Grace Upon Grace Ruth 2

Grace upon Grace Ruth 2

Tue, Jan 14, 2025 8:52AM • 44:29

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Ruth's journey, Naomi's bitterness, barley harvest, Boaz's kindness, Moabite woman, gleaning fields, providential grace, church support, job loss, God's provision, family redeemer, extravagant grace, peace with God, Jesus' redemption, steadfast love

SPEAKERS

Josh Slater

So last week, we started our Advent season, going through the book of Ruth and just to kind of remind us of what's going on, because we're going to be in Ruth chapter two today. We started in Ruth chapter one last week, and in Ruth chapter one, we see a tragic situation happen right where, where? Ruth is a Moabite. She's living in a land that is is her own. And Naomi and Elimelech, right? These are the two characters that were first introduced to Naomi and Elimelech and their sons move from Bethlehem to Moab, and in Moab, the sons marry two daughters, Orpah and Ruth but, and while they're there, though, Elimelech dies, me Leon and Killian this two sons die, and Naomi comes back to or to Bethlehem. And in her coming back to Bethlehem, she feels like she has been rung dry. She feels like everything is against her. She even talks about the hand of the God, of the Lord being against her. She feels bitter. She even tells people to call me bitter, because everything that she has known, everything that she has loved, everything that she has cherished in this life is gone, and she feels this hopelessness, this emptiness, she she even says, I went away from the from Bethlehem full when I went to Moab and I came back empty. But the beautiful thing about the story of Ruth is that that's not the end of the story. There's a silver lining. She makes her way back to Bethlehem, and they come back to Bethlehem, and it tells us, at the end of chapter one, that it was the barley harvest season. I want to tell you a story that so with 2020 I don't know if y'all remember that was, that was, that was only four years ago. It feels like it was a decade ago, but it was four years ago, and one of the things that happened is a lot of churches shut down, and a lot of people stopped going to church. And one of the things that happened when that happened that the church shut it down, when churches started to open back up, many people didn't go back to church, right? Many people just stayed home. They thought it was easier to to watch stuff online than it was to actually gather back together with God's people. And one of those people was my mother. Okay, so my mom, in 2020, she had been going to church, she stopped going to church, and then after about two years of me poking and prodding at her day in and day out, it seemed, and I was like, you gotta go back to church. You gotta go back to church. You gotta go back to church. You gotta find gotta find a church. She's like, it's so hard to find a church, and I go, I know it's hard to find a church, but you gotta go find one. She had a friend who invited her to the First Baptist church, church in Hearst, Texas. Anyway, she goes back to church in March or of January of 2022, she joins the church in February of 2022 and then in March of 2022 she started to go to a Sunday school class. And everything was going good. Everything from my mom was going good. Everything was smooth sailing until about a year and a half after that, and in September 29 of 2023 my mom gets suspended from her work without pay. She gets suspended without her, her from her work without pay. She she had, hadn't kept up with her continuing education that she was supposed to. And they said, Okay, you have a month to do that, and within we'll reinstate you. Well, that month came and went, and she was unable to get reinstated. So on october 29 of 2023 she lost her job completely. She was in a helpless state, where she because of her own negligence, yes, but also because of just the circumstances. This company that she had worked for for 27 years just decided to let her go, and it was hard for her. She was much like feeling a lot like Naomi in this situation, a lot of hopelessness. Now, God was working in the background, though, and that's something that we have to understand, is that in the midst of all of this, in the midst of this chaos, in the midst of Naomi's life, God was working in the background. There were she he was doing things that she could not even comprehend. And it was the same thing with my mom. God was doing things in her life that she could not comprehend, until it happened. My mom was jobless for almost six months, no income to speak of. She was good for about a month and a half. She had enough money saved up for about a month and a half, maybe two months. But come month three, she'd had no idea what was going to happen, because she was fired from her job, she wasn't able to draw unemployment, and so she was just praying, and she said this was the hardest time that she had ever faced, and in that time, I want to tell you how much kindness God's people had towards my mother. In this time, the church that she had happened to go into because her friend invited her the Sunday school group that she had. Happened to come into for those last three months, four months of her being unemployed, she was able to get all of her bills paid. She had a couple of people come up to her and give her checks to cover her mortgage for a couple years or a couple months, just, just a kindness of God