Ordinary People: Ruth

This morning, Dave Blow wraps up our summer series on ordinary people experiencing God's extraordinary grace in the Old Testament with a reflection on the story of Ruth. Just a couple of housekeeping items: (1) next week, there will be no podcast as we will be meeting at the Baker's home for the inaugural HarbourFest (reach out for more information if you would like to attend), and (2) when we resume on September 13th, we will be jumping back into the series on the Book of Acts that we started in the spring.

Please find the slide deck for this week's teaching here.

Home Church Questions:

1. What stood out to you from this week's teaching?

2. Read the book of Ruth (preferably in multiple translations, though time may not permit). What stands out to you from this story?

3. When was a time where you lost faith? What was that like?

4. What is an area of your life in which God is prompting you act out of faith?

5. Pray with and for one another, our church community, and our world.

Instagram: @theharbournewmarket
Website: theharbournewmarket.ca
Email: david@theharbournewmarket.ca

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Well, we're on to our last Sunday of Old Testament stories. The summer has flown by, I would say. And uh next week is uh is Harbor Fest. Looking forward to a great time together. But uh I want to share this morning from probably um my favorite Old Testament story. There's lots to choose from. It's a text filled with uh wonderful themes, and it's simply the story of Ruth. I think one of the reasons I love the story is it doesn't begin with a miracle. It's it's a quiet, simple story, but full of depth. There's no Red Sea parting, no fire from heaven, no prophets standing before kings. Instead, Ruth, well, Ruth begins with something about as ordinary as you can get: a family experiencing grief and loss. And uh what happens through that. We have a woman grieving, a daughter-in-law making a decision, two women trying to figure out what comes next, and yet somehow, in the middle of everything, God is quietly at work, and that's our big idea for this morning. God is often working in our lives in ways we don't recognize at the time. And we're conditioned to look for God in the spectacular, but our text this morning reminds us that God is also present in the ordinary. He's present in showing up, in being faithful, in caring for someone, and making a difficult decision, picking up the pieces after disappointment, and in doing the next right thing. So it's more than a story about loss, it's a story of loyalty and a story about belonging, and ultimately a story about faithfulness. Well, our story begins in Bethlehem. There's a famine in the land. So a man named Emelech takes his wife Naomi and their two sons to Moab. And while they are there, Emelech dies, and Naomi is left with her two sons. The sons marry two Moabite women, Ruth and Orpah. Then tragedy strikes again, both sons die. So now Naomi is left without her husband and without her sons. Three widows, Naomi, Ruth, and Orpa. And in the ancient world, being a widow would make you tremendously vulnerable. Naomi's lost her family, she's lost her security, she's lost her future, as she imagined it, of course, and eventually she decides to return home to Bethlehem. And she tells Ruth and Orpa to go back to their own families. Well, there's a decision that has to be made. And Orpah decides to do that, but Ruth says no. No, Orpa was reluctant to leave, but at the end of the day she did. But Ruth says no, and says something profound, and that's the backbone of our scripture this morning, and something that's burned in my heart for the past few years, because I think it's so I think it's so relevant. Ruth replies in Ruth 1, 16, don't ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Whenever you die, or wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us. And when Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she said nothing more. Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. This is uh a passage that's often touched on in weddings. It's uh often a wedding story. Um I do mostly civil ceremonies, so I'm not invited to share a uh a homily usually. Um, if you did anything longer than three minutes, people might start throwing their programs or even worse, looking at their phones. So, but there was a time about four years ago when I had the privilege of sharing this homily at a at a family friend's wedding. Um Sherry and I have known Doug and Eleanor Snyder since he was in youth. We were newly married. Our lives have been kind of intertwined for about the last 50 years, and a few years ago I had the privilege of uh officiating or solemnizing their wedding. And they made it clear that they wanted Grandpa Dave to do it, and they wanted a homily. And I don't even know how, I don't remember. This is the story that uh came to me. Often 2 Corinthians gets a pass at weddings. I mean, I can say that as a ceremony. Love is patient, love is kind, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And sometimes I'm not sure it's heard, you know, in the proper context and certainly not with the the depth needed, but this story, again, is um sometimes said at weddings. And I would submit, though, that it's many of our stories. These words are are familiar, because they're words of loyalty. Ruth is essentially saying, I am not leaving you alone. Ruth chooses faithfulness. So think about that. She's a young widow. She could return to her own people, start over. She could go back to what's familiar, she could find another future for sure. Instead, she chooses to stay with Naomi. And we don't get the impression in the text that Ruth has any idea of what the future is going to hold. She doesn't have a five-year plan. She doesn't know where they're going to live, she doesn't know how they're going to survive. She really