We're going to be reading from the book of Ruth, which is a marvelous prophetic typology of the Lamb of God and His bride. We're going to look at chapter 2. In the last sermon on the series, we looked at Naomi, focused on chapter 1. We're going to look at Ruth today, focusing on chapter 2. And the context was they had lost everything. They lost their big nest egg. Both Naomi and Ruth lost their husbands, their family, and they've just returned back to Israel. And Ruth is a foreigner. It says, there was a relative of Naomi's husband, a man of great wealth of the family of Elimelech. His name was Boaz. And so Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, please let me go to the field and glean heads of grain after him in whose sight I may find favor. And she said to her, go, my daughter. Then she left and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers. And she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech. And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem and said to the reapers, the Lord be with you. And they answered him, the Lord bless you. Then Boaz said to his servant who was in charge of the reapers, whose young woman is this? So the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered and said, it is the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. And she said, please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves. So she came and has continued from morning until now, though she rested a little in the house. And then Boaz said to Ruth, You will listen, my daughter, will you not? Do not go to glean in another field, nor go from here, but stay close by my young women. Let your eyes be on the field which they reap and go after them. Have I not commanded the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn.' So she fell on her face, bowed down to the ground, and said to him, why have I found favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me? since I am a foreigner. And Boaz answered and said to her, it has been fully reported to me all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband and how you have left your father and your mother in the land of your birth and have come to a people whom you did not know before. The Lord repay your work. "'and a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel "'under whose wings you have come for refuge.' "'Then she said, "'Let me find favor in your sight, my Lord, "'for you have comforted me "'and have spoken kindly to your maidservant, "'though I am not like one of your maidservants.' "'Now Boaz said to her at mealtime, "'Come here and eat of the bread "'and dip your piece of bread in the vinegar.' "'So she sat beside the reapers "'and he passed parched grain to her, "'and she ate and was satisfied and kept some back. And when she rose up to glean, Boaz commanded his young men, saying, let her glean even among the sheaves and do not reproach her. Also let grain from the bundles fall purposely for her. Leave it that she may glean and do not rebuke her. So she gleaned in the field until evening and beat out and beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an Eva of barley. Then she took it up and went into the city, and her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. So she brought out and gave to her what she had kept back after she had been satisfied. And her mother-in-law said to her, where have you gleaned today, and where did you work? Blessed be the one who took notice of you. So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, the man's name with whom I work today is Boaz. And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, blessed be he of the Lord, who has not forsaken his kindness to the living and the dead. And Naomi said to her, this man is a relation of ours, one of our close relatives. Ruth the Moabite has said, he also said to me, you shall stay close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest. And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, it is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women and that people do not meet you in any other field. So she stayed close by the young women of Boaz to glean until the end of barley harvest and wheat harvest, and she dwelt with her mother-in-law. Father, I thank you for the beautiful story of Ruth, and I pray that you would enable me to do justice to this story and give applications that would benefit this your people. We ask that you would receive our continued worship in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, the story of Ruth is very rich in instruction on all kinds of things, on love, on family, on issues of marriage. You could actually spend weeks going through this book, verse by verse, and come up with all kinds of lessons. You could find lessons on issues such as the proper way of fixing poverty, how we ought to oppose racial prejudice, why religious views impact an entire society. The other day, Mrs. Tyler's dad was telling me about this book. by Korbut and Fickert, When Helping Hurts. And just looking through that book, they could have gotten a lot of their lessons from the book of Ruth. The point is, we are not going to be able to cover absolutely every lesson that could be covered from the book of Ruth. But I hope what I do cover will be beneficial to you. When we looked at the story of Ruth's mother-in-law, Naomi, we saw that she was a genuine Christian, but she and her husband had made some very bad decisions, had some bad priorities, they were in a mess. In-laws can positively or negatively impact our families. When big mistakes happen, we need to be ready, to be gracious, and to help those people to be restored. The decision that Naomi and her husband made in the first verses of chapter 1 we saw may have looked like a good decision initially, but they were not led by the Lord, and those decisions had long-term negative results, some of which directly impacted Ruth. The first bad decision was selling the farm. We saw that they had a big dream of getting out of the famine area, some of the problems with politics in Israel. They were going to make their wealth in Moab, and it just didn't work out so well. The second bad decision was actually moving to Moab to improve their business relations and connections. But failing to take into account that when you abandon the connections and the relationships within the body of Christ, it can negatively impact you. And it definitely negatively impacted their children. The third bad decision was to make political marriage connections for their children in order to further the family's economy. Now we did see that technically They were not out of accord with the law of God because they made Orpah and Ruth leave the gods of Moab and convert to the God of Israel. But we also saw that Orpah's conversion really was just outward. It was a convenience move. And when the convenience was over, in verse 15, she returned to the gods of Moab. And so it was just a conversion of technicality. She was kind of OK with having Yehovah to be the family God, but that's not true conversion. But Ruth's impassioned speech in chapter one, verses 16 through 17, shows that her conversion was a genuine one. And you can see it on many levels. She rejected the God of Moab. So that's antithesis. She embraced the God of Israel, that's life commitment. She resolved to stick close to God's people, that's covenant relationship. And in verse 15 she says