Ruth

At the camp, we've been working through the book of Ruth. There are four chapters in Ruth and we've done, we will be doing four sessions. So it fits really, really nicely. It's a nice short, punchy book, but it is, as we've discovered again this weekend, just a multifaceted, multilayered story. There's so much going on there and it's an absolute gem of a story, an absolute gem in God's word and I'm really thankful, thankful that we can look at a central point in the story in Ruth three together as a church.

So let's open to that. Ruth chapter three. Now, just to give a bit of context of what's happening here. A woman by the name of Naomi, an Israelite, married a man called Elimelech. And they had two sons, Mahlon and Kilion.

There's a famine in God's land. They come from a little place called Bethlehem. And there's a famine in the country in the time of the judges, the Bible says, and they decide to move to a place called Moab, which is a neighbouring country. And they live there for a while and unfortunately Elimelech and the two boys die over the course of ten years. And Naomi is left with her two daughters-in-law, which these two boys have married in that time.

The two daughters-in-law are Gentile women. They're not Jews. They're not part of God's kingdom, or God's community rather. And after this ten years where they've had so much pain and so much bitterness in their life, they hear that in Bethlehem and God's land, there's been rains. The famine is over and they decide to move back.

And in this time, Ruth is just an absolute wonderful woman. She decides to move back with Naomi. The other sister, the other daughter-in-law stays behind, but Ruth clings to Naomi, the Bible says, and she goes back to Bethlehem with her. And the story of Ruth is really this amazing unfolding story of God's grace entering into a Gentile woman's heart and changing her radically, and through this transformation of a non-Christian, non-believer becoming Christian and understanding God, Naomi's life is transformed amazingly. This woman who made mistakes in her life, this decision to go to another country was not a good decision. She wrestles with unbelief and she wrestles with a distance with God and as the story unfolds, we see transformation happening in the life of Naomi as well.

And so that's been happening. They meet a man called Boaz who blesses Ruth with food and starts looking after them. And we come to chapter three where there's an escalation. The story takes a turn. Let's have a read of that chapter and then we'll start.

Ruth chapter three, verse one. One day Naomi, Ruth's mother-in-law, said to her, "Ruth, my daughter, should I not try to find a home for you where you will be well provided for? Is not Boaz, with whose servant girls you have been, a kinsman of ours? Tonight, he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor. So wash and perfume yourself and put on 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.

When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down and he will tell you what to do." "I will do whatever you say," Ruth answered. So she went down to the threshing floor and did everything her mother-in-law told her to do.

When Boaz had finished eating and drinking and was in good spirits, he went over to lie at the far end of the grain pile. Ruth approached quietly, uncovered his feet and lay down. In the middle of the night, something startled the man and he turned and discovered a woman lying at his feet. "Who are you?" he asked.

"I am your servant Ruth," she said. "Spread the corner of your garment over me since you are a kinsman redeemer. The Lord bless you, my daughter," he said. "This kindness is greater than which you showed earlier. You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor.

And now, my daughter, don't be afraid. I will do for you, all that you ask. All my fellow townsmen know that you are a woman of noble character. Although it is true that I am near of kin, there is a kinsman redeemer nearer than I. Stay here for the night and in the morning,

if he wants to redeem, good, let him redeem. If he is not willing, surely as the Lord lives, I will do it. Lie here until the morning." So she lay at his feet until morning, but got up before anyone could be recognised and he said, "Don't let it be known that a woman came to the threshing floor." He also said, "Bring me the shawl you are wearing and hold it out."

When she did so, he poured into it six measures of barley and put it on her. Then he went back to town. When Ruth came to her mother-in-law, Naomi asked, "How did it go, my daughter?" Then she told her everything Boaz had done for her and asked, "He gave me these six measures of barley, saying, 'Don't go back to your mother-in-law empty handed.'" Then Naomi said, "Wait, my daughter, until you find out what happens, for the man will not rest until the matter is settled today."

