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Salt + Light Community is a SOMA church plant in the heart of Fort Worth, TX. Here you’ll find teaching and discussions from our gatherings on Sundays.
All right.
So exciting to be here in this new space.
Everybody found us.
We're all together in
this beautiful space.
Um, it's a little different.
It's a little different for, um, going
from our cafeteria, our precious, I don't
know if you guys, uh, for those of us
that were there last week, uh, leaving
Fortress, there was like this, um.
It was emotional.
It was more emotional than I expected.
Uh, 'cause it was because
God was so good to us there.
Uh, he provided for us in really specific
ways in that building for several years.
And I, I couldn't help but, um,
just pause and reflect on the.
The, the timing of God's goodness,
um, to, uh, you know, create a space
for us at Fortress and then know
when it was time for us to move to a
different space to start a new chapter.
And I wanna say this real
quick, uh, because it.
I think it, I think it's important
to draw attention to this.
You know, when we were trying
to figure out, you know, we knew
Fortress was closing and we had
to figure out a new place to go.
Um, we didn't know the best
time for that, like when it was
the right time for us to move.
Am, am I good?
Do I need to keep, just
keep living life up here.
Okay.
Um, but as we, you know, we knew, like,
um, when we found Launch Box in December,
we're trying to figure out the best time
for us to transition out of Fortress.
And we considered the first of the
year, we considered the end of January.
We considered Easter.
We considered all these different
dates and, um, you know, in these
conversations, we ended up landing on the
date that we picked today to meet here.
And, and wouldn't, you know.
That last week, fortress sold their
building and they got to close on
their building, um, just on Friday.
Isn't that incredible?
Like just to rec, I, so I just
wanna pause and recognize.
Um, how God always goes before
us and God knows what we need.
He knows the details, he
knows the timing of things.
And that is just another little reminder,
you know, a stone of remembrance that
God is with us and that we can trust him.
And I just, I just wanted to point
that out for us 'cause you might not
have known that, um, that they got to
close on their building, um, on Friday.
And it was, uh, Brent, uh,
you know, who's on the board.
He sent us a message.
They, Brent and Stacy were thrilled, so
excited to get to close on that building.
It was a huge, um, blessing for
them that they got to do that.
So, and it's a blessing for us that we get
to be here starting, um, starting today.
So.
Anyway.
Okay, so we are starting a new series on
Ruth, and if you're like me and you kind
of grew up thinking Ruth was this romantic
story, I want, um, I wanna untangle
that a little bit for us, uh, today.
But before we get into looking at this
passage, uh, you know, I was thinking as
I'm studying this and looking into this.
Uh, last week, last Saturday,
it was Valentine's Day.
I don't know what you guys did,
but our family, we always take
Valentine's Day and create more of
like a family style holiday for us.
And we watched a rom-com together.
We watched Serendipity, a
classic movie from like.
2001, I think.
Uh, it was actually fun fact me
and Matt's first movie that we saw
together, one of our first dates.
Now it's not exactly a family friendly
movie, so I'm not signing off on this
to say go and watch it with your kids.
But we did what we did.
So we watched it as a family.
Um, we skipped a few parts.
Just know that, um, if you do watch
it, you have to skip some things.
Um, but if you have seen it.
You might remember that it is
this incredibly predictable movie.
Okay?
Um, and while we're watching
it, my daughter Bell, who loves
rom-coms, she's almost 13, so,
um, that is her jam right now.
She said, this is why I love rom-coms.
I love being able to predict what happens.
And I said, that is the same
reason I do not love rom-coms.
I do not love a predictable, cheesy
storyline in my movies or in my books.
That's not what I want.
Um, and then, and, and so I
was thinking about this in the
stories that we love in our home.
We tease Matt because he loves
Dragon Books and we're always like,
what's your latest dragon book?
Um, and he gets sucked into that.
I get sucked into like tragic
stories and they're like, what
depressing book are you reading today?
