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In the Book of Ruth, Boaz finds a vulnerable widow gleaning in his field and he has to decide if he’ll do more than what the law requires. We, like Boaz have to answer the question Will love dictate we give more than the bare minimum? That’s much easier to tell others to do than for us to do ourselves.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening, everyone. It’s so good to be with you, even if it is on screen tonight. For most of you that I already know, my dad tested positive for COVID, and I was concerned enough that I’d been exposed that I didn’t want to bring it and expose all of you, so I’m on screen. And that sounds really good, doesn’t it? I’m trying to take care of all of you. I’m being really careful for all of you.
But I have a confession to make. Tonight is the 2nd anniversary of us meeting in person, and I really would like to be on the other side of the screen with you, for those of you that are in person tonight. I would like to be up at our pulpit in front of our altar. I want to be there tonight.
It’s been a process this week because I’ve been thinking about this: Okay, I’ve been exposed how many days? Yeah, I’ve had some allergies. Is that anything that’s going to cover up if I actually have a mild case? What should I do? What should I do? All this stuff running through my head. I haven’t necessarily had the right attitude about it. I’ve kind of known—well, we’ve been asking.
Kathy just mentioned, if you think you’ve been exposed to some kind of illness, if you know you have some kind of illness, please take advantage of our online church family, be on with them, be on with all of this together online so that we don’t share those sorts of things. We have our ability now to broadcast on FM radio in the parking lot. So if you want to be physically near but keep everybody safe, you can do that too.
We have all that stuff and we talk about that. I’ve talked about that. But what’s it look like when I actually have to do it? When I know I’ve been exposed to something nasty, hoping I don’t get it. I’m hoping beyond hope that I will be there with you next Sunday, but what do I do when suddenly it’s inconvenient to me to do the things I’ve been saying everybody should do?
Of course, you would hope—and I would hope of myself—that I just think, well, I know the right thing to do. I’m going to be extra careful. Maybe careful for two reasons. I’m going to be careful, one, because I do believe I could potentially have it, and I could bring it to all of you, and I don’t want to do that. And also because I want everyone who does come in to be able to worship and focus on God and what He’s doing for us and not on whether I’m exposing you.
I’m like some of you. I know our congregation has a variety of opinions on these things, but some of you are more concerned, and I’m in that category where I don’t want to be exposed to this stuff. I’d rather avoid it. Would I want someone who’s been exposed right next to me? Well, no. So I’d hope, with all that in mind, I’d just do the right thing.
That’s really hard, isn’t it? When it’s actually coming down to the things that we want to do. I want to be there tonight. We all have things we want to do, and the question is: Who am I acting for? Am I acting for myself, or am I acting for other people? Who am I acting like? Am I acting like the world, or am I acting like Jesus? And those are challenges I think all of us face, all of us are going to struggle with.
It’s a challenge that I believe we see being played out very well, better than my own attitude, in Ruth chapter 2. So let’s go ahead and pray and ask God that He would help us to see those places where we’re acting for ourselves, where we’re not acting like Him. As we look at the story of Ruth and Boaz, and how that starts to unfold, it would be more like them. Would you pray with me, please?
Father, would You help us to be people who do what’s pleasing to You. Lord, we want what we want. We want it when we want it. But Lord, would You help us to want what You want? Would You help us to want what is a blessing to those around us, that we’re not focused on receiving blessings but in being agents of Your blessing to others? Would You give us the right focus tonight? And would You help us to do that?
Because we do all this, we study all this in light of our Savior Jesus, Your Son who came into this world, fully deserving to ask for every blessing but instead blessed us by taking on our curse. And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So what do we do? What are we called to do? We’re called to act for His purposes. And that’s what we see if we turn—if you want to look in your Bible or on your Bible app or on screen—Ruth chapter 2, verse 5. We read these words: Boaz has just learned that there’s this young woman out harvesting in his field, and it says:
Then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers, “Whose young woman is this?” And the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered, “She is the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.’ So she came and she has continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest.”
Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Now listen, my daughter: Do not go to glean in another field, or leave this one, but keep close to my young women.”
