Barbie and Ruth The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her

As inspired by the book of Ruth.

So let's listen to this beautiful love story.

Ruth, you work so hard,' Naomi stopped, wiping away a few tears. It is my deepest desire for you to find rest for your heart and hands.

The words may seem odd to you and me, but to Boaz the meaning was clear. Ruth was asking him if he would marry her.

The story which began with three funerals would end with a glorious wedding in the birth of a child.

So, we have really two major sections here. We have the conquest of Canaan and then we enter a very, very difficult period called the Judges. And we'll talk about that in a little bit.

And then in the midst of Judges, there's Ruth.

And yet they do that. It's one of those, again, once again, a frustrating moment, but there's always this grace and I mean grace and not just like it's graceful. I mean like grace from God.

There is nothing about ethnic battles that's going on in book of Judges or in the book of Joshua that is actually this ethnicity versus that ethnicity. It's not about that. What it is about is about the true worship of the Lord and belonging to his covenant versus these forms of idolatry and these forms of essentially demon worship that are happening amongst those other people.

It actually is true that Ruth essentially converts. She becomes a member of the covenant and it's through Ruth that we get the great king of Israel, David. And it's through that line that we get the great actual great savior, the great redeemer, the great judge of the universe, Jesus Christ.

So we have really two major sections here. We have the conquest of Canaan, and then we enter a very, very difficult period called the Judges. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. The main character is Joshua. Moses has died on Mount Nebo on the eastern side of the Jordan in modern day Jordan. And Joshua is the one that's going to take them across in this first book, Joshua. And it's very dramatic. They are going to go across the Jordan River, and the waters are going to be rolled back all the way to a city called Adam. And that's about eight miles upstream. Now, this is interesting because the waters, you know, the Canaanite god system is they're really worshiping Baal. And there's all kinds of derivatives of this. And the two principal gods are Asherah and El. Asherah and El get together. They have a baby god, ain't he cute? And his name is Baal. And Baal is over fertility. Baal is over the waters, over agriculture. And the very first thing that God is going to do in going into the land is He's going to move that water all the way upstream, and everybody in Jericho is going to see this. Now, they're going to go across, and the manna is going to cease. They're going to circumcise the young men who they didn't in the desert. Then they're going to take Jericho, and most people have heard that story. And then they're going to divide and conquer. There's going to be a southern and a northern campaign in the book of Joshua. But they don't utterly take the land. They take the hill countries, and then the Canaanites have the lowlands. Now, if you look at warfare today, you'd say, yay, I mean, we've got the upper hand. We're up on the mountains. But that's not true because it's where the chariots are. That's what counts, and that's down below. And so they settle into the land. And you know what's really happening here, Father, is they've been in boot camp for a year at Mount Sinai in Numbers and Exodus, and it's showtime. Now is the time to put your faith into practice. In fact, those were the last words in Deuteronomy from Moses in chapter 4 and chapter 6. He says basically that you have to live your life as though two things. One, there's only one God. Number two, you've got to teach your children. If you're going to go into this land where they sacrifice children, they want to intermarry, this is the way that you're going to be successful. So they go in, they possess the land, but they don't do what God commanded them to do. And so we have all kinds of interesting stories here. And as people are going to find out, this is the period where all of your questions are going to come about, about why did this happen? Why did that happen? What about the innocent? And so that's the first part of our movement here. That's the conquest. And another interesting thing that happens here in the next few days is that all of the land will be divided up among tribes. So if you look at a map in the back of your Bible, you'll see a tribal allotment of land both on the east and the west side of the Jordan. And there's something peculiar about it. You won't see any land for Joseph and you won't see any land for the Levites. And the reason is because Joseph has two half tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh. Those were his sons. And there is no tribal allotment for the Levites because they have 48 cities distributed throughout the land for them to minister from. So that's the book of Joshua. Then it comes to an end and then we're going to be going into Judges. Yeah. And then the Lord had said to the Levites, he said that you won't have any land to inherit because I'm your inheritance. That the Lord himself is your inheritance.

So we have really two major sections here. We have the conquest of Canaan, and then we enter a very, very difficult period called the Judges. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. The main character is Joshua. Moses has died on Mount Nebo on the eastern side of the Jordan in modern day Jordan. And Joshua is the one that's going to take them across in this first book, Joshua. And it's very dramatic. They are going to go across the Jordan River, and the waters are going to be rolled back all the way to a city called Adam. And that's about eight miles upstream.

Tomorrow we'll be reading the book of Ruth.