of Israel, and we see God working through him mightily. We see that God is faithful to his promise to Abraham in the conquering of the peoples. And they are commanded explicitly to not leave any of the peoples in the land.

Otherwise, they will be a snare for Israel and tempt them toward idolatry. symptom toward idolatry. Like I mentioned before, it’s not about melanin color. It wasn’t because of a different ethnicity from sort of a neo-Marxist interpretation of the Bible, where we insert our present worldviews of the day into the text rather than trying to draw meaning from the text itself. The reason for driving the peoples out of the land was for their own good, not only as an act of judgment on the peoples because they had worshipped idols, but also so Israel wouldn’t worship idols.

And we see in Joshua, is Israel completely faithful to drive the peoples out of the land? Yes or no? No, they aren’t, right? And are we setting ourselves up, if we’re Israel, we, right? Is Israel setting themselves up for success or failure? Failure, right? According to the Mosaic Covenant, blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. They’re setting themselves up for failure, which is exactly what we saw in the book of Judges, right? The book of Judges is the Wild West of the Old Testament.

We explored that last time we met together. And it’s an amazing book when you understand that God is still faithful to Israel because they certainly don’t deserve it. We saw those seven cycles of judges being raised up of Israel, forgetting God, and worshiping the idols of the nations, and then going under the temporary oppression of some foreigners, and crying out to God, and God hearing their prayer, and raising up a deliverer or a judge. And once again, not cloak and gavel, mallet judge with a wig, but like a deliverer judge. Deliverers. And we saw too throughout that book that we started off with Othniel, the nephew of Caleb, and we ended with Samson. And did the judges get progressively better or worse? Worse. Much, much worse. There’s a downward spiral.

And what we saw at the end of the book of Judges, we saw Israel had adopted idolatrous worship. We saw this in the Danites’ idols in the first epilogue. In the second epilogue of the Book of Judges, we saw the Levite and his concubine and how Israel had become worse than the nations surrounding them, right? The Levite wanted to stay in a town of Benjamin, wanted to stay in Gibeah to avoid all the wickedness of the nations and the men of that city were more wicked than the nations around them. It’s just a crazy thing to think about in light of Israel’s history. And the recurring refrain of the book of Judges is, at that point there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

Things looked really bleak. But what the book of Ruth does is it shows God’s plan in the midst of Israel’s disobedience. Ruth takes place during that very spiritually turbulent time. And it should give all of us hope knowing that God’s promises will come to pass. And there’s just so much in this book and I can’t wait to examine it with you. So let’s continue taking a look.

So we read in verse one, a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the land of Moab with his wife, excuse me, and his two sons. There was a famine in the land indicating blessings or curses. Curses, right? Israel had disobeyed. And this was during one of those cycles where God was disciplining them through a famine.

We read in verse two that the name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife, Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Molin and Chilian, Ephrathites of Bethlehem and Judah. So they are of Judah. And now they entered the land of Moab and remained there. Then Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. And they took for themselves Moabite women as wives.

Now, is that, from what we know from the text so far, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Bad, right? They weren’t to intermarry with the nations. So these men aren’t necessarily righteous. The name of one was Orpah. Don’t be confused, that doesn’t say Oprah. I made that mistake before in class. And the name of the other, Ruth. And they lived about 10 years.

Then Malan and Chilian also died, and the woman was bereft of her two children and her husband. Then she arose with her daughters-in-law, that she might return from the land of Moab, for she had heard in the land of Moab that the Lord had visited his people in giving them food. So she departed from the place where she was, and her two daughters-in-law with her, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, go, return each of you to your mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt kindly with the dead and with me. May the Lord grant that you may find rest, each in the house of her husband. Then she kissed them and they lifted up their voices and wept.

See, Naomi is depicted as a righteous woman, a God-fearer in the Old Testament. And she tells them to return again, the daughters at first say no, and she says to return because you won’t find a husband here. And she says at the very end of chapter 13, that the hand of the Lord has gone forth against me. And what’s so amazing about that is it’s sort of like Job. You see, Naomi is not denying the fact that she’s going through a tremendous trial. And it’s important, sometimes we might be tempted in our Christian walk to think we need to sort of, I don’t know, to just kind of almost be unnaturally positive and try and pretend we’re not human. But this is still a great statement of faith because she recognizes God is sovereign. And she still trusts in him as we’ll see later on in the book. And she is grieving in a biblical way.

