This morning, we'd like to take a look at the book of Ruth in an abbreviated form, which we will expand on tonight. We've just completed the book of Judges and in the latter portion of the book of Judges, we had a couple of little scenes that showed us the moral and spiritual conditions that existed in the nation of Israel during the period of the Judges.

And we find it was a period of moral decay and spiritual confusion. Things were really messed up. But it is interesting to note that in the midst of this confusion, God was working. We look around at the world in which we live today. We see a world that is filled with confusion, spiritual confusion. We see a world that is in a period of moral depravity, and yet, thank God, He is working in hearts and lives in this world today.

God always is at work, it seems. And even in spite of the outward circumstances, you'll always find those places where God is working. And so the two stories had a background in Bethlehem that were given to us in Judges. Now we have a third story which is also thought to be an appendix to the book of Judges. It also happens around the city of Bethlehem, Judah.

It's the story of a couple who in the time of famine decided to move from Bethlehem, Judah, over to Moab on the opposite side of the Jordan Valley in the more fertile plains. Bethlehem, Judah, is a place that even to this present day has only what is known as dry farming. They put out their seeds and then they pray for rain. If they get rain, they'll have good crops. If they don't get rain, they have no irrigation, and so they have crop failure.

So they really depend year by year on how much rain falls, and that is really the criteria for the type of crops they will have. And there are times when you'll get a period of years in which there isn't much rain, and thus famine always follows in that area.

Here was a couple living in Bethlehem of Judea and their names were Elimelech and Naomi. Now so often names were either after the circumstances of a child's birth or the hopes and the aspirations that a parent might have for that child. Or were used to describe the characteristics of the child. Each name had a meaning.

They didn't just go to the dictionary as we so often do. When we are expecting a child, go to the back of the dictionary and look at all the Christian names and go down the list and say, oh, I like that name. Let's call him Joe. But they would have a significance to the name. Elimelech, for instance, means my God is king. The name Naomi means pleasant.

And so you have a beautiful little girl and you name her Pleasant. Oh, what a pleasant little child. And she picks up the name Naomi or Pleasant. Now they had two sons. And the first of the sons was not very healthy when he was born. They looked at him and they said, ooh, he looks sickly. And so he picked up the name Sickly, which is Melon.

Later when his brother was born, He didn't look very well either. And so they called him pining. It looks like he's dying. He's pining away. And so my God is king and pleasant moved with their two sons sickly and pining to Moab.

If you were reading from the Hebrew text, that's the way you would read the story. While in Moab, Elimelech died. The two fellows married girls from Moab, but no doubt because they were sickly and pining, they both died too before they could have any children.

And so Naomi came to her daughter's-in-law and she said, Girls, I've decided to go home to my family and to my country. I've experienced so much grief here. I just don't want to stay here any longer. I just want to go on back to my own family and my own people.

And I am sorry for your sakes, the grief that the death of my sons has brought to you. And I pray that you'll go home to your parents. And that God will be good to you and give you husbands and you'll be able to have a family and enjoy a normal marriage and normal life.

The one daughter-in-law, Orpah, kissed her and bid her farewell and headed back to her parents' house. But the other daughter-in-law, Ruth, said, Please, don't ask me to leave you or to forsake you or to return from following after you. For wherever you go, I want to go. Wherever you live, I want to live. Your people will be my people. And your God will be my God.

And God forbid that nothing but death shall ever separate us. And so Naomi came back to Bethlehem with her daughter-in-law, Ruth. And the people in Bethlehem, having not seen her for around 10 years, said, Oh, Naomi, you've come home. How nice to see you.

And she said, Don't call me Naomi, pleasantness. Call me Mara, bitter. Because she said, God has dealt bitterly with me. Having come back, having lost their husbands, they were poor.

But there was a very interesting welfare law in Israel. Because it was basically a gregarian society, the welfare law actually involved the harvesting of crops. When you as a landowner would go out to harvest your crops, according to the law, you could only pick once the fruit of the field. If you had a vineyard, you had one chance to pick the grapes.

