One of the images I love seeing every Christmas time is people being served, people who have hit hard times, people who are struggling. In particular, I like the image of the Christmas hamper. This beautiful gift basket that people receive at this time because there's nothing overly dramatic or abundant about it. It's just a way of saying everyone is celebrating, so celebrate with us and here's something for you. It's a time of the year in Christmas when people give generously to those in need, through charities like The Salvation Army.
And every year, the Salvos do an amazing job at making people who are in hard times have a comfortable Christmas. This morning, we look at a couple of ladies who had hit some pretty tough times, but they didn't have a Salvation Army. They didn't have a Christmas hamper appeal. In fact, the first Christmas was a thousand years away. These women are Naomi and Ruth.
Their story is told in this book. And this morning, we're going to be looking at Ruth 2. We see that Ruth and Naomi have returned to Bethlehem after their time away in Moab, but they're in a tough situation. They have no food. They have no income.
No way to provide for themselves. Naomi was from this little town Bethlehem. She had grown up there. She was a local girl. She was a member of that community, the community of faith perhaps, the people of Israel, part of the church there.
She had married a man called Elimelech. And Elimelech, whose name in Hebrew means God is my king. God is my king, chooses to turn his back on God and goes to Moab. There was a famine in Bethlehem we hear and ironically, Bethlehem, which means house of bread, had no bread, had no food. So Elimelech takes his wife and his two sons and they go to Moab.
That turned out to be a massive disaster. They lose all that they have. They lose their lives. And so Naomi and one of her daughters-in-law, Ruth, returned to Bethlehem. They returned to the house of bread because the famine was over.
Ruth and Naomi return to Bethlehem in the hope of getting food, of getting being restored, of having a good life. And so this is where we pick up the story of Ruth this morning. It's an amazing story, an amazing turn of events. Before the action even starts, the narrator gives us a bit of a summary statement in verse one about something that's going to unfold. He gives us a little bit of a hint at something.
Ruth 2:1 says that Naomi has a relative from her husband's side, from the clan of Elimelech. And it says there in a bracket that he was a man of standing. He was a man of standing. A mighty man of valour. The old King James Version says, a mighty man of valour.
Interestingly, this phrase is used of wealthy men, wealthy people, but also of warriors. David's private guard were known as David's mighty men of valour. And so this relative whose name is Boaz is a man of prominence in his community. It's an important detail. Ruth and Naomi have returned but they have nothing to their name.
They don't have an heir. They don't have husbands. They don't have sons who can carry out the hard work of providing for them. But they have this relative, and he is a man of standing. In verse two, we see that Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, let me go to the fields to go and pick up the leftover grain behind whoever's eyes I have found favour.
And she says, go ahead, my daughter. Now, again, this is a cultural thing, but gleaning was like our form of social welfare. Gleaning. The poor in Israel's community were entitled to go and pick up whatever was left on the field after the harvesters had been through. So pick up kernels of grain, and sometimes it was just a few kernels, but that's what they had to eat that day.
This was written into the laws of Israel. This was part of God's law for Israel. And so Ruth says to Naomi, let me go and do this. Let me go and get us a handful of grain to survive this day. And so she goes out.
Have a look at the next little line in verse four. It says, as it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz who was from the clan of Elimelech. Boaz is loaded. He's wealthy. He's a prominent guy in town.
He's also related to Naomi. I love how the Bible puts this. As it happened, as it turned out, literally, the Hebrew says, her chance chanced upon the field of Boaz. Friends, there's no such thing as luck. In God's sovereignty, He is in control of everything.
The ancient readers who knew God knew this and perhaps us today know this. When we read this, we say, there's something happening here. God is busy. So Ruth just so happens to end up in the field of Boaz gleaning with the farmers. Boaz, the owner of this property, you know, in his wide brim hats and his leather jackets or whatever, he comes on to inspect the harvest, to inspect the work.
And he takes notice of this stranger among the employees. And he asks one of the harvesters, who is this young woman? The foreman replies, she is the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from Moab. Interestingly, again, this detail about Ruth and her heritage, her nationality keeps coming back the whole time through. She's a Moabite.
She's a Moabite. Make sure you know that she's a Moabite. She's not a Jew. She doesn't belong to the people of God. She doesn't fit in to church.
She's a Moabite. But listen to Ruth and you get a little bit of a snapshot of this lady and the guts that she has. She says to the boss of, you know, the richest man in town. She said, please, let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters. Now for most of us, harvesting isn't a normal part of our lives.
