Brian Maloy

Ruth, which always makes you sad, especially because Ruth is one that, you know, we only got 2 weeks to cover. It’s a shame, but that’s okay. We’re going to do great and it’s going to be a lot of fun. So let’s go ahead. I’m going to do the same annoying thing I did last week, and I read all of chapter 1 and 2. I’m going to do the same thing in all of chapter 3 and 4, which is a little shorter. But we need the whole thing. Otherwise, when we study the part that the quarterly leans into, we don’t have all the details.

So we’re going to read starting in verse 1 of chapter 3. Ruth’s mother-in-law, Naomi, said to her, “My daughter, shouldn’t I find rest for you so that you’ll be taken care of? Now isn’t Boaz our relative? Haven’t you been working with his female servants? This evening he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor. Wash, put on perfumed oil, wear your best clothes, go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let the man know you were there until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, notice the place where he’s lying, go in and uncover his feet and lie down, and then he will explain to you what you should do.”

So Ruth said to her, “I will do everything you say.” She went down to the threshing floor and did everything her mother-in-law had charged her to do. After Boaz ate, drank, and was in good spirits, he went to lie down at the end of the pile of barley, and she came secretly, uncovered his feet, and lay down. At midnight, Boaz was startled, turning over, and there, lying on his feet, was a woman. So he asked, “Who are you?” “I am Ruth, your servant,” she replied. “Take me under your wing, for you are a family redeemer.”

Then he said, “May the Lord bless you, my daughter. You have shown more kindness now than before, because you have not pursued younger men, whether rich or poor. Now don’t be afraid, my daughter. I will do for you whatever you say, since all the people in my town know that you are a woman of noble character. Yes, it is true that I am a family redeemer, but there is a redeemer closer than I. Stay here tonight and in the morning, if he wants to redeem you, that’s good. Let him redeem you. But if he doesn’t want to redeem you, as the Lord lives, I will. Now lie down again until morning.”

Verse 14. So she lay down on his feet until morning, but got up when it was still dark. Then Boaz said, “Don’t let it be known that a woman came to the threshing floor.” And he told Ruth, “Bring the shawl you’re wearing and hold it out.” And when she held it out, he shoveled 6 measures of barley into her shawl and she went into the town. She went into her mother-in-law, Naomi, who asked her, “What happened, my daughter?” And then Ruth told her everything the man had done for her. She said, “He gave me these 6 measures of barley because he said, ‘Don’t go back to your mother-in-law empty-handed.’” Naomi said, “My daughter, wait until you find out how things go, for he won’t rest until he solves this today.”

Chapter 4, verse 1. Boaz went to the gate of the town and sat down there. Soon the family redeemer Boaz had spoken about came by. And Boaz said, “Come over here and sit down.” So he went over and sat down. And then Boaz took 10 men of the town’s elders and said, “Sit here.” And they sat down. And he said to the redeemer, “Naomi, who has returned from the territory of Moab, is selling the portion of the field that belonged to our brother, Elimelech. I thought I should inform you. Buy it back in the presence of those seated here and in the presence of the elders of my people. If you want to redeem it, do it. But if you do not want to redeem it, tell me so that I will know because there isn’t anyone other than you to redeem it and I am next after you.” “I want to redeem it,” he answered.

Then Boaz said, “On the day you buy the field from Naomi, you will acquire Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the deceased man, to perpetuate the man’s name on his property.” And the redeemer replied, “I can’t redeem it myself or I will ruin my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption because I can’t redeem it.” At an earlier period in Israel, a man removed his sandal and gave it to the other party in order to make a matter legally binding concerning the right of redemption or the exchange of property. This was the method of legally binding a transaction in Israel.

Verse 8. This is quarterly. No, quarterly is 13. I lied. So the redeemer removed his sandal and said to Boaz, “Buy back the property yourself.” Boaz said to the elders and the people, “You are witnesses today that I am buying from Naomi everything that belonged to Elimelech, Shilian, and Malon. I have also acquired Ruth the Moabitess, Malon’s widow, as my wife to perpetuate the deceased man’s name on his property so that his name will not disappear among the relatives or from the gate of his hometown. You are my witnesses today.”

All the people who were at the city gate, including the elders, said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is entering your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built the house of Israel. May you be powerful in Ephrath and your name be well known in Bethlehem. May your house be like that of Perez and the son Tamar bore to Judah because of the offspring the Lord will give you by this young woman.”

Now, verse 13, what the quarterly is. Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. He slept with her, and the Lord granted conception to her, and she gave birth to a son. And the woman said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord who has not left you without a family redeemer today. May his name be well known in Israel. He will renew your life and sustain you in old age. Indeed, your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than 7 sons, has given birth to him.” Naomi took the child, placed him on her lap, and became a mother to him.

The neighbor woman said, “A son has been born to Naomi.” And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David. Now these are the generation family records of Perez. Perez fathered Hezron. Hezron fathered Ram. Ram fathered Amminadab. Amminadab fathered Nashon. Nashon fathered Salmon. Salmon fathered Boaz. Boaz fathered Obed. Obed fathered Jesse. And Jesse fathered David.

A familiar story and a beautiful story. It’s one that I wish we could have taken a week for each chapter just so we could really dig into and enjoy. But I hope—I’m going to say this now, it comes up in the end too—I hope it’s really obvious. I mean, this is the gospel. It is redemption unfolding right here in the Old Testament. And so much of Scripture, all of Scripture, points and foreshadows to the redemptive work of Jesus. But this one is exactly pointing to Jesus because we get to read that, you know, down from Perez down to Jesse—I’m sorry, to David—and we know that King David is redemptive in the family line of Jesus because we read that in Matthew. It’s beautiful. So not only does it foreshadow Jesus, but it literally leads right up to Jesus himself, which is an incredible blessing.

