He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands

Announcements:

Hymn of Preparation Number:

†CALL TO WORSHIP Isaiah 57:15

Craig Hoffer, Elder

Congregation: For thus says the high and exalted one who lives forever, whose name is holy,

Minister: “I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit.”

Congregation: We gather to worship you, O Lord. Come, dwell with us, work in us that you may work through us. Amen.

†PRAYER OF ADORATION AND INVOCATION

†OPENING HYMN OF PRAISE #241

“O God Beyond All Praising”

†CONFESSION OF SIN & ASSURANCE OF PARDON

based on Psalm 51; Isaiah 44:22

Minister: Let us confess our sins before God and one another:

Congregation: Merciful God, you pardon all who truly repent and turn to you. We humbly confess our sins and ask your mercy. We have not loved you with a pure heart, nor have we loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not done justice, loved kindness, or walked humbly with you, our God.

Have mercy on us, O God, in your loving kindness. In your great compassion, cleanse us from our sin. Create in us clean hearts, and renew right spirits within us. Do not cast us from your presence, or take your Holy Spirit from us. Restore to us the joy of your salvation. Sustain us with your bountiful Spirit, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Minister: Hear the merciful response of a loving God: My people will not be forgotten by me. I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like mist. Now return to me, for I have redeemed you. Know that your sins are forgiven. Be at peace.

Congregation: God is merciful, offering forgiveness to all who confess their sin in faith. We are forgiven. I am forgiven. Thanks be to God! Amen.

CONTINUAL READING OF SCRIPTURE I Timothy 2

Pastor Austin Prince

THE OFFERING OF TITHES AND OUR GIFTS

CONGREGATIONAL PRAYERS

THE LORD’S PRAYER

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

†HYMN OF PREPARATION #243

“How Firm a Foundation”

PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION

Almighty, eternal and merciful God, whose Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path — open and illuminate our minds, that we may purely and perfectly understand your Word and that our lives may be conformed to what we have rightly understood, that in nothing we may be displeasing to your Majesty, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. — Huldrych Zwingli

SERMON // He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands Ruth 2:1-3

Ruth 2:1–3 ESV

1 Now Naomi had a relative of her husband’s, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz. 2 And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favor.” And she said to her, “Go, my daughter.” 3 So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech.

AFTER SCRIPTURE

The ordinances of the Lord are sure, and altogether righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold.

Intro

Jesus tells a parable in Matthew 25 about a ruler who gives his subjects talents (money) and then goes away on a journey. Upon the Master’s return, he examines his subjects to see what they did with the deposits that they were given to them. If you know the story, you know that the one who was given five talents made five more, the one who was given two talents made two more, but the one who was given only one talent decided to bury it in fear, merely returning it to his master without profit. Taking this man’s talent and casting him away, the master says, “to those who have, more will be given, but to those who have not, even what he has will be taken away.” This parable, Jesus says, is what the kingdom of heaven is like. And it highlights what is at stake between God’s grace and provision and our responsibility, obedience, and faith. The one who acts out of fear is chastised and the grace that he was given was wasted and taken away, while the others who acted in faith were rewarded.

Our text for today could be seen as an outworking of this parable through the lives of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz. Some of the characters could be seen as having ten talents or five–Ruth may be our character who seems to only have one talent, or in her desperation no talents. But the real question is what will they do with what God has given to them?

Remembering where we are in this story, briefly, a man from Bethlehem named Elimelech was forced by famine to take his family into the land of Moab for food and provision. During that time, his two sons took Moabite wives named Orpah and Ruth. While in Moab, Elimelech died, leaving his wife Naomi a widow. She still had her two sons, but we are told that after a decade of waiting with no heirs to their name, her two sons also died, leaving Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah destitute. Hearing that the famine was over and that there was bread back in Bethlehem, Naomi set back for home. Showing remarkable dedication to her, both of her daughters’ in law went with her, but she plead with them to turn back and to seek husbands and hope and a future in their homeland of Moab. Orpah, reluctantly went back. We noted that she is a character that we can understand. Given her options, she chose what looked like feasibility and practicality. But Ruth chose differently. She chose with eyes of faith. She not only chose Naomi and Naomi’s land of Israel, but she also Naomi’s God. She embodied a concept that we focused on last week called “hesed” in Hebrew, what our text calls “loving-kindness”. And we noted that this concept was a love and faithfulness that doesn’t just go up to the level of expectation or the level of obligation; it overflows that boundary and it keeps on going. Ruth says, that if she doesn’t uphold her end of the this promise of faithfulness, then let herself be accursed. And this looks like an unreasonable amount of faith and faithfulness. But this is why the book is about Ruth. This is why this story is preserved, to teach us what faith looks like. This is love and faithfulness like God loves and is faithful, and it is faith that he rewards. Ultimately, this concept of hesed is best captured when we look at Jesus at the cross. It isn’t just that He loves us, but that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And when we cannot uphold our covenant obligations, he takes responsibility for us, overflowing the boundaries of our expectations.

