Ruth & Boaz

Ruth 1-4

Disclaimer: The views and opinions presented herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of DoD or its Components.  Appearance of, or Ference to, any commercial products or services does not constitute DoD endorsement of those products or services. The appearance of external hyperlinks does not constitute DoD endorsement of the linked websites, or the information, products or services therein.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. It is Chapman Boyles here again, and welcome to Soldier for Christ Podcast episode 24. Well, thank you for uh back being back with us. It is exciting to have you again. Um uh today uh I'm gonna go again um into a topic that I think is just very important because it is Mother's Day, and I want to say happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there and future mothers out there, grandmothers out there, spiritual mothers out there. Uh, thank you for everything you have always done for being mothers. Is that is a big, big, important, very hard, very, very critical job in the world. And um, God has God bless you, first of all. Thank you. And I hope this story encourages um the mothers, the women as well, future mothers, and men too, of course, because it is important to talk about relationships, marriages, and to talk about what a godly woman is, and also what a godly man is. And that is why I'm going to talk about the story of Ruth today. Ruth and Boaz and the Bible here. I love the story of Ruth and Boaz. It is an amazing little story, it's an amazing book of the Bible. It is a whole entire story, really, is a template of the entire gospel story. It's one of these small uh notes in the Bible, really, of a remarkable woman and remarkable man uh that is uh showing us the entire Bible story theologically. So if you look at Ruth, and you can if you really break down the whole meaning of the book of Ruth, uh it shows us about God's love and it shows us the entire story of the Jewish nation, and symbolizing in some respects of the woman named Naomi in the story, how she is married to Emalek, um, her relationship is frustrated and dies out, and then how her daughter-in-law, Ruth, who is a Moabite woman and a Gentile woman, how she is the one who ultimately will be married to Boaz. And he is an amazing guy. He is what we call in the Old Testament a shadow of Jesus, a shadow of Christ, sometimes called a proto-Christ, right? And Boaz is the man who is the kinsman redeemer who marries Ruth, has children with Ruth, uh, unites with her, and then because of their marriage and their union, he brings the whole family back together, Naomi and Ruth and all the all the family back together. It is a beautiful picture of how Jesus uh with the whole church unites us, brings us together, loves us, redeems us, covers us. Um so it is a remarkable, remarkable story. And not just because it's a great love story, but it is a great love story. But it's a it's a picture, it's a picture of the way God loves us. Uh, it's a picture of the way God redeems us as well. And so as I get into Ruth today, um, I I want to first say that if you are a mother, uh, or if you are uh single, if you are hoping to be married and and uh you're hoping to be in a relationship with a godly man, and I do hope that you are, or you're in a relationship with a godly man, uh, today's message is about love, but it's also about commitment. And I want you to understand about love that true love, as we see through Ruth, especially her character, true love is a love that just stays. It is commit, it is committed, it is loyal to the hilts. Okay, it refuses to quit. One of the things about we we know about God is that He He loves us so much that He refuses to give up on us. He he has this unfailing, relentless love that refuses, he just refuses to let us go, which is a wonderful thing about the Lord, right? He refuses to quit on us. And that is really about how Ruth loves Naomi and her and loves her husband. And her name, the name Ruth actually means faithful companion, which is a wonderful name. The name Boaz actually means strength. So God's strength meets God's faithfulness, they come together for that union that God is stronger than all of our problems. He loves us even before we even knew him, and we while we're yet sinners, and he died for us, and he is his strength, his strong love is what unites us to him. So it's an amazing, beautiful little story in the Bible. Um, it was written, of course, the book, the book of Ruth was written by uh the prophet and judge named Samuel. Love that man. If I had time, I would I make this a whole series and talk about how how incredible Samuel is. But Samuel wrote the book of Ruth, they look at the book of Judges in first and second Samuel, of course. Um Ruth is a curious character because she is one of the three women in the Old Testament who is not a Jewish woman, but she is in the bloodline of Jesus. Ruth and Rahab and Tamar of the three that uh