through the hands of these people poured out on her, not only that, but even people within this congregation were generous towards my mom and sent my mom money to buy groceries and to take care of the things that she needed. And we see that it is because of the kindness of the Lord that these people were able to bless her. It was the kindness of the Lord that they had seen in their lives that they were able to be kind and compassionate to my mother. It was a beautiful time, and my mom, she goes. I hated that time in my life, because my mom's not one to ever ask for help, but she also grew a lot in that time, and she now trust God even more in the circumstances of her life than she did before this happened, and as I was I got permission to tell this story. I did. I texted her earlier this week, and I said, Hey, Mama, I want to, I want to talk about this story to the church. I was like, are you okay with it? And she goes, Yeah, use it. And when we think about the things that we go through, whether it be with family, whether it be with friends, whether it be just the natural happenstance of the world around us, it's easy to miss that God is working. But I want you to know that God is not I've said this before. He's not divorced from our suffering. He isn't far way away. He is right there with us working things out. We don't know how that looks all the time. We don't know why things happen the way they do, but we do know that we have a God who loves us, a God who sees us, and a God who cares for us. And though this is there are difficult seasons in our lives, God loves us, and I think that's something we can take away from. And in the book of Ruth, one of the key themes to the book of Ruth is this, that God is there, that God has provision over his universe, that he is providentially looking over it, that he has he doesn't miss anything. And we see this in Ruth's story. So we see that they were take they were coming back home, and when they got back home, those things had looked like they were better. They were there during the barley harvest. We still don't know how Naomi, we still don't know how Ruth, we still don't know how these people are going to to live in this town, but they Ruth chapter two gives us a a glimpse into what's going to happen. So Ruth, chapter two, verses one and three, it says this. Now, Naomi had a relative on her husband's side. He was a prominent man of noble character from a limitless family. His name was Boaz. Ruth. The Moabites asked Naomi, will you let me go into the fields and gather fallen grain behind someone with whom I find favor. Naomi answered, Go ahead, my daughter. So Ruth left and entered the field gathered a grain behind the harvesters. She happened to be in the portion of the field belonging to Boaz, who was from a lemon Lex family. So the first thing that we see here in in verse one is that with all the hopelessness, with all the darkness, with all the tragedy that happened in chapter one in chapter two, verse one, the author of Ruth wants us to tell it. Wants to tell us that, hey, it's not all doom and gloom, that there is somebody in town who comes from a limits family. That's that's the Naomi's deceased husband's family, and he's there in Bethlehem, and his name is Boaz. And then for a moment, we don't get anything else about Boaz. It's like, hey, I want to tell you about this guy, and then we're going to shrink back a little bit. So hey, Boaz. Is there now, Ruth is talking to Naomi, and Naomi, she's, I mean, she's probably in this depressive state, right? They're hungry, she's stressed out, she's overwhelmed. There's no way that they know that there's no one to provide. So back in the Middle East, especially during this time when they were living, the men went out and worked. The men provided the food. The men made sure everything. And they don't have a man in their house. They are living in a land where they don't have any provisions given to them, right? That's what's happening. And now the thing about God is, though, God is gracious in his commands to the Israelite people, and so nao or Ruth knows a little bit at least about what God's provisions for his people are and he she goes to Naomi, and she goes, Hey, Naomi, you're hungry. I'm hungry. We need to find some food. What about I go out into the field? I want to get your permission to go first. I want it because I'm a stranger in this land. Not only is she a widow, but she is a Moabites, which means that living in Jerusalem or not. Jerusalem, living in Israel at the time, and Bethlehem is not a safe thing for her, but she knows that they need to get food. They need to do something. And Naomi is wallowing in her bitterness. She's angry and upset at God. So Ruth comes and says, Hey, I want to go into a field. Will you bless me so that I can go into a field to go glean some of the food from the field harvesters as they're going around. Now, where does this come from? So there's a biblical provision for this, for those who are hurting, those who are broken, those who are widows, those who are poor, those who are foreigners. And in Leviticus, chapter 19, verses nine through 10, God makes this provision. And he says, when you reap the harvest of your land. So he's talking to people who are reaping the harvest in your land. You are not to reap to the very edge of your field or gather the gleanings from your harvest. Do not strip the vineyard vineyard, bear or gather its fallen grapes. Leave