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Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find [email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast. Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: I know we've got some families who have been taking their college students back this weekend. So that's kind of a heavy hearted moment.
Also rejoicing for them and exciting for them. And I know that kind of brings a mixed bag of emotions. We're going to be talking about some stuff today that I think brings about some different things and emotion as well.
As you can probably tell even by those songs, some of those were just so moving to think about how God carries us through some of the difficult times in life.
This past week I was able to go to South America, to Guyana, to do a medical mission campaign with the College of Health Sciences from Fulton University. And it was a great trip that we had. And not to give you a full report here, but just to give you a little bit of a sense of what we experienced.
We had occupational therapists and we had physical therapists, we had PAs and doctors. And that beautiful blonde up in the top right corner, that's Kenzie, she was a speech pathologist there doing hearing tests and a lot of other things that she does in her profession that she's coming through. And it was a really, really good thing. We had instructors, we had students, and it was just beautiful to see them do what they were doing. My part of the trip was on the backside of all of that therapy and all that good treatment is they would bring them to a table where several of us would sit down with them, talk to them about their faith, share with them the gospel, pray with them and try to encourage them in scripture and all those kinds of things. And in a place like Guyana, South America, you're going to find some things that are a little bit, you know, unusual things that maybe are, you know, you don't expect to see necessarily. But we had a guy came in and he looked a lot like Bob Marley, came in and had a little shoulder issue and he came in and did some work and then got through the.
And came and found me. He eyeballed me from afar, my brother. And he walked over and sat down with me, and we began to talk. And it was a very encouraging conversation to begin with, until he said, do you smoke weed? Can you want to come back to my house? And at that point, I thought, okay, wow. You know, that went left a little bit quicker. And no, I didn't go, by the way, for those of you who are wondering, I did not. We had other things that came through as well. And one of the things was we had a person with recurring polio.
And that's a very, very serious thing. You know, here in the United States, it's almost been eradicated, but there they still have these cases that pop up. And so in this clinic, you know, it was a good thing for these doctors to one treat this person as best they could. But the physical therapist, the occupational, all these different people. And, you know, he came in very gently. I mean, it took a long time to begin. But when he left, there were tears in his eyes. As he was able to move and walk, they had freed up some stuff, and they had kind of strengthened him a little bit. And that wasn't going to be one of those things that healed him right off, for sure.
But it was one of those things that the tears came from his eyes just out of appreciation for even the pain that he went through to get to that ability to walk to his own vehicle. You know, that was a big, big deal.
But another thing that came through, and this is kind of where I wanted to go with and sharing our experience there is. We had one young man who came in, had an elbow injury and a shoulder injury. He did construction, and he looked like he was 14 years old.
But in so many places across the globe, you're gonna find some people that just age better. And over in Guyana, I mean, the people there age beautifully. I can't explain. I don't know why that's the case, but everyone is way older than you think they are. So this guy came through. I thought he was a teenager, and turns out he was either 26 or 36. And over there, you can't really tell, like, it's 26 or 36. Okay. Like, I couldn't tell the difference. All right, so it's one of those. I wrote 20 or 36 on my piece of paper as I was visiting with him. But one of the things that happened in that conversation is we were talking about faith, and he said he was a Christian And I said, well, tell me what you know about Jesus. He said, who?
And I got the impression that from their perspective, Christianity is almost like a political party. It's like they're good people. So I agree with Christianity, but he was also Hindu, also had some Muslim.
It was kind of a potpourri, almost like. And I saw this a lot, that some of the people would kind of pick and choose, like different pieces and parts, almost like a sampler platter, that if one of those falls out, the other one does not. And I was able to talk to him about how Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except by me, that there's no other person out there that's died for our sins. There's no other person who was raised from the dead to bring forth the promises of eternal life. I began to talk about these things.
And there's also no other group that I know of that refers to his believers as a body and a family.
And as we talked about that, this young man who had gotten some treatment had gotten some new reading glasses and they were all polished, that the tears began to come from behind those glasses.
It was the word family.
They use the term famu in South America, and that's like a close, kindred relationship.
