In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus creates a word picture of the final judgment of humanity. In this parabolic rendering, the goats are those condemned to eternal separation from God. The sheep are those invited to claim their inheritance in God’s Kingdom.
Jesus commends the sheep for all the wonderful things they’ve done. But the sheep spend three verses saying, “We don’t remember doing any of that stuff!” Had the sheep in Jesus’ account of the judgment thought their good works had something to do with their eternal salvation, they wouldn’t say that. They would have been keeping score. In essence though, they ask Jesus,“Good works? What good works?”
Good works are not the ticket to life with God. Jesus says, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29) But something happens in the lives of those who believe in God. When we receive the gift of faith in the God now revealed to everyone in Jesus, faith being a gift that comes to us not by our works but by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God, we become, in a new way, “God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10) Even our good works are things God has set up and we just walk in them.
All of which brings us to our Bible lesson for tonight, Ruth 3-4. We ended the message last week with two widows: Ruth and Naomi. Ruth is a Moabite who insists on going with her mother-in-law, Naomi, to Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem, in Israel. Ruth does this both out of devotion to the God of Israel in Whom she has come to believe and to care for her mother-in-law.
In chapter two of Ruth, which we’re skipping tonight, Ruth finds work helping with the barley harvest on the farm of a man named Boaz. Boaz is a distant relative of Naomi’s late husband, Elimelech. Boaz notices Ruth is a hard-worker and knowing that she’s devoted to God and devoted to Naomi, her mother-in-law, takes care to ensure that Ruth has food she can share with Naomi and that she isn’t harmed while working for him. (More on that in a moment.)
The harvesting of barley involved taking the grain to a threshing floor. A threshing floor sat on top of a hill, composed of an area about thirty-feet wide, the floor made up of soil ground down flat. West winds, the prevailing winds, were strong during the day. But at sunset, the winds, still going, would die down enough to allow for the threshing to begin. The first step was to lead animal-drawn wagons over the grain set on the threshing floor. This would burst the grain open and allow for the second step. In this step, men used shovels to scoop up grain and toss it in the air. The unwanted chaff was blown away, while the usable grain remained. This work went on late into the night. It involved only men, the women being sent away for their safety. And there was a reason for that. Threshing floors were notorious settings of men who took advantage of women. When the crop has been picked, Ruth tells Naomi how well she’s been treated. Naomi is delighted because she knows and respects the older Boaz, an honorable man.
That brings us to chapter three. “My daughter,” Naomi tells her daughter-in-law, Ruth, “I must find a home for you, where you will be well provided for.” (Ruth 3:1)
Under God’s Law, Ruth was under no obligation to play the matchmaker for Ruth or to concern herself with Ruth’s future. No more than Ruth was obligated under God’s Law to commit herself to following the God of Israel, Yahweh, or caring for Naomi. But when God has gifted you with faith and, by grace, made you one of his saints, the question is no longer, “What do I have to do to please God?” but “What do I get to do as I interact each day with my neighbors, including the neighbors under my own roof?” According to Saint Paul, we can have the same mind in us that Christ Jesus had. Although He was God, Jesus didn’t exploit His deity, but became a servant for our good. When, through faith, we know we belong to God forever, we can make the business of others–their needs and interests–our business. I love what Martin Luther says: “God doesn’t need your good works. But your neighbor does.”
So, Naomi concocts a plan, drawing on two interrelated civil laws of the Jews.
One is that of the guardian-redeemer. When a man died without heirs, the nearest male relative could act as guardian-redeemer, ensuring that the deceased man’s birthright will remain with the extended family and tribe as originally assigned by God.
The other law was levirate marriage. This required that the next available bachelor son marry his brother’s widow and that the first son born to that union would become heir to the dead man’s property.
Naomi has Ruth bathe, perfume, and clothe herself like a woman no longer in mourning, like one, in fact, dressed as a bride. Ruth is to go silently to the threshing floor, waiting for Boaz to complete the harvesting and have his dinner and then, entering after all the men have gone to sleep, uncover his feet so that the by-now gentle breeze of the night would soon wake him. In the meantime, Ruth is to lie down at his feet, dressed as a bride.
If this all sounds a little racy, you should know that, in the original Hebrew, this chapter of Ruth is filled with innuendo and double-entendres. That’s because threshing floors, where men spent the night working, many got drunk, and all fell asleep to guard the crops from theft, were notorious for seduction and rape. But here, we’re to compare and contrast because Ruth and Boaz, despite all of the opportunities, behave honorably.
So Ruth follows Naomi’s instructions and when the startled Boaz awakens, she says, “I am your servant Ruth. Spread the corner of your garment over me [a phrase that means, ‘Be my husband.’], since you are a guardian-redeemer of our family.” (Ruth 3:9) Ruth is asking Boaz both to be her husband (which is pretty forward in that culture) and to act as guardian-deemer to care for Naomi. Like Ruth and Naomi, Boaz didn’t have to do what he does next; but he too, is a person of faith, for whom the love of others isn’t odious.