All of the grapes that were still green when you picked had to be left on the vine. You could not pick the green grapes. They were to remain for the poor of the land. And later on, the poor people could come in and pick those grapes that were left.

The same was true of your fig trees or of your apricot, peach, whatever. You had one picking, your tomato plants. You could pick once. The green fruit was all to be left for the poor of the land to come in later and to pick, and thus the poor of the land were taken care of.

If you had grain fields, as your servants would cut the grain, they could only take one swipe at the grain. If they did not make a clean cut, but only bent the grain over, they weren't allowed to take the second swipe. That grain that was bent over and left, not cut cleanly, had to be left for the poor of the land.

Also, as you were grabbing these little stalks of grain, if you would drop one, you had to leave it on the ground. You couldn't pick it up. Again, it was left on the ground for the poor people and thus the poor of the lamb were taken care of because the poor people would follow in after your harvesters were going through the grain field and they would pick the grain that was still bent over, not cut cleanly, and they would pick up all of the shocks of grain that were on the ground.

And so being poor, Ruth said to Naomi, I'm going to go out and find a place to glean today. And she came to a field of a very wealthy man whose name was Boaz, and she just happened to come to his field. During the day, Boaz came out to the field to check with his harvesters, and he said unto them, The Lord be with you.

And they said to Boaz, And the Lord be with you. And then noticing this beautiful young maiden that he hadn't seen before, among the gleaners in his field, he said to his chief servant, And who is that? And he said unto him, that is Ruth, the Moabitess, who returned from Moab with her mother-in-law, Naomi.

And he said, ask her to come over and talk to me. So Ruth came over and Boaz said to her, I want you to glean in my fields during the period of harvest. I want you to feel very welcome to be in the field. If you get thirsty, you may come and drink of the water that my young men have drawn.

And when you're hungry, you can eat of their bread and dip in their sauces. One of my favorite foods over there to this present day is their pita bread dipped in the delicious sauces that they have. I can make an entire meal on pita bread in the sauces. It's fabulous.

They have tahina sauces. They have olive oil sauces. They have tomato spicy kind of sauces. And what you do is you take the pita bread and their pita bread, any resemblance between theirs and ours is purely quince. Theirs is fabulous. I haven't really found pita bread here that I can get excited about.

It's lacking the texture that theirs has over there. Theirs is just fabulous. And you take and break off the pita bread, and then you just dip it in these little bowls of sauces and eat it. Some people get Big Mac attacks. I get pita bread attacks. Longing for this glorious pita bread and the sauces that they have.

As I say, I often just make a meal out of it when I'm over there. I'll just make a whole meal out of the pita bread and sauces. It's so good. And so he was saying, hey, you know, you can come and take their bread and dip in their sauces, in their vinegar and in their sauces that they have.

She said, who am I that such an important man as you would take note of me? And he said, I've heard all about you. Of the kindness and all that you've shown to your mother-in-law, Naomi, I think it's marvelous what you have done.

And therefore, I want you to feel free to just glean in my fields. As Ruth walked away, he said to his chief servant, Now look, don't let any of the young men touch her. And if she happens to roam into the field where you haven't even yet cut, just let her go. Don't rebuke her.

And every once in a while, just let a handful fall on purpose for her. That evening, when Ruth came home to Naomi with a whole bushel of grain, Naomi said, where in the world did you glean today?

And Ruth answered, I happen to be in the field of a man whose name was Boaz. And Naomi said, oh, thank you, Lord, that you haven't forgotten us.

She said, Ruth, this man is a relative of ours. He is a brother of my husband, Elimelech. Oh, God is good to us. Ruth, you stay in that man's fields. Don't you dare let him catch you in another field. You stay in his fields through the whole harvest season.

Needless to say, Ruth had a bumper crop that year. And at the end of the harvest season, Naomi said, now I'm going to show you what you must do. Tonight, bathe and put on perfume and a gorgeous gown and go down and stand back and watch them as they are threshing.