So far our reading. If you don't know really what's going on here, it looks a bit murky, don't worry. We're going to work through it. We come to a point in the story where Naomi, we see this mother-in-law, decides to take things into her own hands. Ruth has met this man, Boaz, by divine act of God.

In chapter two, Ruth goes out and she pretty much begs. She needs to get food. She goes into a field to pick some grain. And the Bible says it just so happens that this field belongs to Boaz, a man of standing, chapter two says, a good man, a noble man. And it just so happens to belong to him, this field, but it then goes on to say, it just so happens that on this particular day that Ruth goes, Boaz decides to go and inspect the field.

And it just so happens that Boaz then notices Ruth and they talk. And so Naomi in chapter three starts hatching a bit of a plan. She, like a few ladies might really sort of feel comfortable with or resonate with, she starts playing matchmaker and tells Ruth to go and make herself look pretty and put on a bit of perfume and put on a nice little dress and go over to where Boaz is working tonight on the threshing floor. So that's what Naomi tells Ruth.

Now Ruth, being a woman of integrity as we've come to know her in the story, the Bible says explicitly she obeys. She says, "Okay, I'll do that." And she listens and she goes. And we see as the story unfolds that this woman is a woman of noble character. In fact, Boaz makes mention of this again.

The townspeople have spoken. Sorry, verse 11. "All my townsmen know that you are a woman of noble character." So we see this character coming through. So after putting on a bit of Chanel No. 5 and slipping on a favourite black cocktail dress, she heads over to the threshing floor.

Now, if you're an ancient Israelite reading or listening to this story, something is fishy. Something is very dodgy about this story and you may have sensed it as you read this story. In and of itself, the perfume or the dress or the makeup aren't bad. In and of itself, we assume that Ruth is a beautiful woman. That is not anything that the Bible points out as a negative thing at all.

In fact, the Bible generally speaks of beauty as a thing to be proud of. Beautiful women are spoken of in a positive light in the Bible. Naomi doesn't do the wrong thing by suggesting that Ruth, you know, bathe and put on some perfume and look nice, but the context, the context is all wrong. Naomi says to Ruth, "Go to the threshing floor in the middle of the night and wait until Boaz has finished his dinner and goes to sleep." Now you're shaking your head if you're an ancient Israelite while you're listening to this story.

The threshing floor in those days was a flat bit of hard land that people brought all their wheat and their barley and their grain and they knocked it off the stalks, the grass. So the grains fell onto the ground and they would winnow it. They would then get rid of the chaff and get the grain that they needed. It was, and there were in every village these locations. It was like our modern day industrial areas.

It's where the hard work happened. It was a bloke's environment. It was sweaty and smelly and grimy. And here is Naomi telling this young lady to look really nice and to go out to the Port of Brisbane in the middle of the night. Or to go out to Coober Pedy in the mines in the middle of the night after the guys have been having a few beers after work, something is off.

And we've mentioned before that this is the ongoing problem that Naomi has. She's a woman that has lots of ideas, lots of problem-solving skills, but she just does it in the wrong way. Boaz is a good man. He is a good man to follow up and to go and talk to and to approach to help, but Naomi goes about it in an unwise way. She sends this poor young girl into the industrial zone of that time.

And again, we know that the threshing floor in the Bible was a risky area. Hosea 9:1 talks about the context where prostitutes in that time would go out to the threshing floor, it mentions the word threshing floor, to sell themselves to the men there. So not only is it risky and at night, but she could easily have been assumed to have just been a lady of the night. And imagine what could have happened to her in that sort of situation. It's a red light district that Ruth is being sent into.

And again, the threshing floor by itself wouldn't be a dangerous place always, but Naomi sends Ruth, perfumed and bathed and looking pretty, to the threshing floor with a lot of men at night by herself. It's like sending your daughter, it's like sending Courtney to Cavill Mall at 12:00 at night during Schoolies. Now you know there is a lot we can learn from the scene. Naomi somehow, again, does her best to destroy or create a catastrophic environment.

Naomi does no one any favours that night and you can understand this lady has come back to Bethlehem. She has nothing. She's lost her husband and two sons. No providers. She's a widow.

