In our modern age of streaming movies and binge watching shows, .it isn’t often that we get to feel the anxiety of a cliffhanger ending to our favorite dramas. Rather than wait a year for the sequel to hit theaters, or even just a week for the next episode…, we can just hit “Play Next” and relieve our anxiety. To be fair, books are that way too though, and I confess on many an occasion flipping to the last page of a book when I just couldn’t take the suspense. But when we do that we miss out. The joy of the last page is not as deep when you have missed the suffering, the waiting, and the highs and lows of the story. And so it is with Ruth; today we come to the final page. We have covered over 10 years of loss, bitterness, joy, suffering, poverty, hopes raised and hopes dashed. And from day one we have seen God just below the surface of everything that has been happening; always present but never seen, except in the kindness and love shown by Ruth and Boaz. God only shows His face in this drama, as He even does today, through the actions of His people. So this morning we get to see the end of the story, which, like all good stories, is just the beginning of another, greater story that we get to remember every Christmas Eve.

Christmas comes with a lot of waiting. Waiting in line at the post office, waiting in traffic, waiting for packages to arrive in time, waiting for cookies to be done. No one likes to wait, particularly at Christmas. If there is something I really want and there is a chance that no one will get it for me, I have been known to just take matters into my own hands and buy myself the gift rather than wait on someone to give it to me. What about you, what do you do when you are tired of waiting? In the suburbs we often just power over waiting with our own means. When stuck in traffic, we pay to get in the express lane. When waiting at the airport we pay for PreCheck. When waiting for a package we pay to have it come overnight. But what about when we are waiting on God? When there are things we can’t just power over? It seems like to wait is to admit in some way that you are human. Advent is a time when we are reminded of what it was like to be waiting for our Redeemer. For about 400 years the world lay in sin and error pining with seemingly no word from God about what His plan was. When we are tired of waiting on God, the temptation is always to just take matters into our own hands. The temptation when waiting on God is to either sin or to get cynical. We are in Ruth 3 this morning; Naomi, Ruth and Boaz have all been waiting on God to get something they want. What will they do when it doesn’t seem to happen?

One of our family traditions around Christmas time is a Secret Santa. The idea of Secret Santa is that you draw names out of a hat and then you give a gift to that person on Christmas morning and it’s a surprise who gave it to them. One year, our kids were having a rough season of not getting along with each other, so we added a new element to the Secret Santa. In addition to just a present on Christmas morning, you had to secretly do kind things for that family member all through the month of December without them knowing it. It didn’t always work, but it did happen plenty of times. It was so fun to see someone come down and say, “My bed was made! Who did that?” or “My chore was done this morning!” Through the whole month of December there was this hidden undercurrent of kindness running through your life, and you had no idea who was doing it so you couldn’t give any credit to the one behind the scenes showing you kindness until the last day. The story of Ruth is a story of God at work behind the scenes, under the surface. Behind the scenes of love, behind the scenes of kindness, and behind the scenes of suffering and struggle. And that is where we pick up in Ruth 2.

For every good story out there, there is a prequel waiting to be told. We know this about our favorite stories, right? It’s not just about milking obscure plot lines for more cash, we simply need to know: How did the rebels get access to those Death Star plans? Where did Gollum come from? How did Wolverine get those claws? How did the witch become Wicked? Behind every good story is a prequel waiting to be known. When we think of the Christmas story we begin with the opening line of Matthew 1:18, but before verse 18 there are 17 other verses, over 40 other names. Before he gets to the birth of our Redeemer, Matthew starts the story like this. Each one of those names leading up to the birth of the Savior has a story. But only one of them gets her own book. Ruth is the only book in the Old Testament named for a non-Israelite. Jewish Rabbis consider Ruth to be the crown jewel of the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. Ruth was so important to them that they didn’t know where to put it in the order of Old Testament books because it embodies the heart and the Spirit of every single book in the Old Testament. All of Old Testament Scripture points to the coming of our Savior and redeemer. But in Ruth all of those hopes, fears and promises come to us in a story. A story about how the plan of salvation hung precariously in the balance of human sin and divine faithfulness. How Christmas was saved by an immigrant girl who was willing to give up everything to show the little town of Bethlehem what God is really like. For the next four weeks of Advent we will be in this amazing prequel to the Christmas story that I hope will quickly become one of your favorite stories.