Ruth: (4 December, 2005)
Message Ruth M2 There is a Redeemer December 4 2005
Big Idea: Even in dark and discouraging times God is unfolding HIS plan of redemption.
(This sermon can be heard on line at:
http://www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
Charles Dicken’s famous novel: The Tale of Two Cities begins with words…“It was the best of times it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us we had nothing before us.”
Dickens’ opening of a Tale of Two Cities, of course, describes pre-revolutionary 18th century France, but could also have been used to describe the book of Ruth… as the story describes a group of people who thought they had nothing, but they had everything because God was at work behind the scenes of their lives.
Elimelech and his family in the period of the Judges are living in Bethlehem, but there is a famine in the land. So they do the “logical” thing and leave Bethlehem for Moab, southeast of Bethlehem, where apparently there is no famine.
During their 10 year sojourn in Moab, Naomi’s husband dies and her sons Mahlon and Kilion marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth and then Naomi’s son Mahlon and Kilion ending up dying as well in Moab.
Bereft of her husband and sons, Naomi sinks into a deep pit of despair…
Naomi hears that the famine has ended in Bethlehem and she and her daughters in law Orpah and Ruth begin to walk along the Dead Sea Northwest to back to Naomi’s homeland…
Naomi says God’s hand is against me and she urges her daughters in law Orpah and Ruth to go back to their country, their families, and their gods.
Orpah does the sensible thing and goes home, but Ruth clings to Naomi and utters those immortal words, “Don’t urge me to leave you, where you go, I will go, where you lodge, I will lodge, your people will be my people, your God my God…(she leaves her gods, and takes the God of Naomi) where you die, I will die… and she travels with Naomi to Bethlehem.
As Naomi comes back into the Bethlehem she says, “I left Bethlehem full, but I have come back empty. So don’t call me Naomi (which means pleasant) call me Mara which means bitterness, for the Lord has made my life very bitter.”
Let’s turn to Ruth 2 (as you turn, I want acknowledge a pastor I know name Tim Keller who serves a church called Redeemer Presbyterian, whose helped me see all the redeemers in this passage).
Ruth Meets Boaz
1 Now Naomi had a relative on her husband's side, from the clan of Elimelech, a man of standing, whose name was Boaz.
2 And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, "Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor."
Naomi said to her, "Go ahead, my daughter." 3 So she went out and began to glean in the fields behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelech.
4 Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, "The LORD be with you!"
"The LORD bless you!" they called back.
5 Boaz asked the foreman of his harvesters, "Whose young woman is that?"
6 The foreman replied, "She is the Moabitess who came back from Moab with Naomi. 7 She said, 'Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.' She went into the field and has worked steadily from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter."
8 So Boaz said to Ruth, "My daughter, listen to me. Don't go and glean in another field and don't go away from here. Stay here with my servant girls. 9 Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the girls. I have told the men not to touch you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled."
10 At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She exclaimed, "Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?"
11 Boaz replied, "I've been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. 12 May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge."
13 "May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my lord," she said. "You have given me comfort and have spoken kindly to your servant—though I do not have the standing of one of your servant girls."
14 At mealtime Boaz said to her, "Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar."
When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and had some left over. 15 As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, "Even if she gathers among the sheaves, don't embarrass her. 16 Rather, pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don't rebuke her."
17 So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah. 18 She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough.
19 Her mother-in-law asked her, "Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!"
Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. "The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz," she said.
20 "The LORD bless him!" Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. "He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead." She added, "That man is our close relative; he is one of our kinsman-redeemers."
So Naomi’s family leave Bethlehem where there is a famine and goes to Moab hoping to improve their financial lot, but they end up in poverty and so Naomi returns to Bethlehem.
It’s not like she has just failed in some internet start up company and can declare bankruptcy and start again.
Naomi is too old and physically fragile to work in the fields.
She’s lost her husband and her two sons in a culture when only males have access to power, and she’s old to re-marry and have children.