And so eventually, verse 14, Orpah says, kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. Orpah kissed her goodbye, but Ruth stayed. In verse 15, Naomi said, behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods. Return after your sister-in-law. But Ruth said, do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you, for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. That’s probably the most famous verse in this book of Ruth. It’s a great verse, and it shows the stark contrast between Ruth and the Moabite woman in Israel. Ruth herself declares that Naomi’s God is to be her God as a Moabite, whereas Israel at this time, as we saw, has gone into spiritual chaos.

It’s amazing. She continues saying, where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me and worse, if anything but death parts you and me. Again, demonstrating Ruth’s amazing faith. And so it says they both went together until they came to Bethlehem in verse 19.

This is a little random tidbit and unasked for and probably not necessarily important in this class, but just to demonstrate some of the Struggles in seminary, when you’re translating the Hebrew language, if you don’t know that names actually mean things, you can be in quite the struggle.

I remember one time translating Bethlehem, and it’s Bethlehem, house of bread. I just remember not recognizing Bethlehem in the moment, like house of bread, house of bread, like, and you know, silly seminarian, like making a joke, like it’s like a gingerbread house? No. What’s going on? No, it’s Bethlehem. So if not that any of you are studying Hebrew, but if you are, just know names mean things.

Naomi said to them, the other women in Bethlehem, they say, do not call me Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. Naomi means pleasant, Mara means bitter. Once again, she recognizes God’s sovereignty and trust in him, but she also calls it as it is. I went out full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi since the Lord has witnessed against me and the Almighty has afflicted me?

So Naomi returned and with her Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, who returned from the land of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest. There are many things in this narrative that are going to be important to remember. One of them that’s most important is God’s providence, that things just happen to take place. Like the fact that Naomi and Ruth returned at the beginning of the barley harvest, like this is very providential and God’s going to use it to bring about his great plans to continue the kingly line. And so the second chapter we see here is the reaping of Ruth. And it says in verse one, now Naomi had a kinsman of her husband, a man of great wealth, of the family of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz.

Once again, the stupid joke. What kind of a man was Boaz before he was married? Ruthless, ha ha, thank you. Anyway, just doing this so that we remember. So Boaz, there was this guy named Boaz in that land, and he was a kinsman. Kinsman, right, for those of you who might not remember, kin just means like family. So a member of their family.

And so Ruth the Moabitess verse two said to Naomi, please let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after one in whose sight I may find favor. Back in the book of Leviticus, one of the random, seemingly random, right, laws was that when they were gathering their crops, they were supposed to leave some of the outside for the poor to come and glean. from that. I mean, it’s so much better than like a government welfare system, that they could go and glean that while they were still seeking to find work elsewhere. And so Naomi says, ago my daughter. And so Ruth departed and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers. And she happened to come to the portion of the field belonging to Boaz, who was out of the family of Elimelech. Now again, verse three, it says, she happened.

It seems like a coincidence almost, but it’s not. God is orchestrating his plan in the midst of the chaos of the book of Judges and is faithful. It’s very similar to the book of Esther. And when we get to the book of Esther, we’ll see God’s name isn’t mentioned once in the whole book. It’s crazy. But the reason for that is to show that God is still at work implicitly in the text through his providential ordering of circumstances.

And we see in verse four, now behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem and said to the reapers, may the Lord be with you. And they said to him, may the Lord bless you. Once again, Boaz, if we’re just taking this as a short assessment of one verse or is spiritually, we’re going to give him a thumbs up or thumbs down? Thumbs up, yeah, absolutely. That’s going to be important.

And if we remember from our study of the book of Joshua, whose mother was Boaz? Or, sorry, who’s Boaz’s mother? Rahab, right? Remember Rahab? God redeemed that situation, and the son of Sammon, as we see in the New Testament, is this Boaz guy. He’s the son of Rahab.

God has been faithful, and he trusts the same God. It said, then, Boaz said to his servant, who was in charge of the reapers, whose young woman is this? The servant in charge of the reapers replied, she is the young Moabite woman who returned with Naomi from the land of Moab. And then the next verse talks about her request. And then in verse eight, Boaz, noticing that Ruth’s in the house, says, listen carefully, my daughter. Do not go to glean in another’s field. Furthermore, do not go on from this one, but stay here with my maids. Let your eyes be on the field which they reap and go after them. Indeed, I have commanded the servants not to touch you.

And so then Ruth wonders how she found favor in verse 10 and Boaz replies in verse 11, all that you have done for your mother-in-law after the death of your husband has been fully reported to me. Once again, providential circumstances. He just so happened to hear about Ruth’s response in her staying with Naomi.

