Ruth Chapter 2

0:01 Can we pop that first slide up please? How many here, how many people here along with me love this show? Anybody, many people watch this? Okay, there's enough to actually understand what I'm talking about. Good. This is Grand Designs. This is a show that I suppose all to do with houses and architecture, all that sort of stuff. And it's a show that I love, but not so much for that.

0:22 I don't really know much about architecture, interior design, any of those things. But for me, They're sort of incidental in terms of what is the real star of the show. And the real star of the show, narrated by Kevin MacLeod, is just its brilliant execution consistently of what is commonly called the man in the whole story arc. And if you've watched this show, you'll know what we're talking about. So we begin up here, right? We begin generally with a couple. Let's find somebody. Let's call them Andy and Anna, for example, right?

0:55 at the beginning of a couple, call them Andy and Anna. They are full of hope, naive hope, and self-confidence. And they have decided they're going to embark on this dream project of their dream home. Andy's decided that even though he's a teacher, he's going to project manage the whole thing. He's never wired a plug in his life, but he knows how to project manage this. And they are full of these hopes and dreams, wildly unrealistic time scales and budgets, but we're up here. but then Kevin MacLeod's raised eyebrows prophesy the future things are going to go wrong the whole is going to appear and so it happens disaster strikes generally precipitated by some sort of biblical weather event or by skyrocketing costs or by the fact that they can't get hold of this random building material from east Germany that they were hoping to environmentally build their and everything starts to come down around them.

2:00 And then the whole extends. It seems to go on forever. We see these dates on the screen, month after month, year after year, compressed. And this is the season of the rusty caravan on site. The couple living in the caravan, freezing through winter after winter. And a year goes by, but you see them and it looks like they've aged about 10 every year due to the stress. And all hope seems completely lost, but just before the final ad break, we get a chink of light. A family member has remortgaged their own ordinary house to Eli, Andy, and Anna to actually, yeah, Neil and Sharon have a good shout, to actually come through with the costs for that building material in East Germany that are needed to finish the project.

2:56 And what happens is they redeem the situation. And so the ad break happens. We return. Kevin is driving up to this house in glorious sunshine and blue skies. And he steps out of the car. He walks up the hill to survey. He folds his arms. And he looks at this monstrosity.

3:19 and he says it's not just a house it is a testament to persistence it looks like the landscape has always wanted it there you're thinking really kevin but it's a great show because it so consistently covers this this man in the whole story arc and we now of course turn to another wonderful story with a not dissimilar arc. Although last week in chapter one, we really, we didn't start up here. We began in the hole. We began in despair and sorrow. We began with Naomi and Ruth returning from Moab to Bethlehem, empty, bereft, hopeless, afflicted, widows, childless, no hope on the horizon. And if we switch the analogy then from TV program to play for a moment, our drama is being acted out in front of a scene backdrop of the whole nation of Israel in a whole. Remember how the story starts in the days of the judges.

4:35 And they are characterized by everyone did what was right in their own eyes. This is a dark, dark time, not just in our little story, but in the story of God's chosen people, sin and rebellion and idolatry and God's judgment. And so we have this darkness of the big backdrop. We have the darkness of Act 1, chapter 1. And so the question is, is there going to be some chink of light? Is God somehow going to break through into this situation? And of course the answer is yes. And our chink of light arrives a lot earlier than the final ad break.

5:20 Gilbert mentioned last week, even at the end of chapter one, we're given that first sliver with the information that Naomi and Ruth arrived back in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. This picture of new season, fresh hope. new beginnings connected with the Passover where God sets his people free. The readers originally would have been thinking all of this in their minds. And now as we transition into chapter two, act two, our narrator follows this mention of the barley harvest with a little aside for us, his readers, just before he gets into the story. Notice what he begins with. Now, Naomi, just telling us, let me just mention this before I begin. He says, now Naomi had a relative on her husband side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz.