she's willing to die for her faith. So that shows the sincerity of her faith. So in her case, God actually used the mistakes and the sins and the bad planning of Elimelech and Naomi to work together for good in many different ways, including the birth of Obed, who would be the ancestor of David, and the Lord Jesus Christ. So let's take a couple of minutes to look at what it was that Ruth was converted from. Five times this book calls Ruth a Moabitess. What does it mean to be a former Moabitess? Well, her sister, who was also a Moabitess, went back to her people and back to her gods, it says. And when you do a little bit of a study of the gods of Moab, you realize that Ruth was saved, actually, out of a pretty dark background. If the Jewish tradition is true, that she was a daughter or a granddaughter of King Eglon, the darkness would have been even more pronounced. The Moabites worshiped many gods, but Chemosh was their patron god, their chief god. And 2 Kings 3, verse 27 says that the god Chemosh demanded child sacrifice. And it gives an example of the king of Moab offering up as a sacrifice when there was this… looked like they were going to lose their war. His eldest son, who was going to rule in his place, he just offered him up as a sacrifice. Now, when you've got things like abortion and child sacrifice, going on, you have a very low value of life, no matter how much you might protest to the contrary, oh no, I value life. This would illustrate, no, there is no value for life. And if you study their culture, you realize they had even less value for their females. This can be seen by the permissions given by another one of their chief gods, Baal of Peor. This god encouraged rampant promiscuity, much like our culture does, and much like the government schools promote in our own age. Women were encouraged to trade themselves for sexual favors. I'll just give you one hint. According to Numbers 31, verse 16, It was this religious promiscuity of Baal of Peor that almost destroyed Israel in Numbers chapter 25 when the Israelite men were seduced by the Moabite women. And we're not talking about Moabite prostitutes here, we're talking about the wives of Moabite men seduced the Israelite men to commit fornication with them. So Moab was pretty loose morally, and it was sad that Naomi would even recommend that her daughters-in-law go back to their families because that meant going back to these horrible gods. And so it shows to me that Naomi was in somewhat of a backslidden condition, kind of a picture of where Israel had been previously. She had become numbed to the morals of the culture around her. And that's what happens when you get immersed in a culture. This is what is happening to the children of Christians today when they send their children to government schools. These children are being discipled by Moabites, and Christian children become numbed to things that in previous generations would have absolutely sickened them. Okay? Anyway, if Ruth's family was royalty, as ancient Jewish tradition insists, then going back to her kin guaranteed she would be going back to the gods of Moab. And when push comes to shove, government-educated Christian children today are embracing the culture and eventually the gods of our perverted American culture. I'll just illustrate it. Even back in 2013, 32% of practicing Protestants were supportive of the LGBTQ favoring laws, and 65% of all Americans were supportive of that. That was back in 2013. This year, just actually last week, I saw a new study that says 30% of millennials identified as LGBTQ, themselves being that. I mean, to me, that's stunning. But when you are educated by the LGBTQ supporting educational establishment, that should not be surprising. And eventually the Orpas will go back to their gods. And this is why I have said over and over down through the years why it is so foolish for Christians to be sending their kids to the government schools, like happens in so many denominations. Even pastors are sending them there. In the PCA, you see it in many denominations. It is more than foolish. It is suicidal for the church. Now, we don't have any background on the business dealings that Elimelech and his sons had with the king of Moab. But rather than having his sons convert to Chemosh worship, Naomi's family insisted that these two women convert to the worship of Yehovah. And so Elimelech and his family did at least have some principle that they were not going to compromise on. They demanded that Yehoah be the lord of their home. Well, sort of. At least in name, he was the lord of their home. And it actually did affect some of what they did. They insisted on one man being married to one wife. And the change Ruth would have experienced going from her Moabite household into this Israelite household would have been quite a cultural change because the morals would have been different. The faithfulness to one wife would have been different. Respect for life would have been different. And so for Ruth at least, whose heart had been changed by God, this would have been a very refreshing change. Perhaps not so much for Orpah, whose heart was not regenerate. One commentator states, the gods of Moab pleased the flesh, and that was her, and he's referring to Orpah, that was her desire. Now, whether that is true or not, Hebrews in 2 Peter indicates that her latter state was worse than her former state. But for Ruth, the change was deep and transformational. Her whole life was turned upside down. Her marriage to Mahlon, the eldest son, was the beginning of a lifetime commitment to the one true God of Israel. And I believe she stands as a paradigm for what true conversion looks like. When you look at her, you see a change in lordship, in values, in disciplines, in orientation, antithesis, focus, commitment. There was a complete life transformation. But shortly after being married, Ruth lost her father-in-law, her brother-in-law, her husband, and it would have been very easy for her to conclude that the God of Israel was not worth serving. And that might have factored into Orpah's apostasy from God. She might have thought, you know, if Yehoah really is who he says he is, how come things have turned out so bad for us? It was much better when we were worshiping Chemosh, the god of Moab. But where pain, loss, and trials turn false believers away from God, those exact same painful events actually drive true believers to press into God all the more tightly. Now, even after Naomi sought to push her girls away, Ruth refused to abandon the only other believer that she knew, and for sure she refused to abandon the God whom she had come to trust. Come what may, she stood firm by Jehovah. And if you take a look at chapter one, We'll just read verses 16 through 17. where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me and more also, if anything, but death parts you and me." Now from a human perspective it would have been much easier for her to fail this test and to go back to the gods of Moab because after all her family was royalty, they were wealthy, she would have been well off. Naomi had lost all of her wealth. There was nothing there. Her family was a known factor, whereas Naomi's family in Israel were strangers. She had never met them. She'd be able to get remarried in Moab. Getting remarried may not have been an option going to Israel. She was a citizen of Moab, in Israel she would have been a foreigner. And