A Greater Kindness - Ruth 3:10-18 - March 17, 2013
Series: From Heartache to Hope – The Redemption of Ruth - #8
Let me ask you a question as we start this morning: How many decisions do you figure you make in an average day? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand? Any ideas? Any guesses? … It turns out they’ve actually done studies on this type of thing (which was a decision in itself!) and those studies show that the average adult in North America makes something like 35,000 decisions during the course of each and every day! That’s huge!
Now most of those will be relatively small and inconsequential. However, some are going to be of far great importance and they do have the potential to shape our lives. These are the ones we tend to wrestle with and agonize over.
A fellow by the name of Richard Bach once said this, “Some choices we live not only once, but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives.” In other words, a decision that you make today, may direct, influence, or lead to consequences, whether good or bad, that will be felt for the rest of your life.
Those are the ones we want to get right, aren’t they? But we don’t always know what the right choice is. Aristotle once said this: “Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.” That sounds like a catch 22, doesn’t it?! According to Aristotle, if we want to make good decisions, the chances are that we’ll have had to make some bad decisions along the way, in order to be able to make a good decision today. And to a degree he’s right – we ought to learn from our mistakes so that history doesn’t repeat itself over and over in our lives. However, that’s a hard way to do life.
I like what Anso Coetzer has said, “Decisions become easier when your will to please God outweighs your will to please the world.” The big decisions of life become easier, when we set it in our hearts to please God above all else - above others and above self.
Now why are we talking about decisions this morning? Because in our Scripture passage today, Boaz, is on the verge of making a life changing decision. Open your Bibles with me please to the book of Ruth. Ruth, chapter 3, and we’ll begin reading in verse 10, and we’ll continue with our series entitled: From Heartache to Hope – The Redemption of Ruth.
Ruth has just made a decision that will potentially change the course of her life. She has taken Naomi’s advice and gone to Boaz’s threshing floor. After Boaz has lain down to sleep, she goes to him, uncovers his feet, and then lies down and waits for whatever will happen next. When Boaz wakes up, he’s startled to find a woman laying there at his feet. In the darkness of the night he calls out asking a very reasonable question, “Who are you?” And Ruth replies, “I am your servant Ruth. Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a kinsman-redeemer.” (Ruth 3:9) Again, like we talked about last week, that is so far removed from our own customs that we struggle to understand what’s going on, on that threshing floor.
But what Ruth has done, in the language that she’s chosen to use, and the request that she has made of Boaz, is to let Boaz know that she is eligible for marriage, and willing for him to act as kinsman-redeemer on her behalf. We pick up their story with Boaz’s reply in verse 10 ….
““The LORD bless you, my daughter,” he replied. “This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier: You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor. And now, my daughter, don’t be afraid. I will do for you all you ask. All my fellow townsmen know that you are a woman of noble character. Although it is true that I am near of kin, there is a kinsman-redeemer nearer than I. Stay here for the night, and in the morning if he wants to redeem, good; let him redeem. But if he is not willing, as surely as the LORD lives I will do it. Lie here until morning.”
So she lay at his feet until morning, but got up before anyone could be recognized; and he said, “Don’t let it be known that a woman came to the threshing floor.” He also said, “Bring me the shawl you are wearing and hold it out.” When she did so, he poured into it six measures of barley and put it on her. Then he went back to town.
When Ruth came to her mother-in-law, Naomi asked, “How did it go, my daughter?” Then she told her everything Boaz had done for her and added, “He gave me these six measures of barley, saying, ‘Don’t go back to your mother-in-law empty-handed.’ ” Then Naomi said, “Wait, my daughter, until you find out what happens. For the man will not rest until the matter is settled today.”” (Ruth 3:10–18, NIV84)
Now Boaz is faced with a big decision: to act as kinsman-redeemer, and to take Ruth as his wife, or not. If he chooses not to, life will go on pretty much as it always has for him. There is no shame, or repercussions to him, in saying, “no.” However, if he chooses to redeem, not only are there some obstacles to overcome, such as a nearer kinsman-redeemer, but his life is guaranteed to never be the same again.
And if you weren’t with us for our earlier messages, and are not sure what a kinsman-redeemer is, a kinsman-redeemer is simply a man who can act on behalf of a relative in need. The kinsman redeemer can buy back land that was sold to pay off debt, they can buy a relative back from slavery, and in the case of a woman widowed without a male heir, the kinsman-redeemer, the deceased husband’s brother, was to marry the widow in order to provide for her, and to ensure the deceased man’s family name would carry on through the children born to that new marriage. A son born to that union would inherit the property that had once belonged to the deceased man, and which the kinsman-redeemer had redeemed.
So Ruth has asked Boaz to act as kinsman-redeemer. But there are two problems: 1) Boaz is not the brother of Ruth’s deceased husband. There are no living brothers. Boaz is simply a relative of the family, which means he is not required by law, to redeem Ruth. 2) Even if Boaz is willing to redeem, it turns out that there is a man who is a closer relative, who would have first dibs, so to speak, in choosing to act as kinsman-redeemer.