Boaz goes to the village gate, where judicial and civil proceedings are hammered out by the men of the community, establishing that the next-in-line male who had first-dibs on redeeming Elimelech’s property isn’t interested in buying the property if it means he also has to marry Ruth. He’s, afraid that his property would go to Elimelech’s heir if he marries Ruth. You know how the story ends. Boaz marries Ruth and takes care of Naomi. Later, Ruth and Boaz have their first child, Obed, the father of Jesse, and the grandfather of David, Israel’s greatest king. It’s into David’s family line that eleven centuries later, according to the plan and the promise of God, the Savior of the world, Jesus is born in Bethlehem.
From the beginning, God has had a plan and He uses grief-stricken people, imperfect people, people just looking ahead to the next step, to do His work in the world.
There are three main things to mention about what we see in this remarkable book.
First, of course, is that Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz do way more than God or anyone would require of them. They act with what the Hebrew of the Old Testament calls hesed, a word is often translated as mercy or covenantal steadfastness. But it might better be rendered as merciful fidelity. God is the initiator of His merciful covenants with Israel and the Church and believers and that same attitude of merciful fidelity is played out in the lives of those who trust in Him. Faithful to God, living in His grace, Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz are set free to love God as they know God has loved them. They knew that by God’s grace through faith, they were part of God’s people and were free to live lives of unstinting love. “This is love,” the New Testament teaches, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)
The second thing to mention is that God welcomes outsiders into His kingdom. He even uses outsiders to accomplish His purposes. Boaz was the son of Salmon and Rahab. Rahab, you’ll remember, was the Canaanite prostitute from Jericho, who, like Ruth, came to believe in the God of the ancient Israelites and helped them take that city when God gave them the land. Ruth was a descendant of Lot and his daughters who got their father drunk and tricked him into getting them pregnant. It was into the family descending from these two imperfect “foreigners” that the King of the Jews and the Savior of the world was born. If Jesus could be entrusted to such an unpromising lineage, He can also give us the gift of saving faith in God the Son, Jesus. No matter how far we have wandered from God. No matter how imperfect we are. No matter how much we may feel like an outsider.
The third thing to notice is that Boaz, the guardian-redeemer, foreshadows the guardian-redeemer God provides to all of us born with no claim on life with God. Like Boaz, who took Ruth as His bride, Jesus has come into this world to take His Church, the fellowship of repentant believers in Him, as His bride. Jesus died and rose to make us heirs of His grace. Infinitely and eternally more than Boaz, Jesus redeems us, not with money, but with His own sinless life offered on a cross. The faith and lives of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz, empowered to love by the God of love, help us see what kind of God we worship. But, if we want to know where their love came from, we look to Jesus, God the Son, the God Who empowers us to live, confident in His grace and forgiveness, and to love others as God loved us when He went to the cross. Amen
Jesus commends the sheep for all the wonderful things they’ve done. But the sheep spend three verses saying, “We don’t remember doing any of that stuff!” Had the sheep in Jesus’ account of the judgment thought their good works had something to do with their eternal salvation, they wouldn’t say that. They would have been keeping score. In essence though, they ask Jesus,“Good works? What good works?”
Good works are not the ticket to life with God. Jesus says, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29) But something happens in the lives of those who believe in God. When we receive the gift of faith in the God now revealed to everyone in Jesus, faith being a gift that comes to us not by our works but by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God, we become, in a new way, “God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10) Even our good works are things God has set up and we just walk in them.
All of which brings us to our Bible lesson for tonight, Ruth 3-4. We ended the message last week with two widows: Ruth and Naomi. Ruth is a Moabite who insists on going with her mother-in-law, Naomi, to Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem, in Israel. Ruth does this both out of devotion to the God of Israel in Whom she has come to believe and to care for her mother-in-law.
In chapter two of Ruth, which we’re skipping tonight, Ruth finds work helping with the barley harvest on the farm of a man named Boaz. Boaz is a distant relative of Naomi’s late husband, Elimelech. Boaz notices Ruth is a hard-worker and knowing that she’s devoted to God and devoted to Naomi, her mother-in-law, takes care to ensure that Ruth has food she can share with Naomi and that she isn’t harmed while working for him. (More on that in a moment.)
The harvesting of barley involved taking the grain to a threshing floor. A threshing floor sat on top of a hill, composed of an area about thirty-feet wide, the floor made up of soil ground down flat. West winds, the prevailing winds, were strong during the day. But at sunset, the winds, still going, would die down enough to allow for the threshing to begin. The first step was to lead animal-drawn wagons over the grain set on the threshing floor. This would burst the grain open and allow for the second step. In this step, men used shovels to scoop up grain and toss it in the air. The unwanted chaff was blown away, while the usable grain remained. This work went on late into the night. It involved only men, the women being sent away for their safety. And there was a reason for that. Threshing floors were notorious settings of men who took advantage of women. When the crop has been picked, Ruth tells Naomi how well she’s been treated. Naomi is delighted because she knows and respects the older Boaz, an honorable man.
