Book of Ruth Overview

Good morning, Watermark. How are we doing today? Great to see you. I'm glad you made it. If this is your first time ever with us on a Sunday, thanks for trusting us. I hope this place feels like home very quickly. I want to let you know that the message today is what I like to call a "check the dash" sermon. When I talk about the dash, I'm talking about the dashboard of your car.

I'm inviting you today to check the dashboard of your life to see if there is a "check engine" light on. I'm inviting you to see if the gas light is showing that you are running on empty. It is a "check the dash" type of sermon. I remember almost two and a half years ago, I was sitting in that back section for a special event at the church, and a guy was sitting next to me who was a friend, but we didn't know each other super well.

I will never forget him turning to me in the middle of this service, sitting in that section back there. He just turned to me and said, "You don't want to be here, do you?" It totally caught me off guard. "You don't want to be here, do you?" The reason that question threw me off was because we hadn't been talking about anything serious. We hadn't been going deep. I hadn't let him in on anything going on in my life. Honestly, we had just been cracking jokes with one another.

What his question showed me was that I was showing the world that I was not okay. He wasn't just exposing that I was having a tough day; he was exposing that I had been in a season where I was running on empty, and it was finally showing to the rest of the world. I was out of joy, I was out of encouragement, I was out of optimism, and I was out of contentment. I was running on empty.

The reason I share that with you is just to ask the question…Is that you today? If you check the dash of your life, are you running on empty? When I ask the question, "Are you running on empty?" I'm really not asking if you are tired today or if you have been tired for the last week. What I'm really asking is…Is your joy still intact or are you joyless, discontent, discouraged, bored, numb, not yourself, just making it from day to day?

Do you feel like something is missing right now? Are you waiting for something to change in your life? If I am describing you right now, welcome. The book of Ruth is for you. The book of Ruth is actually a book about a woman named Naomi, which is kind of confusing. The book of Ruth is about Naomi. The story we're going to see in this beautiful book today is a story where, at the beginning, Naomi is empty, and it's going to end with her being full, all because of the provision of God in her life.

As we look at the story, I want to invite you to take steps from being empty to being full in Jesus. I'll go ahead and give you the five steps, and then we're going to pray. The first step I'm going to encourage you to take is to look where you are. Secondly, I'm going to invite you to see what God is doing. Thirdly, I'm going to invite you to be loved and to love. Fourthly, I'm going to invite you to be available. Fifthly, I'm going to invite you to surrender everything.

Just to be clear, if you feel like you're already identifying with this message, here's what I want to make sure you know. A few of you might be here, and you are battling something clinical. You are battling clinical depression right now. Maybe you're battling a clinical anxiety disorder. If we're not careful, you might leave here feeling like I am minimizing what's going on in your life. So, let me state very clearly: you might be battling something right now, and God might want to use some professional help in your life, yet I still believe that what we unpack from the book of Ruth today will be extremely helpful to you.

So, I want to invite you to pray, like we do every Sunday, now that you know where we're headed. First, I want to invite you to pray and say, "God, would you speak clearly to me today?" Maybe you're not running on empty, but there are other people in this room who are, so take a moment and pray for the people around you. Just say, "God, would you speak clearly to them?" Then, would you pray for me and ask God to speak clearly through me to you?

Lord, my hope for your people today is joy. Where we are empty, would you fill us full of yourself? God, what a joy in and of itself that we can gather here to meet with you. You've given us your Word. You've given us your Spirit who leads and guides us into truth. Holy Spirit, I'm asking for you to do that today. Open our eyes to see Jesus. Give us ears to hear from you, God. Give us hearts that are receptive to all that you want to say. We love you. In Jesus' name, amen.

I just want to let you in. Sermon prep this week for me was super frustrating. That was really surprising, because over the course of this year in the Year of the Word, Ruth is by far the shortest book we are studying. It's only four chapters. Every other book up to this point has been 20, 30, 40, even 50 chapters, so it has been a heavy lift to try to synthesize entire books. So, going into this week, I was like, "Four chapters? God, I'll take it from here," yet it has been the hardest book for me to prep so far in this series.

The reason for that is the farther I got into it, I was like, "Have I ever read Ruth before?" It just felt like I was discovering more and more beauty in the book to the point where I was like, "Okay. Well, this is the direction I'm going to go, but if I go that direction, I'm going to leave out this, so let me try to put both of them in. Well, that's trying to cover too much." It was so difficult because of just how rich and beautiful this book is.

