Turn in your Bibles with me please to the book of Ruth. We're going to read the second chapter of this historical record and message from God. Ruth chapter 2, reading the whole chapter, this is God's word to us. There was a relative of Naomi's husband, a man of great wealth of the family of Elimelech. His name was Boaz. 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. Now 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. Dombois said to Ruth, you will listen, my daughter, will you not? Do not go to glean in another field or 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 and the land of your birth and come to a people whom you did not know before. The Lord repay your work. and a full reward be given to 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, boys 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 ifa 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 worked 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 Moabitess 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 the 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 the barley harvest and wheat harvest, and she dwelt with her mother-in-law. We read in the Bible many places the way God provides for us, his people. The book of Ruth gives us a vivid image of him doing that. We see it above all in the way he dealt with Ruth. As we look at this book, we learn something of her character, her faithfulness, and we see her faithfulness rewarded by God. Then there's Boaz, and Boaz is much more than a counterpoint to Ruth. He's one who shows us the compassion of God himself. He is an example to us, just as Ruth is. He teaches us faithfulness. He teaches us generosity. He teaches us thankful, practical generosity. Ruth shows us how to deal with hard choices. The first chapter presents People making choices, the kind of choices that move you away from God. The choice, very common in our land today, of material security at the cost of spiritual security. Limelech and Naomi left Israel, and remember, Israel was the church in that day, the whole church in that day. They left Israel for Moab, which is a place where God was no longer known. They left because it was tough times in Israel, and they hoped to prosper more in Moab. When you look in chapter 1, you also see another choice being made, the choice of wives who do not know God. We see again that happening around us today, Christians marrying non-Christians, men or women. The two sons of Elimelech and Naomi married unbelieving wives, Ruth and Orpah. And we're shown in a very clear way how such choices commonly lead to bitter results. The end in loss because prosperity and joy in the end only come from God. You may get something about a measure for a time apart from God's from loving God, but it all comes from Him. And if you turn away from Him, you can't expect it to grow and last. And what happened there is that Elimelech died in Moab. His two sons died in Moab. And Naomi and her daughters-in-law were left destitute, where they'd gone for prosperity. But following that we saw a call to make the hard choice to follow God. Naomi decided this was not a very good situation for her anymore and decided she needed to return home to God's people where she was known and where the famine was over, I guess, and things were starting to prosper. She thought she would return home, and at first Ruth and Orpah were going to go with her, but she warned them, you know. She had no resources to care for them. She had no children to give them as sons. It was not likely to be a good scene for them in Israel. And Orpah chose to stay with her family in Moab, but Ruth left with Naomi. She left her family. She left her settled home. She left any reasonable prospect of getting married. She left the church in which she was raised. And we saw, we looked at that Ruth chose to commit to Naomi's God, the true God. In her we see an example of that we all should follow, to follow God, whatever the cost, to follow God, to leave everything behind if need be to follow God. Well, it's outwardly costly. Choosing God leads to great reward always in the end. Chapter two of this book highlights how God provided for Ruth and Naomi. We saw that last time I was here. He provided in his law the possibility of gleaning so the poor could come and find some food where they had nothing of their own to get it. The prosperous were urged by God to be generous. The poor were taught to accept gifts of graces. We saw the use of providential guidance in his leading Ruth to Boaz Field. We saw how he works in equipping people with Christlike hearts to help the needy. We saw that his provision extends as well to us. We have examples of it here. But when we follow him, he is there for us always. But there's more in this chapter, so we're going to continue in Chapter 2 a bit, and we talk about how we enjoy God's blessing. Three things. First of all, that God provides for us through our labor. Secondly, that God provides for us through the compassion of His people. And thirdly, that God rewards those compassionate people, provides for them in that way. God provides for us through our labor. And Ruth's example shows to us the value of hard work. You think about Ruth. She's an alien. She's coming to this strange land, Israel. What did she do? Far from home, no funds, no job, no network of friends. The only person she knew there was Naomi. What did she do? Did she say, okay, Naomi, I followed you here and you're the only one who knows this territory, so it's up to you to see that we get fed? No, you just heard it. She didn't say that, did she? Did she go to the local civic leaders and plead for assistance? No. Did she cry out