Show Notes
Ruth 2
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Our Heavenly Father, we do pray and ask that you would guide us throughout this life, even to the point of our deaths and beyond.
[00:00:09] Lord, we rejoice in the death of death in hell's destruction, and know that one day we will be fully in a consummated way in the kingdom of God.
[00:00:25] We do not doubt, O Lord, our current citizenship in this kingdom, your protection, your guidance, your hospitality, your love.
[00:00:35] But we do struggle, Lord, as pilgrims in this land, along with Christians throughout the world and many other lands, we do sense our weakness.
[00:00:49] We do see our lack of faith, our doubt, our struggles against sin, the pressures of the world.
[00:00:57] And so we come to you asking that through your word and spirit you would build us up today, that you would give us ears to hear and eyes to see, that we might know you and follow you with all of our heart, soul and strength. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:18] Let's remain standing and turn our attention now to Ruth. Chapter two.
[00:01:45] Ruth2.
[00:01:47] Early on in the Old Testament, a small book between Judges and First Samuel. So if you're in one of those books, you're close, you'll soon get there.
[00:02:03] If reading is tough and you'd prefer to listen, that's all right too. Let's give our attention to God's word.
[00:02:09] Ruth 2.
[00:02:13] Now, Naomi had a relative whose husband, a relative of her husband's, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz.
[00:02:22] And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him, in whose sight I shall find favor.
[00:02:33] And she said to her, go, my daughter.
[00:02:36] So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers. And she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech. And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. And he said to the reapers, the Lord be with you. And they said, the Lord bless you.
[00:02:54] Then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers, whose young woman is this?
[00:03:02] And the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered, she is the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab.
[00:03:11] She said, please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.
[00:03:15] So she came, and she is continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest.
[00:03:21] Then Boaz said to Ruth, now listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women.
[00:03:31] Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping and go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you?
[00:03:38] And when you're thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn.
[00:03:43] Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and said to him, why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me since I am a foreigner?
[00:03:54] But Boaz answered her, all that you have done for your mother in law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me, and how you left your father and mother and and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before the Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.
[00:04:18] Then she said, I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, though I am not one of your servants.
[00:04:29] And at mealtime Boaz said to her, come here and eat some bread and drip your morsel in the wine.
[00:04:35] So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her roasted grain, and she ate until she was satisfied and she had some left over.
[00:04:43] When she rose to glean, Boaz instructed his young men, saying, let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her, and also pull out some of the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her.
[00:04:57] So she gleaned in the field until evening.
[00:05:00] Then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley, and she took it up and went into the city.
[00:05:07] Her mother in law saw what she had gleaned. She also brought out and gave her what food she had left over after being satisfied. And her mother in law said to her, where did you glean today, and where have you worked? Blessed be the man who took notice of you.
[00:05:23] So she told her mother in law with whom she had worked, and said, the man's name with whom I work today is Boaz.
[00:05:29] And Naomi said to her daughter in law, may he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead.
[00:05:37] Naomi also said to her, the man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers. And Ruth the Moabite said, besides. He said to me, you shall keep close to my young men until they have finished all my harvest. And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter in law, it is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young Women, lest in another field you be assaulted. So she kept close to the young women of Boaz gleaning until the end of the barley and wheat harvests. And she lived with her mother in law.
[00:06:09] You may be seated.
[00:06:24] Well, as we talked about last time, Ruth faces a very difficult situation.
[00:06:29] She's poor, along with her mother in law.
[00:06:33] Both are widows. And they find themselves in a situation, they find themselves in a moment where they are having to rely on one of the institutions God has put in place to take care of sojourners and the poor.
[00:06:50] The institution that God put in place was a practice of leaving behind a certain amount of grain when the harvest happened so that people could come and glean from that.
[00:07:03] So if you have a field and you are going about collecting the grain which you are going to harvest and then, or sorry, collecting the seeds which you are then going to turn into food, you would not, your aim would not be to get everything right. Kids, if you have ever been told to clean by your parents, to clean your room and they expect everything in its proper place, they don't want anything out. This is a different situation.