them for the poor and the resident alien. I am the Lord your God. Okay, so what does that mean? As they go out and harvest, right? They didn't have big combines, so they could go harvest their grain with right? So they're going out, and they're picking the grain. And God says, as you're going out, I want you to leave the edges of your field clear that way. People who are passing by, people who are resident aliens, who don't have land in the town or in the city or in the the country, people who don't have land can come by, and they can pick what's left over. So you can have the bulk of it, but leave some behind for those who are hurting, for those who are widow, for those who are are not being able to provide for themselves. And that's a good law that the Lord did. Now we what we can't do is we can't forget the backdrop of what's happening here. What's the backdrop of what's happening they're living during the time of the judges, right? And one of the themes that I talked about last week is that during the time of the judges, one of the refrains that the author of judges tells us is that everyone was doing what's right in their own eyes. So most of those fields probably did not have the edges left for those who are living in that time, because they were doing whatever they wanted to. They were being greedy. They weren't worshiping the Lord God. And so Naomi want, or Ruth wants to go out, and she just wants to find some grain. She wants to see if there's a field with someone who will not just, not just a field, but she wants to ask for permission. Wants to find somebody who's going to have favor on her to allow her to glean some of the food. And one of the things we learn about Boaz in that first first verse is that he is a wealthy man. He's a well to do man, uh, he's a prominent man of noble character. He has fields and he has money and he has workers. He's He's not just some Joe Schmo. He's actually pretty prominent in Bethlehem. And so Ruth wants to go glean, but she doesn't know about Boaz. That's something we can't forget. She doesn't know who Boaz is. The only people at this point in time who know who Boaz is is us reading the scripture that he's a prominent man, that he is of noble character, and that he is from a limits family. That's only people who know. So Ruth is just looking for some opportunity, some way to go and glean in the field, maybe. So there's some falling green on the road. I know one time when I was driving through, when I lived in Georgia, actually, and I was following a corn truck, and some of the corn kind of fell off, you know, the wind blew the corn out the back of the truck. I was like, you know, that's probably what Naomi and Ruth are looking for, just a few kernels of corn to pick up on the side of the road, just hopefully there is somebody here who has some food that I can glean. And so Naomi goes, go, my daughter, leave me alone. I want to just stew in my depression. I want to stew in my anger and my frustration. Just go. And so it tells us that Ruth leaves. She entered a field to gather grain behind the harvesters. And it says this, she happened to the portion of the field that belonged to Boaz, the Hebrew there actually is this a chance, chanced that she went into the field of Boaz. Now, as we're reading that, do we think it's an accident that Ruth went into a limitlex field or a Boaz field. Do we think it's an accident that she just happened? No, the author is trying to get us to understand that this is not just a accident that Ruth went into the field. It wasn't just an accident that my mom stepped into that church. It wasn't just an accident that this happened. This was God's provision in Ruth. There are hundreds of other fields she could've gone to. She could've gone to Joe Smith's field. She could've gone to Isaiah field. She could've gone to whoever Jackson's field. She could've gone to anybody's field, but she happened by chance wink to go into Boaz field. God is providentially directing her through his kindness and his goodness, he is leading Ruth to Boaz field to go and glean, to go and be provided for. Think one of the ways that we would say this today, as luck would have it, Ruth went into Boaz field her chance. But as we know, God is not a God of chance that he he is all around at all times, working things together for His glory alone. We talked about this in Sunday school, that the greatest good in all of creation is God's glory, and God is always after the greatest good. And so God is going to use this tragic situation with Ruth and Naomi to bring about his glory, alright? So after she gets into by chance, the field of Boaz, we read in verse four through seven later, when Boaz arrived from Bethlehem, he said to the harvesters, the Lord, be with you. The Lord, bless you. They replied. Boaz asked his servants, who was in charge, the servant who was in charge of the harvesters, Who is this young woman? Whose young woman is this? The servant answered, this young Moabite woman is the one who returned with Naomi from the territory of Moab. She asked, Will you let me gather a fallen grain among the bundles behind the harvesters? She came and has been on her feet since early morning, except that she rested a little in the shelter. So the first thing we see here, and this is going to be a short second section, is just about Boaz and his character. Like he he is a good owner of the field. The first thing he does when he comes into his