In fact her situation seems so bleak that as she comes back into Bethlehem with Ruth she says, “I left here full, but I’ve come back empty…”
I wonder what Ruth thinks as she hears her mother in-law say, “I’m empty.” I wonder if Ruth thinks, what am I—a nothing, a zero, just a flea or something?
But Ruth proves to be a lifeline for her aged mother in law, Naomi.
Ruth is a woman who has left her nation of Moab, her culture, her language, her parents, her people, potential husbands…
In a culture where family is everything, Ruth is not just willing to leave her family, but to face the rest of her days as a widow and childless… to support her mother in law…
She’s willing to become an alien, a despised minority in an unknown place for her. In this chapter 2 alone, the author brings out the fact Ruth is a Moabites 5x.
And in this chapter Boaz commands his employee not to harm Ruth, why? Because as a woman and a member of despised minority, with no man in her life Ruth is vulnerable to violence or rape…
Ruth lays down her life, so her mother-in-law would have one. She’s a redeemer figure for Naomi.
When God is in the picture for us, it is never just the “winter of despair, it is also the spring of hope.
As we see in the book of Ruth even in this seemingly bleak time, God in all kinds of ways is working quietly behind the scenes working out his redemptive purposes.
But not only is there a redeemer for Naomi in Ruth, a redeemer emerges for the both of them.
Ruth’s mother in law is too old and fragile to do the backbreaking work of gleaning in the fields, so Ruth volunteers to go into the fields and pick up the left-over grain (according to God’s law given through Moses, landowners were supposed to leave what the harvesters missed, so that the poor, the alien, the widow and the orphan could eat.)
The New International Version text tells us… “As it turned out” Ruth found herself working in the fields of Boaz, who was from her same clan as her dead husband, Elimelech.
In the Hebrew the phrase translated in the NIV… “As it turned out” reads more literally “she chance chanced upon.” In Hebrew that idiom indicates much more strongly than the English that Ruth “chance chanced” to come onto the field of Boaz, under the providential guidance of God.
At first, Ruth had no idea that this was Boaz’s field and at the time she had no idea who or what Boaz was…
There are so many times when our seeming ordinary steps in life are being led by the Lord. The book Proverbs tells us a person in his or her heart may chart his or her course, but God determines their steps.
As Ruth “chance chanced” upon, Boaz’s fields, we are told that Boaz is a man of standing, which means that he is a man of wealth, status, and respected in the community.
And we know early on that he’s a man of God. Just as Ruth begins working the fields, Boaz happens to walk by and greets his workers with the words, (and remember this is in the time of the Judges when most people have turned away from God) “The Lord be With you.” Why does the author include such a seemingly trivial detail? To show us that Boaz is a man who acknowledges God.
Boaz ends up discovering through his foreman Ruth is a foreigner, a Moabites and who has come to Bethlehem to support her widowed mother-in-law, Noami.
Boaz, knowing that she is a vulnerable alien woman, tells his men, not to harm her…
He says to Ruth, “Whenever you are thirsty, please access to drink from my water jars…”
14At the lunch break, Boaz said to her, "Come over here; eat some bread. Dip it in the wine."
And he orders his men, "Let her glean where there's still plenty of grain on the ground… in fact, pull some of the good stalks of grain out and leave it for her to glean.
And when Ruth returns to her mother that night with not a few gleanings, but a lap full of grain…. Naomi, her mother in law, says whose fields did you work in today?! Ruth says, “I worked in field of a man named Boaz.” Ruth has no idea who he is.
Naomi, exclaims, “He’s one of our close relatives!”
He’s one of our “goels,” one of our kinsman-redeemers!
John Piper says this is like a bright crack in the cloud of bitterness hanging over Naomi.
We don’t have anything equivalent to a kinsman-redeemer in our culture. So, let me explain what that is.
When Israelites moved into Canaan, the promised, the land was divided and each of the families received some property.
But some families, of course, would fall into poverty and be forced to sell their land.
