Ruth 2
A Redeemer Arrives
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Welcome to God's Word for You, a Ministry of Sharon RP Church in Southeast, Iowa. We want to thank you for listening today, and we pray that you'll be blessed by both hearing God's word as well as having it applied to your life and your heart.
Ruth chapter two. This is God's word. Pay attention.
Ruth 2:1–23.
2 There was a relative of Naomi’s husband, a man of great wealth, of the family of Elimelech. His name was Boaz. 2 So Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, “Please let me go to the field, and glean heads of grain after him in whose sight I may find favor.”
And she said to her, “Go, my daughter.”
3 Then she left, 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 family of Elimelech.
4 Now behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said to the reapers, “The Lord be with you!”
And they answered him, “The Lord bless you!”
5 Then Boaz said to his servant who was in charge of the reapers, “Whose young woman is this?”
6 So the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered and said, “It is the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. 7 And she said, ‘Please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.’ So she came and has continued from morning until now, though she rested a little in the house.”
8 Then Boaz said to Ruth, “You will listen, my daughter, will you not? Do not go to glean in another field, nor go from here, but stay close by my young women. 9 Let your eyes be on the field which they reap, and go after them. Have I not commanded the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn.”
10 So she fell on her face, bowed down 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?”
11 And Boaz answered and said to her, “It has been fully reported to me, all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you have left your father and your mother and the land of your birth, and have come to a people whom you did not know before. 12 The Lord repay your work, and a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.”
13 Then she said, “Let me find favor in your sight, my lord; for you have comforted me, and have spoken kindly to your maidservant, though I am not like one of your maidservants.”
14 Now Boaz said to her at mealtime, “Come here, and eat of the bread, and dip your piece of bread in the vinegar.” So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed parched grain to her; and she ate and was satisfied, and kept some back. 15 And when she rose up to glean, Boaz commanded his young men, saying, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. 16 Also let grain from the bundles fall purposely for her; leave it that she may glean, and do not rebuke her.”
17 So she gleaned in the field until evening, and beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. 18 Then she took it up and went into the city, and her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. So she brought out and gave to her what she had kept back after she had been satisfied.
19 And her mother-in-law said to her, “Where have you gleaned today? And where did you work? Blessed be the one who took notice of you.”
So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked, and said, “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz.”
20 Then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “Blessed be he of the Lord, who has not forsaken His kindness to the living and the dead!” And Naomi said to her, “This man is a relation of ours, one of our close relatives.”
21 Ruth the Moabitess said, “He also said to me, ‘You shall stay close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest.’ ”
22 And Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, “It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, and that people do not meet you in any other field.” 23 So she stayed close by the young women of Boaz, to glean until the end of barley harvest and wheat harvest; and she dwelt with her mother-in-law.
The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Ru 2:1–23.
Thus ends this portion of the reading of God's word. Let's pray: “Lord, we thank you so much for your word. And we pray, Father, that you indeed would open our minds and ears to hear what you would have for us today, Lord, to receive it with faith and to apply it to our lives. We pray these things in Jesus's name. Amen.”
Last week, the last statement of the entire chapter was, and it was barley harvest. Naomi and Ruth had just come into Bethlehem and there was a cloud of darkness and depression surrounding them. And when Ruth woke up in the morning, the reality of her widowhood stared her in the face. What are they gonna eat? They're not from there. They haven't lived there. They don't have a field of their own. What are they gonna eat? How are they going to live in Bethlehem? And Ruth wakes up and she takes the first initiative.
She goes to her mother in law and she asks the question, verse two, “Please let me go to the field and glean heads of grain after him, in whose sight I might find favor.” She asks her mother in law permission. Ruth hasn't left her mother in law since Moab. Do you remember last week that Naomi had been the one telling her, “Go, go, go home. Go to your own family, go to your own house, go to your own gods.” And Ruth said, “No, I won't turn back. I'm gonna go where you go. I'm gonna live where you live. I'm gonna die where you die.”
