To Provide and Protect Ruth and Boaz Summer Sermon Series: Love Secrets from Bible Marriages Ruth 4:9-17

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1 To Provide and Protect Ruth and Boaz Summer Sermon Series: Love Secrets from Bible Marriages Ruth 4:9-17 Rev. Michael D. Halley August 10, 2014 Suffolk Christian Church Suffolk, Virginia Ninth Sunday After Pentecost ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ruth 4:9-17 New International Version (NIV) Then Boaz announced to the elders and all the people, Today you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelek [uh-limuh-leck], Kilion [KILL-ee-un] and Mahlon [MAY-lun] 1. I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite [MO-uh-bite], Mahlon s widow, as my wife, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property, so that his name will not disappear from among his family or from his hometown. Today you are witnesses! Then the elders and all the people at the gate said, We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the family of Israel. May you have standing in Ephrathah 2 [EFF-ruh-tuh] and be famous in Bethlehem. Through the offspring the Lord gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah. So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he lay with her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. The women said to Naomi: Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth. 1

2 Page 2 Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. The women living there said, Naomi has a son! And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David. Here is an observation someone made: A husband is someone who, after taking the trash out, gives the impression he just cleaned the whole house. 3 What a wonderful story this is. It takes place about 500 years after Jacob and his wives Leah and Rachel. Naomi was a godly woman, living in Bethlehem with her husband and her two sons. A famine came upon the land and times were very tough. So, Naomi and her family went to the neighboring country of Moab 4 to find food and a better life. While they were there, her husband died, and her two sons married Moabite women, Ruth and Orpah. Then tragedy again struck Naomi and her two sons died as well. Meanwhile, word came that the famine in Israel was over and Naomi decided to go back home. She told her Moabite daughters-in-law to stay there in their own homeland, but Ruth insisted she would go with Naomi. Her words to Naomi were very tender and have become quite well-known: Don t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me. (Ruth 1:16-17, NIV) Your God will be my God, Ruth declared to Naomi. That is not an insignificant statement, for it was through the faithful testimony and witness of

3 Page 3 Naomi and her husband and sons that Ruth was moved to renounce the worship of the Moabite god Chemosh 5 and worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. What an incredible woman Ruth is: willing to put her own life on hold to care for her mother-in-law, willing to leave her own blood relatives behind to go and live as a foreigner in a strange land, loving God and trusting God to provide for them and to give them strength. Few women throughout history have ever shown that level of love and commitment to their mother-in-law! When Naomi and Ruth arrived in Bethlehem, their immediate problem was how to find enough food to eat. Fortunately, the God of Israel, our own wonderful God, had made a gracious provision in the Mosaic Law for those in the same predicament as Naomi and Ruth. Under God s Law, farmers were to leave the corners of their grain fields untouched, and they were to leave the gleanings (the leftover crops after the main harvest is done) in the field for the poor, the foreigners, and the widows and orphans 6. This was not easy work for Ruth, as you can imagine. Stooping over and bending down all day in the hot sun, carrying her heavy load of grain in her long cloak. I am sure there were a few bigots in the field as well, making fun of her foreign accent. All the while, Ruth could see in the distance the hills of her homeland Moab and I am sure that homesickness just about overcame her. Moab was home, that is where she belonged; but with her quiet courage, simple modesty, and total unselfishness 7, she labored on. Well, you can imagine what happened next. Ruth had ventured into the field owned by Boaz, and soon he spotted her. His field hands told him who she was, and Boaz extended to Ruth many kindnesses. Listen to this reading from Ruth chapter 2:

4 Page 4 So Boaz said to Ruth, My daughter, listen to me. Don t go and glean in another field and don t go away from here. Stay here with the women who work for me. Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled. At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She asked him, Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me a foreigner? Boaz replied, I ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. (Ruth 2:8-12, NIV) How many men do you know who could match the kindness and the thoughtfulness and the gentleness of Boaz? These are godly traits, and every one of us men here today should practice these traits every single day. Well, soon it was time to make a move. And strangely enough, in the Jewish faith, it was Ruth s move to make. When a woman s husband died and they had no children, it was the responsibility of a kinsman to marry the widow and protect and provide for her. The Hebrew word for this kinsman was goel, which is translated as kinsman or redeemer 8. Normally the goel would be the brother of the deceased husband, but in Ruth s case it would have to be a more distant relative. Boaz was related to Ruth s father-in-law, so he certainly qualified. As the book of Ruth tells us, Ruth 3:1-9, Naomi tells Ruth to dress up and put on perfume, and go to where Boaz is sleeping that evening, somewhere