And it was through that that I asked him about his family, and he told me that his mother died at the age of two and his father died nine years later.
So at 11, he was an orphan. So. Well, don't you have aunts, uncles, other family members?
No, that's it.
I said, well, how have you been making it all this time? I had to find work, construction jobs, different things that he did all the time. And when we talked more about family and I talked to him about his spiritual family, he began to cry even more.
And so I said, hey, because other people were lined up to talk, and I wanted to spend all my time with this guy.
I said, let me do something with you. Let me get you a Bible.
And I said, if you want to know more about Jesus, let's open up to the Gospel of Luke. I put the marker in there, and I sat down with it. I said, read all of Mark and you'll find at least stories about Jesus and you'll find out more about the people who followed him. And if you keep reading in the New Testament, you'll find more about that family and how we're close together and how we support each other. You read the Book of Acts, you'll find out to what links we'll go to support each other and help each other and encourage each other. So I went through all these things with him and. And I had to let him go. And it was one of the hardest things to do because the other people were coming in.
But I looked up and he walked to the front of the clinic where they were registering people, and he sat down again as if he was going to go back through registration, but it wasn't. He was going word for word, and he could barely read, you know, Gospel According to Mark.
And he was digging into that Bible, trying to find more about Jesus Christ and the family that he has. Boy, you talk about touching your heart and making you realize how beautiful and how valuable what we have here is that we can lean on each other, that we should be able to, you know, be there for each other, that we should have an awareness and all of those things. And it started, though, as a result of his grief and kind of that's the pivot to what we're talking about here in this story, because grief is one of those things that maybe we just need to be reminded of with regard to understanding.
You know, I can think about maybe 100 people in this audience that I know are going through some kind of form of grief.
You lost somebody very dear to you.
You're going through a battle, okay? And you're facing that every day.
And it's easy for those of us who may have not experienced that or not gone through that to go, man, they are really taking it hard and kind of say things like, you know, that's kind of pitiful, and those kinds of things. But can I just for a moment bring us back to some things that I think will remind us that grief is a real thing? You know, I don't know what you're going through. I know what I'm going through. I know what other people are going through because I talk to them.
But sometimes grief is one of those things that. That people may go. They're just kind of taking that a little too far. I mean, I get that they're sad and all those kinds of things, but can I tell you something? For that person, whoever it is they lost, it's a real thing.
It's real, and it hurts.
And it should, right? If we love people deeply, if we've had experiences with people that were wonderful in our life, it should hurt us when we lose those people. That's just normal, right? And it's okay for them to feel that loss and to feel that burden and to be sad and to have these moments and where they're just not doing well. It's okay if you're going through that. I want you to know it's okay for you to be feeling those things, but also your grief and my grief are different.
And how, you know, you say some people. Well, it looks like they're kind of getting through it pretty well. You don't know. Some people put on a good front. Some people are in their private times having really difficult situations, you know, and so I want to remind you that it's unique to everyone that how they're dealing with it, it's okay. Let them deal with it and process it how they think is best. Okay? But another avenue of this is we need the ability to talk about it openly. Sometimes we go, I just can't hear about how sad they are all the time. I just can't listen to it. Hey, open up your heart. Be compassionate. People who are grieving need full expression. They need to be able to say what they're thinking and what they're feeling.
It's kind of their way of sorting it out. It's kind of their way of putting it on the table so they can kind of sort through it and deal with it and get through that. That really disappointing thing that they've experienced in their life. And then finally is for all of us to realize that, I don't know that we get over grief. I hear people talk about that, but I think it's one of those things that through time and through expression and through recognizing that it's okay to experience it over time, we give ourselves permission to move forward in life. That it softens, that sorrow softens a little bit.
But I'm seeing that when I look at this story in Ruth, because the situation here is Naomi and her husband, Elimelech. And I know Andrew did this message last week, so you're kind of fresh. But let's reboot it just a little bit.
They're in Bethlehem.
Bethlehem and all of Israel have run away from God. This is during the time of the judges. God's judgment is kind of poured out on top of them. They're going through a tough time. They're in famine.