belong in the direct descendancy, the direct bloodline of Jesus. Because God obviously picked her being a woman of incredible faith, incredible love, incredible good character. And that's what makes her distinguished between all the other women of the Bible in so many ways. So a little background on this story. Ruth was a very old story, ancient times, about 2800 years ago, uh, the time of the judges, which was actually a pretty wild time, in a lot of ways, kind of similar to today in some way, a lot of decadency and um some social decline. Um it is a story where uh the the the story begins with um the husband, a man named Emalek, who is married to a woman named Naomi. Naomi is a name that means uh joy and and and peace and love. And Naomi, um, married to a fairly wealthy man, Emilek, um, she travels to the land of Moab with her husband and her two sons. She has two sons as well. Um, and her sons, Mehon and Kileon, they marry uh Moanite women, Ophrah and Ruth, and they're living in this land called Moab. Moab is, by the way, if you're wondering, that is just the country of Jordan today. Moab, um, usually Moab and Israel the Jewish people Israelis, they did not like each other. They were usually enemies, actually, with one another. Um, the reason that Emalak moved his family to Moab, and they were from the town of Bethlehem, is that there was a famine in Bethlehem, and famines will drive, I mean, economic depression, hard times will drive uh people uh to new locations and new beginnings. And sometimes God brings famine in our life to disrupt us and to move us around. So they move from their home, their their people in Bethlehem, which is also where Christ, of course, was born, and they move to Moab and they live there for 10 years. Now, the story starts off with a tragedy. It starts off with a huge disruption. It starts off with a uh a really traumatic event to begin it off, where Naomi uh loses her husband. Her husband Emalak dies. Not only does she lose her husband, but she loses her two sons as well. So she is now a widow and she is completely alone by herself. She only has her two daughters-in-laws, um, Ophra and and of course Ruth. And she is in a dire situation because, of course, in those times when women were alone, uh, they really couldn't defend or speak up for themselves, and they were destitute in so many ways. And it was a dire, really bad situation for Naomi. Um, so bad that Naomi is is so rocked and so unsettled that she changes her whole entire identity, even her name, to a name called Mara, which means bitterness or sorrow. And um she, in in desperation, decides that she's going to leave Moab and return to her people, return to Bethlehem to turn to the Hebrew nation, and try to, in a sense, just live out the rest of her days in sorrow uh and throw in the towel in some respects here. When she is uh preparing to move out of Moab, um she has a dialogue with her sister, uh, her daughter-in-laws, and she is trying to convince them that they don't need to go with her anymore. They don't need to be part of her family anymore because their husbands are dead, and her husband is dead, and she tries to just simply push them away and say, go back to Moab, go back to your family, go back to your old way of life, go back to your gods, go back to what you know, what you're what is familiar with you, because I'm going back to my people and back to Bethlehem. And what is remarkable is that pain oftentimes comes in our lives. And I'm not going to sugarcoat it, even the Christian world all the time, uh, we are always familiar with pain. If you were with me last time we talked about giants and being, you know, overcoming that, those obstacles and overcoming giants. And pain is an interesting fraternity that brings people together. I've I've noticed that in the army, if you are going through very painful situations with your soldiers, whether you're on deployment, whether they're in the field, whether what's going on, uh, it brings people together. It really brings it it connects people in very fascinating ways. Uh sometimes pain makes better, makes people better. Sometimes pain makes people very bitter. Uh, sometimes pain makes people to the point, brings people to the point where they just don't want to forgive, they don't want to get past it, they can't get over their past, they they are they're just stuck in a in a dead mentality, in a broken way, in a broken manner. And that is what's going on with Naomi. She's really broken woman. She's she is uh defeated in a point where she feels like her life is over. Okay. Now, encouraging word for all of you out there today that if you're going through very hard times, painful times, and maybe there's a death in your family, or there's a death in a relationship, or you've been through a divorce, or you've been through broken hearts, and you've been through trauma, okay, and that happens everywhere. Trauma um happens. And sometimes, by the way, God brings trauma in your life. It's