doesn't know what will happen. She simply knows that Naomi needs her and she says, I will go with you. And there's something profoundly Christian about that. Because faith isn't always knowing where the road leads, is it? It's sometimes faithfulness simply means when we say, Well, I'll walk with you. That's faithfulness. And think how often this happens in our own lives. I think of us who are going through medical challenges, partners who have medical challenges, when our partner says, I will walk with you. Or the friend that says, No, no, no, you don't have to go through this alone. Parents, you sit beside hurting children. Sometimes we visit a person in hospital, sometimes we bring her meal, sometimes we text, we make a phone call. Faithfulness, church, often looks ordinary. But God works through the ordinary. So Ruth and Naomi arrive in Bethlehem and they have very little. So Ruth goes out to gather grains in the field, and she's doing what poor people were permitted to do under Israel's law. They're allowed to glean the leftover grain after the harvesters are gone through, and for all intents of purposes, they picked up the scraps. Notice Ruth is not preaching, Ruth is basically existing and wondering what the future holds. And our story picks up. Now there was a wealthy and influential man in Bethlehem named Boaz, who was a relative of Naomi's husband, Elimelech. One day Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, Let me go out into the harvest fields to pick up the stalks of grain left behind anyone who is kind enough to let me do it. So Naomi replied, All right, my daughter, go ahead. So Ruth went out to gather grain behind the harvesters, and as it happened, she found herself working in a field that belonged to Boaz, the relative of her future, the relative of her father-in-law, Elimelech. While she was there, Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters. The Lord be with you, he said. The Lord bless you, the harvesters replied. Then Boaz asked his foreman, Who is that young woman over there? Who does she belong to? And the foreman replied, She is the young woman from Moab who came back with Naomi. She asked me this morning if she could gather grain behind the harvesters. She has been hard at work ever since, except for a few minutes of rest in the shelter. Boaz went over and said to Ruth, Listen, my daughter, stay right here with us. When you gather grain, don't go to any other fields. Stay behind the young women working in my field. See which part of the field they're harvesting and glean there. And so the journey continues. Now, the Bible tells us that Moaz is a relative of Naomi's husband, and slowly the story begins to unfold. Boaz notices Ruth, he hears about her faithfulness to Naomi, and he tells his workers to treat her kindly. He makes sure she has enough grain, he protects her, and eventually, as we'll find out in a few moments, Boaz becomes Ruth's redeemer. But let's notice how the story develops. Ordinary acts. One ordinary act after another. Ruth stays with Naomi, Ruth goes to the field, Ruth works, Boaz notices, Boaz acts, and more about Boaz in a moment. But right now, God is weaving all of these ordinary things together. And I think this is one of the most important lessons we can take away this morning. This book never records a moment where God says, Ruth, here's what's going to happen. Ruth doesn't get a map, Naomi doesn't get a vision, Boaz doesn't receive an angelic announcement of any sort. They simply live faithfully, and God works. And I often wonder how many times this is true in our own lives. We realize after, you know, after some time, that wasn't an accident. That conversation mattered. That person came into my life at exactly the right time. Mike shared last week a door that closed, but another one opened. We all have gone through difficult seasons that have changed us. And we didn't see it, but God was working. There's a wonderful phrase that theologians sometimes use: the providence of God. And that simply means God is at work even when we don't see Him. And Ruth is filled with providence. God is rarely mentioned as dramatically intervening, but by the end of the story, we realize God was there all along. And what about Naomi? Well, Naomi is still grieving, and she returns to Bethlehem and she tells the people, Don't call me Naomi, call me Mera, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. See, Naomi's name means pleasant. Mera means bitter. And Naomi is essentially saying, Don't call me pleasant anymore, call me bitter. And I think we can relate to the pain behind these words. She believes that God has dealt harshly with her, and we can certainly understand that emotion. She's suffered loss. She's suffered loss of a husband, loss of two sons. She's she's empty. She's coming home empty, but she's not actually empty. She has Ruth. But Naomi can't see it. The pain is just so large that it's blocked her view of hope. And again, something that we can understand. There are seasons when loss and grief change the way we see everything. And we can look at our lives and think that nothing good can come from this, or my best days are behind me. I don't know what God could possibly do with this, but our story this morning reminds us that the story isn't over because we can't see what comes next. And there's another dimension of this story that often just gets kind of glossed over, and it's easy to overlook, but it's important. Ruth is a Moabite. She's not an Israelite, so she's an outsider from day one. Yet she becomes part of God's covenant story, and that's significant. And as all roads point towards Jesus in our Old Testament narratives, God's family is larger than our boundaries that we create sometimes. So Ruth enters a community where she could have been treated as different, but she finds belonging. And through Ruth, God reminds us that people that we