We're in the book of Ruth.
We started this series last week.
It's a four week series because there's four chapters in Ruth,
and I've titled this series The Unseen Hand of God.
We have a Bible and brought one with you.
Go to the book of Ruth.
It's right after the Book of Judges.
So goes.
Genesis. Exodus.
Leviticus. Numbers. Deuteronomy.
Joshua. Judges. Ruth.
So it's right there at the beginning of the Old Testament,
and the book of Ruth is a book
about the providence of God, though it doesn't use that word.
We see what's called the providence of God all throughout the book of Ruth.
And I want to help us understand the
what providence is.
It's different than the miracle of God.
There's the problems of God on the miracle of God.
And God is active in both most of the time.
And this is just a recap for those of you who were here last week.
Most of time when we want God to move in our lives, we want a miracle of God.
We want him to step in right now,
do something miraculous, solve it, fix it, add it, change it, whatever.
While God does that,
that's not God's normal mode of operation.
Even in the book of acts
I cover some 30 years of time.
There's about 30 miracles in the book of acts.
That's only one a year.
That's not a lot.
We read it as though that everybody
walking around the church got a miracle, and it just didn't happen that way.
Though that still happens.
God's normal mode of operation,
this world is through his providence.
And his providence says this that God orchestrates
supernaturally the natural.
So God takes our natural world, our decisions, our mistakes, our success,
all that.
And he supernaturally mixes those together for good.
The Bible says for the good of those who love God.
And that's an important thing for us to stand to us to understand.
So the providence of God,
for those who are disobedient,
the providence works in alignment for those who are obedient.
Providence of God works for blessing.
Here's what I mean.
The Bible promises us that
we know Romans 828, that God works all things together
for the good of those who love him,
and were called according his purpose.
Jesus will tell us in John 1415
that you'll know you love me if you obey me.
So part of the litmus test of loving God is obeying God.
It doesn't mean being perfect, but it does mean when I realize there's sin
in my life, I repent, I confess it, I repent of it, and I do it God's way.
That's living in obedience.
For those who live in obedience, God's providence works and creates blessing.
That's the promise of Scripture.
But for those who don't love God, guess what?
Prophecy doesn't work that way for you.
Providence of God works for alignment,
for the blessing of those who do love God.
Because the Bible says
God providentially works together, all things together
for good, for those who love him.
So for those who don't love him, God is still providentially in control.
But those lives work in alignment for the blessing of those who do.
I look at the book of Ruth
in the book of Ruth.
This whole providence of God,
the Book of Ruth is a story about Ruth and her mother in law, Naomi.
Naomi was married to a man named Elimelech, and they had two sons.
God's providence did not work
for the blessing of those three men.
They all died
in a foreign land.
But it did work for the blessing of Naomi, and especially Ruth,
who came back to faith and came became women of faith.
Loving God
and God, providentially working these together for them.
Do you understand what we're talking about here?
Yeah. So?
So it's not like like just everybody just happens to get,
you know,
I mean, there's the common grace of God that the rain falls on the just
and the unjust.
You know, the sun rises and falls for everybody.
You know, like the common grace of God,
we all get free air to breathe at this point.
They haven't taxed that yet. So we all get the, you know,
but but God's hand of
providence works for those who love him,
but for those who don't love him, God aligns
their lives to work on behalf and for those who do.
And and so and so.
I want you to understand how this Providence thing works.
And so one of the ways we say it is this, that, that God's hand
seems most powerful when it is most unseen.
And the providence of God we don't see from the front windshield,
we see in the rearview mirror, we can look back and see,
hey, God was doing something, and this is how he orchestrated things.
We don't see it looking through the front windshield,
but those who believe in and trust the providence of God
can look through the front windshield.
Unknown of what's going to happen in the future,
and go into that unknown with confidence and assurance, because they know
that the providence of God is working on their behalf.
You follow fast.
So let me just
I think God gave this to me right before the first service started.
It was sitting right down here
and I got out this posted on our job to this down
because it just kind of hit me all of a sudden.
Let me just let me just tell you.
Contentment.
Contentment is proof
that you trust God's providence.
Let that sink in.
Your contentment right now
is your proof that you trust God's providence.
Because if you know that you love God
and he's working things right now together for your good,
there's a lot of contentment in that.
You understand things now.
So let's turn that coin over
discontentment in your life right now
is proof that you do not trust
the providence of God.
Do you understand?
