Ruth: The family that matters
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Welcome to the Living Covenant Podcast, where we journey through the messy human stories of the Old Testament explore what it means to live in covenant with a promise keeping God. I'm your host, Zanita. Let's dive in.
Robbie, my good friend, welcome to the Living Covenant Podcast. Yoo. Thank
you. Thank you.
I always love having, you on, Robbie, and chatting with you, hearing your current ponderings and thoughts, so I'm looking forward to this conversation. But before we get into the story of Ruth, do you wanna tell the people a little bit about who you are?
hi, I'm Robbie. I'm a recovering human, and, uh, yeah, I, I don't know, what you wanna know? What do you
like to do on a Sunday afternoon? Where are you from?
Oh. I, I grew up in Southern California. I've lived in a couple places around the world. I live in Australia at the moment, in the Northern Rivers, with my beautiful wife and two precious little kids. On a Sunday I often like to start my day with a early morning walk and prayer usually, but, on a Sunday my beautiful wife lets me sneak off for a nice little surf usually, and then come back and spend the time with my family. yeah. Which I suppose is kind of on on point with what we're talking about with Ruth, 'cause it's a talk about family, so that's kinda cool.
Yeah.
Which-
But I didn't-
We'll get to that ...
plan that. Anyway.
No, I actually thought you would just talk about surfing, so. Now you kinda mentioned that your story is on, the Book of Ruth, which is only a short book, like about four chapters or so. And you started this piece by talking about the two countries, Israel and Moab, where the Book of Ruth is set. Yeah. Why is that so important in understanding Ruth's story?
Oh, man. I think it's really important because the history of those two nations kinda sets the scene for the expectation that the reader has. Because i- the context, like, this is written by an Israelite to an Israelite, effectively. So they would understand the history of this, conflict that had been going on for generations between these two people groups, and they knew the origin story of them.
And the ironic thing, since we're talking about the beauty of family and how in the, Book of Ruth God is using the family, which he does from the beginning of scripture all the way through to the end, is one of the most beautiful pictures of God's character and also God's redemptive purposes and plans is through the family.
But also that the origins of Moab, which is where Ruth is from- Come from a very, very unfortunate dysfunctional family situation. And so it's almost like this incredible ironic contrast, between these two groups of people and how God uses people from both of these groups and identifies those who are outcasts who are willing to respond to God's grace.
And as they come together, they become one family. And through that united family, we have the origin of Jesus in terms of the, the lineage that is, you know, the one who has come to bring together the whole human family and restore it back to God. So there's a lot of layers, I think, of beauty in there. And if you're not familiar with the story, the, like Genesis 19 is where, where you have the origins, and it's a horrific story.
It's one of those stories that, uh, like, like numerous stories that you may read in, in the Bible and particularly through the Old Testament, you read it and you go, "Ugh, w- why is that in there? W- I didn't wanna know that. Why would you even record that history?" Mm-hmm. And I think the key is, one, that it's there because it happened, and two, it's there because it teaches us valuable lessons.
Mm-hmm.
And so the origin of Moab, Ruth is from the nation of Moab. And the origin of the Moabites comes from the story in Genesis 19, where Lot, who is the nephew of Abraham, who's the father of all of God's people effectively, right? The one through whom the Messiah, the Savior will come. He's a relation.
He's, comes from his family. And unfortunately, in the situation that Lot- Puts himself into. He winds up in a situation where he's living in a cave with two of his daughters, and his wife is now dead. The city that he had lived in, which was Sodom, has been destroyed by God. It's been judged.
Because of the ungodly practices of the people that had gone on for so long, there was a, a situation where divine justice intervenes. And so now you have this man who's in a situation where he is living alone with his daughters in the cave, and they're hopeless. They've got no sense of purpose and direction even though God has literally sent angels from heaven to rescue them from God's destruction of the city.
They have been literally taken by the physical hands of angels and rescued out. They're still living out their search for identity and meaning and purpose through what the world around them has told them, through the destruction of the city, through the negative influence of that city on their moral decision-making.
And so the two daughters decide that they're gonna get their father drunk and get pregnant by their father, and that's the origin. They both do, and that's the origin of two nations, the Ammonites and the
Moabites. Huh.
And so this is the origin of this group of people. And then the Moabites are perpetually at odds and enemies of the people of Israel, throughout the history.