But there was a provision in law that allowed a close relative to buy back the land for the family. So if some other person had come to own the land, if a close a relative (a kinsman) wanted to buy back the land, on behalf of the family that had lost it, he could do so and the owner would have to sell whether he wanted to or not.
Now apparently when, Naomi’s family moved to Moab they sold their family land, and didn’t have the money buy it back….
But, Boaz is close enough of kin to buy it back.
Another role that the kinsman redeemer could play was to marry a widow of a close relative in order to carry on the name of the dead relative…
In this case ideally Boaz would both buy their land back, but would also marry Ruth so that Naomi’s family had an heir to inherit the land.
Naomi gets so excited at this prospect that not long after this she encourages Ruth to propose marriage to him, in a way that would fit the culture.
Naomi says to her daughter in law, wash, and perfume, put on your best clothes. This evening after Boaz has finished eating and drinking and he goes lies down on the threshing floor… go to him, uncover his feet and he’ll tell you what to do…
This was obviously quite forward, but nonetheless a culturally acceptable way a woman could propose to a man. Apparently, this custom is still practiced in some middle Eastern cultures…
Naomi sets up a plan, but there are great risks.
Boaz has been very kind to Ruth, protecting her from assault or rape at the plantation, allowing her to glean as much as she wants from his fields, but there’s a big difference between offering to safe environment and being generous to someone and wanting to marry them!
As a kinsman redeemer, he is does NOT have to buy the land back NOR does he have to marry her… he has the option to say no….
But Ruth she goes to the threshing floor, while Boaz is sleeping, lifts up his blanket lies down… in the middle of the night something startles Boaz and he asks, “Who are you?” I am your servant Ruth, spread the corner of your garment over me, for you are a kinsman redeemer… this was a way asking him to marry her…
At this point, Boaz could turn her away…
Perhaps Ruth in the back of her mind is thinking….
Why would he marry me a woman, who is not from his culture, a woman who is a despised minority?
Why would he want to marry me in culture where family means everything, since I was not able to have a child with my first husband? And even if I have a child that child will not be considered his, but my dead husband’s?
If he marries her me, he assumes all of our family debt, he’ll have buy back my mother-in-laws lost property, he absorbs all our debt and all his wealth transfers to us…
Why would he do that?
But the worst thing for Ruth would not to be turned down, that would hurt.
Boaz, is a male, he’s a good a male, but he is a man, and Ruth’s lifting up his blanket and asking to be covered by his garment is a marriage proposal and has sexual overtones, which could be misread. It’s dark, it’s at night, she just a vulnerable young woman, with no legal standing as a minority, no real protector, Boaz could decide to have one a night stand with her and leave her, reasoning after she sort of “owes me”…
But how does Boaz respond? He responds with total integrity… tenderness and purity… and he says you’ve done me a kindness, but not running after the younger guy… Boaz calls a daughter which suggests he’s older, but also he will treat tenderly and will purity…
He agrees to marry her, buy back the family property and to become her and Naomi’s kinsman redeemer…
What this story shows us that God can use “chancing upon a chance” our every ordinary actions that we don’t give forethought to, like Ruth coming into a field to glean, and choreograph these into his greater plan…
The story also shows us God can and does use planning and risk taking to achieve his redemptive purposes… Ruth took at big risk in proposing to Boaz.
The story shows that God can use something as earthy as an unlikely relationship to achieve his purposes.
My grandmother turns 92 years old this month… If you meet you might think she has everything in the world going for her as a 92 year old: she’s beautiful (in 92 year kind of way), she’s fit—she plays tennis, she has money and she lives in the best neighborhood.
But her life has been filled with pain. Her husband my grandfather, had money and power and was repeatedly unfaithful and at times physically abusive. But they lived in a culture and in a generation where divorce was not an option… Many times she wanted her life to end. Several years ago, she confided in me. She said, “My life was filled with suffering, but I know it wasn’t completely in vain because, your mom was born and you were born and you’re serving God… so my life wasn’t wasted after all?”