And so
when we start talking about doctrine and sound doctrine,
like the providence of God, it has profound implications
on how we live and how we view our lives
and the world.
It's easy to be it's easier.
It's easier to be content when I trust that
whatever's going on right now, God is working it together for my good.
If I don't trust him, his heart or his hand,
discontentment is soon to follow.
You got it?
Yeah.
This is why Christ followers
and relationship with the father
should be the most contented people on earth.
Because we know
that all things.
We're good. You.
So I'm not to verse one yet.
We'll get there.
Let me just recap a little bit to the story of
the book of Ruth is a story of providence and redemption.
And we're going to talk about
what redemption is and how it's fleshed out in chapter two.
But Ruth, the main character, there's only two books in the Bible
named after a woman, Ruth and Esther, both in the Old Testament.
So the book of Ruth named after this,
the the heroine in this story, Ruth,
she's not a Hebrew.
She's not from the Promised Land, from a land called Moab.
And how she got to the promised land in the story of God
is that this man Elimelech, whose name means
God is my king,
didn't live like it and didn't trust God.
He was married to a lady named Naomi.
And in the land of Israel, during the time of the judges in the Bible,
there was a famine that hit.
It wasn't a natural famine.
It was a judgment of God against them because they had rejected
God as their king.
And so God allows this famine to happen in in this famine, Elimelech
and his wife Naomi and their two sons decide to move
to the land of Moab because things were tough in Jerusalem.
Actually, there in Bethlehem, Ephrathah, the very place where Jesus was to be born.
So way before Jesus is born, that there's famine.
And so they it's hard here. It's difficult.
And so they, like us,
have to solve their problem and not wait on God to do anything.
And so they move to Moab.
The thing with Moab is, Moab was a land of the people
who came about by an incestuous interaction
between the lot, the nephew of Abraham and his daughter,
and he got her pregnant.
And this nasty old story and her son
out of that into incest, was named Moab.
So all these people come from that lineage.
And so God said that whole thing is just evil and bad.
I want my people to stay away from that people
because they're going to corrupt you and lead you away from me.
And so there were all these rules and curses on like, don't go there.
And so that's where they go.
They're experiencing difficulties.
So they leave the promises of God and they go to that place they shouldn't be.
And while there, they're looking for greener pastures.
Elimelech and their two,
now with two sons, die.
Naomi's two,
two sons are married to these Moabite girls that they met in this land.
They were there for over a decade.
And so now Naomi is forced with this decision.
Do I stay here in this Moabite land or do I go back?
Do I return to God and His people?
She starts hearing that God's doing great things amongst his people.
And she says, I'm going to go back.
And she tells one of her daughters in law, Orpah tells them both,
just stay here with your people.
Orpah says, yes, I will stay here with my people.
And Ruth says, beautiful, beautiful sentiment.
No, Naomi, where you go? I will go.
Your people will be my people.
Your God will be my God.
Where you die, I will die and they'll bury me there, she says,
I want to I want to convert to this this God that I hear you talk about now.
And so Ruth and Naomi make their way back to Bethlehem, Ephrathah
in the Promised Land.
Now that was all. Chapter one.
And so chapter two is like, they're here now in the Promised Land.
And we
start to see this story, both of Providence and redemption.
Redemption is when you buy something back, you redeem it and make it whole.
And we'll see in chapter two, these types, we're going to be introduced
to a man named Boaz.
And Boaz is a type of foreshadowing of Jesus the Messiah.
And Ruth will become his bride,
a Gentile bride,
just like the churches, the the non-Jews, the like the Gentile bride of Christ.
We're going to see these types of this great story of of redemption,
but we're also going to see the redemption of this broken
woman named Ruth, this broken outcast named Ruth.
And we're also going to see the redemption of our hero, Boaz.
It's an amazing thing that God does.
And we'll I'm going to say that for the end.
But this is where we are.
And right at the end of chapter one, it says, they came back.
They just happened to come back right at the barley harvest, right as the
the as the as as the, as the,
the produce was coming back
as, as, as the famine in this part apparently was being lifted.
It was a time of great abundance.
They just happened to.
Have you ever had those moments in life when you look back and like,
you know what, I just happened,
but it sure worked out well, right?
Yeah. Right. I just happened.
They happened to be here at the right time. I happened to be there for Adam.
I happened to make this vision and it just happened to.
That's the providence of God.
If you love him.
And so,
right at the barley harvest, let's pick up chapter two, verse one.
