No Sanity Required
No Sanity Required is a weekly podcast hosted by Brody Holloway and Snowbird Outfitters. Each week, we engage culture and personal stories with a Gospel-driven perspective. Our mission is to equip the Church to pierce the darkness with the light of Christ by sharing the vision, ideas, and passions God has used to carry us through 26 years of student ministry. Find more content at swoutfitters.com.
No Sanity Required
God of Ruth, God of Now | Beyond the Flannelgraph
In this episode, Brody and JB unpack the story of Ruth and Boaz—not just a romance, but a stunning display of God’s redemptive work through unlikely people and difficult circumstances. Set in a time of chaos, Ruth’s bold loyalty and outsider status become the backdrop for a greater story of grace, restoration, and purpose. This powerful narrative points forward to Christ and offers deep hope for anyone navigating seasons of uncertainty.
Rahab: Jesus and His Crazy Grandmas
Tamar: Jesus and His Crazy Grandmas
Ruth: Jesus and His Crazy Grandmas
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uh ta-da, you call this a set or a studio studio set, but we finally have. It's still very spartan we don't know how this set's going to end up yeah this is what we got so far. Yep, but we're ready to start rolling. So, yeah, true, it's a new day at nsr yeah, super exciting, I picked out this plant, it's a good yesterday at lowe.
Speaker 2:It took me like 45 minutes. Wanted to get the best one.
Speaker 1:You did good so thank you. Thank you. If we put one on this side, it would be like between two ferns. What's his?
Speaker 2:name Zach Gilvanakis or whatever.
Speaker 1:Funny dude. We're going to do a Beyond the Flannel graph. We're going to talk about Ruth and Boaz Yep, so I'm excited to get into it. Welcome everyone. To no Sanity Required.
Speaker 5:Welcome to no Sanity Required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. A podcast about the Bible, culture and stories from around the globe.
Speaker 1:Okay, so one of the things that I've learned in my Christian life is there are stories that you're going to learn that are going to be meaningful enough to you that they become sort of these things that you go back to. For me, one morning last week I walked with Moses through, with my son, my 12 year old son Moses, who's the youngest of our six kids, and I walked through the David and Goliath story. Yeah and um, all all the dudes at SWO, all the men that are here on set today filming and listening, have probably heard it a dozen times. Right, because it's one of those like I go back to it because there's so much going on there, specifically in the misconceptions we have about who david is and who david. Who david was at that moment in his life yeah, he wasn't a. You know, I was trying to explain to mo. Hey, he's not just some 12 year old kid that bebopped up to the battlefield.
Speaker 1:The king of israel places the hope of israel on his shoulders, yeah and we've done that here as a beyond the flannel graph, and so that's one of the stories I go back to, um, but another story that I go back to is the story of ruth and boaz and for a number of reasons that we'll get into, but we had an interesting conversation before we turned the cameras on, yeah, and you had some insight on kind of the way you have always perceived the.
Speaker 2:Ruth story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just very much like Ruth and Esther, like for girls. I just feel like people are like, oh, it's like the book for the women or, like you know, even just kind of making the moral of the story per se, like oh well, ruth was faithful and she found boaz, so like hold fast for your man, like stuff like that, when it's kind of like wait, I think there's more to the story, you know. But yeah, and then we, we kind of got talking about like the genealogy and how that plays into David, and then we were like let's just do an episode on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to be fun. I'm really looking forward to this. Yeah, because Ruth and Boaz are David's great grandparents.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is so cool.
Speaker 1:It was so cool, which means Ruth is in the line of Christ, and I did an early NSR episode.
Speaker 2:The like crazy grandmas of Jesus.
Speaker 1:It was a little series. It was a Beyond the Flannel Graph series called Jesus's Crazy Grandmas or Jesus's. Crazy.
Speaker 5:Grandmas.
Speaker 1:And it's. You've got Tamar, who was in that real scandalous story where she poses as a prostitute so that she can have a child but she ends up having that child by her father-in-law. It's a crazy story. Rahab, who is a prostitute in Jericho and not an Israelite Jericho and not an Israelite. Then Ruth, who okay, this is where we start our story. Rahab was Ruth's mother-in-law. She's Boaz's mom. So, as this story unfolds, one of the things about Ruth that kind of jumps out at at a person who understands the history and the context of the story is she is a Moabite. The Moabites were descended from an incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughter, so this is a group of people that are very, uh, very pagan. They have a really dark past. Um, she's a mobile and they would have been very much considered unclean or outcast by the israelite people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and that's a crazy story yeah so you could even say Lot and that whole thing. You know, eventually Ruth comes out of that and then grafts back into Abraham's descendants. There's a lot going on, but Ruth would have been considered I mean, she had already been married, right? She's a widow, she's a Moabite. There's so many things going against her. She's an exile living in israel, yeah, and the fact that this guy, boaz, brings her, you know, into his own, into a marriage relationship, into his own family and family line. There's a lot that's going on in that part of the story which we'll get, but I love the fact that he was probably completely unfazed by where she had been and what she had done.