So you've got this huge clash that comes from this hugely awful situation. Is it possible that God could do anything to redeem a situation like this? And I think that's a beautiful part of the story, too, because we see how God is able to redeem somebody from that environment, from that awful family history, bring them into the family of God, and there's...
So there's so many layers of redemptive, the redemptive power of God.
So that's where Ruth comes from, is Moabite. What about Israel? Yeah. What do we know about Israel's history?
Well, Israel's history is no beautiful thing either.
while, you know, the family origin has messed up stuff in Abraham's situation, too, but you have the birth of the promised child that they had, which was Isaac.
That comes through this miraculous situation where Abraham, who's, like, 100 years old, and his wife, who's about 90 years old, they miraculously, supernaturally conceive a child by the promise and the power of God even though it says that his wife w- had been barren their entire marriage. And it's clear that Abraham was not, um, I don't know what the right word, I'm trying not to be loose, but he was not shooting blanks because they had decided to, you know, appropriate a cultural custom of the people around them when she couldn't have a child, and they didn't trust that God was gonna fulfill his promise his way.
And so- They had a situation where he has another wife effectively, Hagar, they have a son, but this is not the promised son. This is a long, meandering answer as well. Sorry, this is a habit of mine. But God brings a situation where a woman who has been barren for their entire marriage, who is now probably post-menopausal 'cause it says she was past childbearing age.
He's old. She's old Then God says to circumcise yourself, so damage your parts that are necessary to fulfill the promise of God in conception, and God brings about the promised child. So that's kind of that family background. But as the children of Israel come down the line, they go to Egypt, they end up enslaved there, they're brought out of Egypt, and then there's this awful pattern once you, you get past Moses, you get past his predecessor Joshua, you come into the period of the judges. And during this period of time, you see this pattern that repeats itself where Israel goes into a situation of rebellion, and then God withdraws His protection, and they experience the consequences of their, behavior, of their rejection of God and their rejection of His ways.
So they rebel, God withdraws His protection. They suffer the consequences until they get to a point where they realize, "This is not what we want," and so they repent and they call to God for help. God raises up a ruler or a judge who then rescues and restores the people, and they are brought back into a good situation with God, a good situation politically, and then they go right back very soon to rebellion.
Hmm.
And then this, and then God withdraws His protection again, and then they end up in the situation where now they're, they're repenting, they're calling for help. God rescues them and s- fixes it, and then it goes again and again and again, ad nauseam. Hmm. And the last line, actually, of the Book of Judges, which is the book right before Ruth, and if I remember correctly, in the Hebrew Bible, um, sometimes they're actually just one book.
Judges and Ruth is just a part of it, almost like an appendix to the book saying that this is happening in this time period. And in Judges, the last verse of the last chapter of the Book of Judges says this: " In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes."
Hmm.
And so the background of this book says, here's a situation where people who effectively just, don't know their elbow from a hole in the ground, they can't work things out, they can't figure out how to be faithful.
They're not responding to God's grace in a consistent way. They just do whatever they want, and it goes pear-shaped, and it has negative consequences for them and their people and the surrounding people. They're not fulfilling God's commission for them to reflect His character and His image to the world, to be a model of what the love of God looks like, to be a light to the world that draws people in.
They're doing the opposite of all of that. They're doing whatever they want. There's no king. There's no leader that they follow. Everybody is his own god, effectively. And that's the background of this, and it's just, it's so interesting to me- That that's the lead into the story and then the final closing part of the whole story of Ruth is how God has used this foreign woman and this faithful man of God that both honor Yahweh, the God of Israel, in their actions and he brings them together and through their family there's a lineage that is started that leads to David who will become the King of Israel who is after God's own heart.
Yeah. Who will be the ancestor then of King Jesus who will be the king of the human race and of the universe. Mm. And so it's just beautifully tied together to make this point- Yeah ... that there is hope if you let God be God instead of you trying to take his place.
It's so interesting 'cause I think most people when they open the Book of Ruth or when they think of the Book of Ruth they think of the love story between Ruth and Boaz. And they don't realize the hectic circumstances in which they were written and the places in which they come from.
Because like you said, if you read Judges before it basically ends with that line, everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes. Um- Yeah ... and yeah, what you mention about family is something that I'd never really noticed in the Book of Ruth before because you hear the childhood stories of Ruth and Boaz, Boaz in the field and rah, rah, rah.