And after they have finished eating and they lie down to sleep, note carefully where he lies down. When everything is quiet. You slip in, you lie at his feet and take his blanket and cover yourself with it. And he'll tell you what to do.

So Ruth went down and stood back and watched them as they ate and as they finished drinking and bedded down, noting carefully where Boaz had bedded down. And then when things got real quiet, she slipped in and pulled his blanket and covered herself with it.

About midnight, his feet got cold. He rolled over and... discovered that there was a woman lying at his feet. He said, who is it? Who's there?

And she said, I'm Ruth, the Moabitess. He said, what are you doing here? She said, I want you to cover me with your skirt. Spread your blanket over me.

Now there is another Jewish law that is important to note at this point. Under the Jewish law, if a man would marry a woman and die before he had any children, it became an obligation and the responsibility of this man's brother to take her as his wife.

And the first child that was born would be named for the dead brother that his inheritance might continue in Israel. So that the family's inheritance not be lost. The inheritance was passed on.

Now, if a man had a brother who married a wife, but he did not want to fulfill this obligation, Then he would call the judges of the city and he would bring the woman and himself before the judges and he would say, this woman was married to my brother, he died and they did not have any children, but I don't want anything to do with this woman.

She gave my brother a bad time and no way do I want to get saddled with her. And he would take off his sandal and he would hand it to her and she in turn would spit in his face.

And he got a dirty title. From then on, he would be called the man from whom the shoe was loosed or the sandal was loosed in Israel. The man who took off his sandal. I mean, that was dirty, you know.

He didn't fulfill the family obligations. But he could free himself from that through this little ritual. Elimelech was a brother of Boaz. Elimelech had died and his two sons had died.

The family inheritance would be lost. No son to pass it on to. So Boaz bringing a brother to Elimelech, what Ruth is doing is proposing. She is saying, I want you to take me as your wife and have a son for the family of Elimelech for their inheritance.

Now Boaz was an older man. He was old enough to be her father. And she was a young and beautiful maiden. He said, oh. Surely you are blessed of God in that you weren't interested in any of these young guys around here.

And, you know, ooh, I'm excited. I love this, Ruth. And he got all excited. He said, but there's a problem, Ruth. Got a problem. There is another brother who is of closer kin than I am, and he has the first obligation or right.

He said, now look, I want you to go back to Naomi before it gets light. I don't want men to know that a woman was here on the threshing floor tonight. And so you get back to Naomi and I'll see what I can do about this.

So before it was even light, before you could even recognize people, Ruth slipped out and headed back to Naomi, knocked on the door. Naomi said, who is it? He said, I'm Ruth. Oh, what did he say? What did he say?

Well, he said that he would like to do it, but there's a closer of kin than he is, and he will have to go see what he can do to take care of it. And Naomi says, Honey, you just rest, because that man is not going to rest until he's taking care of everything.

Sure enough, at the crack of dawn, Boaz was sitting in the gate of the city, waiting for his brother to come by. And as soon as his brother came by, he said, Hey, brother, come on over here. I want to talk to you a minute.

He said, you remember our brother Elimelech who died and his sons when they went to Moab? Well, Naomi is advertising the field for sale. And you, being the closest of kin, have the first right of redemption.

The word was known as Goel, the kinsman redeemer. You're the family redeemer. And he said, well, that's great. I'll take it. I'll redeem it. And Boaz says, now, it so happens that whoever redeems the field will also then have the obligation to raise up a seed for the family of Elimelech that they not lose their inheritance.

Oh, he said, Boaz, my wife would never go for that, man. He said, why don't you redeem the field? And Boaz says, all right. And the guy took his sandal off and handed it to Boaz. Boaz didn't spit in his face because he really liked this one.

And he redeemed the field and took Ruth as his wife. And she had a son who they called Obed, who later on had a son who they called Jesse.

Who later on had a son named David, who became the great king of Israel. Now, Boaz redeemed the field because he was in love with Ruth. He redeemed the field in order that he might get a bride whom he loved.

