Ruth 4: Redemption
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
My name is Spencer and I am one of the pastors here. We're going to be in the final chapter of the book of Ruth. That's chapter 4. That's on page 128 in a blue Bible that may be around you. If you don't have a Bible at home, please take that as a gift to you. I want you to have a Bible that you can read.
But we're going to be finishing out Ruth today. My wife loves happy endings. When we watch movies, if it does not have a happy ending, it is a wash. It doesn't matter that the beginning, middle, all the way up towards the end was good. If it does not end correctly, the movie was terrible. We have a difference of opinion there.
But what I've realized is that she's not alone. There are a lot of people that really want to see a happy ending. And yeah, all right. So if that's you, you're going to really appreciate Ruth. Because it does indeed have a happy ending. If you have not been here the last few weeks or you've missed some, let me recap a little bit of where we've been in Ruth.
There are three central figures in this story. The first central figure is Naomi. So Naomi and her family, they live in Bethlehem in Israel. And a famine strikes the land. And they decide to survive. They have to leave.
They leave Bethlehem and they go to Moab. Moab is not in Israel. It is actually enemy territory. The Moabites and the Israelites fought quite a bit. So in order to survive, they go amongst the people that are not their own, even hostile to them.
And while they are there, they settle down for a bit. So her sons marry Moabite wives. One of them marries Ruth. Ruth is the second major figure in the story. Probably knew that from the title of the book. But she is a Moabite.
And they settle down. And after this, tragedy strikes. So Naomi loses her husband Elimelech. He dies. And then both of her sons die. So after this, in the aftermath, it tells us that there actually is bread again in Israel.
The famine is over. And Naomi decides, I'm going back amongst my own people. As a widow who is poor, who doesn't have any really hope in front of her. She says, I'm going to go back amongst my own people. And she tells her daughter-in-law, stay. You're Moabite.
Stay amongst your own people. And Ruth says, no. No, I'm going with you. Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people.
Your God shall be my God. And where you die, I will die. And there, I will be buried. She loves her mother-in-law, Naomi. She is loyal to her. And she follows her back to Israel.
And to get back to Bethlehem, we're introduced to the third major figure in this story. And that is Boaz. Boaz, we learn very quickly, is a worthy man. He is a good man. And he is a close relative of Naomi's late husband, Elimelech. So Ruth goes to glean in his barley fields amidst the barley harvest.
Gleaning is just picking up the remainders from the field. And when Boaz realizes that's Ruth who's gleaning in his field, he says, you're not just going to glean. I've heard your story. I know what you did, the kindness you did to Naomi. You are taking as much as you can handle back with you today. And then Ruth goes home with as much barley as she can handle.
And Naomi's like, who is this from? She's from the fields of Boaz. And Boaz, in that moment, Naomi says, all right, she hatches a plan. And this plan is a pretty bold thing. That in that very night, Ruth is to go back and she is to propose. And that's what we sat last week in chapter 3.
That Ruth goes back and has this bold marriage proposal to Boaz. And the cliffhanger from chapter 3 to chapter 4 that we've been waiting for all week is that Boaz says, I want us to settle this matter the very next day. But there is a redeemer who is closer, a closer relative of Elimelech, a closer relative of Naomi. And he says, we're going to have to settle this matter tomorrow. And I'll explain more of this in a moment. This is what Chet walked us through last week.
But that is chapter 4 as we launch into seeing how this story is going to conclude. Is Boaz going to end up with Ruth? And as we witness the conclusion of this story, I want us to actually realize and see by the end of this that this is a bigger picture of redemption that it points to and why this story is actually really good for us. Let me pray for us. And then we will walk through the text together. God, I thank you for the scriptures.
They give us a picture of who you are, how good you are to us. May we listen. May you go to work in our hearts. May we respond in faith and repentance and in worship. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so start off in chapter 4, verse 1.
Now, Boaz had gone up to the gate and sat down there. And behold, the Redeemer of whom Boaz had spoken came by. So Boaz said, turn aside, friends. Sit down here. And he turned aside and sat down. All right, so Boaz meant what he said.
I'm going to settle this matter today. He does not waste any time. Now, this closer relative, this Redeemer figure, is a closer relative to Ruth's late husband, Malon, and Naomi's late husband, Elimelech. Now, we don't get his name. We just know he's the next in line Redeemer. So Boaz goes straight to the gate.
The gate in their culture was the place where it was a little bit part town square, where people gathered, part courthouse, where matters were settled, where transactions and disputes were handled. So he goes straight there. He finds the Redeemer. And then he pivots to the situation to settle the matter at hand. So this is what Chet walked us through last week with this Redeemer language.
Because there's two different threads that are packed into this word Redeemer. And there are two parts of the Old Testament. The first that we're going to see in a moment has to do with land redemption. This comes out of Leviticus 25. Land, this is what Chet explained last week, is very important. It's very important to the people of God.
When God settles the promised land, and the 12 tribes settle different areas of the promised land, within those 12 tribes are individual clans and families that have individual land parcels. And land was important because that was what your lineage was tied to. That was the inheritance. That's how you were provided for your family and your children and your children's children. It was very important for land to stay within the family. And in this specific instance, Naomi is going to need her land redeemed.
That's the first part of redemption that is tied into this word Redeemer. The second has to do with something called Leveret marriage. This comes from Deuteronomy 25. Leveret marriage code. Leveret just means brother-in-law. And what Deuteronomy 25 teaches is that if you have a husband and a wife, and they have no son, and the husband dies.
If she has no son, she has really no hope in front of her. Like financially, widows and their culture were poor. They didn't have anyone to take care of them. Your son was going to be the one that would take care of you. He was going to be the one that inherited the land. He was the one that was going to end up providing for you in your older age.
So not having a son is a very big deal. So God built into the Old Testament law that if this was the case, if your husband died and you had no son, that the next close relative, which would be the brother, would marry his sister-in-law. He would marry her. And that was to provide for widows, but it was also to perpetuate the name of, to sustain the line of the deceased brother. And what would happen is, is the firstborn son of this new marriage would legally belong to his late brother. He would get the inheritance.
In the future, he would get the land. He would sustain and perpetuate the name of that deceased brother. That's weird to us. We look at that like, I don't know about that. Some of y'all are thinking, I ain't have it in our family if that happens. Like, I don't know.
Like, it's strange to us, but this is God's way of providing, of taking care of his people so that the names of families would not be blotted out in Israel, that they would be sustained and carry on. So, that's what is happening when it says redeemer. And a lot of times the phrase here is kinsman redeemer. That's what's happening in this passage. That's what Chet walked us through last week. And that's what Boaz is here to settle because there's a closer relative that is in line to do this before him.
And that's where we pick up in verse 2. And he took ten men of the elders of the city and said, Sit down here. So, they sat down. So, every village, every town in Israel is going to have different elders, different men that oversee the town's affairs. They're the rulers, the leaders in that town. That's still the case in many parts of the world.
You go to different cultures in the Middle East and in Africa. There are villages that have elders that still do this today. They're the ones that settle disputes that handle the matters of the town. So, he's got the redeemer and he's got the elders and now they're about to see some legal proceedings. So, if you geek out about, if you like Judge Judy or like the back end of every Law and Order episode, get excited because we're about to see some legal proceedings that go down in verse 3 and beyond. So, pick up in verse 3.
It says, Then he said to the redeemer, so this is Boaz talking to the redeemer, in front of the elders. Then he said to the redeemer, Naomi, who has come back from the country of Moab, is selling the parcel of land that belonged to our relative, Elimelech. So, I thought I would tell you of it and say, buy it in the presence of those sitting here, in the presence of the elders of my people. If you will redeem it, redeem it. But if you will not, tell me that I may know, for there's no one besides you to redeem it, and I come after you.
So, we're dealing with the land aspect first. That's the first part of redemption, which for us, we're not excited about that. We want to know if he's going to end up with Ruth. We've got to wait. They're going to handle this land stuff first. And it says, And he said, this is the redeemer responding, I will redeem it.
I will redeem it. Okay. So, Naomi, in this transaction, is selling this parcel of land. We don't know the exact situation of what has gone into this. We don't know if she, if Elimelech sold this, her husband sold this before he went to Moab in order to pay for their trip. We don't know if they sold the rights to it.
We don't know if Naomi owns this, but it just needs the money because she can't sustain it. We don't know exactly. We do know that Naomi is in deep poverty, and this is the redemption that she needs in order so that she can survive. So, while this is an incredible kindness for this redeemer to step in and say, I will redeem it. And it is. It is a kindness.
It is also an opportunity. This is a financial investment for this redeemer. One commentator puts it this way. He says, Since Naomi had no heir, when she died, the land would revert to his family and be passed on to his heirs. And the money put forth for the land would be an investment on future returns. So, it's a kindness, but it's also an investment.
Naomi doesn't have any heirs. So, when she dies in this transaction, the land will become his. And it's a way for him to, you know, future investments, y'all. Better and more sound than crypto is land, right? So, he's like, I'll do it. I will be the one that redeems it.
And then Boaz, I don't know why he doesn't do this all in one clip, but he goes, Well, it's a bit of a catch. And he gives the curveball in verse 5. He says, Then, Boaz said, The day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you also acquire Ruth, the Moabite, the widow of the dead, in order to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance. And he throws in that curveball. He says, This is a package deal. This is land redemption alongside of this leveret marriage duty.
That phrasing, to perpetuate the name of the dead is inheritance. That is straight out of the leveret marriage code in Deuteronomy 25. Which means that this is going to be costly. This is not just land redemption. It means that Ruth and the kinsman redeemer, that their firstborn son will take the inheritance. It will take the land that he just agreed to redeem.
So all that kindness and that money that he puts in that land, once he produces a son, is going to go to him and that son will legally belong to Elimelech and Malon and that line. So this is no longer a good investment for him. This is actually going to be costly. Not to mention if he produces any more children with Ruth, that's going to, if he has his own children, it's going to tie up a lot of different things. It's going to mess with his inheritance and the redeemer considers all of this and then in verse 6 he says, then the redeemer said, I cannot redeem it for myself lest I impair my own inheritance.
Take my right of redemption yourself for I cannot redeem it. So once he hears that, kindness becomes too costly. He can't do it. He's not going to impair his own inheritance. He says, you do it. Boaz, you be the one that actually steps in and redeems.
And Boaz has been waiting for this and he absolutely is ready to redeem. Verse 7, now, this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging. To confirm a transaction, the one drew off his sandal and gave it to the other. And this was the manner of attesting in Israel. I appreciate that it says that at the end and this was the manner of attesting in Israel because a lot of times in the Bible it'll just give you some kind of, like you hear a sandal, take off your sandal, pass it. You're like, oh, that's weird.
What are you talking about? And sometimes the Bible goes, alright, next verse. It says, this was a manner of attesting. And the most helpful commentary explanation I heard was this is basically like a title exchange which me having a real estate background was very easy for me to understand. When you buy a property, you have, there's a title with that property and it's exchanged and it gets recorded with the county. Alright?
So, he took off the sandal and they even said like, these are the shoes that would walk the property off with. So, they would survey the property and they'd have their sandal and they'd say, alright, here is the title, here is the exchange. We don't know that, if that's 100% exactly what it is, we do know that this is the official way to seal the deal. I just like the real estate explanation because that was the best one I found. So, that seals the deal officially. The sandals have been exchanged and then in verse 8 it says, so, when the Redeemer said to Boaz, buy it for yourself, he drew off his sandal.
Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, you are witnesses this day that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belong to Elimelech and all that belong to Kilion and the Mehalon, meaning, it's done. The land redemption is done. He is taking care of Naomi. He is buying this land to take care of her and then in verse 10, the moment we've been waiting for. Also, Ruth the Moabite, the widow of Mehalon, I have bought to be my wife to perpetuate the name of the dead and his inheritance that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place.