But if you were part of this community in Bethlehem, you might be taken aback actually by this request from Ruth. She's not asking to come into the field after the harvesters had done their work, after the harvesters had picked up everything and perhaps gone through a second time to make sure that they had got most things, and then she comes and she picks up whatever had fallen into the cracks of the ground. She asks the boss if she can come into the field while the harvesters are still working. She knows there's going to be more grain to pick up while the harvesters are working. They're gonna drop a stalk of grain.
They're gonna drop a little bit of wheat here and there. Remember that all of this was happening in the time of the judges. These were dark times in Israel's history. These were times where everyone chose to do what they thought is right. No one followed the law of God.
No one believed in this welfare system, or not many people did. I suspect there were a lot of people who didn't follow this law. And having experienced this massive famine before, they were going to make sure that they got all of the food. They got all of the grain. But here comes Ruth who's going the extra mile for her mother-in-law, Naomi, and she has the audacity to say, hey, can I work alongside the harvesters?
Can I pick some of this grain for myself? Let's have a look at verse eight and nine. This is Boaz's response to this. He says to her, don't go to any other field. Stay and work with my servant girls.
I've ordered my guys not to touch you or else they'll have to deal with me. If you're thirsty, ask one of the blokes to get you some water even. It's pretty incredible. Boaz is letting Ruth go right along with the seven girls which he has hired for this task. And in this time of chaos, when everyone did what was right in their own eyes, he promises protection to Ruth.
It was dangerous being out there with the guys. Anything could have happened to this single girl. The Bible says, I've made sure. If anyone touches you, they're gonna have to deal with me. Boaz is now going the extra mile, and Ruth is stunned.
She's absolutely amazed at this. She falls on her face, bowing low to the ground, and she said to him, why have I found such favour in your eyes that you take notice of me, a foreigner? Boaz answers her, I've been told all about what you've done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, how you have left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with the people you did not know before. And then Boaz offers her this beautiful prayer. He prays for her.
He prays for her. In verse 12, he says, 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. I love this image of God's protection. This image of God's care of wings, of us coming under His wings.
It's used a few times in the Bible actually. And again, for those of us who haven't worked on a farm, who haven't experienced that, it's harder to understand the significance of an image like this. But let me try to explain a little bit, perhaps something that we can all relate to. In my area, in my neighbourhood where I live, we've got a pair of not so friendly plovers. And me and these plovers have become quite intimate over the past years because our ritual, our daily ritual goes something like this.
I park my car in the car park and then I have to somehow manage to get away from them while running to my house. Walking through the car park, running perhaps through the car park as they chase me, they give me this evil eye. And alongside that, they give you the ear bashing, you know, the yelling, the screaming. You can just pretend they're swearing at you. It's almost that intense.
But if you push your luck a little bit, if you come a little bit closer to where they are, you see something pretty amazing. And we've just recently had new hatchlings. Three little chicks. If you come close to mama bird, you'll see her get down on the ground. She'll lie flat.
And then as quick as anything, these little two or three chicks just run under her wings. Disappear. You can't see them. Gone. It's almost as if they were never there.
And you can see in the mum's eyes that, you know, if you come close, you're gonna get it. You're gonna get it. You'll be in trouble. Those babies are hers and she'll die before she'll let you get to them. That is the image.
I once read a story of a farmer in the US who had chickens in his barn, and the barn burned down. The barn burned down. And he was going through the barn the next day picking through some of the debris and stuff like that. And he came to a hen who had died, who had been burned in this fire. And as he came, he sort of nudged it with his boot.
And three little chicks ran out. And in this moment, the mum was protecting her chicks in the fire. She had no way of escaping. She protected her little children. That's the picture we have here.
Boaz recognises that this is the kind of God we serve. When we turn to God like Ruth had done, we're turning to a God who is not only sovereign over all things and every detail of our lives, but we're turning to a God who protects us even when we don't see that happening. Even when we don't see that happening. God loves us so much. Perhaps today you're experiencing the desperation that Ruth was experiencing.
Know that you are covered by the wings of an almighty God, but you gotta stay under them. You gotta stay under them. Don't forsake that place for anything else the world might want to sell you. Perhaps you find yourself secure and safe this morning. Are you thanking God for that security?
Are you recognising that security? I think we sometimes don't realise just how many things God has protected us from, is protecting us from at this very moment. Think of all the possibilities of things that could be going wrong in your life. God is in control of all those things. Boaz invites Ruth to have lunch with him.
I wouldn't call it a date yet, but this is a woman who has come back to a land hungry, not knowing where her next meal will come from. She's probably working on an empty stomach, just wanting to get back at night so they can have one meal together. But Boaz again goes the extra mile. There's nothing in the law saying that you have to provide a meal for some of these people gleaning in your fields. There's nothing about that.