Um, and so I spent the first few weeks
of the New Year reading Demon Copperhead.
Has anyone read Demon Copperhead?
Okay.
Yeah.
Talk about a depressing book, right?
Like, it's like it starts out
sad and then it gets sadder.
Sadder and sadder, and you just keep
thinking, is it ever going to make a turn?
And it not really.
Um, it just continues to be one of
the saddest books you will ever read.
Mm.
But it is so good because the whole
time you were just so desperate to
see things work out for this main
character, and you don't know how,
and you don't know if it will.
It is this incredible story
of suffering and resilience.
So if you love books with a well-developed
character, that is a great one.
If you also wanna be really sad.
Um, so, okay, so then,
um, so I love books.
I love literature, right?
So the Book of Ruth that we get to
look into the next few weeks, it
is a beautiful piece of literature.
It has got such strong
story elements in it.
Um, the setting, character
plot, conflict, it's all there
and it's all so well developed.
And it's not a predictable book.
If you are reading it for the
first time, it's not predictable.
The Book of Ruth follows Naomi.
Um, it follows Naomi's
daughter-in-law, Ruth.
And then it follows the, it includes
This man is farmer named Boaz.
So, like I said, growing up I
always understood this book to
be a romance story, um, where the
poor girls are rescued by the man.
And I used to think that it was
just this simple love story.
Um, but I don't want us to
see it that way anymore.
It is not a romantic love
story, but rather it's a story
about true sacrificial love.
It's a story of suffering
and resilience and hope.
It's about community and belonging
and our need for one another.
And it even, uh, gives us this picture
of how God intends for men and women
to partner together for his purposes.
So I'm so excited to be in
this book with you guys.
I really do think that it is timely and
that it is going to meet each one of us
in really specific and intimate ways.
And so with that, I want to encourage you
to read this book throughout the week.
It's just four chapters.
Okay?
So read it.
Every week, um, read
it all in one sitting.
Listen to it while you're driving.
Remember that as you're reading it.
Remember that the author did
not break it up into chapters.
It was meant to be this beautiful
short story that's read together.
Uh, and because if you read it
together, you see how the story
flows, how the characters are further
developed, how the themes kind of just
permeate throughout the whole book.
And I want you to trust that
scripture is living and active.
So because of that.
Make time to interact with
this story throughout the week.
Don't just show up on Sunday, uh, and,
and listen to what we have to say.
But actually take time and spend
time with scriptures yourself.
And as you read it, uh, you might
notice that there's gonna be a just
a few mentions of God throughout
the book, but we also get this
picture of this extraordinary
God who operates in the ordinary.
God is the true hero of the story.
And the point of scripture is to discover
what God is telling us about himself.
This small book that's only four chapters
long, it gives us the gospel story.
It's like just shrunk down into this
really beautiful story that is telling
us the gospel, and then the book ends
with one of the clearest pictures
of redemption in all of scripture.
But it is not a predictable story.
So as you read it, uh, you, you have
to sit in the tension and the ache,
and the longing and the hope, wondering
how this story's gonna play out, which
is why we've decided to walk through
this book during Lent over the next
six weeks, leading us up to Easter.
Lent.
If you're familiar, it's a season,
uh, that centuries of Christians
have associated with yearning and
sacrifice and heart transformation.
As we prepare our hearts to look
toward the great celebration of
Jesus' resurrection at Easter,
because the truth is many of us are
carrying hard things and heartaches.
Some of us are wondering
where is God right now?
Some of us are asking for him
to move, to do something, to
make his plan known to help us.
Some of us are tired and weary from
the weight of the world, from the
news day after day after day, and
some of us are just longing to see
and understand what he's doing.
Or maybe you are actually
indifferent and you're here right
now, but your soul feels numb.
Um,
knowing that there are a lot of different
needs in this room right now, I love
that we are taking this lint season.
To study Ruth, because I think
Ruth addresses all of that.