Speaker 1:And there's a really cool principle there, especially for women that have been in messed up relationships. Maybe you know I can think of a girl that lived with a guy for years in a very unhealthy, ungodly relationship and eventually married a guy who became a pastor and they have one of the most beautiful marriages that. I know of. Like there are godly dudes that don't care where you've been, what you've done Right, right, Even Jackie Hill Perry funny story.
Speaker 2:The other week when we were at the airport we saw preston perry, jackie hill's husband and I didn't know.
Speaker 1:I thought he's a rapper.
Speaker 2:Yes, well lately saw him anyways, besides the point but even that is, I think, such a beautiful picture she was like actively living in a lesbian lifestyle, was dating multiple women, and then even that I think some guys would be like oh I'm not dating that girl after she's been through that. But they have such a faithful and godly relationship and I think it's been so helpful for, like, their podcast listeners and stuff.
Speaker 1:Just a really cool story, but yeah yeah, man, because a lot of times I think there are women who become wives to men that have a really crazy past, right, but typically men are scared of that. They want a girl that's a good girl that hasn't been, you know, down that road or whatever. Anyway, boaz don't care. So immediately Boaz begins to form, to emerge as sort of this picture, he's a type of Christ because he's the kinsman redeemer. So the overarching theme of the story is attached to an old Israelite tradition that actually didn't just exist in the Israelite world in antiquity and other cultures, where if a person died, if a man died, then his brother or nearest family member would, would marry, right his widow and and bring her into his family, the, and that had to do with protecting.
Speaker 1:You know, you had tribalism and in family security it wasn't like today, where we have law and order. The way we have law and order, women weren't typically educated, that a lot of times they couldn't go make a living for themselves and and uh, culture and society was often very oppressive to women, and so God had created a system in Israelite life where if a woman was widowed in order to preserve her family lineage and also not just lineage, but like land and inheritance. Then there was a way that she could be married to her husband's relative right. But the trick was that man was marrying her, but then the bloodline of her children would be she would still maintain the inheritance. So he's marrying her to provide certain aspects of security and stability, but he's not getting anything out of the deal per se.
Speaker 1:Per se yeah where in the ancient world, if someone did that, he got to take all of the dead man's inheritance, like like land or life insurance. Yeah, he got all that. Yeah, there's a running joke. I'm I'm evaluating life insurance stuff right now because I've got a policy that's going dead and I'm like okay, if I die, if I croak out, I need to make sure little has enough money to get the house empty empty the nest yeah I don't want her being broke and poor and yeah, and raising mo yeah and so.
Speaker 1:But there's this balance, there's this line of oh, I don't want to, I don't want to set her up with so much money that that then she's like there's a, there's a biblical principle in proverbs 30, where where agar, I think, is the guy's name, and he's like praying to the lord and he says don't give me so much money that I'm rich, because I'll forget you right but don't bring me to poverty or I'll despair and lose faith, you know.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of my principle of life insurance leave little with enough that she's not going to have to despair, but she's not going to have the headache of like I got so much money.
Speaker 1:Yeah and so, and life insurance is expensive, especially when you're my age. So, anyway, it's funny Cause I'm meeting with this, with with my insurance agent, who's a good friend of mine, and I'm like I probably need to. I probably need to get some more life insurance, and that's part of the conversation ultimately turns to if I leave my wife a million bucks and she marries some idiot is he getting the million bucks?
Speaker 1:So it's like a running joke with me, a little like uh, hey, if I die and leave you a bunch of money, are you going to get married? Hey, if I die and leave you a bunch of money, are you gonna get married? Yeah, so we're like she's like heck, no, I'm spending, I'm going on trips, we'll have a good time, yeah, so.
Speaker 1:God's plan for life insurance for a widow in ancient Israel was that society would come around her. You know, one of the beautiful aspects of Israelite life was they didn't need a social welfare system, because God had provided for people to be cared for and looked after if they're in a bad situation. So a woman that was left as a widow, an alien, sojourner, foreigner, an exile from a foreign culture or land that needed to escape tyranny or oppression, could come into Israelite life. You'll hear a lot of people use this to say well, we shouldn't have strict immigration policies, we should have open borders, which it's actually the opposite. A person could come into Israelite culture, but they either came as a slave or a convert. So, for instance, when people say, oh, we should be like, you know God would want us just to open our society to outsiders, he would. But to become an Israelite citizen as a man, you had to go through circumcision, right, that's way worse than standing in line and do us a paperwork. That's right.
