Well, we're looking at, you know, the second out of two weeks of relationships and specifically looking at how both relationships that have been damaged can be restored by following God's plan for your life. That's what we saw with Joseph and his brothers last week. And, you know, Joseph was, even though he was harmed so much by his brothers and so much that they had done to him, he was harmed by Potiphar, although we never see any kind of fixing of that relationship. Of course, that was a little bit different than, like, the family bond. Joseph was eventually put in charge over the whole nation of Egypt, but not just for the power and fame and glory.

He realized he was there because God had placed him there. It didn't matter what his sons had done or anybody else along the way that had harmed him. He was there because God had a plan for Joseph's life. So as Joseph was willing to focus on that, a couple points along the way, he tells people that he fears God. In other words, even though Joseph had been put into this land against his will, every bit of it was against his will, he still understood God's plan and all of it.

And so he was willing to forgive his brothers and be restored to them because he realized how it fit into God's plan. And so we look at how our relationships in this world can be healed because of, you know, what God is doing. And so we also have this. This week, we're looking at the relationships that we need to have. You know, we need to have deep relationships with one another.

We need to have relationships that are not just a depth of bond of friendship, but that are godly relationships. In other words, as you're walking with God, you're able to kind of be the type of person that others need you to be. And so the idea today is that you should never walk alone. You should never walk alone. This is the power of deep relationships.

You know, when we understand that life has those hard moments, it might be something catastrophic that happens. It might be a medical diagnosis, a job loss, a car wreck, loss of your home, whatever. It might be any kind of thing, a death of a person that's close to you. In those times, we need relationships with others that are godly people and godly relationships, people that we can lean on and rely on. So we're going to look today in the book of Ruth, chapter one.

It's right after the book of judges, and I'm going to spend a few minutes doing kind of the backstory in all this. Naomi replied, go back home, my daughters. There's no reason for you to return to Judah with me. I am no longer capable of giving birth to sons who might become your husbands. Go back home, my daughters, for I am too old to get married again.

Even if I thought that there was hope that I could get married tonight and conceive sons. Surely you would not want to wait until they were old enough to marry. Surely you would not remain unmarried all that time. No, my daughters, you must not return with me. For my intense suffering is too much for you to bear.

For the Lord is afflicting me again. They wept loudly. Then Orpah kissed her mother in law goodbye. But Ruth clung tightly to her. So Naomi said, look, your sister in law is returning to her people and to her goddess.

Follow your sister in law back home. But Ruth replied, stop urging me to abandon you. For wherever you go, I will go. And wherever you live, I will live. Your people will become my people.

And your God will become my God. Wherever you die, I will die. And there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I do not keep my promise. Only death will be able to separate me from you.

When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her. She stopped trying to dissuade her. So the two of them journeyed together until they arrived in Bethlehem. When they entered Bethlehem, the whole village was excited about their arrival. The women of the village said, can this be Naomi?

But she replied to them, don't call me Naomi. Call me Mara. Because a sovereign one has treated me very harshly. I left here full. But the Lord has caused me to return empty handed.

Why do you call me Naomi? Seeing that the Lord has opposed me. And the sovereign one has caused me to suffer. So Naomi returned. Accompanied by her moabite daughter in law, Ruth.

Who came back with her from the region of Moab. Now, they arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. I'm going to pray. God, we just ask today, in this moment. That as we dig into your word, as I try to explain some of the background about it.

That your holy spirit would speak to us. And that you would show us what you want us to hear from your word today. Whether it's anything that I've said or not, Lord, we know that your spirit can speak through that. And to show us what it is that you have for us today. To heal us, to restore us.

And to draw us close to you. We thank you, Lord. Amen.

So I want to do a little kind of the surrounding story. About what's going on here in the book of Ruth. But there's one thing that I want to mention beforehand, and that's what some of the words of Naomi talk about that perhaps might be troubling for us to hear or to say on our own. Out loud. Over and over, Naomi talks about how it seems that God is afflicting her or that God has caused these things to happen.