So that said, there’s a question on my team that I like and I’m going to start there. Um, says: “What has provided you a sense of hope when everything seemed out of control?” I don’t know. I love that one. This is funny. My Bible case as a kid, like my zipper case, had that embroidered on it. So it’s always been in my head of like that’s—I don’t know. Plus Eagle Scout, Eagles in the—I just, I don’t know. It’s always been a favorite, but it’s a perfect one because it’s that deep abiding reminder that it’s not in our own strength. It’s through God’s power that we endure difficult or hard or frustrating or even just day-to-day little setbacks.

What else do you think? What else has given a sense of hope to you when things just feel—and it’s not necessarily big out of control, but just—it can even be, I have classes sometimes that you’re like, “My 4th hour this year, pray for me a little bit.” My 5th hour is wonderful. Same class, both Marketing 1, like lots of juniors. 5th hour, I love when they come in the room. 4th hour, I love when they leave the room. I mean, you just have those classes. You just have those classes. I snuck medicine. My eyes are doing that weird migraine warning thing.

What else? What else gives you hope in hard things? Yes, sir. Yeah. They will push them out of the nest, and then they will swoop under them if they can’t fly and carry them on their wings. I can’t wait to be in heaven someday to understand all the ways that nature unfolds God’s… It’s just incredible. I love those analogies. It’s amazing. Well, I know growing up… My mom had the footprints in the state. Oh, yeah. And, you know, there was a song about it that, you know, talks about it. You know, “Why did God, why did he leave me when there was 1 set of footprints?” Right. “I was carried.” Yeah, like “I didn’t need you. You just didn’t realize it.” Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, I think realistically, like, you’ve got… There’s so many things that do provide us a sense of hope, which is where we’ll kind of land back to this place. But people, people are often a sense of hope. You know, when we’re going through difficult things, the people who love us well, who, and honestly, sometimes it’s just being there and not being abandoned. Stories. I think stories help remind us of, or give us hope. When we can look back—I love, I think most people do—I think Joseph’s story in Genesis is amazing. I mean, we’re so quick to be frustrated by like momentary pauses. We don’t know like, “Why won’t you do something, God?” And it’s like Joseph endured multiple decades of just waiting and waiting for God to do something. And it gives a lot of hope because you can look at his story and go, “This is incredible.”

I think we, there’s a lot of promises, but really in the end, the, the, the best—this is where me and I, it breaks my heart for—there’s a lot of people who would say they’re Christians who don’t believe that scripture is the inspired and air order of God. They don’t have that to rest in and say like, “This is my ultimate truth.” Like the world is always changing definitions of words and, and changing, I don’t know, traffic patterns. And like they added, they slipped in a double left hand lane off of Tesson into the hospital the other day. I didn’t even—I had driven that way like recently and all of a sudden it was like, “Whoa.” I mean, it just, like slipping things in everywhere. And my car’s old enough that if I did use the GPS in it, it would be wrong now.

So in a world that’s constantly in flux, which is just the way it’s always been, having something that genuinely can be the ultimate, like “This is a constant.” This is something that does give me hope because God’s word doesn’t change. One of the greatest things is when—Amen. Amen. And that’s the tangible working of us as instruments of God. And it’s an incredible thing. And hopefully we’ve all been on both sides of that, the receiving and the giving.

Because the reality is, the quarterly makes this comment, and it’s a good reminder, because we’re looking at Ruth and Naomi’s story. Nobody likes to feel helpless. Right? No one likes to feel out of control. I literally have never met someone who’s like, “I love feeling out of control.” And if you’ve met someone, let me know. But no one likes the feeling of insecurity and helplessness. That’s not a comfortable feeling because it often leads to fears. And most of the time, some people really like haunted houses. I’m past that point in life. I went to 1 haunted corn maze in college. I’m like, “I’m good.” I like the woods to not have people jumping out at me and trying to scare me.

But nevertheless, no one loves that feeling. No one goes looking to feel insecure and helpless and out of control. But what we’re going to see is for Ruth and Naomi, the crisis that they’re in is the very thing that draws them back to the redemptive plan of God. I’ll say it again. The very crisis they’re in that they would not have chosen is the very thing that drew them back to the redemptive plan that God was unfolding.

I think it was last week. It may have been 2 weeks ago. We talked a lot about… It was last week, yeah. God’s providence of the very ordinary moments of providence that God worked out, landing in Boaz’s field and happening upon all these circumstances and all these little dominoes falling in the right order is God’s providence. It’s just those little things. So I think… This question I jotted down last night, and we don’t necessarily… We will come back to this a little, but I’m planting the seed now. What is it like… I rewrote it. There it is. “How does crisis help turn our focus to God?” And it doesn’t necessarily mean big crisis. It can mean small crisis too. But how do crises—that’s the plural for crisis, right? Crises? I think so. How do crises turn our focus back to God? Why does that wake us up? Why does that turn the focus back?

I think that may have been… I was going to say, I may have… Where was that? Yeah, yes, okay. I’m glad, that was a good connection to last week. It’s, there’s the, okay, I wrote down, like, “Faithfulness reframes trouble as our context, not as the final story.” It’s the “God is against me” flipped into “God is not finished yet.” That, like, in Ruth’s story, it feels like subtraction, because it was. Like, there were multiple family deaths. Like, there was subtraction, there was loss. But that was where God was able to work. And I wrote down, “God is carrying me through something I do not yet understand.” We have to reframe our frustrations and crises. Is that “God’s carrying me through something I don’t understand” versus “God’s giving up on me.”