Speaker 1:So it's not like, oh, just open borders, right. It's like right. So if you were going to come into israelite culture, there were certain things you had to do. One of the one of the most important ones is you had to forsake and abandon pagan ideology and worship rituals. So it's like we want to assimilate into Israel, like culture, as a foreigner? Okay, well, you cannot bring your idols and your pagan ideology here, right? You can't do that because Israel was what we call a theocracy. They were one nation under one God that they all worshipped at least that was the idea. Now, they didn't all worship him, right, they.
Speaker 1:There was a lot of infidelity, you know, with other gods, but, but the point being, god had made a way for this society to flourish, to bring others in, to protect the destitute, the widow, the orphan, even in james in the new testament, when james says pure and undefiled religion before God, and the fathers take care of widows and orphans. So in one sense, ruth is this picture of an orphan and a widow. Naomi is a widow and as the story starts, you've got a scene that's laid out where the stage is set this way. There's this man. He lives in Bethlehem.
Speaker 1:Bethlehem means house of bread. Literally, the word Bethlehem means house of bread. Bethlehem has so much scriptural history and connotation. David was from Bethlehem. Jesus would be born in Bethlehem. So this man so as this story is emerging as sort of this, this guy's going to come out of this story as a type of Christ. There's a lot of nuance and overlap that points to Jesus and a lot of undertone and meaning to the story. It's not just a love story, in other words. So Bethlehem means house of bread, but the story starts out and says and there was a famine, so there's no bread in the house of bread.
Speaker 1:And you start to feel this is one of those times where they're under God's hand of judgment. So it's not a random famine People in Bethlehem or in Israel. This is the land that flowed with milk and honey a thousand years earlier. So they're not just randomly going through famines In Israel. When there was a famine, it was the hand of God's judgment. Well, it also tells us at the beginning of the book of Ruth that it was the time of the judges. Well, when you go and you read through the book of judges, you'll see this continuing statement Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. So it was a time where god would bring judgment on the people. They would be in oppression for a period of time. They would cry out in repentance and desperation. God would bring them a deliverer. These deliverers were men like ehud Samson.
Speaker 1:I love the guy Gideon, the story of Gideon, which should be an awesome be on the final graph sometime. God would raise up a judge, deborah, this lady who God raised up to deliver Israel. So he would raise up a person who would deliver them, and these judges would have God's blessing. They would deliver the people, they would come back to a place of national stability and they would worship the Lord for about a generation and then they'd fall away. Judgment would come again. So the story starts off. We're in one of those seasons of judgment. There's no bread in the house of bread, there's nothing to eat in Bethlehem. This man then leaves and takes his family to Moab, which is actually not. If you look at a map, it's not a huge move. So my mind, my imagination, runs crazy. Is it just a localized famine? Or is this guy like I got to get out of here but he only goes to Moab, like I don't know why he lands in Moab, but when he gets there, him and his wife, and they've got two sons, those two boys marry Moabite women, which the way they go about it is is in opposition to what God has commanded and designed. So they marry pagan women in a pagan land where they've assimilated into pagan culture. And I've, I've, I've got a couple of thoughts that I put down on this.
Speaker 1:Um in the, in the first five verses of Ruth, chapter one, it says that they sojourned to Moab, which means sort of traveled over there. Let check it out. It's like sojourning means it could be we're passing through, but you wouldn't pass through Moab. It's not on the way to anywhere, so they've gone over to Moab. Something drew them over there. Then it says they remained. So they come in there, sort of in this temporary check it out. Then they remain there and then it says they lived there for 10 years. So they sojourned, they stayed, they put down roots and it's sort of to me it's like this really strong picture of how sin works Kind of kind of slip into this stage of life or this area, you see. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You kind of linger, you kind of remain and you put down roots.
Speaker 1:there's this, I think did I? Um, I was talking to laylee I think most of our listeners know that my daughter, laylee and jb are like really close friends. Um, and I was talking to Lely the other day about a situation that she's dealing with with a friend and I said there's this old churchy saying from when I was a young believer but it's so good and it's like sin will take you farther than you intended to go, keep you longer than you intended to stay and cost you more than you intended to go, keep you longer than you intended to stay and cost you more than you intended to pay. So you've got this progression of this guy. Elimelech takes his wife Naomi they're two boys and he moves, he goes over. It's uncomfortable here it's uncomfortable, but the point that to me stands out is you are safer under God's hand of judgment than you are trying to get out from under it and go somewhere more comfortable. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So they go to Moab. Um, the guy Elimelech. His name means my God is King. So here's a man who, who is called my god is king and he lives in the house of bread and he abandons his god in the house of bread and he goes to this dark place of my lab and he remains there and then puts down roots. So the first five verses, the story.