You hear all of that and-
Oh, it's so sweet. It's so beautiful. Yeah. Oh, and that's fun. Yeah. Here's our romance story and there is a romance story there and it's, it's, it is beautiful. But-
Mm.
So often in our modern context, we've so glorified, the goddess of Eros, the god of romance. And the way that it's presented in our modern Western culture is that the romance story is all about, the partnership, the pair, but it's, it's not about what that inevitably leads to by natural consequences, which is a family unit.
Hmm.
And the romance ends, that's where all our movies basically stop, this is where all our stories stop. They lived happily ever after together, and we don't hear about how that leads to a family, to a community, and how that community is supposed to reach out into the broader communities and how, what it, what starts as this beautiful love story between two becomes an even bigger love story of community.
Yeah. We have this line of like everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes, and we've obviously talked about family. But can you break that down a little bit? Like, do we see any individual, or which individuals do we see that are kind of living counter to that or setting a different example?
So Boaz is an obvious example, right? Mm-hmm. And, what's interesting to me about Boaz is there are these incredible Old Testament laws, these Levitical laws, that identified certain ways that we as a people, if we're people of God, are supposed to operate.
And mind you, in their context, this is before Centrelink, this is before the dole, this is before any of those social support systems were in place. So God has, is set apart this people and he says, "This is how you are going to operate as a people." And some of those things, like for example, if you go to Leviticus it says, in the context it's talking about these feast days that they were supposed to celebrate every year.
There was a significant amount of time given to that. It says, "When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning or the leftovers from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger.
I am the Lord your God." So one of the laws that God had established and put in place was when you are in this agricultural setting, caring for your people, harvesting your crops, you go through one time and then you leave everything that you missed on the first go is there so that the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, anyone who is in less desirable economic circumstances than you can- Have the dignity where they get to provide for themselves.
It's not just a handout, right? So there's this incredible opportunity where they have dignity that they still get to contribute and work and feed their family and feed themselves even though they've fallen on hard times, and this is one of the ways that God provides opportunity, and they have provision.
So this is a way that generosity is supposed to be practiced, and Boaz does this.
Mm.
Boaz goes even beyond, and when he finds out who the woman is that's, here, oh, who is this lady who's with the orphans and the widows and the strangers? He finds out who it is, and he recognizes that, oh, she's the daughter-in-law of a lady that is related to me, and there's another law, and I forget where exactly it is now, but a kinsman redeemer law.
He recognizes it's my responsibility. There's someone in line ahead of me, but, but eventually the, responsibility could fall on me that it should be my responsibility to provide for them according to the laws, specifically on top of what he's generally doing by being obedient to God's instructions about caring for the poor, the widow, the orphan.
Mm.
But then you've also got this other place in, 16:10-12, and it says this "Then you shall keep the Feast of Weeks," so again, this is relating to the feasts and the festivals, some of which were around harvest time. " Then you shall keep the Feast of Weeks to the Lord your God with the tribute of a free will offering from your hand, which you shall give as the Lord your God blesses you."
So you've got a free will gift to give to God, right? It's a feast, it's a festival. "You shall rejoice before the Lord your God. You, your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, the Levite who is within your gates, the stranger and the fatherless and the widow who are among you at the place where the Lord your God chooses to make His name abide, and you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and you shall be careful to observe these statutes."
So in these feasts and festivals, not only have you, already when you took your harvest, you let the poor come and feed, and you're not gonna be greedy and take everything. They're gonna come and have the opportunity to have self-respect and dignity and, feed themselves and their families.
Mm. They're gonna have provision. Also, you're gonna have a festival to celebrate before God that, He provided for you. And so you are now going to invite all your family to be provided for and to participate in this thankfulness, but also your not family, right? Your not blood family. You're gonna invite the stranger, so that's the foreigner, the religious worker who doesn't have a harvest 'cause he doesn't have a field.
You're gonna invite the widow, the orphan, all the destitute, all the outcasts, and you're gonna feed and provide for them. And what I love about Boaz is that he does all of this.
Mm.
He is obedient to God's instructions to care for the orphan, the widow, the stranger, the poor, et cetera. He's doing this, and so he demonstrates that his faithfulness to God is practiced this way.
Mm. That really challenges the way that we do dinner parties today.
Totally, right? Like- Like Jesus says in Luke 14, when you have a party, when you throw a feast, don't invite all the rich people and your friends and always the people who can repay you and invite you to their parties.
Mm.
What good is that doing?
