Unlikely Love

Ruth 2:14–23 ESV

And at mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine.” So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her roasted grain. And she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over. When she rose to glean, Boaz instructed his young men, saying, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. And also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her.” So she gleaned in the field until evening. Then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. And she took it up and went into the city. Her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. She also brought out and gave her what food she had left over after being satisfied. And her mother-in-law said to her, “Where did you glean today? And where have you worked? Blessed be the man who took notice of you.” So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz.” And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead!” Naomi also said to her, “The man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.” And Ruth the Moabite said, “Besides, he said to me, ‘You shall keep close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest.’ ” And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, “It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, 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 harvests. And she lived with her mother-in-law.

Be Thou My Vision: A Liturgy for Daily Worship Day 7

Prayer for Illumination

As you read his word, ask God to enlighten your mind and heart:

Almighty, gracious Father, since our whole salvation depends on our true understanding of your holy Word, grant that our hearts—freed from worldly affairs—may hear and understand your holy Word with all diligence and faith, so that we may rightly discern your gracious will, cherish it, and live by it with all earnestness, to your praise and honor, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Martin Bucer

Two main themes run throughout the book of Ruth that I want to highlight here for you today and those are Kindness and Redemption.

Kindness

The Israelites has provisions in place to help the most helpless of their people. In Lev 19.9-10 ““When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.” Ruth is poor sojourner and a widow in this community. She is one of the most vulnerable in the whole community who has to rely on the generosity of farmers and local businessmen to live. Typically you were only allowed to do this after the harvesting had been done, so what you were left with was just the edges. She is just making it by day by day eating what she can glean from the edges of fields. So when Boaz allows her to glean with his servants, he is essentially showing her kindness by allowing her unhindered access to the field and the best of it.

There is a special word used here to describe Boaz’s kindness to Ruth. The word translated here kindness is the word חֶ֫סֶד. This word carries a very special significance in the Old testament for it is the word that is used to describe God’s character. God is ultimately the one described as kind and loyal to his people. What we see here is what God’s people are to look like as the reflect God’s character. Boaz already showed her kindness which Samuel talked about last week. Here we see what an overabundance of grace looks like in someone’s life. Ruth was not only allowed to take what she needed but we see then Boaz follows this up by letting her sit at his table and eat until she is stuffed. The meal that she had leftovers for Ruth gave to her mother-in-law Naomi to of

Redemption

Next is Redemption we see coming from Boaz. When Ruth comes to tell Naomi about Boaz, Naomi is thrilled because Boaz is in the place of a Kingsman-Redeemer. This is from the institution of a Levirate marriage, or marrying your brother’s childless widwo to continue of the family line. Boaz is not the closest person in the family lineage to redeem Ruth but he is the one God has seemingly chosen to being about redemption. We see Boaz stepping in here as the hesed man in a time when everyone did what was right in their own eyes. The reason the book of Ruth starts off wih telling you that this took place during the time of Judges is to tell you that people were morally debunk. TIme of the Judges good time or bad time? Yeah a mixed bag but way more bad than good. What we see here is in the midst of a corrupt generation hope shining through. God is not finished with his people and Boaz is acting as someone who loves others because of the tremendous love of the Lord. This is a man after God’s own heart and it not surprising since he is the great grandfather of David.

What does this mean for you as a grad student? I believe this text shows who we are means to be as God’s people and what our goals should be be on campus.

In your graduate studies, you are working with complex problems that take a high level of training and proficiency to master. You training the enter firlds that are incomprehensible to most other people because of the high level of difficulty required. As you train yourself for this, this should not lead you do become puffed up with knoledge and concieted but studying should lead you to kindness. You do not do this work because you are more talented than everyone or better but because the Lord has placed you here for a purpose. We see here what God’s people are like when given the responsibility of privilege and power. You are to become peoplewho use your power to lift others up.

Secondly, your goals I don’t believe are to become a Kingsman-Redeemer of your family members. That was a social system set up for an ancient people but we have a Redeemer who has saved you from poverty. Our sin separates us from God and Jesus is the only privisin for that sin. Like Boaz Jesus saw us and not only showed up grace but gave us a seat at the table, he has made you children of the King and made you royal priests. You goal now is to live as royal representatives in this world, showing God’s kindness and love. You get to look at your own field and discover how God wants you to use the overproduction of your own work to bless others just like the Israelites did with their fields.

This week as you do your homework and write essays have in the back of your mind how a Kingdom citizen would live in this world. Not as someone who does what si right in their own eyes but as someone who shows abundant grace to those who are the most vulnerable.