Ruth - Part 3 - Ruth 3 Series

Do you know who this is? It's the Queen of England. Does anybody here know her personally? Bruce, you know everybody. Do you have her cell #? I'd like to give her a call. I have some questions. No? Well, let me ask you this. If you wanted to know the queen, what would you do? Let's say you are a citizen of the United Kingdom and you somehow have the opportunity to meet the queen and ask her for something, what would you do? Do you show up in shorts and a tank top? Do you rush up to her, hollering out, "Hey, queenie baby!" and give her a big hug and ask how her little Corgi dogs are doing? No. None of that will help you at all and will probably get you escorted out quickly and maybe even put in jail.

There are rules for seeing the queen -- lots of rules. You need to wear really nice clothes. Be clean. Be quiet and don't speak unless she asks you a question. Don't touch her. Don't sit until she does. Don't eat until she starts eating. She is a woman of great power and status and should be treated as such. But if you need something in England, there is no better person to know than the queen.

Now, let me ask you another question. What do you want more than anything in this life? Do you want happiness, contentment, money, fame, power? What? So...how's that working out for ya? Are you there yet? Maybe you want to be healed of cancer or you want your loved one to be healed. Maybe your child is hooked on drugs or alcohol. Maybe your spouse in not a true believer in Jesus. Those are real needs. Is God answering your prayers for those things?

If not, then maybe you don't know Him well enough. If the Queen of England is not taking your calls, then maybe you don't know her well enough. Maybe you aren't doing what she wants you to do. Maybe you aren't coming to her in the right way. It's the same with God but much more important.

Turn to the Book of Ruth in your Bibles. Ruth is between the Book of Judges and the first book of Samuel in the Old Testament. We are continuing our look at this love story and will again next week, Lord willing. But what you need to remember about the Book of Ruth -- what you always need to keep in the back of your mind is that Ruth...is you. Ruth is a picture of the church, of all Christians. And Boaz is a picture of Jesus Christ. Just keep that in mind as we go through here.

Now, just like you want and need and have to have some things to live and to be content and live a full and abundant life, so too does Ruth need some things. You need peace and joy and healing and so you go to God through His Son Jesus in prayer. Well, we are going to see in chapter three of Ruth that Ruth needs some things from Boaz and in studying this closely, I think we can find out how better to get what we want and need from God. In fact, I believe God has put this book in the Bible to help us understand how to know Him better.

As you turn to Ruth chapter three, remember that this is an ancient book with an ancient culture written with some ancient words that we can't always interpret but we get enough to know what's going on. And what's going on is that Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi have come back to Bethlehem empty. No husbands, no jobs, no money, no welfare and nobody to look after them. It "just happens to be" the time of the barley harvest and Ruth has been able to get a few days groceries from the nice man down the street whose name is Boaz.

Boaz is a successful farmer and landowner. He has been very generous to Ruth as she gleans some of the barley from his fields and he "just happens to be" related to Naomi in some way. Now, we will get more into what it means to be a kinsman redeemer next week but you need to know something about their ancient customs to really understand this chapter.

In those days, if you had to sell your property for some reason, there was a law that allowed for one of your relatives to buy it back for you. And if times got really bad, you might have had to sell yourself to be a slave to somebody and the law was good for that as well. A relative could buy you back. If that relative bought you back, they were considered your kinsman redeemer.