5 Page 5 in the field they are harvesting. She is to slip in, uncover his feet, and lie down there. She did as Naomi told her, and sometime in the night, Boaz woke up and was startled to find a woman at his feet. She said to him, I am your servant Ruth.... Spread the corner of your garment over me 9, since you are a guardian-redeemer [or goel ] of our family. (Ruth 3:9, NIV) Boaz was very honored, but there was a glitch in this plan. He told Ruth, Although it is true that I am a guardian-redeemer of our family, there is another who is more closely related than I. Stay here for the night, and in the morning if he wants to do his duty as your guardian-redeemer, good; let him redeem you. But if he is not willing, as surely as the Lord lives I will do it. (Ruth 3:12-13, NIV) We learn that the other relative declined, and Ruth and Boaz were married. Boaz fulfilled his responsibility to redeem Ruth from poverty and became her provider and protector. Does this mean that Ruth s mother-in-law has no more role in their lives? Ruth could have resented Naomi as an intruder in their marriage. But that was not what a godly woman would do. Boaz and Ruth were both guided by God s love, and they would never exclude Naomi from their lives. The final twist to the story, it seems to me, comes in the passage we read this morning. The first child born to Ruth and Boaz was Obed, who became the grandfather of King David, who was the ancestor of Jesus. To protect and provide. Isn t that a fairly good definition of our role in marriage, husbands? And don t you wives do the same in your marriage? We can t protect our spouse from everything, of course. Nor can we attain the ideal level of provision. But that is what we work toward, each of us trying to out love the other.

6 Tony Campolo 10 is a colorful Christian preacher and author. When he does marriage counseling, here is what he tells the couple: If you do what I tell you to do for an entire month, I can promise you that by the end of the month, you will be in love with your mate. Are you willing to give it a try? Page 6 He goes on to say, When couples accept my challenge, the results are invariably successful. My prescription for creating love is simple: do ten things each day that you would do if you really were in love. I know that if people do loving things, it will not be long before they experience the feelings that are often identified as being in love. Love is not those feelings. Love is what one wills to do to make the other person happy and fulfilled. Often, we don t realize that what a person does influences what he feels. 11 [emphasis added] I believe that fairly well describes the marriage of Ruth and Boaz. Whatever they might have felt, their actions were loving. Protection and provision were actions taken, demonstrating how much they loved each other and Naomi as well. Boaz stepped up and assumed the responsibility of kinsman-redeemer, protecting and providing for Ruth. Isn t this a wonderful picture of Christ? It is you and I who need redeeming. It is we who are poor and needy, powerless over the consequences of our earthly nature. It is we who seek a powerful kinsman to take up our case and provide for us what we cannot provide for ourselves. So we seek this kinsman and we find that this kinsman, Jesus, has already sought us. We don t have to introduce ourselves to him, because he already knows us. We don t have to make a pile of excuses to him about how badly we have lived our life, because he already knows all about our faults and our failures. We just have to come to him and let him protect and provide for us.

7 Don t try to do this by yourself. It won t work. Let Jesus be your companion, your guide, your friend. And don t embrace Jesus unless it is going to be a life-long commitment to follow him. But if you do let him be your protector and provider, it will be the most fulfilling life you could ever live. Let us pray: My hands were made to worship You My heart, my King, it beats for You Oh Lamb, so true I surrender to You My life I give, My love I give, My all Your touch, Your kiss, Your grace to me Is deeper than my soul can see My purpose it changed When I called out Your name My past has been erased With just one touch from You My clouds, my rain, my pain has changed Your blood has made me new Oh Lamb, so true I surrender to You And when this world Has come to end And paradise With You begins Well done, You ll say When I see Your face Oh Lamb, so true Page 7

8 Page 8 I surrender to You My life I give My love I give My all Jesus, You are my life 12 Amen All Scripture references are from New International Version, NIV, copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc., unless otherwise indicated. +==+==+==+==+==+==+ Sunday Sermons from Suffolk Christian Church are intended for the private devotional use of members and friends of the church. Please do not print or publish. Thank you. Suggestions for sermon topics are always welcome! 1. Elimelek was Naomi s deceased husband, and Kilion and Mahlon were their sons, also deceased. 2. Ephrathah is a Hebrew name which means fruitful. It may be that Ephrathah was a clan name of a family in Bethlehem whose importance made the clan name a synonym for the city. Source: Holman Bible Dictionary, Edited by Trent C. Butler, c From Funny Marriage - Not to be taken seriously :), 4. Moab was located just East of the Dead Sea and was a fertile land. The Israelites generally enjoyed good relations with the Moabites. See Moab, by Maxwell Miller, in Holman Bible Dictionary, Trent C. Butler, Editor, c

9 Page 9 5. See Chemosh - Lord of the Moabites, by Judd H. Burton, 6. Leviticus 19:9-10: When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. 7. Quoted from Two to Get Ready: The Story of Boaz and Ruth, by the Rev. Richard L. Strauss, from his book, Living in Love, Tyndale House Publishers, 1978, found at i-story-boaz-and-ruthi. 8. See Goel, Easton s Bible Dictionary, 9. Signifying his willingness to protect and provide for her. 10. His website describes him as speaker, author, sociologist, pastor, social activist and passionate follower of Jesus! Dr. Tony Campolo, quoted in Homemade, June, 1988, found at Marriage, My Life, My Love, My All, by Kirk Franklin, published by Universal Music Publishing Group,