Co-Laborers; Co-Heirs: Ruth and Boaz

For joining me in prayer for that. I know that's a heavy thing for us and I hope that you'll encourage one another in these things and others as you have an opportunity this week to talk about these things with family and friends and coworkers.

We're going to turn our attention today to Ruth, which is printed in your bulletin with large sections for us to read out loud together. But before we jump into that, I want to give a brief plug for the Gift of Gender seminar that we're hosting this coming weekend. This will be Friday night from 6 to 8 PM and Saturday morning from 8:30 to noon.

This is really set up for us as a community to come around and talk together about a very complex issue, which is very personal to us—how we identify ourselves in a culture that's also very confused about these things and offers lots of different voices. My friend, Doctor Sam Andriatis is coming in with his wife for this weekend to do this.

Sam and I met Mary Kay when we were at the Assessment Center to plant a church in 2001. We were there over 9/11, just really strange set of circumstances. But that's when we met this couple and we went off to plant a church in Downtown Philadelphia. They moved right after this from Washington DC to an area of New York City called Greenwich Village.

And immediately they were thrown into trying to reach out to a community where transgenderism, gender dysphoria, the homosexual community—all of this was right in the cauldron of their environment they were ministering in. And they really worked hard to try to figure out what does it mean for us to love and care for our neighbors.

Sam piloted a program called GAME, which stands for Gender Affirming Ministry Endeavor, which was a way of trying to engage their neighbors and love their neighbors around these topics. And so they've done a lot of work over a long period of time thinking about helping the church equip itself, helping us to think about what does it mean to love all our neighbors.

And so we're really excited to bring Sam in. He is not flustered by any question. So he's great for people who are coming who are like, "I don't like that we're talking about this" or people who are like, "I need to talk about this." He's good for all that. And we encourage you to come. We still have some sign up space available, but it's going to fill up. And so if you want to register, you can follow the QR code in the bottom of your bulletin to that. We hope you'll come. We hope you'll bring a friend. We hope you'll bring middle schoolers and high schoolers. It's very appropriate for those age groups. This is a great opportunity and we're also going to have Sam come and meet with our youth on Sunday night next week too. So we're really grateful to have an opportunity to host this as a church and I hope you'll take an opportunity to sign up for that.

Co-Laborers, Co-Heirs Series

Along with that seminar, we are doing a preaching series on gender in the body of Christ called "Co-Laborers, Co-Heirs," and today we're going to look at the Old Testament Book of Ruth and I hope that you'll pay attention to what we're doing as we pick the various passages we're looking at in this.

Let me say this again: this is not a marriage series. All of our relationships are affected by gender and so last week, the passage we looked at was a sibling relationship. Next week, we're looking at a parent-child relationship. Today, we're looking at a marriage. In following weeks, we're going to look at ministry partner relationships and friendships, but all of our relationships are affected by gender because it's how we identify ourselves. So we're looking at this in a broad spectrum of ways.

And today, we're going to look at the book of Ruth. Again, this is not a marriage sermon. This isn't a marriage story. This isn't even a romance. This is not a love story. So we're going to look at Ruth and we're going to read here in a moment, but I want us to think about two questions today that are going to frame our time:

First, what stories does our culture tell about the Bible and gender? What stories does the Bible tell about us and gender? What stories does the culture tell about the Bible and gender? What stories does the Bible tell about us with regard to gender?

Reading Ruth

So let's read together. We're going to read sections from Ruth 1, 2, and 4, and I'll pause at appropriate moments. But if you'll join your voice with me as we read God's word aloud together.

Now it came about in the days when the judges governed that there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to reside in the land of Moab with his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech, the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem in Judah. So they entered the land of Moab and remained there. — Ruth 1:1-2

Then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died, and she was left with her two sons, and they took for themselves Moabite women as wives. The name of the one was Orpah, the name of the other Ruth, and they lived there about ten years. Then both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and the woman was left without her sons and her husband.

Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the land of Moab because she had heard in the land of Moab that the Lord had visited his people by giving them food. So she departed from the place where she was and her two daughters-in-law with her, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah.

But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go, return each of you to your mother's house. May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. May the Lord grant that you may find a place of rest, each one in the house of her husband." Then she kissed them, and they raised their voices and wept.

So Naomi returned, and with her, Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, who returned from the land of Moab, and they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. Now Naomi had a relative of her husband, a man of great wealth of the family of Elimelech whose name was Boaz. And Ruth became his wife, and he had relations with her. And the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son.

Then the women said to Naomi, "Blessed is the Lord who has not left you without a redeemer today, and may his name become famous in Israel. May he also be to you one who restores life and sustains your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him."

Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse. And the neighbor women gave him a name saying, "A son has been born to Naomi." So they named him Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.

What Does Culture Say This Book Is About?

What's the story that the culture tells us about this book with regard to gender? I think that what I hear regularly is that the current storyline about this book is that this is a dangerous book, particularly for women. This is a patriarchal book. In fact, what we hear a lot is the Old Testament patriarchy, Jesus—lone good guy—New Testament patriarchy.

And I want to ask that question: Is that true? Is that really the problem that we're facing with regard to gender in our culture right now? Is the Bible the problem behind some of the abuses we've seen in leadership in the church in particular? Is this behind some of the problems we see around men and women and identification? Is the Bible the problem?

If you've been around the things of Jesus very much, if you've been around our church very much, you know that it's probably more complex than just that.

In 1910, the London Times—the British newspaper—ran a series of articles by eminent writers and thinkers of the day, and they solicited responses from various thinkers to this question: What's the biggest problem in the world today? What's wrong with the world?

Lots of responses to this, but most famously, the Christian writer G.K. Chesterton responded with the shortest response. He wrote this:

Dear sirs, what's wrong with the world today? I am. Sincerely, G.K. Chesterton.

I love that because Chesterton said a whole sermon in a couple of words right there. He's representing a Christian worldview that the biggest problem are not all the bad people and the bad things out there, but it's in here. My own sin, my need for redemption, the gospel that comes to me through Jesus Christ—this is the great hope of the world and this is the great problem.

And why am I telling you that story with regard to talking about gender? Well, by extension, here's my point: I think our biggest problems with things like patriarchy and abusive leadership and the misogyny even in the church—these are not from this book. These are in here. These have to do with what human beings in our hearts do with regard to how we distort gender. The Bible is not the problem.

So what is the story? I'm going to come back to this in a minute. We're not done with that question. But what's the story that the Bible tells us about us and gender?

And I want to look this morning with you briefly at the book of Ruth because it gives us a really helpful word to think about the Bible's message with regard to gender. And I want to look at this under kind of four people—the four main characters of this story.

I know we just read parts of it, so I'm going to tell you the story. We'll start with the main character: Naomi. The book of Ruth actually isn't about Ruth. It's about Naomi. And it tells the story of Naomi's family. And I'm going to help you out this morning by giving you Naomi's family tree.

Alright, family tree of Ruth and Naomi. So, Naomi is married to a man named Elimelech and she has two adult sons named Kilion and Maelon. And they live in Bethlehem and it's the same Bethlehem that you know of from the Christmas story. This is where Jesus is from. But there's a problem the book opens up with. There's a famine in Bethlehem. Now that's meant to be ironic. Bethlehem means house of bread. There's a famine in the house of the bread. This is like there's a famine in the breadbasket of America. Right? And so immediately, Elimelech and Naomi, instead of staying put, they decide to move. And they don't decide to move to somewhere within Israel, they move out of Israel to Moab. Now, this is not like moving to Greensboro. Right? Moab is the enemy of Israel, number one, and it's a place that was very much against the worship of Yahweh as God. So they abandoned the house of bread. They don't turn toward God in this. They turn away, and they move down the road not to Greensboro but to Moab. And shortly in succession, what happens is what God had said would happen if you move to a foreign place and intermix with the other people. Both the sons marry Moabite women.