She has no land to plant crops. She has no income. She has no food. And so you can understand she's desperate and this man Boaz is a wealthy man. He's a good man.

He's provided for them now, recently. He's given them grain and food in the previous chapter. And you can understand she's starting to make a plan here. I don't know if Naomi prays about this plan at all. I wonder if she asks God's guidance on how she could provide a suitable husband for her daughter-in-law, but her crazy scheme puts a loyal daughter-in-law in the worst possible situation.

And I want to just pause here and see this warning in Scripture for us. Sometimes we can so easily think, "I'll just quickly do this." In desperation even, "I'll just quickly try and work out a plan and just chuck something together and maybe that'll work. If I just quickly tell my husband, my kids to do this or if I invest my money like this or if I choose to enjoy my time in this way," making decisions and plans in a flawed way, an unwise way, a way that does not consult God, it can create a perfect storm. And I think we can be reminded from Scripture again that we have to get into a habit of coming to God in prayer, considering the possibilities of these decisions, biblically whether this is a godly and a wise decision to make or not.

A small decision may turn out to have been a big decision in hindsight. So we have to allow God to influence all our decisions. We have to go to God. We have to seek His face. We have to pray about these sort of decisions and we have to know God's word on a variety of life's situations.

We have to know what God says about marriage and who to marry. We have to know what God says about how to spend our money. We should know God's word enough that it will influence and permeate our thinking. And I think the story is saying this is not being done very well. It's a bit dodgy.

Then we find this intimate scene in verses 7 to 13. Ruth heads out to the threshing floor in the middle of the night and she's sort of waiting around the edges of the darkness there, you know, as the men are eating and they're sitting probably around the lamps and she's in the shadows and she waits for the men to finish. And the Bible says that Boaz eats and he drinks and he is in good spirits. The Hebrew Bible literally says his heart was good within him.

And he is happy. He's at peace and people have read this and they have mentioned that perhaps Boaz had a little too much. Like he was good in spirits because he had some good spirits. But the Bible doesn't insinuate that. In fact, Boaz is extolled as such a noble man that it would be going against his character to have had an excess.

He is happy. He's worked hard. He's had a good meal. He's had some great time with his mates. And he goes off to bed.

And then he wakes up in the middle of the night and he realises his sandals have been taken off. His legs are exposed and there's a woman lying at his feet. The Bible says that something startles him and he wakes up. Now a translation says that he became chilly. That could be translated in that way.

Like his exposed feet wakes him up in the middle of the night. And he sees this woman of all things on the threshing floor lying at his feet. Now we have to ask, what is going on here? What is going on here? Why does Ruth take off his shoes and then cover his feet?

In the Middle East, even today, but definitely in the ancient Near East, the head was regarded as the most noble body part, the head. The feet were the most humble. And the feet are humble because they get dirty. They are used for all your transport. They are used for hard work.

And of course, they're not particularly nice smelling all the time. Now while the head gets a place of honour, the feet are something lowly and humble. By uncovering Boaz's feet, Ruth is doing something very symbolic here. She is indicating the attitude in which she is coming to this man. She shows this man a lot of respect in doing this.

At the same time, there is this air of intimacy as well. I mean, you don't do this to a stranger. You don't take off someone's shoes and expose their legs. There's an intimacy involved in this as well. But the twist of the story, this is the funny thing.

Again, if you put yourself into the mind of an ancient Israelite, the twist of the story is that this is all done above board. This is not sleazy. I've read non-Christians that have taken this story and really made it very saucy and she takes off more than just his shoes. The whole story here has integrity. She retains a faithfulness to God, this new God that she has come as a Gentile to believe in.

She remains pure. The scene is set. She comes with humility to Boaz. Boaz wakes up and he finds her lying at his feet and he obviously asks, "Who are you?" Ruth replies, "I am your servant Ruth."

Again, the language there is more than servant, it is maidservant. Young servant, a vulnerable young servant, maintaining that air of humility. And then she says these words: "Spread the corner of your garment over me." Verse 9. "Spread the corner of your garment over me since you are a kinsman redeemer."