So Elimelech takes his family and moves off to Moab, which is not a great place to go, but it was a place of plenty, a place where they could have what they needed.
Somehow, through the course of time, though, things changed. Moab had a famine, and then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, passed away.
And then the two boys that she had also passed away.
And what was left was Naomi with those two daughter in laws and Naomi in a foreign land like that, you know, an older woman, a widow, doesn't bring much value and all that she had in heirs and all that are gone. The people that were gonna be required by law to take care of her were out of the picture altogether as well. So all she's left with is these done law. So she decides to go back to Bethlehem and when she does, you have to understand the circumstance. Now she's going back to Bethlehem, but she brings no value to the table. She has no possessions in fact, because the way the law's written, those lands and possessions went to their heirs. Having no heirs then meant she was empty of all those things, no one to provide for her.
So she goes back and the two daughter in laws are going with her and she's like, no, you can't. Like it's going to be terrible for me, but for you it'll be even worse. I mean, you're pagans and you're refugees and you're going to come over here like what I have is not even going to be what you're going to have. And so it's better for you to go back to your, maybe somebody will marry you, someone will take you and you'll have children and all those kinds of things. But in the process what they realize is that those two daughters were married for 10 years and had not had a child before their husband's deaths.
So they weren't all out called bare, but they were at least considered to be infertile. Well, if you can't provide an heir for someone, then that woman actually goes further and further down. So not only does she widow, not only is she a refugee, not only is she a foreigner, but coming back over to, you know, this would be like she had no standing at all, no ability to be of benefit to other men in this time. It's a very rough time of life.
So I say all that to say that Naomi in this moment becomes hardened and bitter, right? And she goes into this place kind of in a really tough situation because as she's going back into Bethlehem, what I want you to understand is she's not going to live in Bethlehem. She's going in her frustration and anger and disappointment in God, she's going into Bethlehem to die and she wants to release those daughters in law.
But Ruth says, what? No, I'm going to go with you. Your people are going to be my people, your God's going to be my God, I'll be with you forever because of the way you've treated me. And so they enter into Bethlehem, and Naomi says at the end of this chapter, of chapter one, she says, don't call me Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. Now imagine you're Naomi in that circumstance, with all those things gone, all that loss in your life, and you walk into this place and you go back to what should be a very familiar place. But because now Bethlehem is out of famine, they're recovering from that. It's a whole different place. But everywhere you look, you think, Elimelech, my boys think about the memories of all the things that you experience when you had plenty and you had each other and you had God's blessing and you had all that going on. And you go into this place and I'm telling you, it's not the same anymore. The Naomi that comes back doesn't look the same.
She says it I'm bitter. She's saying, I need to express these things. I'm bitter and I'm empty. In the middle of all that, she says, I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. The Almighty has brought calamity upon me.
That's the circumstance that we find ourselves in. And I'm thinking to myself, you know, before we get too hard on Naomi, wouldn't famine and loss be. Be something that might bring us down as well?
I mean, if we think that life is all about just good things and I just wanna be blessed all the time, if we think that that's how life goes, you're sort of missing the point, because that's not how life works.
And every one of us, I don't care how strong you are as a Christian, if you experience these things over and over again and it feels like it's just mounting on top of one thing after another, you can find yourself being pretty bitter and empty as well.
But here's the thing I want us to be reminded of, and it's something I think that God is telling us through every one of these stories in the scripture, is that sometimes it's our calamities that bring us to the very place that we need to be spiritually in that place in that moment that God's in control. And imagine, if you could, a mindset that says God's providence. I need to be thinking about God being in control, and that whatever I'm going through, he's going to help me through that.
He's going to carry me through that. And if we just adopted that kind of Persona, that kind of mentality, how that might shape the way we view life and the things that we're going through in the moment.
So here we are at the close of this chapter, and it says this. They came to Bethlehem. And look at this. At the beginning of barley harvest. If we truly believe that God is in control, then we have to understand that God's providence also often brings us to a place of his timing.