He's done it. Like Boaz, he is going to be the Kansman redeemer. He is going to be the one that restores Elimelech and Melah. He's the one who's going to redeem Naomi. And he says, you are witnesses this day. then all the people who are at the gate and the elders said, we are witnesses. And then they give a blessing.
May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah. That's a blessing, y'all. Rachel and Leah are the matriarchs of the people of Israel. Their line goes back to them. May you be blessed like them, like Rachel and Leah who together built up the house of Israel. May you act worthily in Ephrathah.
Which we don't know if Ephrathah is a part of Bethlehem or if that's just another name for Bethlehem. But that's just saying worthily in this land. And be renowned in Bethlehem. Verse 12, And may your house be like the house of Perez whom Tamar bore to Judah because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this woman. Which that tie in is also incredible. Because this is the tribe of Judah.
They come from Judah. Their history goes back to Judah and Tamar which is the first leveret marriage story in the Bible. Not quite the same if you've read Genesis 38. Ruth is this is like Hallmark. And Genesis 38 is like an episode of Mari. Like it's it's a lot more it's a lot rowdier a lot sketchier.
And I've piqued your interest when you get down today go read Genesis 38. If you have questions come talk to me. But it's just cool that that's the story they come from. They're referencing that story purposely. Like that is where we come from is this lever this redemption that happened then and now you get to do this as well. And then the deal is done.
And I want you to imagine Boaz walking back Naomi and Ruth are probably waiting like just looking over the distance is he home yet? Is he coming? And then finally they see him and he's approaching and they're anxiously awaiting what's going to happen and he says it's done. I've settled the matter. Naomi your land has been redeemed you will be taken care of and Ruth I am your kinsman redeemer. I am redeeming you.
Let's get married. And in verse 13 it says so Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. Can you imagine what kind of wedding that might have been? how joyous that would have been? People know their back story. Have you ever seen or been to a wedding where there's a lot of joy but the backdrop is? There's a painful story of how it got to here.
And they're just people are just overjoyed seeing this beautiful redemption that is happening. And then it says and he went into her and the Lord gave her conception and she bore a son. that after all of this loss she has a son. Years ago my wife and I she went through a very painful miscarriage and it was a painful experience and then a year later we had our son. And being able to hold our son and the joyous moment that that was with the backdrop of the pain from the last year was powerful and that is this moment and then some after everything that they faced Naomi lost her husband. She lost her only sons.
She lost everything. Ruth lost her husband and she left her people and these widows went back poor without a shred of hope they thought. and now they are holding this baby boy this redemption in their arms. How beautiful is this moment and what I love about this book is it actually doesn't end with focusing on Ruth and focusing on Boaz it ends with focusing on Naomi. That is how the story ends that God saw Naomi in her suffering and he provided. And this is where we pick up in verse 14. Then the women said to Naomi blessed be the Lord who has not left you this day without a redeemer and may his name be renowned in Israel.
He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age for your daughter-in-law who loves you who is more to you than seven sons has given birth to him. Like the women of the neighborhood are just praise the Lord bless the Lord he did not leave you without redemption Naomi. He didn't forget you. Like we gotta remember when Naomi comes in from out of town when she comes back from Moab they say Naomi we haven't seen you in years it's good to see you and she says don't call me Naomi call me bitter call me call me Mara that's what she wants to be renamed because her life is bitter and it's like no no your life is not bitter God has not forgotten you Naomi means pleasant you will be called Naomi God has been kind to you and his kindness is displayed in his daughter-in-law and her daughter-in-law the kindness is displayed that she has Ruth and they say Ruth is of more value to you than seven sons which is a profound statement for all the reasons we just highlighted sons were your future they were your inheritance they were your social security they're the ones that sustained the line they say this daughter-in-law of yours is more valuable than seven sons praise the Lord that you have this woman in your life and then in verse 16 it says then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse and the woman of the neighborhood gave him a name saying a son has been born to Naomi they named him Obed so that's the only time we see this in the scriptures that the women of the neighborhood named the child they just threw out a name and it stuck and they ran with it Obed means the one who serves and the picture here is that this child is the one who serves Naomi this child is her redemption this child is a reminder that God has not forgotten about Naomi that he has taken care of her can you see this moment as she's bouncing little Obed in her arms as she's holding this bundle of joy and redemption in her arms she has been redeemed and it says she she's going to take care of this child she's going to raise this child Obed is her redemption and this is how Ruth ends Obed he was the father of Jesse the father of David now these are the generations of Perez Perez fathered Hezron Hezron fathered Ram Ram fathered Amenadab Amenadab fathered Nashon Nashon fathered Salmon Salmon fathered Boaz Boaz fathered Obed Obed fathered Jesse and Jesse fathered David and that is when we learn that this is the family of David that Obed is the grandfather of David this is David's story this would have been a family story they passed down the kind of family story that said get around let me tell you let me tell you kids about our story let me tell you about my great grandmother Naomi let me tell you about my grandfather Obed this is a family story that they passed down this means that the nation of Israel would know about this story that's why they have it and it is a vivid joyous picture of God's redemption and his providence on behalf of his people and how he loves and takes care of his people but for us as Christians this story means all that and more because when you get to the very first page of the New Testament that's when this becomes more clear for us Matthew 1 the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David the son of Abraham Abraham was the father of Isaac Isaac the father of Jacob Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers Judah the father of Perez and Zerab by Tamar and Perez the father of Hezron the father of Ram Ram the father of Menadab the father of Nashon the father of Salmon Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab which pause for a moment that's powerful in itself because if you know the story of Joshua Rahab was a Jericho she was a Gentile that's Boaz's mama which means that his mom was a Gentile outsider enemy of the people of God and he marries an outsider of the Moabites of the people who are enemies of God that's an unbelievable connection then it gets down it says Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth and Obed the father of Jesse and Jesse the father of David the king Ruth Boaz Naomi are a part of Christ's story listen it is no accident that God chose to come in the line of Obed this redemption story is bigger than Naomi it is bigger than Ruth and it is bigger than Boaz this is a picture of Christ's redemption of his people that's the hidden subplot that's the Hitchcock M.
Ruth 3: A Midnight Proposal
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Happy Mother's Day. Grab your Bibles and head to Ruth chapter 3. We are walking through the book of Ruth. It's an Old Testament book that happens during the time of Judges. And we're in the third chapter. There's four chapters in the book.
And so the first two chapters, what we see is that there was a man named Elimelech, his wife Naomi. There was a famine. And so they're starving and they head to Moab, which is an enemy nation that was near Israel. And so they kind of they go away from their home just to try to find a way to survive. While in Moab, both of their sons get married and then all of the men die. So Elimelech and Naomi's two sons die.
And so we're left with three widows and they're in a vulnerable, unfortunate position. And so Naomi decides to head back to hear that there's food in Israel again. So she goes to head back and Ruth goes with her. So one of her daughter-in-laws comes back. And Ruth gives this kind of this pledge, this promise where she says that I'm going to your people are going to be my people. Your home is going to be my home.
I'm going with you. Your God is going to be my God. And so she goes back with her. But when Naomi returns, she tells us that she's hopeless. She's empty. She's bitter that things have not gone well for her.
And then we see that they Ruth decides to go glean. There's a barley harvest. And so she's going to glean, which is something that was offered to poor people or somebody who is in a foreign country to be able to follow after those who are reaping and to be able to pick through the scraps and get some food. But she's hoping that someone will let her do that. And she goes to do that. And so she just so happens to end up at Boaz's field and just so happens to meet Boaz.
And we're to see that the Lord's at work in this. And so Boaz shows her great kindness. And we end chapter two where they're fed. They're provided for that God has answered and he's beginning to fill their life back up and he's beginning to care for them. And so we're picking up in Ruth chapter three. Let's pray and we'll pick up there and see where this story goes.
God, we ask for your help and your grace as we study your word that we might see who you are. That you might draw our hearts closer to you and help us to follow you in faith in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. I'm sorry for my voice this voice this morning, but you're just going to have to deal with it because I have to deal with it. So Ruth chapter three, verse one.
Then Naomi, her mother-in-law, said to her. My daughter, should I not seek rest for you that it may be well with you? That phrase, may I not seek rest for you, she actually references it in chapter one, verse nine. She says, may the Lord grant that you may find rest each of you in the house of her husband. So what she means here is, shouldn't I help you get married?
Shouldn't I help you be established? Shouldn't I help you find a place to settle and to be okay? And Naomi told us in chapter one that she's older and so she doesn't think that necessarily she's not marriable at this point. And she's trying to help make a plan for Ruth going forward. And this is the role of a mother. This is something that your mother would help you do.
And so she has taken Naomi, taken Ruth in and she's treating her the way she would treat her if she was a daughter. She's her daughter-in-law and she's a Moabite, but they love one another. And she's saying, shouldn't I do this? Isn't this what I ought to do? And some of you, maybe your mother has said that. Isn't it my job to find your husband, not yours?
But isn't there something beautiful about that Naomi is saying that I want to care for you. I want to help provide for you. I want to help make sure you're established and you're okay. And specifically on Mother's Day, we ought to be thankful for our mothers. And we ought to be thankful for every lady in our life who took on some of that role. We ought to be thankful for our mothers.
We ought to be thankful for every person, every lady that stepped in and helped care for us and provide for us like we see Naomi doing for Ruth. One of the blessed things about being in a church family and one of the blessed things about how we do community groups is that we aren't trying to design our community groups to be age-based or life-stage based. So sometimes it may be a little harder to get to know people, but you also get to begin to know people that are in different life stages from you. And we have the opportunity to have some of this play out, and it is a blessing. So here's what she says.
Verse 2. Is not Boaz our relative with whose young women you were? We're going to stop there for a second because that is not he our relative matters. So she says we know Boaz, and isn't he our relative? Which means isn't he marriable? Isn't he a redeemer?
And you say, well, I'm glad. You know, when my wife and I, we had our boys, we looked on Ancestry.com to try to find names. We tried to limit the names we were picking from our relatives. But I'm glad we don't do marriage like that. It's like, all right, I've got to marry one of my relatives. But here's how this works.
They had to marry inside of their tribe because the land, when they came over following Moses out of the Exodus, the land was given to the tribes. And so it would be like South Carolina was one tribe, one long, big family. And then inside of that, maybe Lexington was your clan or Casey was or whatever, and you live closer to family. But you would marry inside your tribe because the land was passed down through your family line, and the land had to stay in the tribe. So if you were of the tribe of Simeon, you weren't supposed to marry someone of the tribe of Judah because the land has to keep in the family.
So that's what she's saying is you're a part of my family, and Boaz is a part of our family. He's a part of our clan. He's a part of our tribe, and he's a relative of Naomi's husband. And she says, so isn't he a good option for us? He's also a redeemer, which means he's a close enough relative to a limeleck to be able to step in and take on this kinsman redeemer and this leverite marriage role. We have to explain that.
This is nuance in the text that they would be understanding that's completely lost on us. So we've got to learn our Old Testament a little bit better so that we can understand what's happening in the story. Okay. He has the position in their family to be a leverite, to live up to the leverite marriage codes. And lever just means brother-in-law, like your husband's brother. Not your brother's husband because that's weird.
Your husband's brother. So this is from Deuteronomy 25, verses 5 and 6. It says, Now this seems kind of crazy to us. But they had a patriarchal society and they had land inheritance that traveled as they passed it down from father and son. And what happens is, if someone's married and their husband dies, you're supposed to keep that wife in the family and raise up an heir for the husband that died so that the family line of passing on land will continue. It protects a widow from just being sent out.
It protects a widow from being just ignored. But it does also limit the way that she's able to respond in her widowhood because they're trying to raise up a son. She's supposed to be brought into her brother-in-law's house and raise up a son for her deceased husband. So that's one thing at work here in the process of redemption. The other thing at work in the process of redemption that we'll find out more about in chapter 4 is the process of redeeming land. This is Leviticus chapter 25, 23 through 25.
The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. This is God talking. For you are strangers and sojourners with me, and in all the country you possess, you shall allow a redemption of the land. If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold. So if your brother becomes poor and he sells off part of his property to someone not in the family, someone in the family has to come buy it back because it's got to stay with that tribe.