And now they're in Bethlehem. And it's the first morning. And what has Ruth realized you have to do? She needs to go. She needs to leave Naomi apart for the first time. And she asked her permission. Kindly and lovingly. She looks at her mother in law in the face, making sure she knows “I'm not leaving for good. I'm not going to run back to my people. I'm gonna go find someone I can glean out in the fields with. Can I go?”
Naomi lovingly looks at her daughter Ruth, and she tells her, “Go my daughter.” She calls her “my daughter.” “You're part of my family. Yes, you have permission to go.” And the text is really funny, Ruth goes out, God is Sovereign in all of this story. But look at verse three, how it says this, “Then she left and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers.” There's meant to be a sense of irony in the story here. And it just so happened that she ended up in a field. Oh, I wonder who is behind that plot?! She just so happens to find herself in a field where she's able to reap. And it belongs to Boaz, who’s of the family of Elimelech, her father in law. And it's Elimelech who has died, but it's Boaz who's alive. Boaz’s very name means “in his strength”, and Boaz is described as a man of great wealth, or of great power. He's a man of standing in the community.
And she finds herself at his field. And the fields out there aren't too terribly different from the fields here. These aren't the big, huge fields of Nebraska or North Dakota or South Dakota that go on that seem for miles and miles, out outside of Bethlehem. These are patchwork fields. She finds herself in a field. There's no fence rows out there. She just walks out in the field and she happens to find herself in the field of Boaz.
And Boaz comes out to his field. Boaz lives in the city. He doesn't live near his field. He's a man of standing, and so he's probably one of the elders of the town, and he lives in the city of Bethlehem. And he leaves from his home and he comes out into the field and we find out a little bit about this great man. How does he address his workers? “The Lord be with you.” He calls upon the covenant name of God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, and he pronounces God's blessing upon them. The boss has come out to the field, and he sees his workers doing their work, and it's not the hot of the day yet, but they've been out there for a little while, and he announces God's greeting to them. “The Lord be with you.”
And you see a reciprocity, an exchange, between his workers and Boaz because they respond back to him in a courteous way. They don't sit there. “The boss is here.” But how did they respond to Boaz’s greeting of “the Lord be with you and the Lord bless you?” They pronounced God's blessing back upon Boss. This is a great time. The harvest is plentiful. The barley has come in. This has been a 10 year time period where there's been famine in Bethlehem. The house of bread has seen no bread and everybody's hearts now are finally merry. There's finally food to eat. The harvesters aren't going out there without work to do. But they're able to go out in the field and they know that there's going to be food for their families. And their hearts are overjoyed. The Lord bless you.
There's a blessing here, and everybody's recognizing that this is the God who has brought food back to Bethlehem. And we find in Boaz’s own character that it is Boaz who recognizes that this is God's blessing. “The Lord be with you.” And the Lord bless you is his interchange. But as he is talking to his men, as he goes out into the field, he notices someone off to the side. He doesn't know who this woman is. Hold on. I know all my workers. I know who Bob is, and I know who Joe is, and I know who Mary is, and I know who this person is. And he knows all of his workers in the field. He knows the men and the women who he's hired. But there's someone back here. He doesn't know who she is. And he asks his foreman, He says, “Who's that young girl belong to? She's not my maidservant. She's not my person that I've hired. Who is that girl? Why she's standing there?”
And the foreman answers and says to him, in verse six, “the servant in charge of the Reapers answered and said, ‘It is the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab.’” Boaz recognizes who she is. He doesn't know her name yet necessarily, but Ruth has a reputation in the town already.
It's not too different from our small town. If a new person comes into Morning Sun, people already know who that new person is. I'll never forget the first time I walked in the bank and they said, “Oh, hi, Bryan.” I never stepped foot in that bank before in my life! But people know who Ruth is in this small town because she's the one who came back with Naomi. But Ruth has a question that's a little bit unusual, and the foreman says it that way. In verse seven, “and she said, ‘Please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.’”
We need to pull back a second here, “let me glean among the sheaves.” Hold on. That's not how it works. See, in Israel you had a field and it was maybe a square field and you weren't supposed to harvest around the edges of the field. You're supposed to leave that for the poor people that they could come and they could harvest amongst the edges, and they could be able to gather a little bit of subsidence for their living. But that's not what Ruth asked to do.