And a lot of times we might be tempted, in the trying or tough moments of our lives, to blame God and to say, why have you done this to me? I might point out there's this guy named Job. There's a whole book written about his life, and he did that, and he went through a lot because his focus wasn't in the right way at the beginning on who God is and how God was treating him, and he wanted to blame God for it. In the end, he never really got his answer. That's not that comforting to us.

We want to know why. It seems like God might be doing these things or allowing these things to happen, and we don't ever seem to get those answers. But at the end of the book, here's what happens with job. He says, you know God. I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but this is what he said.

You know God. Before this, I'd heard of you like I'd heard of you as one can hear with their ears. But I never really knew you. I never really saw you. But now I see you.

Through the midst of trial and struggle and suffering, job saw God. And he was able to see God in not just a new way, but in a personal way. One of the characters in this book, Ruth, she's. Now, she's not the one that's saying that God has done these things to her, but I believe that she starts out her journey knowing about God, hearing about him from her husband, who had passed away from her husband's family. But in the end, she gets to knowing God through the connection with godly people that redeem her life.

So here's where this story picks up in the book of Ruth. This book is four chapters long, and it might be considered a love story. It might be considered a story of loss and redemption. There's all kinds of ways you can look at it, but I just want to tell Yden the details about it. It starts out by saying that in the time of the judges.

I mean, it's in the first 1st verse, first line during the time of the judges. And if you don't know what that is, we might think like, well, we have judges, we have Supreme Court justices. We have district courts, and we have city, county judges and all these things, but that's not what the judges were. In the Old Testament. In the Old Testament that you had, everybody's pretty familiar with Moses, and he's the guy that leads the children of Israel out of Egypt, where they were enslaved in that land, leads them out of there, takes them into the wilderness, where they were only supposed to be there a short time.

But the Israelites did not have the faith yet to trust God, to bring them essentially, with no weapons and not much personal belongings, no might or ability, no training. I mean, they were probably strong from the work they had done, but they weren't organized, they weren't fighters, and they were supposed to go into this land that God had promised on oath to Abraham 400 and something years before that. But they didn't have the faith that God was able to make it happen. So God said, okay, this generation will live and die in the wilderness. But once this generation passes away, the kids that have grown up in the wilderness, that have been learning my ways and learning my law, that Moses, you know, Moses would receive the law from God and teach it to the people as he taught it to the people.

That generation that's coming up would learn God's ways, and they would learn how to trust in God and how to relate to him. They would wake up every morning miraculously fed by manna from heaven, which got old, I'm sure. They probably had, like, these cookbooks. Have you ever had, like, been to, like, a church or some kind of social club that had a cookbook? You know, I've seen them from women's clubs, elks lodges, churches, you know, boy scout troops, all these things.

Everybody likes to make a cookbook and then try to sell them. Now we have the Internet, and recipes are really annoying online. Does anybody get recipes online for anything? How many of you are sick of those things? Do you know what I'm talking about?

You've got to scroll, scroll until you get to the actual recipe. They always want to tell how their grandma made this dish or how they went to some mexican restaurant, and it was just perfect there. And this is the closest way they could come to making this. And I'm like, oh, my goodness. Need to know about the consomme sauce you got with your tacos at the mexican place.

I want to know how to make it today. You know, like, anyway, if you don't know what that is, go down to taco amigo down here in the orange building on 301. Taco amigo is fantastic. And they have these burrilla tacos, and you dip them in the sauce. Oh, it's wonderful.

It's a great lunch. It's a good plan. Anyway, they didn't pay me to say that. I just love them that much, you know, so. Ooh, that's.

I could start doing, oh, man, God's shutting me down. My microphone just cut out during that. He's like, nope, don't start selling plugs for restaurants. Okay, I won't do that. So we'll cut that out on the video.