field is he says, The Lord be with you. So right off the bat, we see that Boaz is different than everybody else who lived during the time of the judges, that Boaz is distinct, and that he loves the Lord, that He is serving the Lord, and that he is going to go to not just his he's going to go to his workers and say, hey, the Lord, be with you. They're like, hey, you know what, Boaz, The Lord be with you too. It's a it's a good sign for us as readers of the scripture, that he is, that he is a good man. Now, he's looking out, and he's he notices all of us, so he knows all of his harvesters, and he sees this one that sticks out like a sore thumb, right? And he says, Hey, who is that young woman? Who does she belong to? Now, this could mean that he was asking about if she had a husband, or who she belonged to, as far as what, how she belonged to, but she notices there's something different about her. And the way that the servant replies, kind of is a little snarky, and he goes, some Moabite woman who came back with Naomi. Now, why is that a significant because the author of Ruth does not want us to forget Ruth is state, Ruth, Ruth station, right? She is a Moabite us. She is a stranger in this land. She doesn't belong here. She does not belong in the land of Bethlehem. She's an outsider. She is downtrodden. She has all the things that she she should not be in this town. And yet, over and over again, we see that God is having grace on this young Moabite woman. So Boaz is one of the good guys, and we're told that Ruth has been working hard, that she's been going out there every time a green falls on the ground. She doesn't overlook it. She's picking it up. She's picking from the edges of the grain, and she's putting it in her basket, and she's she's getting ready to go back home to feed her mother in law. That's what we see here in this short passage. Then in verse 18, we see this. Then Boaz said to Ruth, listen, my daughter, do not go gather grain in another field and don't leave this one, but stay here close to my female servants. See which field they are harvesting in and follow them. Haven't I ordered the young men not to touch you when you are thirsty, go and drink from the jars the young men have filled. She fell face down, bowed to the ground, and said to him, why have I found favor with you so that you notice me, although I am a foreigner, Boaz answered, everything you have done for your mother in law since your husband's death has been fully reported to me. How you left your father and your mother in your native, native land, and how you came to a people you didn't previously know. May the Lord reward you for what you have done, and may you receive a full reward from the LORD God of Israel, who under whose wing you have come for refuge, my Lord, she said, I have found favor with you, for you have comforted and encouraged Your servant, although I am not like one of your female servants. At meal time, Boaz told her come over here and have some bread and dip it in the vinegar sauce, so that she set beside the harvesters, and he offered her roasted grain she would ate and was satisfied and had some left over. So what do we see here? We see an extravagant grace given to Ruth in this passage, Ruth wanted someone who would show her favor, who would just let her pick on the outside and the edges of the field, who would just let her one or allow her to pick some of the grain that had fallen on the ground. And what we see here is that Boaz does more, and we'll see even more in the later. He's He's not just allowing her to to glean from the fields, but he's actually protecting her. Did you see that? Haven't I told my young men not to touch you? Haven't I told them to stay away from you? There is a for for a Moabite. You. During this time again, no real family except for Naomi, no real protection. It's a dangerous world for her. We see kind of like, this is like the first sexual harassment policy that we see in Scripture, right where Boaz is like, Hey, I told all my young men, don't touch her, Don't Don't look at her, don't bother her. Just let her do her thing. It's a beautiful thing that highlights a difference between Boaz and the rest of the the country, especially if you know how the book of of judges ended, right? If you know how the book of Judges ended, then you see that the women in the book of Judges were not being taken care of, and here Boaz is really making sure that he is taking care of Ruth, this woman that he doesn't have to take care of, right? She is a foreigner. She doesn't have to do anything, and yet he is showing extravagant grace to her, where he's allowing her to be treated like a daughter of his own. Um, he sees his kindness demonstrated in this. And these are a few, a few ways that he does this. One he says, Don't go anywhere else. I have plenty of grain for you. I have plenty of grain for you to pick. Don't go anywhere where else. I have all you need. Just stay here. And he protects her from like the wicked hearts of men what we just said. And he says, continue to follow the ladies. So this is this is permission, not just to stay on the outside of the field, but actually to follow the ladies as they're picking harvest. So this is a another kindness. Don't just go on the outsides of the field, but harvest the grain that is on the inside as well. And he says, if you get thirsty, this sounds kind of weird to us, but if you get thirsty, go and drink the the water that