SERMON: REDEEMING RUTH: GLEANING THE GRACE OF GOD

28 August 2011

I. Introduction -- turn in Bibles to Ruth 1:19-22

19 So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”

20 “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”

22 So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.

-- one thing that I have learned in life is that not all days are equal -- some days are just really, really good -- you wake up and the sun is shining and the birds are singing and you just know that it's going to be a good day
-- but then there are those mornings when you wake up and you have to drag yourself out of bed -- you feel like death warmed over and you really don't feel like going to work or school because you just know that this is going to be one of those days -- you just know that today is going to be bad
-- so, how do you know if you're having bad day or not? -- well, if you're not sure, I actually found a list on the internet that can help you determine if your day is going bad or not -- let me share a few of these with you
-- You've been at work for three hours before you find out that your zipper is undone
-- You're so tired, you have to sit down to brush your teeth in the morning.
-- Your income tax refund check bounces.
-- It costs more to fill up your car than it did to buy it.
-- The bird singing outside your window is a vulture.
-- You wake up and your braces are stuck together.
-- You put both contacts into the same eye.
-- Your doctor tells you that you're allergic to chocolate.
-- You have to borrow from your Visa card to pay your Mastercard.
-- and I really like this last one -- you get to work and there's no coffee because the county health inspector has condemned your office coffee bar and closed it down pending test results

-- sometimes that's the way things go -- and sometimes, it's not just a bad day, but a series of bad days or bad weeks or even bad years
-- that's how it was with Naomi

-- if you remember where we left off last week in our story of Naomi and Ruth, Naomi has been having a series of bad days
-- she and her husband Elimelech had moved off to Moab with their two sons because of the famine in Israel -- and soon after they got there, not only did Elimelech die, but both of her sons passed away
-- and, there she was, widowed and penniless -- left in a foreign land to care for herself and her two widowed daughters-in-law -- she decided to go home to Bethlehem, if for no other reason than just to die in the place where she was born
-- one daughter-in-law went home to her family, but Ruth stayed with Naomi as they made the journey back from Moab across the Jordan River to Israel once again
-- as they made their way back into town, the women flocked around Naomi to welcome her home and to hear about what had happened in the time she had been gone -- "Don't call me Naomi -- Don't call me "pleasant" any longer," she said, "for God has afflicted me -- call me Mara -- "bitter" for that is what I am"
-- there's no doubt about it -- Naomi's having a bad day

II. Gleaning the Grace of God
-- so, let's continue our series in Ruth by looking at Chapter 2 -- look with me, if you would, at verse 1-3

1 Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelek, whose name was Boaz.
2 And Ruth the Moabite 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, entered a field and began to glean behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelek.

-- as Chapter 2 opens, we find Naomi and Ruth back in Bethlehem with no means of support -- they had no husband or and no sons to protect them or to provide for them -- they had no close kin who would help take care of them -- they were basically homeless and reduced to living on the charity of those around them
-- what do you do when you find yourself in this condition? -- what do you do when the bottom drops out and the economy fails and you lose your job and you're left with nothing?
-- you do what you have to do to survive -- as Dave Ramsey, the Christian financial talk show host advises -- when you find yourself in a situation like this -- overcome by debt with without enough income to pay your bills, you focus on what's important -- you put your time and your money into providing the things you need to survive -- food, shelter, and clothing -- and you leave the rest alone until you are able to take care of your basic needs

-- well, that's exactly what we see going on in these verses -- Naomi and Ruth's focus is on food -- they know they have to have food to survive, and without a husband or a son to provide for them, their only hope is in the grace of God
-- as Jerry Bridges put it: "Our worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace."
-- God had already made provision in His law for the widows and the poor and the destitute -- in Leviticus 19:9-10, we read this command, “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.”
-- the Bible tells us that God's mercies are new every morning, and that His grace always precedes our needs -- before Naomi and Ruth had ever been born -- before they ever suffered heartache and loss and misery -- before they ever wandered back into Bethlehem as widows in need of food, God had already made a way for them to get by
-- we call this command of God "gleaning" -- the farmers allowing people in need to go into their field to salvage the remnants of the harvest -- to gather the part of the harvest that is dropped or left behind or that is thrown away by the farmer as not usable
-- gleaning is a practice that is not very common today, but it used to be very common -- during the depression, as people struggled to find enough food to eat, farmers would allow strangers into their fields to pick up the culls and the part of the harvest that was missed
-- today, with our clean farming practices and our mechanized harvest, there's not a lot left to glean in the fields, and very few people are doing so -- however, this biblical practice has been gaining a lot of attention in recent years, especially as the economy has turned south
-- there is an organization called the St. Andrews Society with a regional office in Tifton that I tried to get our churches to help with in the past -- this group finds local farmers who are willing to allow people to glean in their fields and they get volunteers to go out and pick up the culls and the vegetables and fruit that are left over to give to the local food bank or to give away directly to people in need
-- this might be something for us to consider being involved with or maybe something that we could pass on to the 4-H club as a community service project
-- regardless, this is what we see Ruth proposing here in the start of Chapter 2