Yeah, Terry. Yes. Yes. Yes, which is even neater. I mean, this is not that many generations removed from the walls falling down in Jericho. Boaz, and I’m so glad Boaz is like a well-respected member of the community because it’d be so easy for him to, and maybe there was still a stigma because his mother wasn’t an Israelite and she was an outsider. Who knows? But regardless, he is still this respectable man. It’s really neat. I mean, it’s a very short throw. He would have heard that story. He would have known those stories, which is incredible. I think it’s incredible. You have Rahab. You have Ruth. You have Esther. They talk about in that time that women weren’t in power. But it seems like… Which is where it’s so neat that scripture is culturally, for thousands of years, women had a lower place. But scripturally, we never see that women are less valuable. It’s always been the case that they were part of the story, which is amazing. I mean, it’s beautiful. When people really study it and understand, “Oh, wow, it changes everything.”

But they don’t always tell you that to know. That question about crisis, before we move on. The thought I had, and we’ll come back to this toward the end as well, I think crisis often strips away the illusion of control. Think about that. Like, when we’re in real crisis mode, I cannot pretend I’m in control. Most of the time, I pretend I’m in control. Like, if you’ve been around my kids, I pretend like I’m in control. I am not always. But the reality of that is, if we pull that thread more, crisis strips away the illusion of control, and it also shows what we really trust in. Are we trusting in ourselves and our own ability? Or are we trusting in God the Father, who’s actually able to change hearts and move the will of men and time?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so it’s such a weird counterintuitive because when we when we lean into fear, we try really hard to pull back on the control. But the irony is then we don’t have hope because we’re trying to be in control and it’s… it’s like the penny at the mall. I use that a lot. It’s like, it just spirals out of control and it’s gone. Unless you’re bad at the penny and it just falls into the hole. I’ve been, I’ve done both. We were at the science center like last, I don’t know, sometime. And they had a penny thing and I was like, “Guys, I’m so excited. Like this is, we had these when I was a kid.” And like the first 3 pennies just flopped right into the hole. And I’m like, “This is so disappointing.” We finally got 1 that worked and they were like, “Okay, that was cool, Dad.” I’m like, it would have been cooler if it worked the first time.

Okay, let’s reread 8 through 10. So we’re just, we’re leaning into 2 small sections of this, but they’re great sections. So 8 through 10, chapter 3. So Ruth has obeyed her mother-in-law, and she now is going into the threshing floor. So at midnight, Boaz was startled, turned over, and there lying at his feet was a woman. So he asked, “Who are you?” “I am Ruth, your servant,” she replied. “Take me under your wing for you are a family redeemer.” Then he said, “May the Lord bless you, my daughter. You have shown more kindness now than before because you have not pursued younger men, whether rich or poor.”

Okay, I don’t know about you, but there are many parts of that that without any kind of cultural context, it’s weird. Do you know any women who have gotten their husband by sneaking in to where he’s sleeping and taking his cloak off his feet and resting it on them? Anyone? Really? No? Usually it’s a very strange… yeah, it does. Like, it really does. It does not get your husband to get you a restraining… Right, right, right. People don’t sleep outside anymore.

So context for this passage. The threshing floor that it’s talking about evidently—was not in my brain when I read threshing floor, I always thought barn—evidently, this is usually a long, like, you know, a lot of Israel was small hills like the Ozarks, and it would have been an area that was all rocky. So it was a spot that they could have threshed the grain to get the grain beat off of the stalks, but kept it kind of contained on rock versus it blowing away versus it being caught up in the dirt. It was probably out of doors. It was not inside. But it also was common. The reason he’s sleeping there is because during the barley harvest season, they would have wanted to protect their harvest while they were threshing the grain. They didn’t want to just leave it overnight and it’s stolen. So he would have stayed there. They knew he would have stayed there.

And I think we mentioned last week the providence of not only did they go back to Bethlehem at the time of harvest, which is great. But then they happen to go—or Ruth happened upon the field of Boaz, and he notices her. There’s all these dominoes that fall. But now they’re at the point where the harvest is being brought in, and they kind of know where Boaz will be. So Ruth is instructed by Naomi, which we read earlier. And she makes the—to my knowledge, I mean, it does not say that Ruth argues with her. It says in verse 5, “And so Ruth said to her, ‘I will do everything you say.’” Like, I’m sure there was a little more conversation, and Naomi probably explained why this was culturally appropriate, but it’s still super weird. But that was their context.

And the neat thing about this, this is where I do think I’m sad in some ways that modern church has lost some of these neat physical metaphors. Her going in and taking it off his feet and covering herself was a metaphor for placing herself under his refuge and care. So it was not unlike being under the shadow of wings or under the covering of the Lord, but in a very physical, metaphorical sense. Which I think is neat and not easily understood unless you go read a couple of study Bibles that have the good notes in them.

So we have this. Ruth goes to where he’s been gleaning. Naomi initiates the plan to ask Boaz to accept responsibility as the family’s kinsman redeemer. Ruth does exactly what she says. It’s important to note nothing she was doing was immoral or like seductive. She was just—this was a normal cultural thing. But we see Boaz in verse 8 is where we picked up that he’s immediately startled and asks, “Who are you?” And “I’m Ruth, your servant. Take me under your wing for you are a family redeemer.” It’s bold, but she’s obedient to her mother-in-law.

I love though, and this is where context helps. Verse 10, when Boaz says, “May the Lord bless you, my daughter. You have shown more kindness now than before because you have not pursued younger men, whether rich or poor.” So if we think back in context, initially, Boaz was very impressed with her, and he was grateful how she had been so kind and faithful to her mother-in-law. So her mother-in-law lost everything. Ruth stays with her to take care of her and to go and provide and to not let her be alone. And Boaz is already impressed, and he told her last week or a couple chapters ago, “Thank you for the kindness you’ve shown your family members.”