Naomi, however, in contrast to Ruth’s great faith, has been shaken, even wishing to be called Mara, meaning “bitter”, instead of Naomi, which means “sweet” or “pleasant”.

And here we pick up in chapter two with these two women who seem to have to their name only one talent or maybe no talents, as in the parable. But the question before us is what are they going to do about it?

Let’s look at our text. We will be looking at the first three verses one at a time. To help guide us, we’ll give each verse a heading: v.1) A Possibility, v.2) A Performance, and v.3) A Providence.

V. 1) A Possibility (Who was Boaz?)

Ruth 2:1 Now Naomi had a relative of her husband’s, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz.

This first verse is the narrator simply introducing us to the character of Boaz before he really enters the story or even meets Ruth. It’s quick and the story simply proceeds. But it tells us a lot about what to expect if we know what these names mean.

First, we are told that Boaz was a relative of Naomi’s late husband, Elimelech. He’s in a position of kinsmen to Naomi and could possibly serve as a kinsmen redeemer, restoring Elimelech’s land and possibly perpetuating his family name. But that’s a long shot. Naomi is old and she likely doesn’t even consider Boaz a path of hope.

But we are also told that he is a “worthy man”. The Hebrew here is gibbôr ḥayil, which means “war hero”, “capable person”, “wealthy man”. gibbôr means strong, but gibbôr ḥayil is the phrase used for men like David’s mighty men, these were men of valor and great esteem. And both emphases of this word are likely true for Boaz. This story is set in the time of the Judges, and it’s probable that Boaz has distinguished himself as a man of war and protection, and what we will come to see is that he is a man who is also very wealthy, overseeing many fields and workers.

But the last thing that we should note is simply his name. To us, we read right past it, only taking from his name something to address him with. But the keen listeners to this story would know where he came from and who exactly he is.

Boaz was a descendent of some pretty famous and worthy characters in scripture. At the time of the Exodus, the leader of the tribe of Judah was a man by the name of Nahshon. The book of Numbers has him as the leader of 74,000 fighting men, the largest of the tribes. Jewish legend in the Midrash has it that Nahshon was the first man to enter into the red sea, and that the waters parted when he walked by faith up to his nose in the water. Exodus 6 tells us that his sister married Aaron the priest, and that his son, Salmon, married Rahab the prostitute from Jericho, and the two of them had a son named Boaz. So Boaz’s grandfather was the leader of the tribe of Judah, and he is also family to the priestly line of Israel. And in two books of the Bible, in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles we see that king Solomon, when he built his temple, gave names to the two pillars which framed the vestibule (the entry way). They were called by two of his ancestors. And one of those pillars of the temple was named Boaz.

The overtone of Boaz, though, is not that he is merely a mighty man, and a wealthy man, but that he is a worthy man. He, too, is a man of Hesed. What draws him to Ruth is her faithfulness.

In this preemptory verse, hearing the name Boaz, is as if you’ve gone to Mr. Bingley’s ball and you are introduced to a man by the name of Darcy.

You’ve already met the poor Bennett family, so you know something is going to happen when the opulently wealthy and highborn Mr. Darcy enters the story.

We could say that Boaz is our character with 10 talents, but does he rise up to the description of a “worthy man”? He’s a match for Ruth in that he meets her needs of family and provision, but will he match her in loving-kindness, this “hesed” that she so dramatically demonstrates?

The narrator simply introduces us to a possibility.

Moving on, back to Ruth and Naomi, we see Ruth’s plunge. Look at v.2.

V. 2) A Plunge (Ruth’s Hesed and Obedience)

Ruth 2:2 And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favor.” And she said to her, “Go, my daughter.”

As the story picks up with Ruth and Naomi, we find the two women destitute. No help, no income, and no prospects. But with the little that they have (the one talent), we see what Ruth decides to do with it.

Two things to notice: 1) Ruth tells Naomi that she will go and glean from the fields, and 2) she will glean wherever she can find favor.