just a it's just part of what He He sometimes God will bring disease and sickness. Sometimes God will allow relationships to die. Sometimes God will bring in famines and he will bring in uh economic poverty and distress. And and and we always want to believe in Christians always, you know, this idea that uh, you know, just name and claim it, blab it and grab it, and God's always gonna just prosper us all and make us all rich and happy. Uh that's not necessarily true. Okay, that's just not true. Um, God is a God that likes to disrupt us, make us uncomfortable so often in our life. And he does that because he wants to get us to another level, another dimension, another place of real blessing, and another place where we can really grow our faith and we can really be a stronger, better version of ourselves. Okay. So that is the the background of Ruth. Um, I'm gonna get into the story here. Again, I hope this blesses you. I'm gonna dig as I'd make this a series if I could, because there's so much to dissect in this whole entire little book here. But I I, you know, this is a podcast. I'm gonna be as fast and as expedient as I can. But let me pray first. We're gonna go in this story. I hope this blesses you. Let me pray. Thank you, Lord, for a wonderful day. Thank you for this story of Ruth. Lord, help us to be more like um your servant Ruth, more like your servant Boaz. Lord, help us to live with faith, Lord, even in dire, hard, painful circumstances, Lord, knowing that you have the best for us, that you want to bless us, that life, Lord, is already predestined, and we are walking in the steps that you have already ordered us to walk in. I pray that this message today would be an encouragement and Lord would be a comfort to those right now, all listening to this. I pray, Lord, for those who are single that you would bring in their Ruth and Boaz to their life. Help us, Lord, to be loving and patient and kind and to forgive, Lord, and to not give up our faith and to not surrender, Lord, even when the enemy comes against us and all his lies, Lord. Help us to listen to your voice, the truth, and to walk in your and walk obediently in your ways. In Christ may pray, amen. Okay, so Ruth chapter one. I'll start there. Ruth chapter one. Again, this starts with a famine, and this is the I'm gonna go into just right into the the dialogue here with Naomi and Ruth. Um, and again, Naomi, broken woman, is heading back to her town of Bethlehem, and she is trying to convince her daughter, daughters-in-law to return to Moab to start their lives again. So, from chapter one, let us go down to we're gonna start here now in verse 11, okay? And I'm just gonna kind of jump in here, and it says, Naomi replied, Why should you go with me? Can I still give birth to other sons who can grow up to be your husbands? No, my daughters, return to your parents' home. For I am too old to marry again, and even if that were possible, even if I were to get married tonight and bear sons, then what? Would you wait for them to grow up and refuse to marry someone else? Of course not, my daughters. Things are far more better for me than for you, because the Lord Himself has raised his fist against me. So again, this poor woman uh really feels like her life is over, that God is against her, and and she's saying, You know, I I can't get married again, I can't have sons again, and even if that was possible, you couldn't wait for them to grow up and remarry them, you know. And it is better now for you just to leave me. And 14, it says here, and again, they all wept together, and Oprah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye. Okay, so the first daughter-in-law, Oprah, she leaves her mother-in-law, she kisses her goodbye, and she returns to Mala. But it says here, but Ruth clung tightly to Naomi and said, Look, look, Naomi said, excuse me, to her, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods, and you should do the same. But Ruth replied, Don't don't ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us. When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she said, Nothing more. Now, this is probably one of the most amazing little scriptures of the entire Old Testament here because Ruth is showing us, I mean, a genuine, incredible love for her mother-in-law and an incredible loyalty. True love. True love stays. I want you to really hear that. That's that's the whole keystone of that this message here is that true love stays. If anyone, by the way, this is just free litmus tests and just free, you know, candy here. Uh, if anyone ever tells you they love you and they don't stay with you, that is not a genuine love. Okay, that's not just it, that's not, that's not no good. Um, if if if so, if you are dating and so forth, and and if you if if a brother or somebody's telling, telling you, like, hey, you know, I love you, and then uh, you know, I only got eyes for you, and rider died, death to his part, all that kind of thing, but they they they