To Boaz’s credit, he doesn’t even hesitate. I think that’s because he’s already set in his heart to do that which is pleasing to God. When we decide in our hearts to do, above all else, that which is pleasing to God, the decisions we are faced with become clearer; the choices more obvious.
Let me give you an example. A man of faith finds himself attracted to a woman, as Boaz was to Ruth, and decides he wants to get to know her better with the idea of a marriage sometime down the road. The first question he needs to ask himself is this: Is this woman he’s interested in, a Christian? If she’s not a Christian, then to pursue such a relationship with her, is not a step of obedient faith, because God’s desire is that we not be unequally yoked in marriage. You’ll remember that back in chapter 2, Boaz recognized the fact that Ruth, a woman who was once far from God and a foreigner amongst the people of God, had now come to seek refuge under the wings of the God of Israel. They now worshipped the same God and shared the same faith. If they had not, for Boaz, a man of deep and abiding faith, the decision would have been easy. Because his desire is to please God above all else, he would not have pursued a relationship with Ruth, if she did not share the same faith.
Now if this man and woman share the same faith, the next question that each of them ought to be asking is this: Is my relationship with this person a help, or a hindrance, to my own spiritual journey? Are we growing closer to God as we grow closer together, or am I losing sight of God as this relationship grows deeper? If the relationship is hindering your walk with God, then to pursue marriage together would unlikely be an act of obedient faith either.
In verse 11 of our passage today, Boaz says that Ruth is as woman of “noble character.” That’s the exact same phrase that’s used in Proverbs 31 where it says this: “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.” (Proverbs 31:10–12, NIV84) And then from there it goes on to speak of all these glowing qualities that a woman of such character exhibits from day to day.
Boaz saw in Ruth, a woman that he could grow together with, in God. She was a woman of noble character, and just like the woman spoken of in Proverbs 31, Ruth too is a woman who has shown devotion to her family, who displays concern for others, who works diligently at what is set before her, and who loves God. As best we can tell, if these two are going to pursue a relationship together, it’s going to be God honoring – just as it was meant to be.
The third question a man such as Boaz should be asking is this: Can I love this woman as Christ loved the church? In other words, am I willing to lay down my life for her and love her with a self-sacrificing love? And we need to ask ourselves that men, because that’s how Christ loved the church, literally laying down His life and dying for her that she might have life. In the book of Ephesians we read this command: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” (Ephesians 5:25–27, NIV84) And that laying down of our lives usually it isn’t a one-time physical laying down of life either – it’s dying to self in each day in order to be a blessing to this woman you’ve joined your life to - and that’s not always an easy thing to do. Sometimes we get it right and sometimes we get it wrong.
Too often in our marriages, in our churches, in our homes, we want the other person to die to self, don’t we? We want them to lay down their life so we can get what we want and do what is pleasing to us. But Jesus calls us to lay down our own lives. Love is sacrificial in nature. Like we heard in the verses that ___________ read for us earlier – “love is not self-seeking.” It’s kind, and it always protects, trusts, hopes and perseveres. That is a sacrificial love because its only realized to the extent that we’re willing to lay down our own lives for another.
Jesus once said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13, NIV84) That’s how Jesus literally loved us – laying down his life for you and me as He died on the cross. See, it wasn’t man who put God on the cross that day so long ago. God placed Himself there in order to show man the extent of his love. It was a love that looked beyond self. Jesus, in the flesh – had no desire to suffer the horrors of the cross. No-one would! As the son of God He could have called down legions of angels to deliver Him that day, but He chose not to. Why? So that love would win the day and that He would deliver us from sin and darkness and death and give to us new hope and new life. A sacrificial love does the hard things in order to bless another.
And even though those words of Scripture were written long after Boaz had passed away, we see him loving Ruth with that self-sacrificing love that the Bible talks about. We see it in how he has treated her from day one. He has richly blessed her, protected her, encouraged her, provided for her – he’s treated her with amazing grace. He’s not expected anything in return. He did it out of “hesed” – a Hebrew word for “loving kindness.”
It’s the same type of kindness that we find in verse 10. Boaz says, “The LORD bless you, my daughter,” … “This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier.” (Ruth 3:10, NIV84) The kindness that Ruth showed earlier was to join her life to Naomi’s. When they were still in Moab, Ruth said to Naomi, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”” (Ruth 1:16–17, NIV84)
Ruth could have stayed in the land of Moab. That’s where her family was. That’s where her friends were. That’s where she was likely to find a new husband – among her own people. She had no bond to Naomi now that her own husband had passed away. But she chose to go and do life with Naomi just the same – to help her, to provide for her, to care for her as she got older. This is the first act of loving kindness that Boaz mentioned. The whole town knew about it and admired Ruth for it. Her loving-kindness spoke volumes to the people around her about the depth, not just of her character, but of her love. And so will our loving actions, or lack of them, speak volumes to the others about the depth of our character and the reality of our love.