And I think I made up a word, approximation, proximity, okay, that God is in control. His providence brings us to a certain time and place. But then there are certain things that are going on around us that make that proximity just right for his provision to be there for us. So here's what it says that happened.
They had a relative. Naomi has a relative, and they call his name Boaz. And it's sort of like one of these things that's dropped as a pin, right? It doesn't tell you a ton about him. He's just a good man. Okay? He's of the clan of Elimelech, so he's sort of family. His name is Boaz. That's a good guy, as far as we know. And then verse two says that Ruth, the Moabite, she said to Naomi, let me go in the field and glean among the ears of grain after him, and. And whose sight I shall find. Now, you may ask yourself, what does it mean to glean? I always thought this in the same sense of harvest, you know, as they're going and harvesting crop. The gleaners would come in and do that, and I thought that the gleaning was the harvesting, but actually it's not. If you look in Leviticus, chapter 19, what you're going to find out is that God commanded all of Israel when they did their crops, that they would harvest it by not getting all of it. They would leave either certain edges or maybe they would round off the corners. So corners of their. Their property would be available for people who were poor or foreigners coming in or people who were destitute, that they could come in and that they could glean what was left on that field as a way to provide for the poor in their area. So God commanded them to do this. So Ruth, understanding that culture knows, hey, we're fortunate in that we're here now in this time, and we're going to get out into the field, and I'm going to glean the corners.
So Ruth hesed. This is the word that Andrew used last week. It's the word that really defines, like, loyalty and devotion to someone, love for someone that compels you to action. Okay, that's a really important term here because you're gonna see this over and over in this story that her loyalty and love for Naomi, her mother in law, trumped a lot of things and she would do whatever it took to provide for her. And so she finds herself in this desperation, even being okay with just getting out there and getting whatever the scraps are left on the edges of those fields to take care of her mother in law. That's the kind of love and devotion she had for her.
And I want to remind us that I think this is the truth for those of us who are dealing with misery and we're going through tough times, that maybe one of the best ways to climb out of that is to simply just get after it. And you may say, well, that's not really a biblical term, Brandon. No, it's not necessarily.
But I think you'll know what I mean by this when I say get after it. Sometimes you just have to pull it up and you have to get going. You have to be moving in a direction. You have to make something happen. On some level, yes, God is in control, but you have to move. He doesn't just bless you because you're sitting there. He blesses you because you're getting up and doing some things. So in your misery, sometimes it's just about getting after it. What do I mean by that? Well, first off, you have to realize that it's not just about you, that you yourself are not enough.
None of us are enough to pull things together on our own.
We're all in need of God's favor and his help and his blessing, his providence, the things he does for us. So take a moment to pray.
Pray for the healing of your heart. The things that you're going through.
Look deep inside those difficulties and say, God, I can't do this on my own. I know it's all about you.
And give your trust over to him to help you through this process, to open up doors, to. To brighten up the way you see things, to look differently at the world around you. The second thing is look in God's word for guidance.
Romans chapter 15. We're going back to this study we just did. Romans 15:4 says this. The things that were written before were written for our learning. So that we, through patience and comfort of scriptures, might have hope. Do you see what he's saying? There's a whole long story here.
Provision in the Bible. Everything that you've read and you've seen how God has worked. All of those things are meant to provide us a sense of comfort that whatever we're going through, God is still there. He's helping us through those things. And little by little, if we trust in those things, we can see it applied to our own lives. So begin to seek out that guidance from God. Look at what's happened, see how faith and trust can get going, but then also find strength in God's people.
Now, this is something that should go without saying, but we need to be there for each other, and is it possible that we haven't?
While I was in South America, one man came through the line. He got this treatment, came to me and said, no need to evangelize me, brother. I'm a member of the church. I said, okay, good. In other words, don't waste your words, brother.
But he said, but I'm not leaving until you go and talk to my wife and my son, who have stopped coming to church. Well, everybody loves that conversation. Don't you? Like, hey, want you to send me to go whoop them upside the head, you know?
And of course, I was not necessarily comfortable in those shoes, but I thought to myself, you know what?