it's true, staying would have its risks, but there were a lot of risks in going to Israel. I mean, even traveling on those roads that Judges 5 says were filled with bandits, and that's why the roads were abandoned during that time, that would have been a dangerous thing. And it was a 7 to 10 day trip of walking and camping. Okay, this was a huge risk that she was going on. And all of these things were tests of the genuineness of her faith in God. She did not go with Naomi for personal gain, that's for sure. And she did not embrace Yehoah purely for personal gain. She did it because she belonged to God lock, stock, and barrel, no matter what the risks. And I think her decision shows sacrifice, love, faithfulness, a total commitment to God come what may. You know, Gary North wrote a book called Unconditional Surrender. That's what it means to become a Christian, unconditional surrender. In her testimony, she's even willing to face death in order to follow God. So here's my question to you. Do you have times where you're so discouraged you want to throw in the towel and quit? You know, during those times, we need to realize that God allows tests, providential tests, to come into our lives. And if we pass those tests by responding appropriately, He blesses us with more stewardship. Okay, and sometimes those tests come from the very ones that we love, like Naomi. Naomi was bitter, and she was part of the test of Ruth's faith. When tempted, let the life of Ruth inspire you and encourage you to be faithful. And when you pass the test, God's going to say, great, I'm going to usher you into the next stage of your personal growth. Now, her faithfulness is also shown in chapter 2 that we just read, in that she was committed to being faithful even though her work was ultra boring. You could not get much more boring than gleaning. It amounted to bending over, picking up little bits of barley, and then the next season, bits of wheat from the ground, dusting them off because they would be dirty, putting them into a pouch or into a basket. I mean, this is back-breaking work. Very, very difficult. And when Boaz asks who she is, the servant in charge tells her in verse 6, and then in verse 7 says, and she said, please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves. So she came and has continued from morning until now, though she rested a little in the house. Wow. What a work ethic. Persevering in your boring work can be a test from God as to whether or not your work ethic is just fleshly induced or if it is really wrought by God's grace. And the reason I say that is because a boring regimen has frequently in the past turned people away from faithfulness in God. In verse 2, she asked her mother-in-law if she can go glean. I think this is likely a division of labor. Naomi's probably doing some things that are a little bit easier in order to pay for the rent of their place. And she's volunteered for the back-breaking work of gleaning in the fields. And gleaning is as inglorious as dumpster diving, but it is a whole lot harder than dumpster diving. Believe me, I've tried to glean just for fun. It isn't fun. It isn't fun at all in the cornfields. You are bent over most of the day picking up bits of grain that have fallen from the reapers. And so it was not a glamorous or an easy job by a long shot. But in verse 7, which I just read, it highlights the fact that Ruth had a fantastic work ethic. She hardly took a break, working diligently to gather as much grain as she possibly could. Now we've had a few in the background, farmers, you know Gil and others here, You know, making hay while the sun is shining means you take advantage of the opportunities to make money while you can. And sometimes those are wasted because we're lazy. So a good work ethic and going the extra mile is a very, very important part of her persona. And I'll comment on that a bit more toward the end of the sermon. Anyway, Boaz notices, guys and gals, the habits of conversation, and work, and politeness, and how you respect your parents, and how you respect other elders, you know, that's going to be noticed by other people who may become your lifetime partners. And so, if you girls want to attract a good man, become the kind of a person that a good man is looking for, okay? Become a person worthy of a good man. And you guys, You know, you need to, if you want to attract a good lady, become the Christ-centered good man that is worthy of her. It is never too early or too late to begin imitating Boaz and Ruth. They're fantastic role models. Boaz was definitely a man of noble character and remarkable generosity, and he notices a woman who has the same noble character and remarkable generosity. They're like a match made in heaven. He's generous to everybody, actually, who comes into his field to glean. And coming from Moab, Ruth is absolutely blown away. She's not used to that in a pagan land. She's not seen that kind of kindness. In verse 4, Boaz says, Yehovah be with you. It's not an empty blessing. And when he blesses, all of his workers and gleaners say, Yehovah bless you. They were so grateful for their boring jobs that they wanted God to bless Boaz with even more. Do you have gratitude for your job? Do you bless your employer? Or do you find yourself grumbling and wishing, you know, that you were as well off as your employer is, right? Do you bless God for the work that He has given to you, or do you think you deserve more? We really do not deserve anything in this life when you think of what our sins deserve in God's plan. Anyway, Boaz must have been impressed with the diligence of Ruth. She no doubt looked different. He notices she's a foreigner. He asks about her, and almost every time I read this dialogue, I'm surprised as many times as I've read that, that I got choked up. But I get choked up over this story. I love this story of both Ruth and Boaz. They're a picture of Christ. And every time I read this, I just imagine myself bowing before my kinsman redeemer, Jesus, because I feel utterly, utterly unworthy of His grace. utterly unworthy. In the New King James here, it translates the word grace as favor. But grace means undeserved favor, right? And it's using the word grace here because Boaz represents in symbolic form the Lord Jesus Christ and the redemption that He has given to us. And none of us, none of us deserve that favor. We don't deserve our jobs. We don't deserve the food that we eat. What we deserve is hellfire. And yet He has blessed us. I mean, when lamentation says that His mercies are new every morning, that is not an exaggeration. When you understand what you deserve, you will be saying, thank you, Lord, every single morning you get up. Thank you for trusting me with another day to live. Your mercies are new every morning. But even on a human level, this conversation is a wonderful display of the beautiful character of both Boaz and Ruth. And let's start reading at verse 8. This is chapter 2. That Boaz said to Ruth, you will listen, my daughter, will you not? Do not go to glean in another field, nor go from here, but stay close by my young women. Now, the word daughter shows his kindly intent. He was not hitting on her, okay? He's just concerned for her welfare, just like a father would be concerned about the welfare of his own daughter. He's an older gentleman, and he knows the dangers that a foreign woman like Ruth could experience. With no one