Now, that sounds to us like, okay, they're from Moab. What's the big deal? Well, God had said like, these people don't worship the living God. This is a problem. This is a point of stumbling for God's people. So both of them marry Moabite women, one named Ruth, one named Orpah, and in close succession after this, Elimelech dies, Maelon and Kilion die. The husband and the two sons die. And what this means is that Naomi is now a foreigner living in a foreign land without property, without husband, without income, without anyone to provide for her. These were key at that time for women's survival. She's penniless and futureless and so she decides, I only have one option which is go back to Bethlehem. So she announces her plans to her two daughters-in-law, effectively saying goodbye to them. She tries to send them home. She's like, go back to your family of origin, they'll take care of you. Makes sense and Orpah leaves. But at this point, I want you to notice how dark things are for Naomi. Naomi at this point changes her name. She changes her name from Naomi which means pleasantness to Mara which means bitterness. That's not accidental. That's telling you what's going on on the inside. The despair, the hopelessness about her future, the destitution. She says actually, I went away full and came back empty. I went away with pleasantness. I came back with bitterness.

But here is where the story gets good because this story should end at this point except for the second main character that the book's named after, Ruth. Ruth does the unexpected and pledges herself to her mother-in-law. She says the famous words:

Where you go, I'll go. Your people will be my people. Your God will be my God.

Now, let's put this in marriage vow terms. Ruth is pledging herself to a destitute old woman. She's saying in effect, for worse, not for better. For poorer, not for richer, in sickness, not in health. I'm tying my entire future to this woman. It makes no sense. And she goes on from this. Remember, Ruth is not a worshiper of Yahweh, but she makes this profound statement. She takes Yahweh's name and says, by Yahweh, by the Lord, all little capitals in your Bible, I pledge myself, your God will be my God. Your God will be my God. And even the words here about what she does is marriage vow words. She clings to Naomi. The same word from Genesis chapter two where we said, the husband will leave his family and cling unto his wife. It's the same word.

Now, let me just stop there and make sure we're all on the same page. Because the people act like the book of Ruth is some kind of romance novel. Like it's a love story, but let me just remind you, Ruth doesn't make those vows to Boaz. She makes them to Naomi. This doesn't make any sense. This is not a love story at all. This isn't romance. This is a rescue story. This is a rescue story and Ruth is key to this.

So Ruth and Naomi returned to Bethlehem right at the time of the barley harvest. Because this is where things begin to change. Now, ancient Israel had a system of welfare that was written into the Pentateuch, the legal codes for Israel. And it went like this, if you're a landowner, you're harvesting your crops, don't harvest the edges of your field. You leave those for the poor. They can come along behind you and your workers and harvest that and take it home. That was the welfare system for Israel. Not everybody participated or did that, but that was what was God's intention that was called Israelite welfare.

So, it happens that there's this man named Boaz and it just so happens that he's wealthy and it just so happens that he's single but that's not the point. The point is, he's just. He's a righteous man.

He does Israelite welfare. He leaves the edges of his fields for the poor people to come along behind. So Naomi is too old to harvest. She tells her Moabite daughter-in-law Ruth, "I've got this distant cousin Boaz, I hear he's a righteous man. His reputation is that he's just. Go out in his field." And so Ruth goes and gleans behind the harvesters, cleans out the edges of the field. But Boaz notices Ruth and doesn't let her just take that. He invites her instead, "Come and sit down with us on our picnic blanket." He gives her food and he gives her a ridiculous amount of grain. He loads her up with what's about a 70 pound bag of barley at the end of this for her to go back home to Naomi.

See, here's where Naomi's fortunes begin to change. Her prospects are looking good. She's not alone—she has Ruth. She's not destitute—she has barley. But there's a problem still. She has no future. Now in ancient times, family lineage was incredibly important in a way that we probably can't understand today. Today, if you have a family and your family line ends with you, and there's no next generation, we're kind of like, okay, that's not the end of the world. But in that time and place, to have no descendants come after you, to be forgotten, was one of the worst things imaginable.