So anyway, that's a joke. I see that on videos all the time. It's like they didn't cut it out. They left it in there because it was still kind of funny. So they had this cookbook probably that's like, you know, a 1001 ways to cook manna and enjoy it.

You know, like, there's no spices, there's no anything. It's like there's not that many options. But they tried, you know? So they're eating manna and getting tired of it. But that's life.

That's what they're learning. But through all this, they learn about God. They learn about his provision, his protection, his guidance. They learn how to worship him, how to serve him. They learn that you're supposed to work for six days and rest for one of them.

Sometimes we still need. Sometimes I still need to learn that lesson. I forget that one a lot. And God says, you know, when you were a slave in Egypt, you were made to work seven days a week with no rest, no break. You were treated as a machine.

I want you to know you're a person. You're a human being. Created the image of God. And when God went about his work of creating this earth, he worked for six days and rested on the 7th. We're not to think of ourselves better than God as if we have to continue working all the time.

We can take a rest. We're called to take a rest. We're created to take a rest. And so as God does that, he doesn't create the Sabbath for us to just have to follow it because it's a law. In fact, they argued with Jesus over this when he healed people on the Sabbath, raised them metaphorically out of the pit that they were in, and set them free.

And the leaders, the religious people today, said, Jesus, you're not following the law. You're breaking the Sabbath law. He said, well, the Sabbath law was made. The Sabbath itself was made for people. People weren't made for the Sabbath.

It was made for you. It's a gift to you. And yet so many times we say, I don't want this gift. I'm not going to live by it. Well, the Israelites for 40 years are living in the wilderness.

And God is teaching them to abide by the Sabbath, to rest on that day. That that day is for them. They're learning all these different things and they're learning how to worship God and how to live according to his rules and his commands. But then when Moses died, he had been raising up this young man named Joshua, who's not a young man at this point. He's been been there this whole time.

And now Moses dies in the wilderness. And Joshua is the new leader of the children of Israel, the nation of Israel, the twelve tribes. And Joshua. He leads them into the promised land according to the will of God. The first place they go to is Jericho.

They don't even raise a weapon against it. They march around it and shout and blow trumpets. And God causes the walls of the city to fall inward, not out, but inward. And they march on in and they capture the city and they take it. They burn the city.

There's actually archaeological evidence that shows of a city where this happened, Jericho. And where the walls fell in like they found evidence of this today. The walls are fallen inward. There's evidence of charring, like the city was burned, just like the scriptures talk about. There's proof in archaeology findings that show that the story in the Bible is accurate.

And so they marched into the city. They took it. The fear of God falls on all these cities around it. And they begin marching against them and capturing these cities and dwelling in there. Because God had promised to Abraham that this would be where his descendants would dwell.

And God had given the people that dwelt there opportunities to live for him and to serve him. And they refused to. They followed idols. They served false gods. They offered their children in the fire even to some of these idols.

And God detested these things. He still detests these things. We're still offering our children up. It might not be on the altars to Molech, but there are other ways that we're doing that still today. And God is heartbroken over it.

The children of Israel, they begin moving into the promised land and they live there. But then after Joshua dies, he was their leader during this whole time, both in military might, in leading them to worship God and to follow the laws and leading them to settle into their towns. But then when Joshua ages out and dies, he hadn't taken the time and effort to raise up a leader after him, like Moses had raised Joshua up. Nobody came after Joshua. And so now the people don't have a leader.

And so you can read this. It's a big, long book, the book called Joshua, about his time. And then after that, there's the book called judges that precedes the Book of Ruth. And in the Book of Judges, you have these judges that come up, like I said, they're not, like, wearing black robes with the little white thing showing and all that. No, it's judges in the sense of they would be the person that rose up for a time, for a moment, to lead the people of Israel.

