The Book of Ruth and Good Decisions

About three years ago, I read a book that was quite long. I think it was over a thousand pages. Every once in a while, I get in the mood to read a book like that. It's one of these books that you should have read when you were in high school and you didn't do it. There's a few books that are on my list of books to read. War and Peace is not one of them.

But the book that I read was a book by an American author named Thomas Wolfe. I'm not the one who's alive today, wears the white suits all the time. Thomas Wolfe, who died in the 1930s, another American author. It was his very first novel entitled, Look Homeward Angel. Thomas Wolfe was from Asheville, North Carolina. He grew up there around the turn of the 20th century. He wrote this novel, based essentially, it was his childhood autobiography. Although he changed the names of the people, his own name and his parents' name and his family member's name, it was a book about his family. You can go to Asheville, North Carolina today and go to the home that he wrote about where he lived and see it. It's part of the culture there and still kept up.

After I finished it, I had to realize that the most important thing that I probably learned and remembered from the book was on the first page. Imagine reading a thousand plus pages and realizing the most important message that I got, at least, was on the first page. From time to time, I've gone back and read that first page of Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel and thought about the lines and some of the things that he wrote. I wanted to read just a few sentences to you about what he wrote in that. The book and his writing style was rather convoluted, but bear with me. It does have a point to my sermon today. It's not a sermon about Thomas Wolfe or American literary figures or anything like that.

But keeping in mind that it was a story about his own family and his parents and things that went before and how it affected his own life, he makes this statement. He says, Each of us is all the sums he has not counted. Subtract us into nakedness at night again, and you shall see begin in Crete, four thousand years ago, the love that ended yesterday in Texas. In other words, things that happened four thousand years ago impacted things that happened yesterday in Texas. And then he made another statement in the second paragraph, and he said that every moment is a window on all time. Now you might think, what in the world does that mean? And what does that have to do with a Sabbath sermon? And how does that speak to anybody? Well, as I said, the book was autobiographical. And he went on to tell the story of his family, which could be the story of your family, my family, and anybody's family. We chose to write about it, and you read about people, and you realize that people make decisions. And decisions that are made impact your life. That day, that week, maybe that six-month period, and some decisions impact a whole life. And some decisions impact not just one generation's life, but multiple generations. And that's just the way it is. And when you start to piece it together, and if you knew all of the decisions made in our own families, by our parents, by our grandparents, and our great-grandparents, and knew the whole story, if we could ever know that, if we ever would want to know that, we would have quite a story, and we would understand, I think, the truth of that reality, that decisions that we make have long-term consequences. And that's what I want to talk about today. Decisions that we make every day have long-term consequences. And I want to tell that point, and make that point, through the story of an individual that we read about it often at this time of the year. Now, we are a week beyond Pentecost, but I gave this sermon up in Fort Wayne last week, and I wanted to give it here, because it is a sermon that is based on a book that is read during the Pentecost season. And it's a well-known story to us of Ruth, from the book of Ruth in the Old Testament. And I want to go back through this book briefly in the next few minutes, and rehearse the story of a major character of the Bible, and in a very fascinating story of the Bible, to make that point and to show and illustrate the point of the decisions that we make, and the consequences those decisions have, and the importance of making good decisions, wise decisions, godly decisions, that have long-term godly consequences, righteous consequences. And I think it's best illustrated in this story from the book of Ruth, and once again taking a look at the story of this remarkable lady. So, if you will, turn over to the book of Ruth, and we will go through it very quickly, and at least hit the highlights.

Let me set the stage for the book of Ruth. This is a book that was probably compiled by the prophet Samuel years later, but the setting for the book of Ruth is the time period of the book of Judges, which is the book just preceding the book of Ruth, which is why it's right there.

It is really within the first generation or two after the conquest of the land of Israel by under Joshua. It's certainly less than a hundred years from the time when the Israelites crossed the Jordan after the death of Moses and began to conquer the Promised Land.

We know that because of the characters in the book, which I'll explain when I get there. So, it is within the first generation or two of the conquest of the land, but during a period of time after Joshua's death, when things in the land of Israel kind of go back and forth in terms of the fortunes of the tribes and the peoples.

You're here at the book of Ruth. If you look at the last verse of the book of Judges, just wherever that is on your pagination of your Bible, verse 25 of Judges, chapter 21, it describes the setting of the period in which even the book of Ruth is set. And it says, In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes, which really helps us to set the stage for the discussion of the story of Ruth.

Everybody did what was right in their own eyes. That's decisions. People making decisions about their lives and their character, their conduct, how the village is conducted, how the tribes' business is conducted, how the whole land is conducted. And it's being done in a period when there's sometimes righteous judgments being made and sometimes not so righteous judgments being made.

People are experiencing ups and downs within the land. So that's kind of the general setting. This is before the monarchy, before the time when Samuel comes on and Saul and then ultimately David. So it's kind of a wild west period of time in the land of Israel among the tribes with no central authority.