So, what do we see going on here? We see initially Boaz learns that Ruth is there, and he’s already heard about Ruth. We learned that as we read through this chapter. We’re going to look at portions of it tonight. I’d encourage you to read the whole thing. But as we look at those portions, what do we discover?
We discover that Boaz knows the story of Ruth already. He knows that she’s come back. She’s been widowed. She was married to one of Naomi’s sons, and she’s come back with Naomi, who herself is widowed as well. We’ve been talking about that the last few weeks: the situation they’re in, the graves they find themselves in both literally and metaphorically. That’s where they are. Boaz has heard about this, and so now he sees Ruth out following behind his workers who are harvesting the fields.
That sounds a little odd to us. We might drive by a farm field here or there, and we don’t see people following behind the combine trying to collect anything. But in a sense, this was the welfare program of ancient Israel. If we go back to the law—the Torah, the first five books of the Bible—it’s God’s delineating how it’s that you’re going to live as His people, how you’re going to be a people that aren’t just receiving God’s blessing but giving His blessing.
God says to them: You’re going to do this. You’re going to harvest your fields as you should and you’re receiving God’s blessing in that, but you’re not going to try to get a perfectly clean harvest. You’re going to leave some stuff there, and you’re going to allow those who are in need to come and clean up behind your harvesters—apparently, what you harvest behind what your servants harvest. And that’s going to ensure that they have something to eat. And that’s what Ruth is doing here.
It’s a perfectly legal thing, but it really full stop ends there. Boaz doesn’t need to do anything else. He’s not ordering his reapers to prevent Ruth from doing this. Clearly, the reapers understand that Boaz isn’t trying to get around God’s law in any way. They allow her to do this.
But then we go to that second part here, and that’s what’s so remarkable. Because Boaz says, I want you to stay here and keep harvesting. Look at this last part again: “Now listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women.”
Throughout the chapter, we see Ruth do exactly that. But here’s the beautiful thing: Boaz knows that Ruth is vulnerable. She’s a young woman who is unmarried, she’s widowed, she is a nobody as far as society is concerned. She could easily be attacked by someone if she goes to a field and some worker wants to take advantage of her. That could easily happen.
Boaz says, I know my people. I know my young women will take care of you. I know my male servants have been out harvesting the fields. They’ve already been watching out for you and I want you here where you’re safe.
As he looks at this woman who’s been taking care of her mother-in-law—she’s not obliged to—she’s come to a foreign land to take care of a mother-in-law for whom the son that she married is no longer even alive. She’s come to this strange land because she cares about Naomi so much. And Boaz says, someone like that, I want her to be safe. I don’t want something bad to happen to her.
Listen to what Boaz says in verse 11: “But Boaz answered her, ‘All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me, and how you left your father and mother in your native land and came to a people that you did not know before. The Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.’”
Here’s what I think is really important that we see with Boaz here: He doesn’t know the rest of the story yet. We’ve already talked about how Naomi doesn’t know the rest of the story, Ruth doesn’t, well, Boaz doesn’t either. None of these people are prophets. There’s no prophecy.
Oh, just watch for the Moabite woman to come back with her mother-in-law after they’ve both been widowed, and everything’s going to work out great if you treat her well. Nothing like that. Boaz is simply looking at a picture of one: a woman who is doing what the law permits. He’s not trying to prevent that or somehow short-circuit God’s required forms of generosity. But as we see throughout this chapter over and over again, what does he do?
And that’s why I encourage you if you haven’t read this in a while, read it again because just read it as someone who’s never met Ruth before but knows of her character, of how she’s seeking to do what’s right.
And Boaz says, I want to bless her. He invites her to come and eat with him. He invites her to have this safety as she harvests. She’s going to receive extra harvest that’s been harvested by Boaz’s crew that he’s going to send back with her. Boaz sees someone who’s acting the best that she can, trying to do what’s right, trying to be a blessing to Naomi, not trying to seek blessing after herself. And Boaz says, I want to do the same. I want to be a blessing to Ruth.
Does Boaz know that, ultimately—not to spoil this if you’ve never read this story before—they’re going to get married? I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s going through Boaz’s mind here. I don’t think Boaz sees anything other than he wants to show a blessing to someone who’s been blessing someone else.