Speaker 1:The stage is set very explosively yes it's crazy, um, and so I think there's some irony in the story and there's human. There's all the components of good literature, good storytelling, good drama. First, there is the irony of this guy Elimelech, his failure of this guy Elimelech, his failure. What we see is that, as he fails to be faithful to God and he goes to Moab, as the story starts to unfold, we're going to see God be faithful over this man's failure. Right.
Speaker 1:To the point he uses this man's failure to bring blessing not just on his family but on the house of Israel. And then there's tragedy in the story in that this lady, naomi, who is his wife, she is the person who ultimately deals with the repercussion of this man's actions. Yeah, because when he gets over there, when he takes his family and moves to Moab, he marries his boys off to these pagan women and then both sons die and the man dies. So you've got Naomi all alone in a pagan foreign land. Her husband has failed her. This is like tragedy. And she changes her name to Mara, which means bitter. She's like I came here I thought things were bad. They're actually pretty good, and now I'm just bitter. And you see what we know to be true in Israelite culture, names and words were all very important. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, we don't have as much of that in our culture, but so she even changes her name of that in our culture, but so she even changes her name. And so the the the thing that ends up happening throughout the story. There's two themes that then start to emerge. One is the sovereignty of god right, which means god's working, even in the worst of circumstances, to bring about his end. And then this word emerges that you see, often in scripture it's the hebrew word has said, which means loving, kindness or mercy. So in the midst of the dark and brokenness of moab, we see the mercy and loving kindness of a sovereign lord begin to emerge right, it's, uh, it's really powerful.
Speaker 2:So I also think right before we filmed in the car I briefly just read through ruth and it was kind of cool because like the narrator of ruth, it doesn't even really mention god that often, you know, but like explicitly. But it's just cool seeing like the providence and the sovereignty of god through kind of like you were saying, like the actions of Boaz and like we'll get into that more. But it's just cool looking at like God's will and God's providence through the actions of the people in this story, even um the like maybe the bad action of taking his family to Moab, you know, and so how like the Lord worked through that and the Lord's will is done you know even through like the choices and the actions of like humans, kind of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that is probably the big.
Speaker 1:what you just said is, to me, the biggest point of really the first chapter for sure, but it also sort of is a theme that comes out through the story. Definitely, I always think there's a couple stories in my life that I think of. One is my sister rocky, who you know yeah, um, that's zach mabry's wife and so my parents divorced because of my father's moral failure and infidelity. It was a horrible situation and the only people that really know the situation and lived through it were like my mom, me, my siblings, and even the way we've all dealt with it has been very different. I've got one sister that still kind of idolizes my dad, where I have to fight to not hate him. Just full transparency. I don't hate him.
Speaker 1:I love him. He's dead and gone, been dead almost 20 years. I love him, but I fight resentment and bitterness. Sure, I love him, but I fight resentment and bitterness. The thing that keeps me from going off the cliff ledge of bitterness is realizing God used my dad's moral failure to shape my life and put me on a trajectory Right to then move my mom into a marriage her second marriage with the only granddad my kids know who is one of my favorite humans on the planet? Sure, and his name is Steve Parker. My mom married Steve Parker.
Speaker 1:At the time, steve Parker is raising his biological daughter, hannah, and his Bob, his first marriage niece and nephew, raquel and Justin, who are brother and sister. And what had happened is Steve had been married to a lady and they had a child together and she had a sister. This gets real confusing, so if you're driving and listening, you're not watching this. Listen close, I'll try to make this make sense. So steve was married to a lady I'm not going to use too many names and confuse people and she had a sister and her sister had two children and her sister's husband murdered her, killed her and he went to prison for it. So you got these two kids who were like four and one at the time.
Speaker 1:The four-year-old is my now sister, rocky Raquel. So Rocky was four years old. Her biological dad murdered her biological mom, and so Rocky and her brother, justin, go to to live with their aunt, the mom's sister and her, their aunt and her husband, steve steve, and the aunt steve's wife. Their marriage disintegrates because the mom's sister I believe part of losing her sister caused her to go into some really hard choices involving addiction and basically that marriage disintegrated. Steve then gets custody of and is raising his biological daughter and his niece and nephew but, he's not blood kin to him.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And he starts raising them. My mom and him start talking, dating and get married and they raise these kids, one of them being Rocky, who then, at high school graduation, moves in with Little and I because she loved Snowbird and had been coming to Snowbird, and then eventually marries Zach M zach mabry well, they're a vital, integral family. At snowbird, who god has used in so many mighty ways, and rocky my sister, is a picture of the lord's strength and grace and and you go.
