A Virtuous Man-Father's Day
Father’s Day Ruth 2:1-10 1 John 4:19-20
Today we celebrate Father’s day. I got a text from my daughter, Judge Samantha, four days before Father’s Day inquiring about a possible Father’s Day gift for me:
Good morning dad, what size shirt do you wear? Medium. Large, or X Large.
Me: Good morning Extra Large.
What size pants do you wear. Me: 36 by 34.
And what size tennis shoes and dress shoes.
Me: 12 and to keep you from having to ask my wallet holds 50 and 100 bills in stacks of 10.
So you need a smaller wallet. OK
One thing we all have in common here to is that we all had an earthly father who was the instrument God used to bring us into existence. We can say thank you Lord, whether the father was a great one or a poor one, because without that father, we would not be enjoying the blessings of God today nor the gift of life today.
Let me say thank you to every man who brought a child into this world, and was committed to that child for life. You were there for the child with food, shelter, clothing, and love. Thank you to all the men present who took the place of a father in child’s life for whatever reason or circumstance, because you too have made a difference.
Thank you to the men who made some mistakes along the way, but you tried to go back and do what was right for your children. Thank you to boys who are yet becoming men, who have made up your minds, I’m not bringing a child into this world until I’ve gotten a wife that I’m committed too for life, so that I can be the kind of father God wants me to me.
Every male here was created with the possibility for excellence. Now men wouldn’t it be great if after coming into contact with us, others would look at us as we walked away thinking in their hearts, “Wow, what a man.” We may get excited to know that a woman is thinking that about us, but it’s just as important to know that our children, our family, our church, our community and most importantly of all our God are all eager to say the same thing about us. “Wow, what a man.”
Now men somebody lied to us along the way and told us the secret to having people say this about us is to drive the right kind of a car, build a home in the right neighborhood, get a job with some status, dress to kill and have the women chasing after us. There was a father who had all this and then some. He not only lived in the right neighborhood; he built the neighborhood. He was Chief Executive Office of several corporations.
His little black book did not consist of 10 to 20 names. He had an inventory of 1,000 women to choose from on any given night. Now before you say to yourself, “wow what a man” let me tell you, before he died, he said it was all meaningless. He said, “I would have been better off serving God with my life than taking the path I chose. His name was Solomon. Read the book of Ecclesiastes to see the life of a man who had it all as far as money, power, and sex are concerned and where it left him. It’s sad to say that even after God used him to write parts of the bible, to our knowledge at the time of his death, he was worshipping idols instead of God.
I want us to know that some of us as men are far more blessed than we can imagine. It is a blessing to have a wife and children that love us. It’s a blessing when others look at us from a distance and say, “I want to be like him.” It’s a blessing to know the presence of God in our lives. There are so many things that could have us, but don’t because Christ has either taken it away or kept us from going there in the first place.
The good news today is that it’s not too late for us to be changed into men of whom others can say, “wow what a man.” Jesus Christ is still in the business of taking lives that are headed in the wrong direction and turning them around and doing something great in the life of the person by putting them on the right road. To be a man that catches the eye of others, men we need to be virtuous men. The word virtuous is usually applied to women, but men we need to claim it for ourselves as well.
Virtuous means having high moral character or one who displays self-sacrifice. One who looks out for what is best for others. In our text in Ruth today, we ran into a man by the name of Boaz. He was a man of standing in his community. Man of standing is also translated as “a man of valor”. It is also translated as “mighty warrior.” You may recall when an angel went to see Gideon, he called him a mighty warrior, or man of valor. Boaz is a warrior, but not the kind that goes out and fight in battles with foreign armies. He’s a warrior that defends those who are weak.
He’s a man of standing in his community because of the work that he has allowed God to do in his life. You may recall that Naomi had been married to a man name Elimelech who had died. Boaz and Elimelech had been blood relatives from the same clan of people. They had known each other before Elimelech took his family and fled to Moab in search of food during a famine. We’re not told about Boaz’s immediate family. He could have been married and widowed. He doesn’t appear to have any children based on later events in the story.