And usually when this would happen was when. And the book of Judges tells us that there would be a time where everyone did as they saw fit. They did things like they thought were best. This was kind of what Adam and Eve had done when the serpent tempted Eve, and she was tempted by the idea that she would be able to choose right and wrong, good and evil, that she would be able to decide for herself the things that were right and the things that were wrong. That's where we've struggled pretty much always.

We've always, since then decided, rather than listening to what God tells us to do, we want to listen to what our heart tells us to do. And that's where we get into trouble so often. And so the children of Israel would get to this point where they would. They would be doing their own thing, deciding for themselves what they wanted to do, rather than following the word of God that Moses had handed down to them, and they would get into trouble. One of the things that God had told them would happen was that when they worshiped him, when they lived according to his law, the land would produce crops, the animals would have offspring, and they would multiply, and that God would give them protection from their enemies, that he would provide for them on all fronts of.

But if they stopped following God, if they stopped obeying his commandments, if they started worshiping idols, then he would allow the consequences of their actions to fall on them. The neighboring peoples around them would invade them, they would subjugate them, they would levy taxes on them, that they would have to pay the rain, and the crops wouldn't work right. The animals wouldn't have offspring. In other words, God would start putting some thorns around them that would be prodding them, saying, turn back to me, turn back to me. Return to me.

And it seems like it would go in cycles, 20 years or 40 years. Who knows what it would go for? A cycle where people would go off, and they would run far from God. And then eventually they would start to repent. God had promised them that if they called on the name of the lord, that he would bring them back, that he would raise up someone that would be their deliverer.

And so you've got these people that God would raise up called the judges, and he would raise up a judge. Sometimes they were a military might. There's usually a military component of it where they would gather the armies of Israel together, and they would overthrow the yoke of bondage that another nation had placed on them. And sometimes there was a spiritual component to it as well, a time where this person would lead them back to the proper and true worship of God according to the law. But when this happened, a lot of times you would have.

Sometimes that leader wasn't necessarily that strong of a military person. I think of a guy named Gideon, who, he fought a battle also with no weapons. They just had torches and trumpets. And yet they overtook an army of over 100,000 people, with only 300 Israelites, because God was fighting for them. When the angels of the Lord talked with Gideon, he says, hey there, mighty warrior.

And he's like, who, me? Not me. I'm a scared guy. I'm just scared of everything. He says, no, I'm calling you to be a mighty warrior.

There was another guy named Samson that, Samson was strong, Samson was powerful. He was not a very good guy on the religion side of things, like some of Samson's favorite things. I can't even really describe that fully. I'll just say he liked to kill people, burn down crops in villages, and he really loved visiting prostitutes. Like, that was one of Samson's favorite things.

If you read the story, not very good on the religious leader front, sadly, we have some pastors that are like that, too. When you look at some of their records, it seems like almost every week I'm hearing in the news about some pastor at some that had some kind of a moral failure. And you know what? I don't know. Like, part of that maybe, is being on that big of a viewing platform.

There's so much pressure. I'm not sure. I don't know what happens wrong there. These people need our prayers, these leaders, it might be whether they're preaching to tens of thousands of people or dozens of people. We need your prayers.

But Samson wasn't the great religious leader. He could. He could fight some battles and, you know, overthrow the yoke of the bondage from these nations around Israel, but he wasn't very good at leading them in a religious way. But these judges, God would raise up for a specific time and a specific period. So when we see what the cycle is, where they'll fall away from God, when people fall away from God in the nation of Israel, the land itself would begin to reject them.

God would remove the hedge of protection from around them. And when we start reading the book of Ruth, we see in that first line, during the time of the judges, there was a famine in the land of Judah. So with all that background knowledge that I've just spent, like, 15 minutes talking about, what you can learn from that one sentence is, things aren't right in the land. People weren't giving God the honor and glory that he deserved. So what God does, generally speaking, is he'll raise up a leader, a reformer, to come in and to bring some kind of restoration to the people into the land.