If you read on “the edges” of the book of Ruth, you’ll about the men in Noami, Ruth, and Orpah’s lives. We don’t for certain, but there are hints the men in the family were drifting from God. They leave the land God promised them to seek out wealth in Moab. The sons take on Canaanite names and they marry women who don’t share faith in the same God, yet God uses this all this drifting away from God to bring about his purposes.
Last week in our home group we were studying Joseph’s life. How God used the sin of Joseph’s brother to work in a remarkable end to save their family.
Some of us talked about God used our sins and mistakes to achieve his purposes.
Ruth shows us that God can use the ordinary, he can use planning and risk, he can use relationships, and he can even use sin to bring about his redemptive purposes.
We see in the book of Ruth there is a redeemer for Naomi, Ruth, and there is Redeemer for Naomi and Ruth, Boaz, and there is a redeemer for us…
At the end of book of Ruth, the women say to Naomi, praise God that He has not left you without a kinsman redeemer… and if you stop there. You would you think the kinsman redeemer is Boaz.
But it become clear as you read on, that it is not Boaz, it’s a child, it’s an offspring that Boaz and Ruth will have….
They have a child named Obed, Obed a child named Jesse and Jesse has a son David, who becomes a great King of Israel and many generations later there is one called the son of David, born in stable in this same Bethlehem…
That one born in Bethlehem, named Jesus Christ, is the ultimate kinsman redeemer…
Like Ruth did for Naomi, he lays down his life on the cross that we might have one…
Like Boaz he absorbs all of our debts before God, a debt comparable to a totally impoverished widow on welfare who owes billions of dollars, a debt we could not pay,
Phil 2 says, he emptiness him of all his wealth and privilege to unite to buy us back, to redeem…
Like Boaz not only does he redeem us he unites with us…
That’s why we celebrate this season of Christmas and come to this table…
On night Christ before Christ died on the cross, he said this is my body broken for you… and my blood shed for you, for the forgiveness…
Through my death on the cross, I am redeeming you, I call you by name…
Big Idea: Even in dark and discouraging times God is unfolding HIS plan of redemption.
(This sermon can be heard on line at:
http://www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
Charles Dicken’s famous novel: The Tale of Two Cities begins with words…“It was the best of times it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us we had nothing before us.”
Dickens’ opening of a Tale of Two Cities, of course, describes pre-revolutionary 18th century France, but could also have been used to describe the book of Ruth… as the story describes a group of people who thought they had nothing, but they had everything because God was at work behind the scenes of their lives.
Elimelech and his family in the period of the Judges are living in Bethlehem, but there is a famine in the land. So they do the “logical” thing and leave Bethlehem for Moab, southeast of Bethlehem, where apparently there is no famine.
During their 10 year sojourn in Moab, Naomi’s husband dies and her sons Mahlon and Kilion marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth and then Naomi’s son Mahlon and Kilion ending up dying as well in Moab.
Bereft of her husband and sons, Naomi sinks into a deep pit of despair…
Naomi hears that the famine has ended in Bethlehem and she and her daughters in law Orpah and Ruth begin to walk along the Dead Sea Northwest to back to Naomi’s homeland…
Naomi says God’s hand is against me and she urges her daughters in law Orpah and Ruth to go back to their country, their families, and their gods.
Orpah does the sensible thing and goes home, but Ruth clings to Naomi and utters those immortal words, “Don’t urge me to leave you, where you go, I will go, where you lodge, I will lodge, your people will be my people, your God my God…(she leaves her gods, and takes the God of Naomi) where you die, I will die… and she travels with Naomi to Bethlehem.
As Naomi comes back into the Bethlehem she says, “I left Bethlehem full, but I have come back empty. So don’t call me Naomi (which means pleasant) call me Mara which means bitterness, for the Lord has made my life very bitter.”
Let’s turn to Ruth 2 (as you turn, I want acknowledge a pastor I know name Tim Keller who serves a church called Redeemer Presbyterian, whose helped me see all the redeemers in this passage).