And so here's the problem: What's going to happen to the family line of Elimelech? My grandpa Bradford was really excited when me and Susan started having boys. He's like, "The family name, you know, the Bradford name will continue." And we kept having boys and he got to a point where he's like, "We have six. Okay, enough's enough. We're secure with the family lineage now." But Elimelech and Naomi's family have this problem: two dead sons. What's going to happen to the family line?

The Kinsman Redeemer

So Naomi encourages Ruth to approach Boaz again, and yet in another way. Naomi explains that Boaz is a kinsman redeemer—yet another little legal wrinkle that you need to know about from the Pentateuch. The kinsman redeemer is a provision where a male relative may sub in for a dead male relative in order to make sure a family line continues and a family is provided for. So if a man dies, his brother can marry the widow, and the children that come from that family line are considered the dead man's lineage. They're considered part of the lineage of the dead man.

So he's given the opportunity. Boaz is going to be given an opportunity to act on behalf of a relative who's in trouble, in danger, in need, in death. This is what's happening. As I said before, it's almost impossible to live in ancient times without a male guardian or husband. So the male relative is a provision by God to make sure that there's not destitution and a loss of family line. But it comes at a high cost.

For Boaz to be the kinsman redeemer means two things. One: he's got to buy back all the property that belonged to Elimelech and Naomi's family—financial cost. Number two: he's got to take Ruth on as his wife. And Ruth goes to him directly and appeals to him at midnight at the threshing floor, and Boaz agrees to do this.

Let me emphasize: this isn't a romance. This isn't Boaz going like, "Who's the hottie foreign girl?" That is not like that at all. This is Boaz choosing to do justice. Choosing at great personal cost to take this foreign woman as his wife, to redeem the family line and provide for her and her family financially for generations to come.

In fact, what we're shown is that he doesn't have to do it. There's another cousin—let's say Boaz's third cousin twice removed—who's not named in the book of Ruth. In fact, in Hebrew, he's called "Mr. So-and-so" because that's what the Hebrew means. He's not named because he chooses not to do justice. He's the next in line. He's like, "Too expensive, too great cost. No thanks." He's not a righteous man. But Boaz, at great cost to himself, chooses to do what's costly and right: to feed Naomi's family and to take her daughter-in-law as his own, at great personal cost.

The Redemption

And what's the result? What's the result of the partnership between Ruth and Boaz? We'll read it at the end of the book in chapter four. Naomi is pictured with a baby in her lap. But this is grandma. And this is what the neighboring women say:

A child has been born to Naomi. — Ruth 4

Not to Ruth, not to Boaz, but to Naomi. See, this is a redemption story about Naomi—who leaves empty and comes back full. God reverses it, and her name is changed back from bitterness to pleasantness. What do the neighbors say about Ruth?

Your daughter-in-law who loves you is better to you than seven sons. — Ruth 4

Now I know a lot about six sons.

I'm super proud of my six sons. Better than seven? And what do we learn about God? They say:

Blessed is the Lord who has not left you without a redeemer today, and may His name become famous in Israel. — Ruth 4:14

God is not done. In fact, the word that's associated with God throughout the book of Ruth is this word: Hesed. Hesed is a powerful word in Hebrew, and it means covenant faithfulness. It means God always finishes the job. God never drops the ball. God never goes to sleep. God always fulfills His promises.

And the way that God does that in this passage, in this story, is through a partnership between an unlikely man and an unlikely woman. Two gendered image bearers who partner together for the glory of God and the rescue of the family line. And what results in this? This child, Obed, becomes the grandfather of King David, who is the lineage of Christ. The very family line of Jesus is rescued by these two image bearers.

Do you see the story of Ruth? This is a redemption story, but more than that—what is the story the Bible is telling us about gender? Is this a patriarchal book?

Remember the beginning of this story. The very first verse you read was: "At the time of the Judges." Judges is famous for being one of the darkest books in the Old Testament. It is a story of seven cycles of failure and God's rescue of His people. Tremendous disobedience, tremendous oppression. I will tell you, as a male reading the book of Judges, it's hard. But the amount of patriarchy and abuse in that book—I imagine for a woman it's even harder. It's a horrible book.

