Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have also obtained access by faith into his grace, in which we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that sufferings produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Join me now in prayer as we ask for the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching and hearing of His Word now from the book of Ruth. That was our Old Testament reading. Let’s pray now. Join me in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we do come again before You. What a privilege we have, dear Lord, in being in Your presence and sensing Your grace upon us and Your love upon us in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we pray that you would come to us again as we continue to worship you, not as speakers now, but as hearers, as we listen to the voice of our Lord Jesus as he speaks to us from his word. And we pray, Heavenly Father, that we would be aware of his presence with us and of his authority and power and grace. And we ask, Lord, that you would draw us to him as individuals, yes, and as a church family, and that we would kneel inwardly before him and love him always and love him more. We pray that we may know the great love of Christ our Savior even now and know the certainty that we are indeed the ones that he loves. We ask all of this, your people saying together, amen.

You may be seated. Turn, if you would, back to Ruth, chapter one. I’m not gonna get very far into Ruth. This is an introduction in the setting. And as we do so, I wonder how many of you have heard people talk in the past about the good old days? Or maybe you’ve heard people talk about the glory days of high school or college. One historian reminds us that there was no golden age. There is no golden age. And indeed, the glory days will be the golden age when we receive our resurrected glorified bodies and are brought into the presence of our Savior and behold the face of our Lord. But we all do look at periods of time when we’ve experienced and read about, and the general trend is to think of the times, to recognize the downward spiral and decay of a fallen world that seems to reject and despise the creator of heaven and earth. We label times that we remember fondly as good old times, and the current state of things as times of turmoil and calamity. Of course, this is selective memory, right? But this morning, we are beginning to go through the book of Ruth. And as we do so, we need to recognize that the book of Ruth is set in a wicked and dark time in Israel’s history. Many perceive the book of Ruth as in quite a sterile, in quite disconnected way, a story with merely a happy ending, marketed to women’s gatherings and women’s retreats. But if we’re to look at what God is teaching us in this book, We have to understand its context and its setting to understand the point and the punch of what is going on there and what the Lord has given us in the book of Ruth for our good and for His glory. What were the times of Ruth and Naomi and Boaz? What was going on? What was the backdrop of the times in which they lived? This is what we’re gonna look at this morning. And we’ll orient ourselves to the setting that was one of the blackest times in the history of Israel. And as we do so, we will see that because God is the God who promises and provides, we can rejoice in confidence. We can rejoice because God is the God who promises and provides for his people. We can rejoice in confidence. So you have an outline in your back of your bulletin there. We’ll look first at the historic calamity of the time, the historic calamity. And then we’ll look at the hope of the country, right? What the nation needed. And then finally, thirdly, we’ll look at the hero to come, the hero to come to provide that hope and to meet that need that we see there.

Historic Calamity of the Time

But first, the historic calamity of the time. Ruth opens in verse one and says, in the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. And in these brief words we find a ton of information about the time in which the story takes place. It takes place in the time of the judges. And those familiar with your history remember that this was a time of great idolatry and wickedness and apostasy. We learn from this opening that it takes place in the times of the judges and there was a famine in the land, a famine in the land. This meant, of course, great economic ruin and hardship, right? The whole way of life for the people was impacted and in turmoil because of this famine. It is a time of calamity and darkness, of turmoil and famine and rebellion and sin and idolatry. And we’ll see in a moment that the book of Judges tells us of such shocking and gross sin. We can easily forget that it’s talking about the people of God. This is the story of God’s chosen people, his precious people. But that is the darkness and depths to which they’ve fallen. And it’s from this time, the time of the Judges, when the Judges rule, that this book, the book of Ruth, comes to us. And if we take care to pay attention, we see that Ruth, comes to us and shows us that as calamitous and dark as times may be, God has yet prepared a future hope and a path and light, and even in the midst of the most vile times and evil days. So what is the context, Ruth, of the days when the judges ruled? How did it get so bad? Well, you remember how God called Abraham He called them, and how from this one man, Abraham, comes the nation Israel. And Israel, at a pivotal moment in its history, in her history, is enslaved, and she’s under oppressive conditions of Egypt. And this great multitude that they’ve grown to cry out to the Lord, and the Lord hears them. And the Lord leads them out of