Which means that a redeemer has to pay off someone else's debt, and when they are redeeming a bloodline, they have to raise up somebody else's heir. And that at times can get where your inheritance and that other person's inheritance get tangled up, and it can be a bit complicated. It takes a good bit to be a redeemer to take this on. But Boaz is in that position in their family to be able to do this. So she says, Isn't Boaz?
Isn't he a good option? Shouldn't I try to help you find a husband? And so Naomi has hatched a plan, and let's read it. Let's see what her plan is here. She says, Is not Boaz our relative with whose young women you were? See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor.
All right. A couple of things here so we understand what this is. Winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor. So, you had a harvest. You reap your harvest. Poor people can follow behind and glean, but you reap your harvest.
You pile it up. Then you thresh it. The way you thresh something is that you beat it. So that people would gather around, and they would sit and hit it with stuff, or they would stomp on it with mules. They would have it all thrown out, and they would stomp on it with mules. Or mules would drag a threshing sledge behind them, which is like a big, like the thing that Kevin McAllister rides down the stairs in Home Alone.
It looks like a sled or whatever. It looks like that, except for the bottom is all gnarled and jagged, and has holes in it and spikes in it and stuff. And they just tear it all up. And what this does is it separates everything, so that the grain actually comes off of the straw and the chaff. So now it's just a big old pile of mess, which that also helps inform when you're reading prophecies, and God tells a nation, I'm going to thresh you.
You don't want to be threshed. So that's what threshing is. So they do that at the threshing floor, and everybody would kind of do this in the same area. So everybody's making harvest. All their fields are kind of connected. They'd have to know where their property line was, and they'd pile everything up, and they would thresh.
Then you winnow. Winnowing happens at the same place. It has to happen in a certain spot in the city. Because you have to have wind. And they would winnow in the evening, as the temperature changed, and the breeze picked up. So there's a specific spot where they would all winnow.
And what winnowing is, is you take everything that's been threshed, it's a big pile of mess, and you toss it in the air in the breeze, and the wind blows the chaff far away. It blows the straw a little bit further. And the grain, which is the heaviest, falls right here. And so they just toss it up in the wind. It blows everything away. Then the chaff is fuel for fire.
The straw is fodder for your animals. It's feed. And the grain is food. So you have fuel, fodder, food. That's winnowing. Now, winnowing is work.
But it's fun work. Because it's payday work. The harvest is over. You're seeing how much you get. There's been a famine. So when they would winnow, they'd all get together and winnow together.
And you're seeing how much you're going to get. So it's like if you owned your own store, and you go and you turn off the light, and you flip the sign that says you're closed, and you go get the money out of the register, and you go to the back to count it. This is still work. But you want this to be a really long part of your day. You want to count money for a while. You don't want to go $2, $3, done.
That's the bad day. You want to count. So they're winnowing, but it's good work. And it was celebratory because it's payday work. And so what happens is at the end of this, they would know how much they got. And the people who'd been working and laboring this whole time would get paid out.
And so it was a celebration. They would do it in the evening. They would eat a meal. Everybody would stay right where they were to guard their grain and to be there ready to go as they would do this, take care of everything off in the morning. So she says, don't we know where he's going to be?
And they understood how this was going to work. Also, they're at the end of the harvest, which means the window of opportunity for Ruth to be around Boaz is closing. She can't just keep showing up to his property for no reason. And she's not in a position to pursue him as a match or anything. She has really nothing. She's in a very vulnerable position.
So Naomi comes up with this plan and says, we know where he's going to be tonight. We know it's a good night for this sort of thing. Here's my plan. So here's her plan. Verse 3. Wash, therefore, and anoint yourself, and put on your cloak, and go down to the threshing floor, but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking.
But when he lies down, observe the place where he lies, then go and uncover his feet and lie down, and he will tell you what to do. And she replied, all that you say I will do. What? That's Naomi's plan. And when I first read this, started studying this, I thought, okay. You know, I just studied threshing and winnowing and all this stuff.
I thought maybe there's some context here. Maybe there's something they know. You know, Jewish roots lost on me, but Jewish readers would read this and go, yeah, obviously. Nope. To the original Jewish readers, this was as sketchy a plan as it seems. It's a, you're really towing the line here, Naomi, with your plan.
It's like, what, what, what is happening here? You're putting, what? I didn't see this story going this way. What's, what is going on? What, how is this going to work? That's kind of how this reads.
And there's this tension in the text of like, what's about to happen? How does this, how is this a plan? And how is this going to play out? So let's just walk through it. I mean, I'll tell you that if, if you came to me and said, I'm, you know, I'm trying to, trying to find a husband. I wouldn't say, get your Bible out.
Let's go. Ruth chapter three. I got some coaching to do. Do you know how to pick locks? Do you know where he sleeps? Here's the deal.
When he wakes up, you want to be making eye contact. This isn't, this isn't the plan I'd come up with. It seems a little bit, uh, it puts her in kind of a, could potentially be a bad position. So let's see what the plan is. Verse three, wash therefore and anoint yourself and put on your cloak. So far I'm tracking.
Every time she's seen Boaz, she was gleaning in his field. She had shown up to work. She was working all day out in the sun, probably not her, her cutest. So what her mother-in-law says is, Hey, let's take a bath. Let's put some oil on and let's get dressed up.
That's what her cloak is. Is this is a, one pastor said there's a distinct difference between trying to be attractive and trying to be seductive. And that this is attractive. She's aiming for cleaned up. She's wearing her cloak. She looks nice.
She's to be the nicest Boaz has ever seen her. She just says, Hey, let's put your best foot forward, which I just want to point out. We've been talking about the invisible hand of God, how God moves things according to his will and how we can trust him. But also we can try to come up with some plans. We can be intentional while trusting him. You can say, I'm just trusting God to give me a job.
Okay. You still need to send your resume out. And trust him. You know, if God wants me to have a wife, he'll send me one. What to your, to the basement where you're playing video games. I don't know.
Like let's get a, let's have a bath and get a job. And you know, that's, that's what's happening here. She's making a plan. All right. So go down to the threshing floor.
Do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. Again, I'm still tracking. He's just finished work. And then he's going to have a meal. You don't just charge in, in the middle of that. I don't know if y'all ever knew this.
You ever had bad news to tell your dad? You didn't tell him right when he walked in from work. You waited. You were trying to time that up. You're like, I've got to show him the report card because he needs to sign it. And last time I signed it, they, they caught that.
You're asking like, what are we having for supper tonight? You're like, okay, he likes that. That's good. That's good. You know, right? Maybe not before his show, but, but after supper, that's kind of what they're doing.
She's saying, time it up, right? Let him eat and drink, get him in a good mood and wait. Then she loses me. But when he lies down, observe the place where he lies. Okay. That's sound advice because if she follows the rest of the plan with some, with the wrong person, she's like, this is key.
Make sure you know where he's sleeping. You can't just wait till it gets dark and pick up a lump of a person and pull their blanket back and hope for the best. So know where he lies down, then go and uncover his feet and lie down and he will tell you what to do. And she replied, all that you say, I will do. All right.
We have our plan. Let's see how it goes. So she went down to the threshing floor and did just as her mother-in-law had commanded her. And when Boaz had eaten and drunk and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. Okay. A couple of things here.
It was a celebration. There is no need for us to read in that he was drunk. He ate and drank and was merry. And he went to lay down at the end of the heap of grain. So this is a good night for him.
He's got a heap of grain. They're just coming off of a famine. We're supposed to picture him. He's got a merry heart. He's had, he's winnowed. He's got a heap of grain.
He has a good meal. He goes and lays down next to his grain. You can almost picture him just laying in the dark. Just, this is a good evening for him. Thanking the Lord for providing. He's gotten to enjoy some good company.
He's gotten to celebrate. And he's just going to sleep. That's where his heart's merry. And he's laying down to go to sleep. He went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. Then she came softly and uncovered his feet and lay down.
At midnight, the man was startled and turned over. And behold, a woman lay at his feet. Okay. That word startled. I thought this was interesting. It means, it's often used as like shook with fear.
In this context, a really good way to translate that would be the man shivered. The plan was, it gets colder as the night gets on. Uncover his feet. He'll get cold. Lay down at his feet. When he goes to put his blanket back on, boom, there you are.
That's Naomi's plan. And it worked. She said, uncover his feet. Be at his feet. And that's what it says. He may have gotten startled.
He might have heard a noise. He might have seen something. But it doesn't seem like he sees her until he's bent over. He's turned over. So I think it's really, he shivered.
He rolls over to get his blankets settled. And there's a woman at his feet. And he asked what I think is a very reasonable question. He said, who are you? And she answered, I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer.
A couple of interesting things that happen here. First of all, have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and seen a person in your room? Wakes you on up. Some parents, you have kids, they come and stood next to your bed like a little psychopath for some reason. You wake up, and there's a face next to you. Some of you have just hung up your own coat and then woke up in the middle of the night and tried to fight it.
But you don't usually hang your coat there. And it startled you. That's what he has. He rolls over. He's cold. He's like, why is my blanket all off my feet?
And then boom, there's a woman and he's startled. And he says, who are you? And she says, I'm Ruth. And here's what she says. She says, I'm Ruth, your servant. One of the interesting things is that she's referred to herself as a servant a couple of times in this, in her conversations with him.
The first time she says servant, she picked the lowest word for servant, the most humblest version of a servant. And in the way they have this set up, it's a servant that is an unmarriable servant. That is not the word she uses here. She says, I'm your servant, but she elevates the word to I am your marriable servant, which in the Hebrew would have hit their ears. They would have understood that kind of bit of a distinction. She says that.
So she's still being humble and they've put him in a position. When she says this, he's in a, she's in a very vulnerable position, but she's come to him in a way that lets her actually speak to him, but also does, does not have any kind of audience. It's just them. If we were watching this, you'd be real zoomed in just to try to even make out their faces to try to see who was who. And so she's, she's saying this, she says, I'm your, I'm your servant. Spread your wings over your servant for you are a redeemer.
She, she says, marry me. I want to have your baby. That's what spread your wings over your servant for you are a redeemer means. Take me into your household. That's wrap your cloak around me is another way to say that. Spread your wings over.
Bring me to you. Make me yours. Bring me into your household. Cover me. Care for me. Shield me.
For you are a redeemer, meaning this is the role you, you, you exist in, in our family. And she's saying, I need you to redeem me. Like what I'm bringing to you is a broken story. Debt. No air. I need you to step in and do something.
And he said, verse 10, may you be blessed by the Lord, my daughter. You have made this last kindness greater than the first in that you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich. A couple of things we have to see here. I said this earlier. He's older than her. We don't know how much older.
There's a thing called the Midrash, which is Jewish commentary on these texts. It's, it's just commentary and, and we don't know where they get some of their stuff, but they, they suggest that she's 40 and he's 80. I, I would, I would be inclined to make both of them younger than that because he's out winnowing his own stuff. He's, he's a healthy 80 if he's 80. Um, maybe 30 and 60. There's definitely a gap and he sees it and he understands that she had some, some other options.
Could have stayed in Moab, could have tried to find a young husband, could have tried to find, and what he says is your kindness now is greater than the kindness I had already seen you perform. And it's kindness to him a little bit, but it's kindness to Naomi that Ruth is going to go the route of redemption to reestablish a limilex line and Naomi's line. He says, you could have just said, I'm single, I'm free, I can go find whoever I want. And he says, but you're showing great. This has said, we talked about earlier, this steadfast love to Naomi that you're going to try to, to go the route of redemption to reestablish and to fix her story, not just yours.
So he says, this kindness is great. And now my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you all that you ask for all my fellow townsmen know that you are a worthy woman. Earlier when we were introduced to Boaz, we were told he was a worthy man. And now this is used to describe her, that she's a worthy woman. I love this.
