Hello, and welcome to the Westside churches special Monday Morning Coffee podcast on this podcast, our preacher Mark Roberts will help you get your week started right. With look back at yesterday's sermon so that we can think through it further and better work the applications into our daily lives . Mark will then look forward into this week's Bible reading so that we can know what to expect and watch for. And, he may have some extra bonus thoughts from time to time. So grab a cup of coffee as we start the week together on Monday Morning Coffee with Mark.

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee podcast for Monday, January the sixth , 2025. I'm Mark. I'm holding a cup of coffee. I've got my Bible reading schedule and I'm ready to talk with you. Well, I really need to talk with you about the podcast because this is a little weird and you're gonna notice some strange things this week in the podcast. And I don't just mean when I'm talking about weirdness that the Dallas Cowboys aren't in the playoffs because that really isn't that weird. They played terrible all year long. What I do want to talk about is that I didn't understand that we had a gap week between last year's reading schedule, the eyewitnesses to Jesus and the start of this year's reading schedule seeking God's heart. And so last week I record a podcast and I talk about the reading and all the stuff that's going on in the book of Ruth. And all through that podcast I'm saying things like Happy New Year and it's New Year's Eve and happy anniversary to my wife, and all the stuff that goes with last week. And so if we dump that podcast out, you will feel like you have fallen into a time warp and regressed seven days back into 2024. And that'll just weird everybody out. So I've recorded rerecorded some parts of the podcast and our technical folks are taken out all of the out of timed, all of the out of chronology comments, at least I hope we can get all of those out. And so you're gonna notice some cuts and you're gonna notice some places where there's been some editing and that is completely on me. I just just didn't get it. And so I was all gung-ho for a new reading. And here we went and just started up with a whole new reading schedule one week early. How about that? There you go. We should be eager for daily Bible reading, but I'm not sure we should be that eager for daily Bible reading. So if you, you get a little strangeness in this podcast and it , it's jumping around a little bit volume and, and , and I , I'm still kind of congested from having the flu last week. And so my voice changes a little bit. Don't, don't panic, it's not you, it's me, it's me. But I sure do appreciate our technical folks and Issa and John, they, they are able to fix all this stuff and, and make it all work right? And I really do appreciate them. Lemme say a quick word about the conversation yesterday with Rusty and then we'll get to daily Bible reading. Yesterday's sermon wasn't really a sermon, rusty and I just talked about daily Bible reading and the preaching theme for the year. And I could say a lot about that. I was really disappointed not to be able to be part of that last Sunday because of the flu. And really glad that we were able to roll that off a week. Those conversation sermons are just a very nice way to spice things up. A little bit different approach, a little bit different way of doing things. I'm super excited about the preaching theme and I know that you are super excited about it as well. 'cause you are making the preaching theme what it is this year. And I'm really excited about our Fridays this year because I love the Psalms I have preached through the Psalms. Psalms are just so important. And I know that there are people who don't really get the Psalms and who struggle with that a little bit. And so you hang in there because as we work with those on Fridays on the podcast, I think it will help all of us to be closer to the Lord. If you're gonna seek God's heart, you need, you need to know about the Psalms because that is the place where David is really seeking the heart of God. I'm excited about reading the Psalms with you this year. So there we go. I grab that cup of coffee, get ready, get set. Let's go. Let's talk about daily Bible reading as we seek God's heart in the Book of Ruth. Open your Bible to Ruth chapter one. We'll be reading Ruth one chapter a day as we begin this series with King David and learning about him and his character. And this is the place to begin with King David, because this is where King David comes from in the Book of Ruth. That book concludes with genealogy pointing to David. However, that's not the only reason to read the book of Ruth, and we need to talk about that now. Everybody loves this book. It's a wonderful book about love and faith and especially about the providence of God who oversees his promises and his purposes. But we really want to look beyond the surface story. It's not just, this is not a Hallmark movie. This is about God and about what God is doing. Now, it's not a hard book to understand. I'll try to keep these