He says, "Invite the poor, the lame, the blind. Invite the destitute. Bring them into your home."
Mm.
And so he does that, and he's a model of that. Ruth is a model of that. Naomi is caring for her, daughter-in-law and giving her a way to be provided for and comes up with ideas to connect her to Boaz to provide the opportunity for her provision. yeah, so
let's- Can we go back to that part of the story a little bit? Because obviously Ruth has stayed with Naomi. Yeah. And I like what you point out in your piece how it's like something about Naomi and her family must have been so influential that Ruth was so adamant on staying with her.
Yeah. But we haven't kind of explored, why is Ruth in this situation? What has happened for- Yeah ... this to all come about?
So Ruth ends up marrying, Naomi's son, I don't remember which one, Mahlon or Chilion, one of those names. But anyways, she marries one of these dudes, and then they're together for 10 years in the land.
Naomi's husband dies. both of her sons die, so now she's got two daughters-in-law and herself, and that's it, and they're in the land, and now there's a problem. Food's running out, which is why they went to Moab in the first place, was 'cause there was a famine in their land. And now there's no... Now they, "What am I gonna do?
Oh, I hear that there's food. The Lord has brought food back to the land of Israel." And so she goes, "Well, I can't do anything here. I'm destitute. In our cultural segment of society at this time in history, it's hard for me as a woman to provide for myself, let alone you. There's no protection or security I can offer you.
I'm leaving. But you, I, I, I'm saying you don't have to follow me. Go back to your place, to your people, to your gods. Whatever you owe me culturally as part of the family, I'm breaking those bonds for you, giving you freedom to go." And one of them says, "I'm out." Or put her s- her name, you know, and then she's like, she's like, "We love you.
We wanna come with you." And she's like, "No, no, just go." And she's like, "Okay." Kisses her on the cheek or whatever, and she's out. But Ruth says, " I'm not going anywhere. You ain't getting rid of me." But, like, how do you get to a place where you're ready to leave your people, your culture, your family, everything you've ever known, to go to a place where not only is it unknown, you have a difficult journey to get there.
It's dangerous. You're putting yourself into a specific situation that's gonna be hard. What's the likelihood that anybody there is gonna wanna marry you? You're a foreigner from the enemies of God's people, right? Like, this seems like a dumb idea. Right. This is a bad idea. Unless she has come to see and understand that there's something about these people who follow the God of Israel, Yahweh, that there's something different about them, and that the God that they serve has influenced them in such a way that He must be more than what I have over here.
He must be faithful in the way that these other false gods are not. He must be something that is beautiful and strong. And the only way that she could have come to those conclusions, to be able to say, " Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God," which is what she says to her. And she says, "Nothing but death will separate me from
you."
Hmm.
And I just think, man, how could she have arrived at that conclusion except that they were living the gospel in their home?
Hmm. This is
powerful.
Yeah, she's literally giving up everything. I think this is what you said before was there was, like, a law in which, if the husband died she had to stay with the family, but- Yeah
Naomi's kind of given her a pass to go- Yeah ... and she's like, "I'm staying. I'm 100% in."
Yeah. Like, it's just wild, man, and she's like, "Hey, you've given me permission to go. There's no obligation," she says, "but I won't go."
Hmm.
You know, " you have become my mother," I will follow you. I'm not going back to my mother, I'm going to stay with you."
That's huge.
Mm.
It's not like she can just, you know, send a text. Like she probably never saw any of her family ever again.
You know what I mean? She gave up everything.
Mm.
It's powerful to me.
What do you think it is about family that is, so powerful? Because I think that's something that today we stick very close to our family.
It's not as open as, I guess some of the pictures that you see in the gospel of what community looks like and what family looks like.
Yeah.
Why can't I just go out on my own and make friends with someone or,
Well, you can.
Like you can go out and make friends, but I think just biologically for a start everybody's born into family, right? Like prior to... and even with, you know, modern medical intervention, you still need the physical ingredients that come from a man and a woman to make a human- Mm ... even if you're gonna try and do it through surrogacy or you're gonna do it through some other means, IVF or et cetera, the, it's still the same biological contribution.
And so the way that God has designed humanity to function, even at a biological level, is that you have to have community and you have to have diversity in order to procreate life. And then in order to effectively raise that, that human being to a place where it can survive, there has to be provision.