We, the only thing we're ever told about Ruth is that she's young and the word young is mostly used by Boaz, so it seems like younger than him, we don't really know. We're not told anything about her physical appearance whatsoever, but we're told about her character. She's a worthy woman. And he notices it and he says, everybody's noticed it. There's something really encouraging and beautiful about that. Specifically when you take the other passages in the Bibles where it talks about that character doesn't fade, but physical appearance does.
So he says, don't fear, I'll do this. But then he says this, and now it is true that I am a redeemer, yet there is a redeemer nearer than I. Remain tonight and in the morning if he will redeem you, good, let him do it. But if he is not willing to redeem you, then as the Lord lives, I will redeem you. Lie down until the morning. What?
Who's this other guy? No, no, no, we want Boaz. He says, I am a redeemer, but there's another redeemer nearer than I. Basically, he has first right of refusal. It's real technical and legal, you guys. Boaz doesn't just get to say, sure, he has to say, no, actually, if we're doing redemption, we've got to give this other guy, he's got to, it actually goes to him first.
Which, maybe, maybe this was always just common knowledge. And everybody always knew this. But it doesn't seem like Naomi knew necessarily that there were other redeemers that were closer. And this is a bit of conjecture, but she woke him up in the middle of the night and he already knows the redemption line immediately. I think he already thought about it. That's all I'm saying.
I think he had already considered how redemption would work. I think he had already looked into it a little bit. Maybe he just knew it, but I'm just throwing that out there. You wake me up in the middle of the night, I don't know if I'd know my whole family line the way that he does and who gets to do what. So he just says, but he says, if he'll redeem you, good.
If not, I'll redeem you as the Lord lives. We'll handle this tomorrow. So, she lay at his feet until the morning, but arose before one could recognize another. And he said, let it not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor. So he just kind of tries to protect her character.
She's going to leave before anybody can see. She, basically, she fully plays out Naomi's plan, which is come under the cover of darkness, make kind of a bold proposal, but not in a way that's going to shame him if he rejects you, not in a way that puts him in the bad spot, but does show your vulnerability. And then she's going to leave. There are some people who read this text and go, what happened? Was there something, is she lay there till morning, some kind of code for something? I had a professor in college who did that who was like, that Ruth story, as you read this, that idea is really out of place for a couple of reasons.
One is, it's out of place with the character of Boaz and Ruth as far as how this story would play out. And she definitely was in a vulnerable position and it does read to build that tension. The way this is written, you're going, oh my goodness, what is Naomi's plan? And that's the way it reads for everybody. Secondly, it's out of the character of God. And the way the Bible's written.
Because the Bible doesn't wink at sin. It doesn't hide it in between verses as like a cute little thing. It'll just tell you. You read Genesis, read Judges, the Bible will just tell you, and here's what they did. Sometimes it does it with no commentary whatsoever. It doesn't tell you it was bad, it just says, here's what happened.
And you're supposed to understand, that shouldn't have happened. So if the Bible were going to include that, it would just include it. Since it doesn't include it, it makes way more sense that this is exactly what happened. And she laid down on his feet and slept the rest of the night until she got up to head out. And he says, hey, don't make a big deal out of her being here. And he's going to go settle redemption today.
I just want to throw that out there. Because I've heard that and I think it doesn't make any sense. All right. Verse 15. And he said, bring the garment you are wearing and hold it out. So she brings her big cloak.
And he measured out six measures of barley and put it on her. Then she went into the city. And when she came to her mother-in-law, she said, how did you fare, my daughter? How did it go? What happened? And she told her all that the man had done for her, saying, these six measures of barley he gave to me, for he said to me, you must not go back empty-handed to your mother-in-law.
She replied, wait, my daughter, until you learn how the matter turns out. For the man will not rest, but will settle the matter today. So he again takes the opportunity to bless her and her mother-in-law. And he sends her away and he's going to go figure out that's where we're left. We're going to find out in chapter four how it gets settled and what happens with this other redeemer. And as you read this story, I just kept thinking about the fact that this plan works.
Why does this plan work? Well, we're told a couple of things. We're told about the character of Ruth, which is beautiful. She's a worthy woman. She loves her mother-in-law. She shows her great steadfast love, that she's a hard worker, that she seems gracious and kind.
But the reason this plan works is because she laid down at the right feet. What I mean by that is, certainly she found Boaz in the dark. She marked the spot where he lay. But that if it wasn't Boaz, if Boaz wasn't in the position to redeem, if Boaz wasn't a worthy man, this could have gone really poorly. If he wasn't wealthy enough to handle taking on the debt of redemption because redemption is costly. It's not a simple or easy matter.
Redemption is costly. And so this works because when Boaz sits up in the middle of the night, he doesn't think to try to take advantage of this situation or to harm her. But he goes out in his worthiness and his goodness to love and to care and to shelter. It works because when she says, shelter me under your wings, he's the type of person that's worth saying that to. And as I read this, and it's a beautiful little love story, where she boldly goes and proposes marriage in the middle of the night with this crazy little plan, and it works, I can't help but see this as a signpost that points us forward to the goodness of Christ who was in the form of God but becomes a man so that he might be our kinsman redeemer.
That he might be in the position to us to be able to redeem us. That he's good and worthy and that he has credit in his account so that he can buy us out of debt. That this is the same thing we get to go to Jesus with. I'm your servant. Cover me, shelter me in your wings and redeem me. Shelter me in your wings for you are a redeemer.
That we get to come to him humbly and say, I need you to wrap around me, I need you to cover me, I need you to shield me. And you're a redeemer. Because all I can bring is debt. All I can bring is a broken story that's in need of redemption but he's the one who redeems. Do y'all see that? You see that when she comes she's asking him to take on a debt, she's asking him to take on a costly thing that can affect his inheritance and how it all plays out.
But he responds graciously and kindly and how much more does the Lord respond to us in that manner when we come to him and say, I need redemption, I need help. Will you shelter me in your wings? That's what Romans chapter 10 says. For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. You see, our story is that we have sin. We've fallen short.
It's broken. We need redemption. We have debt. We need someone who can step in and rescue us out of that otherwise we're stuck in it and so we fall down to Jesus and he will not put to shame anyone who calls out to him. If you come to him and say, I need you to shelter me, he says, I will. My son, my daughter, I'll take you in.
Do not fear. I will take care of this. That's the hope we have in Christ that when he died on the cross, he was perfect and sinless so that he had credit in his account. He had the wealth he needed in righteousness to pay off our debt so that we might be brought into his household and made righteous. That's the hope we have so that when we come to him and we ask, shield me, protect me, take me in, he does and nobody goes back empty handed. Nobody leaves without him overflowing blessings and joy and protection and hope to us.
No one will be put to shame who comes to Christ. That's the hope we have in Jesus and when I gather up, when we gather on Sundays and I get up here and get to open the scriptures and we get to talk about these beautiful little love stories but we get to point forward to the great joy and love that's poured out for us in Jesus. I always fear that there's somebody in this room and you've bowed down at the wrong feet. You've laid down at the wrong feet and you've looked at something and you've said, I'll serve you, I need you to redeem me and you've looked at success or you've looked at finances or you've looked at romance and you've said, I'll do whatever you tell me.
You're the thing that'll save me but none of them can. None of them can forgive your sin, none of them can pay your debt, none of them can fix your story but Jesus can. The band's going to come back up and in a moment we're going to sing. We do this every Sunday. We're going to sing and then we're going to give announcements and we're going to leave. And it's Mother's Day so if you go eat out in the world you're going to do that for the next four hours.
In a moment we're going to leave. And some of you are going to leave never having asked Jesus shelter me in your wings. Fix my story. Some of you are going to leave never having come to Him and saying, I'm your servant, forgive my sin, take me in. And I'd like to encourage you with the words that she says. She says, He won't rest but it'll settle the matter today.
I want some of you to settle the matter today. You've been holding back. You've been saying, well I'm going to get cleaned up. I'm going to get this fixed. I've got to wait for this. Would you settle it today?
Would you come to Him today and lay down and say, I need you to rescue me. I need you to bring me into your household. I need you to cover me with your wings. I need you to cover me with your blood. I need you to cover me with your sacrifice. I need you to redeem me because I can't do this on the wall.
In a moment, we're going to sing and we're going to sing about redemption and we're going to sing about Jesus and we're going to sing what He's capable of and we're going to sing about what He's done for us and if that's not true for you, would you settle it today? Would you say, I need you to take me in? Because He will. Because no one who calls on Him will be put to shame. Let's pray.
God, God, we thank you that you are a better Redeemer than Boaz, that there is no Redeemer closer than you, that there is no one that is capable of doing this but you, that you are the way and the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Father but through you and Lord, I pray that we would celebrate that no one is put to shame and no one is sent away empty that comes to you, that you have wrapped your cloak around us, sheltered us in your wings and redeemed us and for anyone in this room who has not done that, Lord. May they settle it today. Ask for your redemption and see the smile on your face as you say, do not fear and bring them in and forgive them and give them a hope and a future and rewrite their story. I pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Ruth 2: Behold a Redeemer
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Well, good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in the book of Ruth. We're going to be in the second chapter today. If you have one of the blue Bibles in the row in front of you, it's on page 127.
If you have one of the black Bibles, I don't know what page it's on, but your words are big enough to read, so you get that. But if you don't own a Bible, take one of these blue ones home with you. That's our gift to you. We'd love for you to have a Bible. We'd love for you to be able to read it. We're in the book of Ruth, and we're going to walk through chapter 2 this morning, but I want to catch us up a little bit on what happened in Ruth chapter 1, so previously in the book of Ruth.
We're going to catch up on what we talked about last week. So Ruth is in the Old Testament. It is written during, it's set during the time of Judges, and so that's after the Exodus out of Egypt. It's after Moses, after the law, but before Saul, King David, Solomon, and the kings. So they've taken over some of the promised land, but the time of the Judges is a time of rebellion, then repentance, and then restoration, and then rebellion, and then repentance, and then restoration.
And it's kind of like the Wild West in Israel. It's sometimes good, sometimes bad. Depends on what's going on. Depends on what area you're in. And it's a little bit chaotic. So that's where this story is set.
And we were told last week that there was a man named Elimelech. He had a wife named Naomi. And they had two sons, Malon and Chilion. And they were in Israel, in Bethlehem, during a famine, which means complete economic collapse and starvation. Everything has fallen apart when people are no longer able to eat. And in an agrarian society, this shuts things down.
And so they pick up and move to Moab. And Moab is an area that's enemies of the people of Israel. And at times during Judges, they would rule over Israel. They would fight back and forth. And they go to Moab just because they got to get some food. And we're told that while in Moab, both the sons, Malon and Chilion, take Moabite wives, which they weren't supposed to do given the Old Testament law, but they do.
And so they marry Moabite women. And then Elimelech dies. Malon dies. Chilion dies. And so there are three widows, Orpah, Ruth, and Naomi. And in this time period, single women do not have much agency.
They don't have the ability to own property. They don't have the ability. You were in your father's household or you were in your husband's household. And a widow was in a very vulnerable position. We're told in chapter 1 that they hear while they're in Moab that the Lord has visited Israel and there's food. That God has blessed.
God has shown back up. And there's food in Israel again. And so Naomi says, I'm going back. And she tells Orpah and Ruth, y'all need to stay here. You need to go back to your father's household. And you need to find husbands.
And she said, I can't help you with any of that. So I'm going to go back home because at least there's food and y'all need to find husbands. And Orpah is sad, but she goes. And Ruth says, no. I'm going with you. Regardless of what happens, I'm going with you.
Your people will be my people. Your home will be my home. Your God will be my God. I'm going to stay with you until you die. And I'm going to be buried in the same spot. And may God curse me if I don't do that.
So it's an aggressive way to say, I really care about you and I'm going to stick with you. And so she does. She and Naomi head back, hopefully just trying to find a place to land, hopefully trying to find some food. When they show up, people in town say, hey, Naomi's back. And Naomi says, no, she's not neither. Naomi died in Moab.