Now, Naomi had a relative of her husband's,
a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz.
So this woman, Naomi, her name means pleasant.
She has lost everything.
She's going to change her name to bitter because she's lost her husband,
her sons, her possessions, her land, our home, everything.
She had a relative back in Bethlehem,
Ephrathah a relative of her husband.
This is going to be a really, really important.
And I'll unpack it as we go through this process.
Just remember that this guy Boaz is a relative
of her late husband,
and the Bible says he was a worthy man,
literally a wealthy man, a man of great wealth.
Both.
Okay, so during this time of famine,
Elimelech, Naomi and their two sons leave
because obviously they don't trust God in times of trouble.
So they leave.
But obviously everybody didn't leave.
Boaz stayed.
Boaz stayed where God had placed him.
He stayed in the promises of God in the presence of God
and in the presence of God's people.
And the Bible says specifically that he was a wealthy man.
He has a lot of fields.
He's a farmer.
How does a farmer become a wealthy man
in a time of famine?
By the grace of God and his providence,
working things together for his favor.
Right. So here's what happens.
We get in these times of famine and difficulty and pain,
and we think God isn't doing anything.
I have to go.
I have to leave.
I need to solve my own problem rather than just staying.
And trusting this almighty, providential
God to work things together for good, right?
Right.
They left,
and three of them died
and she lost everything.
Boaz stayed
trusted
God's heart and God's hand
and increased his wealth in a time of famine.
Amazing.
Absolutely amazing.
Don't chase Moab.
Some of you need to listen to me right now.
Well, don't chase Moab.
Stay.
I don't know how you translate that.
You're old right now, but you need to hear this word.
Stay.
Praise God.
They don't chase Moab.
Stay.
Trust his hand.
Trust his heart.
Trust his providence.
Stay.
Like a verse two and three.
And Ruth, the more I 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, or go, my daughter.
So she she set out.
Ruth 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.
Let me just unpack this for a minute.
This idea of
gleaning this was God's welfare system for his people.
In ancient Israel.
The law of gleaning comes to us from Leviticus 19, verses
nine and ten, and I have it on the slide.
I want to read it for you when you reap the harvest of your land.
He's talking to the, the, the, the farmers.
When you reap the harvest, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field,
nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest.
Go to the next slide, and you shall not glean your vineyard,
nor, shall you gather every grape of your vineyard.
You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.
I am the Lord your God.
So this is what he's saying,
he saying, you farmers have, you know, barley, wheat, grapes, whatever.
When you go to harvest the crop,
you don't harvest the edges and you don't harvest the corners.
Leave those.
And as your harvesters move through the field,
if they drop something, they're not allowed to pick it up.
Okay. Why?
Because God knew that there were widows
and orphans and the poor amongst his people.
And he said, you and foreigners, okay?
And he said, you have to leave what's there so they can come through
and pick up what you drop and what you leave behind.
It's estimated that up to 20% of the farmers production
was left on the field for the poor and the needy, and the foreigner.
And what God is saying is twofold.
One of the things that he's saying now, pay attention here is that you
who have be generous with it.
You're leaving 20% behind.
You and Boaz willingly
left 20% on the table.
Do you know why?
Because he knew that what he had wasn't. Is.
It was by the grace of God.
So for those of us who have
the implication command here is be generous with it.
Don't hoard it. It's not yours anyway,
the other implication here in Scripture
is if you don't have be willing to work hard,
the welfare system of this country is broken
and is created a nation of beggars.
The welfare system and God's economy was this.
You have must leave some on the ground for those who don't up to 20%,
but you who don't have to be willing to work to get it.
You don't get free handouts.
What it does is give provision for the poor and dignity to the poor.
There's nothing dignified of walking up to the government with a handout.
It robs people of their dignity,
a rostrum of their personhood, and it makes them beggars and slaves.
And God
says, I do care about the poor, and I want to take care of the poor
through the people through whom I have given much to.
But the poor must work so they keep their dignity.
They understand
that's the law of gleaning.
And so Ruth is sitting here.
She has no idea of this law.
She's been in motion, raised in Moab.
And on their journey back, I had just imagined Naomi telling Ruth
all the glory of this gracious God, that she's coming back to his providential
hand, his miracle and his goodness and his grace and his favor.
And so when they get back there, she asks her mother in law,
May I please go to work?
I love this woman. Yes,
she she virtuous,
honorable, hardworking.
She's in need.