My hope is that this will be a balm
to your soul in whatever state you
find yourself in through this series.
My prayer is that God would intimately
meet each one of you where you are,
and through that experience, he
would strengthen us as a people on
mission and in community together.
So with that, we're gonna jump into
the story and we're gonna start with
her background, the background story.
So like I said, Ruth is a
great short story and in just
these first five verses, um.
We get a lot of important
information and it's like this, uh,
really important prologue, okay?
You don't skip the prologue.
I know some people think you
can skip, skip the prologue,
don't skip the prologue.
Um, those prologue sets the
reader up to understand what
story we are entering into.
It gives us this backstory.
So I wanna read, uh, these
first five verses again to us.
In the days when the judges ruled
there was a famine in the land.
So a man from Bethlehem and Judah together
with his wife and two sons, went to
live for a while in the country of Moab.
The man's name was Ek, his wife's
name was Naomi, and the names of
his two sons were Malan and Killian.
They were Aite from Bethlehem and
they went to Moab and lived there.
Now Ek and Naomi's husband died
and she was left with her two sons.
They married Moabite women, one
named Ora and the other Ruth.
And after they had lived there about
10 years, both Malin and Killian
also died and Naomi was left without
her two sons and her husband.
There is so much in these first
five verses and if we just
carry on, we're gonna miss some
really important information
and I don't want that to happen.
So what we need to do first
is consider the setting here.
The book opens by telling us
this story took place in the
days when the judges ruled.
Okay?
So to us reading that, that
might not mean anything to us.
But to the ancient Hebrews who are
hearing this story, this would've
immediately been a trigger for them.
Uh, one commentator that I read said
this, that it would be the equivalent of
someone today saying it was March of 2020.
You hear that and you're
immediately triggered.
Right?
We all are taken back to a
shared cultural experience.
So for them to hear in the days when the
judges ruled, they're all taken back to
a really important time in their history.
This was a time in Israel's history that
was marked by chaos, and so if you're
reading Ruth, if you're actually reading
Ruth in an actual book, you'll see that
it's right in between judges and first
and second Samuel, which Samuel is
where we get the story of King David.
Judges, uh, in the very last verse of
judges, right before you get to Ruth, it
says, in those days, Israel had no king.
Everyone did as he saw fit.
That's the end of judges.
And then we get into Ruth.
So God had delivered the
Israelites from the Promised Land.
Um, but instead of staying faithful,
the people did as they saw fit.
Uh, which is to say they
turned their backs on God.
They did what they wanted, uh, and
they lived sinful, disobedient lives.
So Israel is a hot mess right
now, and so are its leaders.
It is chaos in an ancient,
patriarchal culture.
And that's the context of the time in
which this story of Ruth takes place.
It's this dark backdrop.
Um, but despite sin and rebellion, God is
going to work out his redemptive purposes.
And I want us to keep that setting
in mind as we read throughout this
book, because I want you to notice
the ways that Ruth and then later
Boaz act within that cultural setting.
Okay, so then the next thing we
learned from these first five verses
is that there's a famine in Bethlehem,
which is ironic because if you know,
Bethlehem means the house of bread.
So Naomi and her husband who are
Israelites, they migrate to Moab, which
was a pagan country, meaning that the
people of Moab worshiped other gods.
So we can think that this is a
good decision or a bad decision.
But we, what we do know for sure
is that this was a family with two
kids that they were unable to feed.
And so at the very least we
can recognize that this was a
difficult decision for them.
So after they migrate to a foreign
land, Naomi's husband dies.
This is all still in the
first couple verses she die.
Naomi's husband dies and she's
left a widow with her two sons.
And they end up marrying Moab
women, mo women from Moab.
And odds are, um, this probably doesn't
thrill Naomi, the mother-in-law,
because now her two sons have married
foreign women who worship other gods.
So that's not probably what
she was hoping and praying for.