Boaz does have a relationship with God. God has given Boaz a gift that is part of the foundation of his being a virtuous man. It is a gift that we often lack men, and its one I’m still praying for today and that’s the ability to see others as people loved by God before seeing them as anything else.
The temptation is to see others with the eyes of what can they do for me, what can I get out of them, or how can they be so stupid to not see the world from my point of view. Instead of becoming more virtuous, we actually become more selfish in the way we look at others.
Our New Testament reading said, 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. NIV 1Jn 4:19-21
One of the things Jesus demonstrated on his way to being crucified, was the ability to see people in need of God’s love. That’s why he accepted the thief on the cross who moments earlier had hurled insults at him, that’s why he prayed for those rejoicing in his crucifixion, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” That’s why while on the cross he looked at his mother, and told his disciple to take care of his mother. What do you truly see when you look at others?
Boaz had left his downtown office in Bethlehem, to go and check on what was happening in his fields. One of the things that made him a virtuous man is that the he took his faith with him to his place of employment. He valued people over products. When he arrives at the company job site and sees his workers, the first words to come out of his mouth are not, “how’s the productivity level today? Are we making a profit? Are all the other workers busy at their job?
No, his first words to his workers are “The Lord Be With You.” He’s more concerned about his workers well being, than he is he the amount of money he’s making. When we open our mouths to people that are beneath us on the social status, do we start with a blessing over them. Boaz made his workers feel better from the moment he spoke to them.
When their boss arrived on the scene, they weren’t fearful of his presence. Nobody passed the word, “Here comes Mr. Boaz, act like you’re busy. His employees, responded. “The Lord bless you.” Jesus tells us to do unto others, as we would have them do unto us. The word of God tells us that we reap what we sow. If you owned a business, wouldn’t you like to know that your employees were praying for God’s blessings upon your life. That’s what happens when you choose to be virtuous. People want good things to happen to you.
When Boaz turns his eyes away from the workers, toward the field, he is completely unaware that his next move involves the plan of God that is about to unfold that will affect human history until the end of time.
Each man, each person here has been assigned a role in the unfolding plan of God. You never know when a simple decision on your part is going to change your life forever. I can recall a moment in my life, when my wife made the suggestion that we combine our last names and become Gillespie-Mobley.
I wasn’t that eager at first, but I wanted her to marry me, so I was willing to do whatever was necessary. Little did I know that five years later, that one decision would lead to me getting paid $300 a month to attend Law School absolutely free. It was a part of God’s plan for me to help others.
For Boaz it was just a simple question. But for us, its part of our salvation process of coming to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of our lives. He asks his foreman, “Who does that young woman belong to?” Again we see his willingness to know his employees. He recognizes that she’s not one of the people on his payroll.
We don’t know who this foreman is, but supposed he had said, “Aw she’s just some foreigner trying to pick up the scraps we left behind.” Although his statement might be true, it could have messed up God’s plans for our future. If he would have had a condescending attitude toward the poor and toward foreigners, he could have turned Boaz away from what God had for him in the future. Are you tempted to speak negatively about others because of some of your own prejudices?
Boaz’s godly influence must have created a godly culture in their workplace because the foreman also took the time to see a person who was loved by God instead of one of “those” people. He said, “She is the Moabite who came back from Moab with Naomi. 7 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.”
The foreman spoke everything good he could possibly say about Ruth. Don’t you want to have a reputation for always speaking good about others. The Scriptures tell us in Ephesians 4:29-30 “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Boaz benefited from the words spoken by the foreman.
When Boaz, approached Ruth, he’s not looking at her as a woman he’d like to get in bed with. He’s not thinking about how he can satisfy any lustful desires. God has equipped him to see her as a woman, who is a child of God. Men and boys we need to pray, God instead of giving me eyes of lust, Give me the eyes to see girls and women as daughters of God who belongs to you, even though they may not know it. You might even have to tell it to them if you want to remain a virtuous man.