But what’s the second loving-kindness, the one that is greater than Ruth had showed earlier? Was it simply to marry Boaz? That’s part of it, but it goes deeper than that. It seems Ruth could have chosen to marry anyone she desired. There were younger men around – some of them poorer, but some of them richer, perhaps – than Boaz. Boaz feels that she could have had her pick of the younger men but she chose him. Why? Because none of those younger men could necessarily act as kinsmen-redeemer, and only by marrying a kinsman-redeemer, could Ruth carry on her dead husband’s line, and make provision to take care of Naomi in her old age. We don’t understand the attachment to the land that the people felt in that day, nor the importance of the family line being carried on in this way, but even today land is of immense importance in the middle east. People identify themselves with the land. So what Ruth was choosing to do, was immensely important, not just for herself, but for Naomi.
Today a woman in Ruth’s position might say, “I’m not going to marry that old goat! I’m going to find myself a younger man to marry.” But that wasn’t the righteous choice, and it wasn’t the loving choice. Boaz acknowledges this and honors Ruth for the decision she has made recognizing in it a sacrificial love pleasing to God. But don’t get the idea that Boaz wasn’t a great catch – he seems to have genuinely loved Ruth, and was going to make a great husband, and as we will see in a week or two, God is going to richly bless their union.
It’s clear that Boaz wants to marry Ruth – maybe even thinking about it all along. He’s worked through the possibilities and as much as he would delight in doing life together with her, he recognizes that someone else has the first right of redemption. And this is where we see Boaz’s love displayed again, because his first concern is, not for himself, but for Ruth. He wants to see Ruth redeemed and blessed even if it has to be another kinsman-redeemer who does it. He doesn’t want any unrighteousness attributed to Ruth, doesn’t want to see her make problems for herself in choosing him ahead of the redeemer who has the greater claim. He’s willing to lay aside his desires in order that Ruth might be blessed and that God might be honored. It’s that whole idea of a sacrificial love that we’re seeing again and again in this book.
We see it in Naomi, who desires that Ruth would find rest and love and blessing in the arms of a godly man. We see it in Ruth, who leaves home and security, to follow her aging mother-in-law to a land foreign to her. We see it in her willingness to honor God and Naomi and Boaz as she chooses Boaz ahead of the younger men, for it is he who can act as redeemer. And we see it in Boaz who, from day one, has responded to Ruth with amazing grace and who is now willing to lay aside the desires of his heart in order that Ruth might be properly blessed.
Their example should cause us to examine our own motives in the choices we make. They each have made a choice to please God ahead of self and to love others with a self-sacrificing love. This is the very thing that we are called to do to, isn’t it? Jesus says that the greatest commandment is this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37–40, NIV84) In other words, all of Scripture, points to these two things: Loving God with everything you are and have and ever hope to be, and then loving others with a love that is deep and true, and which sacrifices itself to do the hard things. Where marriages, and families, and churches, and relationships get into trouble, is when we love God just a little bit and love others less than ourselves; when we act selfishly rather than selflessly. That’s when we start to experience hurt and heartache, brokenness and bitterness. But in the book of Ruth, we get a picture of how love ought to be expressed, both as we approach God, and as we seek to do life together with one another.
Now Ruth stays the night on the threshing floor with Boaz. The book of Judges, during which time period these events took place, indicates that the roads weren’t safe to travel at night because of thieves, and so Boaz probably tells Ruth to stay for her own protection. And yet he wants to protect her reputation as well, and so they get up before the others are up, and they head back into town, Ruth to Naomi’s house, and Boaz to his own place.
When Ruth comes to Naomi, Naomi asks, “Who are you, my daughter?” Your translation might say something like this, “How did it go?” rather than, “Who are you?” but the Hebrew is actually “Who are you, my daughter?” It’s been changed in order to help us understand the meaning, but in changing it I think we miss out on something.
Back in verse 9 Boaz asks Ruth the same question, “Who are you?” And Ruth responds with words that make it clear she is one who is eligible for marriage. Now she’s come home, after doing all that Naomi has told her to do, and Naomi wants to know, “Who are you, Ruth?” She wants to know if Ruth is still, Ruth the Moabitess, or if Ruth is now going to be, Mrs. Boaz. And so Ruth explains to Naomi everything that took place.
And chapter 3 ends with Naomi giving Ruth some godly advice: instead of being consumed with anxious thoughts, instead of trying to take matters into her own hands, as she might have been tempted to do, Naomi encourages Ruth to wait on the Lord and to see what will take place. And that’s good advice for us too as we seek to set our heart on pleasing God above all else.
Ruth and Boaz are making life changing decisions but in the process they are seeking to please God. They are making choices, not just pleasing to their own hearts, but which are in line with the sacrificial love that we are called to have for one another. They have stepped forward in faith and now they are waiting upon the Lord for what comes next. And like Ruth, we sometimes need to learn to wait, to not get ahead of ourselves, and to not get ahead of God. We need to “be still,” as Scripture says and know that He “is God.” To rest in Him, and to trust in Him, for we can be confident of this: “… that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6, NIV84)
Let’s pray …