And at times people experiencing blessings, and at times they are not. And it's with that setting that we come into the story of one family, one family in the first chapter, in the first verse of the book of Ruth. Let's just jump right into it, beginning there and go through this.

It came to pass in the days when the judges ruled. And a judge was a leader such as Deborah or Beric or Gideon who rose up at a particular time and exerted leadership within the nation of Israel among the various tribes. And so when that person would pass from the scene and tell someone else of strong will or character or leadership ability came along, then it was every man for himself. And again, everybody doing what was right in his own eyes. And so because they were not really looking to God as their king and as their real judge, things began to break down at various times and in different ways. But it was during this period it says that there was a famine in the land and a certain man of Bethlehem Judah went to dwell in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. This man's name was Elimelech. The name of his wife was Naomi. And the names of his two sons were Malen and Killian. They were of the tribe of Judah living in the city of Bethlehem. And they went to Moab and they remained there. Now, let's discuss what this means, what we learned here. Bethlehem is, of course, later as you know, it's the city where Jesus was born.

Today, you can go from Jerusalem to Bethlehem today without really even leaving an urban environment. The cities have grown closer together. It would have been about a day's walk or ride on a donkey in this day, no more than a day to have gone from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.

You can still go to Bethlehem today. It was and is a very fertile area there in Judah. However, at this particular time, there was a famine. Now, famines are caused by a number of circumstances. Famines can happen when there's no rain. Famines can happen when there's too much rain.

Famines can happen when you have a lot of food, but it's not evenly distributed. We're right now seeing some interesting situations in our own world where there are parts of the world that are experiencing some famines when other countries have a lot of grain, but those countries are holding that grain back. It's caused riots in places like Egypt and in South Asia. People have died because there hasn't been rice. There hasn't been corn.

We've seen the price of that go up. It's not because it's not being grown in certain parts of the world, but because of distribution problems, it's caused famines in some regions, some of the poorer regions of the world. You can see famine if a crop fails. Even now, even with all this rain we've been having, Iowa, the majority, it seems, of the state of Iowa is under water, even as we speak.

We've had our own floods through this area in Illinois over the last few days, and that has shot the price of corn up to record levels, at least the futures on corn. They're talking about a lower crop. So, even too much rain can cause crops to fail. There are a number of reasons why a famine would take place.

When famines happen, it's not that you don't have food, but it causes people to begin to do things and to make decisions based on hardship. People begin to migrate. They begin to move. This is what happened in this particular famine at this time during the life of Elimelech.

In Bethlehem, he had to move. For whatever reason, the famine took place, and he decided that he had to take his two sons and his wife and move to Moab. Now, we might not think anything about that. We've gone through our own migrations in our own time. Many of us are well aware that 60, 70 years ago, large numbers of people migrated out of Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia to Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. Many of you are sitting in this room today because your parents migrated out of poorer areas of the United States to come to where the jobs are or where. Still are, in some cases, but things have shifted as well in this part of the country. People migrate when there's a need for food, when there's a need for work, and it just is a part of the economics of people. Now, it's one thing to move from Kentucky to Indiana. It's another thing for a limo-lect to move from Bethlehem to Moab because he was not only moving from one city to the other, he was going from one nation to the other. He was doing something like people do when they go from Mexico into America today. He was going into a whole other culture. Moab was not part of Israel. It wasn't that far away. It probably would have taken him about two days to make the trip from Bethlehem to Moab. He'd gone down the out of the Judean hills to the area of the Dead Sea, going around the north end of the Dead Sea and down the east side and then up into the mountains of Moab of what is modern-day Jordan. And there he would be. But Moab was a place that had been rather hostile to Israel when they were migrating from Egypt into the land. And so God had some very strong things to say about the Moabites. They were not allies of Israel. And they were Gentiles in the sense that they were not non-Israelites at the time. So far, an Israelite to go to Moab was a major, major event. It's not something that would have certainly, when you looked at the Bible, to help make that decision, it wouldn't have been the wisest course of action necessarily. But there must have been food, there must have been opportunity for Elimelech to take his family and go there. And so they did. Now, they remained there, it says in verse 2. And Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died, and she was left and her two sons. So for whatever reason, after whatever period of time, Elimelech died.

And Naomi was widowed, but she had two sons, which was not too bad. I mean, you know, you think of a person being widowed today, and we have insurance, we have social welfare systems that are safety nets under people when unexpected things happen today. That was not part of the ancient world. There was no social security. There was no insurance policy that kicked in when Elimelech died. And he was in a foreign land. So he had nothing to pass on. Naomi had nothing, essentially, but her two sons. So she may have been a bit, she was a bit better off than had she not had any sons, anyone else to follow on. She certainly had no family there. But she had her two sons, and this decision left her kind of high and dry in Moab. So that was one decision. Now, Naomi is there, and her sons are left, and they're probably young men, we would well imagine. We're told in verse 4 that they took two wives of the women of Moab. The name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth. And they dwelt there about ten years. Now, back in the book of Deuteronomy, God gave some specific instruction beginning in, I think it's in Deuteronomy chapter 7. About Israelites not marrying Moabites or other Gentile women. Because, and the reason was, religious reason. It wasn't done anything else other than religion, but God still didn't want it done. He said, your sons marry their daughters, or vice versa, and they will go after their gods. They will forget. And he said, don't do it. He had some very specific instructions. Well, guess what? Malan and Kiel.