Egypt. and he hears them and leads them out of Egypt through the great exodus, right, the exodus. But Israel does not go directly into the promised land, that land flowing with milk and honey. They go rather into the desert, into the wilderness wanderings for 40 years. And there God tests their faithfulness. In the first generation, that first generation that came from Egypt fails the test and they perish. And the Lord prepares their children to go and enter into the promised land. And this generation under Joshua, the successor to Moses, takes the land by conquest as they enter into the land. And the Lord puts the nations that live there under the ban. And they are to be completely driven out and eradicated from the land. And God promises and commands them to do so, not because of the righteousness of Israel or their merit, but because the nations that dwelt there are so evil and have so defiled the land that it vomits them out. And God uses Israel as His instrument to accomplish that very task. And in the book of Joshua, we see God indeed delivering them into the land, giving them success and victory one after the next. They are imperfect to be sure. and incomplete, sin remains. But on the whole, the book of Joshua ends on a positive note. There are pockets of people still needing to be dealt with. But in general terms, for Israel, victory has been accomplished in the promised land. And the book of Judges opens on a similar note where Joshua ends. The tribes of Israel are commanded, take your territories and drive out the remnants that are still there. General success and victory and conquest, glory days for Israel, indeed. But incomplete fulfillment and partial success become, what, a stumbling block and ruin for the rest of Israel’s time in the land. Because people like the Canaanites and the Philistines, what, they worshiped other gods, and Israel would be tempted by them and go after those foreign gods. Scripture says they hoard after them, such intense and grossness was this betrayal of Yahweh, their God, who led them there. And we learn in the book of Judges that the problem with Israel, how they could turn from conquest to calamity, was what? It’s that they repeatedly forgot their God. And there’s this cycle you know well in the book of Judges. And we see it again and again, the people forgot their God. And there is this cycle. God sends the nations, he sends peoples to oppress them. And Israel cries out to the Lord, and they remember him. And God raises up a judge to deliver them. And as the judge defeats their enemies, rest is given to the land. We know the pattern, it happens again and again through these many chapters of the book of Judges. We know the pattern, and we see something else happening. as the book of Judges unfolds, as we move through the story of the Judges. There’s another cycle or another pattern that we see, and that pattern is the Judges’ diminishment, right? The Judges slowly diminish in their effectiveness, in their faithfulness, right? The cycle of sin by the people, then repentance, deliverance, and rest, but also this pattern where the Judges grow weaker and weaker. And this is very important for us to see and to understand as we see the gross and heinous nature. In the gross and heinous times, there are the times wherein Ruth comes, the book of Ruth. The first judge you’ll remember is Othniel. Othniel, he was the ideal judge, right? He was the, if you will, platonic form of judgeness, right? He was the man. We don’t know much about him, but we know that when God raises him up, he acts in power and he follows the word of the Lord, and the enemies are defeated. And for 40 years, the people have rest in the land. He’s a judge who brings rest. And then fast forward later, the seventh judge, we have Samson, right, Samson. And Samson is the polar opposite of Othniel, right? We have such a deep tradition of decontextualized and sadly moralistic teaching that sometimes we only see and envision Samson just like one of the winners of the strongman competition that we see today, right? He could carry the vida bug the longest. He could throw the keg the farthest. And this is what we think of, or we think of Samson as this crazy guy who beats people up with jawbones and does other crazy things, and ties torches to foxtails. But the thing about Samson is that Samson does everything wrong. He does everything that God tells him not to do. Samson, you’ll remember, has a supernatural birth. He had a mother who was barren. She could not conceive. And the Lord acts in the life of this family. And Samson is born. And his parents are told that he is to be set apart, sanctified, set apart as holy, especially to the Lord. And it was a Nazarite vow. He is prohibited from a handful of things. He’s prohibited from drinking strong drink. He cannot be around death unless he become unclean. He cannot cut his hair. But the main thing of this vow, the main thing that Samson is to be, is to be set apart to Yahweh, keeping him from defilement and temptation of the gods around him, of the nations around him. We can’t get into all of this this morning, but we see that immediately in the life of Samson. He begins flirting around with all of these prohibitions of the vows. He lusts after Philistine women, he loves them. He gets drunk, he handles dead bodies. And finally, his hair is shaven off, his head is shaved. And he turns back on his vows and his holy identity is lost. And the story ends how? It ends in disgrace where he is breaking his back like a beast of burden, treading out the grain. When Samson finally acts as judge and raises up, defeating the Philistines, what happens? He dies in the act, leaving no rest in Israel, because the rest only lasts