At that level, it strikes me: We have a hard time even loving our loved ones, much less their enemies. And yet, as far as Boaz is concerned, yes, Ruth has been acting really wonderfully to Naomi, but she’s a Moabite. She is, by definition, in the enemy category. Now, she’s acting pretty nicely, but can we really even process when people in our enemy categories act nicely towards someone?
Sometimes I think about different illustrations I could include in sermons, and I read about someone being really nice to someone else, and that person falls into what I know would be many of our enemy categories, and I just set aside the illustration—not because it’s not wonderful, but because I know we’re going to get so distracted by that person’s in the enemy category, we’re not going to be able to hear what they do.
Isn’t that sad that we fall into that? But that’s me, and that’s all of us. We fall into those categories where we just stop at that first part that puts the person outside of the people that we want anything to do with. “Ah, she’s from Moab.” Okay.
Boaz looks at God’s law. “Can I check? Is there any exception here? Okay, she has to harvest, but let’s not make it any easier on her than we have to.” That would be a perfectly normal human response.
Boaz, here though, clearly has some insight into God’s character, God’s care for him. And Boaz has accent accord.
How do we do that? We say, “But I don’t want to.” You say, “But Tim, that sounds so nice. It worked out really well for Boaz, but here’s what’s going to happen: If I show blessing to people that fall into my enemy categories and to my other categories—the ones that I know those people are up to no good, they want no good for me, they want no good for my country, they want no good for my world. They don’t read the Bible, they don’t know Jesus—and I know that those people are bad news. They’re going to take advantage of me if I do this.”
“If I not only give what I must, and I just sort of grit my teeth and give the bare minimum that God requires in his law, and then I add on to that and I give even more, aren’t people going to take advantage of me?”
Sometimes we have to ask that question when people write into the church and ask for assistance. Unfortunately, as a little, bitty church, there isn’t a lot of assistance to take advantage of; we just aren’t there yet. We’re not able to do it, but it’s something that every church deals with. How do we know if people are going to take advantage? We have to be wise.
But we also have to have mercy and love.
I like what D.A. Carson says in reflecting on Jesus’ instruction in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 verses 41 and following, talking about loving our enemy, and so on. Jesus says, for example, that if we’re told to go a mile carrying the soldier’s equipment—something that the Romans require—that we should go an extra mile. Those phrases that we know but we don’t really like to apply—turning the other cheek.
D.A. Carson has this wonderful point on that. He says the way that we understand it is that love dictates what we do. Because what Jesus is saying there isn’t that we never take a stand, that we never stand against evil. Jesus stood against evil, right? We know that He went, turned the tables over in the temple, and I’m sure as He was doing that, the money changers and the merchants didn’t feel like they were being loved.
Later on, we read, for example, that Paul in Galatians 2 opposes Peter very vehemently for the things that Peter’s doing that are wrong. That probably didn’t feel like love in the moment.
What’s happening there? Love’s undergirding it.
Why does Jesus overturn those tables? Because people are being kept out of the temple. People were supposed to be allowed in even if they were Gentiles, to the outer court. They were finding their outer court turned into a shopping mall. People who were poor were coming in and were being mistreated and were being sold overpriced goods to just try to be able to worship God.
Jesus stands for love there. Moreover, it wasn’t really even loving to allow the money changers and the merchants to go on like this because what were they doing? They were actually maybe making money, but they weren’t actually coming closer to knowing who God is.
Now, Jesus is Jesus. He understands things that we don’t. And so I’m not saying—and sometimes we get really tempted—I’m just going to be like Jesus in the temple. We need to be careful about that.
But what we need to understand is that love undergirds even when Jesus shows His most righteous anger. And likewise, when Paul stands up to Peter, why does he do it? Well, he does it for both Peter and the people around Peter because Peter is going back to following the Jewish laws and it’s causing Peter to cut off his Gentile brothers and sisters in Christ.
It is a breakdown of love there. It is actually causing a genuine rift in the church, and what’s causing a genuine rift where Peter can’t have the full fellowship he ought to have with his brothers and sisters in Christ, and those brothers and sisters in Christ can’t have a full relationship with Peter, and those whom Peter is leading along the same path are going to find that same sort of rift.