And yet what do we see here? God is setting in His word these two books side by side. Ruth is given as a contrast to Judges. It's saying: yeah, in the time of Judges, people were doing whatever was right in their own eyes. But not Boaz and Ruth. They're choosing to honor God.

Notice also—isn't it fascinating that this book is named after a woman, and a Moabite woman at that? If the Bible were simply a patriarchal construction, wouldn't we have the book of Boaz? Not the book of Ruth. And after all, he's the kinsman redeemer. He's a good guy. He does a lot of good stuff. And if the book began with a genealogy of Boaz, we might get the book of Boaz. But it seems to me that the whole purpose of the book of Ruth is to answer this question: who mothered Obed and why? What was God up to through Ruth?

Amy Bird is a writer who's written extensively about this book as a model for how we think about female voices in Scripture. She calls such female voices in Scripture "gynocentric interpretation"—kind of like gynecology. Women's voices in Scripture, relaying a woman's perspective. She goes through studies of Hagar, Hannah, Miriam, Esther, Abigail, many others.

This is what she says:

The Bible isn't a book of masculine history. There's women's literature in the Bible, even if it's not what we think of today as women's literature. If there were no gynocentric texts in Scripture and women played no role in the process of being recognized in the canon, it would be fair to say that maybe Scripture is a patriarchal construction. But the woman's perspective isn't missing from Scripture. Women aren't left out. They aren't ignored. They are heard. More than heard, they contribute.

Bird goes on to make the point about this little book. She says you know what's interesting? The point of Ruth isn't Ruth—it's God. It's primarily about God. Some people have referenced this little book as sort of a female counterpart to the book of Job.

Job is the famous sufferer in the Old Testament who has tremendous loss, like Naomi. And the question of the book of Job is: is God good to His people? And some people say the book of Ruth really asks the same question with regard to women: is God good to women?

And the answer comes in two ways. First, yes—Hesed, God's covenant faithfulness. But second, how that's delivered. It's delivered through the partnership between two gendered image bearers. A man and a woman who partner together for the glory of God and the redemption of another person. Together, co-laborers, co-heirs.

Gender matters in the book of Ruth. It matters a lot. This is a story about gender. So again, what is the story that the Bible is telling us about gender? It's that gender matters. Gender matters in relationship. It's not something we should get rid of.

Now we live in a cultural moment right now where we are very much into what I'll call "fortune cookie identity." It's that each of us is like a fortune cookie, and on the inside of us is a secret message. And if we look deep within ourselves, we can define who we are based on what's on that little slip of paper. We define who we are.

And by contrast, I understand why we're there as a culture. There's been a lot of abuse. There's been a lot of pain with regard to gender. So our culture's answer to that is either get rid of it or redefine it, and particularly redefine what's in this book.

In response to fundamentalism—taking either fifteenth century BC or first century AD gender roles and saying that's what it is for all times and places—the response has been, "No, we need to reinterpret and understand how we're going to read the Bible." One of the most popular ways of doing so is something I'm gonna call trajectory hermeneutics.

So here's where it gets nerdy, but y'all are smarter than the first service. Y'all can get this. They had a hard time with it, but I just believe in y'all. You may not understand those two words, but you'll get this.

Hermeneutics just means how you interpret the Bible. Trajectory is here's a picture of me in high school with hair playing basketball, throwing the basketball up. After it leaves my hand, the trajectory is the pathway the ball travels, and the ultimate endpoint—it swishes through the net. That's the trajectory.

So put those together. This means a way of interpreting the Bible that says, "What's the path that the gospel takes and what's the endpoint?"

Trajectory Hermeneutics and Slavery

Let's take an example. Slavery is the most famous example of this and serves as justification for doing trajectory hermeneutics. It goes like this: Well, it seems like the first parts of the Bible are okay with slavery. It seems like that was somehow okay even among the Hebrews. However, when God's law appeared, it limited what could be done to slaves and provided for treatment that was humane compared to all the other cultures around. Such rules show the trajectory that God intended to take regarding slavery.