wander away or they flirt with another, or they uh or if life gets tough and they quit and and uh they just you know or are they just fake and and untrue to their word, then that's not a genuine love. Okay. That's not so love is not it's not necessarily uh a sexy, beautiful thing like Hollywood likes to make it, okay. It's not just muscles and and and eye candy and and riches, and it's not that. Love is is a a stubborn loyalty that stays with you, okay? It's patient, it's kind, it endures, it does not give up. It's a stubborn thing. And Ruth here is I mean, she says in this desperation, she says to her mother-in-law here that I will never leave you. She says, I I I'm gonna go with you right or I'm gonna go wherever you go, I go. Wherever you live, I live. Your people are my people. Your God is my God. She's clinging on to her and she's saying, May God punish me. If even the only thing that's gonna separate us is death itself, right there. When we make these, you know, I've been a chaplain for a while. When we make these lovely wedding vows, we always say for richer, for poorer, for sickness and health, and all these wonderful things until death do us part, right? That's that's the vow that most people like to say. And I think people say that honestly, but I don't think they really mean that, or they really understand what they're saying. But that is the way that real love, that that's what it is, right? It's stubborn, it stays, it's loyal, it's fixed, it doesn't give up. And that is the difference of Ruth and Oprah. Oprah, of course, she's like, you know, this is this is looking too bad. I'm gonna I'm gonna head back. But Ruth says, I'm a faithful companion, and I'm gonna stay with you because I love you, and you and I are not going to part here. And then Naomi, just seeing how determined this girl was, she's like, Okay, all right. Well, let's go back to Bethlehem together. Okay. Now, these two women go back to Bethlehem, and they are broke. I mean, they are, I mean, what I would call dead poor broke. They are just they're um, I I I've been there, boy. I've been to the point where I've been, you know, living in my car, living in a barn, you know, have absolutely nothing, or all my credit cards are max and whatever, and even a McDonald's meal is is pretty uh a pretty nice luxury at this point, right here. So seminary, I was that was probably the hardest uh moments of my life here. So I know what it is to be pretty poor. Um, and Ruth and and Naomi are really poor, they are really broke. And they go back to Bethlehem and they are living uh in a way where they're just getting by. Okay, they're they they just now again, Naomi is pretty much just given up. Ruth refuses to die, okay. She is going to work it. One thing about what what the Lord loves what one thing I think that really pulls his heartstrings, he loves a faith that that even in the worst moments of life refuses to quit, okay, refuses to die. He loves the kind of faith that is is is is stubborn and proactive and just whatever it is, even if it's a little thing, if you can just show God I am willing just to just to stick it out, just to be strong and just to just to refuse to quit. God admires that kind of faith so much because that is the kind of faith that Ruth has. So it says here in this is in chapter two now, it says, Now there was a wealthy man and influential man in Bethlehem. His name was Boaz. By the way, the name Boaz means, of course, as I mentioned before, means strength. And he was who was the relative of Naomi's husband, Emilech. And one day Ruth the Mobite said to Naomi, Let me go out to the harvest fields to pick up some stalks of grain left behind by anybody who was kind enough to let me do it. And Naomi replied, All right, my daughter, go ahead. So Ruth went ahead to gather grain behind by the harvesters. But as it happened, she found herself working in a field that belonged to Boaz, a relative of her father-in-law, Emelech. And while she was while she was there, Boaz arrived from Bethlehem. He greeted the harvesters, and he said, The Lord be with you all. The Lord bless you, the harvesters replied. Then Boaz asked his foreman, Hey, who is that young woman over there? And and who does she belong to? And the foreign foreman replied, Well, she is the young woman from Moab who came back from Naomi with Naomi. She asked this morning if she could gather grain behind the harvesters, and she has been hard at work ever since, except for a few minutes to rest in the shelter. And Boaz went over to Ruth and said, Listen, my daughter, right, stay right here with us when you gather grain, and don't go into the any other the f any other field. Stay right here be behind the young women working in the field and see which part of the field they are harvesting, and then follow them. I have warned all the young men not to treat you roughly. When you are thirsty, help yourself to the water drawn from the well. And Ruth fell down at his feet and thanked him