I mean, here they were in Moab, and they're young men, and they've got harm on them. You know, when they were in high school, or they go down to the mall, do they see any Jewish women? No. They see Moabite women. And they look like women. They're just Moabites as opposed to Jewish women. And they are attracted to them. And they decide, I want to marry these two.

That's the normal thing. Boy meets boy sees girl. Boy meets girl. Things happen. And Malan and Kielian took two wives. All right, that was another decision that was made, but it was just life. That's just what happens when these things are done. American serviceman goes to Asia. They get lonely.

Asian girl befriends them, makes them feel, you know, ease the homesick.

Or European girl, Belgian girl, German girl. My next door neighbor, when I was a kid, he joined the army. This was in the early 1960s. He went to Belgium, married a Belgian girl, brought her back to Missouri. She didn't fit in. It just happens. Many times they do last. They have very fine marriages and families and all. But it's just part of what happens in life. And so, again, decisions are made. You see how one decision impacts a decision that's going to be made a few years later by a son, a daughter, and all that will ensue from that. Now Orpah and Ruth are the ones that then marry into the family of Naomi. Just as an aside, I read at one point recently or a few years ago that kind of a transliteration of Orpah here by her mother, or however that name came to be put upon her. Instead of giving her Orpah, they gave her Oprah out of this particular name, of this particular character in the Bible, according to the story that I heard. Anyway, these two are married. Then we're told in verse 5, both Malin and Killian also died ten years later. And so now you have three women who are widows. The woman survived her two sons and her husband. For Naomi, that was a bitter pill to have to deal with. No parent should ever have to bury her children. In this sense, bury a child, but Naomi had to bury both of them as well as her husband prior to that. Now, Naomi has to make another decision. Does she stay? And what is there to stay for? If you were in Peru and you were in Naomi's situation, ladies, and you had land in Indiana, family in Indiana, what would you do? You had no hope, no future that you could see in Peru or any other country that you might want to pick. And you were probably in your mid-40s. I'm thinking that Naomi was not an old widow, an old woman in that sense, up in years. She was probably in her 40s at this point. What would you do? Naomi makes a decision. Verse 6, she arose, and with her daughters-in-law, that she might return from the country of Moab, for she heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited His people by giving them bread. And her two daughters-in-laws with her, and they went on their way to return to the land of Judah. She makes a decision to go back. The economy is picking up back home, she heard. And so there's no decision to go back. And her two daughters-in-law, or considered daughters, start to make the journey with her. And an hour or two down the road, however it may have been, they must have packed up and walked out of the little hut, home, whatever they had.

And out of the village, and perhaps an hour or two down the road, they went, and they must have come to a pause at some point. Where maybe they began, would have made the descent from the mountains of Moab down into the Dead Sea area. And so I imagine it this way, that they probably had come to a point where once they started going down, there was kind of a point of no return. And you were going to, it was a time to commit. And they paused at that point. Naomi had some second thoughts, and she was thinking about her daughters-in-law and the future back in Judah, and what if there is a future for them. And she says to them in verse 8, Go, return each to her mother's house. The Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you may find rest, each in the house of your husband. So she kissed them, they lifted up their voices, and wept. And they both said to her, Surely we will return with you to your people. They were going to go with her. Naomi says, No, go back. And she says, Turn back. She says, Turn back, my daughters. Are there still sons in my own womb that I'm going to have that they would grow up and be your husbands? And she said, Look, I'm not going to have any more children. You're going to wait another 18 years, even if I did marry and had another child, and you kept this relationship within the family, it's just not going to happen. She says, Go back. Return to your people. Go back, my daughters. I'm too old to have a husband, and it just is not going to happen. And you're not going to want to wait around, she says. So they all started crying. They had a good old-fashioned cry here on the road. They all lifted up their voices in verse 14, and they wept again. And now here's another decision juncture. Because Orpah and Ruth have to make a decision. Are they going to listen to Naomi? What will they do? Or will they press on? One of them makes a decision to go home. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. Orpah kissed her goodbye, and she turned and went back. And then Ruth says she's going to stay. In verse 15, she said, look, Naomi says, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Return after your sister-in-law. So this was a decision by Orpah to stay, not only to leave Naomi, but to stay in the culture of Moab. To stay with her own religion, her own gods. That's what she said. She's made a decision to go back to her own gods. Keep that in mind. Now, this is a juncture between two women. And it's not only that, it's a juncture between two ways of life. Two ways of life. Keep in mind, when we read these stories, that we're not just reading about historical events and real people, but we're also reading spiritual history, spiritual understanding. As Paul said, these things are written for our admonition and instruction upon whom the ends of the ages have come. So we understand that there is a deeper spiritual message here. And here's the message. Here are two women who are given an opportunity to come into God's church. Just to put it down in language that we would relate to today. Here are two young women with the opportunity to come into the church of God. They're going back, they have the opportunity to go back to the land of Israel, the land of the covenant, the land of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Orpah and Naomi had listened, excuse me, Orpah and Ruth, had listened to the stories of Israel, of Joshua, of Moses, of Noah, of all that God had done with His people. They knew the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the tribes. Because over the years, as they had sat at the table with Malin and Killian and Alemolech and Naomi, over dinner they broke the bread and they told the story, which is what you do. On Friday nights or at the feast days or periodically as the family gathers, they broke the bread and they told the story. And around the fire at night they would tell the stories of Israel and of Judah. And Orpah and Ruth heard those. They heard about the law of God. They heard about the Sabbath day. They heard about the Holy Days. Different concepts than what they had learned from their Moabite religion. Now, they weren't raised that way, but they married into it. And probably Malin and Killian were not going to church every Sabbath. In a regular way, I kind of imagine it that way. And yet they talked about it. And there was still something there that they didn't have a church to go to. They went to church and it was right there in their own home. Think about it. And so here's the opportunity for these two young women to go into Judah, to go into the Promised Land, and to learn more and to see, indeed, if this is really true.

