Ruth - Part 3
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Kids: You need a few things to survive, food, water, shelter (like a house) and clothing. If you have Jesus and those things you can live a good life. It’s the basics.
Food, water, shelter and clothing.
How are you needs met? Where does your food, water, clothing & shelter come from?
Looking for answers like:
(God provides for us)
(Someone had to work for it)
God gives us everything! He provides the world we live in, the air we breathe, he sends the rain to grow our food, he upholds the very universe.
God provides your every need - but he does not usually give you manna direct from heaven. He sometimes does that! But more often than not he is providing through other means.
You’ve probably heard stories about families in dire need who found cash in their mailbox, or maybe you’ve heard the stories about George Muller who ran an orphanage often having their needs supplied at the very last moment.
God can and does supply the needs of his people by dropping what they need right into their lap, but for the other 99.9% of occasions he still supplies our need, but he does it through other means.
God has created an ordered universe where he provides through ordinary means. ANd remember, ordinary does not mean bad! Ordinary means common, usual, normal. We’re being taught by marketing campaigns to think that ordinary means bad! But God’s ordinary means are very very good. And we would do well to see God’s provision through ordninary means, not only when we suspect something supernatural has happened.
I’ll ask, do you think only tend to think God is at work when something surprising happens?
Or do you think of God’s provision when rain falls from the sky? or when you got your milk out of the fridge this morning? Or when you turned the key this morning and your car started? Or when you turn up to work tomorrow to labour for a new week?
God’s provision is an all-encompasing aspect of life. He is over all and working through all. And as we have touched on in recent weeks, he is even working through the bad stuff that happenes to us.
In this chapter of Ruth we get to see several facets of how God provides for His people’s needs.
I want to tell you about 6 aspects of God’s provision that this chapter reveals.
1. God’s Provision Under Law
1. God’s Provision Under Law
If you’re not familiar with this history of God’s people, let me give you a 30-sec summary.
God chose to make a nation of people as his own treasured possession. These are the people who he would use to bless the world! We know them as Israel (distant cousin of the modern state of Israel).
This nation was enslaved in Egypt, but God delivered them from slavery and gave them the land of Canaan as their home. He entered into a covenant with Israel which is a kind of relational agreement, like a marriage. There were obligations from God to Israel, and Israel to God. God promised to bless and provide for and protect them, and they promised to be loyal to God.
Part of that loyalty was the Law. The people were called to follow the Law for how to live. It told them what was right and wrong, and how to live with one another and how to serve their God.
This law was meant to be a blessing to them!
As they moved into the land of Canaan the people quickly forgot the Law and did things their own way. And their society was plunged into bad times. This was both because they rejected the Law that was good for them, and because God said if you’re not loyal I won’t give you blessings like rain. So when they weren’t loyal there was famine and opression.
When they realised their mistakes, they would turn back to God, beg for mercy and repreive and God would bless his people once again.
It was duirning one of those cycles of famine that our story takes place.
Naomi & Family went to Moab to escape famine
Men all died, but famine was over in Israel, so Naiomi went home empty handed, except....
Her loyal daughter in law commited to stay with her and care for her and to convert to Israel’s God.
We left the story last time with Naiomi and Ruth heading home to Bethlehem...
The story continued
Now Naomi had a relative of her husband’s, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz. 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.” And she said to her, “Go, my daughter.”
Bloke named Boaz introduced - will be important later.
Ruth the Moabite - her nationality is highlighted, because it shows the tension of the senario - two widows, one of which is foreigner with no property and reduced rights. A vulnerable predicament.
Gleaning - God provided under his good covenant law to help the poor an needy. Gleaning was their way of ensuring the outcast and orphan and the poor could still get a little to subsist. Have a look:
“When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.
In other places it also says don’t harvest right upt to the edges, and don’t pick up the stuff that you drop on the ground.
They had a finders-keepers attitude to harvest. If you left it behind, or it fell on the ground it was fair game for others. But if someone came in and started actively harvesting your crop, that would be stealing.