And you know, those soppy chick flicks that, you know, wives and girlfriends wish their guys would be just as romantic as the hunky guy in those movies are. And the blokes that have to enjoy those movies just wish that they can somehow fake a heart attack to get out of the movie. This is the moment in those movies where the ladies go, "Aww." When Ruth says to Boaz, "Spread the corner of your garment over me," she's not saying "I'm cold and I'm sleeping in a Mount Isa lodge and there's just no insulation in those cabins and I need a bit of extra heat." She literally says in Hebrew, "Spread your wings over me."

And again, even to this day, in Middle Eastern cultures, at wedding ceremonies, as part of the ceremonial tradition, a husband, the new husband, will have a long flowing robe or cloak that he will pull out and wrap around his new bride. As a symbol and a gesture that he is now going to protect this young woman. She has now come under his protection, his care. She has come under literally his wing.

Ruth, in this scene, is essentially saying, "Marry me." Now that is a moment. Ruth very daringly makes herself pretty, accentuates her beauty, and goes to Boaz. Now the circumstances, like I said, are all wrong. It is so dangerous.

Naomi's plan is a crazy one, but thankfully, like God has so orchestrated in the story up until now, poor decisions are redeemed and worked out in such a way that God wins. The story comes out amazingly well. Both Boaz and Ruth are individuals of deep faithfulness to God, so nothing goes wrong despite a hundred things potentially going wrong. And I think Ruth shows incredible courage to make her feelings and her intentions clear to Boaz. Now just as an aside, God's word may never suggest explicitly that ladies do sort of chasing in relationships in this way, but it does say something, I think, about conveniently putting yourself in the way.

And so if there are ladies here that you know are looking for a husband, I think there's something to be said about conveniently putting yourself in the way. Ruth says to Boaz, "Marry me." But then she adds this: "Because you are a kinsman redeemer." And again we have to understand a little bit of context in the ancient days of Israel. When a person would go bankrupt, when they would move far away, they would sell or get rid of the property that they owned. Often when they were especially bankrupt, would have to sell either themselves or family members into slavery to pay off the debt.

Now to counteract injustices that could happen in this way, God set in place a law to restore the balance. God set in place a law to redeem individuals who had been sold. To redeem family members that may have been sold to pay off a debt. And this law revolves around a kinsman redeemer, a family member who could redeem property that had been sold and therefore livelihoods and individuals that had been sold into slavery. A kinsman redeemer was a family member who would usually be either a brother or a cousin or an uncle or a grandfather.

These individuals would be able to buy back land that was sold in order to pay off debt. Elimelech, who is Naomi's husband who passed away, had forfeited all that he had when he moved to Moab. He got rid of it all. There was nothing left. He said, "There's a famine here.

There's no food here. I'll sell it and I'll move to Moab for greener pastures." But Boaz, and we're still not really sure how, but Boaz is somehow related to Elimelech. Naomi realises this when they're back and she realises what this means for herself and Ruth potentially. It means that Boaz could marry Ruth.

He could buy back the land of Elimelech and provide then both for Naomi and Ruth from this property, from this land. He could turn it into a field again. He could produce crops from it again. But Boaz is under no obligation to do this. He doesn't have to do this.

In fact, he mentions here that there's a family member who's actually closer to them than he is. There's a maybe a cousin, a first cousin here or an uncle or something like that that has first right to this property. There's nothing that forces him to make any contribution to the well-being of Naomi, of Ruth, and of his dead relatives, Elimelech and the two boys. But Ruth says, "Marry me because you are a redeemer." Now Boaz is absolutely blown away by this.

He didn't expect that and he blesses Ruth in response. He says, "You could have gotten any man here. You could have gotten any man here whether they were rich or poor. And you choose me." And we have this idea that Boaz was probably an elderly gentleman.

In his forties or fifties even, a bachelor. And he was never expecting this. And in her humble way, approaching him in this way, Boaz is encouraged by Ruth to do a noble thing and to marry her. Well we see that Ruth could not have chosen a more noble and upright man than Boaz. He immediately tells her that he will do exactly, or try to at least, do what she's asking for.