-- now, there's one thing I want to point out to you that you might have missed in these verses -- look back at verse 2

2 And Ruth the Moabite 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.”

-- according to God's law, it was the responsibility of Naomi as the mother-in-law to provide for her widowed daughter-in-law's needs -- but who is it that comes up with the idea of gleaning? -- who is it that comes up with the idea of doing what they can to survive? -- it's Ruth
-- you see, Naomi has checked out -- she's given up -- she's given up on life -- she's given up on God -- her faith is gone -- her hope is gone -- and she's quit
-- but, as we saw last week in Ruth's declaration of faith and trust in God, Ruth believes -- in spite of everything that they have been through -- in spite of their hard situation -- in spite of their desperate situation -- Ruth hasn't given up -- she still has hope and she still trusts in the grace of God

-- this begs the question -- what do we do when we're having a really, really bad day like Ruth and Naomi?
-- do we shake our fist at God and turn our back on Him as Naomi did or do we trust in God's grace and goodness and love in the midst of the trial as Ruth did?

-- when Ruth surrendered her will to God -- when she surrendered her very life to Him by following Naomi to Israel despite the fact that she would be entering a hopeless situation -- she opened herself to an outpouring of the grace of God
-- the hardest thing to do when you're going through a really, really bad day or a series of really, really bad days is to count it all joy as James tells us in his epistle and trust that God will walk with us and use our trials to deepen our relationship with Him
-- Ruth trusted God and the fields were opened to gleaning by His grace

-- but that wasn't the end of God's grace in the life of Ruth and Naomi -- as we read in these verses, the field that God sent Ruth to glean in belonged to Boaz -- a relative of Elimelech, Ruth's father-in-law, and a kinsman who was bound by the law to help both Naomi and Ruth in their time of need
-- Boaz notices Ruth in the field gleaning with the other women -- she catches his attention -- probably not only because she is stranger in the land -- not only because her kindness towards Naomi had been noticed -- but because God's grace was beginning to stir Boaz's heart towards Ruth
-- look at what he does -- skip over to verse 8-14

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 the women who work for me. 9 Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on 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 asked him, “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 put me at ease by speaking kindly to your servant—though I do not have the standing of one of your servants.”

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.


-- gleaning in this time was mostly done by women because men in that day would have had their own fields to work or would have been bonded out to help others gather the harvest
-- in addition to the women who came to glean the fields because they were widowed or poor or destitute, the landowner would have handmaidens who would work for them by gleaning in the fields to increase the harvest of the farmer
-- in exchange for their work, they would be allowed to keep part of the harvest they gleaned and would be able to drink from the water provided by the farmer instead of having to bring their own to the field -- in addition, they would receive protection from the landowner from those who might try to hurt them or exploit them
-- so, in essence, when Boaz invites Ruth to stay with his servant girls and glean in his fields alone, and then invites her to share his meal, he is putting her under his protection -- he is offering her the position of handmaiden -- as Ruth puts it in verse 13, Boaz is giving her the standing of one of his servant girls

-- skip over to verse 19, and we'll end there -- verses 19-23

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 guardian-redeemers.[a]”

21 Then Ruth the Moabite said, “He even said to me, ‘Stay with my workers until they finish harvesting all my grain.’”

22 Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, “It will be good for you, my daughter, to go with the women who work for him, because in someone else’s field you might be harmed.”

23 So Ruth stayed close to the women of Boaz to glean until the barley and wheat harvests were finished. And she lived with her mother-in-law.