to protect her, she could very easily be exploited by men. It's one of the reasons why people wonder, why do you recommend that people not, girls not go off to work or go off to college? It's for this precise reason. I don't recommend that they go off where they're absent, their support system and the protection at home, unless, of course, the parents have provided the same kind of protection in the place that they're going to. And sometimes people do that. Now, sometimes you just can't help it. Okay, Ruth couldn't help it. She was in that situation. But Boaz knows it's not a good thing for a woman to be working all alone in her situation. So he's already being a generous protector for the other gleaners, but he shows a special heart for a foreigner like Ruth. So he says this is a safe field, which to me implies he knows there's some other fields that are out there that are not safe for women to be in. So he just tells her this is a safe place to be. He continues in verse 9. Let your eyes be on the field which they reap and go after them. Have I not commanded the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn." I mean, he's already protected her before he's even met her. He did with all the gleaners. telling the young men not to harass her. Verse 10, so she fell on her face, bowed down to the ground, said to him, why have I found favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me since I am a foreigner? And Boaz answered and said to her, it has been fully reported to me all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you have left your father and your mother in the land of your birth and have come to a people whom you did not know before. The Lord repay your work and a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel under whose wings you have come for refuge." What a beautiful expression. Then she said, let me find favor in your sight, my Lord, for you have comforted me and have spoken kindly to your maidservant, though I am not like one of your maidservants. So she was deeply impacted by this kind treatment of a foreigner. While I am not, I'm definitely not in favor of criminal foreigners, you know, charging over the border into our country, I will tell you that our immigration policies are absolutely messed up. Of course, many immigrants don't come into our country to work, they come into our country to get free welfare, right? But let's get rid of the welfare, let's get rid of the other socialistic programs so that immigration can be properly managed in a biblical way. This used to be a country that welcomed them in and gave them opportunities to thrive. Carved on the Statue of Liberty are these words, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. It didn't say, give me your criminals, your lazy, your lethargic masses yearning for a handout. That's one extreme. And it didn't say either, no trespassing. We don't want you. Go back to where you came. That's the other extreme. I think that the Book of Ruth is much closer to the way America was originally set up on the issues of immigration. We'll have more to say about that later. In any case, Boaz actually is more generous than the law called him to be. Look at chapter 2, beginning at verse 14, and see how this was really kind hospitality that went way beyond the gleaning laws. Now, Boaz said to her at mealtime, come here, eat of the bread, and dip your piece of bread in the vinegar. So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed parts grain to her, and she ate and was satisfied and kept some back. And when she rose up to glean, Boaz commanded his young men, saying, let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. Also, let grain from the bundles fall purposely for her. Leave it that she may glean, and do not rebuke her. So she gleaned in the field until evening, and beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley." An ephah of barley was an astonishing amount to be able to glean. There is no way she could have gleaned that much if he had not been ultra-generous and if she had not been ultra-diligent. Now in a previous sermon I mentioned that there are differences of view on what an ephah constitutes. I subscribe to a lot of archaeology magazines and in one of them the archaeologist Scott had found a pot that had the word bath written on it. And, well, it's actually a fragment of a pot. Was it half a bath? Was it a bath? Anyway, because it had the word bath, and bath can be a measure by which you can figure out what an ephah came to, he said an ephah is about three-fifths of a bushel of grain, would have weighed about 29 pounds. And so that's what you tend to see in your study Bibles. But I think that that's actually an underestimation, because if you read in Josephus, who lived in the time of Christ, he gives twice the size of that. And he ought to know, he was a Jew, he used all those measurements himself. And he said, based on what he said, it would be closer to 50 pounds. But minimum of 29 pounds, you know, a maximum of 50 pounds that she beat out during that day. And this means to me that Boaz was a great example of ungrudgingly carrying out God's law and charity, just as Jesus loved God's law and called us to be generous. Anyway, when she carries the grain home, Naomi is ecstatic. And she's ecstatic not just because of the amount of food that she brought home, but because she all of a sudden realized, hey, this is Boaz. He is our kinsman redeemer. He is the mighty man in this area. The idea of kinsman redeemer is rooted in the law, and it's what makes Ruth such a prophetic statement about Jesus and the church. So how do we know what's a type? The Bible tells us. And because Ruth, you know, the kinsman-redeemer is built into the law as a prophetic type of Christ, Ruth is based on that law, ipso facto this whole book points to Jesus and the church. Now a kinsman-redeemer was a powerful and wealthy relative who had a responsibility to provide for those in his family who were suffering. He was a protector. He was also an avenger of blood. You see that in the Bible. It's the same Hebrew word, Geol, for both of those. And so he would have been the leader of a unit of the army. But the law also made provision for the kinsman-redeemer to marry a widow who had no children to take up the land and to protect the family. And so Naomi has a glimmer of hope. She's way past childbearing years, so she's not going to give herself in marriage, because the purpose of that was to raise up a seed. But since her son, Maulon, would have inherited the land, Ruth could be married and the land be redeemed through Ruth. And so her situation is really a combination of two laws. in the Pentateuch, the Leveret Law and the Kinsman Redeemer Law. You mash those two together, you've got the basis for what's going on here. Now, in chapter 3, Naomi strategized on how to see, how to figure out if Boaz, who just happens to be an eligible single bachelor, to see if he'd be willing to marry Ruth and redeem their land from whomever it was that they sold it to. And this is one of the few places in the Bible where the woman proposes to the man rather than vice versa. But God's law made provision for that in the case of the Leverett marriage of Deuteronomy 25. There was nothing out of line with Ruth proposing. Now, I'll hasten to say that Boaz recognized that Ruth had crossed the lines of biblical propriety when she laid down at his feet. And the