6:07 He's telling us very clearly, this guy's important. Keep your eyes on Boaz. He's the one through whom we're going to see this chink of light burst through and defeat the darkness completely and overcome. And here, He's the man with the means and the capability and the honor who has the power to transform this situation. And of course, from our perspective, not from the perspective of the original readers, but from our perspective, we also know that here in Boaz, we have this type of Christ. Boaz is an anticipatory picture of the person of Jesus, like a little thumbnail icon pointing towards who he will be and what he will achieve more fully. And we need to keep that in mind as we're reading that. So we're going to make our way just this morning, step by step, through the story.

7:09 It's a brilliant story. I'm in my happy place here as a former primary teacher. You know, listen to the story. I want to invite you all up onto the carpet. But just enjoy this. There's so much to enjoy and think about. And I won't have much time to do anything more than just tell you the story. So I'll read a bit, talk a bit, and then we'll think a little bit about a couple of sort of questions of application as we finish.

7:33 So we go on after that opening verse. And Ruth the Moabite, notice actually here, just as we begin, how the narrator draws our attention to her foreignness. He's reminding us of how she is seen in this act by everybody around her. And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor. Naomi said to her, go ahead, my daughter. Maybe you've spotted this, maybe you've not, but do you notice the upside down, the back to frontness of this conversation? Naomi is the native Bethlehemite. Naomi is the senior person here, the older one.

8:20 In the circumstances, it should not be her saying this to Ruth, her daughter-in-law. But of course, remember, Naomi has asked the woman to call her Mara. She's in this place of deep emptiness and sorrow and despair and depression. Perhaps she's been paralyzed by that. And Ruth maybe perceives that, understands that, and she realizes she is the one, Even though she is the foreigner in that sense that is gonna have to take the initiative and that's what she does. She takes the risky, dangerous initiative to go out into the fields. But she does so, interestingly, in prayerful faith. Notice what she says here.

9:04 Basically praying that she would find favor in someone's eyes. She is prayerfully faithful to the living God who is now her God. and asking for him to intervene. Naomi gives permission. She doesn't do much more than that, interestingly. She doesn't pray a prayer of blessing. She doesn't offer any safety advice in the midst of this dangerous situation. I think it's clear she's just in the depths of that hole.

9:35 We go on. So she went out, entered a field, began to glean behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz who was from the clan of Elimelech. Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters. The Lord be with you. The Lord bless you, they answered. As it turned out. It just so happened that Ruth happened upon a field belonging to this guy, Boaz.

10:11 The narrator is doing two things with this little phrase elsewhere. First, he is being very obviously, very transparently ironic. This isn't just as it turned out. That's his point. This isn't simply a chance coincidence. This is the Lord at work in bringing about his purposes through Ruth's risk-taking initiative. And then second, for his original readers, he's using a phrase that would have sent them back to Genesis and back to Abraham's servant praying that the Lord would make it happen to happen that he would find a wife for Isaac at the well. He's pointing us back to another chance encounter between a man and a woman that would end up with a marriage.

11:06 He's teeing us up for where this story is going. And so Boaz arrives on the scene and we get to meet this man for the first time that we've been told to keep our eyes on. And the first thing we see about him is how he greets his workers. The Lord be with you. Now we could skip over that as a sort of, you know, standard greeting, you know, God bless or whatever it is. But I think, I think we need to go a little bit deeper with this because remember that backdrop in the time of the judges, everyone did what was right in their own eyes. There was absolutely no guarantee that masters with power and authority would not be exploitative, that they would care about their workers, that they would be interested in praying for their workers and looking out for them. This is a little window immediately onto Boaz's character, onto his faithfulness to God.

11:58 It's a foil to Elimelech turning his back and going to Moab in the first chapter. Boaz then goes on. He asked the overseer of his harvesters, why does, or sorry, not why, who does that young woman belong to? The overseer replied, she is the Moabite who came back from Moab with Naomi. She said, please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters. She came into the field and has remained here from morning till now except for a short rest in the shelter. Now, it is crucial to understand the legal basis for what Ruth is seeking to do here and what she's hoping for in the field. In the law given to Moses, the Lord shows himself to be a God who is deeply concerned for the foreigner, the widower, or the widow, sorry, the outsider.