[00:07:36] It's not about sloppiness though, it's not about laziness. It's not about, well, I did half my job. It's about generosity.
[00:07:45] They were supposed to leave, to allow themselves to just leave a little bit behind, interestingly, especially on the edges of the field where it would be easy to access, right? So somebody could come along and collect grains to eat. And that was supposed to be given freely.
[00:08:05] Built into the work was a certain amount of margin. Built into the work was a certain amount of generosity. It's a really amazing, beautiful thing that God instituted among his people.
[00:08:20] Now, Ruth and Naomi know this.
[00:08:23] They're hungry, they need to eat. They're trying to figure out what to do. They've been gone for a long time. They haven't been working the land, they don't have a bunch of servants.
[00:08:33] And so Ruth decides with her mother in law to go out and to collect some grain from the leftovers that are left. But she doesn't know who she's going to meet. She hopes she finds favor in someone's eyes.
[00:08:49] Because just because God instituted a practice and established a law doesn't mean everybody follows it, right?
[00:08:56] Just because God says leave some leftover doesn't mean that as a landowner, as a farmer does his work, he doesn't say just collect a little more. This year let's leave as little as we possibly can and still follow the law or let's just disobey and tell people to go away if they try to come and protect.
[00:09:20] Protect the grain.
[00:09:22] She doesn't necessarily know what she's going to happen. And we see that there's even the potential of assault.
[00:09:28] Naomi knows it, Boaz knows it. It seems like everybody is aware that there's a physical danger, amend others. As Ruth goes out into these fields by herself, a foreigner, a new person to the community, a woman, she faces a certain amount of vulnerability.
[00:09:53] And so it's not necessarily guaranteed that this is going to go well.
[00:09:58] And she goes out and. And she collects grain and then amazing things happen.
[00:10:05] She finds herself, as Boaz describes later, under the protection of God's wings.
[00:10:12] If you've ever seen a bird protect its young, put under its wings, it's really an amazing thing.
[00:10:21] We have mourning doves around here that are. Seem like they're constantly reproducing. If you look at those, or chickens as well, if some of you have backyard chickens or other birds, and what you'll notice is that when those. When the chicks are young, you can hardly see them, right? It's hard to even know that they're there at first because they're so protected, they're so enclosed by their mother's wings. And God is like that.
[00:10:48] He's protecting her, he's keeping her. And not just anyone but Ruth. The Moabite.
[00:10:56] The. The Moabite. The Moabite. From the country of Moab, from the fields of Moab. This phrase and phrases like it appear over and over again through Ruth 1 and Ruth 2, constantly emphasizing to us that she doesn't belong here.
[00:11:11] This is not her people, this is not her place.
[00:11:15] She has done something unusual. In fact, in the way that Boaz describes her. She's almost like another Abraham coming from a people and a place into a new place, just with faith in the Lord, waiting to see what he will do, trusting in God and his promises.
[00:11:38] When we follow the Lord in this way, when we leave families and homes, jobs, all kinds of things to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. The scriptures tell us that suffering is often a part of. Part of that tells us to expect it. And it comes on different fronts too. For example, we are told that the flesh in us, the worldliness of us, the sin that remains in us, is waging war against the spirit of God in us.
[00:12:10] That's without anything around us, right? Without the pressures of the world, without Satan and his lies, his accusations. Just inside of me, inside of you, there is a war going on between the flesh and The Spirit, the flesh is going to lose, but the flesh is fighting, battling.
[00:12:35] That's difficult.
[00:12:36] That's a certain kind of suffering. And then on top of that, we have the pressures of the world, the accusations and temptations of Satan and all kinds of other things. As we belong to God and His kingdom, there are enemies and fighting against it. And we've seen that ever since Cain and Abel, ever since the very beginning when God announced his gospel and established his people, we have seen that there have been other people in the world who have hated that and not wanted that, and have persecuted God's people.