So there’s a clear breakdown of love. Love dictates there. So you don’t go along and say, “Okay Peter, if you don’t want to associate with a significant portion of the church because they don’t eat the way you do, just go ahead. Tell you what, why don’t you associate with even less of it?” Because I’m trying to follow Jesus where He says, if people demand something of you, give even more.
That’s not what Jesus is saying there because that’s not loving. Not loving for Peter. It’s not loving for the other people. It’s causing a genuine rift.
When people write in or call into the church and they’re asking for assistance, again, we don’t have very much. We can do very little at this point because we’re tiny. So the question is, whom is it that we can serve? Are we going to give more to our missions partners around the world that we get to do ministry with? Are we going to give to local people in need who have genuine need? Are we just going to give it randomly to the first person that shows up?
No. We need to have discernment. We need to make sure that we’re not doing the unloving thing by giving money to people who are just gaming the system and taking away that money, and then the next person comes up who is in genuine need and we can’t.
But we make sure that love is the reason we’re doing this. We’re not looking down at the person. We’re not saying, “Oh, well, I think you seem like you—what’s wrong with you? Just get your life together.”
No. The reason we’re doing it is we’re trying to make sure that we can help people.
The reason that Paul challenges Peter so that Peter can go back to helping people and those people can help Peter, he’s seeking to bring together the church.
Here with Boaz, he can look at Ruth. Ruth is not going to take advantage of him. She’s no threat to his wealth. She’s no threat to the success of his farm. He has enough. It’s not that kind of thing. Ruth is not going to eat him out of house and home. The question is, is he going to do just the bare minimum, or is he going to allow love to dictate what he’s going to do?
He’s going to look at someone who’s seeking to follow the Lord. How much does Ruth fully understand the Lord at this point? Probably she doesn’t have a sophisticated theological understanding of the Lord, but she’s committed to following Him. She’s committed to taking care of her mother-in-law.
And in that, Boaz looks at her and says, I want to bless you because I have this gift. God’s given this to me, and I want to do more than what the law requires. I want to show love. I want to show care.
And I think that’s the challenge we read this story for. It’s a beautiful story and we can just enjoy the beautiful story, but I believe there’s a challenge in there for each of us, which is, how am I situated that I can show love like that? Not just sort of big picture, someday, sometime in my life, I am going to have a Ruth-like moment and I am going to be Boaz and I’m going to help someone who’s gone through horrible, horrible situations, and I have a way to help out a little bit and I’m going to give some more than what God requires.
Someday I’m going to have that moment.
I bet this isn’t the only time that Boaz does this. No one around Boaz is saying, “Boaz, why are you being generous here? You’re always such a tough, tough man. You demand so much from your servants, you demand so much from the people around you. You just threw those other people into prison. What’s about Ruth? What’s going on here, Boaz?”
They’re not saying that. They just do it. And I believe the reason they just do it is because they look at Boaz and this is how Boaz operates—Boaz looks at the people who are in need, and he has enough and he wants to help. He has a generous heart and he wants to show love to people because he understands that the Lord has a generous heart towards him and has shown love to him.
How can we have that attitude, not just that one time in life, but throughout life? How about today? How about this week?
Let’s not push it way down the line. How can we leave church tonight and go into a week where we’re going to show Boaz-like love to people? Not because we’re great, not because Boaz is great, but because God is great and He loves us and that we want to respond to that.
Sure, we should have those big lifetime goals, and sometimes we’re going to have that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where we can really make a dramatic difference in someone’s life, something more like what this develops into for Boaz and Ruth. But that might be once in a lifetime.
God’s given us all these days, all these months, all these years to live. He hasn’t given us all that for one or two times. He’s given us every single day to show His love to this world.
And how do we do that?
I think it starts with not focusing first on my rights and my needs. Because that’s where the world tells us to be. That’s where even a lot of the church today tells us to be. How am I getting fed enough? How am I being protected enough? How am I making sure that I don’t face opposition even if it requires putting opposition on other people? How am I going to get what I want and have my life in an order that I would like it?
It’s easy and comfortable. These are the things the world tells us we should care about. These are not the things that the Bible tells us we should care about.