So when he says this, like, “You’ve shown even more kindness,” it does not immediately make sense because we don’t live in their culture. But what I learned when I was reading my, my study Bible, is that it would have been very common in their situation. They’re scared. They don’t have the means to care for themselves. They’ve moved back, but they’re at the end of the harvest. So it’s not as though they can plant anything. The best they could possibly do would be sell the field and get the money from it to survive. That’s what their plan was.

But it would not have been uncommon for Ruth, being a young widow, to start going after someone to marry her. So that way there’d be someone to provide for her and Naomi. It would have been maybe not the most socially acceptable, but it would have been a very normal thing because they’re scared and they want someone to take care of them. So when Boaz says, “May the Lord bless you, you’ve shown more kindness now than before because you have not pursued younger men, whether rich or poor.”

From what I read, that implies Boaz is probably older. They think. They do not know this for absolute certain. They think that the other redeemer was probably Elimelech’s brother. And then Boaz was likely a cousin or a younger brother. That’s their guess. They don’t know because there’s not a historical record that says exactly how Boaz was related to Elimelech and Naomi.

Nevertheless, Ruth has been faithful to wait and seek the family redeemer versus going after whichever men would give her attention, which is wonderful and noble. So Boaz explains, and it’s very… Ruth’s reaction, I’m sorry, Ruth’s words are very humble and kind and gracious, even though it’s odd to us. And Boaz very much appreciated the way that she had cared for her family. And in extension, cared for his family. So when we read that, “You have shown even more kindness.” She was the daughter-in-law. She was a foreigner from another land. She was a widow. Like she really, she was lovely to Naomi, but it would have probably been a little bit odd that this all transpired, that she would love her mother-in-law so much. So Boaz is looking at this of like, not only have you cared for her, but now you’re caring for our family because this is his family that he’s the redeemer of. It’s amazing. It’s a very beautiful moment that we see unfolding.

So there’s a question there on 122. And it says, and this is just if you feel well or happy to share, “How has God’s guidance through moments of uncertainty influenced your faith?” I would say, “How has God’s guidance in hard moments helped you through?” Maybe there’s another way to read that. I mean, has scripture been something that’s been a constant? Has it been specific things or family members? And it may not be something that you necessarily want to share, but it should be the kind of thing we can look back in our lives and we can see, okay, I quote songs too much. And I usually quote Caedmon’s Call because apparently that’s all I listen to. They were a big band in the 90s, early 2000s. They’re not together anymore. They all have jobs and kids. They had a song called “Lead of Love,” and I do not remember the exact line, but if you turned it on, I could sing the entire thing along with it. But it talks about, “I can look back now and see your lead of love,” implying like, I can now look behind and go, “Oh, I did not realize what you were doing, God, but now I can see.” Like you loved me through those difficult things, and I can see how you guided me through that.

And that’s this idea, this question. We should be able to look back, and we should probably make it a practice once in a while to do so, to look and see, “Wow, God unfolded circumstances that I did not see in the moment because I was living it.” I was stressed. I was the widow with a mother-in-law to take care of. But you look back and go, “Wow, look what God did.” That should be normal for us. We should often do that. That’s why I believe, very convinced that when we read through the Old Testament, there are so many reminders to say, “Remember these stories and tell them to your kids.” Because it’s just easy to forget. And it’s easy to get busy. Just because they didn’t have Snapgram and, you know, 70 mile an hour speed limits doesn’t mean they didn’t get busy and forget what God had done right before. I mean, it’s amazing how quick the Israelites forget us too.

Terry, you have a thought?

My testimony is God has never broken a promise. Amen. Amen. Amen. For me, that’s the same. I know there are other ways of seeing God’s guidance in moments that are hard. But for me, it’s always been Scripture, which I’m thankful for. The scripture pops into your mind quickly and comforts and usually gives wisdom and guidance.

I think it’s hard not to see this, to read this passage and not see how God is working in these moments with Ruth and Naomi and Boaz and this other family redeemer. It’s really hard not to see how the dominoes are all working out and exactly what God is going to do, which is just incredible and beautiful in so many ways. So before we read this, eh, let’s go ahead and read 11 through 13. Yeah, chapter 3, 11 through 13. There’s some really, really good questions in this one that kind of take this concept that we see Ruth and Naomi living and then bring it really home and practical for us. So 11 through 13.

“Now don’t be afraid, my daughter. I will do for you whatever you say, since all the people in my town know that you are a woman of noble character. Yes, it is true that I am a family redeemer, but there is a redeemer closer than I am. Stay here tonight and in the morning. If he wants to redeem you, that’s good. Let him redeem you. But if he doesn’t want to redeem you, as the Lord lives, I will. Now lay down again until morning.”

So, a sweet moment. It kind of makes me, I don’t know how to say this. I’m envious of their culture in some ways because there were so many things built into Jewish culture in that time to provide for people. You have the fields purposefully not being farmed to the very edge of everything so that the poor and needy can go and glean and have at least enough to survive. You have family redeemers as part of their culture and system that when there is a situation, there’s other family members who step in and take them into their household. I mean, there’s really beautiful things that we just don’t see as often anymore. So in some way, I know it’s a rabbit trail, but it’s a beautiful thing that we see built into their culture, and I love that.

But back to the storyline that we’re looking at here, there’s a question I jotted down, and I think this is a real one for all of us to wrestle: “How does insecurity usually lead us to fear?” How does that feeling of insecurity lead to fear often? I have lots of high school kid examples, but I’m curious what you all think too.

Too many unknowns in the future. Yeah. It’s really hard. We never know the future, but when we, there’s like certain times I feel like we really, really feel that we don’t know the future and it frazzles us more because the uncertainty itself can lead to fear. You see it like, I think some of it is, “Oh gosh, I’m probably going to get myself in trouble.” Okay.