warmly, and she said, What have I done to deserve such kindness? I am only a foreigner in these parts. Yes, I know, Boaz replied, and I also know everything about what you have done with your mother-in-law since the death of your husband. I have heard how you left your father and mother in your own land and lived here amongst complete strangers. Now may the Lord, the God of Israel, whose wings you have come to take refuge under, reward you fully for what you have done. I hope I continue to please you, sir, she replied. You have comforted me by speaking kindly to me, even though I am not one of your workers. Now, what's interesting here, okay, is that Boaz sees Ruth working, he he has already heard about her story, he already admires that she has left Moab and left her family, and admires that she is willing to pick up just so in the old times, if if a woman was so a person was so impoverished, they were allowed under this old Levitical law to gather whatever the leftovers were, whatever little grain was left over it dropped, they could gather them up so they would not starve to death, essentially. And she was gathering up what she could. And Boaz saw that, recognized it immediately. And not only he recognized that, but he just he actually instructed his entire all of his workers and you know, just start dropping food for her. And he instructed his his uh men not to bother her, not to molest her. He instructed all his women to take care of her. He provided and he protected her. Um Boaz saw her and he saw her character and immediately, that is what immediately he fell in love with her. Immediately, that is what attracted, attracted, um, himself attracted her to himself. He he he saw his he saw a godly woman working hard, doing her best to provide for her family, and he was blown away. And a godly man, by the way, when we speak about Boaz, and this is important for you godly men listening here today, a godly man is always a provider, a protector, and a pastor of sorts. What I mean by that, provider, right? He providing as in he works hard, gets up early, he does whatever, you know, providing you don't have to be set necessarily rich to provide. You just need to work hard and provide what you can for your family. That's what you do. That's a provider. A protector is a man that will not allow his woman to be molested or bothered or manipulated or lied. He he will he will protect her against the enemies, especially the enemy of the devil that comes against her, and he speaks comfort and love and encourages her every day. And a pastor, I you know, in some in so many similar ways, like to be a godly man, you have to be able to pastor your wife, which is be a spiritual leader. You have to pray for her and you have to read the scripture together, you have to, you have to fellowship together, you have to, you have to be that kind of godly example like Jesus, who loved the church. As Paul says, you have to be like Christ, loved the church, and gave himself up for her. So you have to provide and protect, and you have to shelter her, shepherd her. And Boaz immediately sets to work to do that with Ruth right here. He sees something so wonderful and great in her, and he instructs his workers to do that, and he falls in, he falls in love with her. Now, what's curious about this, it's very curious about this, is that back in this ancient day, there was this concept which we call a kinsman redeemer, okay? Or a family redeemer, a kinsman redeemer. And what is that? What is this concept? You might probably heard of that. What is a kinsman redeemer? A kinsman redeemer was a member of a family that took upon the responsibility to care for a family when tragedy happened. When someone, for example, died, uh, a kinsman redeemer was supposed to purchase land, uh, these are the family's land so that it would not be sold. Uh, it was supposed to was supposed to provide for the widow, was uh the widows and widow, and was supposed to take care of that, it was supposed to cover and take care of and provide and protect that family. That was a kinsman redeemer. And Christ, in a sense, he is, of course, our kinsman redeemer, okay, because he not only uh has not only died for us on the cross so he could pay the terrible sin debt we had, but he redeems us by bringing us into his family, into the family of God, into his fellow, the church. Because our ultimate home, as I've mentioned so many times in this podcast, is not his not on this earth. We are not meant to live on this earth, not forever. Okay. This earth is just a shadow, just a test. It's all it is, it's just a test of your faith and your character. And Christ is the redeem, the kinsman redeemer who says, I'm taking you out of this, this, this dire condition, and I'm gonna bring you to my family, to my home, to the place that I want you to be. Okay. You're gonna say that's exactly what Boaz is doing. He's like, I'm seeing this woman, this, this, this woman's been gone through so much misery and pain, and