Y'all can call me Mara because Naomi means pleasant and Mara means bitter. She said, Naomi's not here anymore. Pleasant's gone. Bitter's back. And she, in chapter one, refers to herself as hopeless, empty, and bitter. That's a bad spot to be in.
If you can take a second to just appreciate where they are. Everything that she thought was going to work out when she married Elimelech. Everything that she thought was going to work out when she had her first son and her second son. Everything that she thought would happen when they began their lives, none of it panned out the way she wanted it to. Just to survive, they had to leave their homeland. And then everything falls apart in Moab.
And she comes back and she says, I'm hopeless. I'm empty. And I'm bitter. And that's where we left them last week. So let's pray.
And we're going to go into chapter two and see if this gets any better. God, we ask for your help. We ask for your grace as we study your word. We're thankful for stories like this. We pray that you would help us through the work of your spirit and the power of your word to see you in the middle of this. So that we might learn to see you in the middle of our circumstances as well.
We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. So we're going to pick up in the last verse of chapter one because it sets the tone. That kind of gives us the setting. It says, so Naomi returned and Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
A couple of things we need to note from this one verse. First of all, this is right after Naomi gives her whole speech about Naomi's not here anymore. I'm Mara, which had to be really awkward for the people who are like, hey, Naomi. And she's like, no. But what I love about this is the absolute next verse when she's done talking goes, so Naomi shows back up.
I just appreciate that she does not get to take her circumstances and redefine her identity. That's so good. She says, everything's falling apart from me. Pleasantness is gone. Bitterness is here. That's who I am now.
And the Bible says, no. God's just like, no, that's not how that works. And that's really good news for some of us because we get in these situations where we think everything's falling apart. I'm just worthless. I'm just unlovable. I'm just hopeless.
And isn't it good that we have a God who just goes, no, you don't get to use bad circumstances to rewrite your identity. That's a whole sermon right there. It's not today's sermon, so we're going to have to keep moving on. But that's a good thing. Then it says, and Ruth the Moabite.
Now, you know what Ruth was called in Moab? Ruth. Just like Swedish Fish and Sweden are just called Fish. She just is Ruth. But when she comes to Israel, they're going to call her Ruth the Moabite over and over and over again because her Moabiteness stands out now.
She feels it. They feel it. They see it. If you've ever been in a place where you were the only person who spoke your language, everybody else spoke a different language, or you're the only person who looked like you or dressed like you or had the same skin tone as you, if you ever dated somebody of a different race and then went to their family reunion, you know kind of how she feels. She notices herself in a distinct way than she usually does. And that's part of what the text is showing us is that she's now Ruth the Moabite as she has followed her mother-in-law.
And then it says it's at the beginning of the barley harvest, which for a place that's had a famine, this is really good news. There's actually a barley harvest now. This is what they had been told. It's rained. Barley's growing. There's food again.
Come back. Like she gets to go, there's going to be the barley harvest. And right after the barley harvest is the wheat harvest. And both of those are staple crops. Barley is used to make alcohol, but when you've been starving, that's not the first thing they do with it. It's a staple crop.
They use it to make bread. They use it to make soups and stews. It was something that they were immediately coming back into. We're going to get to eat again. And so they show back up at the beginning of the barley harvest. Now, this is chapter 2, verse 1.
Now, Naomi had a relative of her husband's, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz. All right, a couple of things we need to note from here. First, they're just introducing him, but he doesn't show up until later. So they cut over here and say, y'all need to know about Boaz. And then they turn back, and that was it. They just kind of give him a little introduction.
A couple of things that are helpful for us to capture. First is, Boaz is a really cool name. Name your kids that, and then you can call him Bo. That's for sure. It's awesome. Although, never mind.
Anyway, all right. And we're told that he's a worthy man. That word is used to mean wealthy at times, to mean prominent, to mean a war hero. He's well-respected, but it also means he's well-respected in a way he's helpful to the people around him. He's a blessing. He's a solid, worthy man.
He's a godly man. That's what that's saying. And then it says a worthy man. It says he's a relative of her husband's, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech. Now, for us, that's just background information. But for Jewish readers, their ears just perked up a little bit.
Oh, he's a relative. Oh. Because they would marry inside of their clans. And if you had a problem, the people inside of your clan were the people who would help you out of the problem. They were the people who could help buy back property. They were the people who could help you get your family line back in order.
They were the people who were to be helpful. So when they say, I just wanted to introduce you all to a man named Boaz. He's great and he's related. Jewish people went, oh. And so that's what we need to capture from that. Verse 2.
And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favor. And she said to her, go, my daughter. So barley harvest. But she doesn't have – they don't own property. So she just says, I'm going to go follow behind the people who are reaping and I'm going to glean.
Reaping is where you get to take all the stuff that you can carry. Gleaning is where you get to pick through what they accidentally dropped. And so she says, I'm going to go see if someone will show me some favor. Be kind to me and let me glean. And they're leaning into, in Israel, a part of the Old Testament law. This is in Leviticus chapter 23.
It says, And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner. I am the Lord your God. Same laws are in Deuteronomy. It says you're going to leave them for the widow, the poor, the sojourner. So sojourners are people that have come and trusted in living in this area.
So the rule was, there was some social security that when you had a harvest, you weren't allowed to get everything you could get. You had to leave the edges for people to come by and pick from there. And you had to, once you went through once, you weren't allowed to go back and get everything you dropped. You were supposed to leave it so that there were people who could do exactly what she's doing. But we're in the time of the Judges, which means sometimes people were following the law, sometimes they weren't.
And we're not quite sure if this is going to work out. But she says, we got to get some food some way. I'm going to go do this. It'd be similar to if you were in a real bad spot and you said, look, it's Saturday morning. I'm just going to drive over to Lowe's and I'm going to sit outside. And I'm going to wait and see if I see somebody who looks like they're in a big project.
And I'm going to go over and ask, can I help you for the day? Pay me whatever you can. That's the spot they're in. And so Naomi says, go. So she set out, it's verse three, and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers.
And she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech. And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. Okay. The way this is written is a little bit tongue in cheek, a little bit. It's got a little bit of irony, irony. And it's, it's, he's saying like this.
So she shut out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers. And she just so happened to come to the field belonging to Boaz. And then when it says, and behold, that's look. Oh, looky here. Boaz showed up. Oh, would you notice that?
That's the way this is written. It's got a little bit of, we're supposed to catch the fact that this wasn't just, well, what a coincidence. She's in the right field. And look at that strapping lad, Boaz, just happened to show up. It's written in a way that's trying to help you see that there's more at work here than just coincidence. And it's going to be written that way through the rest of chapter two and three.
There's going to be all these times where you're going, ah. And they're intending to make you go, ah, wait a second. Something else is going on here. And that's one of the things that we need to wrap our mind around is that God often works with his visible hand. That there are times where there are miracles. There are times where he parts the Red Sea.
There are times where there are plagues. There are times where an angel shows up and talks to somebody. But all the time, God is working through his invisible hand. That he's blessing and orchestrating and helping things work out according to his will. That he's moving in ways we don't see. That he's moving in ways that are helpful and grace-filled and loving towards us that just seem like, oh, what are the odds of that?
Exactly. What are the odds of that? God's really good. And they're going to see that as they go through. They're going to respond in the same way, understanding that God has blessed here. So would you look at that?
She shows up on his property. And he shows up. Well, I'll be. And he said to the reapers, the Lord be with you. And they answered, the Lord bless you. So he comes up and says, may the Lord, that Lord capital L-O-R-D, when you see it in your scripture like that, means they use the proper name, Yahweh of the Lord.
It's the I am that I am that he tells Moses in the book of Exodus. And so they're saying, may Yahweh bless you. May the Lord bless you. And they respond, may the Lord bless you. And this is a bit of an uncommon greeting. It seems like it's a very genuine.
He's devout. And he seems to have a good relationship with his workers, that there's mutual blessing and care. Then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers, whose young woman is this? Now, what happened is he shows up. He sees his reapers reaping. And he's got young men and young ladies that are working, reaping his field.
And then there's another young lady following behind gleaning. And you'll notice the question is different than the way we would ask the question. We would say, who is this? But if you remember, females didn't have a lot of agency. He says, whose young woman is this? Whose household does she belong to?
Who is she under? And the answer, the sting that we're supposed to feel in this text is no one. Like when you're talking to someone and they go, how's work going? But you got laid off last week? That little, oh. How's your girlfriend?
She broke up with me. Oh, I'm glad I brought it up. That kind of thing. So he asked, whose young woman is this? And we know the answer. Nobody's.
She's got nobody. She's no father. She has no household. She has nobody. She's doing her best just to eat today. And the way the text is written is there's this little, but is there going to be an answer to that later?
Is she going to be with somebody? That's the way it's written. So whose young woman is this? And he answers. The servant who was in charge of the reapers answered, she is the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. And she said, please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.
So she came and she has continued from early morning until now except for a short rest. The Hebrew phrase there is she's lived in the field. She's nonstop. She's been working. And she came and said, can I glean? And that's what she's been doing since forever.
She's working. And then Boaz said to Ruth. So he goes over to her. He didn't talk to her at first. He just asked about her. He goes over to her.
And now you can feel a little bit of tension because she's been working all morning. Head guy shows up. Has a little conversation. If you've been in these situations, you're usually paying attention to these sort of things. Boss man starts heading over to you. This may not go well.
If you've ever been in a situation where someone who is in charge of things suddenly knew your name. You're like, oh, is this good or bad? You know my name. What's happening here? So he comes over to her and there's this moment of what's going to happen.
And Boaz said to Ruth, now listen, my daughter. Do not go to glean in any other field or leave this one. But keep close to my young women. Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping and go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn.
Y'all, he could have walked over and said, get out of here. He could have walked over and said, hey, it's okay if you do this today, but keep back from everybody. And find somewhere else tomorrow. He comes over and says, you find my young women and you stick close to them. And if you get thirsty, they've already drawn water for you. Which is above and beyond.
He says, you're welcome. He could have treated her like a Moabite. But he comes over and he says, you're welcome. You belong. You get to participate in the same level as everybody else. Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground and said to him, why have I found favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me since I am a foreigner?
So she feels this. This, how much of a blessing it is and how odd it seems. But Boaz answered her, all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me. And how you left your father and your mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before. The Lord repay you for what you have done and a full reward to be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. First of all, her character has preceded her.
Her grace and kindness has preceded her. We find out now she's also a hard worker. She's out trying to labor for her mother-in-law. It seems like her mother-in-law probably isn't capable. Is older and not able to go work in the sun all day. But Naomi says, I'm going to, Ruth says she's going to go help take care of this.
And he says, may you be blessed. I want to point out a few things. Oh, verse 11. Can you go back to verse 11? I want to point out something in that. Yep.
You left your father and mother and your native land and you came to a people that you had not known before. He acknowledges how difficult that is. And I think you ought to have that in your mind when you're dealing with anybody who has done that. That's difficult. It's difficult to be in a place where you don't understand all of the cultural things that you would have been trained in your entire life. It's difficult when you're speaking a language that's not your native language.
And so I would just say, as an aside, be extra gracious to people who are in those situations. And be like Boaz and go out of your way to be kind and helpful. Because we're supposed to. And that's actually what he says. He goes in chapter verse 12. He says, not only have you come here, but you have taken refuge under the Lord, the God of Israel.
And that's what he's understanding. He's saying, you're not just a foreigner. You're a sojourner. And that's what the law tells us in Exodus 22. You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him. For you are sojourners in the land of Egypt.
Meaning someone who's officially come. They're not just for him, but they've come and said, I'm going to live here. And that specifically was people who came to Israel and said, I'm going to worship your God. I'm going to follow your God. He says, no, you belong. You're welcome here.
And he treats her with great generosity and kindness. And I want you to wrap your head around something. He says, may the Lord bless you, even as he is blessing her. And he understands that part of the way the Lord blesses is that he uses us. And that it's the Lord's blessing that we get to participate. So I would ask you, where are you in a position of authority?