Ruth Meets Boaz
1 Now Naomi had a relative on her husband's side, from the clan of Elimelech, a man of standing, whose name was Boaz.
2 And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, "Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor."
Naomi said to her, "Go ahead, my daughter." 3 So she went out and began to glean in the fields behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelech.
4 Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, "The LORD be with you!"
"The LORD bless you!" they called back.
5 Boaz asked the foreman of his harvesters, "Whose young woman is that?"
6 The foreman replied, "She is the Moabitess who came back from Moab with Naomi. 7 She said, 'Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.' She went into the field and has worked steadily from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter."
8 So Boaz said to Ruth, "My daughter, listen to me. Don't go and glean in another field and don't go away from here. Stay here with my servant girls. 9 Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the girls. I have told the men not to touch you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled."
10 At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She exclaimed, "Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?"
11 Boaz replied, "I've been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. 12 May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge."
13 "May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my lord," she said. "You have given me comfort and have spoken kindly to your servant—though I do not have the standing of one of your servant girls."
14 At mealtime Boaz said to her, "Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar."
When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and had some left over. 15 As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, "Even if she gathers among the sheaves, don't embarrass her. 16 Rather, pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don't rebuke her."
17 So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah. 18 She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough.
19 Her mother-in-law asked her, "Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!"
Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. "The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz," she said.
20 "The LORD bless him!" Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. "He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead." She added, "That man is our close relative; he is one of our kinsman-redeemers."
So Naomi’s family leave Bethlehem where there is a famine and goes to Moab hoping to improve their financial lot, but they end up in poverty and so Naomi returns to Bethlehem.
It’s not like she has just failed in some internet start up company and can declare bankruptcy and start again.
Naomi is too old and physically fragile to work in the fields.
She’s lost her husband and her two sons in a culture when only males have access to power, and she’s old to re-marry and have children.
In fact her situation seems so bleak that as she comes back into Bethlehem with Ruth she says, “I left here full, but I’ve come back empty…”
I wonder what Ruth thinks as she hears her mother in-law say, “I’m empty.” I wonder if Ruth thinks, what am I—a nothing, a zero, just a flea or something?
But Ruth proves to be a lifeline for her aged mother in law, Naomi.
Ruth is a woman who has left her nation of Moab, her culture, her language, her parents, her people, potential husbands…
In a culture where family is everything, Ruth is not just willing to leave her family, but to face the rest of her days as a widow and childless… to support her mother in law…
She’s willing to become an alien, a despised minority in an unknown place for her. In this chapter 2 alone, the author brings out the fact Ruth is a Moabites 5x.
And in this chapter Boaz commands his employee not to harm Ruth, why? Because as a woman and a member of despised minority, with no man in her life Ruth is vulnerable to violence or rape…
Ruth lays down her life, so her mother-in-law would have one. She’s a redeemer figure for Naomi.
When God is in the picture for us, it is never just the “winter of despair, it is also the spring of hope.
As we see in the book of Ruth even in this seemingly bleak time, God in all kinds of ways is working quietly behind the scenes working out his redemptive purposes.
But not only is there a redeemer for Naomi in Ruth, a redeemer emerges for the both of them.
Ruth’s mother in law is too old and fragile to do the backbreaking work of gleaning in the fields, so Ruth volunteers to go into the fields and pick up the left-over grain (according to God’s law given through Moses, landowners were supposed to leave what the harvesters missed, so that the poor, the alien, the widow and the orphan could eat.)
The New International Version text tells us… “As it turned out” Ruth found herself working in the fields of Boaz, who was from her same clan as her dead husband, Elimelech.
In the Hebrew the phrase translated in the NIV… “As it turned out” reads more literally “she chance chanced upon.” In Hebrew that idiom indicates much more strongly than the English that Ruth “chance chanced” to come onto the field of Boaz, under the providential guidance of God.