I think some of it is exacerbated by kids watch way too many TikTok and Instagram and Facebook videos about feelings so they all think they have anxiety. And there are many kids who have real anxiety, but there are a lot of kids who they just don’t want to do their homework, so then they show up the next morning and then they’re like, “I’m falling apart, I’m having an anxiety attack,” because you’re like, “No, you’re just stressed because you didn’t study, like you sat in class and you played on your iPad and didn’t do anything.” There’s a difference between actually having anxiety.

That said, the clinicians are really seeing, and biblical counselors, secular counselors, that anxiety is rising in kids. And a lot of that, I believe, you start paying attention to what’s happening. They feel incredibly insecure because no one’s really forced them to do hard things. They’ve always kind of been bubble-wrapped their whole life. So then, when they have to do hard things, they genuinely panic.

I cannot tell you how many times a day—this is sad, how many times a day—I teach marketing. You should get an A in marketing. You have to work hard to get a B in marketing. I have to give some Bs this week on projects. One of them to my cousin. But nevertheless, yes, awkward. That’s probably generous. Oh, no. It’s generous. It’s actually because I don’t know that I want to deal with my aunt if I give him a C. I love her so much. And you have to weigh that in your mind of like, “OK, my integrity is worth this much.”

But this project was also supposed to be a fun intro project. It’s really just, I get to my own psychology test of watching them, see how they work together, decide who’s never going to work together again in groups, and what their skill. But it’s still like, you expect decent projects, not terrible and meh. So nevertheless, there are so many conversations today in marketing I have, which should be an easy A class. You really just have to show up and do the work and do it well. And the kids will be like, “Can you come check my work and make sure this is enough to get all the points?” And I’m like, “I don’t care about the points. I really don’t. I don’t care if this is a… I don’t have an exact, like, this is what a 10 out of 10 looks like in my mind. I want to see that you wrestled through it, that you tried to answer the question the best you could, and that you tried to be creative. Like, that’s all I was looking for.” And they’re like, “But is this what you were looking for?” And you’re like, “You’re missing the point.”

That conversation must happen 7 to 8 times, 7 to 10 times a day. And it’s typically a young lady who’s a very high achiever and she wants everything to be perfectly done. Um, occasionally it’s a guy, they usually tend to float to the like, “I mean, I did the basics.” Um, it’s a new world, but I say all that, that kind of insecurity for them is a tough thing. It’s simple. I look at it and I’m like, “Guys, if you did the work, you’re good. You got the grade.” They look at it and they’re like, “But I don’t know if I did exactly what you want me to do. So I don’t know if I’ll get there.” And it leads them to fear.

So I say that it’s the little ounce of insecurity run amok. It’s like a train that’s run out of control. And before you know it, an ounce of insecurity over something that does not impact the wellbeing of their life beyond that 3 minute period turns into this very fearful kid who’s just clenched up about their grades all the time. So the high schoolers are an easy example. But we do it too. We just do it with other things that are probably equally dumb, but not quite as obviously dumb as that. Because it’s easier to feel insecure and fearful than it is to walk step by step trusting the Lord.

And you know which one you get more attention for on Snapgram? The negative one. Everybody’s seen it. Everyone knows now the, I don’t remember the exact numbers, but something like a negative or sad or whiny story on the news or social media spreads 10 times faster than like, “Yay, happy dogs were adopted.” You see happy dogs getting adopted, but those don’t get nearly as many likes as the sad stories because sad is what gets more clicks.

So we then have to ask, when we think about that idea of why does insecurity lead to fear, how do I stop that train? How do I stop the flyaway train? I immediately see old Western movie in my head of black and white trains flying off. But how do we stop it? What do we do? We’ll come back to that in a second.

So let’s look at the storyline here again, the narrative is unfolding. So Boaz, very quickly, I love Boaz so much. I should have named one of the kids Boaz, but not too late. Kidding, kidding, kidding, kidding, kidding. “Now don’t be afraid, my daughter.” What a great start. “Now don’t be afraid. I will do for you whatever you say, since all the people in my town know you are a woman of noble character. Yes, it is true. I am a family redeemer, but there is a redeemer closer than I. Stay here tonight in the morning. If he wants to redeem you, that’s good. Let him redeem you. But if he doesn’t want to redeem you as the Lord lives, I will.”

I mean, he immediately puts all of the unrest at ease. The things that have been well, there’s no way Ruth wasn’t afraid going into the situation. Wouldn’t you be? I don’t want to go to someone when they’re asleep and uncover their feet and then like get under the blanket. Like that’s a weird thing. Like, she had to have been afraid. On top of afraid, because they know that they’re in a precarious spot. Two widows who have nothing. That’s a precarious spot. And now she’s going in and doing this weird cultural thing. And has no idea Boaz is going to say yes, or if she gets in trouble or loses her reputation. There’s so many dominoes that could fall.

But Boaz’s response immediately puts her at rest. Like… “You are a woman of noble character. I will do everything you say. Don’t be afraid. If he won’t do it, I will.” I mean, he’s taking care of all things. The New American Standard says, “I know you are a lady of access.” I like that wording. Yeah. I like that wording. That tends to be… If you’re ever in the market for Bible translations, I teach class from CSB because that’s what the quarterly does. Great translation. But my go-to translation is off as New American. So I tend to… If you hear from one of those two, that’s what it’s going to be. Dorky Bible things. Anyway.

So when we look at this, though, it’s amazing because she needs the confidence from Boaz because he’s the only one who can redeem her. Or only a redeemer can solve this situation, which is where we see that foreshadowing to Jesus, that redemption is necessary. And in this case, Ruth needs redemption, whether it’s Boaz or whether it’s this other redeemer.

