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.