And she doesn't just stay home.
And I'm just going to pray and ask the Lord to intervene.
I'm sure she did that.
And then she went out and worked to understand she had a need.
Yeah.
And she's so gracious to honor her mother in law and ask permission to go work.
She had every right to.
But she honored those over her.
May I please go?
I want you to understand, I'm going to talk about this.
I'm going to talk about this later, but I just want to introduce it here.
When you trust the providence of God, it
creates confidence and produces momentum.
Just keep that in your heart.
Don't show that slide yet.
I'm not there.
Just think about it.
You guys are doing great now. Thank you. But hold on.
Just keep this in your mind.
When you believe in trust the promise of God,
it will create confidence in you and it produces positive momentum.
And both are super important.
Now listen.
If you have children,
you need to teach this to your kids.
The providential hand of God,
because it will create in them a great deal of confidence
and it will produce a great deal of momentum.
Nothing will slow them down, not because of who they are,
but because of the hand of their God.
Your kids, my kids when they're young.
But why is this happening? Why does that happen?
And how come I don't?
How can they do I don't there's why don't the
and that's what they're supposed to do.
They don't know they're ignorant. They're children.
And so
those of us who are not ignorant, who know God.
So listen, relax.
It's God's providential hand.
You trust him as all over your life.
It's not going to go like you expect.
That's okay. Yeah.
And it creates this incredible
confidence when things don't go well
and this incredible momentum that though this didn't, it's not going to deter me.
Do you understand?
And so here's this woman, Ruth.
She's lost her husband.
She's lost her family.
She's lost everything that she knew growing up with.
And she's here in this land.
And she's not deterred, she's not downtrodden.
It's just like, hey, can I go work now?
What incredible woman, incredible faith.
And she just happened
to come to the part of the field belonging to God just happened.
Can you look back at the.
Just happened times
time and time again?
Listen for those walk in and faith that Jesus, nothing just happens.
It's Amen.
Look at verse four.
And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem.
And he said to the reapers, and the Lord be with you.
And they answered, the Lord bless you.
Now this is a job site.
Have you ever worked construction or in the fields?
This is not usually how people talk.
Your foreman shows up.
The Lord bless you
and all the good stuff here and the Lord be with you.
And I just like this.
But this guy.
But he's just, he's a he's larger than life is good and he's a faithful man.
He's a man of God, is a man of integrity.
And in the time of the judges, when everybody was running away
from doing all that through this cultural moral relativism, nobody cared about
this was the one guy, the shining light,
the standard of a godly man.
Who leads
with God, who leads from the place of faith.
He's going to run his business this way.
He's going to treat his employees. This way.
And in response, they love him back.
It's just this guy.
It's just amazing.
Verse five.
Then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers,
whose young woman is this?
Now the difficult thing in the Bible, we don't have inflection.
We just read in his words.
And it could have been he sees the new woman gleaning
because he knew who was gleaning and was like, hey, who's the new one?
I got to keep track on the ledger.
Could be that or
it could be like the.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, who was this young chick over there?
Right?
I mean, let's just be real.
Let's not get too spiritual.
Who is this woman?
Verse six.
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 she's after the reapers.
So she came, and she has continued from early morning
until now, except for a little, you know, ten minute breather.
This servant.
Now, I told you already in the book of Ruth we have these typologies.
Boaz is a type of foreshadowing of Jesus.
Ruth is a type of foreshadowing of the Gentile bride of Christ,
the church, this unnamed servant in the Old Testament.
We have a few different instances when the an unnamed servant does
the bidding of the master to go
look for and prepare a bride for the master.
The unnamed servant is the type or a foreshadowing of the Holy Spirit.
What we know in the New Testament from Jesus is he says, the Holy Spirit
will not testify about himself,
won't talk about himself, but only what he hears from the father about the son.
So the the Holy Spirit, who never talks about himself,
only points people towards the master.
The unnamed servant doesn't talk about himself, only points
the one who will be a bride to the master.
This is the Holy Spirit's role in our world and in our lives
leads us to the one we're to be betrothed to.
Reports to the one of the condition of his bride.
We see the Holy Spirit here.
And she is the one.
And she asked if she may glean amongst the others.
I love this because what she could have done,
she had a legal right to this Leviticus 19.
She had a legal right, and she could have come to the servant.
And Boaz the servant, said, hey, I'm gleaning I have a legal right to.
I have a legal right to this.
You can't deny me of my rights.