podcast chapters short, maybe today gonna go a little bit longer as we have some introductory ideas to the book of Ruth to work on. But really this book is pretty straightforward. As long as we're making certain we watch for what God is doing, God is at work here. So notice the timing of the book. We don't know the author of the book, but in the days verse one, when the judges ruled, that's so important. This is the time of the judges, which is a very dark time in Israelite history. Lots of bad things going on. Most people not doing what's right. Judges is , oh, it's such a difficult book. One time I was sat down trying to decide what I wanted to preach through next, what I'm gonna recommend to the elders. Hey, let's go here. And I read through the book of judges and I thought, this is it. This is it. I'm gonna , I'm gonna preach through the book of judges and it's just such a dark book. And I got done with , I thought I , I don't think I wanna preach through this book. And that's the time of the Book of Ruth. It's during a time when not a lot of people are doing what's right, which maybe helps us see why this book is here. There are some people who are doing what's right. The main characters here , Naomi Ruth Boaz Boaz is a tremendous character. But really the major character in the book of Ruth is God. He's the one who most often gets overlooked when we talk about the Book of Ruth. But he is controlling everything that happens here. Maybe underlining your Bible, may the Lord or the Lord Grant or all the things where God is at work that'll help you see that. 'cause I think the Book of Ruth is developing the doctrine of God's providence. And I think it is an encouragement to gentile people, people who are, people who are not Israelites, a nonis, Israelite figures dominantly in this book. And yes, I do think this book teaches character. I don't think it's wrong to go to the Old Testament and say, here's who God commended. Here's the kind of person God uses. Here's the kind of person God will bless. We wanna be those kinds of people. So here we are in Ruth chapter one, famine in the land. Guess what? That's a marker that things aren't going right because when people are doing what's right, what does God do to the land? Blesses it with rain and abundance. So things aren't right here . Family Lac verse two, family of Naomi, they up and move to Moab that I don't like it. I don't like it. That doesn't seem like the right thing to do. You need to live in the promised land. They go to Moab and terrible things happen. Everybody dies. That's a disaster for a woman. She has no standing, she has no social safety net. What am I doing now? So Naomi says, I need to go home. I need to go home. So to do that, verse eight would be for these daughter-in-laws to leave their family, to leave their idols, to leave their relatives. And friends, they're they're not doing that. They're not doing that. And Naomi says, I know you're not doing that. I want God to grant that you may find rest. Verse nine, rest. There's not retirement. What she means is you need to get married. Security comes in marriage. You go home, go back to your people, you get married. That's what a woman has to do. She makes a play here off love , right ? Marriage laws. I can't bear more sons for you to get married to go home. And Ora says verse 14, I'm doing that. I go, I , I'm out. I'm going back. But Ruth says, I'm staying with you. And her pledge verses 16, 17 18 is so important because she says, I'm going to serve your God. I'm giving up on Moabite Gods. I'm going to become a person who serves God. And the Hebrew in verse 16 is very, very Tse, your people, my people, your God, my God. And it's not just about loyalty and love for Naomi, it's about her. It's about Ruth's willingness to take Naomi's God as her God. And there's a contrast here between Ruth and Naomi. Naomi seems to have had her face shaken. She doesn't seem like she cares if Ruth goes back to idols. But Ruth says, I care about you, Naomi, and I care about the true God, Jehovah, the God of the Israelites. And so they come back to Bethlehem. There's a , some excitement about that. Naomi decides to change her name. Verse 20. Watch that. That's gonna become a theme. This would be then verse 22 in March or April. And they come home. What's gonna happen now? What's gonna happen? This bitter woman, this Moabite woman living in Bethlehem, what is about to happen really on the edge of our seats here as we come to the end of Ruth chapter one. See you tomorrow. Our reading for Monday is Ruth chapter one. It is Tuesday. And our reading today for Tuesday is Ruth chapter two. And here we meet for the first time. Boaz Boaz is a wonderful, wonderful character. Just watch the way he talks. What he does, he's a tremendous example to young men who need to know how to grow a godly character and the kind of godly character that will attract a godly woman. I think there's some wonderful lessons about that in this romantic story. Nothing wrong with reading a romantic story in the Bible. The Holy Spirit placed it here. We can learn some things