But then even more tragically after that,
after 10 years, uh, both of the sons die
leaving three women with no children,
which also means that this family
must have wrestled with infertility.
So it is one tragic hit
after another for them.
All of that backstory is important to keep
in mind because now we know the problem.
The problem is Naomi is left
without her two sons and without
a husband in a foreign land.
By all accounts, the story
should be over for her.
Naomi's story is covered in
darkness and in hardship.
Several commentaries that I read, uh,
referred to her as the female job of
the Bible, a man who suffered greatly.
And once I read that,
I could not unsee it.
So I want to invite us to empathize
with Naomi in the same way that
we tend to empathize with Job.
It should be easy for us to imagine
her grief and her sorrow right
now that she's an aging widow
without children in a foreign land.
She has no significance to her
life, no social standings, no hope
of carrying on her future lineage.
This is years of heartache
and buildup for her.
So I don't want us to step over Naomi.
Uh, thinking we need to get
to the story of Ruth and Boaz.
There's this fantastic book,
um, called The Gospel of Ruth.
It's by Carolyn James, and she
says this, I wanna point this out.
She says this about Naomi glossing
over Naomi's agony comes at a high
price for, by minimizing Naomi's pain,
we inadvertently minimize our own.
We owe it to Naomi and to ourselves
to stop and contemplate the collapsing
towers in Naomi's life to sit with
her for a while at ground zero.
For without a better grasp of her
sufferings, we will miss the impact
of her doubts about God and the power
of the Gospel of Ruth, the temptation.
Is to quickly gloss over these
couple of verses to gloss over her
suffering and then judge her later
when she struggles with her faith.
Man, that's temptation that
we wanna always push against.
No, we know the pain of Naomi.
Even if we haven't experienced those
specific things, we know every single
one of us in here knows what it's
like to suffer and to need hope.
We know what it's like to long to be seen.
We know what it's like to
have to want significance.
We all know the ache of grief
and loneliness, don't we?
And this, this is the place
where her journey home begins.
Naomi hears that the Lord has provided
food in Israel, uh, that, that
that means that the famine is over.
So she and her daughters-in-law, Ruth and
Ora, decide to leave Moab and travel back.
And at some point in this journey,
Naomi tells 'em to go back home.
And I wanna read this again.
She says.
And Naomi said to her, two
daughters-in-law go back, each
of you to your mother's home.
May the Lord show you kindness as
you have shown kindness to your dead
husbands and to me, may the Lord
grant that each of you will find
rest in the home of another husband.
So this kindness that Naomi
is referring to right now,
it's the Hebrew word has said.
Which we're gonna get into
more in a couple of weeks.
But to touch on it briefly here,
uh, it's more than just kindness.
It is God's unbreakable, covenantal love.
His steadfast, faithful love.
Naomi was asking God to cover the lives of
her daughters-in-law with his loyal love.
In the midst of her own suffering,
she still believes that God
has the capacity for kindness.
Maybe not for her, but for others.
Her hope is for Ruth and Orba
to experience God's has said
his loving, faithful kindness.
They tell her, no, we're
not gonna leave you.
And she says, return home.
My daughters.
I'm too old to have another husband.
Even if I thought there was still
hope for me, even if I had a husband
tonight and then gave birth to sons.
Would you wait until they grew up?
Would you remain unmarried for them?
No, my daughters, it is more bitter
for me than for you because the
Lord's hand has turned against me.
Naomi retains her faith enough
to believe that God can show Ruth
and Ora kindness, but that his
kindness is no longer for her.
Have you felt that too
instead?
She believes God has
become an enemy of hers,
and this is why I love seeing Naomi
as the female job, because these
stories are in our Bible so that we can
learn to be honest in our sufferings,
that we can see what it looks like
to cry out to God in anguish or with
questions and hurt and confusion.
Going to that book, um, by Carolyn James.
She said this, she said, by
spotlighting Naomi's ordeal.
