Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

One of the wonderful things about Advent is the love of God on full display through the life of Jesus Christ.

We see God’s love in sending His Son as a baby.

We see God’s love in Jesus growing up and teaching, healing, and discipling others.

We see the ultimate display of God’s love on the cross as Jesus Christ died a criminals death for sinners like you and me.

We see God’s love from Genesis to Revelation as God loves Himself and us enough to not leave us where we were at… but He came.

He didn’t send an army of Angels.

He didn’t send another prophet.

He didn’t send a human king.

He sent His Son and as we look back, we celebrate all that Jesus has done!

But, we also look forward and we know that God’s love is an adoptive love that will impact us for all eternity if we’re born again followers of Jesus Christ!

Several years ago there was a pastor at home with his school age kids because it was a snow day.

He had a plate full of things to do so he told them that they would play in the morning and then around lunch time that he’d need to get a couple of things done and then they’d play more outside in the snow in the afternoon.

Sure enough, they played in the morning and after lunch the dad went to work.

About 30 minutes into working his daughter came into his office and said, “Daddy, is it time to play again?"

The father said, “I’m awfully sorry, but I’m in the middle of preparing Sunday’s sermon and I’ll be done in 1 hour - then we can go play!”

The daughter said, "Okay, when you're finished, Daddy, I am going to give you a great big hug."

He said, "Thank you very much."

She went to the door and then she did a U-turn and came back and gave her father a chiropractic, bone-breaking hug.

The father said, "Darling, you said you were going to give me a hug after I finished."

She answered, "Daddy, I just wanted you to know what you have to look forward to!"

One meaning of Christmas is that God wants us to know, through this First Coming, how much we have to look forward to in the great Second Coming.

As we celebrate the love of our God in sending His Son, we know that we have even more to look forward to whenever Jesus Christ comes again… This isn’t because of our greatness but because of His amazing love.

This morning we’ll continue going through the book of Ruth and we find ourselves in Ruth chapter 2.

Last week Naomi and Ruth had lost nearly everything they had.

They lost their husbands.

They lost their land.

They didn’t have anything of value - so they made their way to Bethlehem.

God provided them with hope - and today we will see the bigness and purposefulness of God’s love in continuing to provide for these women.

I pray that today you understand that the God of the Bible provides for His children and loves them dearly.

Let’s study from God’s Word.

Our text this morning reminds us of God’s amazing love as He went ahead of Ruth and prepared the way for her to arrive at the perfect time to gather food and eventually meet this “family redeemer” in Boaz.

God doesn’t leave things up to chance.

He has a perfect plan.

He provides.

He loves His children dearly!

This Christmas season we are reminded of His grace and love.

Today let’s give Him thanks for continuing to be a God who pours out His grace and love on us even whenever we go the wrong way.

God’s Love Leads God’s People to a Life of Generosity (1-7)

Love is one of the most overused words in our society.

Think of some of the ways that we use the word “love” - we say that we love food, we love sports, we love nice weather outside, some of you love snow, some of you love 100 degree weather.

We love church.

We love activities.

We also love people - we love our friends, family members, spouses, children, and parents.

We use love all the time but we use it to varying degrees.

You might say in the same minute that you love pizza and you also love your husband or wife… You might mean what you said, but you love those two to different levels, right?

What is different about God’s love?

Whenever we say that God loves us or that an attribute of God is that God is love - do we mean that God loves us like we love pizza?

Absolutely not!

Whenever we talk about God’s love, we have to be careful to do so based on how it is described in God’s Word!

We see throughout the Bible that God is love

What does this mean, though?

What is the big deal about God’s love?

God’s love impacts us in 4 distinct ways: Benevolence, Grace, Mercy, and Persistence

God’s love benefits us because it isn’t based on selfish motives or interests - He loves and He seeks us out as Luke 15 tells us.

He demonstrates this love by not giving us what we deserve but instead what He deserves.

This is grace and mercy as God is compassionate toward His people.

Finally, God is patient.

He doesn’t immediately give judgment, but He continues to offer grace and salvation.

We must see that God’s love isn’t based on our greatness or something that we can give to God on our own power.

God’s love is sacrificial love.

God’s love is purposeful!

If you have experienced God’s amazing love, then you cannot help but be changed and demonstrate that same love to other people.

This is what we see in our text this morning with Boaz.

Naomi’s husband Elimelech passes away at least 10 years ago and we’re introduced in verse 1 to a man named Boaz - a relative of Elimelech.

Who is this man?

We see that he is from Bethlehem, he owns a field, he is well respected by the people, he was wealthy, and we will see that he is willing to redeem.

You and I both know people who are wealthy and have much by the way of earthly things, but they don’t have the willingness to offer assistance and help where there is a need.

This is not true of Boaz: He has been blessed by God and he uses that blessing to in turn assist those in need and bless others!

Boaz, as we’ll see next week, points us to Jesus in so many ways, but one of the foremost things we see about this person is that he is generous.

This must be a mark of God’s people!

In our world whenever someone has a need for food because they can’t afford to buy it, there are government programs that they can get assistance through.

There are organizations that will provide things like food and clothes to those in need.

In the ancient world this wasn’t the case.

You didn’t have church buildings on every block like you do in Salem where people can go to the church office and ask for assistance.

Instead, you had a system in place where the field owners would leave part of their harvest.

The harvesters, the servants, would take the majority and leave the scraps behind.

Ruth is going into this field in order to get some scraps.

There would have been other fields in Bethlehem to gather grain from… The author of Ruth tells us in verse 3 that “she happened to be in the portion of the field belonging to Boaz.”

Some would argue that this is random or luck - but we know better!

We know that this is God providing for Ruth and God demonstrating His divine love.

In the middle of a hopeless situation of loss and darkness in chapter 1, God is providing light left and right.

When did they arrive in Bethlehem?

The beginning of the barley harvest.

Whose field does she go into to glean?

Boaz, her kinsman.

Do you see that God is arranging the circumstances in this story?

Boaz takes notice of Ruth and she is provided for.

Ruth is much like Esther - and many people take issue with the book of Esther because God is never once mentioned in the entire book… But if you read these books, you can’t help but see the hand of God at work in bringing about His perfect plan.

We’re reminded that nothing happens here by accident because of God’s amazing love.

Anyone here a Hallmark Christmas movie fan?

Doesn’t this kind of have that type of feel?

You know that every hallmark movie is the same, don’t you?

Girl goes from one place to another and randomly happens to be at the right place at the right time and witnesses a guy do something really nice and he notices her out of the corner of his eye and they fall in love.

They’re all the same!

Aren’t you thankful that God does something that not even Hallmark can do?

He still works in our lives.

Sometimes He works in obvious ways and we would likely say that those are miracles… but God works in the non-obvious ways as well.

That is called His providence.

Here, this foreign, poor, widow, former pagan worshiping woman is not only present but welcomed into this field to collect food that is not hers in the first place.