[00:13:08] The costs of following the Lord differ from person to person. But everyone experiences it. Some in very extreme ways, some in very extreme ways, facing hunger, death, all kinds of economic trials and things like that.
[00:13:26] And for others, as one author put it, it's just the low hum of shame, potential embarrassment, the threat of not belonging, that just kind of lives in the background of the life of a Christian that says, if you do these things, if you act this way, if you follow the Lord, you're going to be weird and you're not going to like that.
[00:13:53] Maybe there will be consequences from it.
[00:13:57] All of that, that great spectrum, whether it's a kind of low hum of persecution and trials and threat in the background, or a very loud in your face, a thing that's happening, all of it is a kind of suffering that we face when we decide, like Ruth, to follow the Lord.
[00:14:18] And there are discouragements along the way and trials that come and emptiness that happens. And that's where Ruth finds herself at the beginning of this chapter.
[00:14:27] She's hungry, just literally hungry.
[00:14:32] She wants to eat. And she has a mother in law she feels the need to provide for. Naomi, also hungry.
[00:14:44] What is she going to do?
[00:14:47] How will God work?
[00:14:50] One of the things that we see in Ruth 2 is the promise of the Lord that when we find ourselves empty, sorrowful, hungry, whether it's from our bodies or in our souls, he promises to provide for us.
[00:15:09] He promises to provide for us and to give us not just our basic needs, but more than we need.
[00:15:17] There's a kind of generosity and kindness which is super abundant in what we see here in Ruth 2 and throughout the scriptures.
[00:15:27] I want to look at three things this morning. The way that God gives her more than what she needed, the way that God gives her more than she asks for, and the way that he gives her more than she sacrificed or left behind in Moab.
[00:15:44] So let's think about each of these briefly.
[00:15:48] We're meditating on the generosity and the kindness and the provision of God.
[00:15:54] All right, so number one, God gives her more than just her basic needs.
[00:16:00] Sometimes we think of God as generous and we say, okay, well, I have to say that, right? God's good, God's generous. Check that box. But we kind of think in the back of our minds that there's a certain amount of stinginess that comes with that.
[00:16:11] He fills our basic needs, but it's kind of as much as he's supposed to do.
[00:16:17] But that's not true.
[00:16:19] Ruth doesn't just get some basic seeds. She collects all day with water, with safety, and with protection. Notice, too, that it also says he comforted her.
[00:16:33] He's not just, okay, well, she's hungry. We need to make sure he gets fed. There's something about. He knows her vulnerability. And he speaks to her in kind ways, in comforting ways, in ways of blessing. On top of all that, not only does he allow her to collect the grain, but Boaz as a tool, as a means of grace by the Lord, he has her sit down at a meal.
[00:16:58] It says that she eats as much until she's satisfied. It reminds me of going to one of those restaurants where they serve lots and lots of bread. Even before the meal started, she's eating all of this roasted grain. She keeps getting past it more and more and more until she's. She's full, she's totally satisfied.
[00:17:18] More than that, she continues to glean after this and then leaves with leftovers. Probably around 30 pounds of food. She takes home maybe a week and a half worth of grain for both of them.
[00:17:35] Abundance, right?
[00:17:37] Extreme. I don't know if the extreme is the right word, but a lot of generosity. Extreme when it's compared to our stinginess.
[00:17:45] Extreme when it's compared to what we usually think of as. As generosity. And this abundance that we see flowing through Boaz, the Lord's servant, shows up in the life of Jesus in an even greater way.
[00:18:01] Now remember who Jesus is. Jesus isn't just another very generous man. He's the Son of God who comes into the world to save us in and out of his generous love.
[00:18:15] Here are a few examples of Jesus generosity in the ways that he saves us from the Gospel of John.
[00:18:21] In John 2, Jesus first miracle, Jesus turns 6 large vats, jars of water into excellent wine, right? And really good wine.
[00:18:36] In John 6, we see Jesus feeding the 5,000. He pities them. And he doesn't just give them what they need.