as long as the judge lasts. And I want you to see, right, you know we’ve seen it again and again in God’s Word. He lays down again and again patterns and pointers and shows in history things and types and shadows for us. And we look at the life of Samson, and we also see a mirror to the life of Israel. Israel, too, had a supernatural birth. God called her and delivered her. He brought her to conquest. And because of God’s special care, Israel was set apart, special and holy to the Lord. And like Samson, Israel was tempted by foreign gods, the gods around her. And she broke every one of the vows, and her holiness is finally removed. And that special identity is taken away from her. And Judges ends how, with Israel what? Bound and blind in disarray and sin. And back in bondage all over again. Even in the promised land, right? In the promised land, these are dark days of historic calamity for the nation of Israel. and to fully understand, to punctuate the depths that Israel has fallen in the context of the time, we need to look at two final shocking points that take place at the end of the book of Judges. There are two stories, two events regarding two Levites that conclude the book of Judges. The first one is about a Levite. This is important. A Levite from where? From Bethlehem in Judea. Bethlehem in Judea. In this Levite from Bethlehem in Judea, he accepts a job, remember, serving as what? The priest of a false god. Things were so bad and so low that this Israelite whose job, whose life is dedicated, he’s supposed to teach the law of God to the people. He takes a position serving another god, a false god. And then secondly, there is a Levite, we see in Judges 19, who takes a concubine for himself from where? From Bethlehem of Judea. Hmm, Bethlehem of Judea. And we read that as he travels with her in his company, he needs to stop for the night, but he is concerned about where he stops. And in Judges 19, 11, it says this. The day was nearly over and the servant said to his master, come now, let us turn aside to this city of the Jebusites and spend the night in it. And his master said to him, we will not turn aside to the city of foreigners who do not belong to the people of Israel. We will pass through and pass on to Gibeah. The Levite there is aware enough to realize that he shouldn’t stop there in a foreign town. But Gibeah, of course, as you know, is one of the tribes of Benjamin, one of the tribes of Israel. They will be safe and cared for amongst their brethren. It’s a friendly city. And they come to Gibeah, this Levi and this concubine. And when they get there, things appear to be normal. A man from the city, Gibeah, he sees the Levi and he brings him into his house and gives shelter to them. But as soon as the man gives them shelter, other men from the city, From that town, they come and beat on the door, and they demand that the man who gave shelter send out the Levites so they can have relations with him. And it says, the master of the house went out to them and said, no, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Since this man is coming to my house, do not do this vile thing. And he offers his daughter and the concubine. And the wicked man of the city took the concubine and ravished her so wickedly and severely that in the morning the Levite finds her dead on the doorstep. And the Levite is so enraged and appalled that this has happened that he separates the woman into 12 pieces and sends them to the 12 tribes of Israel. Judges 19. And you know this story. We know this story, we’ve heard it before, you’ve seen it in your Old Testament. This is the very thing that happened in Sodom and Gomorrah. And the point is that at this time in Israel’s history, they have become more defiled and gross in a wicked city, that they are more defiled and more gross than that wicked city, the epitome of evil and perversion, Sodom and Gomorrah. And that kind of evil is now taking place in the land, in the home of the Israelites. And this Levite refused to stop in the land of the Canaanites because why? They were unfriendlies. They were not his people. And so he goes to his people, to the safety of the sub-tribe of Israel. And they treated him just like that old city of old, Sodom and Gomorrah. And the book of Judges ends with the Lord calling for what? For holy war against one of his own tribes. The ban, the total war against the people of Canaan has now moved to the wicked tribe, this wicked tribe of Gibeah. And the rest of Israel will have to what? They’ll have to take up the sword to destroy their own because she would become just like the wicked world all around them. And we have to ask and wonder about this downward turn that we see. in the history of Israel. Why was this given to us? What’s the point that we’re to learn? What are we to learn from this tragic episode? We can be assured of this. From this historic calamity in darkness, we learn this, that the judges are not enough. They’re not enough. However they function, they are not enough And we, brothers and sisters, need to remember this very thing, that amidst of the times that seem to be so bleak and dark and hopeless, we need to remember that all sorts and all solutions of man and culture and nations and politics, none of them are truly enough. None of them can supply what is needed and bring true rest for the weary souls of God’s people. They are not enough. None of them is enough. Something more is needed. God is faithful. God is faithful. And we can have hope. And that hope is not from this world. And at the end of the Judges, we have this truly dark and historically calamitous time for the people of God. Something is needed. Something to bring hope for the people. Hope for the people.