about that. We're not the, we're not the first to have men interested in women, boys interested in girls. God made us that way. And that's going on in the Book of Ruth. We learned from that. So here we meet Boaz verse one. Naomi had a relative of her husbands a worthy man of the clan of a Eck whose name was Boaz. Some translations have a man of great wealth. ESV has a worthy man. It's used of a wealthy man over in two kings, chapter five. He is very wealthy 'cause he owns this giant field that they're gleaning in, but he also is a worthy man. We'll see that as we read along. And of course, gleaning here is specifically provided for in the law. We talked about that a while back in the my Leviticus class, Leviticus 19, nine to 10 other pastors , Deuteronomy 24, 19 to 21 mentions cleaning . You were not allowed to just go through your field and just strip it, get everything all the way to the edges and the corners. No, you had to leave some when you missed something, you couldn't go back. Oh, oh, I'm gonna go back and, and get that last little bit of wheat over there. Or , oh, I missed an ear of corn there . Nope, you had to leave it. And poor folks could come to your field and get those leftovers. And so here is Ruth. She's working hard. Look at Boaz. He comes, he says, the Lord be with you. Look , talks about God talk I I mentioned maybe underline in your Bible, the mentions of God. And when God is at work, I think his greeting here says a lot about his character. And so here's this young Moabite woman, and she's gleaning, she's willing to work hard. Little difficulty at the end of verse seven, if you're reading a different translations of great practice here, read the reading in the new, in , uh, in the ESV , the New American standard, then maybe reading the new Living translation. See what, how that's gonna be rendered. The end of verse seven, except for a short rest is how the ESV has the new revised VA standard has without resting even for a moment. The Hebrew there is difficult. But Boaz says, now listen, my daughter verse eight, that my daughter may just be the way they talk at that time. That may say Boaz is a much older man than Ruth. Not sure about that. But of course he knows about her. In verse 11, he says, I know all about you at little town like Bethlehem. Everybody's talking about everybody. Everybody knows everybody's business. Everybody knows what's going on. And once again, he's talking about God. The Lord repay. You notice that that's in small camps . So he's talking about Jehovah and she says, I, I , I have found favor. Favor is a emphasis here in this chapter, verse two verse 10, I have found favor and I just appreciate that so much. And so verse 14, come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine. Hey, the gleaners aren't supposed to be over there eating with everybody, but here she's gleaned this tremendous amount about an efa . Verse 17, that could be as much as 30, 40, maybe 50 pounds. That's enough for, for two women to eat off several for several weeks. She's had a banner day here in this gleaning business. Her excited about that and she says he's a redeemer. Verse 20. Now the kinsman , the redeemer has several responsibilities under Old Testament law, he avenges the death of a murdered relative. Numbers 35 talks about that somebody murders your brother, somebody murders your father. The near kinsman is responsible for seeing justices done and even doing that justice. But of course part of that is he buys back family land that has been sold. We've got to keep the family land in the clan in our family, buying back, family members that get sold into slavery, caring for needy family members. We see a bunch of that. Leviticus 25, and then that lever , right ? Marriage, law, business, you marry, if you're the near kinsman, you marry the childless widow of a brother. Deuteronomy chapter 25, beginning in verse five, describes that Jesus gets asked about that. You may remember the question that they try to entrap Jesus with about this woman. And she has all these husbands, well, where do these husbands come from? They're the brothers of the man that passed away under the Old Testament law. You had obligation, you're the New York kinsman to raise up an heir so the family can stay on the land and so forth. All that goes with all of that. She says, this man, he's the New York kinsman. Wow, how's that gonna work out? Is he gonna be a redeemer? Is he gonna help? Ruth, where is Boaz? He seems like such a good man. How's all of this going to work out? Well, I know you're sitting on the edge of your seats. Stay tuned. We'll have more of this great story tomorrow. And that's the podcast for Tuesday. If you're part of the West Side Church family tonight, we do have the zoom call. If you haven't done that before, give us a try. The information for the Zoom call is in the West Side Family Facebook page, and I think you'll enjoy that tremendously. It's a great way to share with others what you saw in the Bible reading and be encouraged by others. For everyone else, I will see you on the podcast tomorrow. The reading