But the book of Ruth doesn't tell us about that. It tells us a story about a family. And this family, their names all mean something. I think we've got a slide about this that kind of shows. So you can kind of look at that and see what some of their names mean.

The man in this story, the husband, the father, his name is Elimelech, and his name means God is king. Now, that's odd to me. If he was born in a time where the people weren't following God properly, it makes me think that perhaps his parents had a longing that there would be a resurgence of the worship of God. And in their day, names meant something. You would name somebody a meaning of a name that you wanted it to show forth in their character.

I believe that he was named Elimelech so that people would try to start focusing back on realizing that God is king. I don't know if we need to start naming some kids elimelech today. I don't know, but we need to remember in this world, in this country, that God is king, that no matter who we elect in a few months, no matter who gets voted in, by the way, it seems like I've met a lot of people that have no idea there's actually a third party candidate. I'm not trying to endorse him or say this is just shocks me that this isn't on the news, but RFK, Robert F. Kennedy junior is running for president as a third party candidate.

And a lot of people don't even know that. It's like we're being funneled or forced to vote for one person or the other. We don't even get told there's a solid, you know, with a solid following behind him. Third party candidate that's even running. You can look that up.

I'm nothing. Not even coming close to endorsing him. I'm just letting you know it's out there. We have these options, but in the midst of all those options, that doesn't fix who we are inside. That doesn't fix the heart of our country.

The heart of our country needs God. The people in our country need God. And regardless of who you vote for on the national, state, or local level, we need God. And so we need this idea, like the name Elimelech that says God is king, he marries a woman named Naomi. Her name simply means pleasant.

Now, I don't think that this was one of those ironic names, like, you know, a really big guy that's named Tiny or, you know, a really ornery person that they call happy or something like that. You know, like, I don't think that it's one of those ironic things like that. I think her. That she really lives up to this at first, that she's this pleasant person living in tough times. And we need those people.

When we live in tough times, we need pleasant people. Amen. They have two sons. Thank you, Joyce. They have two sons.

Now, something that was going on during these difficult times was a lot of kids didn't make it very long after birth. And this is almost funny to me, but it's not. They wouldn't name them until they had a pretty good idea these children were going to. To live a while. It's like they wouldn't get invested in their kids enough to even name them because they're like, well, track record shows a lot of these kids aren't going to make it.

Like, it's not funny, but it's just. It's so ironic that that's how they lived. I don't think that they were trying to be mean. I think that was just life. That's how difficult it was.

And these two boys did make it, though. And they named them weak and frail. Maelan and Killian means weak, and it means fraile. That's what they named their sons. That's what they named these boys.

They move from the land of Bethlehem, and they move into this neighboring country of Moab and Bethlehem. I didn't put this on this slide, but it means house of bread. Another irony, because in the house of bread, there is no bread. There's a famine in the land. Famine didn't just mean a drought.

Famine meant there was a drought. There was no crops growing it meant the animals were sick and dying. It meant that people were weak and starving. And if you're weak, you also probably, with all these other things, you're probably quite poor. You don't have weapons.

You don't have weapons of defense or offense. You're too weak to even wield those. And so that means you're also susceptible to the neighboring invasions that come as I described before. And so, as you've got all this going on, there's no bread in the house of bread. The city of Bethlehem is later where David would be from and where he would live as he was growing up.

It was the place where Jesus would be born. But right now, you've got Elimelech and Naomi and weak and fraile, and there's no bread in the house of bread. So this man does, I don't think, something that's faithless. He just makes a decision for his family that he thinks is best right now, and he uproots them from this land that is struggling, and they go somewhere else. They go to a neighboring country, a foreign land, and they put down their roots there, and they try to make a go of it there.

Apparently, they lived there for quite a little while because the boys got old enough to marry these two women. One named Ruth. Her name means friendship. That's a very good name for her. And the other means orpah, which means back of the neck.