And Orpah has other things to do back home. She's got maybe some aging parents. Maybe there's a field that she could tend to. Maybe there's a job waiting for her back there. Maybe there's somebody that caught her eye back there.

In Matthew 13, the parable of the sower and the seed, it talks about where the seed is sown. The cares of the world come in and choke out that which has been sown. Seed had been sown into Orpah's life, and something couldn't really take good root and bear fruit. But in Ruth's life, it did. And Ruth, in her mind, is thinking, I want to go and find out if all that I've heard is true. If all that I've read about this church and about this way of life, I want to go and find out if it's true. I'm going to go with Naomi. I'm going to go into that land, and I'm going to sit and listen, and I'm going to find out.

And so she says something here, which is the crux of the whole book. She makes a decision. Ruth makes a decision right here. In verse 16, she says, Entreat me not to leave you or to turn back from following after you. In other words, don't put any more obstacles in my path, Naomi. I'm going to quit throwing up reasons why I shouldn't do this.

And in another sense, she might be saying, You've been telling me about this all these years. Now I want to find out. Just shut up. I'm going to go back with you. I want to find out for myself. So she says, don't throw any more objections up and reasons why it won't work and all the problems. I'm going to go and find out myself. Entreat me not to leave or to turn back from following after you.

For wherever you go, I will go. And wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die. Naomi is hearing these words and she's realizing Ruth really does love her. And she's intent and she's determined to stay. She says, There I will be married. The Lord do so to me and more also, if anything but death parts you and me.

This is a pledge of commitment that can fit two people getting married, two people going into any venture together. Just as much as it does Ruth's desire to go with Naomi back to Judah. It is a pledge of commitment. Your God will be my God. Your people will be my people. And I will be with you for the rest of my life. And so she was determined. Ruth wanted to see if it was all that she had heard. So she made a decision. And they start down the hill toward the Dead Sea. Around the Dead Sea and back up into the hills of Judah. And they came to Bethlehem. And they walked into the village of Bethlehem, which was not much more than just a small village.

It wasn't a big, enterprising town then. And yet people knew that Naomi had come home. Words spread quickly. Is this Naomi? Has she come back? And she said, Don't call me Naomi. Call me Mera. The Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full. And the Lord has brought me home again empty. She's empty. She's lost her husband and her two sons.

And that's really what she's referring to here. And the Lord has testified against me, so the Almighty has afflicted me. So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabiteus, her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. Now they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. And that's why this book and the story is set at this time of year, of the early harvest. The barley harvest in Israel was in the spring of the year, beginning after the Days of Unleavened Bread, and concluding on or around the time of Pentecost.

So this is why the book of Ruth has been traditionally, within the Jewish community, read on and around the Feast of Pentecost, because it's even set within the time of this early spring and late spring harvest. Now, we come to chapter 2. But keep in mind that they're still widows, and even though they've come back to Judah and to the land of Israel, there's still not a welfare office for the two to walk into and sign up for food stamps.

There's not a place to get any type of welfare from any trustee, from any government official, just is not there. It wasn't set up that way in the ancient world, and even within the nation of Israel, there was a reliance, essentially, upon family and the generosity of the people within the community. And so we come to chapter 2, and Ruth and Naomi are going to have to get busy and do something.

There was a relative of Naomi's husband, a man of great wealth of the family of the limilec. His name was Boaz. And Ruth the Moabites said to Naomi, Please, let me go to the field and glean heads of grain after him, and whose sight I may find favor. And Naomi said to her, Go, my daughter. Boaz then is introduced as a man of standing and of wealth, and he's also a relative of a limilec, Naomi's dead husband.

So he's a family member. We don't know exactly how close he is. As we go along in the story, we'll find out that he's close enough to at least make a particular exercise of claim at one point. But it's to his fields that Ruth decides to go and to glean. Now, once again, this was essentially from the principles that God gave to Israel.