to God, I followed you, so now you've got to provide for me? No. What then did she do? while she went out and did the work that was available for her. And it was hard, back-breaking, manual labor. You know, you think about it, and odd stalks of grain missed by the harvesters. They're not very heavy. You can stoop down and get one, and then stoop down and get another one, and then stoop down and get another one. And it's the ultimate in stoop labor, isn't it? Seems fun, especially if you're young and you're fairly agile. It doesn't mean much to stoop down the first time or the first 15 or 20 times maybe, but as the hours go on and you're bending down and picking up a bit here and bending down and picking up a bit there. Ruth did this. She was very diligent about it. She worked hard at it. And as she worked, God prospered her. He caused her labor to be profitable. The basic intent of the law about gleaning was that people could get some kind of a minimum thing, but she got more than that. He provided a reward which went beyond the work, beyond what she could expect. There is no doubt there were many around Bethlehem who would have been kind to Ruth and welcomed her gleaning their fields, no problem. But because God had more in his plan for her, he brought her to Boaz. And there she worked. And what you see here, One thing you see here at least is that trust in God means using the ordinary means He gives you to prosper. Ordinary means are the things God gave you. God doesn't tell you, get down on your knees and pray for incessant miracles. Get up in the morning and pray that God will provide breakfast for you this morning and then go and pray that God will provide a good book for you to read so you can relax through the morning and, you know, That's not what you're told to do, is it? If you want to go to the mission field to serve God, don't expect God to give you a magic carpet to get there. That's not the way he works normally. God made us an orderly universe so that we can work and plan and see the fruit of our work as we do it. Things work together. Trusting God does not mean expecting to bypass the universe He made. Yes, God works miracles, no question about that. But too often God's people get focused on the miracles and forget His day-by-day, minute-by-minute care for us in ordinary ways. People are taught sometimes that faith means refusing to use ordinary means. You've got a problem with your appendix and you're going to trust God to heal your appendix instead of going to a doctor. But brothers and sisters, faith means trusting God to heal your appendix and going to a doctor. Because if you do otherwise, you're saying to God, I don't think the way you run this world normally is good enough for me. You have to give me miracles. I can't work the normal way. It's not good enough for me. If you refuse to use His ordinary means. What God tells us, 2 Thessalonians 3.10, if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. You're to use the ordinary means. If you refuse to do that, then expect to go hungry. It's God's message. to get food on your table, money in your bank account, God expects you to work, to trust him and therefore to work, to work hard and you'll prosper by it because God blesses you. Prosperity is always a blessing from God. It's not something we somehow magic up by our hard work. Hard work is the Christian's key to prosperity. And historically, you look through history, Christians have prospered because they have worked. It's the infamous Protestant work ethic. You all know that name? It's the thing that was taught in the Reformation, particularly reminded of people in the Reformation. You get down to work. And again and again, where people became Christian and settled down to do those things that God told them to do, they prospered. It's sneered at today by most people around us, but it's still God's teaching. It still works. God gives his people fruit from their labor. There's no promise that we are going to get everything we want. There's no promise, in fact, that we'll get everything we need, each of us individually. But there's a clear pattern that on the whole those who live for God prosper materially. We suffer because of people's opposition to Christ. We don't suffer because the means God gives us through this world, through this life, fail. Today, there are a lot of people in our society, especially, who act as if it's a sin to be wealthy. If you're wealthy, it means you're a wicked person because there are people who are poor around you. Some very wealthy people say this, but you notice they don't hand over all their wealth to the poor. It's certainly sinful to misuse your wealth. It's sinful to accumulate it dishonestly. But brothers and sisters, wealth in general is a blessing from God. Think of Abraham, who was wealthy. God's chosen the great example of Christian faith in the whole Bible. Think of Job. We're told he was the richest man in the world. An example of faith which is stellar. Think of Solomon and the wealth of Solomon's kingdom. God gave his people wealth. He didn't say you're evil to have wealth. It was his gift to him. And a major part of the blessing of that gift is what it allows you to do for others. And you see this in Boaz here in our text today. A man of some wealth. Who used his wealth? to help others. That brings us to the second thing. God uses our labor to provide for us. God also provides for us through the compassion of his people. Speaking particularly there of those in need above all. And he calls his people to show practical compassion. He calls on you and me to see the need on our own doorsteps. You know, care for the needy is a funny