Look at it again with me, where does she ask to glean from? Verse seven, “Please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.” See the men would have gone out, and with their left hand, they would have grabbed the stock of barley and with the right hand with a sickle, they would have cut it off and they would continue to fill up their right hand. And as they went along, when they're when they're left arm got full, they would have left the pile there, and then the women would have come along behind them and tied up these piles of green, these piles of barley. And after that is when the gleaners could come. After that is when the poor people could come. But Ruth asked the foreman when she got to the field, “Can I glean? Not from behind. But can I glean between the reapers and the maid servants?”
This is a pretty audacious claim for her to make. You think about how serious this might be. Imagine if someone came into your community and said, “Hey, I really don't want an entry level job. I really need a little bit more to sustain my family,” and you don't know them from Adam. Who is this person? What do you mean? How is she going to be accepted in the community? How is this forman supposed to respond to someone asking for one of the better jobs? He doesn't know how to answer it.
And so he says, in verse seven, “So she came and has continued from morning until now, though she rested a little while in the house.” The idea here isn't that she had gone out in the field and was already reaping, but that she was staying back there. So everybody else is in the field and Ruth is waiting in the back. Because she's determined that she is going to not just go out in the field and start working right away. She needs to get permission to be able to go out and actually work, to be able to do this work.
Why would Ruth ask this? Ruth is caring for her widow mother. Ruth is caring for Naomi. Ruth is asking for this job not because she's pompous and pride, but because she has a heart filled with love for her mother in law, who for some reason, can't go out in the field herself and glean. And Boaz responds in verse eight, “Then Boaz said to Ruth, ‘You will listen, my daughter, won't you?’”
Do you hear the loving tenderness in Boaz’s voice here to Ruth? He comes up to her and he addresses her the same way Naomi had done that morning. In verse two it had been Naomi, who said, “Go my daughter.” And here Boaz comes to Ruth and he says, “You'll listen to me, won't you, my daughter?” He comes to her with tenderness and affection.
This stranger has come in from Moab. This woman who once worshiped pagan idols, whose family was still probably worshipping Chemosh is now in their community, and Boaz shows her kindness. Boaz shows her gentleness. He doesn't treat her harshly, he says to her, “Do not go.” This is the middle of verse 8, “Do not go to glean in any other field nor go from here. But stay close by my young women.”
Boaz doesn't just give her permission to go glean. He says you're gonna stay right here in this field as long as you need to. You're going to stay right here. Normally, gleaning would end pretty quickly. There's only so many aluminum cans you can find on one street. But here, Boaz says “You're gonna reap the whole harvest with me.” Verse nine. “Let your eyes be on the field, which they reap and go after them. Have I not commanded the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn.”
Boaz fully encircles Ruth into his family, into his own workforce. “You're gonna go right next to my young women and more than just that even though you're a foreigner, even though you're a single lady around all these men who are working in the field, I have told my young men to keep their hands off of you. They're not to harass you. They're not to degrade you. They're not to touch you.” Boaz has said, “You are under my protection. My umbrella.”
And Ruth responds with humility. Verse ten, “So she fell on her face and bowed down 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?’”
Ruth isn't an Israelite by birth. “Why are you showing me this type of kindness?” She falls on her face and she recognized the great gift that Boaz has laid upon her. This man of strength has been gentle with her, a foreigner. And Boaz answers to her in verse 11, “It has been fully reported to me what you have done for your mother in law since the death of your husband. And how you have left your father and your mother in the land of your birth and have come to a people whom you did not know before.”
Boaz looks upon Ruth’s conversion that we looked at last week. He looks upon Ruth’s love for her mother in law, Naomi. Her desertion of the people who she loved. The culture that she was from, the land that she knew, to show kindness to her mother in law. And Boaz says, “I've heard about what you did. I'm showing you grace.” And he pronounces the same blessing on her that he did to his men. Verse 12, “The Lord repay your work and a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.”