Gleaning from the fields basically means that she is allowed to follow behind the reapers and the bundlers of a harvest and pick up what they have dropped on the ground. In Leviticus and Deuteronomy, we are told that God commands the Israelites not to harvest the corners of their fields and not to pick up the gleanings but to leave the corners and the gleanings for the widow, the fatherless, and the sojourner. It was a reminder to the people of Israel that the true landowner has the authority to regulate the harvest, and that true landowner is YHWH. And his people, the people of Israel, were to acts as he acts - merciful and gracious to the widow, the fatherless, and the sojourner—to the vulnerable. And Ruth’s vulnerable status is highlighted here in this verse as she is called “Ruth the Moabitess”. She is both a widow and a foreigner.

What we see from Ruth is that by gleaning, she is throwing herself upon God’s mercies. Jesus, describing great faith in the Sermon on the Mount says that “we are not to be anxious about our lives, what we will eat or drink. That the birds neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet God provides for them and we are of more value than they. “O you of little faith”, he says, “do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or “what shall we drink?’. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

With her commitment to where she was (in Bethlehem) and her decision to leave her home empty handed in hopes of coming back provided for by YHWY, Ruth’s actions testify that she is is embodying this type of faith.

It’s not a faith that is inactive. She has her one talent, but she doesn’t bury it, she turns a profit. She invests it in YHWH, hoping that He will bless it. Hebrews teaches us that faith is the assurance of things hoped for. We could say more than she hoped that God would provide—she knew that he would. Her faith is like the widow who gave her two pennies. It might not have been much to our eyes, but it’s a lot when it is given from a heart of trust.

There are several responses when we have great needs and great uncertainty that make sense to us. Fear makes sense, and bitterness, or worry, and a lot of times it results with inaction–we simply freeze up. We can easily say that we have faith that God will change our circumstances and meet our needs, while in reality we become slaves to fear and worry and so we do nothing with our talent.

Sometimes I think of faith like something that will hold your weight. It’s pretty likely that today you came into this room and didn’t think twice before you thew yourself into the chair that you are sitting in. You trusted that it would support you and so you gave yourself over to it. Once you know it will support you, you have no problem standing and sitting without thinking about it. And in many ways, it’s similar with faith in the Lord. We have great burdens that we need to lay down, and the Lord tells us to come to him to find relief—to lay them upon him. But not being able to see, we freeze up, remaining anxious by our burden and inactive to obedience. And this happens on a varying scale. This might be that we don’’t trust the Lord to hold the weight of our souls or our sins or our future, so we don’t trust Him. Or, it might be that we are in a difficult situation, like a strain in your marriage or other relationships, and instead of taking the next step in faith, we simply wait around. What we call anxious, Jesus calls faithless, even wicked false perception. It’s the belief in lies that God can’t support your weight, and while we can all understand that feeling of fear, we shouldn’t honor it as valid or wise or truthful. It’s a lie.

Faith steadies itself by looking to God and then gives itself over to obedience. This is why Ruth’s faith is so remarkable, but it’s also why it is so rewarded. It’s encompassed in that term we have been noting called hesed. Her faith isn’t just measured and reasonable, it seems unreasonable and baffling. But what we are meant to see is that even if you plunge yourself headlong into the hands of the Lord, He will provide. He’s honored by our faith. He’s glorified by it. Because He is by definition faithfulness. No one who throws themselves into the Lord’s hands is dropped. When we taste and see that the Lord really is good, fear becomes the irrationality and faith becomes the only sane thing — the only stability is to throw yourself onto the Rock. Where else can you go? What is your strength or the strength of man? It’s nothing.

The second thing we’re to notice is that Ruth planned to glean in a field in which she found favor.

As we saw earlier, Ruth had the rights of the law on her side to glean, but she didn’t presume upon them. She approached her Israelite neighbors from a place of need and humility, but also in audacious courage. She sought not only to glean what she could, but to glean a lot, enough to provide for her and Naomi, by finding favor in the eyes of her neighbors. In other words, her leap of faith in the Lord was large, extending to his providence through human agency. In the patchwork of Israelite fields, she trusted that the Lord would bring her to the right one.

Ruth is plunging herself in faith upon God and proceeding into the lives of the Israelites with courage and humility.

And this leads us to v.3, where we see God’s providence

v.3) A Providence (God’s Sovereignty)

Ruth 2:3 So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech.

