-paraphrase story
-couple, Elimilech and Naomi move to Moab from Bethlehem.
-he dies, but leaves her with two sons, Mahlon and Kilion.
-they both get married, but then die ten years later.
-Naomi decides to go back to her people, both daughters say they will go, but Naomi points out the problems of age and money, so one goes back. The other, Ruth, goes anyway.
-Ruth in an effort to help their situation decides to glean fields for food.
-ends up in Boaz’s field, a relative.
-Boaz takes care of Ruth as she gleans and gets lots of food.
-Ruth makes a play for Boaz as he’s threshing and he agrees to marry her if he can.
-He is able to and marries Ruth, the feel good love story of the year.
-okay, there’s the story in a nutshell, but there’s a little more to it. There have been billions of people hall in love in the history of the world. Why did God include this one in the Scriptures?
-because it essentially is the entire New Testament gospel in a nice story, and as he know, God likes stories. Look at the parables.
-but how?
1. GOD WILL STICK WITH YOU NO MATTER WHAT
-we’ll go back to the beginning. All the men have died. There’s no one left but Ruth, sister-in-law Orpah, and Naomi.
-Naomi decides to head home. According to Eastern tradition, the girls would accompany their mother-in-law. They would stay together with their husband’s family. So them going is not an unusual thing.
-the unusual part is Naomi relieving them of this duty. Naomi realizes that they are fulfilling their custom duties. Back then, if your husband died, you would then marry his brother to preserve the family name. But Naomi knows when both sons are gone, that’s it.
**Ruth 1:11-13a -> 11But Naomi replied, “Why should you go on with me? Can I still give birth to other sons who could grow up to be your husbands? 12No, my daughters, return to your parents’ homes, for I am too old to marry again. And even if it were possible, and I were to get married tonight and bear sons, then what? 13Would you wait for them to grow up and refuse to marry someone else? No, of course not, my daughters! (NLT)
-in reality, they didn’t have much of a chance if they went with Naomi. They would be homeless (their home was in Moab) and they would have little to no chance of finding a husband (they were older, they were married before and they were not Israelites, not good prospects in Bethlehem).
-Orpah realizes right away Naomi’s right and leaves, but Ruth stays. Ruth’s love for Naomi is so great she’s willing to give up her home, her people, he future, her chance at a new life, she even gives up her religion.
**Ruth 1:16 -> 16But Ruth replied, “Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. (NLT)
-”Do not ask me to leave you!” That’s how God is towards us. He wants to be with us no matter what.
-the famous verse people know but don’t know where it is…
**Deut. 31:6 -> 6“Be strong. Take courage. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t give them a second thought because GOD, your God, is striding ahead of you. He’s right there with you. He won’t let you down; He won’t leave you.” (MSG)
-no matter what you think you’re up against, what odds are against you, God is willing to go with you through it.
**Is. 59:21 -> 21The Lord says, “This is my agreement with these people: My Spirit and My Words that I give you will never leave you or your children or your grandchildren, now and forever.” (NCV)
-God wants to stay with you and your family.
-to put it in the New Testament, God has left us with His Holy Spirit that will be with us.
**John 14:16-17a -> 16And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate, Who will never leave you. 17 He is the Holy Spirit, Who leads into all truth. (NLT)
-even now, God’s Holy Spirit is with us, living in us if we so choose, wanting to be with us even when we have to leave the things we know and trust for other things He has planned.
-why can we trust that God will go with us?
2. HE’S OUR PROTECTOR
-God wants to help us. The story of Ruth starts with God helping His people, allowing Naomi to go home.
**Ruth 1:6 -> 6When she heard in Moab that the LORD had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, Naomi and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. (NIV)
-God wants to provide for us and He will, we just have to keep our eyes open for it. Part of why we have our “God At Work” stories here, so we can see what God is doing and remind us to keep watching for Him.
-in this story, this little history lesson, one of the ways that God takes care of Ruth and Naomi is allowing Ruth to glean in Boaz’s field.
-now most of you don’t know what gleaning is, or how to gather crops, so here’s why it’s important. Naomi and Ruth are poor women with no husbands. They can’t have jobs. There’s nothing for them. So God put a law into the Old Testament that allowed for poor people and widows to get food.
-it must be important, it’s in there three times. Lev. 19, Lev. 23 and Deut. 24. Basically it says this. When people gathered crops you got a whole bunch of hired hands and they would go over your field, chop everything down and gather it up in carts and take it to be threshed or prepared. This law God put in says basically that when you harvest your field, you were not supposed to go the very edge of your field and be super picky about what you get, and you weren’t supposed to go over the field twice or go back for what you dropped or missed.
Instead, you were to leave that for poor people and widows to gather so they would have food. Kind of like, “I’ve blessed you with fields of food, don’t be greedy, let the poor have your scraps.”
-so this is what Ruth does to gather food. She decides to go to a random field and gather food.
-do you think it was “random” or coincidence that she just happened to end up in a field belonging to Naomi’s relative?
**Ruth 2:3 -> 3So she went out and began to glean in the fields behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelech. (NLT)
-that was God at work right there.