thing. Most prefer to help at long range. It's much easier to get people to give $20 a month to support orphans in Vietnam. You know, we can do that quite easily. Lots of people do it. It's much harder to get those same people to give $20 a month to support the needy child who lives five doors down the street. Isn't that right? When it's that close, you have to get personally involved. It can be messy and you back off from that. We're not sure what we're doing there. There must be something wrong with them that they're poor somewhere around us, you know. Boas gives an example which points out the importance of getting involved. Not just standing far off and sending some money, and now I've done OK. I've done my part, you know. But getting down and dealing with people who are hurting. Gleaners were a common sight in his time. They would be in every field after the harvest, practically. It was easy to pay no attention to them. There's a lot of them. But Boaz came to his field, and he cared enough to look to see who was there, who was doing that there. And he identified a stranger. This woman, he didn't know. He was a native of that territory. You would know most of the people there. Who's this? So he found out who she was. Then he provided for her particular needs. He gave her protection as well as the means to gain an income as she labored there. You know, there are lots who would have been happy to allow Ruth to glean in their fields. It was commanded by God. When you do that, you're showing how faithful you are to God. It's kind of like putting a donation in the offering for a diaconal gift. It makes you feel good, certainly. Particularly, it's easy if the donation you put in would be something you'd never use anyway, some clothing perhaps that you've outgrown. That's easy to give. The green bits missed in the harvest, you're not going to use. So if they pick them up, that's good. Cost you nothing. And you get credit. To be like boys, we need to go further than that. We need to inquire into needs we see. You need to use your particular resources as you can to answer that need. If you're a doctor, you might perhaps give medical treatment to a foreigner who has no insurance and no funds to pay for medical treatment in our land. Or perhaps you might invite home a newcomer who's lonely. You see them sitting alone and nobody talking to them, nobody near them. Invite them home for dinner. Introduce them to people who might become friends for them, break their loneliness. You can't do that at long range. Or you may have an opportunity to tutor somebody who's trying to learn English. Help them in that way. You might be able to intercede with the authorities for some stranger who's being given a hard time and doesn't really know how to deal with our bureaucracies. Where you see signs of need, whatever they may be, open your heart, as Boaz did. Investigate, and then prayerfully consider what you can do to help with that. Use the imagination God gave you. Think outside the box of what you can do, how you can help. We're called to be generous in caring for the needy. It comes up frequently in the books of Moses and other places in the Bible. And again, you see Boaz as an example. He found out about Ruth and who she was, and he said, you come to my field all through the harvest. You'll be safe there. You'll be protected there. You're a stranger. Nobody knows you. You're potentially a victim. Come to my field, and you won't be. That was quite explicit in it. He didn't just let Ruth glean there, he provided water for her. He said, help yourself to the water, verse 9. It's not a big cost, the cost of the work of the servant who draws it, but you know, these little things do add up. He invited her to eat with his harvesters. That's not part of the normal gleaning. And not only that, he handed the food to her and saw that she got enough to take some home to Naomi. And he went further. He sacrificed some of his normal profit to be sure she got a good day's pay for her work. How did he do that? Well, he let her glean grain which would normally have been gathered for him. Verse 15 and 16, Boaz commanded his young men saying, let her glean even among the sheaves and do not reproach her. The gleaning rule was that people could go in after the harvesters were done and pick up what was left over. But Boaz says, let her come right up where you're harvesting and pick up the things that haven't been picked up yet, perhaps. Bits that have been dropped that you would normally pick up. Let her pick them up. His generosity went beyond God's command and because he lost part of his harvest there. He went further again. He told his men, also let grain fall from the bundles purposely for her. Leave it that she may glean and do not rebuke her. Not only give her a chance to pick up more than they would normally be picked up, but make sure there's a lot more there. Give it up. You take what you've already picked up from me and sort of, oops, missed that one, you know, pass it by. Don't just be less careful to get it than normal, but take some that you have in your hand and discard it for her. And he did these things all through the harvest. Okay, Boaz was a wealthy man. How wealthy, we don't know, but he was certainly well off. He had a lot of servants, menservants and maidservants. He wasn't going to suffer much from what he did. He might have a little less grain in his storehouse to sell or something. It wouldn't matter that much to him. Those who are not so wealthy can't do so much, but all of us. However rich or poor we may be, should be generous in the use of what God gives us. Boaz is our example for that. We learn from him as well how to