You better not try to transgress a marriage.
This is my legal right. I'm asserting my rights.
A right, because after all,
that's what good all Americans do.
I have a right.
You have no right to.
You know, cost me on this.
And though she has a right,
she leads with gentleness and honor.
A virtuous woman.
She is Proverbs 31.
And so she has a right.
She says, I will honor you and your authority,
and I would like your permission.
Please pay attention
to the virtue of this woman.
Verse eight.
Then Boaz said to Ruth.
Now listen, my daughter,
not really his daughter is just a like a real tender language here.
Do not go to glean
in another field, nor 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.
So this is is doing.
We have to understand.
He's saying, look, stay with me
and stay with my people.
You're safe here.
Stay here.
Don't look elsewhere.
And this is exactly what Jesus would say to us.
Stay with me.
Don't look elsewhere.
Don't wander off.
Stay with me.
Boaz knows
the goodness that he will give this young lady.
She doesn't know it yet, but Boaz does. Listen.
Jesus knows the plans.
He has for you.
You don't know it yet, but he does.
And his word to us is stay with me.
Stay with me.
Do you hear this?
Yeah.
And honestly,
I think one thing like this is also the first indication of there's a,
there's a budding attraction between Boaz and and Ruth happening right now.
And Boaz, his role as a man
is to provide and protect.
That's what he's doing here. Stay with me.
Follow the Reapers you will glean along the way.
I want to provide for you.
And I've commanded the guys not to mess with you.
I want to protect you.
Now, listen, men, this is biblical masculinity.
Not because
women are ineffective or can't provide for themselves for comfort.
None of that at all.
This is just a reflection of the heart of the father.
To provide and protect those God has given to us.
This is biblical masculinity.
Ladies, please, if you're married
and your husband says, sweetie, I just don't like you driving at night.
He's not being condescending.
He's being protective.
To understand this.
And he says, honey,
I would rather work two jobs than borrow money from anybody.
He's not being arrogant. He's.
He wants to provide.
And any man that doesn't lead with provision
and protection has a broken soul.
This is biblical masculinity.
And this is hard wired in the in the core of a man
and women in or moms in your sons.
This is who your sons are.
And that's why sometimes they blow up
because they're figuring out how do I be a protector?
It's okay. It's good.
Like nurture that in biblical, godly ways.
This is a godly man says, I'm going to provide for armor, protect you.
You just have.
And I commanded the young men not to mess with you.
This is the first anti-sexual harassment law we have on the books,
and I am I might just go something like this.
Just go with me. In my mind, like Boaz is big old guy.
He's.
He's got all this,
you know, this farming system, this big conglomerate he's in charge of.
He rolls up on the fields and is, you know, in his F-250
or whatever is okay, come on, team meeting.
Get over. Come on. Get over here right now. Good.
Stop it! Get.
We got to get together in. Listen.
We all know the new girl.
All right.
No eyes over here. Quick! Look in her eyes. Over here.
All right. Right here. Yep.
Listen, don't mess with her.
You don't talk to her.
You don't touch her.
You don't even look at her.
I'm at. I'm saying.
Listen, you see, all these fields I own, they will never find your body.
I just see it going down like that.
You know what I'm saying?
A little sense of an archetype.
You know, you're like a, you know, because a big on knife on the size,
like this.
What's he doing?
He's providing for just protecting her.
Boaz has such great
things planned for her that she doesn't even imagine right now.
So does God for you.
Just stay in that,
I don't know what verse I'm on.
Well, now on ten.
Then she fell on her face down into the ground.
She's an act of of of honor and said them.
Why have I found favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me
since I'm a foreigner? Let me just say this.
But me, I'm going to read more. Let me run!
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 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.
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.
Listen, she has lost everything to her husband.
Like I said, her family, she's in a foreign land.
She lost everything she had in her homeland.
She's living with a bitter, bitter, bitter woman.
Rightly so.
This woman, Naomi, has left all of her family.
She went to a land, lived there for over a decade. Her son died.
Her husband died her once a night.
Her other son died. She lost everything.
No doubt she's bitter, right?
I mean, we can understand this.
And Ruth is living in this nasty, bitter, dark environment.
Lost everything.
And has she ever asked the question, Lord, why all this bad?
The only question she's asked.
Is why all this good to me? I'm.
Do you see that?
Most of the time when you and I go through deserts and seasons
and pain, our first question is, what?
God, why?
Yeah.