he loves her, and he says, I am going to, I'm going to be, I'm going to redeem her. Okay. I'm and not just her, but her whole family. And that's that's what that is a shadow. That's exactly what Christ does when he sees us, okay, when he sees us here. So now Boaz, uh, he he he shelters her, he protects her. Um, and then as the story continues here, uh, Ruth, who is is is kind of uh can kind of confused in a way, because she's like, you know, I'm I'm just a Mobile woman. And by the way, Mobile women and Jewish people, they did not mix at all. They were, they were, they were, in some cases, they were bitter enemies of one another. So she is really blown away, a bit confused, honestly, by why, why this man suddenly is protecting and providing for her and for Naomi, her family right there. Um, and she comes to a place where she tells Naomi, this is what's going on. This man named Boaz is taking care of me. And Naomi explains that Boaz is the family's kinsman, redeemer. And and she explains to Ruth, you need to now put yourself in a situation where you have to, you have to present yourself and ask him to cover you. And that is a funny way of saying, in a sense, like almost like a proposal of marriage. She she she almost, in a sense, is proposing marriage to Boaz, and instead of Boaz is proposing marriage to her. Um, she has to go and she has to uh in a sense humble herself and come to his feet to ask him to cover her. So this is what goes on here with this incredible story, and this is from chapter three, and this is this time of the barley harvest where everybody's in a good mood. And it says here, I'm reading from chapter three, verse seven, it says, After Boaz had finished eating and drinking, he was in good spirits, he lay down at the far end of the pile of grain and he went to sleep. And then Ruth came quietly, uncovered his feet, and laid down. Around midnight, Boaz suddenly woke up and turned over, and he was surprised to find a woman laying on his feet. Who at who are you? He asked. I am your servant, Ruth, she replied. Now spread the corner of your covering over me, for you are my family redeemer. The Lord bless you, my daughter, Boaz explained. You are showing even more familiar loyalty than you ever did before, for you have not gone after a younger man, whether rich or poor. Now don't worry about a thing, he says, My daughter, I I will do what is necessary, for everyone in town knows you are a virtuous woman. Now, while it is true, I am one of your family's redeemer, there's another man who is more closely related to you than I am. But stay here tonight in the morning. I will talk to him if he is willing to redeem you very well. But let him marry you. But if he's not willing, as surely as the Lord lives, I will redeem you myself. Now lie down here until morning. Now, here is this interesting situation because Boaz says to Ruth here, he says, You are a virtuous woman. You've come to me, you could have gone to any other guy you wanted. You you you are I think Ruth was a very attractive woman, was a godly woman, was a was a virtuous woman, and she comes to him in a sense when she when she asks, please cover me. She is saying, I want, I, I want you. I want you to be my redeemer. I want to be in a relationship with you. And you know, Boaz, we we believe actually was a older man, uh significantly older than Ruth. He was probably in his late uh mid-late 50s, early 60s. Ruth was probably in her late 20s, early 30s here. And as an older man, he was pretty uh blown, pretty astounded that a young, attractive woman uh wanted him. And even though he was not the very first one in line to redeem her, he is going to do whatever he's going to move all heaven and earth to redeem that woman right there. So, for all of you men listening today, and you may be wondering, especially you you were young and single, you know, how do I get a godly woman like that? How do I get a woman that I know will love me? And how do I get a woman that I know I can build a life with? How do I get a woman I can I can build a family with and so forth? Well, you have to realize, you have to recognize that one, to be to get a godly woman, you have to be a godly man first. You have to be a godly man and you have to fight for that woman that God has given you in your life. And what I mean by fight for her is that you have to do whatever it takes, whatever it takes, you have to pay the price, the sacrifice uh to have a godly woman in your life. Um, I'll just tell you a quick story about that. Uh when I when I met my wife, I knew real quick that um, you know, she lived in San Diego and I I was way in Texas at the time, and I knew real quick that to have a godly woman in my life, I have to I would have to drive and sacrifice and and I would have to uh what do whatever I had to make the the commitment even early on and show her that I am willing, I am willing to do whatever it takes uh for you to be my wife because you are a virtuous woman right now. And