give graciously. For most people, it's very hard to be a receiver. People don't like it when they have to let somebody help them. It's tough. As you get older, especially, and you start being less capable of caring for yourself, and you have to let others help. It hurts. People don't like it. It's demeaning as we think of ourselves. It hurts our pride. Of course, that may be a good thing. Our pride is the heart of our sin. It's the principal barrier to our coming to Christ because to follow Jesus you have to admit that you're weak, you're needy. You have to acknowledge that He's the Lord and bow to Him. It's sometimes good for us to have the pride which stands in our way knocked down. And that's no doubt one reason that the poor are more receptive to the gospel than the rich. Their pride has already been battered somewhat. They don't feel so self-sufficient. But you know, we're not called to beat down people's pride. God may do that, and he does as we need it. But we are to love them, to deal gently with them, to avoid what will hurt them if we possibly can. So you see how Boaz helped Ruth. In start, he gave her credit for what she'd done for Naomi. He said, you deserve this because you have shown kindness to this woman in need. He recognized her choice to follow God in verse 12, under whose wings you have come for refuge. And he allowed that his care for her was less than she'd earned by that. He prayed that the Lord repay your work and a full reward be given to you by the Lord God of Israel. He's saying, I can't give you the full reward. It's God who does that. He treated her like one of his own people. He gave her friendly family care. It wasn't so, OK, you destitute, here, have an offering. But he took her in as if she were part of his family and cared for her. Made it easy. He gave her help in a way that perhaps she wouldn't notice, at least in a way that allowed her to feel that she wasn't just somebody hanging on and begging. He didn't just write her a check, give her a gift, but he arranged things to make sure she got a good pay for the work she did. And she worked and she harvested, and he made sure there was a good harvest for her. We need to learn to give like this, to try to do it in ways that don't knock people down and say they're incompetent and useless, but ways that help them accept it easily. So they don't feel put down, they don't feel scorned, they don't feel demeaned. We need to give with the grace of Christ, the love of Christ, who gives himself for us. But you know, giving is costly. It can sometimes be very costly. And God here shows us that he richly rewards those who share his compassion. He gives them honor among God's people. Flip ahead in the chapter to the end to Naomi and see how highly Naomi speaks of Ruth's benefactor, a small wonder. He'd done far more than give her food for a few days. He'd restored her trust in God, God's care for her. You know, a few days before this, in the beginning of the, towards the end of Chapter 1, we see Naomi saying, don't call me Naomi, call me Mara. Bitter, because God's against me. He's turned my hopes into bitterness. Now, she speaks of Jehovah, who has not forsaken his kindness to the living and the dead. Now she sees that God still cares for her. Even in the trial she's gone through, he still hasn't forgotten her. And not only that, but he hasn't forgotten the Limelech and their two children either. So they are dead. They're in his hands. And her heart has been changed by Naomi's kindness to Ruth. You know, your Christian compassion will have the same kind of fruit for you. You won't always get somebody blessing you for what you do. There are some who think they have a right to everything they can scrounge out of you, and if you don't give them more, they sound off and tell you how lousy you are, how big a failure you are. But when you give in Christ's name, in most cases you will get honor for it, and generally you will get honor for it. You should note that Boaz was clear about his commitment to God. He made it plain that what he did was part of God's provision. It wasn't just that I'm a generous man and look how good I am. He's saying God is providing here. He didn't say it explicitly, but it's implicit in all that he says there. And it's good for us when you give something to somebody, make reference to God, to His provision. Make plain that you're doing it because this is God's care for that person. God gives you favor, gives you honor as you serve Him. He also rewards those who give graciously, compassionately through the blessing of God's people. Twice Naomi prayed for blessing on Neboez. Verse 19, blessed be the one who took notice of you. He didn't even know who it was yet, but she saw that Ruth came back with far more than she could expect to have from a day's gleaning. And she knew somebody had done something. And then later again, blessed be he of the Lord who has not forsaken his kindness to the living and the dead. No, we tend to read past this and say, okay, so she was grateful. We downplay blessings and cursings, but brothers and sisters, this is no small matter to be downplayed. We show ourselves to be children of our own times, influenced by the materialism of our times when we pass by and downplay blessings and cursings. Naomi, we know, had no power to give good or bad to Boaz. You know, it wasn't that she was a witch or something who could work a magic spell and somehow give him blessing. But her blessing was indeed a blessing because God, when you talk to God, does he ignore you? Do you think he ignores you when you're talking to him? I hope not. He hears you. He cares about you. He listens to his people's