reason I say that is from chapter 3, verse 14, where he says very clearly, Do not let it be known that the woman came to the threshing floor. Now this is such a bad testimony, I don't want anybody to know that you were here, right? So she had stepped over the lines of propriety there, but he probably knows, she's done this at Naomi's instigation, she doesn't know better, and he calls her a virtuous woman. So he's very gracious about the way in which he corrects her about how she went about it. Anyway, back to the earlier part of chapter 3, Ruth trusts Naomi's advice, since Naomi supposedly is more familiar with the cultural norm. We do have to be careful whose advice we follow, and it's sometimes good to get a second opinion and say, you know, where in the Bible is that, you know? ought to be careful who we follow. But in any case, she follows Naomi's advice, she bathes, dresses in her best clothes, anoints herself, puts on perfume basically. She's not going out to glean, she's going out to propose marriage and she wants to make her best presentation. After everyone has lain down for the night and fallen asleep, Ruth crept in, uncovered Boaz's feet as a symbolic gesture, and laid down at the feet of Boaz. This was not seduction. Seduction would have been to lay down at his side, right? She's laying down at his feet, which is a symbol to say, I want to come under your lordship, under your protection. under your leadership. And I think it's a beautiful picture of our coming to Christ. We come under His lordship when He redeems us. We come under His feet. By the way, this speaks to the fact that the man is the head of the home. The man is the lord of his wife. Now, yes, he's supposed to be a gentle and a kind and a generous lord, just like Boaz was, but he is a small l lord of the family. And if you think that's just a weird Old Testament thing, read 1 Peter 3, verse 6, and you'll see that Peter says, no, just like Sarah called her husband lord, you need to be doing exactly the same thing. In other words, when the kids try to play one parent against another, And she comes to you and you say, well, what did dad say? Well, he said, I couldn't. He said, well, he's the boss. Don't be coming to me. We're united here, right? That's basically what Lord there means. So anyway, male headship of the home is written into the law, illustrated in history, repeated in the New Testament. And it too is a test of whether we will follow the culture or follow the Bible. Anyway, when Boaz gets startled, he wakes up in the middle of the night and asks, who is there? She basically asked Boaz to redeem her family and to marry her. And as I've already stated, it was perfectly lawful for her to propose rather than waiting for him to propose. And by the way, it would have been perfectly lawful for him to say, well, thank you for asking, but no, I'm not interested. He could have turned her down. The law made that as a provision as well. We should not be offended with bold inquiries, you know, you think your son would be interested in marrying my daughter, or vice versa. We need to have an open culture in our church where these kinds of questions can be stated. Now, the normal paradigm is for the parents to be asking these questions, right? But the law of God in this situation says it doesn't always have to be that way. Especially with older people, it doesn't always have to be their way. There is some flexibility. Anyway, Boaz is blown away that she would think of him rather than going after younger and more handsome men. I get the impression he wasn't the greatest looking dude. But she is taking the path of scriptural principle and marrying him rather than the path of human wisdom and allowing her beauty to capture a younger, more handsome man. And I think in this she stands as a model to you singles. Don't let beauty or handsomeness of the other party be your first and primary concern. Let it be godliness. In verses 10 through 11, he says, "'Blessed are you of Yehovah, my daughter, for you have shown more kindness at the end than at the beginning, and that you did not go after young men, whether poor or rich. And now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you all that you request, for all the people of my town know that you are a virtuous woman.'" Now that expression, virtuous woman, is the exact identical Hebrew as the virtuous wife or the virtuous woman, you can translate it either way in Proverbs 31. Her value was far above Ruby's. And when he sees that she's available, he is eager to pursue her hand in marriage. But he tells her there might be a glitch. Since both of them are doing things according to the law of God, they have to follow God's law to a T, even if that might bring disappointment. There was another kinsman-redeemer who was closer than Boaz, and Boaz was going to trust God by letting that man know that Ruth was available. It was a risk, but he knew, hey, if God is in this, it will work out. God will often put integrity checks into our lives to test that trust. I've told this story before, but I feel like I need to tell it again. I knew that Kathy was the right one for me before she really knew me that well. And I was going to ask if I could court her, but my best friend beat me to the punch on the very day I was going to ask her, and he started to court her. Now, unknown to me, very, very quickly, I don't know if it was in a couple of days or whatever, she broke it off. not because he wasn't a good man, he's a very, very good man, but because she simply did not have peace about this. And those of you who are going to court in the future, you don't need to have a good reason for why you say no in terms of marriage. If you lack peace, that's a good enough reason to say no. But anyway, after she broke it off, my best friend came to me, And here's where the integrity check came in. He asked me for advice on how to make this work. Now, he wasn't clearly communicating how it had broken off. I just thought there was a little bit of glitches. And before the Lord, I felt I had to give. In all integrity, I had to give him the best advice that I could, so I did. I gave him the absolutely best advice I could give him on how to navigate this, make this move forward, and just trusted the Lord with the results, and of course, you know the results turned out pretty well, right? But the point is, God puts integrity checks into our lives all the time to see if we will trust Him. It might be a test in your job of whether you're going to break the Sabbath to get a really, really good deal. And you just have to say, no, I'm going to trust God on this. I'll turn down this deal rather than violate God's law. Too many times, Christians try to manipulate the results, but you cannot manipulate God's providence. You're in a school learning every day, and when you graduate, these tests that the Lord gives, He says, you can go on to the next grade. I'm going to trust you with more. That's basically what it amounts to. Well, Boaz has confidence in God, but makes both Ruth and Naomi have confidence in God too. We can lead in in developing a culture of confidence and faith. May it be so in our church. May our church just overflow with confidence in God's ways. So Ruth goes home. She tells Naomi that he said, yes, but there is a closer Redeemer who has first rights. And Naomi is certain that whichever way it works out, God will be in this. She knows that Boaz