That brings us to chapter three. “My daughter,” Naomi tells her daughter-in-law, Ruth, “I must find a home for you, where you will be well provided for.” (Ruth 3:1)
Under God’s Law, Ruth was under no obligation to play the matchmaker for Ruth or to concern herself with Ruth’s future. No more than Ruth was obligated under God’s Law to commit herself to following the God of Israel, Yahweh, or caring for Naomi. But when God has gifted you with faith and, by grace, made you one of his saints, the question is no longer, “What do I have to do to please God?” but “What do I get to do as I interact each day with my neighbors, including the neighbors under my own roof?” According to Saint Paul, we can have the same mind in us that Christ Jesus had. Although He was God, Jesus didn’t exploit His deity, but became a servant for our good. When, through faith, we know we belong to God forever, we can make the business of others–their needs and interests–our business. I love what Martin Luther says: “God doesn’t need your good works. But your neighbor does.”
So, Naomi concocts a plan, drawing on two interrelated civil laws of the Jews.
One is that of the guardian-redeemer. When a man died without heirs, the nearest male relative could act as guardian-redeemer, ensuring that the deceased man’s birthright will remain with the extended family and tribe as originally assigned by God.
The other law was levirate marriage. This required that the next available bachelor son marry his brother’s widow and that the first son born to that union would become heir to the dead man’s property.
Naomi has Ruth bathe, perfume, and clothe herself like a woman no longer in mourning, like one, in fact, dressed as a bride. Ruth is to go silently to the threshing floor, waiting for Boaz to complete the harvesting and have his dinner and then, entering after all the men have gone to sleep, uncover his feet so that the by-now gentle breeze of the night would soon wake him. In the meantime, Ruth is to lie down at his feet, dressed as a bride.
If this all sounds a little racy, you should know that, in the original Hebrew, this chapter of Ruth is filled with innuendo and double-entendres. That’s because threshing floors, where men spent the night working, many got drunk, and all fell asleep to guard the crops from theft, were notorious for seduction and rape. But here, we’re to compare and contrast because Ruth and Boaz, despite all of the opportunities, behave honorably.
So Ruth follows Naomi’s instructions and when the startled Boaz awakens, she says, “I am your servant Ruth. Spread the corner of your garment over me [a phrase that means, ‘Be my husband.’], since you are a guardian-redeemer of our family.” (Ruth 3:9) Ruth is asking Boaz both to be her husband (which is pretty forward in that culture) and to act as guardian-deemer to care for Naomi. Like Ruth and Naomi, Boaz didn’t have to do what he does next; but he too, is a person of faith, for whom the love of others isn’t odious.
Boaz goes to the village gate, where judicial and civil proceedings are hammered out by the men of the community, establishing that the next-in-line male who had first-dibs on redeeming Elimelech’s property isn’t interested in buying the property if it means he also has to marry Ruth. He’s, afraid that his property would go to Elimelech’s heir if he marries Ruth. You know how the story ends. Boaz marries Ruth and takes care of Naomi. Later, Ruth and Boaz have their first child, Obed, the father of Jesse, and the grandfather of David, Israel’s greatest king. It’s into David’s family line that eleven centuries later, according to the plan and the promise of God, the Savior of the world, Jesus is born in Bethlehem.
From the beginning, God has had a plan and He uses grief-stricken people, imperfect people, people just looking ahead to the next step, to do His work in the world.
There are three main things to mention about what we see in this remarkable book.
First, of course, is that Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz do way more than God or anyone would require of them. They act with what the Hebrew of the Old Testament calls hesed, a word is often translated as mercy or covenantal steadfastness. But it might better be rendered as merciful fidelity. God is the initiator of His merciful covenants with Israel and the Church and believers and that same attitude of merciful fidelity is played out in the lives of those who trust in Him. Faithful to God, living in His grace, Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz are set free to love God as they know God has loved them. They knew that by God’s grace through faith, they were part of God’s people and were free to live lives of unstinting love. “This is love,” the New Testament teaches, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)
The second thing to mention is that God welcomes outsiders into His kingdom. He even uses outsiders to accomplish His purposes. Boaz was the son of Salmon and Rahab. Rahab, you’ll remember, was the Canaanite prostitute from Jericho, who, like Ruth, came to believe in the God of the ancient Israelites and helped them take that city when God gave them the land. Ruth was a descendant of Lot and his daughters who got their father drunk and tricked him into getting them pregnant. It was into the family descending from these two imperfect “foreigners” that the King of the Jews and the Savior of the world was born. If Jesus could be entrusted to such an unpromising lineage, He can also give us the gift of saving faith in God the Son, Jesus. No matter how far we have wandered from God. No matter how imperfect we are. No matter how much we may feel like an outsider.
The third thing to notice is that Boaz, the guardian-redeemer, foreshadows the guardian-redeemer God provides to all of us born with no claim on life with God. Like Boaz, who took Ruth as His bride, Jesus has come into this world to take His Church, the fellowship of repentant believers in Him, as His bride. Jesus died and rose to make us heirs of His grace. Infinitely and eternally more than Boaz, Jesus redeems us, not with money, but with His own sinless life offered on a cross. The faith and lives of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz, empowered to love by the God of love, help us see what kind of God we worship. But, if we want to know where their love came from, we look to Jesus, God the Son, the God Who empowers us to live, confident in His grace and forgiveness, and to love others as God loved us when He went to the cross. Amen