-- when Ruth came back with almost an ephah -- almost 3/5 of a bushel of grain -- Naomi was astounded -- she asked Ruth how this happened, and Ruth starts to explain here in these verses
-- you know, there's an old hymn that we used to sing in our church when I was growing up called, "Count Your Many Blessings" -- it says in that song, "Count your many blessings, name them one by one" -- and that's what Ruth does
-- but as Ruth counts the blessings of that day and she tells Naomi everything that has occurred, from the graciousness of Boaz to the position that she had been offered as one of his handmaidens -- she doesn't realize the greatest blessing and grace of all -- but Naomi does
-- in verse 20, Naomi exclaims, "The Lord bless him" -- and tells Ruth that Boaz is not just a farmer whose fields she happened to stumble into on that fateful day -- but that Boaz was a close relative -- a kinsman-redeemer
-- the role of a kinsman-redeemer was laid out in God's law, primarily in the Book of Leviticus -- a kinsman-redeemer was a male relative who had the responsibility to act for a relative or their family who was in trouble or danger or in need of redemption
-- we talked last week about the law that required a brother to marry his widowed sister-in-law to allow her to bear sons to continue the family name and to make sure that his home and his land did not leave the family
-- when there was no brother to marry a widow, the nearest relative would assume this role and would provide for the family and take care of them in their need -- if land had been sold, then this relative, as kinsman-redeemer, would be obligated to buy back the property and give it back to the relative who had sold it at his own expense
-- If the nearest relative refused to accept the role of kinsman-redeemer, then the next closest kin would take on the role of the redeemer
-- however, there was a catch -- the kinsman-redeemer couldn’t make the decision to redeem on his own -- he had to be asked by the widow to help her -- and we'll see how all of that plays out next week as we turn to Ruth Chapter 3


III. Closing
-- Brian Doerksen is a familiar name to people who listen to contemporary Christian music -- he is a worship leader -- a song writer -- a gifted musician -- but even someone who serves God fulltime is not exempt from suffering
-- Brian's son, Isaiah, suffers from fragile X syndrome, a genetic condition which results in physical, intellectual, emotional, and behavioral limitations -- In his book "Make Love, Make War," Brian reflects on the day he and his wife first received medical confirmation of Isaiah's condition -- In the midst of his heartache, as Brian considered turning away from worship ministry altogether, God taught Brian a lesson that instead carried him further into his ministry:

-- her writes, "[After receiving the test results], I stumbled around our property weeping, confused, heartbroken -- At one point I lifted my voice to heaven and handed in my resignation: "God, I am through being a worship leader and songwriter …"
-- When I was able to be quiet enough to hear, I sensed God holding out his hand and inviting me: "Will you trust me?" -- Will you go even with your broken heart—for who will relate to my people who are heartbroken if not those like you who are acquainted with disappointment?"
-- Reflecting further on this word from God, Brian writes:
-- "I used to think people were most blessed by our great victories -- But now I know differently -- People are just longing to hear [others] speak of how they have walked through the deepest valleys -- The world lifts up the victorious and the successful, but God lifts up the brokenhearted."

-- Naomi and Ruth walked into Bethlehem in Chapter 1 as brokenhearted women going through a trial of enormous pain and suffering -- but God was faithful, and in response to Ruth's faith and her trust in Him, He began to pour out blessings on her and Naomi that were too numerous to count

-- even though we are not finished with the story of Ruth, there's a lesson that we can learn from her example in this chapter when we, too, are walking through trials of pain and suffering in our own lives

-- first, instead of shaking our fist at God and asking, "Why?" -- turn to God in these times and ask, "What? -- What are you trying to teach me? -- What are doing in my life? -- How are you going to turn this trial into good so that you will receive the glory?" -- remember the promise that we read in Romans 8:28-29, "and we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose"

-- next, trust God -- trust His providence -- trust His grace and His mercy and His love -- Proverbs 3:5-6 say, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight" -- as Ruth learned on that day she first headed out to find a field to glean in, if you trust God with all your heart, He will lead you on the path of grace

-- finally, take refuge under the wings of God's grace -- ask God for His help -- let Him know what your need is and trust that He will meet it -- in Hebrews 4:16 we read, "Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need"

-- Joanie Yoder is a Christian writer who found herself facing a struggle with cancer in her life -- in the midst of her ordeal, she wrote, "I have relinquished my destiny to God's will -- nothing, praise God, not even cancer, can thwart His will -- I may have cancer, but cancer doesn't have me -- God alone has me"
-- that is the same mind-set that Ruth had in this chapter, and this is the same mind-set that we must have if we are to go and grow with God
-- no trial -- no struggle -- no problem -- no bad day -- owns us -- only God owns us, and if we trust in Him, His word tells us that we will overcome the world, just as Ruth is doing in this passage

-- so, let's close in prayer, and next week, we'll pick back up with the story of Ruth in Ruth Chapter 3
-- let's pray