12:54 And he makes provision for them in his law to illustrate and to carry out that care. We find these in Leviticus 19. We find it in Leviticus 23. We find it in Deuteronomy 24. Can't read them all, but let me give you Leviticus 19. When you reap the harvest of your land, the law says, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner.

13:26 Why? Because I am the Lord your God. And in doing this, you reflect me. You reflect my care. You reflect my provision. That's God's law. But again, this was the time of the judges. And it's clear if you read the very difficult read of Judges, if you read through this story, it's clear that many of the people at the time were not interested in the slightest in carrying out God's law or reflecting his character.

13:55 They were much more interested in exploiting the powerless for their own end. Or if they were still law keepers in that sense, many of them were perhaps letter of the law keepers, if you like. Think of the Pharisees that Jesus criticizes in Matthew 23. For meticulously measuring out their herbs, their mint, their dill, their cumin. But for not at all being interested in the spirit of the law. In what it is all about. Justice and mercy and faithfulness. Illustrating the character of God.

14:35 And perhaps that's what we see here in Boaz's overseer. I think again he's a little bit of a contrast. Perhaps he's a bit of a letter of the law guy who gives the impression that he thinks this foreigner is chancing her arm in the amount of time she stayed in the field and in the amount of grain she has gleaned. I don't think we could read this as wholly positive, but I think we'd be wrong to do that. Notice how he references her foreignness twice. She's the Moabite that came back from Moab. He's a letter of the law guy, and the question is, what will Boaz's response be?

15:19 He's got power. He's got authority. He's got means. Is he an exploiter? Is he a letter of the law guy? Or is he something or someone different? So Boaz said to Ruth, the passage goes on, my daughter, listen to me. Don't go and glean in another field.

15:41 Don't go away from here. Stay here with the women who work for me. Watch the field where the men are harvesting and follow along after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. See the threat that was here? And whenever you're thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled. Boaz does not let us down. He does not let Ruth down.

16:03 He is a spirit of the law guy. He concretely displays the heart and the character of God, this super abundant generosity and grace to Ruth. He goes way beyond what the law stipulates is required of him. And I imagine his overseer listening into the conversation of what he's saying to Ruth. And again, a bit like Kevin McLeod's eyebrows, the overseer's eyebrows go up as well. What is he offering her here? he addresses her as family he guarantees her safety and protection in his name he offers her an unhindered supply of water listen it was foreigners and women who were meant to be the ones who would fill up the water jars for the israelite men not the other way around and yet this is what he is offering her grace upon grace to borrow a phrase from john chapter one The Hebrew word for it is this word hesed.

17:14 And Ruth recognizes it for what it is. At this she bowed down with her face to the ground. She asked him, why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me, a foreigner? Well she's found favor in his eyes because God has answered her prayer. Boaz is the answer to her prayer And Boaz replied, I've been told all about you, what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done, for your chesed, steadfast, loyal, loving kindness that you have shown. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. and Ruth replies, may I continue to find favor in your eyes my Lord, you have put me at ease by speaking kindly to your servant though I do not even have the standing of one of your servants.

18:22 So Boaz tells her, well here's why, it's because I've seen it in you, I've seen this sacrificial, faithful, loving kindness, and I've heard all about it. The choice that you've made to come from your homeland, to give up the opportunity of rest with the husband there for the sake of love and loyalty to your mother-in-law and more so for the sake of love and loyalty to your God. And how you're demonstrating right now your faith in him, the living God, in this act of deep risk in what you're doing. But you've prayed that he will shelter you under his wing. And of course, perhaps Bewez does realize that he is the extension of the wings of God here. Maybe he doesn't. We are certainly meant to.

