Sermon – Ruth 2-4 – Ruth and Boaz

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard

First Presbyterian Church of Ocean City

Sermon – Ruth 2-4 – Ruth and Boaz                   

November 8, 2015

            I am continuing today with our look at the Book of Ruth.  Ruth is the personification of chesed.  Chesed is a concept which means kindness and loyalty.  But it goes far beyond this.  Chesed also deals with helping someone meet their deepest needs even if you must make a sacrifice.  As we saw chesed is a characteristic of God, and it is a characteristic of God’s people because we are to love one another just as God loves us.  We have seen chesed from a most unexpected source, a Moabite tribe.  Today we will see chesed from a Hebrew man in Bethlehem.  We will get to this, but first let’s pray.

            May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

            As Ruth and Naomi make their way back to Bethlehem they must have been thinking about how they will be received.  Ruth especially is a hated Moabite, but she is the widow of a Hebrew man.  Let turn to the Law to see what this might mean for them.

Deuteronomy 7:1  When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations … ³ Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, ⁴ for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 

            So no Hebrew man is to marry an alien woman.  The risk is just too great that his wife will teach his children to worship her god.  If you do this within a generation there will be no one left who worships the Lord God of Israel.  From this law it is unlikely that Ruth, a Moabite, will ever find another Hebrew husband in Bethlehem.  Furthermore neither Ruth nor her children will ever be accepted into the Hebrew faith.  Listen to the law.

Deuteronomy 23:  ³ No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation. ⁴ For they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram Naharaim to pronounce a curse on you. ⁵ However, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you.⁶ Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them as long as you live.

            And so Ruth will not only never find a husband no one will trust her because she is a Moabite.  But the law is also clear that Ruth must be treated with hospitality.  She must be given food to eat.  We hear these instructions to Hebrew farmers in the law.

Leviticus 19  ⁹ “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. ¹⁰ And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.

            And so during the harvest season Ruth and Naomi should have plenty to eat.  All they have to do is follow the harvesters into the field and glean whatever is left.  But Ruth, as the widow of a Hebrew man, had some rights.  Her late husband, Mahlon, would have inherited his father’s land in Bethlehem.  Ruth, a woman, could not own it herself.  But one of Mahlon’s relatives could redeem the property on the condition that he marry Mahlon’s widow, Ruth.  We read this in the law.

Deuteronomy 25: ⁵ “If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. ⁶ And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. 

            And so we have a conflict in the law.  On one hand someone must marry Ruth to inherit her husband’s land, but because she is a Moabite no one is allowed to marry her.  And so we turn to the Book of Ruth to see how Ruth and Naomi solve this problem.

Ruth 2: 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.

⁴ Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, “The Lord be with you!”

“The Lord bless you!” they answered.

⁵ Boaz asked the overseer of his harvesters, “Who does that young woman belong to?”

⁶ The overseer replied, “She is the Moabite who came back from Moab with Naomi. ⁷ She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She came into the field and has remained here 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 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. ¹⁵ As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, “Let her gather among the sheaves and don’t reprimand her. ¹⁶ Even 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 guardian-redeemers.^[b]”

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.

            Boaz has obey the law by letting Ruth glean in his field, but he has done far more than that.  Boaz is kind and loyal and goes above and beyond what he is required to do.  And so we see in Boaz, chesed.  But we still have the matter of the inheritance of the land and who will redeem the property and marry Ruth.  Let’s continue with the Book of Ruth.

Ruth 3:1 One day Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi said to her, “My daughter, I must find a home  for you, where you will be well provided for. ² Now Boaz, with whose women you have worked, is a relative of ours. Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor. ³ Wash, put on perfume, and get dressed in your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking. ⁴ When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do.”

⁵ “I will do whatever you say,” Ruth answered. ⁶ So she went down to the threshing floor and did everything her mother-in-law told her to do.

⁷ When Boaz had finished eating and drinking and was in good spirits, he went over to lie down at the far end of the grain pile. Ruth approached quietly, uncovered his feet and lay down. ⁸ In the middle of the night something startled the man; he turned—and there was a woman lying at his feet!

⁹ “Who are you?” he asked.

“I am your servant Ruth,” she said. “Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a guardian-redeemer of our family.”

¹⁰ “The Lord bless you, my daughter,” he replied. “This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier: You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor. ¹¹ And now, my daughter, don’t be afraid. I will do for you all you ask. All the people of my town know that you are a woman of noble character. 

            There are two laws.  One says you must not marry a Moabite wife.  The other says you must marry the widow of the man whose land you are inheriting.  Ruth wants a husband and has taken it upon herself to provide one because she wants to take care of Naomi.  Chesed, kindness, loyalty, meeting someone’s deepest needs, sacrificial love is more important than obeying the letter of the law.  The purpose of law is to help us chesed on another.  The lesson of Ruth is that whenever the law prevents us from kindness, loyalty, and meeting someone’s deepest needs the law must be ignored.  Chesed is far more important than law.

            Boas did inherit Elimelek’s fields.  And he married Ruth.  He chesed Ruth and Naomi, but what about their children?   Remember the law that said that the descendants of a Moabite could not enter the assembly for ten generations.  Well, once again chesed wins over law. Listen to the ending of the Book of Ruth.

Ruth 4:¹³ So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he made love to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. ¹⁴ The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! ¹⁵ He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.”

¹⁶ Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. ¹⁷ The women living there said, “Naomi has a son!” And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

¹⁸ This, then, is the family line of Perez:

Perez was the father of Hezron,

¹⁹ Hezron the father of Ram,

Ram the father of Amminadab,

²⁰ Amminadab the father of Nahshon,

Nahshon the father of Salmon,^[d]

²¹ Salmon the father of Boaz,

Boaz the father of Obed,

²² Obed the father of Jesse,

and Jesse the father of David.

            King David was the great grandson of Ruth and Boaz.  God chesed his people so much that he gave them their greatest king descended from a Moabite woman, Ruth.  And that means that our own Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is a descendant of Ruth the Moabite.  Let’s pray.

            We thank you O Lord for your chesed love and kindness to us.  We thank you for the gifts of men and women who immigrate to our country.  Help us to love them just as you love us.  In your son’s name we pray.  Amen.