Hope for the Nation

And this is what we see next. Hope for the nation or hope for the country. This is a great problem in darkness that we find as we close the book of Judges. But there’s also, if you’ll see, a glimmer of hope. We see something to answer, something of the answer to that difficulty in which they live, right? In the Judges, there is this recurring refrain that points us again and again to that needed hope. And what is that refrain that gives us a hint, that gives us a clue, this glimmer of what is needed? It is this. Four times we read in the book, there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. There was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. And we are certainly in our day and age, no strangers to this sentiment. It is indeed the summa bonum, right? The greatest good of our time, what? Follow your heart. Look within, tell your truth. You are, as the old poem says, the captain of your faith, the master of your soul. Do what seems best to you. We don’t have time to go into the disaster that has come from this kind of backwards, anti-biblical, anti-Christian thinking. Go your own way, do whatever you desire, and you’ll truly be free. But we see time and again, and certainly here in the book of Judges, at the end, that when people do what is right in their own eyes, they are in complete bondage. The result is bondage, not freedom. And this is manifest, it’s made clear in the book of Judges. But what’s also coming through in the Judges is that there needs to be a king. And what kind of king is needed? Israel needs a particular kind of king. And it’s important as we continue to prepare for the story of Ruth that is to follow, that we grasp the big picture here, right? Because the kind of king that Israel needs is not merely a powerful one. It’s not merely a mighty one. They’ve had a powerful, mighty ruler, Samson. He was strong in battle. He was a disaster. It was not enough. A powerful warrior king is not enough. A king is needed. whose rule will have a particular outcome. The king is needed whose rule will end in the people not doing what is right in their own eyes, but doing what is right in God’s eyes. The king is needed who will instruct them and lead them in the piety and practice of the law of God. One who will know that law, will know the terms of the covenant and live and lead in a way that keeps them from the curses of the failure of that covenant. Israel needed a king who would lead them in paths of righteousness and holiness. And this is a picture. This is it. It’s the picture of the need that we see from the book of Judges. And this is the hope of the nation that we see glimmering from this time, the recognition of this need.

Hero to Come

And then finally, In the book of Ruth, we have, we see as we approach a hero to come, a hero to come, right? Brothers and sisters, remember this, Ruth begins in the time of the judges, right? With Naomi and her family leaving that very town that has a particular reputation, right? They’re leaving where? Bethlehem of Judea, of Judah rather. And on hearing that town name, we have a particular reaction in response to that. But in the time of the judges, at the hearing of that name, Bethlehem of Judah, their response was not one of Christmas carols. They didn’t think of, oh, a little town of Bethlehem. Their response in memory would be one of damage and darkness of their history and the scars that it bore. It is a town whose name has been sullied and spoiled, Bethlehem of Judah. That’s where Ruth begins. And the book also ends in the time of the judges in the town of Bethlehem with the birth of a son. And this also brings to mind another story, right? Boaz, who has a son named Obed. And Obed has a son named Jesse, and Jesse will have a son named David. We have in Ruth this hope and this truth that even in a time with devastated and deranged morality and economic ruin and infighting, the darkest times, even then, God what? He continues to work out, to perfectly work out His perfect will for His people. He is still on the throne. He didn’t abandon Israel. He didn’t abandon the covenant promises He made to them, not even in darkness. No, he is still in perfect control and executing all that he decreed from the very beginning. And in this dark, calamitous time in the history of Israel, as it comes to this light and beginning of a hero to come who will lead them to the light and hope of a son named David. There is no king at this time, and everyone does what is right in their own eyes. Israel needs a king. They need a king like David, who is a man after God’s own heart, who will lead them in righteousness. They need a king who will long for the Lord and take pleasure in his word and delight in his ways. They need a king like David, but not like David, because we know the heights and the depths of the life of King David. He was mighty and had wonderful moments in his life, but he also had moments that would fit right in with the wickedness of the times of the judges. You know it, adultery, murder. You see, we