So Boaz explains, and this is where that comes back of they think they think that whoever this other redeemer was was probably Elimelech’s brother, which means he would have been an even older man. And Boaz was likely a cousin or a younger brother, since he was not the immediate next of kin to Naomi’s husband. So we don’t know for sure. But nevertheless, it’s beautiful that Boaz does this.

So when you think about that idea I asked before, how do we stop the runway train? How do we find peace in the midst of insecurity and fear and uncertainty? How do we do that? How do we find peace in those moments? Yeah. Looking outside of ourself is always a good start. Everyone knows the internal, whatever it’s called, doom loop. There’s a real word, but I can’t think of what it is right now. Did you raise your hand? Oh, OK, I thought you put your hand up.

What else do we think? How do we stop the runaway train? Another thing is psychologically, I’m doing this as a school principal. When someone passed away, one of our students, the counselor made the bonehead mistake of bringing all the kids together in one room. And next thing you know, everybody would do it. And they didn’t even know the kid. Yes. I vividly remember. There was a kid who passed away, two boys. They were driving down Old Gravois. I guess it was our junior year, might have been senior, but sometime early 2000s. Lindbergh is big. I mean, and it’s not as big as some schools, but it’s not small. I mean, there were 2,000 kids there when I was at Lindbergh. And I remember, I knew them. But I did not know them well. But the emotions of everyone, because the same thing. They kind of brought everybody together, and all of a sudden, it would have been probably a group of 15 or 20 kids that were really close who needed, like, just give them time. Like, let them go spend some time with friends and family. But instead, the whole school was morose for a week. And it was, again, it’s a horrible thing. But the counselor made it. Like, what’s the word? I don’t know the word. Yeah, snowball. That’s the word.

So part of it, too, when we’re in these moments of fear and insecurity and we’re trying to seek peace, we have to stop it from the avalanche of crazy. It happens easy. It happens really easy. That’s where I think news has gotten hard, too, because you watch the news. Everybody’s mad about something. So then you’re like, “Well, I guess I got to be mad about some stuff.” And, you know, I just don’t need to be mad about stuff. It’s like I need to pray about stuff and then I need to trust that God’s going to handle that. But it’s simple and it spreads fast.

I wrote down a few. So I think ways that are, that are good, sound, biblical ways to find peace and chaos. Scripture, that should surprise no one that I would say that, but really learning how to abide in scripture. There’s been a couple folks that, um, since my evangelism class this summer, have, have continually sent me messages, um, because they have hard stuff going on in life. They have not handled it well—lots of blaming God—but they still want to talk about it, which is great. The fact that they want to talk about it means that God’s not done, you know, churning.

But it’s heartbreaking because trying to get them to just, like, just go find a few Psalms and just read them over and over again until you believe it. Like, just, like, I think one of them, I was like, “Psalm 63 is great.” I could be wrong. Don’t quote me. But um, I was like, just make it your own. Like every day read it 2 or 3 times before when you get up, when you go to bed, like let it actually sit on your heart versus just read it and be like, “Yep, know that, yep, yep, yep,” and then move on. Let it actually… there’s something about meditating on scripture that softens the ice that’s formed.

Um, I think music is great too, like there’s a lot of music like really great songs. That’s where old hymns are so important because they had really important theological truths woven into them. So when I memorize it, I can hold on to that thing and remind myself in the hard moments. Some people it’s nature. Some people it’s slowing down. I think we are not good at this. For whatever reason, a lot of us have been coached in life that praying means we need to talk to God and confess all the things. Yes. Sometimes praying is also shutting up and just sitting down and focusing on the Lord and just being at the foot of his throne and letting us be reminded that we’re not God, we’re not in control. The fear doesn’t have to consume. And that’s easier said than done because it takes time and it takes practice and it takes intentionality.

So there’s a question there in 122, the very logical next step: “What keeps us from trusting God with our fears?” If we know we should trust, what’s going to get in the way of us trusting God with our fears? Stupidity for sure. Yes, I love backup plans. My backup plans. They’re really dumb. I’ve really actually tried to make a conscious effort to like simmer down just because I know like… there’s nothing wrong with that in Eagle Scout world, but sometimes you need to just have a plan, and if it doesn’t work, you pivot. Or you pray, and you’re like, “God, what do I need to do next?”

It happens at school all the time. Working in a high school now, there are some classes that I would kind of put like science, and like it’s very methodical, it’s very like we come in, we do our lecture, but then we go to the lab and do like. But a lot of classes where it’s very experimental and like salt, like math—some math can probably do the simple clean—but a lot of math is too project-based to like it’s you’re everywhere. And English, if you’re reading books with kids, you don’t know what they’re gonna say. Um, if it’s business and they’re solving problems again, it’s might be a good day, it might be a by 4th hour.

But nevertheless, I say all that. Not having a backup plan sometimes is a really good thing. Because sometimes in those moments is when a really sweet conversation with a kid happens or a really great opportunity with someone. You just never know because you didn’t backup plan it to death, even though I like that. What else do you think? What else keeps us from trusting God with our fears?

Yeah, I think we live in a pretty biblically illiterate age. By and large, a lot of Christians haven’t actually read their whole Bible, ever. And it’s not like you have to do it every… There’s some guy that I watch his YouTube videos. He reads the Bible 4 times a year. I am so impressed because I always feel like me reading it once a year, I’m like, oof. And it’s… I don’t know how he does it 4 times a year. Yes, I’ve seen people who do this. Wasn’t Joy doing that too? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I forget where I saw it, and I’m sure it’s on Amazon, but there’s a company that makes blank Bibles. I mean, it’s not a Bible. It’s a future Bible because you get—but it’s giant because obviously we write bigger than printed. But that’s why they sell it, and they have all these empty pages for you to literally rewrite the Bible. And I’m like—there’s a little bit of me that I’m like, you know, not now, not this season of life, but that might be really fun someday to rewrite the whole thing. Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s amazing.

