Ruth 1:16-17 - Summer of Scripture

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Welcome to Summer of Scripture on the Naked marriage podcast. For 66 days in a row, we're releasing a short daily devotional for your marriage. Over these 66 days, we'll be sharing one scripture from each of the 66 books of the Bible and talking about how it applies to your life and marriage. Listen to all 66 episodes of these and you'll have a better understanding of God's Word and His perfect plan for your marriage. Let's dive in to today's scripture. Well, welcome back guys, to Summer of Scripture on the Naked Marriage Podcast. We're so glad that you're on this journey with us and growing in the Lord and in your marriage. Today is day eight and like we shared yesterday, we are in the Book of Ruth, one of our favorite scriptures for a wedding. But it wasn't necessarily about a married couple. And so I'm going to share it with you. You probably are familiar with it. It's Ruth 1, verses 16 and 17. It says this, but Ruth replied, don't ask me to leave you or turn back. Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die. And there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us. And you may be familiar with this story, but this is actually between a daughter in law and her mother in law.

I mean, mind blown, scandalous kind of. You're like, what mother in law? Like not even former mother in law.

Former because he passed away, right?

So Ruth was a young Moabite woman, not Jewish. She had married a man, her husband died. And now her mother in law, former mother in law, Naomi, said, listen, go back to your parents, your homeland. Like, you know, there's nothing for you here. Naomi was a widow herself, no one to care for her. And in those days, if you didn't have a husband or a son to care for you, really, you were on your own as a woman. There were very limited options, right? And Ruth, instead of going back to her family now, there was no legal or moral obligation tying her to her former mother in law. But she said, no, I'm committed to you Just as I was committed to my husband. You're his mother. And just as we would have together cared for you, now in his absence, I'm going to be the one to care for you. And it was such a beautiful testament of what love really looks like. And what we see through her story is because of that kind of commitment, God really blessed her. We see that this is something God desires. He desires that kind of commitment and selfless love. And he rewards and blesses it.

He does. You know, we were actually in a jewelry store recently and they had wedding rings that in Hebrew listed this verse around the wedding rings. I mean, that's how much this verse, even though it's between, like you said, a former daughter in law and her former mother in law. Right. But it's because I think that the nature of this verse of making such a commitment to your spouse, of being there no matter what, of going wherever they go, of saying I'm in this with you no matter what, that rings true in marriage, you know, more than really any other relationship, I would say well beyond, you know, the in law relationship, which is demonstrated by these verses. And so I think that this still applies today. But again, I think that in marriage sometimes we mentally put limits on our commitment to our spouse. And you know, you're like, yeah, I'm not like cheating on him or anything, and I'm not going outside of my marriage bed, so to speak. But I think that there's other ways that we limit our relationship by these, maybe these limitations that we have in our mind that we keep from our spouse. Wouldn't you say, honey?

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Yeah, I think we definitely do that. Limitation is a good word. So we have to be. Again, coming back to the naked marriage, right? Yes. Naked means no secrets. It means full transparency to know and love someone fully and completely exactly as they are. And when we choose to live that way, God blesses it. It puts us in a posture to receive all that God has for us within marriage, within family. And here in this situation with like even Ruth and Naomi, it paints that picture out to another level and shows us how we can have health in the multi generational. Aspects of our family. In fact, we have a brand new book available for pre order now called Married into the Family. And it's really all about healthy, keeping your marriage healthy within the midst of healthy in law relationships. And we know it can be so complicated. It doesn't always look like Ruth and Naomi. No, in fact, sometimes it feels more like. Well, I'm not even gonna jump into what it could feel like. You're fighting the dragon wrestling match.

I mean, I don't know with your.

In laws and you know, and not to take too much of a tangent here, but we've lived some very, very difficult in law dynamics.

Yes.

And now those have gotten much healthier through time. And we share some of our own experience in this book. But if you want a healthier relationship with your in laws, you know, those who are younger than you marrying into your family, those who are older than you, your spouses, parents, siblings, same generation, all of it. If you want to bring more peace, if you want to be a peacemaker within your family and live with peace and healthy boundaries, I really do think that this book could be a healthy one for you. So not to just turn this episode into a plug for that book, but so many people are in that difficult dynamic and so few resources are out there specifically to help in that dynamic. And I do think that Married into the Family could be that. So check that out. You can pre order it. It'll be out soon.

It will be. And I think that I love this verse. We actually talk about this verse in the book because it does show just such a selflessness on both of their parts. It wasn't just one of them being selfless. Cause if you think about it, you know, Ruth is being very selfless and being willing to be there for Naomi. But also Naomi is being very selfless and saying go when she knows she has no other options. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. It's true.

And I think that especially when it comes to marriage and even in law relationships, we need that selfless that putting others needs before our own. Now with that, okay, I wanna say we're always called to be peacemakers. You know, it says however it depends upon you live at peace with others. But it doesn't say to be a doormat. Right. Because that's why I think there's that part that talks about what we can do. And in this instance, they're both doing what they can do, offering what they can offer. But I think that so many times we'll take it too far and let A manipulative person with sinister plans for us and wants to, you know, somebody who wants to control us, to rule our life. But as Christians, we're not meant to do that. Especially even in. In law relationships. Again, we go into detail about this in the book. We have to put healthy boundaries in place. And healthy boundaries are. You know, we need to have those regardless of just in law relationships. This needs to be in every single aspect of our lives. But especially as it relates to marriage, we have to have healthy boundaries in place in order to have a thriving marriage. And so I think that that's something where together, we have to come together and decide what those are. And I think this verse in particular, where it talks about, wherever you go, you know, whatever you do, I will be with you. I think that if anything, it's demonstrating unity and not uniformity. You always say that it's not uniformity. We're not the same people. We're two individuals coming together. But we're saying we wanna live in unity. We wanna be on the same page. And so I think one of the applications that we hope you take away from this verse today is really having a good conversation about where are we not on the same page? Where are we not experiencing unity in our marriage? Is there any part of my life where you don't feel like I'm letting you in? Is there any part where you're like, I don't wanna go with you? Like, I feel this reluctance to join you in this effort or in this belief or whatever it is, and then really talk through that and say, how can we become unified in this cause? God wants us to have unity in marriage.

He really, really does. And to wrap it up with Ruth's story, you know, Ruth, through that faithfulness, God blessed her. He brought a man into her life named Boaz. They had a son named Obed, who Naomi kind of adopted as her own grandson. And it brought her such joy and God. Through the lineage of this woman, Ruth continued on to create a line of kings. Obed had a son named Jesse. Jesse had a son named David. David became the greatest king in Israel. And through the line of David, centuries later, God would bring the king of Kings, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, into this world. A descendant of a young Moabite woman named Ruth, who chose to love with a commitment that so few have. And God blessed her for it. And there's so much we can learn from her story. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope it's been an encouragement to you. We'll look forward to seeing you tomorrow for the book of First Samuel.