When Ruth came from Moab to Israel, when she had left the land of Moab and traveled across the Jordan River Valley and come to the house of Bethlehem, she came to seek refuge from the Lord God of Israel. And for seeking refuge in the Lord, Boaz says, “The Lord bless you in your labor.” And Ruth responds again. She doesn't puff herself up, does she? In verse 13, she doesn't say, “Oh, yeah, I know. I did the right things. Yep.” No, how did she respond? “Then she said, ‘Let me find favor in your sight, my lord, for you have comforted me and have spoken kindly to your maid servant. Though I am not like one of your maid servants.’
Boaz, this man of strength is tender with Ruth, and he shows her loving kindness. He shows her grace, and Ruth humbles herself again and again underneath that grace. Then a while goes past. And now mealtime is upon them. And Boaz does something even greater. Verse 14, “Boaz said to her at mealtime, ‘Come. Come here. Come up and eat of the bread and dip your piece of bread in vinegar.’ So she sat beside the reapers and he passed parched grain to her and she ate and was satisfied and even kept some back.’”
Boaz doesn't just give her a basic level of poverty's assistance, but gives her more than she could eat. Ruth humbles herself. What does Boaz do? He elevates her to achieve a position, to a seat where she has honor, where he pours out his blessing upon her. Isn't this what we find Jesus telling us to do when he tells us when you're invited to a wedding feast? Don't take the seats of honor, humble yourself and take the lower seats. So when the Lord of the Feast comes, what is he going to do? He's going to elevate you.
This is what Ruth has done. Boaz is acting as a gracious lord here and elevating this humble foreigner to a seat of honor at his own table. And when she rises up in verse 15, Boaz commanded his young men saying, “Let her glean even among the sheaves and do not reproach her. Also let grain from the bundles fall purposely for her. Leave it that she may glean. And don't rebuke her.” It's even better than just sticking back with the women. Boaz, it's not just that giving her a little grace is enough. He pours out grace upon grace to her. When Ruth is gone, he takes his men to the side. He says, “All right, here's the plan, men. You're going to leave a little bit behind. When you fill up your left arm with a little bit of grain, I want you to loosen up your grip a little bit and let some fall to the floor. So not only is she gonna pick up from the sheaves, but when she gets closer to you, she's gonna pick up even a little bit more. And you’re not gonna make a fool of her. You're not gonna make fun of her. You're not gonna rebuke her for it. You're gonna let her do it. I'm showing her this grace, and you're gonna let her find this food that I'm giving to her.”
And so what is Ruth do in Verse 17? “She gleaned in the field until evening, and she thrashes out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. Then she went up and went into the city, and her mother in law saw what she had gleaned. And she brought out and gave to her what she had kept back after she had been satisfied. And when her mother in law saw this, she said, ‘Where have you gleaned today?’”
This is not normal! An ephah of flour or an ephah of barley fully threshed for one day's work is an amazing amount of food. In that time period, you would only get maybe one or two pounds of barley a day for your work. She comes home and she has 50 pounds of it! She comes home and you can imagine her coming home with her apron with all this barley that she's already threshed and she comes into the house and she puts it down on the ground. And you could imagine Naomi's jaw dropping to the floor. How in the world did you get all of this? And as if the barley wasn't enough, she shows her all the food that Boaz had given her too. “I even got more! We have leftovers!”
Naomi is shocked. “Where did you glean today and where did you work?” And she recognizes how much of a blessing this is in verse 19, “Blessed be the one who took notice off you.” So Ruth tells her mother in law with whom she had worked. She says “The man I had worked with today was Boaz.”
And immediately light bulbs start clicking in Naomi's mind. She knows Boaz. She knows who he is. She was raised with Boaz. Then Naomi says to her daughter in law, “Blessed be the Lord, for he has not forsaken his loving kindness to the living and the dead.” Naomi is overwhelmed. “Blessed be the Lord.” This is the same Lord in the end of chapter one that she had said that “God has made me bitter. God's taken away my husband, God’s taken away my sons, God’s taken away everything I have. Don't call me pleasant. Call me bitter. Don't call me Naomi. Call me Mara.”