need a king who is entirely greater than David. We need David’s greater son, right? And listen now, a friend of mine used to say, judges cries out, we need a king. And the book of Ruth comes along and says, I have a king for you, born in Bethlehem in the house of Judah. And the world that we live in screams out as self-deceived and suppressing the truth and denying the God who made them, even in their brokenness and fallenness and rebellious state, misguided and distorted, the world nevertheless screams out, we need a king. And the gospels have been telling us for two millennia, I have a king for you. born in Bethlehem of the house of Judah. And this king will rule over you in righteousness, and he will lead you into conformity to the truth, in paths of righteousness. And he will obey perfectly the commands of the father. And this king will, what, ever live to please him and to glorify his name. He will be the one who loves and honors the father so much that He gave Himself to the cross for the life of sinners. And in doing so, this King will take upon Himself a darkness greater than even the darkest time in Israel’s history. As God presses the full cup of His wrath into His hands and He drinks it down to the dregs so that you and I might be delivered from our own sin and may be made holy and righteous in God’s sight and be free to follow His will. Dear people, do you see that God has given us this very King in Christ Jesus in order that we would be freed from the bondage of doing what was right in our own eyes? And so that now, as those united to this King, we can cheerfully say yes and amen to God’s holy law because we are united to this perfect King and because he purchased us for glory. And now, brothers and sisters, we can live the ethic of glory, our true homeland, even now in this pilgrim land. Brothers and sisters, you have been given hope in this King. He is the greater hero to come. He is the final hero to come. And regardless of the darkness of even our current time or any other time, we know for certain that God continues to work out His will in creation. He has not been dislodged from His throne. His perfect work has not failed. No, He continues. He continues to work out His sovereign plan for you, His people, even through our dark times, times that we might understand. And He does so to the end that every knee would bow and tongue confess that Jesus, the son of David, the grandson of Jesse, is Lord. And so have you bowed the knee to this King? That’s the question, right? He is full of grace and truth and mercy to all those that come to him. If not, I implore you, do so even now and worship him and rejoice and receive the refreshment of your soul. And for those of you who have bowed the knee to him, know that he has and is making you fit for the kingdom of glory. as he works in you and on you. Jesus is that hero king. And he gave his life for your sins that you would be clothed in the robes of his perfect righteousness, right? Glory indeed. And that being the case, brothers and sisters, let us live our lives even now for him, this hero king. May we do so rejoicing and delighting to give back to him the whole of our lives. Return, brothers and sisters, from this place back into the world with this message of hope and joy and freedom, for they are alone found in King Jesus, the only hope of the world. Amen. Let’s pray.

Our almighty and loving God, we come again before you, Lord. We delight to give you praise. We thank you for your providence in our lives and for our beloved Savior who gave his life for our sin and rose again for our justification. We pray, Lord, that you would continue to strengthen us and protect us, Lord. Be that wall of fire around us. Indeed, the glory in our midst. Help us to walk in Christ in this pilgrim life. Help us to know and believe and trust your strength. Help us to know that you are working in us your sovereign will. We ask, dear Lord, that you would continue to bless this church, place in our hearts a longing for your name to be spread and to delight in your way and to live faithful lives to our Lord. Strengthen all of us, we pray, to show the love and grace that we’ve been shown, to invite people to come and to hear of your mercy and holiness and to hear the gospel and be confronted with Jesus, the only hope for life in this world and the next. We pray, dear Lord, for the unique sufferings that each of us go through and that we indeed would know your love and presence in and through those difficulties. Father, you know everyone. We ask that you would grant relief and mercy and freedom. And Father, if it is your will, heal and restore us. Yet whatever your perfect will, Holy Father, draw us close unto you, that we would abide our suffering well and that we would know that we have a perfect and loving and gentle Lord who cares for us beyond all comprehension. Father, we pray, be merciful to us. Strengthen us spiritually and conform us evermore into the image of our King, your Son. For it’s in his name that we pray all of these things. Amen.