In this way the “left overs” or a small part of the crop was intentionally left for the needy. And who was most likeley to need this? Orphans, widows and traveling foreigners. Ruth fit two of those categories. This law was for the likes of her!
So God provided under his law a way of providing for the poor, but also a way of actively practicing generosity. Lets say I have a field, and I would be tempted to harvest every little bit for my own benefit, but the requirement of the law meant that I must activley choose to leave some behind for others if I am to be a faithful servant of God.
In a world where we often take for granted the support systems in place for people who are vulnerable it is good for us to remember that it has not always been this way, and, the way we withink about the needy and put in place systems to help them is an outworking of God’s Law.
Please note: Even the poor had to work for what they got, unless they were incapacitated. They were not entitled. The law did not say you must take the portion for the poor to their door and hand it to them. They still had to get out there and work hard for their subsistence
God says “If a man shall not work, he shall not eat.” Unless you’re providentially incapacitated by injury, illness or age, you must work. You’re not entitled to sit idly by and expect that others should provide for you.
If you fall on hard times, your attitude should not be “give me what I want” but how can I work to obtain what we need?”
God’s provision ordinarily means that you work for it. God’s order is that you work for your supply. Even when you’re on hard times.
So here in Ruth we’re seeing God’s provison for her in from his Law. Because of the law of gleaning, she is able to go out and have her needs met. She still must labour for it, but the Lord’s good law has given here an opening to be provided fo in the hour of her great need.
2. God’s Provision by Providence
2. God’s Provision by Providence
Gleaning, what is it?
This means picking up the missed bits of grain in the barley harvest. The bits that were dropped or forgotten.
The harvest was all taken in by hand - usually some were in front taking down the stalks with blades, then another row of people collecting the stalks into small bundles wich were then tied into larger sheafs that could then be lugged over and beat out to get the grain by itself.
The gleaners would then follow along behind hoping to find any dropped stalks or missed bundles.
Ruth heads out to the barley harvest to glean:
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.
SO she’s come out into the feilds, a little ways from the town and not knowing the local area or who’s land is who’s Ruth “happened” to come to Boaz’s feild.
Boaz is the guy mentioned at the start of the chapter.
ALthough this all seesm to be by chance that Ruth ends up in this field, it is actually God providing for Ruth.
As Christians we understand that there’s not really a thing called “chance”.
The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.
Traditionally we have refered to the “happenings” of the world as providence - it is God’s provision whether it be direct intervention by God in a supernatural way, or from the ordinary order of the world with phyisics of atoms and weather patterns and so on.
Nothing is outside God’s hand of sovereign oversight, including the mosquito buzzing around your head when you’re trying to sleep or the wars that are happening around the world, or the policy being made in the halls of power or who you run into on your walk around the lake.
Ruth “happens” to start gleaning in Boaz field, but this “happenstance” is part of GOd’s provision for her and others.
God will bring all things to good, but we may suffer great trials before the good is seen. Just like it was for Ruth & Naomi
Do not despise the “happenstance” of your life. You may be tempted to grow angry and frustrated at the traffic that made you late, or the computer that doesn’t work, or the person who made snarky remarks to you. If you can remember that all that happens is under God’s sovereign oversight, his providence, then you will see the world in a different light. You will feel freer, you will find for joy even when things aren’t going your way. Practice humbling yourself before God in the small cirsumstance of life in practice for the more wirghty things.
Happenstance is what GOd used to save His people!
3. God’s Provision Through Prayer
3. God’s Provision Through Prayer
Ruth is full of prayers. And it is full of answered prayer. For an interesting read, you should sit down and read Ruth front to back and see how many prayers or blessings that you can find!
The whole book is really full of asked and answered prayer. And so even though in this section we’re looking at an answered prayer, it is not confined to these few verses - it is throughout the whole story.
But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.
And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. And he said to the reapers, “The Lord be with you!” And they answered, “The Lord bless you.”
Good Guys come form Bethlehem
Then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers, “Whose young woman is this?” 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.