the young men have gathered into us. We go, yeah, go drink their water. But what we have to understand is, during this time at this place, it wasn't the young men who drew water to serve other people. It was the servants, especially those who are the foreign servants, like Ruth, who would draw water to to water everybody else, to give water to everybody else. But he's saying, No, don't work extra hard. Just go drink the water that the young men have drawn. Do we see that he's going above and beyond the the things that he has to do. And Ruth responds. She's overwhelmed with this kindness. She bows down and she she wants to say, you have shown favor to me. You have shown me something that I never expected. Why have I found favor? That's the question she has. Why have I found favor with you? Why are you being so gracious to me? That word favor is is the Hebrew word that can be translated grace as well. Why are you being so gracious to me? Why are you showing this to me and he goes because I've heard your story, because I know what you've gone through. I know that you left everything that you knew, everything that you loved, everything that you had behind your family, your your husbands have died everything that has gone against you. I have known and I am being gracious to you, because the Lord has been gracious to me. That's what he's doing here. He's demonstrating the beauty and the grace of the Lord. We talked about last week, how When Ruth tells Naomi, she says, where you will go, I will go. Where you die, I will die. Your God will be my God, and your people will be my people. And we talked about how that's a demonstration of God's steadfast love, His kindness towards Naomi, that Ruth has shown that to Naomi, and now Ruth is experiencing that same kindness from a stranger. Remember, we have advantage. We know who Boaz is. We know that Boaz is a limitless family member, relative to Ruth. She has no idea who this man is. She cannot even comprehend this is just a random guy who she happened to come to his field, and he is just pouring out this grace. Now he's heard about what happened to Ruth, and that's that should give her a little inkling that he knows something. But to her, she doesn't know this is just some guy who's being so kind, being so nice, being so loving towards her. She's overwhelmed by his kindness. She's overwhelmed by His grace. Ruth simply wanted someone who would show her a little bit of kindness, and God in His provision, does that, but he does so much more through Boaz. He is extravagantly, extravagantly gracious, gracious. You. There's a humility that great or that Ruth shows here as well. She says, Hey, I'm just a servant girl. I'm just a Moabite. I know you had no need. You didn't have to show me this grace. In fact, she says that she's the lowest of all servants, that she doesn't deserve anything. And isn't that what God does to us, like we don't we are the lowest of the low when it comes to humanity. We. Have all sinned. We have all fallen short of the glory of God. We've all made mistakes. We've all spit in the face of God. And yet God shows His grace and His favor to us, and he doesn't just show a little bit of it. Like God is extravagant in the grace that He shows to those who are here. Every breath that we have, every morning we wake up every gift that we have been given, whether it be the home that we live in, whether it be the car that we drive, whether it be the family that sometimes just frustrates the tarnation out of us, whatever it is, it's a grace of God. Nothing. Nothing is owed to us. Nothing is owed to us. We are like Ruth, where we come into a land where we don't have anything, we don't own anything, and God just says, here take he did this with his son, right with Jesus, where he gives not just a little bit, but he gave his whole life for us. He died on the cross for us. He didn't just go halfway. He didn't just pass out on that cross like He died for us. The God that we serve is a God of extravagant grace, and I love that he uses these stories to demonstrate to us so being the lowest of all servants, when Ruth comes to the field, she probably wouldn't have had food. She didn't have food coming in, right? She's coming from Naomi's house. And the reason why she's gleaning from Boaz field is because they don't have any food to eat. And I love that Boaz does this that he says, Hey, come over and eat with us come. He's inviting the outcast in. He's inviting the the stranger in. He's inviting those who don't have anything in to have the meal. And he says, Here, take this bread. I get that picture of Jesus at the table. Take this bread, right? And in fact, the the phrases use vinegar sauce can also be a wine or some kind of fermented juice, right where it's like, hey, dip your bread into this cup. I'm going to give you a little bit of a spoiler alert. I'll address it a little bit later. But Boaz is a pre figure to Christ that Boaz is kindness and generosity towards Ruth the outsider is a picture of God's grace, and Jesus is coming to us as outsiders. Remember the the Moabites were enemies of God, and she has been invited into the family of God with eliminating we were enemies of God, and we have been invited in through Jesus to through Jesus's invitation into this family. What a beautiful picture this is. And this is just one of the ways that Boaz is like Jesus, but we'll talk about that more. But she comes, she doesn't have any food to