And Ruth's question is.
I'm a foreigner to you.
Why the grace to me? I'm.
The are attitude.
God, I was once outside your family.
You've been so good.
Why would you be so gracious to me?
Do you understand?
Yeah.
Profound for me.
See? And this is what?
Now you pulled that slide. This is what I'm saying.
Providence creates confidence and produces and creates
positive momentum.
This is what it does.
I don't know why, and
I don't like what's going on right now, but I trust the providential hand of God.
And when I'm
living in that realization, it creates incredible confidence.
I don't like what's in front of the windshield,
but I have confidence.
I don't like what I'm living in right now,
but it's not going to slow me down.
Momentum is so huge for it, so huge to have here.
Here's the thing about momentum.
Momentum is so powerful.
You take a big locomotive and put a three inch wood block in front of its wheels,
and a three inch wood block will stop a locomotive
from moving because it has no momentum.
But you take that same locomotive and get it up to its top speed.
It has so much momentum that you put a three foot,
concrete wall in front of it and it won't stop it.
That's the power of momentum.
And Christ followers ought to be living with the most confidence and momentum
in anybody on the planet. Why? Because we know
the providence of God.
You follow well.
And if you've learned that, you darn well better teach it to your children.
Yeah.
And if you haven't learned it, it darn well better learn it.
And I love this about Ruth, that she is more amazed.
And this is what happens when I trust God's providence.
I'm more amazed by the grace given to me than I'm bitter
about what's taken from me.
When I understand
the providence of God, let me move through this.
Just a few more verses.
And that meantime Boaz said,
come here and eat some of the bread and dip your morsel in the wine.
So she sat beside the reapers, and he pastored, to her roasted grain,
and she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over.
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
put some out from the bundles for her, and leave it for her to glean,
and do not rebuke her.
So we invite her to dinner,
and my Bible says, when she she ate till she was satisfied.
The literal translation is that she kept some back
so she didn't eat everything on her plate. Why?
Because some
know.
Because it's a first date.
And ladies, you don't clean your plate on a first date.
You don't.
You don't ask for a second.
I'll have salad.
Right
now, she's also thinking about Naomi.
She's like, I don't want to eat at all. It's.
I gotta take some home.
I just like the way I think more.
But she's virtuous. And.
And Bill says, let her glean amongst the sheaves.
The sheaves after the harvest
is come through, and they gather and they bind it up.
That's a sheaf of.
And then they drop it on the ground,
and they let the others come by and pick up all these sheaves.
And so he says, listen, yes, she has a right to the edges, in the corners.
And this has a right to what's just fallen.
But let's, let's go beyond what is legal,
let's grace her, let her glean, even amongst what
we've gathered, and even take some extra and throw it out for her.
She Boaz could have said, look, God, I'm right before you
because I've done what you asked, I obeyed that was it I but
but Boaz knows
that what he has is come from his, and it comes from God's.
And so he can be extraordinarily generous.
So he goes above what is required.
He doesn't do it here.
He goes up by beyond what he gives more than
what is requested by God and commanded by God,
because he knows
he's been given so much by the gracious hand of God,
so he can extend that same grace to others.
Do you understand that?
So he becomes this incredibly generous man, because he knows
that God will use to measure to him what measure he used to give out.
He wants a lot
from God, and so he gives a lot because that's what the Bible says.
Yeah, it's just beautiful.
It's interesting to me to that.
Just let me just say this, that Boaz had no idea what hung
in the balance of his obedience and generosity.
Boaz knew this was the law from God.
I'm going to be it.
And God's been gracious and generous.
I'm going to be gracious and generous.
He had no idea what was hanging in the balance, what was hanging in the balance.
His bride.
He wasn't saying, look,
if I be obedient and I'm gracious, God's going to give me a beautiful woman.
He didn't know that. He didn't say that.
He said, I'm going to be obedient. Oh, God says,
and I'm going to be generous with that.
He's giving me.
He had no idea what hangs in the house.
Listen, my friends,
you have no idea what's hanging in the balance of your obedience.
You have no idea what's hanging in the balance of your generosity.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
You have no idea what the providential
hand of God is orchestrating right now on your behalf.
Moving heaven towards you and for you in response to your obedience
and your generosity. You have no idea. You
so stay.
Be obedient
and go beyond what's expected into grace.
Follow my.
So she gleaned in the film till evening.
Then she beat out what she had gleaned.
And it was about an ephah barley that means a whole bunch.