As we turn to the New Testament, the book of Matthew, chapter 13, verse 44, Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure that is hid in a field. When a man finds it, hides it, and for the joy thereof, goes out and sells everything that he has in order that he might purchase the field so he can obtain the treasure.

Now, in parables, we know that the field is the world. Who then gave everything they had to purchase the world? For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son. You see, Jesus came, and the purpose of his coming was to redeem this world back to God.

The world originally belonged to God. He created it. But when God made man and placed man upon this earth, he gave the earth to man. God said to Adam, have dominion over the earth, over the fish of the sea, over the fowls of the air, over every living and creeping thing, for they are yours, I have given them to you.

God gave the world to man. However, Man did not possess the world very long before he in turn forfeited or sold out the earth to Satan. When Adam took of the forbidden fruit at Satan's suggestion, he sold out and the world became Satan's.

The Bible says, don't you realize that whoever you yield yourself servants to obey, his servants you become? Whether it be of disobedience unto sin or of obedience unto righteousness. You become the servant of whatever forces you yield yourself to.

Whatever you are obeying. If you're obeying the voice of God, you're the servant of God. If you're obeying the suggestions of Satan, you're the servant of Satan. Yielding themselves to Satan's suggestion, disobeying the command of God, they came under the power of Satan and the earth.

Came under his control. The purpose of the coming of Jesus Christ was to redeem the world back to God. And if you remember, at the beginning of his ministry, Satan took him into a high mountain and showed him all of the kingdoms of the world.

And he said unto him, If you will bow down and worship me, I will give you all of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, for they are mine and I can give them to whomever I will. Quite a boast that Satan is making.

Jesus didn't challenge it. Hey, this whole world belongs to me. I can give it to whoever I wish. And it is true. Jesus recognized that. He had come to redeem the world from Satan.

From Satan's power. That was the purpose of his coming. But he was to redeem it with his blood. The cost was his life. The redemption through his blood. Satan is saying in essence, look. God's way is the cross and

Here is the cleaned-up version of the sermon transcription:

You can have immediate fulfillment. Just follow me. Just worship me. And you can have it right now. I'll give it to you immediately if you'll just bow down to me. And that's really the decision that people must make today. Whether or not I'm going to believe God's Word, I'm going to come to the cross, I'm going to reckon my old man, my old nature to be dead, that I might be alive unto God in the Spirit, and find that fulfillment that God has promised if I'm willing to deny myself and take up my cross to follow Him.

Or I will listen to Satan's lies and I'll think that I can find immediate fulfillment in drugs or in sex or whatever that Satan is holding up to me. Right now you can have it. You don't have to take God's path of denial. But Jesus came to redeem the world. And when Satan offered this alternative plan, Jesus said to him, "It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only."

And he went the path that brought him to the cross where he gave his life as a ransom for all. He redeemed the world through his blood. In the figure of the treasure hid in the field, who then is the treasure? If the field is the world, then Jesus is the one who for the joy of the treasure gave all to purchase the world in order that he might have the treasure.

Who then is the treasure? And the treasure, amazing as it may seem, is you and me who have come to trust in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. We, you see, are called the Bride of Christ. And even as Boaz bought the field because he was in love and wanted a bride, so Jesus purchased the world because he was in love, in love with you, and wanted a bride.

And thus he redeemed the world, not because God needed another planet, but because he wanted the treasure, you, the body of Christ, you, the bride of Christ, and for his love for you. He paid the price of redemption. Hebrews tells us who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, though he despised the shame.

The joy of having you as his bride. The joy of having you with him in eternal fellowship. He paid the price. He redeemed the world. Now as we go on to the book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible. In chapter 4, we find John carried up into heaven. He sees there the glorious throne of God.

He sees the angels about the throne of God and the 24 elders as they are worshiping around the throne of God. And in the fifth chapter, he sees in the hand of the Father sitting upon the throne a scroll that is sealed with seven seals. And he hears an angel proclaim with a strong voice, "Who is worthy to take this scroll and to break the seals?"