19:20 And even more importantly here, the word in Hebrew for wing is the same word as for the corner of a garment. and that's going to be very important as we progress in the story so just keep that in your head and so we go on with the day we have arrived at lunchtime and the narrator continues at mealtime Boaz said to her come over here have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar and when she sat down with the harvesters he offered her some roasted grain she ate all she wanted and had some left over. Boaz here invites her like a member of the family to sit at his table. I can't help when I read this, but think of Psalm 23. You have prepared a table for me in the midst of my enemies. We've got to understand that Ruth was in danger here as a foreigner.

20:21 And yet he invites her to his table. And of course, maybe as I was reading to the words, she ate all she wanted and had some left over. Does that remind you of any other story or stories in the Bible? Let me put up a couple of quotes for you here. They all ate and were satisfied and the disciples picked up 12 basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. Matthew 14, feeding of the 5,000. Next chapter, they all ate and were satisfied after the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The feeding of the 4,000.

21:02 Words from Matthew, from his account of the life of Jesus, this devout Jewish follower of Jesus who actually names Ruth in his genealogy of Jesus in his opening chapter. Do you think the fact that these words appear to echo the words in Ruth, do you think that's accidental? I don't think so. Pointing back to Boaz. Boaz pointing forward to Christ, the Lord of the harvest, the one born in Bethlehem, the house of bread, the bread of life who breaks the famine forever. Twelve baskets, enough for every tribe in Israel. seven basketfuls, the number of completeness, this idea that he will be able to completely sustain. And he borrows that image and those words then, and there's these echoes from the book of Ruth.

22:00 And so she gets up to Gleam. Now she got up to Gleam after lunch. And again, I find this interesting. It's not that she goes, and Boaz is going to be really kind to me. Do you know what, I'm just gonna sit back now and enjoy his kindness. Nor does Boaz say to her, just sit back and don't do anything. There is a connection, there's a threading together here of her initiative and her work and his loving kindness. It's not one or the other.

22:34 And that's important in terms of us living our lives in Christ. And he continues, Boaz gave orders to his men, let her gather among the sheaves reprimand her, even pull out some stocks for her. Help her out. From the bundles and leave them for her to pick up and don't rebuke her. Again, giving us a window onto what the natural reaction might be to this. Grace upon grace upon grace. So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening, then she threshed the barley she had gathered and it amounted to about an ephah. She carried it back to town and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered.

23:19 Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough. The echo's here. Now, just in case you're interested, if you're interested in weights and measures in ephah, it's about 13 kilograms. So think of 13 bags of sugar. Couldn't find a picture of 13 bags of sugar. So this 15 minus two, you'll get the idea. Put those in your rucksack. This is what Ruth would have been carrying back from the field to her mother-in-law.

23:45 Staggering round the corner with this on her back. And interestingly actually it says at the end of this chapter. That Boaz allowed her to glean until the end of the harvest. Which would mean if she gleaned at the same sort of level and speed. According and with the kindness of Boaz continuing. She would gather enough barley for two people that would last them a year. Until the next harvest. And so she brings it back to Naomi or as Naomi prefers to be called Mara.

24:27 And I wonder what would have been going through Naomi's mind throughout the day, the long day that Ruth has been away. As she maybe starts to think, should I have let her go? will she be safe? will she come back? what will she come back with? and then Ruth staggers like I say round the corner with this Aoife on her back and then produces her leftover lunch to give to her mother-in-law and we see hope break in Naomi's demeanor changes her speech changes look at what happens her mother-in-law asked her you you can almost pick up the excitement where did you glean today where did you work blessed be the man who took notice of you and she realizes Ruth couldn't be bringing home the super abundance she's bringing unless her prayer has been answered and she's found favor in a man's eyes.

25:31 But who's the man? Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. The name of the man I work with today is... And if this was a soap opera, if this was EastEnders, you'd hear the drums of the closing credits and you might not find out for another couple of days who the man is, but this is who it is, it is Boa. And a light bulb goes on in Naomi's head as she hears his name uttered. Naomi knew the name. The Lord bless him, she said to her daughter-in-law. He has not stopped showing his kindness, his chesed to the living and the dead, to the living, to us, Ruth.