This was how things were done. At the time of the harvest, the harvesters had a specific instruction from the book of Deuteronomy to leave some of the grain in the fields for the poor. So when they would come to the end of a row instead of, you know, you watch a combine harvest in a field today, they get it all. When you see the work of a field today, there's nothing left.

But they were instructed to kind of leave the corners. In other words, within a few yards of the corner of a field, they just made a wide turn. Left or right, whatever depended on the direction. And they would leave the corners. And whatever dropped—now, keep in mind they were harvesting by hand— whatever dropped out of the bags of the harvesters was left. And if they didn't get every ear or every grain off of the stalk, it was to be left for the poor.

The poor then came in and they gleaned the field. That's why today when you hear about the Gleaners' Food Bank, the Gleaners' Food Bank takes its aim from this idea from God's Word of how the poor were to be provided for. And so Ruth then realizes she's got to get out and do some work.

And she's young enough to do it. Naomi, for whatever reason, can't. So she goes in verse 3 and gleans in the field after the Reapers. And she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz of the family of Olimalek.

So she's working along. She's industrious. She's energetic. She's got initiative. She gets out. And she's doing what has to be done for she and Naomi. And along through the day, here comes Boaz. He's probably been making the rounds of all of his fields that he has. And he says to the Reapers, The Lord be with you to his workers. And they answered it and said, The Lord bless you. Gives you an indication that Boaz had a pretty good relationship with his workers.

That they didn't have to go out and get organized into a union or whatever to have good benefits. They must have all gone along. He gives them a blessing, and they in turn give him a blessing. Which isn't always the case in places of employment today. When the boss is gone, sometimes people let down on their work. And if the boss leaves instructions, sometimes employees grumble and wonder about it and whatever. I see Gordon smiling, and he knows how that can be in running his own business.

And I have to admit that times when I was growing up and working in my dad's business, when my dad decided to go fishing on a summer afternoon, maybe all the work didn't get done in the gas station that particular day. We might stop to have too many cokes or something, and whatever might have taken place at that particular time.

But this indicates that it seems a pretty good relationship between Boaz and his workers. And so Boaz said to his servant, Who's this young woman? He caught the eye of Ruth. And he replied, he said, She was the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab.

And she came to us and said, Let me glean and gather after the reapers. So she came, and she's worked all morning. She only took a short time to rest with everybody else. She worked and worked and worked, and then she rested what everybody else did. And maybe she was the first one to go back from the break. And Boaz said to Ruth, he went up to her, He said, You will listen, my daughter, will you not?

Do not go to glean in another field, nor go from here. 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're thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn. So he said, Look, go over here to the food and the water, the drinks that are provided for my workers. You eat with them.

You don't have to eat in the corner with the other poor that have come to glean the fields. You go and have the good stuff with my workers, which he provided for them. And so he's giving her benefits. He's saying, basically, come back. Now, he's obviously taken a notice to her, and he likes what he sees.

I think we could well imagine Ruth was attracted to him. But she was also a worker. She was not creating problems. And he saw many aspects of her character as well as her beauty, and he was attracted. And so she fell on her face to the ground and thanked him for what favor she had shown her as a foreigner. And she was humble in what she recognized was coming her way. And Boaz says, Look, it's been fully reported how you've treated Naomi, your mother-in-law. The story is well known through the community how you left your home of your father and mother in the land of your birth, and you've come here to a place that you don't know, a strange land.

You're a stranger in a strange land to you. Verse 12, The Lord repay your work and a full reward be given you by the God of Israel, under whose wings you've come for refuge. And this conversation went on, and essentially Boaz began to take good care of Ruth. And she finished her day's work, and she got the grain from the bundles. And actually, you go on down into verse 16, and Boaz tells his workers, Let's let grain from the bundles fall on purpose.

If you just knock a little bit out, that's okay. You guys come up short at the end of the row. I'm not going to penalize you. Don't bend down and pick it up, and she'll take it. And don't worry about that. She may take it, and don't say anything to her for taking it.

So she got full baskets that day. And she took it up. She went back to her mother-in-law and showed her what she had gleaned. And her mother-in-law said in verse 19, Where did you work today? Where did you go? This was a tremendous blessing that someone took notice on you. And Ruth told her that she had worked in the field of Boaz.

And Naomi began to connect the dots. Naomi began to realize what now was taking place. Not only that she had gone there because she knew that she was going to the field of Boaz when she left that day.

But when she came back with her bags full, Naomi realized what had happened. When she began to tell the story of how Boaz had given her encouragement and provided for her in all of this, she knew that something else was working here. This man, she says, is a relation of ours, one of our close relatives. And Ruth said, he also said, You shall stay close by my young men until they finish all my harvest. Ruth may be a little bit naive and a little bit innocent. This is what he said. And Naomi said to Ruth, It's good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women and that people do not meet you in any other field. So she stayed close by the young women of Boaz to glean until the end of the barley harvest and the wheat harvest, and she dwelt with her mother-in-law. Naomi, I think, was beginning to realize that this had some potential. This could work out.