Speaker 1:Okay, dude kills his wife. Is that good? No, no, yeah is god sovereign. Yes, do we see his loving kindness in the story? Yes, in the most real way, kills his wife. Is that good? No, yeah, is God sovereign?
Speaker 1:Yes, do we see his loving kindness in the story? Yes, in the most real way. My dad, his infidelity, my mom striving and trying and working to keep the marriage together, and she'll, she'll, she would say it was through a fire, after a fire, after a fire, and I just kept saying until death, do us part the Lord will get us through this and finally the marriage ended.
Speaker 1:Was it a good thing? No, do we see god's sovereignty in it? Yeah, and so, out of all that craziness, you've got rocky and zach and they're amazing, yeah, crazy four kids yeah, yeah so, if you know, we sometimes we get to live long enough to see the sovereign hand of God.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we don't, but God is sovereign. And so we see that start to emerge in the story, because at the end of chapter one the stage is set because Naomi says I'm going to go back to Bethlehem. And then that's where we find out somewhere in the previous 10 years God's hand of judgment lifted and they're flourishing in Bethlehem. And then that's where we find out, somewhere in the previous 10 years God's hand of judgment lifted and they're flourishing in Bethlehem. But my man stayed in Moab, he got comfortable living in.
Speaker 1:Moab Cool biblical principle, yeah. So she's like I'm gonna go back. I got nothing. I'm gonna go back, at least have some extended family there. And Ruth, who's a Moabite pagan, wants to go back with her and she's like you could get married here and continue.
Speaker 1:She said no, I'm going with you. It's a beautiful picture of loyalty and there's that incredible passage. I just it's when I do a wedding, if someone asks me to choose the vows and the scripture, which about 90% of the time they do. In fact, I just did a wedding for one of our guys on the team here, mike Fitzpatrick, and they said what do you want to do? First off, I'm unique as a pastor in that I love doing weddings. Most pastors say I can't stand doing weddings. Most pastors say I can't stand doing what, first off, there's to me, one of the highest honors I can be paid is for somebody to say will you stand before god and us and do this? But I always use the words that ruth says to naomi as a as wedding vows.
Speaker 1:it's not between a man and his wife in scripture but, it's a beautiful passage in scripture where Naomi says don't come back to Bethlehem with me. You're a Moabite, stay here. These are your people. I'm going to go back to Bethlehem and be. She basically says I'm going to be a miserable old woman and just die. I'm a widow, I got no husband. I got no sons. Imagine the tragedy You've lost your sons, lost your husband.
Speaker 1:And Ruth says do not beg me to leave you and don't urge me to turn back from following you, because where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people. And this is the key phrase your God will be my God. She's saying I now worship Yahweh. I am no longer worshiping the gods of Moab. I'm going to go work. I want to know this God. She's heard of Yahweh. I want to know your God will be my God and where you die, I will die and there will I be buried. And this is beautiful statement of loyalty. So she goes with her back to Bethlehem.
Speaker 1:So they get back to Bethlehem and it's the time of the year where the harvest is full and they're starting to take the harvest out of the field and as part of God's like network for how the poor would be provided for when wheat and barley was being harvested. And and it was so cool they they had a system where most of the year they were harvesting crops it was like overlapping crops and so there would always be food for the poor. And so if you've got a field of barley and you harvest it, or wheat you harvest it, you would leave the a large section of that field for the poor to come and gather right. And so Naomi and Ruth get to Bethlehem and I don't know they're staying in an old container, a tiny house, a trailer a van down by the river, whatever just getting by and Ruth says I'll go, it's called gleaning, I'll go glean some food.
Speaker 1:So basically it's like I'll go stand in line at the soup kitchen and bring us some food. You just stay here and you start to see. This loyalty is not just in the eloquent statement she made, but she's acting yeah.
Speaker 1:And, and I'm guessing, if she had married the dude when, let's say, she was 15 when she married the guy? She's probably 25, I'm guessing, and so maybe your age, maybe early twenties, mid twenties. So she goes um and she starts working and uh, she's out there working in the fields just trying to gather food to bring back to naomi and the guy that owns this property. His name is boaz, he's a relative of naomi through her dead husband and so that's why they go to his field. It'll be friendly, it'll be. We're two women we have no protection we can. I know this guy's reputation is nothing will happen to us if we go glean in his field, right. So he's there. My man, boas, shows up to check on the workers and he's like who's that you?
