Weekly Sunday Sermon - Ruth

 Hello!

Today, the next topic covered by GRII's Grade upper elementary sunday school was the topic about Ruth, following the curriculum. Because Ruth is quite short (4 chapters), it is all covered in one single lesson rather than being divided (for example, like Genesis or Exodus).

There are three main portions in today's lesson, the Context, Story, and Application/Conclusion., this part about the importance of this story to us. First, let's read the last verse of Judges to gain some insight about the book of Ruth. Judges 21:25 says that Israel had no king and everyone during the time of the judges did as they saw fit, no one cared about truth or law, so there was lots of sin and disobedience.

The story of Ruth takes place during the time of the judges, and in this time we know there was a cycle of disobedience -> judgement -> repentance > deliverance -> disobedience again. By the start of the story of the book of Ruth, Israel seems to be in the judgement phase - there was a famine and things were not good. The ither context is the audience context, the people under King David maybe 1 or even 2 centuries after Ruth.

The story centers around a woman called Naomi, who moged from her hometown Bethlehem with her husband Elimelek (whose name means God is King) to Moab, the nation next to Israel but outside the Promised Land. This was not good,  they were running away from God, and was not patient to receive deliverance. So they moved to Moab with Naomi and Elimelek's two children, they grew up and married Moabite women, which was  a sin, because rhey could negatively influence the children. Then, Elimelek and his two sons died, which was a tragedy for Naomi, and now he was without inheritance or family, without property, and had to live in fear of the future. 

Then Naomi told her two daughters in law, the widows of her dead children, whose names were Ruth and Orpah. Naomi told them to stay in their homeland and enjoy their lives there, and not come with Naomi, who was going to have difficulty there as a woman. Nevertheless, Ruth disagreed with Naomi's request and came with her, because she was loyal and wanted to comfort Naomi. So they went to Bethlehem again , but this time Naomi didnnot have a husband nor children, sbe  was empty, so she called herself Mara, meaning bitter (remember the story about Marah in Sinai, which meant bitter?".

Because she and her mother in law was poor, Ruth  was allowed to gather wheat and barley in the farms, so she did. While she was taking some, the master/owner of the field, Boaz, saw and allowed her to take water and assured that none of Boaz's men in the field would touch or assault her, because she was a foreign woman.   That is because Boaz heard what happened fro one of his men and saw how kind Ruth was being, so Ruth took s good amount of bread and came back home gratefully and happily.

In the following chapter, Ruth went at night alone when Boaz was sleeping, and when he woke up he realized that Ruth was at his feet. Why? Ruth and Naomi had formulated a plan to make Boaz the kinsman redeemer, which is a law described in Deuteronomy where the closest relative to a heirless widow can legally "marry" the widow to take care of her and make sure her family line is not cut off. Naomi wanted Voaz to kinsman redeem her, but Boaz at first said that there was a closer relative to Naomi , and the kinsman redeemer should be the closest relative ideally, but this person refused and Boaz became Naomi's kinsman redeemer, and married Ruth, and Ruth had a child (which was legally Naomi's), Obed, who would be the grandfather of David.

Why is this story important to us? First, we learn that we are like Naomi - there is tragedy and sin, but then comfort through our redeemer (Naomi had several redeemers - of course Ruth, Boaz, and the other person who refused to kinship redeem, and also Obed (see the last chapter of Ruth), and then it ends well. This is like out story, and our redeemer is Jesus Christ, the best redeemer, who is perfect. In every Bible story, there is a foreshadowing to Christ, because that is what the Bible is about. God works in mysterious ways to redeem us.