In the New Testament, masters were admonished to treat their slaves well. Paul referred to a slave as his brother in Christ. This is the trajectory—you follow where we're going with this? It's moving toward a place of restoration, slavery is wrong. According to trajectory hermeneutics, we can follow the path that scripture naturally sets us on and conclude that God desired the emancipation of slaves.

That sounds really good, doesn't it? I've heard this argued lots and lots before, but trajectory hermeneutics is not needed with regard to slavery. There's this running narrative that the Bible never condemned slavery. Yes, it did.

One Timothy 1:10

—one of the last books in the New Testament Canon to be written—condemned slavery outright. There's plenty of justification, enough that Bible-believing Christians in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries in our country and all over the world should be saying, "This is wrong. Final word." There was no need for a lot of argument. This should have shut down the Transatlantic slave trade. But people love to use trajectory hermeneutics because it sounds good, when in fact we really don't need it.

But people apply this. This is very common to apply this to issues regarding homosexuality, gender, women in ministry. "Why don't we just follow the trajectory of the Bible? After all, doesn't Galatians 3 say:

In Christ, there's neither slave nor free, male nor female, Jew nor Greek—they're all one in Christ Jesus.

But here's where it gets tricky, and I just want you to think about how you read God's word. The name itself tells you the problem with trajectory hermeneutics. You're looking outside of scripture to an endpoint that's beyond scripture. It means we go beyond what scripture says about an issue.

Now what's the problem with that? If the Bible is somehow incomplete, then who gets to decide what the endpoint is and where do we stop? If logic leads us to some kind of ultimate ethic, like our basketball goal, then haven't we replaced the authority of Scripture with the authority of our own human reason?

See, here's the danger. We've made the endpoint of the trajectory our own place in history, our own understanding of people, our own perspective, and that's really dangerous. C.S. Lewis warned the church of what he called historical arrogance, which says, "We know better than these people. We know better than them. This day, this culture, this perspective is the apex of history."

But let me ask you this: Do we really wanna say that America in 2022 is the absolute apex of history? I mean, we look around right now—it's a really weird, confusing, conflicted, hard time.

I mean, we look back at our sitcoms from ten years ago and we laugh at them and we wince at them because we're like, "That's—I can't believe we laughed at that. I can't believe we were scandalized by that." Do we really wanna say that this moment is the apex of history?

Another weakness of trajectory hermeneutics is we assume that we can separate in the Bible between two things: what is cultural or culturally bound and what is timeless. This is how it goes. We end up rejecting the parts that don't match where we live, the perspectives we have right now. We're like, "Oh, that was cultural. That was back then." The parts that we like—"Oh, this sounds right. We like this part"—that's the timeless parts. Like loving your neighbor, not judging, like Jesus.

But the danger is that, let's be honest, all of the Bible—this is what Christians believe—all the Bible is cultural and all the Bible is timeless. This book is written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. I assume none of y'all speak those fluently. This is written in a particular time and place to particular people who lived and walked around in a very different world than we do. It's cultural. But we also believe this is God's word, that it's God-breathed, that it's given to his people, that it stands the test of time, that it is timeless.

And so the hard work of interpreting the Bible is always saying: this is cultural and timeless. We hold those two things together. We don't separate them according to our preferences. And this is what I wanna say: we don't need to go outside the Bible to some other point on some trajectory. The Bible gives within itself all that we need to navigate these issues and understand gender even in this cultural moment—like First Timothy, with regard to slavery. We don't need to go outside of Scripture to find some ultimate hermeneutic of what we think it should say.

Ruth is such a great example of this. I love this book. The book of Ruth doesn't need revising or anything added to it because in this book we see again two asymmetrical equal image bearers partnering together for the glory of God and for the redemption of this family line. It's a beautiful picture. This isn't the battle of the sexes. This isn't Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet and all those things from the nineteen fifties. It's a beautiful picture of gendered relationships.