is not going to be resting until it's settled one way or the other. He's a very decisive man. He's a man of action. And, young men, you need to be so immersed in the Word of God that when the decision time comes, you know how to make the right decision that's in accord with God's Word. And then you go on, once you know this is God's will, to immediately take action. We've got to be men of action. Faith does not mean being passive. Too many people think faith just means you passively wait for God to do it. Read the chapter on faith in Hebrews 11, and you will see over and over action verbs, action verbs. You know, by faith, Abel offered. Or in verse 6, he defines faith as diligently seeking God, okay? This is very active. By faith, Noah prepared an ark. It's one action verb after another. So, we have got to cease being passive. Real men are men of action. Well, in chapter 4 the tension rises as Boaz finds out that this other family member is willing to redeem the land. He would love to add land to his holdings. But when the other family member finds out that he has to marry Ruth in order to get this land, because the Bible makes this a package deal, he realizes, oh, no, I'm not interested in that. maybe had eyes on another woman, but the phrase, ruin my inheritance, in verse 6 seems to indicate it's purely financial in his mind. It may have been both, but there were inheritance rights that were involved in this. And so he says no, and Boaz and Ruth are no doubt breathing a sigh of relief. Well, Boaz knows Ruth's true character. He redeems Naomi's land from whomever it was sold to. It was not a long romance. He saw everything that he needed to see just by observing her working during that whole season of barley harvest and the next season of the wheat harvest. Why drag out a courtship if you already know the answer is yes? get over it, you know, get betrothed, and start during that process of learning the non-sexual ways of expressing love to each other. Actually, they didn't even have the chance to do that. This is a one-day betrothal, and very, very short, much shorter than most betrothals. But let me quickly distinguish between the betrothal that took place in chapter 3, verses 11 through 15, and the marriage ceremony that took place in chapter 4. Very, very different. And there are some betrothal models out there that confuse this, become a little bit legalistic, because they just impose one paradigm, which is a biblical paradigm, but they don't recognize there is flexibility in the law of God. And I've already pointed out, I think in my overview of Ruth, these differences, but I feel I need to repeat myself. First, the biggest difference is that betrothal is a promise to get married. Sometimes it's in the form of a contract, but it doesn't have to be. It's a promise to get married, whereas marriage is a covenant. Marriage is much more than a promise or a contract. It is a covenant. Second, Boaz's promise to marry Ruth in chapter 3, verses 10 through 14, did not have an oath, though it did include a promise and a token. And betrothals today have a promise. Sometimes the token is a What do they call them? Engagement ring. There could be other tokens. He just gave this token of a massive amount of grain. In contrast, his marriage covenant in verses 8 through 13 goes way beyond a simple contract. Third, a contract does not need witnesses, right? So his betrothal was without any witnesses whatsoever, chapter 3, verses 8 through 18, and yet it's still a valid betrothal, whereas the marriage covenant necessarily involved witnesses, and he had 10 witnesses in chapter 4, verse 2, who also participated in the marriage ceremony in verses 9 through 12. Fourth, the betrothal was not done under authority in chapter 3, whereas elders are a part of the ceremony in chapter 4. All covenants are administered under authority. And then last, His betrothal had a condition inserted into the contract in chapter 3, verse 13. I'll promise, but with this condition, marriages don't have that condition. It's till death do us part, right? And you see that in chapter 4. Anyway, in verses 13 through 22, Boaz and Ruth have a baby and they lived happily ever after. And of course, that's not the end of the story. The real end of the story is not the birth of Obed, but the very deliberately crafted genealogy at the end of the book that shows that Obed is the ancestor of David. who is also prophesied to be the ancestor of the coming Messiah. And so the whole book is structured in a way that shows that every detail of God's providences here is being beautifully woven together to be a part of the grand story of redemption that Jesus would bring. And if I were doing a series of sermons, maybe 20 sermons on the book of Ruth, I would bring out all of these fascinating prophetic details. It's just, it's an incredible book. And I love the fact that the only women that are mentioned in Christ's genealogy in Matthew 1 are the women who might otherwise be shunned because of either their sin or their foreign ancestry. In Matthew 1, Jesus identifies with sinners, with the hurting, the outcast, the widow. He loves to identify with the broken and the crying, take them up in His arms, apply His redemption to them, okay? And this book of Ruth puts emotional depth to that love and loyalty that Jesus has for us. And so the figure of Ruth is a marvelous model. And I want to end the sermon by giving some additional lessons and applications we can glean from her story. The first obvious application is that we need, all of us need Ruth's faith. Faith believes God even when we don't know how all things are working together for good. It sure doesn't look like it to the eyes, physical eyes, but by faith we believe. If God says it's all working together for my good, we're gonna believe that. Faith believes God even when you lose your money. and you lose your husband, and you lose your family relatives. Faith continues to believe God even when other believers are so different from you, and you have a hard time identifying with them, and they have a hard time identifying with you. Faith believes God through thick and through thin. Just like Job said, you know, even if God kills me, I'm still going to trust Him. That's the kind of faith Ruth had. Do you? We all need Ruth's faith. Second, we need Ruth's constancy and willingness to go the extra mile. She went the extra mile when Boaz gave her some special food that the gleaners wouldn't ordinarily give, and she kept some aside to be able to share with Naomi, okay? She went the extra mile when she worked longer hours than others worked. She went the extra mile with her gracious disposition. We need constancy at work, knowing that God sees And more importantly, God rewards that constancy. It is impossible to have a habit of going the extra mile throughout a lifetime without God pouring blessing upon blessing into your lives. And other people will notice too. We need constancy at home. It is tough to be constantly faithful in discipline, in discipleship, in training of our kids, in devotions, in prayer, in other aspects of our home life. We easily fall out of patterns and habits, and we only catch ourselves, you know, maybe several days later and it's like, wait a minute, I have not been doing this. And we think, oh man, I need to get back into this habit of life. Okay, constancy is a good character trait to develop. We all need to be willing