Where do you have something that's been given to you? Do you eat every day? Have food on your table? Do you have a vehicle that works? Do you set the schedule at work? Do you oversee people?
Are you the type of person who you don't set the schedule, you don't oversee people, but you can help control how the day goes? Are you one of the cool people in class? Are you guys that can raise and lower people? And are you using those things that God has given you to be gracious and generous to those around you? Do you have your eyes open for the person who's following after, just trying to glean and trying to figure out how can I be a blessing? How can God work through what I have?
In a lot of ways, God blesses people so that we can bless. In a lot of ways, you're the FedEx driver. You've got a lot of stuff he's given you, but it's not all meant to terminate on you. The FedEx driver shouldn't show up wearing the shirt you ordered. And so there's a lot of things that God has given us that we're meant to just let pass through our hands to be a blessing to those around us. And don't get confused.
Let's be like Boaz because God has been like that to us. So that's what he does. And then she says, verse 13, Then she said, I have found favor in your eyes, my Lord, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, though I am not one of your servants. So he just says, keep at it. You're blessed. Be welcome here.
And he goes. Then it says, at mealtime, Boaz said to her, come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine. So they all take a break to go eat. She would have just taken a break or kept gleaning. Maybe she would have taken some of what she'd gotten and chewed on a little bit of it. You can do that.
It's not great, but you can do it. And he says, no, no, no, no. Come over here. You don't have anything. No, no, no. Come eat with us.
You sit right down. You're welcome here. Which again, he's jumping past cultural things to do this, to be gracious, to be kind, to look a lot like the God he worships. So he says, you come eat. So she sat beside the reapers and he passed to her roasted grain and she ate until she was satisfied and she had some left over.
Now for a lot of us, that's a daily thing. She hasn't done this in a long time. She hasn't gotten to eat and eat and eat until she thought, should I eat this? I'm going to and we'll find out. And then she ate it and then she thought, I really can't eat anymore. Probably shouldn't eat in the last bite, but it was so good.
She ate so much and she had some left over. Do y'all see the blessing in that? For someone who's been hungry for such a long time, for someone who's just been probably every day having to try to find something to eat was actually really good. Times would have to sit and think, do I eat all this now and spend the rest of the day being hungry? But I probably won't get any more food.
Or do I wait and try to parse it out? And either way, I'm just going to be hungry and then I hope for, have some food tomorrow. She gets to sit and eat. She's welcomed at the table. All right.
So she sat. She ate until she was satisfied. She had some left over. When she rose to glean, meaning she's going to get back behind and keep doing the stuff, Boaz instructed his young men saying, let her glean even among the sheaves and do not reproach her. And also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean and do not rebuke her. He says, if she breaks proper protocol and she just starts going in the standing grain rather than the stuff that's already been knocked over, y'all don't say a word to her.
And if she's not doing that and you feel like she's not getting enough, you start just dropping handfuls. She goes home full. That's what he said. And I better not hear y'all say a word to her. And he does this. He doesn't tell her this.
He goes and blesses her without her knowing. Church family. Do that. Jesus says to be generous and not let your left hand know what your right hand's doing. Go out of your way to bless people that they don't even know. But he says she's going to be taken care of.
She is. Okay. Do not rebuke her. Verse 17. So she gleaned in the field until evening.
Remember, she's hard working. Then she beat out what she had gleaned and it was about an ephah of barley. And I know all of y'all were like, a whole ephah? Yeah, an ephah, you guys. My mind was blown too. Yeah, so it's a bushel and it's like 30-ish pounds.
And there are writings from the Babylonian empire that if you had worked all day, they would pay day laborers a pound or two of barley. She goes home with 30 pounds. This is enough for her and Naomi to eat for like three weeks. If she's able to do this every day for the whole barley and wheat harvest, which is about eight weeks, they're going to have enough food for a year. Which is such a blessing to Israel that they're doing this well, that God has blessed them in this manner. But it's such a blessing to Ruth and Naomi.
This is a crazy amount of food. Naomi's thinking, hey, she's sitting at home hungry, hoping it's going well. She's probably been praying for Ruth. Probably been hoping that she found a good place to be. Probably hoping she hadn't been run off. A little bit worried about her.
A little bit scared for her. She's a Moabite with nobody. So she gets all this and she says that she took it up, verse 18, went into the city. Her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. She also brought out and gave her what food she had left over after being satisfied. Isn't that kind?
She ate all that food, had some left over. She said, I'm going to go home. This is about to be Naomi's. I'm going to show up not just with food we can cook. I'm going to show up with some cooked food. She also brought out and gave her what food she had left over from being satisfied.
I love verse 19. And her mother-in-law said to her, where did you glean today? And where have you worked? Blessed be the man who took notice of you. Y'all, that's incoherent, excited, sputtering. She asked the same question twice, doesn't wait for an answer and starts praising the Lord.
She shows up with weeks of groceries, puts this out, and Naomi says, where were you? Who was, where did this, thank you Jesus! Praise the Lord, bless the man who, like she starts praying over this stuff. May he always have barley. May he have so much he doesn't even know where it is and be able to take it. May Ruth always be there.
May Ruth always be there. She's so excited. So blessed to see how this has been provided and taken care of. And then, so Ruth responds. She says, where do you go? Blessed be the man who took notice of you.
And so she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, the man's name with whom I worked today is Boaz. The way that sentence is structured is that it just drags on until you finally hear Boaz. And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, may he be blessed by the Lord whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead. Now, a couple things to see here. when you're blessed by somebody, when they care for you and they go out of their way, do you bless them in return? And even just this, she's just speaking and bless them. She said, Lord, may you bless them.
May you care for them. May you notice. But the other thing that happens here is it's unclear in English and in Hebrew, which I don't read, but other people who read it wrote some stuff down and they told me it's unclear in Hebrew. Whose kindness? Whose? The Lord's?
Or he, Boaz. He whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead or the Lord whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead? And the answer is yes. Because that's how God works so often. You go to the grocery store and you get a gallon of milk. How'd that get there?
The truck driver? The person who milked it? The person who put the milk jug on the counter? The cow? God? Yes.
This means that there's a lot of joy in normal work because you get to participate in all the ways that God is blessing. And it also means that there are times where we pray for the visible hand of God and he blesses us with the invisible hand of God and we're supposed to recognize it and celebrate it. There are times where we pray and the tumor is removed and you show back up and it's gone. They scan, they say, I don't know where it went. And you say, I don't care where it went. It's gone.
High five. I'm out of here. There are other times where you pray and they show back up, they scan it again, they say, it's continued to grow. We need to do surgery now. And God, in his grace, has placed you here where there's a hospital, where there's a doctor, where there's a skilled medical team and they remove a tumor. Praise the Lord and praise the medical team.
Thank you, Jesus. That's how this works. So often, he provides food but sometimes he provides it through you got a job. Sometimes he provides it through church family brought some things over. But we get to recognize and appreciate how he blesses and cares all the time.
Now, a little bit of foreshadowing for next week. Chapter 3. Naomi said to her, this man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers. Now, if this was a 90s sitcom, the crowd would have just gone, ooh. Because there's a lot of hope packed into that, he's a close relative, he's one of our redeemers. This means a couple of things.
One is, he's a close enough relative to fit into the role of a kinsman redeemer and a kinsman redeemer is someone who can help get you out of bad situations and they're supposed to. They're supposed to help buy back land. They're supposed to help when a family line seems like it's going to end, which this seems like it's going to end, that there will be no heir for Elimelech because of no heir from Malon or Chilion. These kinsman redeemer can come back in and get property back. They can come back in and sort things out. And so it either just means he's close enough to do that, but it also seems that at times they actually had someone who was prominent, worthy enough, wise enough that they were almost assigned the role.
Like a mafia don, but in a really good way. He's a relative who's taken on this role and he can do special things. He can get some stuff accomplished. And so she says he's a redeemer, which means there's some hope that we can actually get reestablished. And for a Jewish reader, you go, wait, wait, wait. How reestablished?
He can help you get your house back and get your land back or is he going to help get your bloodline back? And for who? Is he potentially going to marry Naomi or is he going to potentially marry Ruth? And I don't want to give you away, give it away, but the title of the book's a hint. And so you start thinking is Naomi thinking what I think she's thinking? And chapter three is going to say, yes, she's thinking what you think she's thinking.
Naomi has noticed something, whether Ruth has noticed it or not, is that Naomi is suddenly very excited about Boaz's potential as a suitor, as a husband. And I'll tell you, she noticed some things that are worth noticing. So ladies who are looking for a husband, here are a couple things to look for. He loves the Lord, but he doesn't just talk about Him, he obeys Him. That's good. He showed up and said, may the Lord bless you.
And you go, that's a good sign. And then he was generous and kind and he knew the law and he applied it over and above. It's like, oh, that's a real good sign. So I'm excited. Can they come in here and sing and raise their hand? Yeah, that's good.
What do they do when they leave? They still follow the Lord? They know their Bible? Well, he has a job. Yeah. That's good.
Young men, you can only help what your face looks like so much. You can only help how tall you are so much. But you can go to work and you can work hard and let me tell you something. A nice Job smells good on a man. She poured out all that barley and she said, mm, this guy seems handsome. Third, he cared about Ruth's well-being, not his own.
He gave, he didn't take. Oh. If you're in a relationship, he doesn't care about you. He cares about what he gets from you, don't be in a relationship anymore. If you're married, that doesn't apply. And I'm sorry I said it that way, but I didn't need to clarify that.
And we can work on that and we'd love to help walk you through that because that's a very tough situation to be in. But if you're dating, that absolutely applies. One of the ministries I hope to take up in this church is to help young ladies break up with young men who don't have jobs, don't love Jesus, and don't care about him. And you can send them to come talk to me. You can say, oh, I broke up with you because my pastor said it. You don't have to blame it on Jesus, blame it on me.
And then I'll talk to him. I'll say, yeah, you have a job, you love Jesus, get in a group, we'll help you out. We'll make you handsomer by the day. Fourth, he's a close relative. I mean, he's checking all the boxes, you guys. That one's a joke.
I know we got some people from Kentucky in here, that's just a joke. Just list verse three. Okay. And so you're going, is Naomi thinking what I'm thinking? She's thinking, and she is. And watch this.
He's a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers. And Ruth the Moabite said, besides, he said to me, you shall keep close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest. He told me to come back. He told me this isn't just today, this is the whole time. That's such a blessing. And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, it is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, less than another field you'd be assaulted.
Now, I just want to point something out because Naomi is thinking what you're thinking she's thinking. Ruth said, he said, you shall keep close to my young men until I'm done. And Naomi responds, that's good, you should keep close to his young women. She swaps that word out. But she also says this, less than another field you'd be assaulted.
That's a reality. It's a reality then for her to be no father, no husband in a situation where she has no real agency and they didn't really care the same way and protect the same way. But it's a reality now. I read a study one time where they asked college young men and college-aged young ladies and they said, if you were going to go running at night, what would you do to prepare? And the college men thought it was a trick question. They're like, shoes.
A lot of them put nothing. The young ladies, a lot of them said, I would not do this. Or they said, I wouldn't wear headphones because I've got to be able to hear what's going on around me. I'd tell a friend so they knew when I was going, what route I was running when I was coming back. And so I would just say to the men in the room, be like Boaz so that people are more protected around you, not less. And be mindful of the young women and the single women and just the women that are by themselves around you that you don't make them feel uncomfortable because you're not thinking about being assaulted, but they might be.
So be mindful of how close you stand to people, how you look at them. And in general, you can make people safer without being weird about it. So be aware. But she says, it's good. This will keep you safe. So she kept close to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the barley and wheat harvest.
And she lived with her mother-in-law. So this continued. It was a blessing. They got tons and tons of food over the next eight weeks. That's what we're told. I want to point something out as we finish this up because I want to help you see a theological, logical point, a piece of theology that there's a logical point made from from the New Testament.