Because when we come to chapter 3, Naomi then, as the harvest is coming to the close, she says, My daughter, shall I seek security for you, that it may be well with you? Now Boaz, whose young women you were with, is he not our relative? In fact, he's winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor. Wash yourself. Take a good hot bath. Use some of those good smell-em salts or perfumes that you can get at Bed Bath and Beyond, or body works at the mall, or whatever that you can bring home. Pour some of those things in there and get yourself smelling real good. Put on your best and go down tonight. This is the night to make yourself known to the man until he's finished eating. Let me just pause to explain the background to this. There was a law in Deuteronomy 25 that if a man died leaving a widow and he was childless, that his brother, or next of kin, had the obligation to marry that woman and to produce an offspring so that the name would continue. It's very important. There's a lot of reasons you could go into to understand God's reasons behind this law. It did stretch into the stability of the society and the family unit through the generations. There was a reason for that law. It was still an effect. It was a part of the code and social structure of Israel. Naomi understands it. Everybody does. And Boaz is essentially one of the near relatives. We're going to find out he's not the closest. He's a little bit closer by blood. And essentially, the way this must have developed, if the closest didn't fulfill the obligation, then the next closest was called upon to do it. This is how it is being worked in order to preserve the name, the family, and to keep the social structure together.

This was a humane, moral, righteous way to keep families together and to keep a society functioning as well as to keep the name of a family together as well. Ruth is going to be playing a part in making this happen. So she comes to the point where she's told here to go down and after the eating and drinking is finished, it shall be in verse 4, when he lies down that you shall notice the place where he lies, and you shall go in, uncover his feet, lie down, and he'll tell you what you should do. And she said to her, all that you say to me, I will do. Now, this was not to be a provocative, lewd, immoral act or set up. The action of a servant, which Ruth was in the role of a servant.

But a servant laying themselves down at their master's feet was a sign of submission in that structure. And it was common and it was done. Already, we saw in verse 2, where Ruth bowed herself down to Boaz when he recognized her and came to talk to her. Now, this being done in this particular situation made Ruth obvious to Boaz that she was his servant. But it was also part of the ritual of the Leverite marriage, or the idea of the next of kin fulfilling their role to take that woman and to marry her to keep the name of the family going within the structure of the society here. So that's why she was to lay down. And it was not to entice him and to get into a sexual act here on the threshing floor in the middle of the night after everybody had been eating and drinking. It sounds like that. And unfortunately, because of what happens and everything we see in a movie, we think this is where the scene is leading to. But that's not what happens. And it was not the intent. And yet, at the same time, you have to understand that these were two very human beings and things happened between human beings. So when you read the story and you see the beauty of the character and the intent that is flowing from this, hopefully we focus our minds upon that and understand the beauty of making the right decision. Even at moments when things could be tempted to go a different direction. We have the character to make the right decision. All along here, Ruth is having to make decisions. She's made the decision to do what Naomi tells her to do and dress up, go down, look pretty, be there at the right point at the right time, and be at that particular place. And she does. Because as you read through the story here, she went down to the threshing floor and did according to the instruction. So as he ate, he drank, not that he got drunk, but he drank and they were having alcohol and his heart was cheerful in the right sense, in the sense that we would want to imagine here. Then he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. He did not know Ruth was there. She came up softly, uncovered his feet, and lay down. And about midnight, he was startled and he turned over and he saw that she was lying at his feet. And he said, who are you? He was kind of groggy and half asleep. And it was dark and he knew that there was a body down there and it was Ruth and she identifies herself right off. I'm Ruth, your maidservant. Again, keep in mind that the very action of placing herself at his feet was that of what a servant would do. And she tells him, take your maidservant under your wing, for you are a close relative.

What is she saying in so many words that is not recorded here? There is a law. You know the law. I've learned that law. You are the close relative. You can marry me. I am available. Fulfill your obligation. Do your duty. Now, his response is this. Blessed are you of the Lord, my daughter. For you have shown more kindness at the end than at the beginning, in that you did not go after young men, whether poor or rich.

Right there in that verse, you get the idea that Boaz was not a young man. He was not Brad Pitt. Or whoever else you want to put in there. In fact, some speculate that he may have been as old as 80 years up in 70 or 80 years of age. I don't know for sure. But those of you ladies who read the series of books of the lineage of Christ a few months back, or a year or more ago, you remember the story of Rahab? Who did Rahab have as a child? Boaz. Rahab, the harlot of the story of the conquest, was Boaz's mother.

That goes back a few years. That's why I said this was a generation or a generation and a half after the conquest. So Boaz was an older man, and Ruth was a young woman. Sorry, I know we like these love stories. Everybody is young. This is a May-September romance. This is what it is. That's why he says you could have had a young man, whether he was rich or poor, and you might have certainly been more inclined toward a young man, but you've done your duty, you've done your obligation.