eat. Now, I've never picked anything my nose, maybe, but I've not picked any as I've gone out and picked in the field, but I can imagine that during harvest season. So harvest season for the Israelites, during this time was like March to April. So it was, it was not the, the nicest of weather to go out and pick, but so she's out in the field and she's picking, and if she doesn't have any food, guess what happens when you're out there and you're actually doing a lot of hard labor, you get hungry, right? Like you're starving, and she's just out there picking and so the kindness of Boaz has shown and that she and he invites her in to eat with them. So she would have probably kept working, but she but Boaz says, Hey, stop what you're doing. Take a break. Come have this bread, come dip it in this vinegar sauce with me, and enjoy this time together. He wasn't ashamed to have her sit at the table, even though she didn't belong all of his other servants who were there, they were all Israelites. They were all hired hands for Boaz, and he wanted her to sit at the same table, feel like, feel like part of the family, so to speak. It's a beautiful picture. I think it's a beautiful picture. Do y'all think it's a beautiful picture? So the providence of God, we're already seeing part of the reversal of Ruth's situation, right? Ruth came empty, and now she's being filled. She's feeling that. I love how verse 14 says she ate and was satisfied. Man, isn't that what we get when we get to Jesus? We get to take a piece of that bread and we eat and we are satisfied. But then here's the next part, and she had some leftover. She ate and she was satisfied, and then she had some leftover. The picture that they're painting here of Boaz. Is that, again, he's extravagantly, extravagantly graceful. So here's, here's what happens. Okay, we talked about his extravagant grace, but I want to show you that he's even goes further. In verse 15, when she got up and gathered grain, Boaz ordered his young men leave her even, or let her even gather grain among the bundles, and don't humiliate her. Put out some stalks from the bundles for her and leave them for her to gather. There, don't rebuke her. So Ruth gathered grain in the field until evening, she beat out what she had gathered, and it was about 26 quarts of barley. Okay, so he's saying, you know, as as y'all are going out, and as you're you're gleaning, go ahead and just leave some socks for her, like intentionally drop some on the ground for her to pick up. And not only that, the stuff that you've already gathered, the stuff that you've already taken, I want you to go ahead and pull some of that out and give it to her. So basically, Boaz is saying, Hey, I don't really want her to work that much. I just want her to gather. I just want her to go. She doesn't need to be picking she just needs to be pulling it up and put it in her basket. And then we're told this little tidbit, that she took 26 liters of barley. Now, the word there in that's the CSB, which is the one I'm preaching out of it translates into 26 liters. But the word there is ephod. She took an ephod of grain. Now, an ephod of grain would be somewhere between get this, 30 and 50 pounds of grain that she gathered, which I used to have dogs, and I remember going to the store and buying a 30 pound bag of dog food. That's not a light load to carry. So if we imagine that she's got 30 pounds of grain that she has gathered in one day now that 30 pounds, 30 to 50 pounds of grain would have fed, one commentator said 50 fighting men. So would have fed 50 fighting men, 50 warriors, so to speak, so that for a day now, this will feed these two women for at least two weeks. So in one day, she's gathered enough grain to feed two women for two weeks at least. So what do we see that there's an astounding harvest here that it's it's an abundance of a gift. And with that again, he reiterates, my young men are going to leave you alone. They're not going to bother you. They're going to take care of you. So she reaped this harvest and she's going to go back home. She goes back home. And in verses 18 through 23 we read this, she picked up the grain and went into town where her mother in law saw what she had gleaned. She brought out what she left over from her meal and gave it to her. Her mother in law said to her, where did you gather barley? Today? She's She's astounded, right? Where did you work? You have 30 pounds of food with you. Where did you go? May the Lord bless the man who noticed you. Ruth told her mother in law whom she worked with or whom she had worked with, and said, The man, the name of the man I worked with today, was Boaz. Then Naomi said to her daughter in law, may the Lord bless him, because he has not abandoned his kindness to the living or the dead. Naomi continued, This man is a close relative. He is one of our family Redeemers. Ruth and Moabites said, he also told me, stay with my young men until they have finished all the harvest. So Naomi said to her daughter in law, my daughter, it is good for you to work with his female servants so that nothing will happen to you in another field. Ruth said, stayed close to Boaz female servants and gathered grain until the barley and the wheat harvest were finished, and she lived with her mother in law. So what is going on here? So she comes home with the 30 pounds of grain, and I can just imagine the look on Ruth or on Naomi's face. Can you imagine her coming in with a 