if the Lord, and that since the Lord has put you in my life, I have to I am willing to sacrifice and to pay the cost, whatever that is, to make you my wife. There is a love is costly. Love has a sacrifice. Don't believe anybody that tells you they love you and they're not willing to sacrifice their time and their energy and their effort and their money and their life for you. Just like Christ sacrificed everything for us, a godly man has to be willing to die. Uh just frankly, has to be willing to die for his wife, has to put his wife above himself. That's what Boaz does right here. He is going to fight for Ruth. He is going to do whatever it takes to make her his wife right here, because he's so amazed about her love and her loyalty and her commitment and her virtuous faith. And so that's what he does. So going on here to the chapter four, and it says here that uh this is chapter four, verse verse seven, it says, In those days it was custom in Israel for anyone transferring a rite of purchase to remove his sandal and hand it over to another party. This uh publicly validated the transaction. So all the other family, the other family drew off his sandal and said to Boaz, You buy the land. And Boaz said to the elders and the crowd standing around, You are witnesses that today I have bought from Naomi all the property of Emilek, Kileon, and Mahon, and with the land I have required, I required Ruth, the Mobanite widow from of Mahon, to be my wife. This way she can carry on the family name of her dead husband and inherit the family property here in this hometown. You are all witnesses today. So I'm going to skip down to thirteen. So Bo Boaz took Ruth into his home, and she became pregnant, and he slept with her, and the Lord enabled her to become pregnant, and she gave birth to a son. Then the woman of the town said to Naomi, Praise the Lord who has now provided a redeemer for your family. May this child be famous in Israel. May he restore your youth and care for you in your old age, for he is the son of your daughter-in-law who loves you and has been better to you than us than seven sons. And Naomi took the baby and cuddled her to her breast, and she cared for him as if it was her own. And the neighborhood women said, Now at last Naomi has a son again, and they named him Obed, because he was the father of Jesse and the grandfather of David. So in this amazing story, Boaz goes to all the townmen and he says, Hey, if you says, first of all, to the next in line, he says, If you want that woman, you have to buy all the property and you have to take her as your wife. And the guy said, Nope, I'm not willing to do that. He said, Well, I sure am. And he purchased the full price. He bought the land, he he married Ruth, and God opened her womb, and they had a son. And that son was the redemption, actually, and and by the way, Ruth is the great-grandmother of King David. It was the redemption of the whole family right there. It was continuing on the family line because Boaz had to sacrifice and had to do the hard thing and had to acquire Ruth as his wife in front of the whole town. Love, by the way, is never ashamed. It is a public decoration. It goes and it says, I am willing to do whatever it takes to love this person no matter the costs, no matter the price, because I want that woman. She is a virtuous, godly woman here. And that's what Boaz did. So, and I know I'm going really fast through the story today because of my time is limited, but here's what I want you to gather from this little story of Ruth today. One, love is genuine love when it stays. Love is real when it is loyal. Love is real when it refuses to die. Love is real because it is patient, it is kind, it's not rude, it's not boastful, it's not arrogant, and it always forgives. It doesn't hold any records of wrongs, okay? It it never gives up. That's why I like love. It refuses to quit. It refuses to quit. And it will preserve through the very end until death. The only thing that can separate love between a husband and a man, a virtuous husband and a Christian man, the only thing that separate that kind of love is death itself, okay? When Kaius calls us home here. And that is the kind of love that Ruth and Boaz shared here. And and this is important. Um, I have a lot of soldiers and female soldiers sometimes that come to me and they always say, Yeah, I wish there was just a single good guy in the world, like a Boaz in the world. I wish, and I hear a lot of guys all say, you know, I just wish I could find one girl that that just wasn't, you know, all crazy and stuff that I could just truly love and invest my life in. Well, here's the thing: God knows where you are, he knows what kind of condition you're in. He knows if you're single, he knows if you're a divorce, he knows the kind of trauma you've been through, he kind of knows the kind of pain and the heartbreaks that you might have had. And he does want to bless you. But you have to do it his way, okay? You cannot