At first, Ruth had no idea that this was Boaz’s field and at the time she had no idea who or what Boaz was…
There are so many times when our seeming ordinary steps in life are being led by the Lord. The book Proverbs tells us a person in his or her heart may chart his or her course, but God determines their steps.
As Ruth “chance chanced” upon, Boaz’s fields, we are told that Boaz is a man of standing, which means that he is a man of wealth, status, and respected in the community.
And we know early on that he’s a man of God. Just as Ruth begins working the fields, Boaz happens to walk by and greets his workers with the words, (and remember this is in the time of the Judges when most people have turned away from God) “The Lord be With you.” Why does the author include such a seemingly trivial detail? To show us that Boaz is a man who acknowledges God.
Boaz ends up discovering through his foreman Ruth is a foreigner, a Moabites and who has come to Bethlehem to support her widowed mother-in-law, Noami.
Boaz, knowing that she is a vulnerable alien woman, tells his men, not to harm her…
He says to Ruth, “Whenever you are thirsty, please access to drink from my water jars…”
14At the lunch break, Boaz said to her, "Come over here; eat some bread. Dip it in the wine."
And he orders his men, "Let her glean where there's still plenty of grain on the ground… in fact, pull some of the good stalks of grain out and leave it for her to glean.
And when Ruth returns to her mother that night with not a few gleanings, but a lap full of grain…. Naomi, her mother in law, says whose fields did you work in today?! Ruth says, “I worked in field of a man named Boaz.” Ruth has no idea who he is.
Naomi, exclaims, “He’s one of our close relatives!”
He’s one of our “goels,” one of our kinsman-redeemers!
John Piper says this is like a bright crack in the cloud of bitterness hanging over Naomi.
We don’t have anything equivalent to a kinsman-redeemer in our culture. So, let me explain what that is.
When Israelites moved into Canaan, the promised, the land was divided and each of the families received some property.
But some families, of course, would fall into poverty and be forced to sell their land.
But there was a provision in law that allowed a close relative to buy back the land for the family. So if some other person had come to own the land, if a close a relative (a kinsman) wanted to buy back the land, on behalf of the family that had lost it, he could do so and the owner would have to sell whether he wanted to or not.
Now apparently when, Naomi’s family moved to Moab they sold their family land, and didn’t have the money buy it back….
But, Boaz is close enough of kin to buy it back.
Another role that the kinsman redeemer could play was to marry a widow of a close relative in order to carry on the name of the dead relative…
In this case ideally Boaz would both buy their land back, but would also marry Ruth so that Naomi’s family had an heir to inherit the land.
Naomi gets so excited at this prospect that not long after this she encourages Ruth to propose marriage to him, in a way that would fit the culture.
Naomi says to her daughter in law, wash, and perfume, put on your best clothes. This evening after Boaz has finished eating and drinking and he goes lies down on the threshing floor… go to him, uncover his feet and he’ll tell you what to do…
This was obviously quite forward, but nonetheless a culturally acceptable way a woman could propose to a man. Apparently, this custom is still practiced in some middle Eastern cultures…
Naomi sets up a plan, but there are great risks.
Boaz has been very kind to Ruth, protecting her from assault or rape at the plantation, allowing her to glean as much as she wants from his fields, but there’s a big difference between offering to safe environment and being generous to someone and wanting to marry them!
As a kinsman redeemer, he is does NOT have to buy the land back NOR does he have to marry her… he has the option to say no….
But Ruth she goes to the threshing floor, while Boaz is sleeping, lifts up his blanket lies down… in the middle of the night something startles Boaz and he asks, “Who are you?” I am your servant Ruth, spread the corner of your garment over me, for you are a kinsman redeemer… this was a way asking him to marry her…
At this point, Boaz could turn her away…
Perhaps Ruth in the back of her mind is thinking….
Why would he marry me a woman, who is not from his culture, a woman who is a despised minority?
Why would he want to marry me in culture where family means everything, since I was not able to have a child with my first husband? And even if I have a child that child will not be considered his, but my dead husband’s?