And- If you are, say, a mother and you give birth to a child and you are actually in total isolation, what are your chances of success? And I mean, like, total isolation. Like, a woman's there in the wilderness, in the desert, she gives birth to a baby. Who's gonna stitch her up? Who's gonna stop the bleeding?
How's she gonna feed the child? How's she gonna protect the child when the lions come by? Like, the chances of survival are next to nothing. She needs somebody there, whether it be the husband or whether it be the mother or the father or the doctor. Like, there's gotta be community there for us to survive and thrive.
And then, you know, research shows that the emotional connection, the primary attachment figure that you have in your early life is one of the most important things that sets you up for how you relate to other people. You know, attachment disorders, for example, are connected to how you relate with that primary attachment figure.
So psychologically, psychosocially, we need family to exist and to learn how to be healthy and to function and to relate to others, and all of that is essential for human development, and that's the way God made it. But then beyond just those biological factors and psychosocial factors, you've also got the fact that In order for life to be really worth living, you've gotta have meaningful relationships.
There's a study by, uh, general, Secretary General... I forget the name of the guy. But there was this statistic where it says that there's about a 26% increase in mortality rate when someone is socially isolated or feels lonely.
Wow.
That's huge. That's insane. And the, the overall effect is that that's effectively the same risk factor as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, which is nearly a pack a day.
Mm.
And if we look at that on just, like, a broad, public health kind of level, to feel lonely and isolated, and, it's not just that they are physically isolated, it's that if they feel that way, well, that's a perception even can have- Mm
this negative influence on your life. So you need community to exist and to function and to thrive. So why the family as opposed to, say, community? I think it's important to note that if you don't, say, get married, have children, that that doesn't mean you can't have those significant relationships.
They don't have to be blood. Sure. Blood has, like, a natural biochemical connection often, but sometimes those connections are abusive or neglectful or maladaptive in some way, and they're not good, and you need to be able to move away from that to a safe space to create a new community environment, a new family.
So I don't think it has to be just blood relations, and I think the gospel is very clear on that, that the gospel is bringing people in from all different segments of life and walks of life that are united not by blood, not by gender, not by hobby, but by Jesus. That he is- Mm ... he is the connecting factor.
He's the connective tissue, the glue that draws us together. And I think it's funny 'cause I, when I think about some of my closest friends I've developed, some of them I'm like, "If we didn't have Jesus in common, why would we even be friends?" It's not like- You know, we don't have the same hobbies or we don't have, exactly the same interests in life or we're a decade apart in age, but Jesus is the uniting factor that has connected us to become very close friends and have a meaningful relationship.
Yeah, absolutely. You said in your introduction, and we could probably pick it up from your accent, that Australia isn't your home. Yeah. Um, so when you were coming over- It wasn't yet, but It is now. We welcome you, but, uh,- ... mentioned in your piece that there were key individuals and key families that really helped you on that journey and had a big impact on your spiritual life. Can you tell us about that part of your life?
Absolutely. So when I moved to Australia, I moved here without... I don't think I knew anybody. I had met one couple that was from Australia one time, but I didn't know them, and when I moved here, yeah, all of my networks were effectively gone.
I was 21. I came to study and like two of my closest mates in the whole world I met within the first two days, and they became like my brothers. My friend James, he took me in and when it was, time for holidays, he said, "You wanna come and hang out with my family on the farm?"
And so we went and did that. And, um, they became a, strong influence where I had somewhere where I could go and connect with if there was a holiday, if there was a need, they looked after me. There was another family, my friend Adrian and his family, they really looked after me. W- we were in a closer proximity, and it started off by when I was coming to their church with him, that he invited me home for lunch with their family, and then that often turned into staying the whole afternoon, and then it turned into dinner, and we would close the Sabbath together and have a family devotional.
And sometimes it was, like, crashing that night at the house and then coming home on Sunday and back to work, and they just adopted me into their family. And at some point, I was in between houses, I was sleeping in my car, not sure where I was gonna try and find a rental, and been sleeping in my office.
And anyway, they found out, and they were like, "Y- nah, that ain't happening, bro. You're staying here." And I was like, "No, no, no, uh..." And they're like, "No, y- you can't live in your car, dude. You're staying here until you find somewhere else or whatever, but you can just stay here." And I was like, "Oh, but, but can I pay something?"
They're like, "No, just stay." And I was like, "Please, for my dignity, let me pay something." They're like, "Okay. 50 bucks, sure." And they fed me. Like, that wouldn't even have paid for my groceries, let alone the equivalent of rent or anything else, water, utilities that I was... And they just took me in. and, you know, their home was such a special place for me because their family would have dinner together, and then we would have family worship at the table, and that was every day.