Speaker 1:see this like moment where he's like, uh, I don't know if because he's substantially older than her. I think, like when you drill into it some of the language and then, just looking at, he's a good bit older than her. He's probably old enough to be her dad, probably 20 years older than her, something like that. Most commentators think so if she's 25, he's 45, whatever, which was not uncommon in that it's not uncommon in our culture. Which was not uncommon in that it's not uncommon in our culture, definitely wasn't uncommon in that culture. And so is he like a widower. It's very odd that a man his age wouldn't be married. So I don't know what's going on there, but he sees, and maybe he's, maybe we don't know for sure maybe he's 30, yeah, but he's like noticing her and I don't know if it's just that he's going. Okay, I know most of these people. I don't know. I don't know this gal yeah or is he like?
Speaker 1:hmm, yeah, there's something foreshadowed right there, you know. And so he. He starts to really try to minister to her. We start to see his character emerge. I jotted down some thoughts on his character, the first thing that we know about Boaz. I've got six facts. Quick facts. Number one he has a job. Good start For moms and single ladies. Listening don't push your daughter into a relationship with a kid that doesn't have a job. But he's cute, he's a good, he's a good quarterback. Nobody cares, right like does he have a job? Is he a hard worker? Yeah, it's a big deal.
Speaker 1:Um, he loves jesus. We see that in his greeting. When he comes up, he greets all of his workers and he gives them a blessing from the Lord. Uh, we know that he grew up in the home of uh Salman and and Rahab, which is crazy. Yeah, Rahab was a prostitute in a pagan city. Yeah, Imagine imagine Rahab and Boa, Rahab and uh Salman just sitting around chatting. Boa's just playing with his little toy camels. You know his little farm toys or whatever you know yeah and there's this my mom.
Speaker 1:He just knows her as his mom. Yeah, she's a prostitute.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and God brought her out, which is one of my favorite episodes we ever did. As of Beyond the Flannel Grounds, it's one of my favorite stories. He grows up with that lady as a mom. I just wonder what that family dynamic was like. There had to be a sensitivity to people. Did she raise him saying, hey, son, you be good to people. It was two men. So I also have a non-biblical opinion that when the two guys go into Jericho a generation earlier to rescue Rahab I think one of them was Salmon- those two guys are unnamed.
Speaker 1:And this dude, he's the man. He comes from a line of dudes that are dudes. Yeah. And I'm like, did he go in and was he the guy that pulled her? Out yeah.
Speaker 1:And something happened and you know, kind of cool to think about. Yeah, for sure, but just the stories they could have told. Because his dad was part of the invasion of Jericho yeah, the invasion of Ai, where a bunch of men died because of God's judgment, god's judgment and then the eradication of pagans in like five years of war. His dad was a veteran of that. Yeah, raised him married to a prostitute who had lived in the city of Jericho. It's just crazy. That's the house he grew up in yeah he wasn't a Sunday school PK.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know yeah so he grew up in that, so we know that about him. He's a man of faith. Even in a time of famine he had, he'd continue to work. Yeah, so he didn't go anywhere. He just kept trusting the lord and working um in a dark time of the judges, where everyone did what was right in their own sight he emerges as someone that was faithful to the lord. He's a leader and he goes against cultural norms.
Speaker 1:So pretty good resume for a dude, yeah for sure um, so I think, uh, the the the sentence that I jotted to kind of sum all it up, is boaz has the capacity to love ruth the way jesus loves us yes, yeah and you know to whom much is, is given. Much is required, but also to the one that is forgiven much, that one that person loves much yeah those are teachings of jesus.
Speaker 1:And so, um, the relationship starts to sort of I don't want to say take off, but it starts to materialize. So ruth is coming each day and she's taking food from the field. He starts to cultivate a relationship with her and that he gets to know her. She's bringing food home to Naomi. He starts to really invest in her. He's given her abundantly more than she could. Reminds me of that uh verse in Ephesians. Um, in Ephesians three, it's like a it's, it's like a benediction A lot of times at church. Now, to the only one who can do abundantly more than we could ever ask or imagine, he starts to just provide for her.
Speaker 1:And so then there's this point where Naomi says hey, listen, there's going to be a big party. It's a harvest party which apparently, culturally, this was a big deal. Harvest party was a big thing, where they would, at the end of the main harvest, they would come together and celebrate God's goodness, and it would be a big party. And she says Boaz is throwing a party. You need to go to that party. He has only ever seen you in Carhartts and a messy bun. Yeah, yeah, you know, like a messy bun.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. You know like you're like pity city. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Here's what I want you to do. You need to look good. There's this really funny conversation where Naomi's basically saying you need to put on something that looks nice. You need to fix up like do do what women do and you need to. You need to fix up puts like do do what women do and you need to. You need to look good. And she does it. And and there's this really scandalous moment where he he it says he's satisfied from food and wine and he lays down and she goes and uncovers his feet which is apparently a cultural thing where she's saying to him I'm at your service. And we see again the incredible integrity of this man, because what he does is he doesn't take advantage of her. At that point he could have done whatever he wanted. Doesn't take advantage of her, he protects her. He keeps her there till the morning because he says you can't travel home at night. She basically, by the way, says um, will you marry me?