for Tuesday is Ruth chapter two . Welcome to Wednesday and let's start the new year right by reading our Bible together. This is Ruth chapter three. That's our reading today, Ruth chapter three. And this is a little unusual. They get engaged here or about to get engaged and sometimes people look at this business of Ruth going to the threshing floor at night and uncovering his feet and he gets cold feet but not cold feet towards Ruth. And we scratch our head and say, that looks a little weird. Oh, come on. Some of the engagement rituals that people go through today that someday people may look at that and think it's pretty strange. You get engaged, you've got to have a videographer there and cameras there and notes and oh on and on and on. It's become a huge deal. Well, it's a pretty big deal in Ru's day as well. Let's talk about it a little bit. Now notice there's no time element given to us here in the text. We don't know how long until Naomi said this is it. It's time for you to seek rest. And what she means is security, the benefits of marriage. And I, I think there's a little risk going on, there's a little tension here. Maybe, maybe Boaz will say, I'm not interested in you. And I think Naomi is really counting here on Boaz being an honorable, an honorable man. And I think she's counting on what she's maybe heard from people in the village talking about how Boas treats Ruth and all the things that go on with some of that. I think she can see where this could go, but you don't ever know until you ask. And so Boaz is at the threshing floor. The threshing floor would be a circular area about 25 or 40 feet in diameter. It needs to be up a little bit level in hard and you throw the wheat into the air and the wind would drive away on the breeze. The evening breeze especially would drive away the chaff and the wheat. Carnals would fall back. And there's kind of a pitchfork like device used to turn the wheat. And I think it's important to remember here that divine providence and the fact that God has a plan and is working things out that does not eliminate human activity. Don't sit on your hands and expect God to do everything. Rus gotta get up and go and see if Boaz is willing to redeem her. But he is verse 10, very impressed with her and he assures her. There's not anything that you've done that's wrong here, but he is determined to protect her reputation. She labors 14 at his feet until the morning but arose before one could recognize another. And he said, let it not be known. A woman came to the threshing floor. There could be some hand of impropriety here. There's some discussion that maybe because men would be at the threshing floor and kind of an all man thing, maybe some drinking going on, maybe prostitutes would would visit the threshing floor to see if they could get some business there. Boaz is concerned that no one think wrongly of what Ruth has done. And sometimes I wish, I wish that modern scholars would protect Ruth's reputation the way Boaz is in is so concerned to do because there are some modern commentators who have tried to say that this is some sort of sexual encounter between Boaz and Ruth. But of course such would be a violation of Mo , of Moses' law. Such would certainly be culturally taboo in this time. Such would violate Ruth's trust in Boaz and such is not in keeping with either either Ruth or Boaz's character at all, or the purposes of this book that Ruth is a godly woman. If she acts in an ungodly way, the whole book is ruined. Let's try to read the book and see what the book is saying rather than engaging in some sort of vain speculation. I guess the other thing that ought to be said here is the Bible is tremendously honest. When people do bad things in the Bible, the Bible doesn't try to protect them or cover up their reputation. We are reading about King David this year. Yeah, what's the first thing you think about when we start talking about King David? So if Ruth does bad things here, the Bible would certainly tell us she does not do anything that's wrong. Boaz is concerned to make certain nobody thinks she did anything that's wrong. And yet still, somehow some people try to decide she's doing something wrong. That's just foolishness. But what we must do, verse 18 is wait and see what Boaz will do. And that's the reading for Wednesday. Wednesday's reading is Ruth chapter three. It is Thursday. It is Thursday. And today we read and finish the book of Ruth because we're reading Ruth chapter four. All the drama, all the tension is resolved because we find out there is a near nearer, nearer redeemer, nearer kinsman than just Boaz. And we have to see if he wants to marry Ruth. And at first it seems like he does because in verse four he says, I'm gonna redeem the land. That's the land that's in Naomi's family. And of course he wants to buy the land. Everybody wants land. Land is a good thing to have more land. Oh boy, it says that's great, you just buy that field verse five from the hand of Naomi. But when you do that, you also get Ruth the Moabite , this the widow of the dead, you'll need to raise up children