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THE STORY of RUTH – 'Six Men & Six Women' Series THE STORY OF RUTH – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series Good morning, Life Fellowship. Now I don’t know what your emotional stance is this morning as you come to church, but if I were a betting man there are probably some of you here that are really struggling. And you could use some good old fashioned hope today. In fact maybe your circumstances are such that you have found that even living seems hopeless. Maybe you feel depressed, you have inner angst, you have confusion, your emotions feel flayed, and your circumstances are very disturbing and troublesome. Well, it is my hope that our journey through the book of Ruth today will help restore that lost hope to a place of hopefulness again. I want to encourage you to turn to the book of Ruth, as we are going through this series called, ‘Six Men & Six Women,’ where we have been looking at these different biographical sketches of Bible characters. And today this is a great story. It could have easily been called the book of Naomi as well as the book of Ruth. The reason is this is a story about how God uses two people, namely Ruth and Boaz, to restore the hope that Naomi once had. Naomi has lost her husband. She has lost her two sons. And she is absolutely shattered. And Ruth and Boaz were these characters that you are going to meet today that come alongside to help Naomi restore her hope. This is one of those books you go to when you are looking to find hope, when you are looking to find a way out of depression, when you are looking to find how you can trust God. This is one of the books that you can go to find that kind of strength. The book of Ruth is the eighth book in the Bible. You have Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy that make up the Torah, the Law, or the Pentateuch. Then you have Joshua, Judges and next is the book of Ruth. It is the eighth book in. We are not really sure who the author of this book was. Some have said that it was Samuel, but there is no internal or external evidence to help us to understand that. What do I mean by internal or external evidence? Well, when you read Paul’s letters, he will identify his authorship in the book itself. That is the internal evidence. So within the book of Ruth, no one identifies themselves as the author in the internal evidence. Then the external evidence – if we were to look at the archology or external writings, we don’t really have anything that would show a clear strong case for who the author was. We do know that this was written in the time period of the judges. This was the setting that takes place. Basically Chapter 1 of the book of Ruth is the setting. It is a four chapter book. And what I am going to do is give you a layout of this book. We are going to go through and look at the different scenes, and it is a massive task. I have taught through the entire book of Ruth in several messages, and today I am going to try to give you the life of Ruth in one message. So we won’t be able to drop in and read all the Page 1 of 15 pages 4/10/2016 THE STORY OF RUTH – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series verses; I am just going to tell you the story. Then I am going to point out some verses. And then at the end we are going to draw out some practical insights from Ruth herself. We are going to imagine if Ruth were to come into this room today and talk to us, what it would be that she would want to say to us. That is where we are going. So the setting then would be Chapter 1. And we will look at the first few verses to just kind of get a feel of the layout. Beginning in verse 1 it says, “In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land.” So let me kick it off by saying sometimes things go bad. They just do. So this is in the time when the judges ruled and you will remember the book of Judges, the book that precedes Ruth, that it says over and over again, “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” This was a culture that wasn’t concerned with living for God. They were living individualistic lives. They were living for themselves. They just did what was right in their own eyes. And this is the culture that Naomi is living in at this stage. We are going to start off with Naomi and there is a famine in the land. What land? It was the land of Bethlehem. And the name Bethlehem means ‘house of bread.’ So think about it. The house of bread, Bethlehem, had no bread. There was a famine in the house of bread or in Bethlehem. “In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there.” So how do we know that things were bad? First of all the Moabites oppressed the Jews. They oppressed those in Bethlehem. They were like a nemesis to them. So you know things are bad when you leave your own country and you go to the land of your nemesis. They have been pushed out and their pain has made them to go away and leave their circumstances. And isn’t that what we do when life gets difficult? When pain gets hard? We want a new set of circumstances. So we want to change our setting. We look to get out of there and out of those circumstances when things go bad. So Elimelech decides to go to Moab, and he takes his wife, Naomi, and his two sons, Mahlon and Chilion. If you are looking for a cool name try one of those on for size. They make their way over to Moab because things are tough. But after they show up in Moab what happens? Sometimes things go bad and sometimes things go from bad to worse. And that is what happened here. In verse 3 it says, “But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left her two sons.” Now I know for sure that this was written by a guy; I don’t know which guy it was written by, but I know it was written by a guy because there are no details on Page 2 of 15 pages 4/10/2016 THE STORY OF RUTH – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series how Elimelech died. “But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died,” that is a guy statement. We get no details. We don’t learn that he died of a kidney transplant or from an aneurysm. We don’t learn anything but that he died. So spoken like a true guy. I can remember years ago when a good buddy of mine was in a car accident. And a guy from the church calls to let me know, and I wasn’t home so the guy decides to leave a message on my answering machine. I pushed ‘play,’ and I heard, ‘Hey Bobby, Thomas Meadows was killed in a car accident.’ Seriously, that was how he wanted to break the news with no padding like, ‘Hey bro, sit down because I have some tough news for you.’ But guys just aren’t detail people in a relational way. My wife would always like to hear more details from me. She can talk to me about theology or history or philosophy or Bible, and I will give her details, too many details. But the relational details don’t come as easy for us as guys sometimes. I can visit the hospital and when I come home my wife will be ready with a lot of questions. She wants details. And I will just say, ‘Well, the baby is healthy, honey.’ And she will ask if it was a boy or girl. And I will be like, ‘Uhh, I think it was a boy.’ And if she goes to the hospital she will come home with details like, ‘Oh, she had the sweetest little fingers and toes. And she has a lot of blond fuzz all over her head.’ She will have all the details down. But guys don’t get those details as much; we are more data information crunchers. But here Naomi’s husband dies of something and things go from bad to worse. She had followed her husband from Bethlehem to Moab and then he dies. Now she is still in Moab and she is left with her two sons. And then sometimes things go bad, and sometimes things go from bad to worse, and then sometimes things go from worse to impossible. Let’s see what happened next. In verse 4 it says, “These took Moabite wives, the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth.
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