So, I just need you to know we're barely scratching the surface today, but let's look together. Ruth 1:1 says, "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." This tells you where we're landing in the history of Israel. This is happening in the days when judges ruled.

If you were here last week, you saw just how devastating the book of Judges is. This tells us that the book of Ruth is taking place during a very dark time in Israel's history. The book of Ruth starts out as a dark story for one individual that is really just a snapshot of what's happening in all of the country. This is a time when the nation of Israel is rebelling against God. They're running after foreign gods, and because of that, they are experiencing God's judgment.

There is a famine in the land. That famine is judgment from God. It zeroes in on a city, the city of Bethlehem. Bethlehem means house of bread, but there's a famine, so there's no bread in the House of Bread. One guy's solution to that problem, a guy named Elimelech… His solution isn't repentance; it's to run and go to Moab to try to provide for himself, which is really interesting, because if you know anything about the Moabites, the Moabites' origin was incest.

If you remember, the Moabites were a group of people who opposed and resisted the Israelites crossing through their land when they were fleeing from Egypt. The Moabite women had actually seduced Israelite men to worship other gods. Yet Elimelech's solution to the problem of famine in God's land was to run to a foreign land.

So, what we have from the start of the book is a man whose name literally means "God is my king." That's what Elimelech means: "God is my king." We have a guy saying, "No, I'll be king; I'll do what I want" to come up with a solution to a problem that, honestly, only God can solve. So, his family bottoms out in verses 3-5.

"But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband."

So, now the story is going to zero in on Naomi. This is who the book is about. She loses her husband, which means she has now lost her security and status in the present. She loses her two sons, which means she loses her security for the future. All she's left with are her two daughters-in-law who are actually Moabite women, which tells us these are women her sons should have never married. So, these two women are daily reminders of this family's disobedience toward God.

Then, if you look at verse 6, it shows us separation between God and Naomi. It says, "Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food." The reason they had gone to Moab was because they had no food, but they left God's land in search of their own solution.

Here's the reality: if God is going to move, he's going to move in the place that he calls home with the people he calls his own. It's kind of like when you're sitting in traffic, and your lane isn't moving, but you see the lane next to you start to move, so you're like, "Okay. I'm going to move to that lane." The minute you move to that lane, this lane starts moving. Have you ever experienced that?

Or you go to the store and get in one line, and you see that the line next to you is shorter, so you're like, "You know what? Clearly, I need to be in that line." So you get into that line, and then this line starts moving, and your line has someone who has decided to write a check. The teenage person working at the register has never even heard of a check, and 1995 is calling wanting their check back. You should have just stayed in the lane where the movement would actually come.

That's what Naomi has realized. "We should have just stayed in the place. If God was going to move, it was going to be in his land with the people he calls his own." So, she decides to return to Bethlehem. Here's what we find out when they show back up to Bethlehem. Verse 20: "She said to them, 'Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?'"

People in Bethlehem haven't seen her in 10 years, and they're like, "Is that Naomi?" They don't even recognize her. Why? Because it's showing. She has lost her joy. She's running on empty. She's like, "Don't call me Naomi." Do you know what Naomi means? It means pleasant one. She says, "Call me Mara," which means bitter. She left full, and she's returning empty, because she has been living in a land that God would not bless. The reason I tell you that is just to invite you to take one step. If you feel joyless, discouraged, discontent, numb…whatever it might be…I want to invite you to…

1. Look where you are. Just look where you are right now. For Naomi to leave Moab and head back to Bethlehem was, in some ways, an act of repentance. This was her going back to the place where God is. It's going back to be with God and his people. It's kind of like the Prodigal Son in Luke, chapter 15, realizing, "Hey, my father has more than enough." This is the Prodigal Son turning from life away from his father and heading back home.

Maybe you are currently in a place right now that God will not bless. It's like this. Last week, I shared with you that over spring break I took my 7-year-old on a man trip. When we were on that man trip, we went to a basketball game, an NBA game. I bought tickets at the last minute, and we sat pretty high up in the arena.