The narrator gives us permission
to voice the thoughts and questions
that we are fighting so desperately
to suppress, and in some mysterious
way, we meet God in our desperation
when Naomi can't yet see.
Is God's hidden kindness through the
person of Ruth Orba returns home,
but Ruth insists on staying with
Naomi, and this decision changes
everything and it's the decision
that sets off God's redemptive plan
In verse 16, Ruth replies, don't
urge me to leave you or to turn
back from you where you go.
I will go.
And where you stay.
I will stay.
Your people will be my people.
And your God, my God, where you die,
I will die and there I will be buried.
May the Lord deal with me.
Be it ever so severely if even
death separates you and me.
This isn't just a decision
to stay and care for Naomi.
This decision is about God.
She's saying, your people, my people.
Your God, my God, she has grown up in
a pagan country worshiping other gods.
She's experienced that life already,
but she has also experienced family
life with this Israelite family.
For the past 10 years, she has heard
that God has restored the land in Israel.
She has heard Naomi testified
to his kindness even if she
didn't believe it for herself.
So she makes this clear decision right
here to leave behind her identity as a
Moabite and commit herself to Naomi's
God, and together they head for Bethlehem.
They have no idea how their
story will be redeemed.
They have no idea if any of this is gonna
work out, if they're going to survive.
They have no idea what to expect.
They don't know that this is a
pivotal moment in their story.
Because God is always working
with redemption in mind.
And that's where we're gonna
leave this scripture story today.
So here's where I want to end us.
There are many things that we can
take away from this passage, but as
I was thinking and praying for us
this week, uh, there's two things.
If there's two things that I want you to
hear, it's this two simple truths that
I don't think we can ever hear enough.
The first one is this, God cares for you.
This is not just a story about how God
cares for Ruth and Naomi, but it is a
reminder that God cares for you too.
Their God is your God.
God sees you.
He sees you fully and completely.
He cares about your life,
your highs and your lows.
In our ordinary lives, we have
an extraordinary God who sees
and cares when you are hurting.
God sees you
when you are lonely or
when you feel forgotten.
Or like the odds are stacked
against you, and there's just no
way this is going to work out.
God sees you and what that means is
that God gives dignity to your life.
It doesn't mean that we won't
suffer or experience hardship.
We will, because that's just
part of the human condition.
What it does mean is that
you are not forgotten.
You are not alone.
This is not just a story
for Ruth and Naomi.
He says to you too, you are
worthy and you matter to him.
Your life matters to God.
And the second thing I want you
to hear is this, God invites
us to also care for each other.
Not only do we belong to God,
but we belong to each other.
Your people, my people.
We must not forget that we
are saved into a community.
We come to our faith personally,
but we express our faith communally.
This church is not a building or an
event, but a people in community together.
The people of God are meant
to care for one another.
We in this room are meant
to care for one another.
We are called to share our lives, to
grieve together, to pray together,
to celebrate together, to support and
encourage and walk with one another.
We are meant to reflect God to
one another by offering dignity
to one another, by seeing and
caring for one another's burdens.
By walking alongside each other.
When we're struggling with doubt or
we have questions or we're confused,
or we're lost or we're lonely,
we're gonna do that imperfectly.
But we want to do it sincerely, and
we wanna do it with a lot of grace.
Jesus echoes this mindset when he
says in John, by this, everyone
will know that you are my disciples.
If you love one another.
How we care for each other in this room
is meant to impact the world out there.
The Book of Ruth tells us that we
matter to God, but it also tells
us that we matter to each other.
So what does this look like for you?
What does it look like for us?
Who could use your care and your company?
I mean, truly.
Think about that for a minute.
Ask God who he wants you to notice.
Or maybe you need care and company,
would you be vulnerable enough to
let others know that you need them?
I want us to really think about
that and put that into action.
These verses remind us that we can
find hope in God and his people.
Even in the darkest of
times, you matter to God.
We matter to each other.