Trusting God's Wisdom Series

A couple of months ago as Jeanie and I were returning from visiting relatives in Southern California, we arrived in Reno at about noon. So we decided to visit our favorite fast-food restaurant, even though we knew the food wouldn’t be fast. The reason for it being slow food had nothing to do with the service at the restaurant. It had to do with the lines of cars waiting to be served. However, the food is so good we were willing to endure the wait. And sure enough, as we sought to pull into the drive-thru lane, the line was so long, about 20 cars long, that we were barely able to pull in off the highway.

It was at that point I noticed something that was truly amazing on the sign announcing the restaurant’s location. Just below the name were the words, “Closed on Sundays.”

Can anyone here guess what fast food restaurant I’m talking about?

Yep!

Chick-Filet! Do you know why I marveled? It’s because Chick-Filet as an absolute dinosaur among fast food restaurant, or almost any kind of retail business, in that it still insists on being closed on Sundays. I think it must be the only fast-food chain in the nation that still holds to that policy. And I imagine almost any secular marketing consultant would think that a closed-on Sunday policy would be an absolute marketing disaster, especially for a fast-food restaurant in the United States. You are telling your potential customers that you will not serve them one day each weekend, that something is more important than the customer, and you are automatically forfeiting probably at least 15 percent of your potential income.

Now I’m sure we all wonder why Chick Filet persists in this absolutely archaic policy which all conventional wisdom would label as absolute lunacy.

Well, the answer is that founder Truett Cathy was a devout Southern Baptist who believed that church and family ought to be the priority on Sundays.

And despite the fact it is closed on Sundays, or perhaps because of it According to the industry magazine QSR, Chick-Fil-A has more than $4 million in sales per restaurant per year. This makes it one of the most profitable franchises per-location by a wide margin. No other restaurant they studied came even close.

And so in this age where the Almighty Dollar is king, guess what, Chick Filet has defied all expectations because, of all things, it puts God first. It practices,” Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all other things will be added to you.” And God is faithful even to this day to bless His people.

I mention this because our story today is all about how Following God’s Wisdom, rather than Conventional Wisdom, results in finding God’s Blessing.

We’re in Ruth chapter 2. If you weren’t with us last week, Ruth 1 told the story about how a Jewish family headed by Elimelech and Naomi, in the midst of a famine, following what we might call conventional wisdom, moved from Israel to Moab to try to improve their fortunes. Sadly, the move went badly. Elimelech died, and 10 years later, Ruth and Naomi’s two sons, who had married Moabite women, also died. And at the point Naomi and one of her daughter’s in-law decide to return to Israel to seek God’s blessings there, in accordance with the Old Covenant promises of God.

At the end of chapter one, they had arrived back in Naomi’s old hometown of Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest, in early spring. And in chapter 2, verse one, we have an explanatory note added by the author—some information that turns out to be the lynchpin for all that happens to Naomi and Ruth going forward. “Now Naomi had a kinsman of her husband, a man of great wealth, of the family of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz.”

Now the reason this is so significant is the law of Levirate marriage in Israel. According to Deuteronomy 25:5-10, if a man’s brother died and left behind a widow, he was required to marry his brother’s widow to raise up offspring in his brother’s name. Though Boaz apparently was not Elimelech’s brother, he apparently was a near enough kinsman that he could choose to exercise the law of Levirate marriage for Elimelech’s family.

And this is where the story gets good. Ruth, the faithful daughter-in-law of Naomi, who has chosen to care for her mother-in-law and adopt her mother’s God and her mother’s people at the probably expense of her own re-marriage, now that they are back in the land, proposes to Naomi that she’ll go glean in the local fields during the barley harvest to provide for them. Now this was in accord with God’s plan for providing for the needy in the Land. Farmers in those days were instructed in Leviticus 19:9-10 and 23:22 to not harvest the corners of the land or go glean what remained after their initial harvest for a specific purpose—that the aliens and the needy in the land might come and glean for themselves, and so the poor would be provided for. And of course, as was often the case in ancient times, widows were classed with orphans as among the poorest of the people. They were often destitute because they lacked a male provider.