26:15 But also to Elimelech and Malon and Killian, to the living and the dead. And that man is our close relative, she said. He is one of our guardian redeemers. It's a word in Hebrew, goel, and it can be translated differently as well as kinsman redeemer. And without getting too deep into the legal stuff, you can read that up in Leviticus 25 if you want to. But basically, at a basic level, what this is is that there would have been an expectation on this person, a kinsman redeemer, as someone's closest family member, if they had the means to buy back for you your land, to buy back for you your inheritance that maybe you've had to give up or sell in a time of poverty or struggle. And it was a significantly sacrificial act because you not only bought back the land, but there was also this aspect that you would become responsible for any widows who were on the land.

27:23 So it may turn out that you have more work to do and you have more people to look after and feed. Deeply sacrificial. But Naomi would have known though, like I say, she would have known about Boaz, but she also would have known that he was not their closest kinsman redeemer. We find that out later in the story. And so he wouldn't have been actually under any obligation to carry out this rule. In other words, if Boaz was a letter of the law guy, this might be the end of the story. But we've already seen in terms of the evidence so far, and I think Naomi's heart is filled with hope because of what she's heard so far, that he might be something different.

28:19 And so we conclude this second act of the story. Then Ruth the Moabite said, he even said to me, stay with my workers until they finish harvesting all my grain. And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, it will be good for you, my daughter, to go with the women who work for him because in someone else's field you might be harmed. I think she's starting to think straight now. Hope changes your perspective. so Ruth stayed close to the women of Boaz to glean until the barley and wheat harvest were finished and she lived with her mother-in-law and we will pick up the story again next week now there is so much richness and depth in this narrative and I cannot go into 99% of it probably let me encourage you again as I do often we talk about this stuff in home groups it gives us a a great opportunity to go deeper, to together wrestle with God's word and think about how it applies to our lives. And it's an amazing benefit amongst others of gathering in that way.

29:28 But I just wanna really pick up on one thread. I just wanna sort of pull a little bit on that thread of that word, hesed. Think you're meant to really, that, but I'm not gonna do that. Hesed. And the thread begins in Exodus 34. begins with this stunning scene where God reveals himself to Moses on the mountain. Here's a little extract from that. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord.

29:59 And he passed in front of Moses proclaiming, the Lord, the Lord. The compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, has said, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Here is the Lord's name. Here is who he is. Your name was who you were. A God of committed, loving, enduring, faithfulness. Not a quid pro quo God. But a God of super abundant love and mercy.

30:46 so what we see in this story then in both Ruth and Boaz are at a very basic level beautiful examples for us of a woman and a man who reflect the character of God and so in these characters scripture holds up a mirror to us as men and women of God, and they force us to ask, what sort of men are we striving to be? What sort of women are we striving to be? What are we pursuing most in our lives? What is most important to us in our lives? in our bibles the book of rufus is sandwiched between judges that makes sense in the time of the judges and first samuel looking forward towards the king david who comes from this family that we're reading about that makes sense but in in many hebrew scriptures the order is different it actually comes after the book of Proverbs. And if you know Proverbs, you might know that the last chapter of Proverbs is this chapter about a woman of noble character. Interesting.

32:18 A woman who, amongst other qualities, provides food for her family, sets about her work vigorously, extends her hands to the needy, is clothed with strength and dignity and fears the Lord. There's a lot of things I think that many of us place a lot of importance on that are not mentioned in this passage. And so here's the thing, those Hebrew readers who would have been reading the end of Proverbs would have then turned and continued and seen this on display in the person of Ruth, in her chesed choices and seen how God was working out his purposes for her, for Naomi, for the people of Israel, and of course from our perspective, for the redemption of the world through Ruth's chesed choices. And we've already talked about Boaz and his chesed choices and actions. And as I said earlier, they point us forward to God's ultimate loving kindness, fulfilled and personified in his grace upon grace, son. And it is crucial that we recognize and remember that this is a story about suffering, that this is a story about sorrow,

33:52 and the questions that come with that, and the response that we make to that. And the longer I spend talking to people and spending time with people who are going through really difficult situations is I realize I have less and less answers. I thought I had answers, I really didn't. There are many questions that we do not get answers to. And that is incredibly, incredibly difficult. But we are given a really important answer, an ultimate answer. It's an answer that is here.