Like, that was a faithful thing. And to me, it just modeled what a family that's following Jesus can look like. They were actively engaged in mission. They were actively growing. They cared about their kids. And, you know, when it was Christmas, I was invited to be a part of the family.
They were bringing me in. I was the stranger, you know? And they literally took me in for an extended period of time and, they're my adopted Australian family. That was huge. That met, met physical, psychological, social, spiritual needs that my family was unable to meet at the time 'cause they were a 14-hour flight away, and have been ever since.
Like, I've been here for 16 years, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, I think you shared in your piece that, you're a pastor, you've obviously read many spiritual books, listened to many great p- sermons. but a few things have been as impactful as families like this who have welcomed you in when you had no family close by.
And I think probably for people like you and I, we have good families, we come from good families, and so we don't fully understand the effects, and the struggles that people go through when they don't have that backbone in life.
yeah.
In this series we, we do like to obviously look at the characters in the text, but we also really like to look at what this shows us about God. And you also shared how what you learned about God was that he's a God who cooperates with us.
Oh, totally.
Can you talk about that? Because obviously we see family as influential. How are we seeing God in, that with us, I suppose?
A couple things come to mind.
One is like- If you go back to Genesis chapter three, you have the fall of humanity. At first, you know, you got the perfect creation where people are in perfect relationship with a perfect God, with a perfect, relationship with each other, perfect relationship with the world beneath them. Then they fall into sin, and there's this separation that takes place.
But I think it's really interesting that right from the very beginning, Genesis 3:15, God's promise of how he's going to save and restore humanity involves the family and a participation of faith. Like check this out. It says, God speaks to the serpent in that conversation. In Genesis 3:15 he says, " I will put enmity" or to be at odds with, " I will put enmity between you" the serpent or the devil as it's expounded upon in Revelation 12, "between you and the woman and between your seed or offspring and her seed.
He shall bruise your head, you shall bruise his heel." Like this is the first Messianic prophecy, and I think it's incredibly fascinating that it is the seed of the woman is how the devil is going to be conquered. It's how sin and death are gonna be defeated, and it comes through childbearing, right? At some point, the lineage is gonna happen in such a way that God is going to intervene, and he's going to become a human being through this cooperative participation with humanity, and it's gonna involve conception But in order to get to that space, there has to be an opportunity for faith or unfaithfulness, and that if I believe God's promise, then we're gonna continue, Adam and Eve, to have children because it's through the seed.
Hmm.
And so I think all the way from the beginning, God says, "The human family was always the goal. That's what I made you. I made mankind in my image. Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. You're an image-bearer who makes other image-bearers, who makes other image-bearers, and collectively, the human race as a big family is reflecting the image of God to the universe."
That was always God's plan. And when the fall happens, you might think, "Bum-bum, we're gonna change that." No. God says, "Through your seed, you are going to continue the commission, and in your belief that I will bring it about, you will practice that faith, and by growing the human family, there will at some point come in the line the one who will crush the Devil, defeat sin, and restore all the families of God."
Then you get to Genesis 12 when God talks to Abraham, and it's the same thing. He says, "Get out of your place, your family, all of this. You're in the wrong spot. You're in Babylon. You're in Ur. Get out of there, and I'm going to set you apart, give you land and descendants, and through your family, through your seed, all the families of the earth will be blessed.
I've called you out to bring everyone in, back into the family, so that we can fulfill the original commission of God." Jesus' Great Commission is the same thing. " Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I've commanded you."
This is all the same commission. It's a recapitulation of the same thing, which is God's original intent, right? So the, all of that is there and the family unit is the bedrock of all society. You know, families make neighborhoods, neighborhoods make cities, cities make states, states make nations, nations make empires, makes the world, right?
And so in this way that God designed it to always function, there is an incredible power that I think we just underestimate. Because-
Hmm ...
the home is where human beings become what they are and what they're going to be, and then they go on and they replicate themselves, and the patterns of behavior tend to be replicated.
And so as we- live out the gospel in our home towards our children and towards the people in our community that we bring into that family, we model for them what God looks like. And if we model that well by the grace of God, that will influence real lives, and it will change the way that they live, and it will change other families.
If you change the family, you change the world.