Like, the part you see is somebody's walking away from you. And so she lives up to her name, too, I've heard. I don't know if it's true or not. I've heard that the talk show host, Oprah, was named after her, but her mom spelled the word the letters wrong, kind of inverted them a little bit, and probably picked the wrong sister, the wrong sister in law to name her after, you know, like, pick Ruth, not Orpah. Anyway, I don't know if that's true or nothing, but it's just kind of, you know, it's just kind of one of those things.

It's like, well, that. That wasn't too good of a thing to do. So she. This family moves there. The boys marry these two girls, and then it just simply says, the men all died.

Elimelech dies, the boys die. We kind of saw that coming with their names, I think, you know, and they're gone, like, with just within the first few verses, they're not there anymore. So now you've got Naomi, who's starting to become bitter about her life, her plot. You know, things went from bad to worse really quickly for her. And so she starts blaming God for it.

She doesn't look at herself. She doesn't look at her people's sins and all the things that led them to this place. She starts blaming God. And so she says, you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to go back home, because I've heard reports that there's bread in the house of bread again, that God has responded to the cries of his people, that he's blessed Israel.

I assume this is at a time when God has raised up one of those judges who would come in and help bring the people back to God. It doesn't tell us who it is or what time that is, but I assume that's what's happening. And so she goes to return to the land and she shows back up there, and people start to recognize her. Oh, first, by the way, she tries to tell the girls to leave. We read this part.

She says, go home. You don't need to stay here anymore. I'm never going to have another son for you to marry. So just go back to your father's households and let them find new husbands for you, and you can raise your families that way. Eventually, Orpah turns her back, back of the neck.

She turns her back on her and goes home. But Ruth makes that declaration that we saw in verse 16. Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you live, I will live. And your people will become my people, and your God will become my God.

They show back up in Bethlehem, Ruth following along with Naomi. And as they show back up there, it's been, let's say, at least ten years would be a good guess. They show up and people start to recognize Naomi, but they say, wait a minute. You're Naomi, aren't you? And she says, don't call me that anymore.

Don't call me Naomi. Call me Mara. Which means bitter for the Lord has. Has taken a lot from me. Now, what's interesting here is there's never any evidence that anybody actually calls her by her new name that she adopts to herself.

She wants to be called by this identity. In the moment, she's feeling like this is who she is. In that moment, she's feeling like this is her lot in life. This is her identity, and that she's just going to live inside of that identity. She's going to become that person permanently.

I don't want to get into too much stuff, but I can't get away from this idea that we see this happening in our country a lot of different ways today, specifically, a lot of people that are struggling with something they call transgenderism. I'm not trying to make a whole big thing on this, but I can't get away from this idea that says, first of all, there's a study that shows. There's lots of studies that show this. That people, especially young people, who feel like they're experiencing what has been called gender dysphoria, you know what my gender is? I don't feel like I match up with that, and so I need to do something to change it.

They end up if you just leave them alone and love them, but don't coddle them or don't play into that thing that they're feeling at the moment, but you just continue to love them as the person that God created them to be. That in a few years, they. We might call it age out of it, or they just kind of get beyond that as a phase. And so we by no means should judge them or stop loving them or outcast them, but we don't have to go along with saying, well, okay, if that's your name, if this is who you are, then we're just gonna go along with that. Nobody calls Naomi Mara.

They recognize that this was a thing that she was going through at that moment, but that wasn't who she is, that God was going to bring her out of that, and that God was going to heal her and restore her. And so they stayed alongside of her, but they refused to give in to calling her by this new name. Today, we're told that that's wrong, that it's dead. Naming someone that is not respecting them, I say it's respecting them the most. It's respecting them as the person that God created them to be, recognizing them as the treasure that they are and working to redeem and restore that thing which is being covered up by the pain of loss and of struggle and of sin.

And as we see that image of God inside of them, we work to peel those layers away. And these are the times that we need those deep relationships with godly people the most, where somebody will stand up and say, I see the struggle that you're going through. I'm not trying to downplay that or belittle that, and by no means going to walk away from you, but what I am going to do is walk alongside of you. I'm going to walk with you. I'm going to get down.