I mean, and I think that’s the, when we consider the things that help us struggle to trust God, not being in Scripture is probably number 1. And it’s annoying because it’s the same thing your Sunday school teacher said forever ago. You’re like, “Read your Bible and pray.” And it’s because it was really good advice. We just let it become, I don’t know, it felt like the old advice. So like there’s got to be a new, better advice. No, it’s still the best advice.

So before we run out of time, let’s read. We got to pop to 4:4, verse 13 through 17. So, in between, Ruth leaves, takes a big serving. The commentary that I read, they thought probably like 50 to 70 pounds of grain she had in her shawl, carrying back to Naomi more than the day before. So Boaz overwhelmingly provides and blesses, which is really neat. Side comment.

But Naomi, now in this new confidence, is like, “Wait until you find out. He will not rest until he takes care of this today. It’s unbelievable.” So then we know the story. Boaz goes and gets the other redeemer. He brings the town elders. He explains. And then we pick up in verse 13. Here we go.

Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. He slept with her and the Lord granted conception to her and she gave birth to a son. The woman said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord who has not left you without a family redeemer today. May his name become well known in Israel. He will renew your life, sustain you in old age. Indeed, your daughter-in-law who loves you is better to you than 7 sons and has given birth to him.”

Naomi took the child, placed him on her lap, and became a mother to him. And the neighbor women said, “A son has been born Naomi.” And they named him Obed. And he was the father of Jesse, the father of David. It’s just beautiful. I mean, no one loves the sad ending stories. So when you have a beautiful redemption story, it’s our redemption story. Those who trust in Jesus, like, we read this, and it’s such a short verse. I mean, you’ve got 13, 14, 15 through 17. It’s kind of disappointing.

It is very much, I talk about this too much, but it is very much like every movie made by Hallmark. Like the whole movie is drama, and then you get to the end and it’s like, it’s over. And you’re like, “Whoa, like what happened? Where did they move? Like, did they have kids? Like, what’s their house look like?” I mean, there’s no details. It is the most infuriating part of all like, you know, TV movies. It’s just, it’s over now. And this… at least we know what happens to their family after this. But that’s it. It’s just like a wrap-up in 5 verses of, “Okay, it’s all better now.” You have all this heartache and turmoil.

But I have to wonder. This is a Brian wonderment. Maybe that’s the beauty of the kingdom of God, is that there is all of this heartache and pain and brokenness, and then God makes things right. And it really, it’s just, “Okay, like it is now made right.” And it’s an incredible thing, just a wonderment. But we still see the story, and we get to understand the way that this redemption has mattered.

So when we… I’m going to make sure I didn’t miss any of the notes in here. Oh, yeah, we got to go back. Verse 15 says, let’s see, “Indeed, your daughter-in-law who loves you and is better to you than 7 sons has given birth to him.” What a blessing. Again, it is really easy when we are Naomi to feel like all of the world is junk. Nothing good has happened. Everyone’s gone. I am alone. Boo. But indeed, your daughter-in-law who loves you and is better to you than 7 sons.

God so loved Naomi that his daughter-in-law, her daughter-in-law, did not give up on her and is now said to be better than 7 sons, which you can make the connection. 7 was the biblical number for completion or a heavenly number. So it’s important that it’s like, “This is a big deal. This is better than the ultimate.” Having 7 sons is just having Ruth.

I know. But wait, hang on. Yeah, it’s such an interestingly beautiful thing because I see that almost the redemption is so complete that not only has Ruth been restored, but also Naomi has now been restored by this too, which is amazing. And you can’t help but get excited because you look at it and go, “Okay, if I think to how this foreshadows to Jesus, look how his redemption spreads.” That his redemption isn’t just for me. It’s something that impacts my family and my friends and the people I’m around. And it’s pervasive how… strong is not the right word. The redemption is that pervasive that it spreads. It’s amazing. It’s a beautiful living metaphor of the exact redemption story that we get to live in Jesus.

Let’s see. There’s something else I wanted to note with the words in here. It’ll come to me. There’s a question though on 125 because we’re short on time. In what ways does God’s redemptive work change the way we live daily? We are part of a redemption story. So how does our redemption story and God continually redeeming brokenness in the world, how should that change the way we live every day?

I think in a very, very practical sense, it reminds us of what is true: that we are loved, we are chosen, and we are redeemed. And in a world where often we feel fearful, insecure, frustrated, confused, to remember what is true can be the anchor that holds us really well. And in this case, in the midst of the fear, the turmoil, the insecurity that Ruth and Naomi surely felt, this whole thing has reminded them, even in the midst of their loss, they were still loved, they were chosen, and they are now redeemed. And when we can remember that about our own lives, that does change the way we live.

You know, Brian, when I think about heaven, then I immediately think about hell. And it would be awful to spend an eternity in hell. All you have to do is accept. Yes, and surrender and just walk in that. I know. I spend a lot of time thinking about heaven too and just eternity in general because there’s so much mystery to it, but at the same time, it’s not bad mystery. It’s, “I can’t wait to understand” or “I can’t wait to see” or “I can’t wait to…” I get really excited about…

And this is total rabbit trail, but welcome. You’re used to it by now. The whole idea when we read in Revelation of the new Jerusalem coming down to the new earth, I get so excited. I’m like, “What’s it going to be like? I mean, what is that really going to be that God is restoring and making new?” I don’t know. There’s a lot of that. We can’t talk about it too long or I’ll rabbit trail forever. But when we remember where we’re going and we remember what is true, it does change the day to day. No longer are the little frustrations and setbacks and big things permanent because that’s not where we’re going to end up. This isn’t our home. We’re sojourners.