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 because she kept some back.
Because she didn't want to, you know, look like a porker eating on the first day.
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 work today is Boaz.
And Naomi said to her daughter, May he be blessed by the Lord,
whose kindness has not forsaken, the living or the dead.
Naomi also said, the man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.
This is really important for the rest of this book.
In the next few chapters,
the Hebrew word is called goel, and it means that kinsman redeemer.
The Old Testament law was if a woman was left husband less than the
someone from the close family had the obligation to redeem her
out of her poverty and singleness and redeem her into a family.
That was the law.
And so Boaz is one of those people.
It's the kinsman redeemer.
It's the Hebrew goel issues 23 times in four chapters.
It's the most often, Ruth is uses
that word more often than any other book in the Bible.
Per capita for chapter.
So this is an important thing.
And we're going to you're going to learn about this a lot next week.
So but keep that in mind for next week.
He's a he's a redeemer is a kinsman redeemer.
Verse 21 Justin up.
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 her, Ruth, her daughter in law, it is good, my daughter,
that you go out with this 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, wheat, and the harvest.
And she lived with her mother in law. Listen,
she said, it's good
for you to go out with him.
Don't leave him and his people,
because wherever you go, outside of him
and his people, you will be assaulted.
Listen, dear friends,
stay close to Christ and his people.
Everything outside of that will assault you.
Do you understand?
You hear me?
Right now?
Boaz.
The picture of Jesus redeeming a Gentile bride, the church.
But also this is the story of Boaz.
How many of you know who Boaz is?
Mom was.
Joshua to a lady named Rahab.
Rahab was a Gentile,
a non Hebrew in Jericho, who was a prostitute.
When God's people came into Jericho, before the walls came tumbling down,
they two spies met this lady Rahab.
This lady Rahab has a sensitivity to the God of the Hebrews
and promised to hide the spies, God's people.
So God could do his work.
Out of that agreement, Rahab
was saved, adopted into God's family.
A former prostitute adopted into God's family redeemed her life.
Out of her life came this little boy she called Boaz.
Boaz stayed in the land of God's
promises, stayed with God and with his people.
And God providentially orchestrated his life to be a man of great wealth
and prominence, to then be so comfortable with broken lives,
to meet this other little foreign woman of a broken life and redeem her.
If God can do that through a broken man,
a broken prostitute in Jericho, and a broken little boy,
the son of a prostitute, what can he do in your life?
Amen.
Oh, Redemption.
Dennis.
And so, Naomi,
whose name has been changed to bitter, says, now this is good.
And she begins to recognize the unseen hand of God.
And that realization starts her transformation.
And Naomi's advice to Ruth is, what?
Stay.
Why don't miss this?
Why does she encourage Ruth to stay?
Because Naomi didn't stay,
and she knows the peril and the destruction
of walking away.
And she says, dear sweetie, please don't go down that road.
I've been there
and walking away from Christ and walking away from
his people is so much pain and destruction.
You don't want to invite that into your world.
Stay.
God's doing something good.
Stay there.
Trust God's providential and unseen hand
because we know what Romans 828 says, I know the plans,
and they are for your good.
All things together.
And we know what Romans nine says, that those who hope in
the Lord will never be put to shame.
And when you're living like that,
confidence and momentum,
we got a good God.
Good stay.
Father, thank you for this day.
You are a good God.
Encourage us more and more and more to stay.
You know, some of us have walked away.
You know who we are.
You love us anyway.
Thank you, thank you. Love us though we are.
But you call us to change.
You call us to trust.
In father,
thank you that we can trust your providential hand.
I want to give you an opportunity right now.
To trust God's providential hand.
To move from discontentment to contentment.
I don't know what that means in your world.
I don't know what you're going through right now, but I.
But my guess is
that if you could correct God, you would.
And maybe this is the day where you say God,
I don't want to offer you any advice.
I don't want to give you any direction.
I just want to trust your providential hand.
I choose you today.
You you.
Even when it's hard, I choose you.
And I trust you to work all things together for good.
Because I love you.
Father, I thank you for the promise of your word.
Encourage us with it.
In your name we pray.
Amen.
You okay now?
All right. Yeah. Listen.
Read Ruth two this week
with an eye towards the providence of God and trusting him.
And to read Ruth three for next week.
It's an awesome chapter,
and it will tell you, young ladies, how to get a great husband.
Are you ready to sing Ali?
I. That's.