If you're down in the dirt, I'm going to get down in the dirt with you. I'm going to do whatever it takes to be there with you. But the strongest way that I can be an ally for you is to recognize the person that God created you to be and to help you find that person inside of you. If that's not worthy of an amen, I'll get down right now.

They show up there in Bethlehem. Naomi wants to be called bitter. Nobody calls her bitter. Ruth made this unwavering commitment to Naomi. Ruth says that I will be with you no matter what.

And so Ruth is looking out for Naomi. Now, Naomi begins to look out for Ruth. She says, you know what? We need food, so go out and find a field to work in. Now, this doesn't seem like she's looking out for her daughter in law that much.

It seems like she's saying, I'm going to sit home while you go out and work. Let's just assume Naomi is so aged that maybe she can't get out in the field. Let's just throw that out there. And by the way, this idea of going out into the field and I gleaning comes from the scripture, from the law of Moses, and it was God's way of providing for those who didn't have the means or ability to provide for themselves. They could go out the poor people land.

This was like God's welfare for old school Israelites. They would go out in the harvest times. Remember, the verse we were reading says they showed up at the beginning of barley harvest. So Ruth goes out into this field. She's supposed to just pick a field.

It seems like it's just happenstance, but we realize it's the providence of God. All the way through this, she shows up in the field of a man named Boaz. And the gleaning was supposed to be a couple things. One on the corners of the fields they weren't supposed to harvest, all the way up to the corners and the edges of the fields. And the way you could tell a good landowner from an evil or wicked one, the way you could tell one who fears God versus one who doesn't fear God is the width of that border stripe.

The place that they would leave unharvested showed how much they trusted in God. And God, actually, it wasn't a written rule, but God would bless them in proportion to their generosity. In other words, the wider that was, even though it seems like they are getting less crops for themselves, God would provide for them more. Their fields would have more yield to them than, say, a stingy, wicked neighboring field would. And as they're doing this, the poor people of the land could go in there and they could harvest those shocks of grain that were still left standing.

They also, as the harvesters were going through, the. The ones that were employed by the landowner, as they would harvest. If there was stalks that they missed or if there was some that they dropped as they were gathering them, then those were supposed to be left behind. You weren't allowed to go back through and pick those up. And that's what people like Ruth would come and do, and they would pick those up, and that would be their livelihood.

That would be what they were able to live off of and be fed from. So they still had to go out and work for it, but they were provided for by the hand of God and by righteous Mendez, who owned these lands. In the end, what had happened was elimelech probably had owned some land, but in the famine, it wasn't producing anything, it wasn't sprouting anything. And so this land had fallen into the hand of a creditor of some kind, who was probably employing workers to work on it and harvest it. So now there's a debt attached to this land.

Ruth is going out and working for Boaz, but there's probably some family lands that are nearby, but they didn't have the rights to it anymore, even though their inheritance was supposed to be perpetual. So you would have somebody that would step in called a kinsman redeemer. Now, the idea of a patriarch in the biblical times was a man who was. Who would receive the double portion of inheritance from the landowner from their father when the father died, and they would take that, and they would be able to provide for the family. They would be able to look out for anyone who was fallen into debt or who was maybe even kidnapped or taken away or sold as a slave to pay off a debt, and they would be able to go and redeem them and bring them back.

This you can see in the story of Abraham going after his nephew lot, when lot got captured by an invading army, when he lived in Sodom and Gomorrah area. And Abraham went out with his trained fighters, his men from his own household, and he brought lot back and the others who were captured with him. This was the job of a patriarch in providing for those around them. So the other job of the patriarch is this idea of redemption and this land that would have fallen into some kind of debt and into creditors. Somebody needs to come and redeem that land.