Let me go talk. Because the guy was talking and talking and talking and talking and talking. And I was like, he said, he's not leaving, so let me do that. So I grabbed my Bible and I went over to talk to this wife and son who had stopped coming to the worship assemblies.
And I sat down, right? I pulled up a chair literally just inches away from them. And I said, I'm Brandon.
I noticed that you skipped our line, and I wanted to talk to you a little bit. I understand that you guys have been members of this church and that you have, you know, maybe not come as regularly as you ought to. And I just wanted to talk to you and encourage you to get back and those kinds of things. And the lady was like, you know, well, I have medical issues. My medication makes me worthless for four hours. And she said, I just went through the clinic. And they said, that medicine? I said, yes, ma'. Am. I said, I understand sickness and struggle and those kinds of things. And sometimes there are other options, like online. I said, I don't know if you guys have that. No, we don't have that. And I said, okay. And I said, so the Lord understands your circumstance on some level. I said, but I'll come right back to you. I talked to the son. I said, son, you know, what's keeping you from coming? He said, honestly, I don't even know. I Just got out of the habit and I stopped coming and started feeling like I didn't necessarily have to be here all the time.
So I came back to mom and I said, mom, I've talked with you a couple of times already, and one thing that I've noticed about you is you have a spirit of calmness.
Like, you're very.
It's easy to be in your presence. You make people feel comfortable with your smile and your warmth and those kinds of things. It feels like if you were a person around people who were, like, really anxious or high strung or worried about something, that you would be the kind that could come in and be the peace in the middle of that storm.
And she said, yes, people say that about me. And I said, how dare you leave that out of the hearts of the people who need you here at this church?
She kind of reared back.
I said, isn't that what we're here for? I think sometimes we think that church is about what you're getting out of it.
How about your part in bringing it?
We have an obligation to bring that for someone here. And I said, so I need you to realize your importance in the body here, how important you are. Someone like you, with your spirit and your ability has. How you can take someone who's going through a difficult time and you can bring calmness to their life with your example and with your words. Brother, I'll be back.
Wow. Man, I wish it worked like that in the United States, you know, where you could just say what you want to say and people just take it and whatever. Oh, man, we got to skirt around and be careful here. Everybody's feelings get hurt about everything. No truth landed and it convicted her.
Turned to the son. I said, son, you look really nice. Got a nice haircut. You got nice clothes. Did you iron those this morning? You know, like, that kind of thing. He looked very different from most of the people that came through our clinic.
And I said, so you're a logistician? It was written on his name tag, you know, like. And I said. He said, yeah, I do it all day long. I said, man, don't you think that you could probably put together some, like, plans and help this church, like, develop ways of, you know, reaching out into different communities and introducing people to Jesus and spending some time, you know, proclaiming the gospel? Yeah, I could definitely put together a plan for them. I said, how dare you not be here at church to help this body grow?
He said, I'm coming back, brother. It's like, wow, two for two now were they there this morning. We'll find out. I'll call somebody and find out.
But the point I'm making is all of you have a role.
You may say to yourself, oh, they don't even know if I'm here or not. Trust me, we need you here. We need you here because you provide something for somebody. We don't know who it is, but you are that someone, that someone's looking for.
And I want you to be aware that you're needed, that you're wanted, and that you have a role here to fill. You see, you need to be surrounding yourself with people of like faith, because when times get really tough, it's that support system that helps us get past the struggles that we're going through, but also think eternally.
The stuff that we're going through here in this life are.
It's temporary.
If we're people of faith and we believe that Jesus is coming back and that we're gonna be ushered into heaven with him, then understand this stuff that we go through here while painful and destructive and hard and all of those things, understand it's temporary.
Jesus is coming to give us something much better than that. If we adopt that mindset, just think about how that reshapes the way we deal with the calamity in our life.
And then the next thing is just get to work serving other people.
Sometimes just doing for other people shapes your perspective, where you go, hey, I'm not the only person going through this. And. And through that serving, you begin to realize your value and how God can still use you. And it helps you get past the struggles that you're going through.
That's kind of what's happening here in this story.