Speaker 1:it's like very forward you know yeah and uh, she's like how, uh, I'm a single gal, you're single. I feel like there's something here. She's really aggressive, but as an act of faith, it's cool how he responds because he says, okay, we're going to do this. I just would have never imagined you'd want to be with a guy like me. I'm older, I just didn't. You see his humility.
Speaker 1:It's not like a false humility, he's like yeah, you serious yeah I mean, I've been trying to look after you guys because I'm related to naomi and you guys are a bad situation. It's the right thing to do. You get this sense that he's just. But are you serious? Yeah, she's like yeah. And so he says, okay, we're going to do this, we're going to do it the right way. So he keeps her there for the night. Nothing happens. Very honorable guy, he doesn't send her away in the dark where she would be potentially exposed. You know, like, where Kilby and Greg live. You don't go out in the dark where she would be potentially exposed.
Speaker 1:You know, like where kilby and greg live, you don't go out in the dark right, you don't, you do not even grown men like we won't, we won't travel at night in east africa, and so he keeps her there. But he sends her home at first light, before people are stirring, so they don't see her leaving his bedroom or what you know, the threshing floor where they're at, because a lot of people are sleeping in the area. It's like a big camp out almost. And so she goes home. But he sends her with enough food that represents wealth. He basically sends her with an incredible gift to give to her mother, who, naomi, is like her mother, and he says we're going to do it the right way incredible gift to give to her mother, who, naomi, is like her mother, right and and he says that we're going to do it the right way.
Speaker 1:And what he means by that is there's someone else who has rights, to you and Naomi before Boaz, yeah, yeah. So Boaz is a distant cousin? Yeah, elimelech has a nephew, his brother's son, whoever, we don't know. Right. But what's funny is the scripture. When boaz refers to this guy, he doesn't call him by name and he uses a hebrew word. That's like saying what's his name. It's pretty derogatory, that's funny. And it basically tells us this guy is probably not a man of high character and we see that pretty quick.
Speaker 2:Like rejects Ruth because of she's Moab. She came from Moab, right.
Speaker 1:So yes, and maybe more importantly, because if he takes her, so if he brings Ruth in, he gonna he's gonna be responsible for her. However, yeah, he's gonna need to provide a child through her, but then he's not going to get a limolex inheritance that child will get it.
Speaker 1:I see that's the way the redeemer thing works yeah, so again I'm I'm reading a little into it, but I think Ruth was attractive. I think she's a very attractive woman, and even if she's not that's not necessarily here or there I think he is willing to do it because he gets Ruth. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Get a woman to sleep with her, add her to my harem, whatever. It's very selfishly motivated, right? So the way that Boaz goes about handling this he sends Ruth home with lots of money, with lots of, you know, resources. The next day he goes into the city square where he knows he'll meet with this guy. He's at the part of the city. He goes from his, from his farm and his land, he goes into the town where everybody would do trade and commerce and he makes this a public interaction. So the leaders of that town and city are there and he says hey, hey, squatchy, hey, what's your face? I mean literally that's what he says. He's not like calling him by name.
Speaker 1:He's like hey, my man, my guy, come here and he says Naomi's here and would you redeem? Because a lot of times a guy would redeem an older woman like that because he wouldn't have to have sexual union with her. And so we don't know, it's a guy like hey'll bring it naomi into my house, look after her. Maybe the guy's a decent dude, I don't know. And and then whatever, and he's like she got a daughter-in-law. You know you're gonna have to take her. And he starts to lay this thing out for him and the guy's like oh no, because that will also compromise my children's inheritance If I bring them in now. You've got this.
Speaker 1:Imagine, kind of like in our world, if a divorced man and a divorced woman get married or a blended family, and then the man dies. How does the inheritance get divided up? Maybe the wife gets it over the biological children. It just creates complications. This guy's like I don't want to do that. And Boaz says okay, I'm going to make a deal with you right now. And he makes a deal with the guy in the city square that's a binding deal, that he's going to marry her. And then he goes and he marries her.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And they have a son who has a son, who has a son named David. Yeah, crazy.