And I think we underestimate this. Yeah. It's the most important role. If you're a father, you're a mother, that's your most important job in your whole life, is that space. And not only to them, but to everyone who you bring into your family, whoever you bring into your home.
And if you're not in that space where you're a mother or you're a father, you're a single person, whoever you bring into your home, you have the same kind of influence over. You have the same capacity that you bring people in. You can adopt that space in someone's life because you may not have a father, but you may have someone else who becomes a father figure.
They can have an influence in your life that is marked. And- Mm-hmm ... you know, you can hear a sermon, and that's a great, wonderful thing, and God works. Like Paul says, "How will they believe if there's no preacher?" I'm not against all of that. I think it's important. But the sermon that is lived at home is more powerful than the sermon that is spoken.
And if you don't live the sermon at home that you're preaching up the front, if there's a disconnect there, you do a great disservice because what they see is what they believe more than what they hear.
Mm, 100%. So- Yeah, and I think that's something that we see also in the Book of Ruth. Throughout the Book of Ruth, what God is doing, it's primarily through His people.
We don't really see God mentioned that much at all in the text, do we?
Yeah, like twice I think from memory.
Yeah. Yeah,
it's mostly him- And even when, and even twice, it's like God brings about conception. That's what He does. But guess what? They participated. Yeah. Right? So there was cooperation in God's direct intervention there.
And the other one was that, that God brought food. But guess what? You don't get to eat the food unless you go out and you harvest it. So there's cooperation there. Mm. So everything in the Book of Ruth, even that God directly is involved, expressly stated as doing, has to have participation to receive it.
And this, I mean, this is what faith is. Faith leads to response. It's not works-based, merit-based legalism. It's just that if I really do trust, if I really do believe, then I will respond. I will accept it. Mm. And that involves some level of participation.
I'd love to know how exploring Ruth's story has impacted the way that you do family.
I know that you've got two little kids, so I don't know if it's just been like, "Yeah, let's have a family," Yeah. Or if there's been some kind of other thing that has inspired you in your,
in your life. I've always loved family. Family's a really special place. When I was a kid I was the kid who'd ditch my friends for my family, 'cause I just thought my family were so cool.
So I was a bit of a weird guy. But everybody who came, all my friends who came and got connected to my family, they loved my family too. So maybe I think there's some good things there with my family. Yeah. But, I think that that inspiration has been there for a long time, and I think in reading the Book of Ruth, I think it's an inspiration to say my, what can my home be, right?
As I've had that modeled for me at home in many ways, and I've had that modeled for me by other families who've brought me in, and the text identifies this, that like, what if my family could have the kind of influence that leads to the change that her family did? And how do I do that?
How can I live my life and my family in such a way that my kids Have every opportunity to know Jesus because they saw me having a real relationship with Jesus. A broken, fallen, frail man in desperate need of a savior, 'cause that's what I am. When I look at my kids and I see, my daughter's three, my son's almost three months, so I don't see as much out of him in terms of behavior yet.
But when I see my daughter's behaviors that are not ideal, I know where they come from. They come from me. when she does things that are irritating, I know why they're irritating, because they're things that I do that are irritating that I don't wanna see in someone else. And it's just such a stark reminder that my role in that space, I can't underestimate.
And I, I want, by the grace of God, to live a life in my home that sets them up for success, that is a sign that points them to Jesus instead of away. I don't wanna be a hypocrite. I don't want to mess it up, and we're all messing it up all the time, and God is gracious and kids are resilient. But I just feel a burden in my heart and in my life that just wanna do better, I wanna be better, because they deserve better.
And not only that, I want their friends to go, "Hey, we wanna come spend time with you because your family makes us feel that we're loved, that we belong, that we have potential, that holds us accountable, holds us to a higher standard in a loving way so that it's, it's something where our home becomes a place that models for them the gospel, so that it's not just stories on a page.
It's not just, hey, cultural Christianity, which is a waste of time, and sometimes is even worse than no exposure. Um, but it's real. And that's my desire. But I need the grace of God to do that, and I think, I think people like Ruth and Boaz, especially Boaz for me as a man, looking at him as a man, I think he sets an incredible example.
Love it. That's awesome. I feel very encouraged after reading your story, so thank you so much for sharing with us. For anyone who wants to read Robbie's full article, you can find it in The Living Covenant book. It is titled Ruth: The Family That Matters. Thank you again, Robbie.
Yeah, love having you on.
Thanks.