-going and gleaning behind someone on their property, not a safe idea. She could have been abused or attacked for doing it, the owner of the field could have mistreated her. She’s a single woman working in a big lonely field. Ruth tells Naomi the owner of the field is Boaz and Naomi says this:
**Ruth 2:22 -> 22Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, “It will be good for you, my daughter, to go with his girls, because in someone else’s field you might be harmed.” (NLT)
-Naomi was thankful that God had provided food and safety for her daughter-in-law. Boaz not only let her have food, he gave her water and food and made sure she was taken care of. He even told some of the men to pull out grain and let it fall on the ground so she could have some. Why?
**Ruth 2:11-12 -> 11Boaz 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. 12May 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.” (NLT)
-when you are faithful to God and stick with Him even when it makes no sense and you have to step out in faith, God will provide for you and protect you, just like he did here for Ruth.
-but Boaz was more than a nice guy.
3. THE KINSMEN-REDEEMER
-Boaz was Ruth’s redeemer.
-in Hebrew, the term is go’el, a blood relative that is someone able and willing to redeem somebody else.
-so what does this mean, to redeem? How does he redeem Ruth?
-it goes back to the Law again:
**Deut. 25:5-6 -> 5When brothers are living together and one of them dies without having had a son, the widow of the dead brother shall not marry a stranger from outside the family; her husband’s brother is to come to her and marry her and do the brother-in-law’s duty by her. 6The first son that she bears shall be named after her dead husband so his name won’t die out in Israel. (MSG)
-remember how Ruth and Orpah stayed with Naomi at first? This is part of the reason why.
-it applied to more than just the marriage, but all the person’s property.
** Lev. 25:25 -> 25If one of your countrymen becomes poor and sells some of his property, his nearest relative is to come and redeem what his countryman has sold. (NIV)
-as a relative, Boaz had the right to redeem Ruth, to save her, to provide for her and make her one of his family. Now who could that be like? Who do we know of that treats us like that?
-Jesus! But also like Jesus, Boaz didn’t have to do this. It may have been in the Law, but it wasn’t for Boaz, he wanted to redeem Ruth.
**Ruth 3:12-13a -> 12”But while it’s true that I am one of your family redeemers, there is another man who is more closely related to you than I am. 13Stay here tonight, and in the morning I will talk to him. If he is willing to redeem you, very well. Let him marry you. But if he is not willing, then as surely as the LORD lives, I will redeem you myself! (NLT)
-this is the amazing part about God’s plan of salvation. He didn’t do it out of necessity to us. He did it out of love for us. God loves us so much that He chose us, that He goes out of His way to bring us into His family.
-but wait, there’s more.
4. GOD WANTS ALL OF YOU
-notice the plot twist. There’s some else who could redeem Ruth and Naomi. Boaz goes to talk to him and find out if he wishes to do what the Law says.
**Ruth 4:3-6 -> 3And Boaz said to the family redeemer, “You know Naomi, who came back from Moab. She is selling the land that belonged to our relative Elimelech. 4I thought I should speak to you about it so that you can redeem it if you wish. If you want the land, then buy it here in the presence of these witnesses. But if you don’t want it, let me know ight away, because I am next in line to redeem it after you.” The man replied, “All right, I’ll redeem it.” 5Then Boaz told him, “Of course, your purchase of the land from Naomi also requires that you marry Ruth, the Moabite widow. That way she can have children who will carry on her husband’s name and keep the land in the family.” 6“Then I can’t redeem it,” the family redeemer replied, “because this might endanger my own estate. You redeem the land; I cannot do it.” (NLT)
-this person did not want to redeem. He didn’t want what was rightfully his.
-it had too high a price. At first, it seems like he just doesn’t want Ruth as his wife, but there’s so much more to it.
-it sounds like a great deal. Just by being family you inherit some more land and get a woman. I mean, what can be worse than that?
-but look at it closely. He was interested in the land, which was a stretch to begin with. It couldn’t have been the greatest land. Ruth was gleaning somewhere else. Elimilech and family had been gone for over ten years, no plowing, no upkeep, no nothing.
-but the bigger problem was Ruth. He didn’t want to redeem Ruth. Why? First, it meant he would have to provide for Naomi and Ruth, give them a home, food, etc.
-then it gets more complicated. He is a redeemer, not the head of the family. The reason he redeems the family is so his relative’s family name, in this case Elimilech, can live on. So any kids that he has with Ruth as the redeemer are not his, they are Elimilech’s. Likewise, he has to give part of his inheritance to this child which will then leave the family and that land is now out of the family and belongs to Elimilech’s heirs.
-it was too high a price for him, but not for Boaz.
**Ruth 4:9-10 -> 9Then Boaz said to the elders and to the crowd standing around, “You are witnesses that today I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelech, Kilion, and Mahlon. 10And with the land I have acquired Ruth, the Moabite widow of Mahlon, to be my wife. This way she can have a son to carry on the family name of her dead husband and to inherit the family property here in his hometown. You are all
witnesses today.” (NLT)
-Boaz knew his child with Ruth would not be a part of his family, but he loved her, he wanted to redeem her. To him, Ruth was worth it.
-to God, you are worth it. Your baggage, what you think you can or cannot offer Him, what has happened to you or who you think you are when no one’s looking, God wants all of it.
-He was willing to pay the high price of the cross to get all of you, not just the parts you like or what you show to other church folk on Sunday morning.
-I don’t know where you are with God, but He is asking for all of you, and He is willing to pay the high price for it.