All throughout the game, the camera people were showing people from the audience. You know what that's like. You see different people react in different ways, but they always kind of have this spark of excitement and joy when they look up at the screen. You see the wheels turn, and then Click! It's like, "That's me." Some people play conservative. Other people are just living their best life, traumatizing their children. That's what happens. It's kind of this burst of excitement, this burst of joy.

We were sitting high up in the arena, but something in me began to believe, "Maybe they're going to show Jake and me." So, I pull out my cell phone, I open up the video camera, and I just have it in my lap. I'm just waiting. Like, "If they show us, I want to capture this. Jake and I are going to remember this moment forever."

But you know what? All throughout the time, I was like, "I don't know that the cameras even reach this high," but something in me still believed, "Somehow, they're going to show us." They didn't. Why? Because we were sitting in a place that the cameras never look. I tell you that just to say some of you are living in places, in circumstances, in situations, that you keep waiting for God to bless, and God is like, "The cameras of heaven never go there. That is not a place we look upon with favor."

So, let me invite you to look where you are. Maybe you're dating a good guy or girl, but they're not a godly guy or girl. Maybe your marriage has been tough, and you would say, "It's too tough," so you've made a decision in your mind that you're going to pour all of your energy into your children or into your job. Something in you convinces yourself, "Hey, that's a really noble thing for me to do. My priority now is not my marriage; it's my children."

That sounds really noble as a parent. "You know what? I'm just going to focus all my energy on my job, and that provides for my family." But what you need to understand is you entered into a covenant with that spouse. If you want to bless your children, fight for your marriage. Maybe happy hour is what is making you unhappy. Maybe you're numbing yourself or distracting yourself. Maybe you're trying to binge-watch your pain away. Maybe you're trying to scroll away at night your discontentment. Maybe you're trying to eat away or drink away your joylessness.

I think about almost two and a half years ago when I was in that space where I had lost my joy. There were days where I'd be getting the kids to bed, and I just couldn't wait or I was looking forward to sitting down, watching a show, and eating a bowl of popcorn. Now, in and of itself, I don't think that's a bad thing. Some of y'all might be listening, like, "Really, dude? Your illustration is going to be watching a show and eating popcorn?"

Here's the point I'm making. There were some days I was looking so forward to that that I found myself asking, "Am I looking forward to relaxing or am I looking forward to escaping?" Those are two very different things. It is okay to relax. It is not okay to escape, because when you escape, you're trying to satisfy your soul with something other than Christ, but your soul is made for Christ. So, I invite you to look where you are. Are you in a place that God will not look and bless? It might be time for you to leave Moab.

2. See what God is doing. If you're taking notes, capitalize both letters in is, because I want you to see the emphasis. See what God is doing. Our tendency is to see what God is not doing, to focus on what we don't have. A major theme in the book of Ruth is the providence of God, yet it's interesting. If you really study the book, there are only a couple of times where God is directly credited for doing something.

God only gets direct credit a couple of times. The author writes in a way that kind of highlights coincidence. For example, Ruth 2:3. The author says, "So she [Ruth] set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz…" In the Hebrew, that is literally "Her chance chanced upon the part of the field belonging to Boaz." Her chance chanced. It's like, "As luck would have it…"

Yet, the coincidences are so crazy. It's almost like the author is intentionally trying to invite us to peek behind the curtain to see God pulling all of these levers miraculously. That's why I tell you to see what God is doing. Think about all of the circumstances in Ruth that miraculously line up in the story. Let me just roll through them with you.

First, God restores food to Bethlehem. There is bread back in the House of Bread, so Naomi decides to go back to Bethlehem. Ruth, who's a Moabite, decides to abandon every sense of security and go with her. They're in need of food, and they just so happen to return at the beginning of barley harvest, which just so happens to provide for them an opportunity to glean food from people's fields, because that was their need: food.

Ruth just so happens to go to glean from a field that belongs to Boaz, who just so happens to be a relative of Elimelech, who's Naomi's dead husband. Boaz just happens to be visiting the field when Ruth is gleaning from it, and Boaz just happens to notice Ruth in such a way that he desires to take care of a foreign woman. He desires to provide for her and protect her.

It just so happens that the redeemer, the nearest relative to Naomi, doesn't want to redeem Ruth, yet Boaz wants to redeem both Naomi and marry Ruth, and it just so happens that Ruth gives birth to a son who becomes the grandfather of King David. This isn't coincidence; this is providence. This is God intricately involved in all details of the story, pulling levers. The same God is intricately involved in every single aspect of your life. So, if you want to move from empty to full, one of the best things you can do is begin to see what God is doing.