to with her in that family's name. And that of course that is the monkey wrench in the works because it would cost to buy that land and then that land would not be his and it would not stay in his family. No, it would go to the children that he then is obligated to raise up with Ruth. Maybe he's got family already and further additions would only strain his income. He's not interested in doing that at all. Boaz says, I'm very interested in doing that. I would love to do that. And he does that and we get the emphasis again on the Lord. Verse 11, may the Lord make the woman who's coming to your house like Rachel and Leah and may the Lord because of the offspring that the Lord will give you notice verse 12, Tamar is mentioned here. She's a woman who exercised or at least tried to exercise the law of love , right marriage as well. So she fits here very well. Then verses 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, take us to King David. We get the genealogy of David. The key link to David here is established. I think in many ways this certainly authenticates the book of Ruth. Why would anyone link that great king to a Moabite woman if it was not the truth? Just a great ending to this story and it sets us up to study more and to read more about King David. Let me conclude all that with three quick applications that I think are helpful to us. First and foremost, this is God watching over common people. You don't have to be a king or a prophet or a big name Bible character for God to be aware of you and to care for you to know where you are, to bless you and to use you. I would say secondly, especially to families reading this to young people, reading this character draws the right kind of mate. Boaz is interested in Ruth because she does not seek her own benefit . She serves. She constantly. Ma models a fine character. She works hard. There's not a single word in this book says anything about Ruth's appearance. Not wrong to be interested in somebody because they're beautiful. There are lots of Bible characters who are mentioned as being beautiful, but there's something more important than physical beauty. But the most important thing outta the book of Ruth is that God is at work and God is at work bringing a great king to his people. He's working in surprising ways through surprising people through a Moabite named Ruth. Our reading for Thursday is Ruth chapter four. It is Friday. It is Friday. And today we read the eighth Psalm. Now we ended the year last week by reading the eighth Psalm and we're starting the year with reading the eighth Psalm, so don't have a ton of extra notes to give. You talked about that last week and go back and listen to that chapter, to that part of the podcast last week. I just would emphasize that this Psalm is really not about man. This Psalm is really about God. Oh Lord our Lord. How majestic is your name in all the earth? The Psalm begins with that and it ends with that. And notice in verse one, oh Lord, the first Lord is in small caps. That's Jehovah. The second Lord is king, sovereign ruler. So Jehovah is the sovereign ruler. And then this Psalm develops the idea of God, the creator in his incredible power and might and wisdom shown in creation. Understanding God's majesty in creation helps us understand God's majesty as he works in our lives. This is a marvelous Psalm because it helps us see David as he saw himself. God is the one that matters, not me. The Psalm, the Psalm really makes us small. You have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings, makes us small verses three and four before exalting us verse five, as the one that rules over God's creation. This Psalm really helps us find our place before the Lord. And I would add this, it seems to me that David understands that a huge part of our self image is properly developed through worshiping God. That's what matters. If we're gonna see ourselves correctly, we have to see God correctly. David does that in the eighth Psalm and we need to do that in our lives today. Wanna be a person after God's own heart? You gotta go to church. You need to worship God. It'll help you see yourself as you are 'cause it'll help you see who God is. Well, there you go. That's our reading for Friday, Psalm eight, And that is the podcast for the week. I appreciate you listening so much. Hope it's helping you as you start the new year by reading the Bible on a regular daily basis. If the podcast helps you tell somebody else about it. And until next week when we'll open our Bibles together again, I'm Mark Roberts and I do. I want to go to heaven and I want you to come to see you Monday with a cup of coffee.

Thanks for listening to the Westside Church of Christ Podcast. Monday morning Coffee with Mark. For more information about Westside, you can connect with us through our website, just christians.com and our Facebook page, our music is from upbeat.io. That's upbeat with two P'S U-P-P-B-E-A-T, where creators can get free music. Please share our podcast with others and we look forward to seeing you again with a cup of coffee. Of course, on next Monday.