Naomi says, go, get out there. And it says she happened to come to the part of the field where Boaz owned that field. And so I want you to understand something. Nothing just happens when God's in control. And by the way, he's always control.
Listen to this passage. Isaiah 45 says this. I am the Lord, and there is no other besides me. There is no God. I equip you, though you do not know me.
That people may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light, create the darkness. I make well being, I create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. Things.
What's he saying?
In the good times, I'm there.
In the bad times, I'm right there too.
And all of those things Sometimes bring us to the place we need to be.
So let's talk a little bit about Boaz for a second. Boaz shows up on the scene, and I love this. He walks up to the people who are workers, his servants, people who are out in the fields doing that work, and he says, hey, the Lord be with you. And they shout back and say, hey, the Lord bless you. The idea here is that Boaz knows all those people who are working for him like they're a family on some level. And so I think to myself, man, what a. I don't know much about Boaz yet, except for he's a worthy man, all the things that the scriptures say. But right here, I immediately think, wow, when I look at his character, his character is showing up on the scene, brightening up the hearts and the lives of all the people around him. The question comes to all of us is, are we creating that kind of spiritual environment in our surroundings in the providence of God where he has placed you in this moment? Are we that shining light? Are we that brightness, that great example, that beacon of light that shows that God is with us? I love how he says, you know, the Lord be with you. He's like, hey, y' all have a great day. I'm, you know, praying for you, want your protection, and all those kinds of things. And they in unison shout back, the Lord bless you. It's like they appreciate who he is and they'll work hard for him because of that.
Are we creating that kind of stimulating environment for the people that we surround? You don't have to be the boss. You don't have to be the person in charge.
But are you a person that comes in, bringing that light with you, man? Something for all of us to think about when Boaz sets this great example. But not only is he like this, but also he recognizes some things. He looks over and he sees Ruth working, and he says, who is this young lady? And so his workers say to him, this is the Moabite woman that came back with Naomi.
And he says, you know, she asked, please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.
And so this person says to Boaz, she came. And she has now continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest. In other words, that girl is getting after it.
Now, I called him out in the first service. He wasn't here. But I'll say it again. If you've ever watched wukash kondraki work, okay, that guy, you give him a job. He's a sweat puddle in 10 minutes. I mean, he is just busy.
Like, he is a hard, hard worker. I love to watch him work.
He's great, right? That's what I see when I read this. That's the first person I thought of is, doesn't matter what you give Wukosh, he's like, on it. He's working hard all the time.
And it's that kind of example that catches Boaz's eye.
So love and loyalty, that's that chesed that we talked about, originates in our hearts. But look at Ruth here.
She's not just saying, oh, I'm gonna take care of you, Naomi. I promise you, I'm gonna be there for you. I love you. And I said, I'll come with you. You can expect me to be right here by your side. No, she's moved by that love and loyalty to get out into the fields and do the most embarrassing thing to say. I'm poor, I'm broken, I don't have anything to offer.
Please, let me just glean your fields. And I will work so hard to take care of Naomi. Her love is so deep for her that it moves her to get away from her misery and to get after it, so to speak.
So Boaz says to Ruth, appreciates her. He says, now listen, my daughter.
Capture the compassion, the inclusiveness of that.
Don't go gleaning another field or leave this one.
Keep close to my young women. Let your eyes be on this field that they are reaping and go after them. Have I not charged the young men to not touch you? Remember, I've got protection for you. And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn.
What's he saying?
I'm going to take care of you. Can I just say something? This is masculinity.
Men are getting beaten up all the time.
But if you want to know what being a strong man, a man who represents masculinity, this is it. Well, how do I know that? Well, listen to what this pastor says. She fell on her face and bowed down to the ground. Isn't that awesome? Like, he's so masculine. She just fell down and worshiped him. That was a joke, by the way.
Some of you men love that a little too much. I was, like, nudging their wives over there.
That's not the point of this. In fact, I'm told that some women who have researched this found out that, you know, what really should have said was that the man, you know, that he fell out or she fell out because you Know, she saw a man who took notice of something that she had done or whatever.