Boaz sees the opportunity to protect a young woman who is in a very vulnerable situation. He knows that not all men are going to look at her as a child of God. They will only think of what they can do to her. Ruth doesn’t know whom she can trust and whom she can’t. She doesn’t know which fields are safe to work in and which ones are not. She’s probably afraid as it is. When she sees the “big boss” coming toward her, she’s wondering “what is he going to say. Will he ask me to leave? Did I glean to close to the harvesters and pick up something I wasn’t suppose to pick up. Or worse still Is he going to make a pass at me.”
Imagine her relief, when Boaz starts to speak to her. Once again as a virtuous man he speaks life. “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with the women who work for me. 9 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. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.”
For the first time, since leaving Moab, someone is inviting her into his family by calling her daughter. Second she’s being provided with a job to pick up enough food for her and her mother-in-law for the next four months. Third, she’s gotten protection from the men who would see her as a sexual object and not a person. Fourth her job has been made easier, because she doesn’t have to bring her own water to the fields.
When Ruth got up that morning to find some food for that day, she had no idea of how God was planning to bless her. God knows how to bless us far beyond what we can ask or imagine and do it in the simplest of ways. Can you imagine how different her day would have been done if she had been lazy, and quit working just as soon as the sun got hot? It was her perseverance, even when it was hard that God used to put her in the right place at the right time.
She responded to Boaz 10 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?” Ruth thought that she was just a nobody with practically nothing to offer. Boaz saw so much more. Virtuous people have the ability to see us as being far better than we see ourselves. When Jesus looks at us, he sees us becoming much more than we think we can become.
Boaz reminds Ruth of her track record to date; 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.”
At this point, Ruth doesn’t know that her deceased husband is directly related by blood to Boaz. But Boaz does know it. Boaz is also related to Naomi’s deceased husband. A virtuous man will reach out to help members of his family who have fallen on hard times. He didn’t just pray that God would help Naomi and Ruth, he made himself a tool that God could use to see to it that the prayers were answered. How many prayers are you praying in which God wants to use you to do something about it?
14 At mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar.” When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and had some left over. 15 As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, “Let her gather among the sheaves and don’t reprimand her. 16 Even pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don’t rebuke her.”
A virtuous person goes beyond what’s expected. All the law required of field owners was that once they harvested their field, don’t go back a second time so that the poor people and foreigners could then enter the field to find food. Here Boaz is, not only providing Ruth with a meal, he’s telling his workers to deliberately drop some big pieces behind so that she can have more than enough to take care of herself and her mother-in-law. He’s not expecting anything in return from Ruth. He’s just being the person God has called him to be.
He has no idea, that his generosity has set into motion that one day, he and Ruth would be married. They would one day have a son by the name of Obed, who would have a son name Jesse, who would have son name King David, who would one day have a descendant who would be the most virtuous man of all named Jesus.
Like Boaz, when Jesus looks at you he sees a child of God. But Jesus sees more. He sees a child of God in need of a Savior who could pay for your sins. The word of God tells us, that a person might be willing to die for a good person. But the reality is, is that none of us are good people through and through. We all have a heart that is bent in rebellion toward God because we want to do what pleases us.
But the good news of the gospel is that while we were still sinners, Jesus Christ was willing to die for us and put us back in a right relationship with God. Jesus, being both virtuous and righteous, died the death we should have died because he loved us. Because of what Jesus did, we can be called sons and daughters of God who is truly the greatest Father of all.
You can become a child of God, by putting your faith in Jesus Christ by believing he died for your sins, was raised on the third day from the dead, and that Jesus will save all those who choose to live for him. Men, become the men of valor, mighty warriors, by allowing Jesus Christ to transform your life today.
This is a Father’s Day message aimed at men encouraging them to be virtuous men by looking at others as God sees them, especially women. Boaz is the example being used in terms of his relationship toward Ruth and his workers.