So here's my call to us: Instead of editing the Bible, can we let the Bible edit us? Can we let Scripture edit us? If we can listen to the book of Ruth, it has so much to say to us about gender and about our need for redemption and the Redeemer that God gives us.

Boaz and Ruth: Redeemed Gender

Let's look at Boaz and Ruth. Boaz and Ruth show us what redeemed gender looks like in this vital relationship. Look at Boaz. Boaz comes and pays an enormous price tag—culturally, personally, financially. And by contrast, we see him compared to Mr. So-and-So, who's passive, who holds back from doing righteousness and justice, holds back from caring for the poor right around him.

You know, Mr. So-and-So is like—if you had a good friend who lived really far away, in Garner, who was like, "Hey, our house got burned down last night. We've lost everything"—and you're like, "Well, I'll pray for you. I'll send you a postcard. Hope you're well." I mean, that's what Mr. So-and-So does. By contrast, Boaz pays the highest price in his culture to help redeem this family line and to save this family from destruction and death. He's risky and loving. He leads, he acts, he takes responsibility, he redeems. He's a snapshot of Jesus.

And Boaz is not threatened by a strong woman. He doesn't seem to flinch at Ruth taking the initiative, being strong, being decisive, saying what she thinks. Boaz is a picture for us of what it means to be a godly man. One of my hopes as we walk through this material together is that men in our congregation are like, "I love being a man. It's a great gift to be a man"—not as some kind of toxic masculinity or some kind of minimizing, but like being a man, that's a gift. That's a wonderful thing.

And Ruth—Ruth is such a picture of this incredible woman. Think about Ruth. She's an immigrant. All immigrants leave their homeland and their family and everything they've known to find a better life in another country. Not Ruth. She's like, "I think I'll go leave my homeland, my father, and everything I've known for a worse fate. I'm gonna tie myself till death do us part with this destitute old woman who has no sons." And she does so in one of the most powerful redemption stories in the whole of Scripture.

I mean, the courage, the boldness, the incredible kindness, the way she is working righteousness—Ruth is a redeemer. She's a picture for us of Jesus. And think about Ruth.

Ruth holds up this picture of what it means to be a godly woman. Being a woman is God's gift—that is a powerful, powerful thing. It's an honor. We don't see this battle for the sexes in the book of Ruth. We see two image bearers partnering together for the glory of God. The church so much needs to see this right now. Doesn't the church need to say: it's a great thing to be a man, it's a great thing to be a woman, and for us to partner together for God's glory and for the work of God and other people?

But the story also shows us how much who we are apart from Christ and how much we need Christ. Naomi is such a picture of all of us. If you're going to be a Christian, you have to identify with Naomi. Naomi is destitute, hopeless, and futureless. She says, "My life has gone from pleasantness to bitterness." She recognizes her situation is one of incredible loss and she has no hope. She comes back empty to the bread basket—and what does she find? She's filled up. She finds the Chesed love of God available for her.

Over and over again, Naomi is a model for us of what it means for all of us to come to Jesus. We come empty. We come with nothing in our hands, and Jesus is our ultimate kinsman redeemer. He's like Ruth, where he pledges himself body and soul to us—not just till death do his part, but through death and resurrection. And he's like Boaz, who comes and pays the ultimate price to give us a family lineage and a lasting future, a hope.

Brothers and sisters, we live in a culture where either gender is idolized or it's minimized. And God is inviting us into something better. God is inviting us to hear the music—to hear the music of this book that sings to us a better story, a better identity, and a better hope. Can we hear the words God is singing to us?

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your word. There's nothing like your word, and your word meets us in places where it's hard for us to imagine that you can work. Lord, we pray this day that you would help our church to become more and more a place where we honor what it means to be a man, where we honor what it means to be a woman, that we see redeemed partnerships between men and women seeking the glory of God and the redemption of other people. Lord, we pray this for your glory, for our restoration, and for our joy. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Let's respond to God's word in song.