30 pound bag of food. She went to go glean the scraps over which would have been like Maybe one, maybe one pound. And she comes with 30 pounds, and Naomi goes, I need to ask you, where did you get all this food? Where did you glean today? And without her knowing it, or Ruth says, I went to this field, and there was this guy there, and he was super generous. He was super loving, and he was super compassionate to me, and his name is Boaz. And can you imagine the the light in the eyes of Naomi start to open? She gets real wide eyed, and she goes, Boaz, let me just make sure I heard you right, Boaz. Let me tell you something about Boaz. You don't know this, Ruth, you don't know who Boaz is, but I do, and he is one of our family Redeemers. Now that doesn't mean anything to us, so let's talk about it real quick. What does it mean to be a family Redeemer, a family Redeemer. So during the time in Israel, Israel God makes provisions for his land, right? He wants people, his people, to own land, and he wants them to have that land in the Promised Land. And so one of the things that happens is sometimes we hit hardships, sometimes difficult things in our lives happen, right? And so sometimes what happens is we have the tragic loss of a husband and sons like Naomi does. And when that happens, that land is now up for grabs, so to speak. But the person who has the the first rights to the land is someone who is the closest one to their family. Okay, so whoever is the closest one to the family gets the first dibs, because I want to have that land, I need to get that land. And so this is what this Redeemer is, is that. Instead of that land going to somebody else who is outside of the tribe, outside of the family, Boaz has an opportunity to buy the land that Elimelech had and keep it in the family, so to speak. And so when or if it happens, spoiler alert, it does. If the the son, or if Naomi has a child, that land would then go to the child under a limits line, okay, so that the land would never depart from a limitlex line of of people. And so that's what's happening here. Now, Naomi sees the grace of God in this right? She she came into Bethlehem, and what did she say? Don't call me Naomi, which means pleasant. Call me Mara, which means bitter. And so she's sitting here and she's sulking and she's angry and she's frustrated at the Lord, and then she sees that God has been gracious to Ruth, and now she's starting to feel a little bit of peace, right? That now they have food. Could you imagine being worried about where your next meal is going to be? And now you have 30 pounds of food in your house. That's what's happening here. And she says in verse 20, may the Lord bless him. May the Lord bless Boaz, or the Lord like it's kind of ambiguous how she does this, but anyway, she says, May the Lord bless him, because he has not abandoned his kindness to the living or the dead. Now she could be talking about Boaz, that Boaz is being kind to Ruth and hasn't abandoned the living abandoned, the living Ruth and Naomi, or the dead Elimelech and his family. Or he could be she, we could be talking about the Lord. I think she's talking about God. She's having a change of heart. And why she is having a change of heart because the kindness of a strange or of a person. He's not a stranger, really, because of the kindness that God has shown to her through the actions of Ruth and through the actions of Boaz, she's starting to get a little bit of joy. She's getting starting to get a little bit of peace. She got it. Starting to get a little bit excited. She notices that though she believed in chapter one that the Lord's hand was against her, now she's starting to see that word that we looked at last week, the said, The steadfast loving kindness of the Lord is has not left her. She's starting to see that the Lord is providing for her, and he's providing for her through this man, Boaz, so the kinsman redeemer thing is, you can look at Leviticus, chapter 25 and it'll talk about it, verses 47 through 49 but it's all about keeping the land in the name keeping the land with the family anyway. So there's that one of the things we have to understand about the scriptures, and I know that I'm I'm running a little long, but is that all of the scriptures from the Old Testament until the New Testament, is all pointing towards Jesus, right? That God is on a mission, and his mission is to send His Son to die on the cross for our sins so that we can be reconciled to Him. That's the the storyline of the Bible, that man sin God saves us, right? And the way that he does that is through His Son, Jesus, Christ. And as I said earlier, Boaz is a pre figure of Christ. Boaz is good. We would all say that Boaz is a good man. He's taking care of Naomi. He's taking care of her and making sure that she's going to have food, that she's protected, and in in some sense, he redeems her from a bad situation here, right? And this isn't even the extent. It goes further than this we'll look at next week, but let's look at a few ways that Boaz treats Ruth like Jesus treats us. So the first thing is, Boaz treats Ruth as a daughter, right? That she is an enemy of Israel. She's an enemy of God's people. But he invites her in to sit at the table. He says, daughter, My daughter, come and sit at the table. We see this in Romans, chapter five, verses 10 through 11. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, how much more have been having been reconciled. Will be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also boast in God through Lord, Lord Jesus, Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation, this redemption, this this going from being enemies of God to being sons and daughters of God. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing that we can be called God, our Father, our Father, who art in heaven. Hallowed be your name. It's a beautiful thing that though we were enemies of God, we are now sons and daughters of the living God. The other thing is, is that Boaz has good standing. He's a prominent man. He's got a lot of wealth, he's got a lot of influence. He's got a lot of all of that going on. Well, the Lord had, has all of it. He holds all of creation in the sands. He governs all of it. Ruth, by contrast, to Boaz, has no standing at all. She has no right to anything in the land, and yet Boaz, through his kindness, invites her in. God does that same thing with us, right, that we have no standing. We talked about this just a minute ago. We have no standing. We have nothing. And God invites us into a relationship with him. He gives us His standing. Jesus gives us his standing. And this is one of my, my favorite verses, Second Corinthians, 521, he made the one Jesus, God. Made the one Jesus who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. We get the standing of Christ in the eyes of God. Boaz also required, was only required to do one thing, which is to let her glean the outside of the field, and through his extravagant grace, He did way more. We, under the penalty of the law, are dead in our sins and trespasses, because the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. So what did we earn? What do we deserve? We deserve death. We deserve wrath. We deserve destruction. But God, in his graciousness and his kindness towards us, He gives us life, though we need we were going to die in our sins, He gives us life. One of the most popular pastors who ever lived, he's dead now. His name was Charles Spurgeon, and he says this, Jesus is our glorious Boaz. He is the Redeemer. He is the one who gives us life. He is the one who brings us peace. So this Sunday is the Advent Sunday of peace. And so what's peaceful about this situation? Naomi and Ruth were worried about their next meal, where their next meal would come from, and the Lord provided for them in that state of despair and in that state of frustration and not knowing what the next meal was going to go to, God showed her that she could have peace. She could trust him. We have peace for two reasons. We can have peace. One, we see that God knows us, that he isn't divorced from our suffering, that he knows what we're doing. He's not looking the other way. He's not abandoned us. He hasn't turned a blind eye. No, he sees us, and He knows us, and he sends people to help us in our time of need. We can trust that the Lord loves us. We can trust that He cares for us. We can also look back on the the lives. So going back to that story my mom, we can she can take that time in her life, that six months or so that she had to fully trust in the God, and she can look back on that for the rest of her life, seeing God's faithfulness, seeing his provision. Same thing with Ruth. Ruth later on, we don't get much of a story after chapter four, but if, if she ever goes through another difficult time, she can also look back and see the beauty of God, the grace of God, the love of God, through the story of her coming to no Boaz happening upon his field. Just think about it, Ruth, she's sitting back, and she goes, I could have gone to any field, and I, just by chance, by providence, went into boasts field, and the rest of my life changed forever. I walked into those doors at the church my mom could say, and for the rest of my life, I have been forever changed. What a grace it is from the Lord that we can look back on the situations that he's pulled us through and know that He is worthy of trust. So he gives us peace because we know we can trust him, but then the ultimate thing is the peace that he grants is peace with himself. Right? We are enemies of God, but we can be sons and daughters. If, without terminology, enemies, what does that mean? That means strife. There is something between us. There is no peace between us and God, but through Jesus, Christ and His coming right he is, he has prepared a way for us to have peace with God. We are no longer we don't all we no longer have to be enemies of Christ. We can be his sons and daughters. The wrath of God that hung over our heads has been absorbed by the Son of God who died for our sins. What a good news. What good news. Let's pray, Father, we are so grateful for your love. We're grateful for your peace, we're grateful for your grace. I just pray this morning, Lord, that there's anybody who's struggling with this, anyone who's struggling with understanding that you are good and that you are gracious, I hope them just that they just see your goodness and your graciousness through this story, through the lives of others. There's a lot of heartache in this world, Lord, but we know one thing. We know that you love us. We know that you care for us. We know that you're gracious to toward us. We're thankful for who you are. We're grateful for what you do. We're grateful for what you've done, we just want to keep our eyes and our hearts focused on you. Pray all this in Jesus name, amen. Let's stand up and sing Amen.