And no man was found worthy in heaven, in the earth, under the seas, who could take the scroll and break the seals. And John said, I began to sob convulsively because no man was worthy to take the scroll and break the seals. What is the scroll? It's the title deed to the earth.

Deceived man, and took from him the earth. The title deed was sealed with the seven seals. Now the time has come for redemption. But no man is worthy. There's no kinsman that can come and redeem it. You see, there's another Jewish law, the law of redemption. Whenever you sold property, there was a revisionary clause within the deed.

Within a specified period of time, providing you could fulfill the terms of the contract, you could purchase back your property in order to stay in the family as the family inheritance. So many times a person in the time of need would sell their land in order to get the money that they needed. But then in this specified period of time, and usually a six-year period, you would then come and you would bring this scroll with the seals.

You'd come to the elders. You'd open the scroll. You'd say, look, I'm Chuck Smith, and this is my property. I sold it. And here's the money. Here's the contract. Here's what it says. All right, I'm able to fulfill it. And you'd purchase the thing back, and the field became yours again.

Now, if you were unable to do that yourself, then a brother could step in and do it. He would be called the Goel, the kinsman redeemer. And he could come in and purchase it so that it stays in the family. The title deed to the earth. The time has come for redemption. No man is able to redeem.

Jesus, who became man, became our redeemer. And as John is sobbing, you see, if you don't redeem it, then it stays in the new ownership forever. John is sobbing. Looks like the world is going to forever be under the power of Satan. But the elders said, hey, John, don't cry.

Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed to take the scroll and to loose the seals. And John said, I turned and I saw him. He looked like a lamb that had been slaughtered. And he took the scroll out of the right hand of him who was sitting upon the throne.

And as he took the scroll, the 24 elders came forward with little golden bowls that were filled with odors, which are the prayers of the saints. And they offered them as incense before the throne of God. And they sang a new song saying, "You are worthy to take the scroll and loose the seals.

For you were slain, and you have redeemed us by your blood out of every nation and tribe and tongue and people. And you have made us unto our God kings and priests, and we're going to reign with you upon the earth." The glorious worship of Jesus Christ by his bride, by the church, when he takes the scroll, the title deed to the earth.

From the hand of the Father. And we proclaim what? Redemption. How? Through his blood. You have redeemed us by your blood. He purchased the world that he might take you, his bride, out of this world to be his forever.

Shall we pray? Thank you, Lord, for your beautiful plan, your plan of the ages, fulfilled through Jesus Christ. Thank you, Lord, that you place such high value upon us that you were willing to give yourself.

To purchase us out of the bondage and slavery of sin. That we might become your bride. Lord Jesus, thank you for your love. We love you. And we praise your name today for your redemption.

God will not force you to love him. He will not force you to be his bride. He will not force you to fellowship with Him. If He would do that, the fellowship would be totally meaningless. God wants a meaningful, loving relationship with you, and thus He leaves options for you.

It's your choice. You can choose redemption, or you can choose to go on in a life of sin, corruption. God will not force you to be with Him eternally. He allows you to make that choice. You have to make your choice. And so, whether or not you are redeemed is the matter of choice.

You're accepting God's love. Accepting the opportunity of becoming a child of God and dwelling with Him eternally. And if you reject it, then you cannot really blame God for the consequences of the rejection of that love.

I would encourage you today, accept God's glorious plan for your life. Become a part of the bride of Christ as you open up your heart to His love and receive Jesus Christ as your Savior so that you will be with me around the throne of God.

When He takes this scroll and we begin to sing together, "Oh, worthy is the Lamb to take the scroll and loose the seals, for He was slain and He's redeemed us by His blood out of every nation and family and tribe and tongue and people.

And He's made us unto our God kings and priests, and we're going to live and reign with Him forever. I can hardly wait for that glorious moment. There at the throne of God. And I trust as I look around, I'll see you there.

By the grace of God, we'll all make it. May God be with you. May God bless you. May His hand be upon your life to guide you in this coming year. May He empower you to do His work.

May you be filled with His Spirit and with His love as we walk in fellowship together. In Jesus' name.