[00:18:44] Everyone eats. John says as much as they wanted, as much as they wanted, right? That's firsts, seconds, second and a halfs, maybe thirds. You just keep. They kept eating until they didn't want to eat anymore. There was not any more. I wish I could have a little extra.
[00:19:04] They didn't want any more food because he had given them so much. In fact, not only did he feed them enough and to the point where they didn't want any more, we read that there were 12 more baskets full of bread.
[00:19:20] In John 21, we read that the disciples caught a large number of fish and their nets were breaking.
[00:19:28] And of course, all of this was displayed in the sacrificial love of Jesus on the cross, in his whole ministry and his coming, in his dying for us.
[00:19:39] Paul writes about this in Second Corinthians 8, 9, when he says, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor.
[00:19:51] This would be like Boaz selling everything he has to provide for Ruth.
[00:20:00] Jesus, the eternal Son of God, becomes man. He comes down into the fields of this earth, finds us toiling and hungry, and under a curse that we earned for ourselves.
[00:20:14] And then the Eternal Son of God takes that curse on himself, pays the penalty that we owed out of his own blood, so that no obstacle would stand in the way between us and him, so that no obstacle would stand in the way of the fullness of our joy.
[00:20:35] A lot of people, maybe including me and you, turn generosity sometimes into a box to check a thing that we must do, a thing that needs to get done.
[00:20:48] We think about it like a class that needs a passing grade. And we kind of look around and we ask, what's the minimum I need to do to pass this class?
[00:20:57] And then we think of God like that.
[00:21:01] That's not who God is.
[00:21:03] That's not what he does.
[00:21:07] We think, for example, well, sure he loves me, but only this much, or only as much as is necessary. And of course, we want to affirm that God is perfectly wise, that he's perfectly good.
[00:21:19] I'm just saying.
[00:21:21] And God does always give us the perfect amount, but he gives it in a way that is way beyond the minimums that we think of.
[00:21:30] The generosity and abundance out of which he loves us is more than we imagine. God is not a judge coldly handing out his love in this sort of rationed way, well, this is as much as you need today, and I don't care. Beyond that, he is a generous host, a watchful provider, and he calls us to, like Boaz did, to his table, and he says, eat, be satisfied. Taste and see That I am good. He gives to us not only of the things of this world, but remember, he gives to us the life of his son.
[00:22:15] He doesn't just give us things, he gives us himself.
[00:22:19] And so that's why John starts his whole gospel this way. He says, from his faith fullness, let you imagine the fullness of God for a moment.
[00:22:31] From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace.
[00:22:39] So God provides more than our basic needs. God is doing more than what we might think of as the bare minimum.
[00:22:47] We can also say that he provides more than we ask for.
[00:22:52] We ask because our faith is weak. We ask because we want to manage our hopes. We don't want to be disappointed.
[00:23:02] We manage. We ask for very little. Or we don't ask because we're ignorant maybe of the abundance of God's love. But look at what happens to Ruth.
[00:23:13] She asks for leftovers and is given a field to stay in, she water to draw the protection of Boaz and others.
[00:23:24] She's asked to.
[00:23:26] She's asked to glean.
[00:23:28] And Boaz lets her go glean among the sheaves that have been collected. That's not the leftovers. That's all the stuff that has been gathered, put together, right? This is like when we say, you know, served on a silver platter, right? It's all easy, ready to go, you know, in a bag, that kind of thing. That's what she is told when she's told to go collect among the sheaves. This is the work that they've already done for themselves, for that household. And she's called not just to collect around the edges, but among the sheaves past her legal right. And then he deliberately pulls handfuls from it and gives that to her, sends her home with extra.
[00:24:08] It's amazing in a famous passage that if you don't know, you should definitely learn from Matthew 7.
[00:24:17] Jesus talks about this with respect to God and his love for us.
[00:24:23] I'm going to turn there and read this. Matthew 7, 7:11.
[00:24:30] Jesus says, Ask and it will be given to you.
