Key Learning from Sunday School
January 2025
Youth Sunday School (The Book of Ruth)
The Book of Ruth is an example of God’s grace that highlights integrity, kindness, and faithfulness. The major theme of redeemer foreshadows Jesus as our Redeemer. Ruth’s kindness and selfless loyalty toward Naomi, and her faith in God, have long endeared her to the faithful and redounded to God’s praise for his merciful choice of one so unexpected.
⁃ Linage
• Ruth - Not a Hebrew she is a Mobite.
• Mobites are related to the Hebrews through Lot
• Lot was Abraham’s nephew
• Ruth -First mother-in-law is Naomi
• Naomi and her husband were originally from Bethlehem before Moab
• Moves back to Bethlehem after husband’s death
• Ruth - Grandmother of Kind David
• Ruth - One of four women mention in the genealogy of Christ
⁃ Who’s Who
• Naomi was married to Elimelech and had two children
• Mahlon married Ruth who was loyal to Naomi
• Chilean married Orpah
⁃ The importance of geography is to demonstrate scripture is rooted in reality.
- God of the Moabites- Chemosh
• A synthesis of truth and heresy
⁃ The strangeness of an agriculture culture
• Reaping and harvesting
• Gleaning: gathering what the harvesters did not collect
• Threshing: process of separating grain from the plant
• Winnowing: separating grain and chaff
⁃ “Redeem, redeemer, or redemption”
• The World term usage is mainly in an economic context
• Church/Scripture uses the terms to describe deliverance from bondage
• (Delivered, Ransom, Rescue, Advocate, Defender, Buy Back, Set Free)
⁃ The theme of family redeemer foreshadows Jesus as our Redeemer
⁃ The focal point of the Book of Ruth
• Recognition
• Respect
⁃ Old Testament connections
• Lot & his daughters
• Judah and his daughter-in-law (Tamar) Recognition
⁃ Restoration of boundaries
• kindness
• love
⁃ Shavuot (Pentacost)
• Acceptance of faith
• Commitment
⁃ Boaz’s status
• TLSB infers from v4:6 that the closer family redeemer had no family of his own and backs out because of inheritance concerns for his own heirs.
• Boaz acceptance of the responsibility
• Boaz already had heirs
• Boaz made a sacrificial labor regardless
• Scripture doesn’t say
⁃ Rachel and Leah is a reference to the whole nation of Israel
• Bilhan and Zilpah where handmaidens not wives
⁃ Faithfulness and Recognition
• Recognition that we are sinners and cannot redeem ourselves
• Faith alone, Grace alone
• Foreshadows our redemption in Christ
⁃ Boaz and Ruth’s story is the redemption of the Tamar & Judah story, the redemption of Lot & His Daughter’s story, and ultimately the redemption of our story
⁃ Noami’s reentering the story at the end
• The son of Boaz and Ruth was Noami’s family redeemer
• To give the book symmetry.