prayers. He invites us to pray. He invites us to bring all our concerns to him, not just our needs, but our desires. And he listens to every one of us because he's God. He can listen to us all when we're chattering in a babble and none of us can hear anything but noise. He can hear every word and he cares. Can you listen to Naomi? And where Naomi blessed Boaz, God heard. And God's blessing is there because he cares for his people and hears what they say and acts on it. As we'll see later, God indeed blessed Boaz beyond all expectations. He gave him a godly wife and a family. Boaz was not a young man anymore. And he raised up Boaz's great grandson, David, to be the king. Maybe a generation or two more, because the Jews tend to skip generations, just name prominent names in their genealogy, and maybe a couple more generations. But certainly Boaz's not-too-distant descendant, David, became king. And it doesn't stop there, because you continue down through the Bible, and you trace that bloodline, and eventually you come to Jesus Christ. a descendant of Boaz in the flesh. He would have the honor of being used by God to bring the Christ into the world. God blesses his people and their compassion. God's people don't lose through generosity. Luke 6, verse 38, Jesus said, give and it will be given to you. Good measure. pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you. Oh yeah, you may indeed lose something of what you give in this life, but your reward doesn't end with this life. And God's blessings to you in this life don't necessarily come in a direct line from what you have done. But your reward, well, God says he'll always be as generous to you as you are to others. Think what that means. Think of your strength, your size, your wealth compared to God's. Imagine a child who's got a little beach shovel, you know, and he's got a big box with pennies in it. And a man comes up to him and tells him that for every shovel full of coins he gives to needy people, the man will give the child a shovel full of coins. Okay, that's fair. So, shovel full of coins out there. And he discovers that the man's shovel is a steam shovel, and the coins in his box are $20 gold pieces. And that's the way it is when God says he will give as freely to us as we give to him. Because God's shovel is much bigger. God's coins are much bigger. God's just bigger in all ways. And when he's as generous to you as you are to others, boy, do you get a load. As God's child, you will never lose by acting with the compassion that God has for us, never. God doesn't come out and say, do this, do this, do this in the book of Ruth. He gives us an example of how we should live. And the book is filled with practical lessons for your Christian life. It teaches you to work hard if you want to enjoy God's blessing, to work hard because you trust God. You're not told to work because it's up to you to make your own way. You're told to work Well, you're not told to work because God won't help you. You're told to work because God promises that he will help you as you work. He'll bless your work. You're assured that the normal means that he gives you will be effective. God will bless you through them. God teaches you practical compassion. He says to look to the needy who are near to you. Find out about them. Care for them generously. Use your special resources to answer their need. Be gracious in your help. He encourages you with the insurance that God's blessing will be upon you. But bear in mind that the full blessing of God is only experienced as a Christian. Ruth, began to know God's blessing when she chose to follow Him. Boaz was one of God's followers. His first words to the people in the field was, the Lord be with you. You need to be sure of your place with God. Have you asked Him to be your God? Have you? Have you sought to follow him, tried to live as his child, to walk with him because he's so kind to you. If you have not, then you need to go back to chapter one and make Ruth's choice. Your God will be my God, she said to Naomi. Choose God, choose Jesus Christ and follow him. You need to align yourself with Boaz and others of God's people in the service of Christ. Seek God first, His kingdom first, His righteousness first, and then you will begin to enjoy the fullness of His blessing. Let's pray. Father, teach us to be generous people, because You are a generous God and we're trying to be like You. Give us the grace to not just see a bunch of needy people and toss a coin their way, but to find out what the need is where we can and try to give better help. Help us to be prepared to pay the cost of generosity, to trust in you to bring good from it. Father, In your generosity, we pray that you will touch the hearts of each one of us here. We pray especially for any who do not yet know you as their Savior, that you would touch their hearts now. Pour out your Spirit on them and renew them. Draw them to Christ and to the path of your blessing. Let us live in such a way that people around us, as Naomi did, see that you are kind, that you are loving, that you care. and respond in love. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm told it's a custom at times to allow questions and answers, hopeful answers after the service. So if you have questions, sit back here and we'll start right after the benediction. Lift up your hearts now to receive his blessing. The Lord established you as an holy people to himself and cause you to keep his commandments and walk in his ways. May the peoples of this earth see that you are called by the name of the Lord and fear you. May the Lord cause you to abound in prosperity for the glory of his holy name forever. Amen.