And I believe Boaz, he heard those things too, because we see over and over in Scripture where people chase after those things. It’s not new to our current moment. We chase after it because we’re fallen sinful human beings, but Boaz knew something of God’s heart. He knew how God had been with him, and Boaz wanted to see Ruth experience the love of God.
Notice what he says there. He says, “You’ve come under the protection of the Lord.” And Boaz says in his mind, I believe—I’m hands and feet here. God has placed me here with blessings. Why has He done that? So that the people who seek His protection can experience His protection.
Sure, God can do miraculous things and sometimes that’s the way He shows His protection, but He wants us, His people, to show care and protection to the people that seek it, the people that need it.
And again, Boaz doesn’t do a lengthy study on Ruth first. He knows her story, but he doesn’t say, “Now, Ruth, I want you to show me a 10-point plan and how you’re going to get your life together. Yes, it’s great that you’re taking care of your mother-in-law, but prove to me that you’re worthy of this extra help I am going to give you.”
He doesn’t do that. And again, I’m not arguing that churches or individuals shouldn’t show care and wisdom because we do have limited resources, but here Boaz just shows generosity, and may that be our starting point.
That when we do hold back because we realize we can’t show the love that everybody needs and we’re trying to figure out, well, is this a really legitimate need or not, may it be that we’re kind of feeling the strain that I wish I could. I want to just help everybody.
I mean, let that be our starting point rather than, do I have to?
A lot of times we as Christians, a lot of times we as the church—I pray this isn’t the case at Little Hills, and I’m so often encouraged by my church family and how it isn’t the case at Little Hills—but we’re going to fall into it too. We all do. We get the trimmings of the church. We have all the music, we have the lights, we have the live stream, we have the in-person, we actually have a building. What a blessing that is.
Here we are. We are a young church plant and it’s not a big building. It’s not a spacious building. It’s not a fancy building, but we have a place that we don’t have to set up every week. What a blessing that is. We have those things.
But are we actually functioning like the church?
Reminds me when I was little, my mom and I went to a garage sale and we found an Atari 2600. This is probably late 1980s, maybe early 90s, somewhere in there. It was before I had a video game system that was functioning.
We saw this, and I remember it still had its original box. I still have this down in the basement. It had its original box, you know, the wood grain. They had extra controllers. It had a bunch of games. Well, I didn’t know a lot about video games. I knew Pac-Man and the ones everybody knew with Atari. It had all those. It was a great price, and we came home with it, and it was so exciting. We went to hook it up, putting in the cartridge and hooking up the controllers and trying to figure out exactly how it all went together, then trying to turn it on—and it didn’t turn on.
Now, it was really exciting, and it’s wonderful that it had all those colorful boxes and all the controllers, but you know what? An Atari 2600 or anything that’s come after it that doesn’t turn on isn’t fulfilling its purpose. It might have all the snazzy stuff, but if it doesn’t turn on and let you play the game, it’s disappointing, isn’t it?
Too often, we as the church, we have all the flashy packaging. We have the extra cartridges and the joysticks and the fancy wood-grain console and all the cabling and all the instructions in the original box.
Someone comes up and needs God’s love and they press the power button and we don’t turn on.
In our lives as Christians, sometimes people come up to us and they’re hurting, they’re suffering, struggling, and they press the power button and say, “I just need some love. I just need to be loved by God. I need to know that there’s something that matters in this life.” And we don’t turn on.
The challenge here is: Are we going to turn on? Are we going to be the people that just look really good and have all the nice boxes? Are we going to turn on and actually show God’s love?
Romans chapter 12, verse 10.
What does Paul say there?
As Paul contemplates the calling he’s giving this commission to the Roman church, he says, “Love one another with brotherly affection.” And I think this next part is so crucial—it’s a picture of what Boaz is doing. “Outdo one another in showing honor.”
We’re called to be a people who show affection, who love each other and love each other well. And if we’re going to compete on something, it shouldn’t be success or titles or respect; it should be, “I’m going to compete on loving all of you better than you love me.” And not that people praise this, but because we want to be more like God.
All of us should be racing to love each other more because none of us are loving each other nearly as well as God loves us.