And he says, verse 12, May the Lord reward your work and your wages be full from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. It’s more than what was required in the law for the poor. Boaz is showing here, not just obeying the law to try and measure up to just the only things he has to required in the law, but loves the law and wants to be very gracious and very generous to Ruth. It demonstrates a positive view of God’s law in the Old Testament, that it was an act of worship. It wasn’t for one’s own righteousness or to be right before God, but was in light of God’s grace.

It said in verse 15, when she rose to glean, Boaz commanded his servants saying, let her glean even among the sheaves and do not insult her. Also, you shall purposely pull out for her some grain from the bundles and leave it that she may glean and do not rebuke her. So without her even knowing, why don’t you collect some and accidentally drop it so that she can pick it up? It’s so cool. So awesome.

And then Naomi finds out about this in verse 20. And she said to her daughter-in-law, may Boaz he be blessed of the Lord, who has not withdrawn his kindness to the living and to the dead. And Naomi said to her, this man is our relative and he’s one of our closest relatives. And then Ruth the Moabitess said, furthermore, he said to me, you should stay close to my servants until they have finished all my harvest. And so they recognize that this is God’s grace working through Boaz.

But eventually, we get to the request of Ruth in chapter three. Naomi has an idea. We see in verse one, it says, then Naomi, her mother-in-law, said to her, my daughter, shall I not seek security for you that it may be well with you? Now is not Boaz our kinsman, our family member, with whose maids you were? Behold, he winnows barley at the threshing floor tonight. Wash yourself, therefore, and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes, and go down to the threshing floor.

But do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. It shall be when he lies down that you shall notice the place where he lies, and you shall go and uncover his feet and lie down. Then he will tell you what you shall do. And she said to her, all that you say, I will do. And so she ends up meeting Boaz. And it says after in verse seven, he had eaten and drunk and his heart was merry. He went down to lie at the end of the heap of grain. And she came secretly and uncovered his feet and lay down. It happened in the middle of the night that the man was startled and bent forward, and behold, a woman was lying at his feet.

He said, who are you? And she answered, I am Ruth, your maid. So spread your covering over your maid. For you are a close relative. The idea is to be under his protection, his covering. Then he said, “‘May you be blessed of the Lord, my daughter. You have shown your last kindness to be better than the first by not going after young men, whether poor or rich. Now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you whatever you ask. For all my people in the city know that you are a woman of excellence.

Now it is true, I am a close relative, but he recognizes that there’s a relative that’s closer than him. He said, remain this night, the morning comes. If he will redeem you, the closer relative good, let him redeem you. But if he does not wish to redeem you, then I will redeem you as the Lord lives. Lie down until this morning. There is nothing in the text here that makes us think anything immoral happened here, even though modern interpreters often like to go in that direction.

Instead, it was a very symbolic move because back then there was this idea of redeeming land. So in order to keep land within the certain tribes, the tribal allotment of the land through the time of the conquest, they had certain laws in place so that if the male heirs were to die, of the land, that the land would still remain within those tribes. The idea was that someone, the closest relative, could redeem this land and redeem the land in a way that they would buy the land, for a temporary period of time in the year of Jubilee, I believe, then they would eventually give it back to their family, to an heir. Normally it was during times of poverty, so if the people were specifically poor and they had to sell their land, it wouldn’t be sold outside of the tribe, demonstrating, especially not to foreigners, so Israel wouldn’t fall into spiritual idolatry.

But the thing about Ruth’s situation is it was even more unique than just the buying of the land. Because you see, it was Ruth and Naomi, and they had no male heir. And so, to give to at the end of a jubilee, And so what also was required because of the like leverage marriage requirements in the Old Testament, kind of similar to Judah and Tamar that we saw with Judah’s sons marrying Tamar, being sought to be married to Tamar in the book of Genesis, is that the closest relative was then to marry the widowed so that she would be able to, the husband’s name, her former husband would be able to have some sort of future descendants and things like that.

And so what Boaz ends up doing in chapter four, we see the redemption and wedding of Ruth. is that it says, the text says, he went up to the gate and sat down there. And behold, the close relative of whom Boaz spoke was passing by, the one who’s closer. And in this redemption, the expectation was the closest relative was the one who was expected to redeem.

And he got first dibs on the land and he wanted to check in with this relative. And so he came by and he turned aside, the text says, and sat down. He, Boaz, verse two, took ten men of the elders of the city and said, sit down here. So they sat down.