to take risks for Christ. Ruth took great risks in coming to Israel. She took great risks in following, maybe she shouldn't have, but following Naomi's advice, lying at his feet. There are other great risks that she took, but with great risk also comes great reward from the Lord. Some of you have taken risks in applying for the vaccine mandate exemptions. Some have taken risks in relocation. or buying a home, or getting a different job, or pursuing a spouse. For others, the risk may simply be you're leaving your comfort zone. But all of us should be willing to take risks for Christ. Fourth, the story of Ruth shows us that God has a special heart for foreigners and strangers, and Boaz did too. And I believe Boaz is a great example of how we should treat aliens, foreigners, strangers that come to America. The law of God repeatedly commands us to not neglect the stranger who comes into our land. And I think we need to evaluate ourselves. How are my attitudes on this toward foreigners? And I'll just give you a sampling of laws. There's many more than this. Exodus 20 verse 10 commands us to not overwork a migrant worker, but to give them a full Sabbath. Well, that implies that it's okay to have a migrant worker in our country and we ought to treat them with respect. Exodus 22, 21 says, you shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Basically, it's saying what Jesus did, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Leviticus 19.10 commands citizens to deliberately leave some things that can be gleaned by the poor and the strangers. Now, I love the fact that on Discord, you guys are giving away so many things to each other. It does my heart good to see that. That's a kind of gleaning, really. But think of creative ways that you can also help the poor and the stranger. Leviticus 19, 33 through 34 is even stronger, commands us to love the stranger as we love ourselves. This is absolutely amazing. This is not just a New Testament command, this is an Old Testament one. Leviticus 19, 33, and if a stranger dwells with you in the land, you shall not mistreat him. The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself. For you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord, your God." All you have to do is get a concordance and look up the words stranger, foreigner, alien, and you will realize that the policies of both the Trump administration and the Biden administration and several administrations before them are wrong on this issue. They are not handling it right. Thomas Sowell, Cal Beisner, Gary North, many other biblical economists have demonstrated that authoritarian approaches to the poor and to the immigrants do not work. What do I mean by authoritarian? Well, Gary North writes against both establishment Republicans and the establishment Democrats when he demonstrates, and I think he demonstrates it very, very well, he demonstrates how unbiblical and how economically disastrous, and let me list some of the things that he's opposed to, how disastrous tariffs are. They are disastrous, and price floors, and antitrust legislation, and minimum wage laws, and compulsory unionism, and restrictions on agricultural production, and state licensing of professions. You dig into that, you will realize this is so corrupt. Licensing of professions. The government should have nothing whatsoever to do with that. Zoning laws. Oh, wow. Zoning laws have been used to keep churches out of towns. They've been used for all kinds of totalitarian things. Immigration quotas. There's a host of other laws. These all flow from a totalitarian, authoritarian, statist philosophy. And in terms of our present subject, they contradict God's laws related to the alien. And this means that both the Democratic and the Republican parties have been, for the most part, grossly unbiblical in their policies for immigration. God's call for treating those who are down and outers is a radical call to love, and I think Boaz is a great example of that. Ruth is a great example of the benefits of the right to free travel. I don't think we have free travel today. You've got to have a passport to travel out of the country. And now it's becoming obvious you're going to have to have a vaccine passport to be able to travel out of the country. OK? Modern travel laws are not even remotely like the ones that were in biblical days. And there are calls from congressmen who want to force every citizen to get a unique medical identifier that contains all of your medical information, including that you are vaccine and booster compliant before you'll be able to travel, not just outside of the country, but from one state to another state. This is all out there in the open. This is totalitarianism, right? Even totalitarian Moab was not that bad. They had free travel. Israel had free travel. And by the way, biblical laws related to foreigners also factors into God's permission to marry a foreigner. In Christ's genealogy there were two Canaanites, Tamar and Rahab, and one Moabite, Ruth. Moses married an Ethiopian. There's controversy on this subject, but I think it is crystal clear. Now, fifth application could be made to the foreigners who immigrate to America. And I say to the foreigners, don't come to America to get free welfare. You've got to work for your money. Why was Ruth able to make a go of it in Israel, even though there were probably Israelites who were prejudiced against her? Well, she was able to make a go of it because Israel didn't have minimum wage laws and job protectionism and any of the other things that I just mentioned. Down through history, immigrants were able to better themselves because they were willing to work harder, do a better job than others, do it for less pay than others, take on jobs nobody else was willing to do. And because there were no minimum wage laws, they were able to get ahead, and they were able to prove themselves and gradually grow in terms of the wage scale. Well, minimum wage laws made that all illegal, and when that's illegal, who's the first ones to be unemployed? It's the very people who the citizens tend to be the most prejudiced against. The black economist Walter Williams in his book, The State Against Blacks, gives graphs that show a direct correlation between increases in federal minimum wage level and the rise in unemployment amongst low-skilled workers and others facing prejudice. By the way, if you're an Austrian economist, which that's the closest to biblical economics in my view, You automatically can predict that. Within six months of raising minimum wage, you're going to have an increase in unemployment. It's just the way it is. But anyway, minimum wage laws hurt those who are targets of racial bias, since it removes the economic incentive to hire across barriers of bigotry. People like Ruth can prove themselves by working in the worst jobs and gradually climb the economic ladder. Now the point is, good character and a good work ethic can overcome prejudice if there is a free market. Now another lesson in this book is that God loves women and elevates their status. We can see this principle because Boaz followed God's law, and God's law gave all kinds of protections to women. It protected the property rights of women. Since there were no male survivors, these women fit the law that Moses made for the daughters of Zelophehad, which I'm hoping to preach on next week, Lord willing. We'll see. God didn't want