shortcut love. And what I mean by that, you can't use sinful ways, you can't you can't manipulate, you can't try to manipulate God, you can never manipulate God, to get what you want. Love is not selfish, it is selfless. Lust is very selfish because lust just wants to gratify the flesh. Love wants to give, it wants to pour out. It's a sacrifice, love wants to love says this person is better than I am, and I I want to do whatever I can to love them and and and provide for them and protect them. And like Ruth, love is faithful to the end, absolutely to the end. Love refuses to quit. Okay. And you have to know, have to know that that's the way that Jesus loves you. That's the way that Christ loves you. Christ refuses to quit for you, He refuses to quit on you. He refuses to let the devil have you. He refuses to let have you fall into sin. And don't be frustrated if you feel like God has been hard against you or disciplined you or you're not getting what you want or you're spinning your wheels or whatever. Oftentimes it's because God is transitioning you. He is moving you, he's disrupting you. One, because there's sin in your life and you've got to get rid of that. And two, or two, he's he's transitioning you because he's placing you in the right time and the right season and the right circumstances that you can be blessed and you can be married and you can have that relationship that he wants you to have with the right person. Okay. And you're never too old, by the way. You're never too old. Um, God doesn't, you know, God does not want anybody to be an island and be isolated and be alone. Absolutely not. He wants everybody in the fellowship of the saints, and he wants, and marriage, by the way, is an institution that God created, not man. God created marriage. Marriage between one man and one woman, starting from Adam and Eve. He wants you to marry the right one that he has for you, okay? Marriage is this way. This is how it always is. If you marry the right one that God picks for you, it's like, it's like almost like almost like getting married to Jesus because a good marriage makes you better in every way, makes you smarter, makes you happier, makes you healthier, makes you richer, makes you stronger, and every way makes you better. Marrying the wrong person is like kind of like marrying the devil. It makes you it breaks you in every way. It'll make you depressed and miserable and broken, and it'll suck your life and joy and energy all the way. So take it from me. Learn from this woman here, learn from this amazing woman, Ruth. Refuse to quit. Okay? Stay loyal to God. Even when life is hard. If it has been hard for you, and if you're if you've been through the the the ringer, just hear my words today. Love is patient and it waits and it trusts and it refuses to die. Okay? Faith and love, the Bible says the three greatest virtues always are hope, faith, and love. Okay, you have to hope for all the what God has got for you in the future. So to wrap things up today, let me conclude by saying this to be a godly man or woman, the the point the point that you have to remember is that life, your life has to be based on faith and love. Ruth is the faithful companion, and Boaz is strong. So a strong, faithful woman and a strong, faithful man is God's recipe for success, for blessing, for favor, and for true love. So I want you to be a Ruth and a Boaz, okay? The men to be Boaz, women to be Ruth, to be faithful and to be strong and to be committed to one another. Um, I'm gonna conclude with I always say that this passage in the Bible here, 1 Corinthians 13, is something I read every day and something I'll just read to you now to end this. Love never gives up, it never loses faith. It is always hopeful and it endures through every circumstance there. Ruth never gave up. Okay, she clung on to Naomi. She never lost her faith. She was always hopeful for the future, what God was going to bring her, ultimately her Boaz, and she endured through every circumstance. Let me encourage you today to be like Ruth. And then you men out there, when you find your Ruth, you know, you got to fight for her. Boy, you gotta fight for her. You gotta do what it takes, pay the price, sacrifice. Love is very sacrificial. Um, don't give up. You that is how you win a woman's heart. Not by muscles, not by money. You win a woman's heart by just showing her that you absolutely love her and you don't give up. Love stays, love remains faithful. God bless you. Let me pray for you. Thank you, Lord, for a wonderful day. You bless us, Lord, as we continue to always study your word and get closer to you. Increase our faith and our love, Lord. Help us to be more like Ruth and Boaz, faithful and strong, Lord. And thank you for all of your many and many blessings and for touching our families and our friends. And Lord, help us to be always constantly looking to you, Jesus, and not to the world. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you. Have a blessed day.