She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.’ So she came, and she has continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest.”
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. 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? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn.”
4. God’s Provision as Reward
4. God’s Provision as Reward
Karma has merit. It makes sense but it is fundamentally flawed because it detaches us from God.
Under God the good are rewarded and evil punished. The righteous thrive, the wicked perish.
Justice is built into our hearts, and we hate it when justice is subverted, and that includes the justice of good work not being rewarded.
In our story we see a pattern of God providing for Ruth as a reward for the good work she has done
When Boaz is kind to ruth she responds this way:
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?” 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 your native land and came to a people that you did not know before.
Because of her love and care for Naomi, and her dead relatives Boaz is rewarding her.
He recognises what she has given up, the sacrifices she has made, and so he prays:
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!”
The irony here is that while Boaz is making this prayer, he is fulfilling it with providing for Ruth!
Ruth responds in humilty with thankfulness
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.”
God rewards his people. The righteous are blessed and the wicked perish.
Problem is naturally we’re all wicked, we need to be made righetous.
As now righteous people, we remember our good work will still be rewarded, if not in this life, in the life to come!
5. God’s Provision through Generosity
5. God’s Provision through Generosity
A strange thing happenes when we come to be kind and generous, even in the midst of doing a good deed our mind may be saying “don’t give too much.” Don’t go overboard.
Or you may be thinking how much can i do or how much can I give that is the bare minimum to make me look good.
In this passage we see GOd’s provision comes through people going above and beyond “minimum” kindness
And at mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine.” 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.
Giving her lunch, and leftovers to take home.
Boaz has already been super kind, and yet it keeps coming. He’s basically given her the status of his employees - you get the benefit of the coffee machine, use our water cooler and take as much as you like at staff lunches!
Super kind. Not how you are expected to treat the people gleaning in your fields. The bare minimum is leave a little for the poor, and Boaz is going way above and beyond through generosity to Ruth.
But there’s more!
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 from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her.”
Let Ruth have first crack at the gleanings, don’t tell her off, in fact, leave some extra grain out for her!
So she gleaned in the field until evening. Then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley.
SO Ruth collects a huge ab=mount of barley, about 22L! Might not seem like alot to us, but if you had to do it all by hand from “left overs” you found in the feild, that’s a good haul.
Bit over a week’s food for two people form one days work.
At that rate, if Ruth worked all barely harvest and all wheat harvest, then they would have had enough food for Naomi and Ruth for two thirds to a whol year!
Boaz’s generosity is equates to about a years food. At a rough guess, modern equivalent $25k.
God provides for Ruth and Naiomi through the generosity of others.
GOd provides for us through the generosity of others. My family literally lives off your generosity, but God can provide for any of us from that.
GOd provides your life and salvation from his own generosity.
6. God’s Provision in Community
6. God’s Provision in Community
Don’t want to spend too mach time on this point, but I just wanted to note that God provides for us through community. No-one is called to be a lone wolf cut off from others. We are meant to live in community and families who love and care for one another.
In tis story God is providing for through the community - through their relatives and workers.
Look
And she took it up and went into the city. 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.
Surprised
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.” 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.”
Naomi is provided for in community - through Ruth & others. Ruth is provided for by kind good man. All the harvest comes together as a result of many laboring together. The community thrives with a godly combination of hard work and generosity.
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!” Naomi also said to her, “The man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.”
This prayer will be answered!
This detail is important for the later part of the story
And Ruth the Moabite said, “Besides, he said to me, ‘You shall keep close by 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.”
Found protection, now keep it. (there’s nothing wrong with finding protection! God designed us so that the stronger protect the weaker. Each has their advantage & disadvantage - do not despise the office in life that God has assigned you. That is pride.
Risk of being turfed out or God-forbid a young lady away from the cities be sexually 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.
Ruth took the advice and continued on.
So What?
So What?
God’s provision comes in a multitude of ways!
Under Godly Law
Providence
Prayer
Reward
Generosity
Community
Our Greatest need provided! In Jesus!