women to be neglected when it came to property. God's law protected women sexually by making penalties for those who abused women. Boaz, as a lover of God's laws, protected the women who came to glean in his fields. And so Ruth is a story of how God elevates the status of women. Of course, we've been seeing that in several of the sermons in this Women of Faith series. A seventh lesson that I see from the life of Ruth is that your past does not have to dictate your future or hold you back. I've seen way too many people who have been emotionally chained down by abuses in their past, and they just cannot move forward. They have a hard time getting past it. It cripples them, OK? It hinders them from moving and improving. Well, Ruth had a horrible past, yet she refused to let it chain her down. She left the horrible past behind and pressed into opportunities for the future. And in the same way, your past does not have to chain you down forever. What we need to do is be driven by the vision of what God is calling us to be. Just think of Ruth. She came from a pagan past, like her sister-in-law. She lost her father-in-law and her husband. So far, she's barren, unable to have children. She must have had enormous pain, must have been nervous about going to Israel. And so she had plenty of reasons to live in a shell, just wish everybody would go away, live in obscurity. And yet, because of her faith in God, she was able to move forward with confidence and even help her mother-in-law, who really struggled in this area, to move forward. She had a purpose in life and a calling. And even though she had no idea what the future held, she held on to God and His call upon her life. So don't let your past pains keep you from God's upward call. Actually, you could just think of the Apostle Paul. How many Christians had he imprisoned and murdered, and he becomes a Christian and people don't want to have anything to do with him? He could have been so embarrassed by his past that he wouldn't want to face any other Christians. No. He refused to do that. He said this, brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended. In other words, I'm not perfect. But one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. The next lesson I see from her story is that we should see adversity as a test of our faith, not as a reason to cast off our faith. Naomi had such weak faith that she didn't pass this test very well initially. Ruth had a faith that in effect said, with Job, though he slay me, yet will I trust him. How do you handle adversity? Does it make you grumble and feel sorry for yourself? Or do you resolve to glorify God, thank God, take advantage of the situation, move forward. See adversity as a test from God's hand to respond appropriately in a way that will please Him. Yet another lesson is that no one is unimportant to God in His kingdom. He has a plan for the least of these to the greatest of these. It may not seem like you're very important to God when you're traveling from Moab to Israel with your reserves running out and you're on a road where bandits could take advantage of you. But God was there with them. No one is unimportant to God. Jesus said, the very hairs of your head are numbered, and God has committed Himself to caring for you. The next lesson is that God can redeem the messiest of situations. If you study much about Israel's land laws and how loans were made against the law, you couldn't permanently sell it, it was basically a lease. You realize there was a debt on this land that was unpayable by these two women, unpayable. And I have known people who have gotten into debt up to their necks and they feel paralyzed and helpless. Now, I'm not guaranteeing God's going to ever bring along a kinsman redeemer to bail you out. That would be awesome. But Dave Ramsey has all kinds of other ways, biblical ways, in which he has helped many, many people get out of horrendous debt and move forward. And so there is a way out. Your messy life may not be dead. It may be a moral mess, much like the background of Ruth. God can redeem and fix even the messiest of situations if we're willing to get rid of the past, press into God's biblical blueprints with all of our heart. The next lesson I see is that God is in providential control of both the little things of life and the big things. God controlled Ruth's infertility when she was married to Molon, because that would totally ruin the story, the redemptive story that God had if she had a baby by Molon. It would totally ruin the story. So he was in control of her infertility, and then he controlled her fertility when married to Boaz. You can trust God on even the issues of fertility. When we did an overview of the book of Ruth some months ago, we saw from the first verse to the last verse that God's providence had to control the economics of the nation. War, immigration laws, bandits deciding not to visit that road on the seven to ten days that they're traveling there, right? What field Ruth wandered into. He controlled romance. The fact that Boaz couldn't find a wife for years. He controlled so many other details. And without those details, Ruth would not have married Boaz, Obed would not be born, which means David would not be born, which means Jesus would not be born. But you see, God not only ordains the end result, He ordains all of the means that lead up to that end result. We can trust God that providentially He controls everything in life. In fact, Proverbs 16.33 says, there's no such thing as pure chance because every casting of the dice, the outcome comes from God. Every casting of the dice. Now that should affect how you feel when you lose a Monopoly game or some other game of chance. Are you a poor loser on those games, those fictional games? Well, that might reflect that you're a poor loser in life in general. Right? We need to get used to realizing God is in control of everything. He's in control of the stubbed toe. He's in control of my back pain. He's in control, you know, when David hits his finger. Or was it Gil who hit his finger with a hammer? And how do we respond to these details of life? Do we glorify Him? Do we give Him thanks? Yes, we need to respond appropriately. The last application that I see in her life is that decisions made today often impact future generations. Now, you may not realize it at the time, but they do. Okay? You can leave a legacy for future generations just by the faithful decisions you make on the mundane things of everyday life, like changing diapers or like gleaning. All of those mundane things, all the tiny details of this story added up to a story of marriage and a child and the lineage of David and the coming Messiah. So be faithful in the small decisions of today and know that at least some of them will impact future generations. And may God receive the glory for our faithful responses to Him. Amen. Father, thank you for the story of Ruth. Thank you for how your grace I saved her out of such a messy situation. We thank you for trusting us with our own messes and enabling us to get past those. And I pray for each one here, Father, that they would have a trust in you in every detail of their lives. that they would apply the redemption of Jesus Christ to their lives on a day-to-day basis. We love you. It is such a glory to serve you. And I pray that as we end this service singing, that you would hear the responses of our heart. In Jesus' name, amen.