[00:24:34] Seek, and you will find.
[00:24:36] Knock, and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks finds. And the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent. If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him?
[00:25:04] In John 16:24, Jesus says, Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full when you give a present. If you're a parent, you give a present to your child.
[00:25:23] You're not just wanting them to have a shirt to wear.
[00:25:27] You're wanting them to be happy.
[00:25:30] You're wanting their joy to be filled. Do you like it? We say, I love it. Thank you. Right?
[00:25:38] That's what God wants for us.
[00:25:40] He's not just, we got to make sure they have their stuff, like a project manager or something like that. Let's get the task done. Let's make sure it's done. He says, what can I do that the joy of my children is full?
[00:25:59] This is the greatness of God's generosity.
[00:26:04] The last thing we'll mention is that God gives more than Ruth and more than we leave behind.
[00:26:09] She leaves her family, her community, her native land. Like I said, she's like Abraham in this moment. But as with Abraham, God does not leave her empty.
[00:26:19] He promises to be with those who follow him. And she does that. And we see that with Boaz.
[00:26:26] Now you might wonder, where's my Boaz?
[00:26:30] I don't have this kind of provision. I don't have a patron in my life who's just giving me beyond what I. What I ask for.
[00:26:40] There's two things to remember about that. One, you might have more than you recognize.
[00:26:46] I won't say too much about that, but something to think about.
[00:26:49] And number two is to think about this.
[00:26:52] The way that God wants us to think is the way that Abraham thought in that he, as he pilgrim through this world. He didn't see this world as the end. This was not the end point. He's not evaluating everything in light of this world. Hebrews tells us that he was seeking a better country and he saw it from afar and. And he would get it.
[00:27:17] So this is how Jesus puts it in Luke 18.
[00:27:20] There is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God. Who will not receive many times more in this time and in the age to come, eternal life.
[00:27:37] No one.
[00:27:40] No one who leaves father, mother, house, child for the sake of the kingdom of God. Who won't receive many times more in this time and in the age to come? Eternal life just pouring out.
[00:27:57] So that's how we can think about these things.
[00:28:00] God does provide for us in this life in very rich ways. Even in times of deep and difficult times, suffering and persecution, and even more so in ways that we can only begin to imagine in the life to Come.
[00:28:16] That's why Paul says in Romans 8:18, I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
[00:28:28] It's not even worth comparing, not even worth thinking about how different these, these things are.
[00:28:36] Because as he says in Colossians 3, 4, when Christ, who is your life, appears the day of his coming, then you also will appear with him in glory.
[00:28:49] Whatever you have sacrificed, whatever you may be sacrificing, whatever cross God calls you to bear in the coming days, years, months, whatever, it doesn't even begin to compare with the fullness of joy that is promised for you, the glory that you will have in Christ when we come into the glory that he himself has.
[00:29:19] Following Jesus costs something, sometimes even great things.
[00:29:25] But the generosity of God, the abundance of God, the kindness of God, the hospitality of God is very great and will sustain all his people.
[00:29:39] This means that you can stop worrying about what you lack.
[00:29:43] This means you can stop worrying about the things that you hope to get in the future.
[00:29:49] And you can relax and you can praise God that you have him who has promised himself to you and you have a place at his table.
[00:30:00] Let's pray.
[00:30:02] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your goodness to us, and we ask that you would bless your word to us as we meditate on your generosity and your goodness.
[00:30:12] We thank you for all that you did through Boaz and through Ruth. And we ask that you would do similar things us as we have received so much from you. Help us to also be generous to others and to be generous in your name.
[00:30:28] Help us to build margin and time and resources in our lives, that we might give that to others in the praise of your name, that we might demonstrate the kind of generosity that we have seen and where we are doubtful and where we are afraid and where we are worrying about what we have and where the suffering is difficult. Lord, we ask that you would comfort us, that you would speak kindly to us, your servants, and that you would take care of us. Lord, thank you for healing the brokenhearted and comforting the downtrodden, even us. O Lord, we pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