If he marries her me, he assumes all of our family debt, he’ll have buy back my mother-in-laws lost property, he absorbs all our debt and all his wealth transfers to us…
Why would he do that?
But the worst thing for Ruth would not to be turned down, that would hurt.
Boaz, is a male, he’s a good a male, but he is a man, and Ruth’s lifting up his blanket and asking to be covered by his garment is a marriage proposal and has sexual overtones, which could be misread. It’s dark, it’s at night, she just a vulnerable young woman, with no legal standing as a minority, no real protector, Boaz could decide to have one a night stand with her and leave her, reasoning after she sort of “owes me”…
But how does Boaz respond? He responds with total integrity… tenderness and purity… and he says you’ve done me a kindness, but not running after the younger guy… Boaz calls a daughter which suggests he’s older, but also he will treat tenderly and will purity…
He agrees to marry her, buy back the family property and to become her and Naomi’s kinsman redeemer…
What this story shows us that God can use “chancing upon a chance” our every ordinary actions that we don’t give forethought to, like Ruth coming into a field to glean, and choreograph these into his greater plan…
The story also shows us God can and does use planning and risk taking to achieve his redemptive purposes… Ruth took at big risk in proposing to Boaz.
The story shows that God can use something as earthy as an unlikely relationship to achieve his purposes.
My grandmother turns 92 years old this month… If you meet you might think she has everything in the world going for her as a 92 year old: she’s beautiful (in 92 year kind of way), she’s fit—she plays tennis, she has money and she lives in the best neighborhood.
But her life has been filled with pain. Her husband my grandfather, had money and power and was repeatedly unfaithful and at times physically abusive. But they lived in a culture and in a generation where divorce was not an option… Many times she wanted her life to end. Several years ago, she confided in me. She said, “My life was filled with suffering, but I know it wasn’t completely in vain because, your mom was born and you were born and you’re serving God… so my life wasn’t wasted after all?”
If you read on “the edges” of the book of Ruth, you’ll about the men in Noami, Ruth, and Orpah’s lives. We don’t for certain, but there are hints the men in the family were drifting from God. They leave the land God promised them to seek out wealth in Moab. The sons take on Canaanite names and they marry women who don’t share faith in the same God, yet God uses this all this drifting away from God to bring about his purposes.
Last week in our home group we were studying Joseph’s life. How God used the sin of Joseph’s brother to work in a remarkable end to save their family.
Some of us talked about God used our sins and mistakes to achieve his purposes.
Ruth shows us that God can use the ordinary, he can use planning and risk, he can use relationships, and he can even use sin to bring about his redemptive purposes.
We see in the book of Ruth there is a redeemer for Naomi, Ruth, and there is Redeemer for Naomi and Ruth, Boaz, and there is a redeemer for us…
At the end of book of Ruth, the women say to Naomi, praise God that He has not left you without a kinsman redeemer… and if you stop there. You would you think the kinsman redeemer is Boaz.
But it become clear as you read on, that it is not Boaz, it’s a child, it’s an offspring that Boaz and Ruth will have….
They have a child named Obed, Obed a child named Jesse and Jesse has a son David, who becomes a great King of Israel and many generations later there is one called the son of David, born in stable in this same Bethlehem…
That one born in Bethlehem, named Jesus Christ, is the ultimate kinsman redeemer…
Like Ruth did for Naomi, he lays down his life on the cross that we might have one…
Like Boaz he absorbs all of our debts before God, a debt comparable to a totally impoverished widow on welfare who owes billions of dollars, a debt we could not pay,
Phil 2 says, he emptiness him of all his wealth and privilege to unite to buy us back, to redeem…
Like Boaz not only does he redeem us he unites with us…
That’s why we celebrate this season of Christmas and come to this table…
On night Christ before Christ died on the cross, he said this is my body broken for you… and my blood shed for you, for the forgiveness…
Through my death on the cross, I am redeeming you, I call you by name…
posted by Shigematsu at 3:16 PM
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