And here she realizes that God has not forsaken her. The Lord loves her and has brought Boaz to provide for her through Ruth. And then she goes even further. And Naomi said to her, “This man is a relation to ours and one of our close relatives.” Ruth doesn't know who people are. When Mahlon and Chilion had left and gone to Moab and they had married their wives there, they didn't tell them what all their relatives looked like. She might have heard of Boaz in a far distant story. Have you ever talked with your spouse? And they're telling you about a third uncle? And you're like, “All right, sure, okay, you got this relative. I really don't know who exactly you're talking about.” Maybe Boaz was mentioned in a distant memory.
But here Naomi says, “No, no, no, Ruth. He's a close relative. It's a close relative of ours.” And then Ruth, the Moabitess said, “He also said to me that it's not just that this is one day's worth of labor, Mom. He also said to me, ‘You shall stay close to my young men until they have finished all my harvest.’ It's not just that I was able to go today, Mom, but he's letting me come back the whole season.” This wasn't a temp job. This is “I'm able to go and I’m able to go and harvest every day in that field. We're gonna have food to eat all year. Can you believe it? What grace!”
And Naomi said that Ruth, her daughter in law, Verse 22, “It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women and that people do not meet you in any other field.” There was a danger with Ruth going out in these fields. There is a reality that she could be abused by people. She's a foreigner in a foreign land. She's a young woman by herself, without male protection in a society that's men dominated. She says, “This is good. This is really, really good that you get to go and work in his field. He's right. Don't go in any other field. Stay there, work with him.”
“So she stayed close by the young women of Boaz and gleaned until the end of barley harvest and wheat harvest and she dwelt with her mother in law.” Ruth doesn't just get to stay there for the barley season. She doesn't just get to stay there for the soy. She gets to stay there for the wheat. She gets to stay there for the corn as well. She gets to stay there for the whole harvest season. They're going to be cared for. They're going to have food.
Boaz is going to keep showing them grace. And it is in Boaz, we find one of the most beautiful, beautiful pictures that God gives us of what godliness looks like. It is Boaz who acts like God himself in showing love to the widow. It is Boaz himself who shows us what it's like when Christ tells us that he loves us. Gentiles, foreigners, the promise. It is Boaz who shows us God pouring out upon us, grace upon grace upon grace, even though we don't deserve it. It is Boaz who shows us what it means to show loving kindness and faithfulness and mercy and justice. He is the one who shows that he is going to care for those in need. He is not going to turn away the alien and the sojourner who come and lower themselves before him and seek his grace.
This is us. Ruth shows us who we are and who we are supposed to be. We are those who come to the threshing floor of God as strangers. We are those who ask permission to glean in God's fields. The field was not prepared for you. It was prepared for the Jews. And yet God has told you to go and gather behind his chief harvester, Jesus Christ, to reap all the spiritual blessings. To enjoy all the fruits of the spirit to never go hungry; be satisfied.
You have a close relative in the Lord himself who provides for every need you have. This is what Jesus tells us in the book of Matthew, when he tells you not to worry about what you're going to eat or what you're going to drink or what you're going to wear for, the Lord will provide all these things for you. He'll bring you to the field. He'll bring the harvest to you. He is going to shower upon you, grace upon grace. For he is the one who is the great man of wealth. He owns the cattle on 1000 hills. He owns the hills themselves. He brings the harvest and he brings you to his field.
Stay there. Don't go search in another field. Don't go. Try to find food somewhere else outside of the Lord. But stay where he has brought you into his field. Sit at the table of the Lord and be fed to all your heart's desire. Stay there, glean, in the Lord's field.
Let's pray, “Lord, what kindness you have shown to us. What grace you're poured out upon us. Father, we pray that our hearts would be filled with Thanksgiving for your goodness in your love for us. Father, we thank you for your sovereignty and your providence. God, please let us walk out of these doors today, overflowing with Thanksgiving for your kindness to us in. Jesus’ name, amen.
Thank you for listening to God's Word for You. A ministry of Sharon RP Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. We pray that you would be blessed as you grow in your love for God, your love for his Word as well as your love for his people. Until next week, God bless you.