Leftovers And Generosity Series

Ruth

Chapter Two – Leftovers and Generosity

November 14, 2021

Ruth 2:8-9 NIV

So Boaz said to Ruth, "My daughter, listen to me. Don't go and glean in another field and don't go away from here. Stay here with my servant girls. 9 Watch the field where the men are harvesting and follow along after the girls. I have told the men not to touch you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled."

The corners of every field were not to be harvested so that the foreigners and the poor who had no land could harvest.

They had to leave cash crops – grain, grapes, and olive oil.

Leviticus 19:9-10 NIV

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 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. I am the LORD your God.

We should leave portions of our time and money to give away.

Conditions are never perfect for us to be generous. It always takes faith to give!

V. 10-12 At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She exclaimed, "Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me — a foreigner?" 11 Boaz replied, "I've been told all about 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. 12 May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge."

We’re all afraid of being overlooked, but the eyes of the Lord are always searching the earth for faithful people.

Luke 21:1-4 NIV

As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. 2 He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. 3 "I tell you the truth," he said, "this poor widow has put in more than all the others. 4 All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on."

Jesus always notices great faith!

Ruth 2:19-20 NIV

Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!” Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said. 20 “The LORD bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our guardian-redeemers.”

Guardian (Kinsmen) Redeemer – A legal term for one who has an obligation to help a relative in serious difficulty.

God designed families to take care of one another.

1 Timothy 5:8 NIV

Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

One of the tragedies for people caught in the cycle of poverty is they simply don’t have anyone to ask for help.

Galatians 4:4-5 NIV

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

Jesus is our kinsmen redeemer!

Jesus has already made up his mind to adopt and rescue us.