If we look at the Upper Room discourse in John 13 to 17, Jesus gives those last instructions to His disciples before He’s betrayed. Not once, not twice, but three different times He commands them with the new commandment, “Love one another.”
Jesus wants them to hear something. If He’s going to say something verbatim over and over again, guess what it is? It’s to love one another. That’s what we’re called to do.
We might say, “Well, I try to love people, but I can’t see, even when I do, I don’t feel like I’m having any impact. Maybe I should go back to what the world says because it doesn’t feel like it’s doing anything.”
We encounter those times, right? Sometimes I talk to someone who’s angry at the church. Not long ago, I interacted with a person who’s been hurt deeply by the church, and the response I got—that she’s angry at the churches—is, “You all are horrible people.” I’m trying to help. I’m trying to encourage. But I get lumped in with people that have hurt her in the church.
Maybe you’ve talked to someone who’s been hurt by the church and you get that same kind of response. You just get lumped in with that, and you think, “Well, what good did it do? Maybe I should just reject those people; they have their problems and whatever.”
It doesn’t often feel like we’re doing anything, and maybe I won’t do anything, maybe you won’t do anything, but maybe God is situating things for someone else to do something in that person’s life. We often don’t see it. But God is moving us and moving everyone else into the positions they need to be in.
If we rewind a little bit to chapter one again of Ruth, listen to the very end of that chapter: “So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, with her, who returned from the country of Moab, and they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.”
Might say, “Well, that’s nice.” Ah, the author of Ruth is adding a little detail just to situate us in the times, right? They’re coming in the barley harvest. But that’s a lot more significant than just saying, “Oh, let me tell you what season it was.” It’s crucial.
Naomi, here’s the Lord’s blessing has returned to Israel, and they do whatever preparations they need to do, and they take off and go to the land, and when do they arrive? They arrive in the midst of a harvest that Ruth is going to be able to go to Boaz’s field and harvest.
Had they come a month earlier, what would they have done? I don’t know. Had they come a month later, would it have ended up being, as the other crops came into harvest, that she would have ended up at Boaz’s field? I don’t know. But what it appears is that God is here in that little detail that probably seemed insignificant in the time.
God is positioning Ruth so that she’s going to show up in the right person’s field at the right time. She’s going to show up exactly where she needs to be, even though it looks like something relatively insignificant.
But there she is because she can glean, and she can glean someplace safe, and she can glean someplace that she’s going to become a bigger part of God’s story. She doesn’t know any of this.
I don’t think that she said, “Ah, good, we’ve arrived at the barley harvest; that means everything’s going to work.” I don’t think that’s how she was thinking. It’s often not how we’re thinking when God puts us in a place at just the right time.
It’s going to be a while, a long while before Ruth truly understands exactly how arriving at that moment was really significant. Maybe she never thought back to it even.
Oftentimes we don’t think back to those places that God has moved us in just the right place at the right time, and yet He does.
She continues then in that setting, the end of Ruth chapter 2: “And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, ‘It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, lest in another field you be assaulted.’ So she kept close to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the barley and wheat harvest, and she lived with her mother-in-law.”
Naomi sees maybe not the significance of the timing, but she sees, “Hey, this has worked out pretty well. I know you’re going to be safe there. Stay there because you aren’t going to get hurt in Boaz’s field.”
That’s all they can see at the moment still. There’s more to come, but that’s all they can see in this moment. But how beautiful that is.
God makes it clear to Naomi it’s time to come back home at just the right time. And all of what’s happened that we’ve talked about—Naomi’s urging Ruth to stay and Ruth’s insistence that she’s going to come—all that comes in the context that she arrives at just the right time to end up at a field where she’s safe and can provide for herself and her mother-in-law because she ends up in a field of someone who says, “I’m not just going to give you the bare minimum that I’m required to give you, Ruth, I’m going to give you more because I just want to show God’s love to you.”
How often is it that we don’t even realize God is doing that for us? Those places that we end up, our places that God has situated us because He cares about us and loves us and wants us to be exactly where we need to be or He’s putting us in that place because He’s seeking to show care to someone else and we’re the person meant for the job.
Them arriving at the barley harvest is significant for Ruth, but it’s also significant for Boaz. God’s making it happen to bring His story together.