That's not the case either.
What's happening here is she's working, working, working, giving it all, slaving the day away.
And all of a sudden, someone says to her something so deep and so kind that it penetrates the heart and the floodgate opens.
You ever been in that kind of desperation in South America this past week, they have a preacher, but they also have missionary that moves from two different locations, industry, church and plaisance.
And they go from back, back and forth. And it's a husband and wife team.
And oddly enough, her name is Naomi. Isn't that a godsend?
And she is the mother bee. You know what I mean? She is the queen. She is taking care of everybody's food. She is going around checking everyone. She had a purse that had, like, you know, money to exchange. She had, like, you know, everything that you would need. It's like, you know, I tell people my mom is a mobilized unit for Dollar General. That's kind of how this lady was like, she had everything. She called it her all purpose bag. And she was taking care of needs all day long, working, sweating, literally moving, going and getting food, coming back and feeding all of us who were on that mission team. And then anybody else who was in the room, she was feeding them all. And she was, you know, sweating on her brow and just moving from one place to the next. And I grabbed her and I sat her down. I said, naomi, I can't tell you how valuable you are to what we're doing here. And you know what she did?
Tears.
Why?
Because she doesn't do it for that.
But in her urgency to take care of people, if we don't take the time to notice people like that and to say, hey, we appreciate you. I see something powerful in you. I see how valuable you are.
We're missing opportunities to be a blessing to someone else.
And Ruth is in this situation where she's working with everything she's got all about Naomi.
And he looks at her and he recognizes what's going on.
Masculinity sometimes is about awareness. And, man, we all could do better at this. Life is just passing us by often, and if we would just take a moment to notice what's going on around us, we'd be so much in a better situation, and our women would respect us so much more.
It's not just about that passage, but here's another example of this.
He looks at her and says, all that you have done for your Mother in law, since the death of your husband has fully been told to me. I've heard what the situation was.
And I heard that you chose to come and to be here for her.
How incredibly kind of you to come and to be here and to work so hard. I've seen all that you're doing just out of your love for her, just to be moved by that.
But also, masculinity is about godly concern.
As he looks at her, he stops in this moment and he offers a prayer to her. And listen to these words. He says, the Lord repay you for what you have done. A full reward is given to you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. Remember, she chose to make Naomi's people her people, Naomi's God, her God. And he's praising her for that decision.
And he's saying, hey, may God give you not just a blessing, but a full blessing, a full reward for that effort and you being brought underneath his wings. You just don't understand what it is.
That's what he's saying. You're gonna be blessed as a result of this. But also, masculinity is about provision.
Listen to these words. He says, come here, eat some bread. Dip your morsel in the wine. And she ate until she was satisfied and she had some leftover.
Let me explain what's going on here. It's typically a person who would have this kind of land ownership might bring in people to have a dinner, and it'd be kind of set aside for the special guests to come to the table. And the ones who are real special might get this plate that would have, like, herbs and oil and those kinds of things. And they would pass out bread and they would take it and they would dip it in that. You know, if you've ever been to Terra Novas or some of these, you know, fancy Italians, I'm gonna love it. I went to Riccatoni's in Florence a while back. Man, that's some good stuff, you know?
And this is like a special thing. And notice who he's bringing over to the table. He's bringing over Ruth and saying, hey, I want you to do that. But it's not just Ruth. Notice again who this guy is.
Everyone's. She sat beside the reapers and they passed this along. Do you understand? Like, everyone's special in Boaz's eyes. He brings everybody to the table and makes them all sit and feast. And she eats what she can and then holds back some later.
But also, protection is a key Component of being the man we need to be says that. We already heard that he had said, don't touch her to all of his servants. Because again, in these days, pagan women, you know, refugees, were the lowest of low and were abused so often by people, not Boaz's people, but by other people.
And he says to her, let her glean even among the sheaves and do not reproach her. Also, pull out some of the bundles for her. Leave it for her to glean. Like, give her a little bit extra light, make it so it doesn't look obvious, but drop some stuff for her so she's got what she needs and she doesn't have to work quite so hard for those things. And don't rebuke her when she does it. Don't look back and go, hey, what are you doing? Don't do that.