But Boaz invites her to eat with his harvesting crew. After lunch, Ruth goes again into the field to glean. Then she threshes the barley she has gathered and it amounts to an ephah. Now scholars aren't really sure about how much this necessarily equates to, but it's roughly about a week's worth of food. A week's worth of food in one day.
It's a phenomenal amount. Ruth goes back home and tells Naomi about this story, and her mother-in-law is, again, just flabbergasted. Where did you glean today? Where did you get this? Who did you work for?
Blessed be the man who took notice of you, she says. So she tells her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, the man who I worked with today is named Boaz. And now Naomi says to Ruth, the Lord bless him. He has not stopped showing kindness to the living and the dead. He has honoured us.
He has honoured our family. He has honoured all of us even though my husband and my sons are dead, and he is honouring them as well. And she uses the word here, loving kindness, mercy. It's a very important word. It's a very important word in the Old Testament especially.
It translates as kindness in our passage here. Sometimes in the Psalms, it's translated as love or loving kindness or loving faithfulness or grace even. It's all the wonderful attributes of God wrapped into one special word, chesed. Naomi says, I knew God was a God of chesed, and now He has shown chesed to me and to us. And I pray that God would have chesed on Boaz because Boaz has had chesed on us.
She just uses it all over. She's saying that Boaz is reflecting here the very nature of God. Boaz is showing who he is, that he is a man of God, that he has been influenced by God's character so much so that he is reflecting that back onto us. Boaz is an image bearer of God. He is like a mirror reflecting the love and the compassion and the grace and the mercy and the provision of God to these two women.
You see, Boaz could show loving kindness, loving faithfulness, grace to these women because he understood that God has been so good to me that I can be good to these ladies. He understood God. He knew God. He reflects that back to the ladies. Naomi sees all of this and her heart changes.
You hear there's a sprightliness in her voice. The woman who came back from Moab who said to her friends, don't call me Naomi anymore, which means sweet, sweetheart. Call me Mara, bitter, because I am bitter. And Naomi in this is so thankful. She just can't help but praise God.
She can't help but bubble over with joy. She says to Ruth, you know what? This man Boaz is a godly man. He is a God bearer, an image bearer of God. He's loving.
He's gracious. He's merciful. He provides. He protects. He defends.
You've met a godly man. Praise God for answering our prayers. She goes on to say that this man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers. Isn't God so amazing? It just so happened that she stumbled upon this field.
It just so happened that this field belonged to Boaz. It just so happened that this Boaz was a very generous, merciful, gracious man. It just so happened that he blessed them abundantly and made sure that they were going to survive not just that day but for at least a week. It just so happens that while she's harvesting, this Boaz takes notice of her. He sees her.
It just so happens that he offers her a job. He offers her a bonus. It just so happens that he is in the process of making her life so much better. There's no such thing as it just so happens. God is in control of every single detail of our lives.
God is orchestrating a masterful plan here, and I'm getting really excited about next week where we read about this even more. But God is busy in our lives, friends. God is a God who provides, who lavishes blessings upon us. And we are challenged this morning again by being providers, by being image bearers of God as well. Boaz knew God.
Boaz followed the laws of God, but he went the extra mile as well. He showed grace. A thousand years later in the town of Bethlehem, Ruth's great great great great grandson was born. Ruth would go on one day to marry Boaz and they would start the line of King David, the ancestor of our Lord Jesus. Now like Naomi and Ruth we were without a hope.
We were desperate. We were down and out. Like Elimelech, our own poor choices cursed us and caused us to be our own worst enemy. But not just our own enemy, but enemies with God. Since we turned our backs towards Him and the Elimelechs inside us said, I will be my own king.
We were in very desperate straits, but Jesus is our Boaz. Jesus was the one full of chesed love, loving kindness, all conquering faithfulness, grace. Jesus, our redeemer, went above and beyond. Grace. He went the extra mile and He returned to us our livelihoods.
He returned to us our lives. Jesus has saved us from our desperation. Boaz was a forerunner of Jesus Christ. Boaz was a redeemer. This morning, if you are struggling with the knowledge of whether God loves you, be comforted with the knowledge of this amazing story of Boaz that shows the relationship we have with Jesus.
Meet Jesus this morning. Understand Him. It just so happens that we are in this building, on this day listening to this message from the Bible. There is no coincidences. Jesus invites you to receive the life that He wants to give.
Let's strive to be men and women of valour, men and women of prominence and standing like Boaz. Let's be people of integrity and character like Ruth. And ultimately, we may truly find the refuge under the Lord's wings.