One of my mentors in life, a guy named Doug Sherman… I've shared this before. You'll continue to hear me share it. He was really big on the idea of telling God stories, just testifying to what you've seen God do. A question Doug would ask was this. He would say, "Hey, of all of the ways God has shown up in your life today, just share one."

So, let me ask you. What time is it right now? It's 11:59. I don't know how long you've been awake today, but of all of the ways God has shown up in your life just this morning, just share one. If I were to give you a microphone right now, what would you share? Would you get nervous? Would you be like, "It's only 11:59. Let's give God some time. He kind of has to get warmed up. We'll get things going in just a little bit."

Okay, fine. Let's take yesterday. Of all of the ways God showed up in your life yesterday, just name one. Would something in you still be like, "Let's expand the search. How about the last week?" Do you know what Doug's point was? His point was, "Hey, our God is a God who's constantly showing us his goodness and greatness. He is consistently, all throughout the day, trying to communicate to us, get our attention, and draw us close to him."

The issue isn't if God is moving. The question is…Are we seeing? So, what I'm inviting you to do is to develop eyes to see all of the ways God is moving, to see what he is doing, because here's the thing. We talk about this on the Watermark staff. God deserves credit for everything he's doing. He deserves credit for the watermelon-sized fruit, and he deserves credit for the blueberry-sized fruit.

Our tendency is to just have eyes to see the watermelon-sized fruit, because those tend to be the things we really pray about or we want to see God do something about, but here's the reality: God is pulling levers every day, all day, in your life. He's working in the monumental moments and in the mundane moments.

Doug used to say that he would ask God… Like, he'd be driving in the car, and he would ask God, "God, what are you trying to tell me right now? What are you trying to show me right now as I'm driving down the road? In between meetings, what are you trying to show me right now?" Because God is always communicating. Start seeing what God is doing in your life.

That's why one of the things we're trying to normalize in our family is God stories. It's for my kids to grow up understanding that God's goodness is toward them all throughout the day every day. We might position it as highs and lows or we might ask the question, "Hey, what's one good thing from today?" If they share, then the question is, "How does that show God's goodness?"

So, if one of the kids says, "Well, I ate ice cream today…" "Okay. How does that show God's goodness? It's because God gave us taste buds. You know, God didn't have to give us taste buds. Things could taste like nothing. And he gave someone the idea to mix things together to create ice cream. That's how good God is. He gave us taste buds so we could taste sweetness and say, 'You're even sweeter, Jesus.'"

Or for my kid to be like, "Well, I played video games today." Some parents might be like, "There is nothing good or godly about video games." But for us to ask the question, "How does that show God's goodness?" Well, God gave someone the creativity, because he's a creative God, to invent something like that. We want our kids to grow up seeing God's goodness.

This is a conversation our family just had this past week, because we noticed in one of our kids his tendency to see the negative. So we talked about an SD card like what you might put into a Nintendo Switch. I know I'm talking like an old person right now. The goal of an SD card is so you can save things. When you're playing video games, you only save the good rounds. No one saves the bad rounds.

We just talked in our family, like, "You know what? Scripture tells us to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks, but what we're noticing is this tendency to save the bad moments of the day and not the good moments of the day." You know what I've realized about myself? Some of you guys are forever optimists. You can positively spin anything. Every day, you're better than you deserved.

For me, my tendency when people ask, "Hey, how are things going?" is to think of the negative things or where things are not as good. I have to discipline myself to see and to save and to store the good ways God is moving, because that's what leads to gratitude. So, if you want to move from empty to full, then I want to encourage you: see what God is doing.

3. Be loved and love. Do you want to move from empty to full? Be loved and love. There's a Hebrew word that's used in the book of Ruth three different times. It's the Hebrew word checed. Scholars agree that the Hebrew word checed is basically the theological term that encapsulates the entire book of Ruth. Scholars also agree that the Hebrew word checed is very hard to define with English terminology, because what is packed into one Hebrew word isn't packed into one English word.

You see it defined in different parts of Scripture as kindness, loyalty, faithfulness, love, mercy, or graciousness. Author Paul Miller wrote a book called A Loving Life, which is an entire book that unpacks the idea of checed love in the book of Ruth. He explains the Hebrew word checed as one-way love. Think about it that way: one-way love.