You would have to imagine that there's even an attraction on her part toward him. Again, it was a different time. Ruth wasn't used to watching Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, and all these other stories of romance that, you know, tame or otherwise, that fill our minds about relations between the sexes. She was attracted to him at one level. I'm not saying she was head over heels in love with his physical specimen or whatever, but she was attracted to a certain degree.

I will imagine that when they marry, which they do, and you know the story, that the love that developed between them probably was a true, deep love, based on the qualities that build true, deep love between two people, not just on outward appearances. Ruth was not looking on outward appearance. She was looking on the heart. She was learning her way in this new world, in this new religion. She was exercising faith all along. Ruth had had to step out in faith by even going into the land without ever seeing it.

That's what faith is, Hebrews 11.1 tells us. Faith is the evidence of things not seen. She had already made a major decision in her life based on what she had not seen, only what she had heard. Now she's having to make another decision to marry herself to the second man in her life, thinking full well that this is going to be the rest of her life. And she's doing it according to the law of God, according to the Word of God, the law she's beginning to understand within the land as a stranger, as a Gentile joining herself to Israel.

And she's having to test the waters, but she's doing it in faith, and she's stepping out and she's obeying. That's what life is like for us all. At any point of God's law, God's way of life, that we come to learn, that we must follow through our lives, it always comes down to a time of decision. Will we keep the Sabbath? Will we keep the Holy Days? Will we observe what we've learned? Will we stay faithful to it? Will we resist this temptation? Will we overcome this particular trial?

We have to make these decisions, and these decisions impact a decision we make in a week, for six months, for a year, for the rest of our life. Those decisions are made like that. This is what Ruth is having to walk through.

This is what we are to learn from this story. And Boaz is now one he's now faced with a decision, because he has to then act upon what has been placed literally in front of him through the life of this woman who is saying, you have a duty. Now, he is a man with wealth. He's got fields, he's got property, he has money in the bank, stocks and bonds, IRAs, 403s, herds. He's got a lot.

Now he's got to marry another man's wife. There's a joining of families here. Even today, people later in life marry the second or third time. Have you ever heard of a prenuptial agreement? It's because people have something that they've got to negotiate out. I was reading about one performer, a musician. He's in his early 70s, been married two or three times as children. And he's still going strong, but he said, I'm not going to marry again. He said, it's too complicated. He said, I've got my wills all made, it's all divided among my family.

He said, I'll never marry again, because it'd just be too uncomplicated to unravel all of that. So he made a conscious choice not to marry again. Boaz has to make a choice, because he's got his property. And to fulfill this duty, he has to get involved with the property of a limalek. And that gets into legalities, and it could impact his. And so he has to make a decision.

And he tells her, look, I will do all that you do, verse 11, all that you request for all the people of my town know that you're a virtuous woman. It is true I am a close relative, but there's a closer one than I. There's someone else. Stay this night, and the morning it will be that if he will perform the duty of a close relative, good, let him do it. But if he does not want to perform the duty, then I'll perform the duty for you as the Lord lives.

So he promises he will do it. He says, lie down till morning. She stayed at his feet till morning, and then she got up, and she left early. Nothing happened, and she exited the scene. She goes back to her mother-in-law in verse 16. She tells her what happened, and she said, look, set still my daughter in verse 18, till you know how the matter will turn out, for the man will not rest until he's concluded the matter this day.

Naomi must have known that there was another relative, but she still pointed Ruth toward Boaz. She probably knew how it was going to work out, but it had to follow course. They had to go through the legality. So the next day, Boaz goes down to the gate. It's like going down to the courthouse. In an ancient city, the gate of the city, there was one way in, one way out, one gate, and it was there in the gate where the elders sat, the judges sat. Business of the city was transacted right there. It was like, you and I are going down to the courthouse to transfer a deed, whatever, licenses, things like that.

He goes down to the gate, and there he knew would be the close relative of whom Boaz said. So he said to this close relative, come, friends, sit down beside me. He took ten other elders to kind of be a jury here and help make this decision. They all sat down, and he said to the close relative, Naomi, who's come back from Moab, and he told a piece of land which belonged to her brother, Elemelak, which again tells you something about the story of Elemelak even going to Moab in the first place.

He had property that he left. He wasn't completely destitute. He just didn't have food, and there was no means of doing anything else, so they had to leave for survival's sake. But there was property, and I've thought to inform you, saying, buy it back in the presence of the inhabitants. If you will redeem it, then tell me that I may know, for there is no one but you to redeem it, and I'm next after you.

And the man says, I will redeem it. He thought it was just a property transaction. Notice that we're never told this man's name in the story. The other close relative. He's offered a chance to buy, oh, maybe it's what? Pennsylvania Avenue on the Monopoly Board.

I doubt that it's Park Place or Boardwalk, but it's one of the green ones on the Monopoly Board. A desirable property. I don't think it's Baltic Avenue. I think it's Pennsylvania. He's given a chance to buy. He does a real quick, rough calculation. Oh, yeah, man, I could plant on that, run some cattle out there, some sheep. I could increase 30% in the first year. Yeah, that's a good deal. He says, I'll buy it. He doesn't know what comes along with it. A woman. There's a woman involved. The close relative said, I cannot redeem it for myself. Let's run... Wait a minute. Verse 5. Boaz says, on the day you buy the field from Naomi, you must also buy it from Ruth of Moabitis to perpetuate the name of the dead through his inheritance.