Sort of like if you’re playing chess with someone, and if you’re playing chess with someone like me who isn’t especially good at it, sometimes I win, but I’m not by any means a chess master.
So a lot of times, I just move something because it looks interesting to move. Then I try to watch what the other player is doing and think, “Well, I see what the next move that would seem most logical if I had those pieces in those places would be.” And so I move my pawn or I move my horse; I’m moving.
Why? Well, I’m moving not because I can contemplate eight moves from now where my knight could be. I’m moving because I want to get that piece out, or I think this piece might be a threat.
I don’t always move everything exactly for a reason. It could be random, and maybe sometimes I work to my advantage because people are trying to read into what I’m doing, but there’s nothing really there. That’s different, though.
He’s moving us. Sometimes we just feel like a useless pawn being sent out into battle, and I think, “Well, God’s not even going to care if I get eliminated.” That’s not how God works.
God’s moving every single piece of the puzzle of history. He’s put us in this particular moment. He’s put you in this particular spot that you’re either online watching this service or you’re sitting in the church watching this service.
He’s put us in those places. Why? Because He has a plan that He’s working out, a plan to show us love and to show the people He puts around us love. And so we need to understand that God isn’t just an okay chess player. He’s not even a good chess player. He is the best chess player.
Every single move is intentional. Every single move has every move that comes after it already calculated. He’s moving things that seem insignificant or even maybe foolish at times because He has that really important move that’s coming next.
That’s why if I played with a chess champion, I would get clobbered. If I went down to the Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis and played, they wouldn’t even want to play with me because they beat me in just a handful of moves. It would be so boring to them.
But God isn’t bored when we don’t get it. God just calls us to trust that He does understand what’s going on and He has been for all time. This isn’t something new in Boaz and Ruth’s life.
We go back to Genesis 3:15. What do we read? “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
Way back at the beginning, God says, “I have a plan.” Eve didn’t fully understand that plan. Adam didn’t fully understand that plan. But God says, I have a plan that’s going to put things right. That serpent isn’t going to triumph.
And here we are many, many years later. Ruth’s out harvesting. Sure seems like a lot of insignificant stuff is happening, but here God is continuing to move the pieces to accomplish what He promised all the way back then.
Because guess what? The pieces are moving in place so the Messiah will come. Did Ruth think of this season? Did she understand the reasoning for how God was working? Do I understand the reasoning for how God’s working? Do you?
Most of the time we don’t. Maybe virtually all the time we don’t. But God’s calling us to understand that He’s moving the pieces.
And I think that’s what Boaz understands here. He doesn’t know what the future holds, but he knows that he can do what God’s called him to do. He can live out the important functions of his piece.
As he lives out the important functions of his piece, he might not know what’s going on in the pieces over here, over there. He might even feel like his piece is just a piece being moved forward for the slaughter. But he understands that God’s in control.
A lot of times when we’re called to act in love, it doesn’t feel like it makes sense. Sometimes it’s going to feel completely contrary to everything that we want and everything that we think should be.
But what we’re called to do is to care about each other enough that we’re constantly outdoing each other in honor. And we each have the opportunity to do that today, tomorrow, and every single day ahead.
Here’s the thing we need to know. As we do that, God is using that. God doesn’t call us that for random reasons. God calls us to show His love and to outdo each other in honor and to be people known as people who are loving because He has purposes and He has plans, and they all circle around that Messiah, His Son, our Savior Jesus, who came and made the ultimate move that ensured that while the pieces are still moving, Satan can never get a checkmate, and all of us can be restored to life.
That’s the one whom we serve and the one whom we are called to look like.
So let’s pray that we can be that today.
Father, we ask You that You would help us to be a people of love. A lot of times it’s hard because it requires us to do things we don’t want to do, to give more than we want to give, to take more than we want to take.
Remind us as we do that we take way, way, way, way, way more than we could ever ask of You, and You give way, way, way, way more than we could ever, ever, ever hope.
Because You give us, Lord, give us life. You give us adoption into Your family. Father, You gave Your Son for us. And so help us to be people who respond in kind.
Like Boaz, we might act generously, not because we’re great, not because he was great, but because You are great, because we know how much You love us, so that we look more like You.
We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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