Naomi says, I'm hopeless, I'm empty, I'm bitter. But they find out that the Lord has visited Israel and there's food. And then we see this moment where the Lord visits Naomi. Where she had said, he's come out to harm me, but she sees how blessed and she immediately just pours forth with praise. Praise the Lord that he hasn't forgotten us. The Lord has visited us.
He cares for us. This is beyond anything I could have hoped for. And we need to be mindful to see where the Lord's at work and where he blesses. But I want to show you something that the New Testament tells us that helps us even more than the help Naomi. He gets. You see, this picture, this story of Ruth is a picture, ultimately, of God's story.
That we're bitter, we're empty, we're hopeless, we're foreigners, we're unwelcome, and that God visits his people in the form of Christ who takes on flesh to redeem us, to fill us, to make life good and sweet and pleasant, to give us hope. because he dies because he dies for our sins that we can trust in him that he'll work on our behalf. And so what I want to show you is this. In Romans chapter 5, it says, God shows his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We actually didn't have a good report like Ruth had that goes before us. All we had was our sin. And then he says, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son.
That's the hope of the gospel, that we're sinners, we're enemies, we're not welcome, we're worse than a Moabite. We don't even have a good report and that Jesus Christ came to redeem us, to give us hope, to rescue us out of our sin, to pay our debt. And then, chapter 8, it says this, He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? So this is a theological point, but there's a logical point made from it. If you right now have trusted in Christ, but you feel empty, hopeless, bitter, life circumstances have not worked out the way you wanted to.
You painted a baby room, but the baby didn't come. You got married, but it didn't work out the way you thought it would work out. You are in a situation where you thought you were going to get the job, you didn't get the job. You thought you were going to graduate, you didn't graduate. You thought things were going to work. You don't know why your mind is working the way it's working right now.
You don't know why your health is working the way it's working right now. And you just, you just don't know. We can trust and look for and celebrate everywhere we see his invisible hand, but we have something so much better that we can look and say, if he would die for me, if he would give his son for me, I can trust him with everything else. And I don't know why this has worked out the way it's worked out, and I don't know why it's been as hard as it's been, and I don't know why it worked out for them, but not for me, but I can trust that I'm not lost, that he doesn't, it's not that he doesn't know about me, it's not that he doesn't care about me, it's not that I'm on my own, it's not that he's turned his back, because he promises if he'll give me his son, he'll take care of everything else, and I can trust him in it, and not just trust him to work it out the way I want it to work out, but I can trust him in it, to work it out how he wants to work it out.
And that's good news, and that's an anchor for us when we have no other anchor, and that's why we have a hope that is not tied to circumstance. Matt's going to come back up, we're going to take communion, where as a church we remind ourselves of that tangible, real sacrifice of Christ on our behalf, where we remind ourselves of what he has done for us, and that we anchor our hope in the fact that he gave his life for us, that he died for us while we were still his enemies. If you are not a Christian, communion is not for you. It's where we celebrate and we take that his body was broken for us, that his blood was shed for us, that he says, my body is real food, and my blood is real drink, meaning that it actually satisfies forever, that it fixes forever, that it cures forever.
But if you have not placed your faith in Christ, I would encourage you to come to Christ, to trust that God is good in general while you're still an enemy, while you're still a sinner, now come to him and know that he is good specifically on your behalf to repent of your sin and to be redeemed and brought back into the family. That the promise of he has given up his son for us, how will he not give us all things, is for those who have believed. But it's open to all who would believe, and I would encourage you to place your faith in it. But church family, take a moment, consider your circumstances, look for the way that God has blessed, and then, as an anchor for our soul, remember that he died to redeem and to care, and that we have hope.
Let's pray. God, we thank you for how good you are. We thank you for how you care and provide and watch over and work and all these seemingly normal and mundane ways, and we thank you, Lord, that we can look to the cross to know that you have us and that you love us and that you are capable. And we don't know what happens next and we don't know how it all plays out, but we know that you are not withholding good from us, but that you know what you're doing and that you love us. And for those who have not trusted in you to rescue their souls, who have not seen their sin and known they need a Savior, we pray, Lord, that your Holy Spirit would work and that they would come to you empty, hopeless, bitter, to be restored by your word.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Ruth 1: Loyalty and Loss
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Thank you. Spencer didn't mention that I also teach Sunday school at 9.30. So if you like getting up early on Sunday, you should be here for some excellent Bible teaching. And it's been a privilege to share in the ministry of this church. We're going to be looking at the book of Ruth. And if you don't have a Bible under your seat, there are some little blue Bibles.
And Ruth is found on page 127. And if you don't have, you can just take that Bible home with you if you would like to have it. We'd love to share that with you. To kind of introduce it a little bit, I'm going to tell a story that was interesting. Benjamin Franklin, by the way, was our ambassador to France during the Revolutionary period in the United States. And when he was in France for about three years as our ambassador, he would occasionally attend the Infidels Club.
You know what the Infidels Club is? It's kind of like the atheist club. And they love to talk about scientific things and search for literature and beautiful stories. And one time, Benjamin Franklin, it's reported that he chose to translate the book of Ruth out of the Hebrew context into the contemporary French way of thinking. And he changed the names to protect the innocent or the guilty, whichever one. He changed the names so that nobody would know.
And after reading the story, these Infidel Club members said, Wow, that is one of the most beautiful stories we've ever heard in our life. Where did you get that story? And he said, from the Bible. And of course, that was a bit of a shock to him. Ruth starts with, in the days when the Judges ruled. And of course, Ruth follows the book of Judges.
And the book of Judges is all about rebellion. It's just constantly turning away from God. God bringing oppression on them by capturing them by enemies and making them slaves. And then they cry out to God. And God sends a deliverer they call Judges. And the deliverer would deliver them, such as Samson or Deborah, Gideon, those Judges.
But they were all a part of this period of time when there was so much rebellion going on. J. Vernon McGee says that the book of Ruth is like a precious pearl in the swine pit of Judges. Because that was the period when the book of Ruth was written. And the book of Judges, by the way, has rebellion written all over it, just back and forth. And the book of Ruth has, well, Redeemer written all over it.
Matter of fact, the word Redeemer or redemption appears over 20 times in the book of Ruth. It's a powerful story. And Larry Crabb was teaching a Sunday school class on the book of Ruth. He ended up writing a book. He's a fairly famous Christian psychologist. Wrote a book called Shattered Dreams.
And the basic idea of the book was that God uses the pain of loss and shattered dreams to help us discover what's really important. And that's our desire to know God as he is in an intimate way. We're going to consider the effects of loss in the life of Naomi. And we're going to consider the effects of loyalty in the life of Ruth. Naomi experienced such extreme loss that she went into deep depression and bitterness. Because she said, God has dealt bitterly with me.
And, of course, Ruth is going to demonstrate one of the most amazing demonstrations of loyalty that you can imagine. So let's dig in. We're going to turn to Ruth, chapter 1. And I'll read verses 1 through 5 to get it before us. But before we do that, let's pray.
Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your amazing word that gives light in our darkness, that gives understanding in our confusion, and enables us to know the true living word, Jesus Christ. I pray that the Holy Spirit would come and be our teacher this morning, that we would indeed be able to understand your word. And we pray that in Jesus' name. Amen. Ruth, chapter 1, verses 1 through 5.
In the days when the Judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem and Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Malon and Chilion. And they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem and Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there, but Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. And these took Moabite wives. The name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other was Ruth.
And they lived there about ten years, and both Malon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. Famine in Bethlehem. That's kind of an oxymoron, interesting way of putting it. Bethlehem means house of bread. And there's no bread. No bread in Bethlehem.
There's a famine, and it's a painful famine. And they're doing without, you know, Bethlehem. You remember Bethlehem. Oh, little town of Bethlehem, how still we see the light. The hopes and fears of all the years are not met in thee tonight. It was a very different picture than when Jesus Christ came.
When Elimelech was there facing the reality, my family is going to die of starvation if we don't get out of here. And so they decide to move on to Moab. And, of course, Jesus made an amazing promise, because he is the bread of life. He said, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall not thirst. First, he is the real house of bread.
Not Bethlehem. But, of course, he was born into Bethlehem. And so it's a beautiful picture of what God is doing. But Elimelech takes his family into Moab, hoping to find bread, since the house of bread didn't have any bread. What's your life missing that you think would make you happy and satisfied? I got a call from a friend a couple of years ago, and he was calling on his cell phone from Russia.
I said, what are you doing in Russia? He said, I'm here to get a wife. A wife? I'd been in counseling with him before, and I knew that he had had a couple of American wives, and they didn't work out too good, so maybe he thought this Russian wife, they might be a little more submissive or cooperative or whatever. I don't know what the deal was. But anyway, what are you looking at that might make you happy and satisfied?
But Elimelech ends up dying, of course, and now poor Naomi is a widow in a foreign land, but at least she's got her two sons. Her two sons can go out and do spare jobs and make a little bit and be able to get along. And then Naomi's sons decide to marry some Moabite women, but ten years later, the sons die. Well, now we've got trouble. These Moabite girls are widows. Now, depending on Naomi that's a widow, and in this male society that they were living, it was not an easy thing to make it.
Matter of fact, your basic Social Security plan was children. That's why they wanted to have lots of kids, so that at least one or two of them would take care of them in their old days because there was no government providing some kind of Social Security. So Naomi is stuck with a couple of girls that are despised by Israelites, so if she takes them back to Israel, it's not going to go well. And of course, racism was pretty standard back in those days, and so for Naomi to stay in Moab, she's of course facing all the rejection that goes along with that. So this book of Ruth is a fascinating book because when you consider everything that's happening here, in the Bible you hope God's going to come through with some kind of miraculous something or other, but this book has no miracles, it has no revelations, it has no appearances of angels, it doesn't have anything supernatural in it.
It's just showing how God is the King and He's going to be in charge and He's going to make things work out, but right now they're not working out too well. Matter of fact, some commentators suggest that the name of the head of the family, Elimelech, means God is King, and maybe this was a subtle way of saying God is King, but He's in the background right now and things are not working out according to His way. I believe that God works in a supernatural way even though there are no miracles or major revelations. God works in our lives in a natural setting a lot of times just to accomplish His supernatural purposes and I believe He's done that in my life.
Well, let's move on and check out Naomi now who's going to try to think maybe if I return to Bethlehem it'll be better. So, beginning at verse 6, we're going to read to verse 8. It says, Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited His people and given them food. So she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, Go, return each of you to her mother's house that the Lord may deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me.
So here, both of Naomi's sons are now dead. She's left a helpless widow. She's in a foreign land. No hope. And all of a sudden this glimmer of hope. I hear there's food back in Bethlehem.
So let's head back to... So she decides to go back. She's going to go back and stay with her relatives wherever she can. Robert Frost said that home is where when you go there they have to take you in. And so she's hoping that when she gets back somebody, you know, kind of like Mary and Joseph had to stay in a stable or something anyway. She's going to go back with her two daughters-in-law.
And on the way back, Naomi says a very strange thing in verse 8. But Naomi said to her two daughters, Go, return each of you to her mother's house. May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt kindly with the dead and me. That is your husbands and with my husband. You've dealt kindly. The word kindly is the word hesed.
It's a very fascinating word. Hesed. The kindness of God. The word is also translated steadfast love in Psalm 136. Matter of fact, in Psalm 136 it repeats 26 times. The steadfast love of the Lord endures forever.
The steadfast love of the Lord endures forever. Orpah probably had a skeptic's attitude to this God is good all the time. You ever hear that? You know, someone says God is good and somebody else says all the time and then somebody says all the time God is good. I think Orpah probably had a little skeptic's to that. But Ruth may have seen something different in Naomi and God had worked in her heart in a way that she saw Naomi maybe trusting God the way Job did.