It turns out that Boaz, that Ruth has gone to his fields. Boaz is a kinsman redeemer. He's a close relative of. Of naomis, and so it's his job to go and redeem this land for them on their behalf. But he says there's somebody that's a closer Redeemer.

There's somebody that's more closely related to your family, and it's his option first. So he goes to this guy and he says. He says, and there's all the men at the city gate where they would conduct business. And he says, hey, there's the foreigner, Ruth, that showed up to take care of her mother in law, Naomi. And there's this debt, and, you know, the land needs to be redeemed.

And he says, will you do it? And the man says, yeah, I'll do that. He says, okay, but you have to take Ruth as your wife and provide offspring for her dead husband. That was the way the law worked. You would provide offspring, but they didn't belong to your family line.

They belonged to the family line of the man who had passed away. And so this guy that Boaz is talking to says, well, if that's the case, I can't do it because it'll mess up my. My children's inheritance and my name and family line. And you know what's really interesting is this story. Whoever wrote the book of Ruth, we don't know for sure, but whoever wrote it down goes to painstaking lengths to make sure that that man's name isn't in here.

All these other names that we had that have a meaning and are important enough to see in here, he makes sure that we don't see this guy's name. That's just poetic justice, if there is any. You know, it's like. It's like, I think he maybe wrote this whole book. Like, yeah, there's all these good points, but it was really just like revenge literature, you know, against that guy.

He's like, I'll show you. I'll write this whole book and keep your name out of it, if that's what you're worried about. But Boaz ends up not only redeeming the land, but he also takes Ruth on as his wife, and she through. Through their union. They provide the family line where King David comes from, and eventually the messiah, Jesus Christ, comes from.

Speaking of Jesus Christ, he's the best friend you can have. He's not only the redeemer like Boaz was. He's our redeemer from sin and from everything that drags us down, all the things that we might look at in this world that say God's been hurting me, I'm really bitter right now. I'm going through some hard stuff. Jesus is the one that redeems us from all of those things.

Jesus is the one that's fulfilling what Romans 828 says, that God is working all things in our lives together for the good of those who love him, for those like Joseph knew, who are called according to his purpose. In those times of difficulty, famine, drought, struggle, whatever it is that you're going through, God is taking those times to work in and through you to work about something good. Don't give in to what your heart says in that moment that says, I give up. I'm just bitter now. I'm angry, I'm hurt, I'm broken.

Don't give in to what your heart says in those times, because our heart can very well easily lead us astray. But in those moments, understand that God has a plan for you. There's a need that we have for good, godly relationships. There's a need that we have in our lives to have friends that are close to us.

There's a need that we have to be those friends to others. If you don't have friends in your lives that walk with you through, let's say, the light and casual moments, they don't stay close to you during those times, they probably won't be there for you in those difficult times. Time to find new friends. I'm not saying your friends are bad. I'm just saying you might need some friends that you know will stick close to you.

And then there's the need for you to be that friend to others. Be there in the times where somebody needs you. Don't cut them off. Don't just always give them advice. Sometimes just sit and listen, maybe pray with them, and that's it.

Our job isn't to fix them. Our job is just to love them. So in those times, we know that we need those friends, or we know that we need to be that friend. But ultimately, the best thing we can do is walk close with Christ and connect others to Christ. He's the friend that never leaves us or forsakes us.

In proverbs 17 seven, we have on the screen, I think, or we have that slide that talks about a friend who loves at all times, a friend that sticks closer than a brother. In proverbs 1824, which isn't on the screen, we see that Jesus is the one who sticks closer than a brother. A friend that's close like a brother is necessary. But there's a friend who's closer than a brother. And that is what we find in Jesus Christ.

So as we think about relationships, it's not just a message about, hey, be a good friend. Hey, be a committed person. It's recognizing the times, knowing that God has sent his son Jesus Christ, to redeem us and to walk with us through those most difficult of times. And that when you're walking in a good time, he's called you to be that friend that others need.