It's a combination of commitment and sacrifice. It's love without an exit strategy. You bind yourself to the object of your love no matter their response. Checed love doesn't act on feelings; it acts on commitment. It's a stubborn love. David Platt described it as someone going out of their way to work extravagantly on your behalf. I love that. It's someone going out of their way to work extravagantly on your behalf.

Where do we see checed love in the book of Ruth? Well, first, we see it in Ruth. Ruth binds herself in love and loyalty to Naomi for Naomi's sake. Ruth forsakes her land, her people, and her gods. She clings to Naomi. She says, "Wherever you go, that's where I'm going to go. I'm going to die with you."

The reason Ruth does this is solely for Naomi's benefit. Ruth gives up the possibility of being remarried to one of her people. It could even mean poverty for her, but Ruth goes to a foreign land and takes great risks as a Moabite woman in hopes of carrying on the line of Elimelech, who was not her husband but Naomi's.

We also see checed love in Boaz, who in the Hebrew is the goel. The goel is what's known as the kinsman redeemer. There was a law or a custom that if a man died, then the next closest relative was responsible for purchasing that man's land so that the land stayed within the family. If there was a widow, then that kinsman redeemer's responsibility was to marry that widow, especially if she didn't have a son. The reason he would marry that widow was so she would hopefully have a son and carry on the father's name or the father's line, because it was a massive failure for the line to cease.

Boaz is the kinsman redeemer. He welcomes, provides for, and protects a foreign woman. He incurs the cost of securing the land that belonged to Elimelech, and he marries Ruth. Why did he marry Ruth? Some people position the book of Ruth like a romance novel, but the story gives no hint of romance. You don't see at any point this romantic attraction from Boaz to Ruth. No, Boaz does it to preserve Elimelech's land and line. In doing so, he ends up providing safety, security, and a family for Naomi and Ruth.

The point I'm trying to make is to be loved and to love… Now, when you hear all of that you might hear that and be like, "Yeah, okay. I get what you're trying to say. You want me to leave this place, go out, and love other people." Yeah, I do want you to do that, and we're going to get there, but there's a reason the point is worded in the way it is: be loved and love.

Originally, in my notes I had it written, "Love and be loved." It just flows better. Right? "Love and be loved" as opposed to "Be loved and love." It feels backward, yet there is an order to things. You can't go out and love until you have first been loved. When I talk about being loved, what I'm really talking about, first and foremost, is preaching the gospel to yourself, reminding yourself of the gospel, that Jesus is, in fact, the greater Ruth and the greater Boaz.

Jesus Christ is like Ruth in the sense that he left the home of heaven for the foreign land of earth, and he bound himself to us for our sake by taking on flesh, but then he's also like Boaz. He is our kinsman redeemer, because Jesus Christ incurred the cost to redeem us and to bring us into his family through his perfect life, his sacrificial death, and his victorious resurrection.

So, if you're feeling empty, then my encouragement to you is to spend time every day reminding yourself that God sent the eternal Son to die for you. God didn't need you, but he wanted you. God has chosen to move in close to you, to rescue you, to redeem you, to bring you into his family, to have an intimate relationship with you. That's love.

Yet, when we talk about God loving us, I think it kind of flies right past us. If I were to be like, "Man, have you savored the reality today that God loves you?" you'd be like, "I guess." Like, "Yeah, yeah, I know he loves me. I actually struggle with believing that God likes me, but I know he loves me." Well, I want to dial in on him loving you, because I think so many of us are followers of Jesus, yet we're chasing love somewhere other than Jesus.

We're looking for love, and we're trying to secure something we already freely have in Christ. I remember years ago, I was seeing a counselor. The counselor was asking me some questions, and what it exposed was that I was living under a banner. Do you know what was written on that banner? "Failure." That was the banner I was living under.

Something in me, deep down, believed I was a failure as a follower of Christ. I was a failure as a husband. I was a failure as a father. I was a failure as a child. I was a failure as a kid. I was a failure as a minister of the gospel. I was a failure. The counselor did something I'll never forget. I've encouraged other people to do it sometimes.