So okay, I have to summarize questions because we have too many questions and not enough time here. Okay. How do we… I’m going to go back to that question a little bit. How do we really surrender all those fears and doubts? Like Ruth and Naomi are wrestling through this, and Boaz is redeeming the situation. But how do we practically, day to day, because we know Jesus has redeemed us. We know where we’re going. Yeah, Terry. Yeah.

We picture him as every time I step out of line, he’s going to squash me like a bug. That’s not who he is. Because he proved that when he sent Christ to the cross. And he couldn’t even look at his own son. I can’t imagine that. To genuinely send your only son, one of the Trinity, to do the thing that us humans could not do is agonizing.

There’s a book I read it years ago. I actually started rereading it the other day called The Cross-Centered Life. Really beautiful book. It’s like 80 pages. It’s not a big deal. It’s cheap on Kindle. It’s a small paperback. But it’s phenomenal because the author is always making the case of how, as believers, our focus has to continually be back on the cross, of what Jesus did for us and what that actually meant. Because when we’re focused on the cross, when we understand the true God of Scripture, that very quickly displaces fear.

It very quickly displaces uncertainty. It’s not an immediate like, it’s not like movies where like the whole, it’s like, what’s that Wizard of Oz where it goes from black and white to color immediately. But it slowly unravels the lies and the pain and the brokenness that we live in. So we have to consider genuinely, I wrote it down a few things, but we have to genuinely consider how God is calling us every day to continually set those things down.

I think with fear… and I have to cut out a few things over here, so we’re going to focus on the important. If we really want to surrender those doubts and fears and live in hope, we have to sometimes just name the fears. We don’t like doing that because we don’t really like admitting that we have fear. We don’t like admitting that we have insecurities. We don’t like admitting that there’s something wrong. But when we name them, that helps. Two, fear can’t exist in God’s presence.

The more that we place ourselves, again, a cross-centered life rooted in Scripture and the real God of Scripture, fear cannot remain when we are deeply rooted and deeply focused on the cross. And fear, I said this earlier about remembering and how there’s all those moments in Scripture that we see the Israelites charged, like, “Don’t forget. Tell these stories to your kids. Remember, remember.” Fear sometimes comes from forgetting.

Like I have to remind myself when we have something hard going on, I’m like, “You know what? God has been so good to us in so many ways through so many hard things. He is going to be good in this. It may not be the outcome I want, but he’s going to be good in this too.” But we forget. We forget. We have to… another book I love, The Gospel Primer. We have to preach the gospel to ourselves all the time because we are prone to wander. Right?

And then we also, the last one is like we can’t let our emotions speak louder than God’s word. Like we can’t. But we’re humans. So we have to fight against that. We have to consciously and maybe audibly remind ourselves it’s okay to feel this emotion, but I also have to trust God’s word more. Because my emotions are not going to be the anchor that holds me in the storm that God’s word wouldn’t.

So since we’re out of time, last thought. Life is unpredictably hard. I’m sorry, incredibly hard. It’s unpredictable, but life is also a huge blessing. Ruth and Naomi remind us of the beauty of redemption in God’s kingdom. And we can find ourselves in both Naomi and Ruth. Like we have been both of those. We have been Boaz at times for others. But in all of those things, we can be steadfast knowing that we belong to the same God who quietly unfolded this providential plan that redeemed us.

Two women in the ancient Near East, 3-ish thousand years ago. That’s the same God that we serve today. And we can still quietly trust him and remain steadfast in that way. So that said, it is time to pray. And then, yeah. Father God, thank you. Thank you for Ruth and Naomi’s story, for Boaz.

Father, I wish we’d had so much more time to dig into the nuance and the story and the details and the cultural context. But God, bless us in this last moment as we wrap up our summer study through Joshua and Judges and Ruth. Let these be words that draw us closer to you. Help us to surrender our fear and our insecurities and our doubts. Help us to not let emotions reign supreme, but help us to genuinely rest in your word.

Let the Bible be the thing that pulls us back to you over and over again and gives us confidence and hope for all the things that we know we’re going to struggle through. God, thank you for our class. Thank you for what you do for us every day. We lift up all of our prayer requests and praises, and we ask all these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

All right, next week we start Romans. Romans for the fall, which will be great. There’s a very good chance my school small group will also be doing Romans. We’ll see. The kids won’t know, and then I have one less thing to prep. So my kids might also be studying Romans this year. Thank you all.

Thanks, Linda. Are you guys going to go do this desk? Oh, okay. Yeah, as long as it’s that left side, yeah. Oh, that’s right. Oh, sorry, Allison, just cut you off. You are so wise for your age. Oh, gosh. Mom doesn’t think so. She sees me day to day. Throw her under the bus. In the question session, when Jill was doing…

It is. That book is really good. I don’t have a paper copy anymore. I just have it on my Kindle. But man, the other day I… I think I just stumbled on it on accident. I was like, “I need to reread this one because it’s a good book.” And I think if I remember right, the way he writes it, the whole bottom half of the page is all the scripture citations, which I just love because then you know everything he’s written. You’re like, “Nope, this is literally scripture just unfolded.” I’m still excited to read it, though.

I’m impressed you still have it. No, everybody needs a good laugh. Okay, why isn’t it showing up as… the recording? Moving. No, it says recording stopped. Oh, okay. But it’s not showing anything about converting it. Remember, it did that last time. It just takes a minute for it to pop up. It converts in the background for some reason. Ugh. It’s making me nervous.