Sermon Tone Analysis

Love Story: God’s Epic Tale of Redemption

The Mystery of Mercy Dr. David Platt

July 5, 2009

THE MYSTERY OF MERCY

Do you have a Bible?

I hope you do.

I invite you to open with me to .

This morning we begin a journey through one of the most moving stories in all of scripture.

It has all the elements of a love story; tragedy, loss, despair, triumph, hope, loyalty, romance.

You have no need to take your wife to a chick flick during the month of July, gentlemen, just bring them to worship and that will suffice.

It’s not just a love story spread out over four chapters of scripture.

It’s a story within a story; a story a part of a much greater story, of which we, too, are a part.

It’s a story within a grand, epic tale of redemption; a tale of who God is redeeming a people for Himself, bringing them from them from despair to delight, from hurt to hope and you and I find ourselves in the middle of that story.

Now, as we approach the Book of Ruth, we’ve got a couple of challenges us.

First is the challenge of reading this story.

It is intended to be read in one sitting, Ruth, 1 through 4 and we’re going to spread it out over four sittings, so to speak, over four different weeks.

And so, we’ve got a couple of options about how to address reading through studies in the Book of Ruth.

We can go ahead and look at what happens in chapter 4 so we can understand chapter 1 completely, or we can move through this book slowly and feel the tension that original readers felt as they were listening just chapter by chapter, not knowing the end from the beginning.

And really, both options have their advantages and here’s what I’ve chosen to do.

What we’re going to do over the next four weeks is we’re going to move through this book slowly and we’re going to hang out just in chapter 1 today.

We’re not going to look at what’s happening in chapter 2, 3 and especially in chapter 4. Now some of you may have read Ruth before; some of you may not have read Ruth.

Maybe it’s been a long time since you read the Book of Ruth.

Let me encourage you not to be like those novel readers in this room, who open up a novel and go immediately to the last few pages to see where this thing’s going and then come back to the beginning just to kind of breath a sigh of relief.

Just don’t do it.

What I’m going to do, is I want to walk us, shepherd us through this book step by step without looking ahead.

Now once we look ahead, once we find out what happens at the end, it’ll help us understand what we’ve seen, but I want us to feel the tension and not just what the original reader heard when they were reading this book, but these characters, the people in the Book of Ruth were feeling as they walk through this journey.

I want us to feel the weight of .

Now we have to be careful.

The disadvantage there is if we’re just going to hang out in today, there’s a great likelihood we could walk away from here totally depressed and that’s not the goal.

And so we’re going to have to kind of massage that a little bit, but the goal is we’re going to take this step by step, which leads to the second challenge.

© David Platt 2009 1

We are reading this book in the English language and not in the original language it was written in, the original Hebrew.

And if I could just put it point blank simple, the author of the Book of Ruth, which we’re not sure exactly who it is, but the author is a brilliant writer.

And there are literary devices that he uses, she uses, whoever wrote it, throughout that bring things to life, that we will miss if we’re not careful in the English language, in many things we just can’t get in the English language.

And so what I’m going to do this morning, this will be a little different than what we normally do, instead of just reading through this chapter, , that we’re going to look at this morning, what we’re going to do is we’re going to kind of pause along the way.

And my goal, I pray that God will help me to tell this story well and to point out some of the nuances in the language that help heighten our sensitivity to certain truths, to certain pictures, to certain facts, to help us get a feeling sense of what’s going on in the Book of Ruth.

So you got your notes.

What you got in your notes, just kind of almost put them aside for a minute, ‘cause we’re not going to get to that.

We’re going to spend some time, just walking through these verses.

And you might make notes there on the page that you have, the half sheet that you have in front of you, or you might make notes in your Bible.

Just draw little lines, this or that, just make this whole book very colorful in your Bible in the next four weeks as we walk through just verse after verse and try to let this story come alive as if we’re in the middle of it.

So that’s the goal.

Book of Ruth, now.

Keep in mind, this book is only one of two books in the Bible named after a woman.

The other one being Esther, okay.

There we go.

Now Esther and the only book in the Old Testament that is named after a non-Jew.

So that should grab our attention from the start.

Then we get into , “In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab.”

Okay, we’re not going to get very far here.

Let’s stop—h pause.

In reading a story, we’re looking for certain elements and these elements arise in the surface from the very first verse, time and place.

The time, “In the days when the judges ruled.”

Give you a little picture of Old Testament history up to this point.

You got Genesis through Deuteronomy, which gives us a picture of the founding of the people of God, the patriarchs, then developing into the exodus from Egypt and wandering through the Promised Land.

The end of Deuteronomy, the people of God are on the brink of the Promised Land.

Then you get to the Book of Joshua and Joshua leads the people into the Promised Land and the people of God establish themselves in the Promised Land and settle there.

The Book of Judges really describe—look at the very last verse in the Book of Judges.

It’s on the page to your left when you’re looking at Ruth, the very last verse before you get to Ruth. .

This sums up the whole Book of Judges right here.

.

“In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.”

That’s a commentary right there on the entire Book of Judges.

Basically, the Book of Judges is a cycle.

There’s no king in the land.

Everybody’s doing as he saw fit, which means everybody’s running rampant in sin among the people of God in the Promised Land.

This is before the kings.

Before King Saul, David, Solomon.

What you’ve got is a time where it’s just kind of everybody doing his own rule.

© David Platt 2009 2

And there’s a cycle in the Book of Judges.

What happens is the people are engrossed in sin and as a result of their giving into sin, they find themselves being attacked by the enemies around them and they cry out to God for help and what God does is He raises up a judge to help deliver them from their enemies and then the cycle starts over again.

Once they’re delivered, they’re engrossed in sin, then they’re attacked by their enemies, they get overtaken, cry out for help, God raises up a judge.

This happens over and over and over again.

And the Book of Ruth, we come to this book, what happens is we get a little bit of a spotlight of what has happened in the middle of the Book of Judges.

We’re not sure exactly where in the Book of Judges.

Some scholars think around , but what happens is Ruth is not advancing the history in the Old Testament, so to speak.

It’s given us a pause here, at the end of Judges, and taken one story from the middle of that time period and bringing it to light.

So that’s time.

Place.

A famine in the land of the people of God, particularly in Bethlehem, which is particularly interesting because Bethlehem means “the house of bread.”

The house of bread has no bread.

And so what you’ve got is the people of God in the Promised Land famine.

Just imagine most of us, if not all of us in this room relatively unfamiliar with famine.

What does it mean to be without food completely?

With wondering what you’re going to eat, what your children will ever be able to eat?

There is no food.

You are starving.

We say, when we get hungry, “I’m starving.”

We have no clue what starving is.

So there’s famine in the land of Bethlehem and what happens is, a man from the people of God takes his family, turns his back on the land that God has promised and he goes into the land—of all places—Moab.

A little background on Moab, had started at , when Lot had an incestuous relationship with his daughter, that’s the beginning of the Moabites.

When the people of God wanted to pass through Moab on their journey, wandering in the wilderness, the Moabites said, “No, you can’t come.”

There was division between the Moabites and the Israelites.

There was a point when Moabite women—you’ve got to catch this—Moabite women seduced Israelite men into sexual immorality and all kinds of idolatry.

God brought judgment down— 24,000 people were struck down and killed.

This is a place that is known, particularly where the women are known for sexual immorality, a place that is known for idolatry and worship of false gods, enemies of the people of God in Israel, and this is where this Jewish man takes his family to.

Shameful place, Moab.

That’s verse 1.

Verse 2, “The man’s name was Elimelech, his wife’s name Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion.They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah.

And they went to Moab and lived there” ().