The counselor said, "I want you to imagine Jesus is in the room. He just pulls up right next to you. What does Jesus want to say to you about that idea of you being a failure? Just what does he want to say to you?" God wrecked me in that moment. In that moment, what God exposed was that idea of failure wasn't from a neutral source. That was straight out of the mouth of the Father of Lies speaking failure into my life.

In that moment, Christ was inviting me to know this zealous, jealous love that our perfect heavenly Father had for me. I sensed this fatherly protection, this love welling up and exploding forth into my life, of him saying, "No, no. You're mine. You belong to me." I drove away from that moment feeling a freedom I hadn't felt in a long time. Why? Because in that moment, what I knew to be true intellectually became true experientially. This idea of "Jesus loves me, this I know" actually became "Jesus loves me, this I know!"

So, I'm just asking you. When was the last time you allowed yourself to be loved by God? Here's what I'm telling you. When was the last time you sat and meditated on the idea that God loves you to the point that it moved you, that it resonated with you? That's my challenge to you this week. Just go sit with God. Read verses about his love for you, and don't move on from that moment until it actually means something to you, until it becomes more than just an idea in your mind. Allow yourself to be loved by God.

I want to also encourage you to allow yourself to be loved by others. That's a part of moving from being empty to being full. We talked about this with our kids this past week. We saw in one of our kids their tendency to nullify people's compliments. I don't know if anyone is like this, where someone gives you a compliment, and then you defuse it. "Oh, man, that's awesome. You are so good at that." "Well, it's really not a big deal. I just got lucky. You know, what I wish I had done better was [this]." Just say, "Thank you."

When you take someone's compliment and throw it back at them, you're saying, "I reject that. I reject your attempt to love me right now, because what you're saying, I don't believe." Receive it. Allow yourself to be loved. One thing I've realized about myself is this tendency I feel… If someone does something nice for me, I feel this need to pay them back. They never ask me to pay them back. I'm not just talking about financially. I'm talking about returning the favor.

Either someone is doing you a favor or they're seeking to love you. Those are two different things. A favor is something you need to pay back. Love is love. My tendency is I always need to even things out. "You do something for me. Well, then I need to return the favor. I need to do it for you." Now, what I'm not telling you is to never do anything nice back. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying never write a "thank you" note.

But what I've realized is sometimes God is going to invite people to experience a joy by incurring a cost for me, and one of the best things I can do is receive it with gratitude. God is going to call me to do the same thing for other people. I'm not talking about taking advantage of people. I'm not talking about ripping people off. This is the beauty of being in the body of Christ, that God is going to call us to love one another with a checed love, a one-way love, a love that doesn't expect something in return.

Our joy comes not from what we get in return but the joy we get when we're being like Christ. So, my encouragement to you is to ask the Spirit who he wants you to love like Jesus this week. Who does he want you to love with a checed love? Who does he want you to go out of your way with, to incur a cost for, to expect nothing from in return because you just want to bless them?

Don't miss what I'm telling you right now. If you're in a place where you don't feel yourself… You feel down, joyless. You would say, "I just don't feel myself." Well, then my encouragement to you is to go out and love people radically, because you know what? When you love like Jesus, you are most like yourself. You have been made to be like Jesus, and when you go out and love like Jesus, that's when you are most like yourself.

4. Be available. Turn over to Ruth, chapter 4. We're just hitting the highlights today. This book is too much for one Sunday. Look at verses 13-17. The wording is so important.

"So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went in to her, and the Lord gave her conception, and she bore a son. Then the women said to Naomi, 'Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age…'"

Remember what she said in chapter 1? "I left full. He has brought me back empty." These women are saying, "Look. Ruth has had a child, and this child is going to be a nourisher of your old age." That's why the book of Ruth is a book about Naomi starting out empty and ending full. "'…your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.' Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse. And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, 'A son has been born to Naomi.'"

"No, the son was born to Ruth." But it's a son to Naomi. "They named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David." It's incredible. The book begins with Naomi empty and ends with her full. God restores what was lost. At the beginning, Naomi is away from God without food, family, or a son to carry on the line of her dead husband, yet God brings her back to the land where he resides. He provides food for her, gives her a family, and gives her a son.

The book of Ruth is this subtle reminder that God is in the business of grand reversals. That's a helpful reminder, because the whole story of Scripture is just one grand reversal from creation to new creation through the path of redemption. God is going to restore what was lost from the garden of Eden. He's going to reverse the effects of the fall.