When Job's friends were criticizing him he finally said though he slay me yet will I trust him. Wow. Evidently Naomi is doing that. she continues to refer to God as Yahweh Y-H-W-H Yahweh from the Latin it can be translated Jehovah but it's the personal name of God. Yahweh has been okay he's dealt bitterly with me but I still trust him. Naomi has not been afraid to face her pain and loss but she still acknowledges God and even looks for that bright moment when oh yeah back in Bethlehem I understand there's food now. So the story comes in a time of Judges remember when God would be punishing his people for the sins not of Naomi's but she's going to be living with the consequences.
With the consequences. So let's look at as Naomi tries to convince the girls to go back beginning in verse 9 down to verse 14 the Lord grant that you may find rest each of you in the house of her husband then she kissed them and lifted up their voices and wept and they said
To her no we'll return with you to your people but Naomi said turn back my daughters why will you go with me have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands turn back my daughters go your way for I am too old to have a husband if I should say I could have hope even if I should
Have a husband this night and should bear sons would you therefore wait till they were grown would you therefore refrain from marrying no my daughters for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me then they lifted up their voices and wept
Again and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law but Ruth clung to her so Ruth has this amazing kind of loyalty after Naomi has prayed for him may the Lord deal kindly with you may he show his chesed to you as you've shown chesed
To me and to my passed away husband and sons but they promised to go with her but you have no prospects she said what are you doing normal Israelites they won't marry you and I can't produce any more boys that could
Marry you and do you understand that God has attacked me did you see that phrase the hand of the Lord has gone out against me not the hand of the Lord is against me not the hand
Of the Lord has been with me the hand of the Lord has gone out again it's attacked me God is attacking me you don't want to go with me this time they weep again
And Orpah kisses her and says goodbye and off goes Orpah back she's smart she's doing the sensible things she's reasonable she realizes I'm going to be a foreigner in Israel and they're not allowed to marry Moabites I'll never be able to do anything and so she
Does what Naomi suggests and she goes home but Ruth on the other hand she has a different plan but before we move to Ruth how about if we look a little bit more at Naomi's misery and loss in verses 19 through 22 so we're going to go to the
End of the chapter and then go back and pick up the part with Ruth so the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem and when they came to Bethlehem the whole town was stirred because of them and the women said is this
Naomi and she said to them do not call me Naomi call me Mara for the almighty has dealt very bitterly with me I went away full and the Lord has brought me back empty why call me Naomi
When the Lord has testified against me and the almighty has brought calamity upon me the whole town was stirred and they're looking at Naomi and they're thinking wait a minute this lady maybe she's a little past mid life
But good night she looks like an old woman and they asked the question is this this is Naomi her name means pleasant or lovely and she says don't call me Naomi anymore call me tomorrow that means bitter
Because God has dealt bitterly with me I left full and now I'm back empty I have nothing now when she left full she didn't mean you know full of bread because they didn't have any bread what she meant is I had a husband
I had two boys I had a family I was in good condition and now what have I got nothing empty my life matter of fact she says Yahweh has testified against me that's actually a legal term
That's talking about one giving testimony in a court case and she has been found guilty and punished and then she refers to God as the almighty that's El Shaddai and El Shaddai is the one who is great
That can do anything he can accomplish amazing things but all he's done is heaped all this trouble on me how do we handle pain when we're dealing with situations like this when one loss after another again
And again and again we might turn to self-pity and try to get others to join our pity party some folks say hey I can make it determination I'm going to make it through any of you that have
Seen Gone with the Wind you remember Scarlett O'Hara up there in that it was a potato patch and she was looking for a little lost potato that might have been left
And this is what Scarlett O'Hara says as she's standing out there in that barren land as God is my witness I will never be hungry again that's the way some
People face the struggles and difficulties some of us might hide our struggles with a big smile fine I'm fine fine I'm good how about you
Good good fine yeah I'm good some people to avoid pain go to the extreme of suicide that's a permanent solution and if it's not the right
One don't try it it's pretty stupid some just get busy get busy with dinners and activities and do this and do that and a little bit of social
Gatherings but let's consider what a difference it made when Ruth decided to be loyal in this situation with her mother-in-law amazing loyalty of Ruth I'm going to read you that passage from 15 to 18 we'll back back up to get the
Rest of chapter 1 so she said see she's talking now to Ruth of course because Orpah has gone back see your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to
Her gods return after your sister-in-law but Ruth said do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you for where you go I will go
Where you lodge I will lodge your people shall be my people and your God my God where you die I will be buried
May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you and when Naomi saw that she
Was determined to go with her she said no more so Naomi tries to turn Ruth back by using a little peer pressure come
On your sister in law she's doing the right thing why don't you go back to Naomi attitude is basically this I'm not anybody
That can do anything for you now we're going to discover in the rest of the book that God is somebody that can do something for both
Naomi and Ruth here's another part of her attitude Ruth I can't do anything for you but as we work our way through this book
We're going to discover that God can because he's going to be with Naomi and Ruth now here's even more interesting about her attitude
It seems like it's this way to me she says not only that I don't want to do anything for you go back but
The story is going to reveal the reality that God can do with impossible situations things we never could have imagined so when we
Get to the end of the book we're going to know that God was ordaining the circumstances in such a way to give Naomi
The continuation of her family and Ruth a place in the royal genealogy of King David and on into the royal genealogy of Jesus
Christ the ultimate redeemer it's going to be a beautiful picture as we work our way through the book of Ruth then the speech that Ruth gives
Here one commentator said it's more famous than the Gettysburg address really I mean I grew up in a traditional church where we were
Biblically illiterate you know I didn't know much except to repeat the liturgy and the stuff that you went through so I didn't really know about
Ruth's little thing but later on when Kit and I got married my sister actually sang the song this whole passage she sang it entreat
Me not to leave thee that's a sweet way to say it from the old King James Bible but here she's saying do not urge
Me to leave you or return from following you for where you go I will go and where you lodge I will lodge and
Your people shall be my people your God my God where you die I will die so her attitude Ruth's attitude is don't even
Talk to me about not going with you because I'm going with you you see some relationships are more important than other issues that
You know like standing in society or being successful and Kit and I were missionaries for 18 years in Spain and we were in our about
The eighth or ninth year we were beginning to be a little effective we got a church planted it was really going great and then I
Was trying to start a church in a town near there and over in this other town over there and then helping out our
Other missionaries doing things and I was traveling going constantly and finally Kit came to me I mean we're missionaries alright she came to me and
She said why don't we separate I want a divorce I can't live like this anymore she said she described this word picture a
Counselor said help him understand with a word picture she said I feel like I'm a donkey pulling a cart and the family is
The cart back there and I'm pulling with all of my might and there's a stick held out there with a carrot dangling in
Front of me and I keep trying to get a bite of the carrot and I could never get the carrot and I could
Never get the carrot and she said you're the carrot I was trying to win the world for Jesus and losing my wife well through
The effective counseling we managed to get things straightened out and we stayed together and oh wow what if I had missed these last 30
Something years with kids it would have been a horrible thing Ruth told Naomi I don't care where you go I will go with
You it doesn't matter Jeral and Elisa it was interesting Elisa had graduated from college and Jeral had graduated from high school a year or two
Late because we bounced him back and forth from Spanish to English to English to Spanish and so he graduated a little bit older but
He was just a high school kid and he was working digging holes to put in posts for real estate signs and that was
His Job at the moment and they were talking marriage and my wife is concerned for Elisa and so she takes Elisa aside and
Says Elisa listen if you were to marry Jeral it's like getting on a train without knowing where it's going and Elisa said to
My wife I don't care where the train is going I just want to go with him that's truth truth that's commitment that's loyalty
That's amazing and then she says I'll lodge where you lodge it's not like you know a vacation lodge on the lake any house can be
A home if I can just be with you we had an interesting experience of having met some friends that were from the upper
Society of Columbia when I was at Columbia Bible College our first year we lived in a trailer in the woods and I met this fellow I
Think I bought some insurance from him or something and I went to his office and he had this high up office with big
Windows overlooking the high rises of Columbia South Carolina and I'm looking at this office and wow this guy he is important and we
Went for dinner to his house and oh my goodness I've never been in a house so nice and what furniture they had it
Was just phenomenal and he drove us around in his Mercedes and everything was fine but then one day it all crashed and bankruptcy
Hit and he lost his office downtown he lost his house he even lost his furniture you believe that I didn't know people rented
Or mortgaged their furniture so when he lost everything so he comes driving up he rents the trailer in the woods next to us
And he drives up in his Mercedes with his two kids and they get out and we're helping them get set up and I
Said where's your wife and he said she left me she said she's not going to live in a trailer in the woods well
Ruth is not like that true loyalty is till death do us part that that expression of Lord of course is what we say
In a wedding ceremony but it does come from the Bible it it says that Ruth clung to her in verse 14 which is
The same Hebrew expression that we see in Genesis 2 24 that a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife
They're clinging together it's a beautiful picture of the importance of commitment to people you know this kind of commitment to friendship Mark Zuckerberg has made billions of dollars on that
Kind of friendship that people are trying to preserve these friends throughout their life that they no longer live close to because of the
Importance of being committed to one another it's similar to the call that Jesus gave Jesus said God in in in in Matthew 10 37
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and in verse 18 it says that Naomi saw her determination Naomi
Naomi recognized has said in Ruth and Orpah and that Orpah had before Orpah decided to go back and she said as you've been kind to me may God be kind to you this word
Has said it embodies love and generosity and kindness enduring commitment has said that's an interesting word and it's a Hebrew word say it with me has said has said let's try it has said has said is in Psalm 136
Translated steadfast love you know when you're doing Bible study a dictionary can be a great thing you know what the dictionary says about steadfast the steadfast love the first definition is firmly fixed in place
Immoval that's steadfast second definition not subject to change that's steadfast love God steadfast firm in belief and determination or adherence to something loyal God's loyal love or has
Said endures forever surely Ruth is banking on knowing God by sticking with Naomi Kit and I did not have has said within ourselves to have this kind of loyalty to one another we had
To turn to God to restore what we had lost in those first 18 years of marriage Jesus compared the disciples to a woman giving birth before his crucifixion and in John 16 22 he says you have sorrow now
But I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy away wouldn't you like to have unshakable joy that is there permanent
Even though the situation might be sad like losing Jesus of course in this situation wouldn't you like to have that unshakable joy it's by knowing Jesus in his resurrection power he says I'm going
To come back and you're going to see me and you are going to experience newness of life that's what it says in Romans 6 it says we're buried in baptism but raised to
Walk in newness of life wouldn't you like to have a new life that kind of loyalty can come by knowing Jesus Christ this is the way Paul describes it in the loss that can
Accompany the commitment of loyalty to Jesus Christ Paul says in Philippians chapter 3 verse 8 I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord he lost all the benefits of being
A zealous Jew by becoming a follower of Jesus Christ and in order to do that there's got to be faith in verse 9 he said believers really want to be right with God I count everything a loss let's move to verse 9
Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but that which comes through faith in Christ the righteousness that comes from God that depends on faith in other words I'm not confident of my chesed to be loyal to him I'm confident
In his chesed to be loyal to me and that's where I place my faith in him it doesn't depend on my chesed like Ruth Paul was ready to lose his people and his religion and put all his hope
In Christ the deepest desire of our life is found in verse 10 that says that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share in his sufferings becoming like him in his death
As the band comes up would you like to know Jesus the way Paul did who could count every benefit in life that he had as rubbish in order to know Christ and be found in his
Chesed his steadfast love that endures forever your part is to have faith in God's loyalty in God's chesed his steadfast love that never ceases your chesed may fail but you're putting your faith in his
Chesed you're trusting him to keep you faithful to be a real believer we must trust him completely that he really is better than everything else in life and in him we can joyfully
Face the loss of anything in life accept the presence of him in our life let's pray father I pray that you would help us to be genuine in our desire to express to you you can take the
World you can have it all forgive me Jesus I need him I can do it without anything else but I've gotta have Jesus working in my heart because I'm crucified with christ nevertheless I live yet not I
It's christ who lives in me and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me oh my friends please trust Jesus and him alone I pray in his name amen