The close relative said, I can't do it. It will ruin my own inheritance. It'll complicate matters. And he says, you redeem my right of redemption for yourself. I can't redeem it. And this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging. They took off their sandal, it says, and gave it to the other, and this sealed the deal.

We're never told this man's name. Now, he made a decision, didn't he? He made a decision. Maybe it was just a business decision. Nothing... It's like the Godfather says, it's not personal. It's business. He just made a business decision. But it had long-term consequences. We know Boaz's name. We don't know this man's name. I don't think he was a bad man.

Chances are he was probably a good man in his own way, in his own time, and good father, good husband, and a suit businessman. But he had to make a decision, and he disappears from the story. One day we'll know his name. One day we'll know the generations that went from this man. But because of the decision he made in Israel at this time, we don't know his name. But we know Boaz's name. And so Boaz seals the deal in verse 9.

He says to everybody, your witnesses, that this day I bought all that was a limilex, and all that was kylians and malins from the hand of Naomi. Moreover, Ruth the Moabiteus, the widow of Malin, I have acquired as my wife to perpetuate the name of the dead through his inheritance, that the name of the dead may be cut off from among you, from among his brethren, and from his position at the gate. Your witnesses, this day. And everyone said, essentially in verse 11, the people who were at the gate, the elders said, we are witnesses.

The Lord make the woman who is coming to your house like Rachel and Leah, the two who built the house of Israel. Now that's quite a statement. Rachel and Leah, the two wives of Jacob, they didn't give birth to all the sons of Israel, of Jacob, but they were the two legitimate wives of Jacob. And it says of them that they built the house of Israel.

And the blessing that is given to Ruth is that may you be like Rachel and Leah, that the two who built the house of Israel, and may you prosper in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. May your house be like the house of Peres and Tamar bore to Judah because of the offspring which the Lord will give you from this woman. And Peres and Tamar were also in the line of Boaz. And you go back to Matthew 1, verse 5, you see how that is traced there in the lineage leading up to Jesus Christ. So all the family knew the lineage of Boaz, and now Ruth was marrying into a lineage that was known and was a kind of a blue blood lineage, if you will.

Because you go back to Tamar and Peres and Judah, that's one of the founding families. One of the ones that came over on the Mayflower, kind of the blue blood there. So when they pronounced this blessing, it was quite something for Ruth to join into that. And she was a Gentile. She was a Moabite. But because she had made a decision, now here, weeks later, a few months later, she is already to find a husband and to marry into a substantial family within the tribe of Judah, the nation of Israel.

She became the wife of Boaz, and they immediately had a son. And the son becomes, in a sense, the grandson of Naomi, but Naomi then has something restored to her that had been taken by the death of her sons. And verse 15 says, So Ruth takes on quite a position herself as the story is told and as it was retold down through the generations. And even the genealogy is given here because then, as the book comes to an end, you find that the son then figures into the lineage of King David.

And you come down to verse 22, and you see that Ruth and Boaz are part of this lineage that ultimately gives birth through Jesse to David, who becomes the second king of Israel, but the one king that is remembered and who sets up the promised dynasty of the kings of Israel. And then, of course, that becomes a part of the whole lineage leading up to Jesus Christ, which the book of Matthew tells us. So you see how this story, which is really a story of one moment, is a window into all time. It is a window into the lineage leading up to David and then to Jesus Christ. And what happened in Judah?

Hundreds of years later, it came right back into the city of Bethlehem with the birth of Jesus Christ, a descendant of this very same woman. But you see the matter of decisions that are made, choices that come our way, forcing us to make decisions and the importance of making right decisions.

We all have decisions to make it any day of our life and at critical moments, some decisions will have longer impact than others. Obviously, the decision of who you marry has long-term consequences. What type of work you will pursue? What type of work and what type of job you take? Where you move? The people you choose as friends? Sometimes, even, it is as mundane as the decision at a particular time to get in the car and drive down the street to the mall. We all know that a minute later or a minute earlier could mean the difference between life and death. We've all been by those scenes when we recognize that I've been here a minute earlier, I would have been there. Those are decisions that sometimes are out of our hands. Sometimes we may not always realize how God is guiding us in our life. Think about the top three decisions you've made in your life. Go through a mental list in your mind. The three most important decisions that you have made that's impacted your life. What led you to make them? What were the circumstances? What was the level of knowledge that you had? Would you make those same decisions today? Think about that. Think about the story of Ruth. Think about how these decisions have long-term consequences for our own lives, for the generations that will come from us. When it is all packaged within the context of God's kingdom and God's calling to us, we see that it's important to make the right decisions. Ruth made the right decisions. Let's make sure that we are making the best ones for ourselves, for our families, and for the future generations to come.