Speaker 2:It's a crazy story. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, so, even going back to, like, the story that you told about rocky and steve and your mom, it's like even like I'm sure pap steve didn't think this was gonna happen or even your mom probably didn't think this was gonna happen, like when all that horrible stuff was happening. And now, crazy, like you're saying, there are times where we're able to see the mercies of God and the sovereignty of God. And same thing with the story of Ruth and Naomi. Like I'm sure when Naomi's husband and all her family died and she was left alone, I'm sure she wasn't like, ah, this is going to happen, I can't wait for it. Like just so cool. I just think that's such a cool picture of, like I was saying earlier, the providence of God and I don't know just how faithful. Like I think it's just so important that Naomi and Ruth and Boaz, like they all, were just continuing to be faithful. They didn't know that this was going to happen.
Speaker 2:You know it's not like okay, you work to this point and then you'll be granted what I promised you. They didn't know. You know, no one had any idea.
Speaker 2:I think sometimes a lot of. I've been thinking a lot about the women's conference and just like, especially, I guess, like women just being faithful in the home and stuff. And I keep thinking of the twins, lauren Annabelle, their interns here. Their grandma is just so faithful and, um, like she comes to camp as a chaperone and it's just so faithful to her kids and her grandkids and I fully believe that Lauren Annabelle are here working because of how faithful miss therese that's her name, miss therese has been and I just think that's like a cool picture. That's kind of what I was thinking about when you were talking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is a good example yeah the it's.
Speaker 1:It's interesting too. My mom had three biological children, but she raised eight kids. Really, she raised 10 because when I was small they fostered, Like when I was six. From the time I was like four to seven, maybe six or seven, there was a girl that lived with us. It was a teenager. Um, we called her Niecy, Her name was Denise and she was like she was family. But then there was a guy that came when I was around six or seven and stayed till I was like 11 or 12, through his teenage years. Um, my mom was always just giving and pouring out, but she raised eight kids that she's their mom, you know but only three were biological. Yeah.
Speaker 1:She has like 20 grandkids, but let's see, biological grandkids are maybe six or seven, I think seven yeah um, and I would say she's. She's maybe closer with a couple of the non-biological grandkids, like. In other words, she doesn't differentiate sure so Naomi has no biological connection to Ruth, no biological connection to Obed the, the son that's born, but she's his grandma yeah and she's, that's her only grandkid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at this point, and you see that God's definition of family is way bigger than what we put on paper. Sure, you know, um, and you, we have that all around us. Sure, my family's like that, you know, like um, and it's this really cool picture of God grafting and adopting and putting together families out of brokenness. Yeah, you know. Yeah. It's really the for me, the image of naomi bouncing that kid on her knee being a grandma after she had changed her name to bitter old woman.
Speaker 2:You see, joy even that of like she was like I'll just go back and I'll be an old woman and die. Obviously she was not seeing, like, how much more the Lord had. And so for her and her family, even that of like that great grandkid brought her so much joy, and you know that's crazy.
Speaker 1:It really is, yeah, and so Ruth is one of the crazy grandmas of Jesus. I love it. It's no sanity required stuff, right there, yeah, it's like crazy in the world's wisdom. Yes, for sure. Love that story. Sure, yeah, um well, I'm excited about the new setup. I'm excited about developing the set. I'm excited about our team. We have an, a team right now. Man, yeah, it's exciting. Send us ideas on the, on the uh, on our set yeah, we need to fill in the shelves.
Speaker 2:Obviously they're a little bit bare, bare shelves we do have one idea.
Speaker 1:We were talking with the, with the guys behind the cameras, um, before we started this episode, not a deer head, but a european mount, a skull mount would look pretty cool up there. I think it'd be cool, especially one that has a cool story behind yeah, yeah, definitely um katie, cousins jersey of course that that was the cause of all the controversy that she didn't want to wear the jersey that had the rainbow pride stuff on it yeah that'd look good somewhere up here, cousins I.
Speaker 1:So after that went down, I think we talked about this when we were talking to katie, but when that all went down, I said hey, I want one. I'm only ever going to ask for one thing from you in your life and it's, I want that jersey, yeah yeah, so that'll look cool in here. It'd be awesome. Yeah, I'd really like to get tucker on here yeah, it'd be cool just talk about.
Speaker 1:You know that elite world of of athletics and just the pressures and how do you stay faithful and how hard is it to stay faithful and assuming that you don't always stay for you know just what I think that'd be really inspiring for, especially for young athletes. So cool stuff coming up.
Speaker 2:Yep Exciting, exciting stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks, it was fun. Yeah, I like having you on here because, uh, it's easier to talk to a human than a camera. Uh and um, I appreciate your input and questions. Keeps things flowing. For sure. All right. Well, thank y'all, and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 5:Thanks for listening to no Sanity Required. Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating. It really helps. Visit us at SWOutfitterscom to see all of our programming and resources and we'll see you next week on no Sanity Required.
