Thank you. The Old Testament Book of Ruth is a short story. It's often overlooked, sometimes considered a book of the Bible that's mostly for women. But as we conclude this series today on Truth for Life,

we'll explore why everyone needs to hear and understand Ruth's story.

Alistair Begg is teaching from the closing verses of Ruth Chapter 4.

Now, I don't know if you've thought much about Ruth's family. I haven't. But she had a family.

And she had a family in Moab. And when she married, her circumstances were altered because the two will become one.

And for this reason, a man will leave his father and his mother, and the two will become one flesh. And so they established a new family unit. But she had to walk away from that when she came back into Israel with her mother and law. And doubtless, the family that was left behind as a result of the geographical separation would have said to one another, you know, I don't know what is happening here. What will we make of our

daughter? What's to become of Ruth? Again, if you think of it in terms of fiddler on the roof,

you see that dramatic scene there at the railway station. And he's there and the train is coming and you can hear

it in the distance. And he knows that she's going and he knows that she must and he longed for

her to stay but still she must go. And in all of the emotion of that. Now these are real people

living real lives, 12 centuries BC. And God is working his purpose out.

Go home and read the story for an afternoon siesta. Read it and then fall asleep and dream about it.

And read of the famine in chapter 1 and the family decision by Alimelech, I'm going to have to

take the wife and the kids, we'll have to get out of here. There is nothing left for us here.

Bad decision, wasn't it? Certainly to go to Moab, they weren't to have relationships with the Moabites.

He could have stayed where he was and trusted God. Easy for us to say now, but he determined I have to provide for my family. It doesn't seem as though anything's going to come here. So off he goes into Moab, takes his wife, takes his sons. He dies there. His sons die there. Fortunes pick up in Bethlehem. Naomi decides she'll go back to Bethlehem. After all, I might as well be miserable amongst people that recognize me as be miserable here so far from home. She suggests to her daughter-in-law is that they stay. One says fine. The other says no. Ruth is converted. I can put it no other way. She had worship

to that point with her family, the God Kimosh. She must have come to the understanding that

Kimosh couldn't hear, couldn't answer, couldn't do anything at all. You may have a God

that you worship and he can't hear and he can't answer and he can't do anything at all.

I don't know why you worship him. I don't know why you worship her. I don't know why you worship it.

Five times this week I've read in the press about somebody and his God. Somebody and her God. That's fine, I understand. Everybody has their

own God. They can carry them with them in a suitcase. They can prop them up when they move from

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