Don't miss what I'm telling you. The grand reversal of the whole story of Scripture hinges upon one promised in Genesis 3:15 who will come to crush the head of the Serpent. This is what's so amazing about the book of Ruth. That Serpent crusher will come from the line of David, who we find out from the book of Ruth just so happens to be from the line of Boaz.

What's amazing is Naomi didn't know it at the time, but God was working through her and through Ruth and through Boaz to preserve the family or the line from which the Serpent crusher would come. That's why when you turn to the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew, chapter 1, you read, "…and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth…" And you trace it all the way down to Jesus.

Here's why the point is be available: because just like Naomi, you don't know what God wants to do through you. You don't know how God is going to use you. God is often doing something bigger than we can see. Faith is trusting that God sees a future or an impact that you can't see. That's what faith is. It's trusting that God sees a future or an impact that you can't see.

I've shared this before, but when we lived in Waco, you would drive around, and there were billboards around the city. There were billboards that were just a black billboard with two words in big, bold, white letters. Those two words were "Use me." That's it. It was an ad for an ad. "Use me." I saw that, and I was like, "That's a perfect prayer for followers of Jesus Christ." "God, use me. Use me. May my life be a billboard for your glory. Would you declare your goodness and your fame to an unbelieving world through my life?" If you want to move from empty to full, just be available. Ask God. Pray every day. "God, use me. However you want, use me."

5. Surrender everything. This point is especially for those in the room who are just visiting who don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ. If you are sensing an emptiness in your life, then I want to encourage you to surrender everything. Back in chapter 1 of Ruth, there's this moment where Naomi encourages her daughters-in-law to return to their people in Moab. Ruth clings to Naomi, and here's what Ruth tells her.

"Do not urge me to leave you or to return 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. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you."

Do you know what this is? This is Ruth, a pagan woman from a pagan nation, doing what the nation of Israel wouldn't. She is faithfully surrendering everything to God. She's abandoning anything in her life that brought security. She's abandoning her people, her god, and her land, because she believes true security is found only in the God of Israel.

Do you know what's interesting? Throughout the book, the author reminds us that it's Ruth the Moabite. Ruth 1:22: "So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite her daughter-in-law with her…" Ruth 2:2: "Ruth the Moabite." Ruth 4:10: "Ruth the Moabite." It's like the author is constantly reminding us, "She's not one of God's people. She doesn't typically belong. This is crazy that the story includes a faithful woman from a pagan people."

Yet, in the book we see a progression. She moves from being a foreigner to being a servant to being a wife, and she becomes a part of the people of God. The invitation is the same to you today. God is inviting you to surrender everything and to belong to him and his family. Today, you can move from being an enemy of God to being a child of God. God has made a place for you in his family.

Ruth shows us that God's intention is for the nations. His salvation isn't just for one people. God is cultivating a people from every tribe, every tongue, every people and nation. You have a place in the family of God if you'll surrender everything to him today.

What's interesting is Bethlehem stands for House of Bread, yet Jesus Christ would be born in Bethlehem, and in John 6:35 he would say, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst." If you don't know Jesus Christ and you feel empty, it's because your heart is restless.

As Davy said earlier, your heart and your soul will be restless until they find their rest in the one they've been made for, and that's Jesus Christ. Would you come and know him today? You have been made to know Jesus, be known by Jesus, and make him known to the world. The invitation is to surrender everything and to come and be satisfied in Jesus Christ. Let's pray together.

Lord, I praise you and thank you for the book of Ruth. After all the frustration I felt this week in sermon prep just trying to get my mind around all of the beautiful intricacies of the book, I now just say it's okay that we don't get to all of it. Thank you that we can spend all of our lives excavating your Word, and we'll still just scratch the surface.

Lord, Ruth is such a beautiful reminder that you're in the business of grand reversals. You can take those who are empty and make them full. Lord, I pray that everyone in this room would check the dash this morning, and if there are lights coming on, saying, "You're not okay; you're on empty," may we not just push through, cross our fingers, and hope that something will change someday.

I pray, Lord, if anyone is living in a place that you will not bless, may they leave Moab this week. Lord, give us eyes to see what you are doing. Lord, would you free us up to be loved by you and to love others. Lord, would you use us this week, and if anyone doesn't know you, may they surrender everything to you today. We need you and we love you. In Jesus' name, amen.