The writer of the book is having a bit of fun with us here. God’s sovereign hand is all over this book, never far from the author’s voice. So this phrasing is a bit ironic, meant to highlight the opposite of its understatement. The reader is to know precisely what is happening here — that God is rewarding Ruth’s faith by bringing her to exactly the right field. The field of a man who will look upon her with favor. The field of a man who is a gibbôr ḥayil, a mighty and wealthy man — a worthy man. A man, whom we will see, is not only able to match Ruth’s needs, but is able to match her in hesed faithfulness and loving-kindness.

We can easily get caught up in the difficulties of our present circumstances, feeling that God might have blessed us if we had done things differently in the past. If only we were in a different spot.

For Ruth, it would have been easy to think about “Where would we be had Elimelech not gone to Moab?”, “What would have happened if I went back like Orpah?”, “Would it be better if I chose to go back home?”

But this is another area in which we can get our faith stuck and fall into fear, burying our talent. The truth is, you are never in a place that God can’t bless you. You’re never in a place that God can’t use.

You can definitely be in places that you shouldn’t be. You can make decisions that put you in poor places, or you can be handed a famine by the hand of God like Ruth and Naomi, but none of them are places that God can’t use.

We must remember that God takes you from where you are, not where you think you should be. Will you be faithful where you are, or will you freeze in fear, or in bitterness, or in blame?

Ruth acted in faithfulness in the situation that she was in and she was rewarded for it.

Conclusion

And this balance that we see in this text today of God’s providence and sovereignty, and of human agency and obedience, the giving of the grace and talents and the decision to act faithfully with what is given, is wonderfully summarized by a phase from the Scottish puritan Samuel Rutherford, who says, “The duties are ours, but the events are the Lord’s.”

The events of life, of all of life, belong to God. He upholds the universe by the word of His power. He is the sovereign king over every king and every molecule and every moment, who never is caught off guard and never out of control. He has the whole world in is hands. He feeds the birds, clothes the fields in flowers, and we should know that in his sovereignty he cares for us much more than for the sparrows. Not sparing even his own son, why should we think he will not provide for us in all things? The events of this world are his, all of them. And he can work anything for our good.

But the duties are ours. Given our events, given our talents, we are not meant to bury them in fear, freezing up with worry or with doubt that he would bless us where we are. Like Ruth, we are to plunge ourselves into God’s care, finding that He can indeed hold our weight. That he could hold the weight of 10,000 worlds. That with our obedience, God can and does turn a profit on faith. You can trust Him. You should trust Him. If you stand in fear, he will challenge you to give it up. But if you cast your cares on Him he will reward you and sustain you.

Seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

As Ruth seeks first the kingdom, we will see next time how God adds all these things for her.

Prayer

†PSALM OF RESPONSE #51C

“God, Be Merciful to Me”

THE MINISTRY OF THE LORD’S SUPPER

Minister: Lift up your hearts!

Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord.

Minister: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

Congregation: It is right for us to give thanks and praise!

THE WORDS OF INSTITUTION Mark 14:22-25

And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

CONFESSION OF FAITH Belgic Confession, Article 35

Minister: This is a table for people of faith. Without faith, we cannot receive Christ here. Let’s confess what we believe about this meal.

Congregation: We believe and confess that our Savior Jesus Christ has ordained and instituted the sacrament of the Holy Supper to nourish and sustain those who are already born again and ingrafted into his family: his church.

This banquet is a spiritual table at which Christ communicates himself to us with all his benefits. At that table he makes us enjoy himself as much as the merits of his suffering and death, as he nourishes, strengthens, and comforts our poor, desolate souls by the eating of his flesh, and relieves and renews them by the drinking of his blood.

With humility and reverence, we receive the holy sacrament in the gathering of God's people, as we engage together, with thanksgiving, in a holy remembrance of the death of Christ our Savior, and as we thus confess our faith and Christian religion. By the use of this holy sacrament we are moved to a fervent love of God and our neighbors.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE ELEMENTS

HYMN Amazing Grace! # 433

SHARING OF THE LORD’S SUPPER

[ad hoc?]

PRAYER

†OUR RESPONSE #567

“Doxology”

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;

Praise him, all creatures here below;

Praise him above, ye heavenly host;

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

†BENEDICTION: GOD’S BLESSING FOR HIS PEOPLE

The blessing of God, the giver of every good and perfect gift; and of christ, who summons us to service, and of the Holy Spirit, who inspires generosity and love, goes and abides with you all. Now and forevermore, Amen.