For the people of God, there is nothing ordinary done in obedience to Jesus Christ.

It is all cosmic. It is magnificent.

How does God's covenant love for us, his people make every act of obedience to Christ magnificent?

That's the question that John Piper answers from Ruth IV in this episode of Light and Truth.

This sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on July 22, 1984.

The life of the godly is not a straight line to glory, but they do get there.

The life of the godly is not an interstate highway in Nebraska.

It is a state road through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Tennessee.

There are rock slides and precipices and dark mists and bears and slippery curves and hairpin

turns that make you go backwards in order to go forwards and all along this hazardous

curvy way there are signs and the signs say the best is yet to come and written at the bottom

of every sign in his unmistakable handwriting are the words as I live says the Lord.

In all of your setbacks this summer, the message of this book is,

God has been plotting for your joy and your glory, whether you've recognized it yet or not.

This book is just a series of setbacks, isn't it? Just one setback after the other almost

right up to the very end. Let's review for a minute. Chapter one, Naomi and her husband and her

two sons are driven by the famine out of Judah. They go to Moab and her husband dies. Her sons

marry Moabite women. They're childless for 10 years and then the sons die and leave her with

two daughters in law, destitute setback series number one. The chapter closes with a bitter complaint.

I went away full Naomi said and the Lord has brought me back empty. The Almighty has dealt very

bitterly with me. Chapter two. Now in chapter two, hope dawns. Naomi becomes filled with hope because

Boaz comes onto the scene. Boaz is a man who could marry Ruth, raise up offspring to a limoleck

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