Then he said to the closest relative, Naomi, who has come back from the land of Moab, has to sell the piece of land which belonged to our brother Elimelech. So I thought to inform you, saying, buy it before those who are sitting here and before the elders of the people.

If you will redeem it, redeem it. But if not, tell me that I may know, for there is no one but you to redeem it. So essentially what he’s saying is, is you get first dibs on this land, If you will redeem it, I won’t. But if you don’t, I certainly want to. And then the man says, well, yeah, I will. I will.

But then in verse five, Boaz says, by the way, this is a unique situation because also they have no descendants. And so the expectation is that you would marry Ruth as well. He said, on the day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you must also acquire, or marry, Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of the deceased, in order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance. And then verse six, the pressure finally came to the surface, and the closest relative said, I cannot redeem it for myself, because I would jeopardize my own inheritance. Redeem it for yourself. You may have my right of redemption, for I cannot redeem it. and talks about this custom. They remove their sandals. It’s a long, long explanation there.

But Boaz said to the elders in verse nine, you are witnesses today that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belong to Elimelech and all that belong to Chilean and Malan. Moreover, I have acquired, or going to marry, Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of Mollen, to be my wife in order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance, so that the name of the deceased will not be cut off from his brothers, or from the court of his birth. birthplace, you are witnesses today. And so then they all say they’re witnesses.

They say, may the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, both of whom built the house of Israel. In other words, may the Lord use your descendants to be just as impactful as Jacob or as Israel. It’s just an amazing thing when we look at the very end as well. “‘Moreover, may your house be like the house of Perez, “‘whom Tamar bore to Judah through the offspring “‘which the Lord will give you by this young woman. “‘So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife, “‘and he went into her, and the Lord enabled her to conceive, “‘and she gave birth to a son.

“‘Then the woman said to Naomi, “‘Blessed is the Lord who has not left you “‘without a redeemer today, “‘and may his name become famous in Israel.'” So it’s just an amazing thing to think about. We see, so they named verse 17, so they named him Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David. Remember, what’s the theme in the book of Judges? Everyone did what was right in their own eyes, but what was the other thing?

At that point, there was no what in Israel. No king, right? Even though there was no king and that was a problem. They didn’t have good spiritual leadership. Had God stopped his plans to create a king for Israel? No, he hadn’t. The book of Ruth shows that he absolutely was continuing his plan.

And then we see this genealogy in verses 18 through 22. And I find this one really cool too. Because we think of, we think of Salmon and Rahab and how amazing God, how God redeemed the situation of Rahab. But if we look at verse 18, it said, these are the generations of Perez.

And if you remember, that’s that story of Judah and Tamar. It was a crazy situation in which Judah had lost all of his male heirs, and Tamar had pretended to be a cult prostitute, and Judah went into her, and she conceived, and she conceived twins, and Perez was the firstborn of those twins.

And as we remember in Genesis as well, in 4910, Jacob promised that the scepter would not depart from what tribe? Judah, right? It would have been impossible for the leader to come through Judah, had Judah had no descendants, had no male heirs. And Perez, in the midst of crazy circumstances, Judah’s own sin, and the deception of his daughter-in-law, he did have heirs.

And that heir, ultimately, was one of the ancestors of Boaz, as we see in here. who eventually had Obed as his son, and Obed had Jesse, and Jesse had David, the king of Israel, and sort of like the best one, at least according to the text, apart from Christ. It’s just an amazing thought to think about, even in certain circumstances, and in spiritual craziness, that God is still faithful to his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but as what was seen before, There was no king in Israel, and Israel’s first king, they want to be just like the rest of the nations. And as we’ll see in the first book of Samuel, God gives them exactly what they want, and Saul first before David.

Let’s pray. Lord, thank you for your word. Lord, even in a book like Ruth, a short book, we see so many things about who you are. Lord, that you’re a faithful God, and that Lord, even in the midst of crazy circumstances, that you’re still sovereign. Lord, that you had orchestrated in the time of the judges, that David’s ancestors so that eventually Israel would have David. And from David, knowing the Davidic covenant, the son of David, Jesus Christ, for you to reign forever. On the throne of Israel as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, we pray that this week, Lord, in the midst of our crazy circumstances and our culture, that we would be reminded that you’re just as sovereign and as faithful as you were in the time of Ruth. And please, Lord, remind us that, especially when we look at the headlines, when we drive by a bunch of crazy protests or whatever it might be, that you are faithful. We love you, Lord, and we praise you. It’s in your name we pray these things. Amen.