34:39 It's an answer that is in each part of scripture that we've looked at together here over the last year. It is this answer. God knows our plight and he has entered our plight on our behalf. think of John 1 the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us we were there in the autumn grace upon grace is mentioned in that chapter think of Hebrews 2 where we've just been recently since the children have flesh and blood he too shared in their humanity kinsmen so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death that is the devil and free those who all their lives were held in slavery By the fear of death. God and his son became our kinsman. So that he could become our redeemer. We don't get every answer.

35:35 But we do get that one. We're redeemed out of slavery. To sin and to death. As Ephesians tells us. We're given a glorious inheritance. the son is the ultimate final word of chesed to us from the father. To quote Paul in Philippians 2 and being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death even death on a cross so that we might be redeemed. And it's interesting from there from that hymn Paul to his letter to the Philippians goes on.

36:23 And he says, listen, look at that truth. And in response to that glorious truth, you need to work out your salvation with fear and with trembling. What does that mean? And he goes on to say, then as children of God, without fault in a warped and crooked generation, shine like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. We then, in light of the story of Ruth and Boaz, in light of the character of God whom they reflect, in light of the son to whom Boaz points us, we are to do the same. And where this story pushes me is to reflect on myself and ask, What does it look like in the simple, small, mundane, but cumulative choices of everyday life in my family, in my marriage, in my workplace,

37:37 in the people that I interact with and the opportunities that I have to continue this thread of chesed, faithful, loving, kindness, to be some sort of Boaz, or for the women here to be some sort of Ruth, to shine like stars in the power of the Holy Spirit, to be chinks of light who reflect the light of the world. And if we dig a little bit deeper down into that, I can only leave you with questions, but particularly thinking of this story, what might not harvesting right to the edge of our fields look like? The fields of our income, yes. Of our resources, yes. But it's more than that. It absolutely includes that.

38:34 But what about the fields of our time? And our energy and our emotional capacity even? We often, I think, as Christians, where our 100% busyness is a badge of honor, I don't think that's what the Bible teaches us. Is there any room in my life? Is there any room in your life for divine interruptions? In a world of darkness and exploitation then as well, where leaders and people of power seem to just be out to exploit and be out for themselves so much of the time, what is our care? What is our provision for? What does our standing up for the weakest and most vulnerable look like?

39:37 For the widow, for the foreigner, for the outsider. What does it reflect? Does it reflect, do we reflect the character of God? The chesed character of God. And just to finish, how much space do we leave in our minds? How much do we allow, even though we won't necessarily see it until we see it backwards? The idea, the concept that through those choices that we make, God is weaving together some sort of tapestry of his providence for his purposes and his glory and our good all connected in with those choices and those actions and those decisions that we make. Ruth and Boaz never got to see even any of that.

40:31 A little bit in their own story. Not in terms of the fact that Obed would lead to Jesse and Jesse would lead to David and David would lead to Jesus. None of that. But do we trust that God can use our stories in that way? Let's pray together as the band come back up. Father, thank you for this story. Thank you for its beauty. for just how much is in here for us to enjoy and to see and to think through.

41:08 Thank you ultimately for what it reveals about you. Your faithful covenant loving kindness. Your grace upon grace character. abounding in chesed love. Father, we pray that you would lead us by your spirit. As we wrestle what the mirrors of Ruth and Boaz sort of reflect in us in terms of what is important to us, in terms of what we pursue, in terms of what sort of men and women we want to be.

41:55 speak Lord we pray by your spirit transform our hearts move in us we pray in Jesus name, Amen