But there's a hitch. There is a redeemer that is closer to her than he is. But he says, and we'll find that out in chapter four, therefore you have to come this afternoon. He'll make a plan. He'll sort something out.

And then just to bless her, he gives her six measures of barley. Now, we're not exactly sure how much this is, but it is a phenomenal amount. It is enough to last six months. He's moved by this gesture and he loads her bag full and she carries this back home. But what we see in this story again is the gracious, powerful guiding hand of God working throughout this whole situation.

God's fingerprints are all throughout it even though it is murky, even though it is not ideal. Naomi does no one any favours by coming up with this risky plan. But Ruth's absolute commitment to Naomi causes her to obey and listen. Bruce and Boaz, although in the trickiest, most perilous of situations, remain faithful. They don't fall into desires that would have been even acceptable on the threshing floor. No.

There is something more significant and special going on here. A woman who is a new believer, doing what is right according to her new found Lord and Saviour, and a distinguished gentleman, a long and faithful believer in this Lord. By the grace of God they navigate this perilous situation and Ruth is assured that she will be redeemed, that she will be looked after, that her life and her mother-in-law's life will be spared. Friends, our God is so good. In our perilous, murky situations in life where we even come up with bad ideas, where we don't do ourselves any favours, where we get ourselves into a lot of trouble.

God is able to redeem. God is able to protect. God is able to so guide situations that He will have us end up exactly where we need to be. We see in this story just the significance of Jesus being called our Redeemer as well. Jesus once said in Mark 10:45, "I didn't come to be served, but to serve.

To give my life as a ransom for many." Jesus Christ is known as the Redeemer. And He redeemed us from a fight far more horrific than dying of starvation. Romans 3:23 says that there is no difference for we all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. And Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death.

The payout for sin is death, even eternal death. Now our falling short of God through our brokenness and imperfection and our poor decisions that are made without the wisdom and without obedience to God, a perfect God can turn to His good, to our good. Jesus Christ makes us right with this God.

He redeems us from that life. By the redemption of Jesus Christ, we see that He is like our Boaz. Our life and our death have been laid in His hands and He gladly took up this price. He gladly bore the cross. He gladly paid the price ultimately.

He is our Redeemer. He is the one that will save us from a terrible fate. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray Lord and we ask that You will help us in our shortcomings, in our own struggle for how we are to live our lives, for wisdom that wasn't so wise in hindsight, for decisions we may have made that were bad, that have had perhaps terrible consequences, that hurt us and hurt those around us. Plans made in our own strength.

Plans that stink. And yet Lord, here we are. And we hear Lord today once again that there is a Redeemer who saves, who restores, who forgives. Though our sins may be as red as scarlet, marked across our lives, the blood of our Saviour washes us white as snow. You have paid for our lives.

You have paid for our shortcomings and our sin that we have made against a righteous and holy God who must hold someone to account. Because You are truly just and fair, You must hold someone to account. We sold ourselves into slavery. We went and we sought those greener pastures. We desired those forbidden fruit.

And yet Father, in Your great love for us, because of Your rich mercy, You send Jesus Christ to pay those debts, to buy back those lives. You are our kinsman Redeemer. So Lord, we thank You for this great witness, this great prediction and prophecy in the Old Testament hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus Christ as an example of what would happen when Jesus would eventually come. We see it in beautiful human ways and beautiful human language that we can associate with and understand and we see Lord, the spiritual truth behind it. The eternal truth that it holds.

We see our lives in the lives of Ruth and Naomi. So Father, I pray for each individual here that we may understand and be gripped by the truth of the gospel. That it may change and radically shape our lives. That we will not fall into a world of self pity because You have dealt with that. It is gone.

But Father, that we may also not go back to that land. To those fake green pastures, to those places that hurt and will hurt us again. Father, may we offer our lives to You as living sacrifices, forever Yours, because of Jesus Christ. Amen.