Doing It Right Series

Doing it Right

Series: Ruth

Chuck Sligh

July 28, 2019

NOTE: A PowerPoint presentation is available for this sermon by request at chucksligh@hotmail.com. Please mention the title of the sermon and the Bible text to help me find the sermon in my archives.

ATTENTION: This interpretation of Ruth and the threshing floor incident takes a less than positive view of Ruth. I have another sermon on the same text that takes a more positive (and traditional) view titled How to Put Your Life Back Together. You might want to read them both and decide which best fits your understanding of the event. Also, the sermon below deals less with how Boaz is a “type of Christ” and more with the story itself. The only reference to Boaz’s typology is in the call to salvation at the very end.

TEXT: Please turn in your Bibles to Ruth 3.

INTRODUCTION

Illus. – Remember when you first got your driver’s license? You studied and got all the knowledge necessary to pass the WRITTEN test, went to the DMV, took the written test, passed it, or if not the first time…eventually. But then you had to take all the knowledge you had attained and put it into practice by taking the DRIVING test. Some of us had no problem taking the theoretical and putting it into practice, but others of us, for one reason or another, just didn’t get it right.

Living life is kind of like taking the driving portion to get a driver’s license. We have some knowledge of living life as God wants us to, or at the least we come to church, and study the bible, and pray, and we gain the “written knowledge.” But then we have to go out and put all that knowledge into practice, and sometimes we just don’t get it quite right on the “driving test” of the Christian life.

I think that’s what we see in Ruth and Naomi in Ruth, chapter 3; while in Boaz, we see a wise and loving man who had a good handle on the driving portion of the Christian life.

You’ll recall from last week that when Ruth got home and told Naomi that she had been gleaning in the field of a man named Boaz, Noami suddenly brightened up. She realized Boaz might be the answer to their dilemma because he was what was called a “kinsman-redeemer,” a man designated in the Law of Moses to have the right to rescue a close relative from servitude or restore land lost to an unpaid debt. A second right of a kinsman-redeemer was to marry the widow of a brother and raise up his firstborn son in the name of the dead brother.

All of a sudden, Naomi’s gloomy, bitter spirit changed. Now she was BLESSING the Lord, and rather than CRITICIZING His dealings with her as she had in chapter 1, suddenly she was seeing God’s blessings in her life.

However, that does not mean she knew how to handle things God’s way, or how to properly counsel Ruth, a new convert to Judaism. In fact, her advice, and Ruth’s actions, could have led to moral catastrophe were it not for the wise handling of Boaz in this situation.

Let’s consider some lessons for us as followers of God by examining the actions and motivations of each character in our story.

I. THE FIRST LESSON WE LEARN FROM RUTH 3 IS TO DO GOD’S WILL GOD’S WAY. – Verses 1-4 – “Then Naomi her mother-in-law said unto her, ‘My daughter, shall I not seek rest for you, that it may be well with you? 2 …Is not Boaz…our relative,…whose young women you were with? This evening he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor. 3 So wash yourself, and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes, and go down to the threshing floor: but make not yourself known unto the man until he has finished eating and drinking. 4 …When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. …Then later go in, and uncover his feet, and lie down. Then he will tell thee what you should do.’”

Now I really struggled with this text, because this doesn’t sound like a very pure and godly thing to do. What in the world do you think Naomi was thinking when she told Ruth to do this? What do you think she foresaw as an outcome from the secret night operation? It doesn’t sound very pure does it?

In fact, to me it downright looks like Naomi sent Ruth to Boaz late at night, with just the two of them there for the rest of the night at, at a time when Naomi might have thought he could be under the influence of alcohol. Maybe I’m seeing this wrong, but Naomi’s plan looks for all the world like a plan for Ruth to seduce him, or at least to make herself available!