So she gleaned in the field until that evening.
Says that she, when it was all total, she grabbed about an ether of that grain. Well, what's an ephah? I don't know. Had to look it up. 22 liters, it said. Somewhere just shy of six gallons of dry grain, she was able to harvest from what they left on the ground for her. Do you see that protection, that provision for her? And she was satisfied.
So there, as he's prayed for her in the shadow of God's wings, you not only find refuge, but you find plenty.
What takes place next?
Naomi sees what's done. She sees. Cause you know, Ruth has brought all of this food back. She's fed her, she recognized. She's like, oh, may the Lord be really with this man. And by the way. And I can hear in the background, matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match. You know, this man is a close relative now. He's one of our redeemers.
So if you don't know what that means, just real quickly, and I'm not going to get too deep in it because Andrew's going to cover this. I know the next couple of weeks, we'll get into the depth of this and what it really means and what the spiritual applications are. But this word was kinsman, redeemer was the idea that if someone had a brother that lost or someone had a sibling who died, he was to take that sibling's spouse and make sure that he gave her an heir on behalf of his brother. Does that make sense? So he would do that to be a blessing to his family. That heir would not be his. Would have no claim to him. It would just be in his father's name. And so that was what this kinsman redeemer would do. There's also other things you see there in Leviticus 25, Deuteronomy 25, there's other things that spell out those details. But he could redeem a kinsman's property from loss. He could pay a ransom for a kinsman in bondage, or he could avenge a kinsman's death if that was needed as well. Again, we'll get more into that. But she kind of mentions this as a way to plant a seed thought in Ruth's mind about who this guy is, Boaz, that he falls in this category for their family.
And so what happens is Ruth stays in there. She keeps working, but she stays and lives with Naomi. Her devotion to her was what was fueling every bit of this. That love, that loyalty. And so it was in those fields of Boaz that they not only found the grain, but they also found grace.
And things are beginning to look up.
So I was thinking about that with regard to the things that we may be going through.
I don't know what your circumstance is. I mean, I try to keep my ear to the ground. I try to listen for things that people are going through, try to pray for people.
But can we just be real? We don't always tell people everything.
We don't always let people know the doubts we're going through. We don't always know the battles we're facing, and we're not always able to share those things with other people. We just don't want to kind of let that out there. We're not as vulnerable as maybe we should be.
But it did make me think, how are we addressing the calamities of our life?
How are we dealing with the difficulties we're facing?
And it made me think, don't we all say, like, why is this happening to me?
Don't we all find ourselves going, I don't understand. Why would God do this to me? Why am I suffering when I see other people over there having a good time? By the way, you don't know that they're having a good time.
People wear masks, but we say, I don't know why. It just always seems to happen to me.
What if we refocused and we reshape the way we think about the things that we go through in this life, the difficulties that first of all, God's in control, that he's going to guide me through it, that I can see him. And maybe we start asking these questions instead.
One, where will I find your grace today?
Because, see, it's real easy to find the difficulties. It's real easy to look for those and to see them right in front of us.
But if our mind and our heart begins to think this other way, then we start looking for those little bits of relief, those little moments of hope, those little things that help me get through this struggle today so I can face tomorrow. And then every day as my mind changes and I begin embracing this place, positive mindset. Then all of a sudden, I'm starting to see God's hand in the middle of all these things. So ask the question you know, where will I find grace today? And where will I see your hand? And ask those questions repetitively of yourself so that your heart can be shaped differently.
To not dwell in your grief and your loss and your disappointment and your hurt, but that you can imagine a God who carries you through it and brings you to the other side this morning. I don't know who's subject to the invitation we use that term. It just means something hits you in the heart.
If something hits you in the heart this morning and you want prayers or you want new courage, or you want to be redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, you want to be baptized into Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, to have that new life cleansed, made whole, freed from all your past and all the history of your life, to walk in newness of life. If any of you have that need this morning, whether their shepherds are at the door or whether they're up here, please come while we stand and sing.
