I praise you Lord Jesus that all the promises of God are yes in you.

Fear not for I'm with you. Be not dismayed for I am your God. I will help you. I will help you I will strengthen you I will hold you up with the right hand of my

righteousness so we receive your promises of help.

And we asked it now in this moment you would draw near

and be our teacher and our rock.

rock in Jesus' name, amen.

You may be seated.

I invite you to turn with me to the book of Ruth in the Old Testament and if you

not sure where it is it's Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judge

Ruth. Well there it is. Tucked away at the end of the Book of Judges, for a reason.

And the reason the book is positioned at the end of the book of judges is because the first verse of Ruth tells us that it takes place during the time of the judges against the position in the Bible.

In fact, it might help before I read part of it for you to notice the last verse of the book of

judges which is the next verse before the first verse of Ruth.

You see that?

The last verse in the book of judges is this.

In those days, there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

That's a summary of the book of judges and a summary of the time of the judges, namely it was a very dark time.

It was a time of moral collapse. it was a time of human autonomy with everybody's

deciding for themselves what they would do with no king to draw them into line.

And it was one of the darkest seasons in the history of Israel,

and that is the setting for this beautiful book of Ruth.

So let's read the first chapter of the Book of Ruth.

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