regard as outsiders are central to the story that God's writing. And the Bible's full of this. Teaching us and surprising us with the people He chooses. So the outsider becomes central. The unlikely person is important. And the person no one would really expect becomes part of God's purpose. And we're going to see some genealogy in just a moment, but as a spoiler, Ruth becomes the great-grandmother of King David. And through David's line comes Jesus. So there's an indestination that's beautiful. A Moabite woman who is gathering leftover grain in a field becomes part of the genealogy of Jesus. God takes an ordinary woman and places her in the middle of his extraordinary story. So faithfulness. What does it look like? It's tricky, yet it's so simple. We often talk about having great faith. We love that as Christians. And in reading this text over and over and over, and I weave in and out throughout the years and often come back to it in personal devotions. I wonder if we should be talking more about faithfulness. Mike got me thinking about that again last week when he shared about Daniel's journey. Where faithfulness wasn't dramatic, although God worked dramatically. Faithfulness is just simply showing up, keeping your word, caring for someone, doing your work well, being kind when nobody notices, serving when you're not thanked, staying when leaving could be so much easier. Offering forgiveness, being present. Faithfulness doesn't always make the headlines, but it can change lives. And I think about the people who have shaped my life. They weren't famous, they didn't write books. They weren't standing on stages. They were simply faithful. And it could be anyone in our lives a pastor, friend, neighbor, someone who believed in you. Ruth doesn't know what's going to happen. She showed up. That's all she did. Naomi doesn't know what's going to happen, but she takes a risk and goes home. And Boaz, well, he doesn't know how the story's going to end, but he does what's right. And often that's enough. We don't have to know the ending to be faithful. We don't have to know how everything's going to work out. So I think we simply need to ask as we start each day, what's the faithful thing I can do today? And it can be anything. Sometimes discipleship is oh so ordinary, and we tend to overthink it. Well, there's another beautiful theme in Ruth: redemption. A little about Boaz. He's known in the Old Testament as a kinsman redeemer, and he uses this position to protect Ruth and Naomi and restore what's been lost. And that points us to the larger story of Scripture, because God's word is ultimately a story of redemption. We experience loss, we make mistakes, we become separated from God, things become broken. God stays. God doesn't walk away. God moves towards us and he redeems. And as a community of faith, we see that ultimate expression of redemption in Jesus. Jesus never waits, he's always moving towards us. So Boaz is described as a kinsman redeemer. And this is an interesting relationship. We don't understand that term. We don't use it much. It's unfamiliar. But in the world of Ruth, it was an important part of how families and communities cared for one another. A kinsman redeemer was a close relative who had the ability and the willingness to step in when a family member was in difficulty. This idea appeared in Israel's laws and traditions. Now, a family could lose its land because of simple poverty. A widow could be left without protection or provision. And ultimately, a family line could be in danger of disappearing. So a close relative could step forward to help restore what had been lost. So the key word here, of course, is redeem, which means to buy back and recover, restore, rescue. Now, redemption wasn't simply about having the ability to help. The Redeemer had to be willing to help. And Boaz didn't have to take Ruth as his wife. He wasn't forced to become the Redeemer. He chose to step forward. Now, the Bible never gives us the exact age of Ruth or Boaz. There's clues in the text that Boaz was considerably older. Boaz refers to her as a young woman. And Boaz notices in Ruth 3.10 that Ruth did not pursue younger men, whether rich or poor, which suggests that Boaz himself wouldn't have been a young man. But he was an established landowner with servants and a prominent man of standing. And Ruth appeared to be a relatively young widow, because she's described in here as a young woman. And some commentators have tried to assign specific ages, but the numbers are certainly not carved in stone in the text. I think our takeaway here is not the age difference. They don't appear to be an obvious match. Again, Ruth being young, widowed, and Boaz established. But what brings them together appears not to be attraction, it's character. Ruth sees Boaz's integrity, and Boaz sees Ruth's faithfulness. So again, this is a story about character, faithfulness, generosity, and redemption. So what does that mean to us? Well, we don't have kinsmen redeemers in quite the same way today. But this principle speaks powerfully to us. Faithfulness means noticing when someone is vulnerable and being willing to step towards them rather than step away. So yesterday I officiated a wedding. And it was special because the bride had worked with me at John Howard. She was finishing up a master of social work and had to do a four-month placement and did it at John Howard. And uh I had contracted with her and her fiance to do this wedding. And um part of our Zoom call was, you know, I I ask about you know what's going on in their lives and get to know them a little bit, and she mentioned doing this placement. Oh, well, where are you doing the placement? John Howard Society. Oh. And long story short, um she and I worked together doing some counseling and stuff over the winter, and I got to know her a little bit. And that was a huge, just a huge blessing. Um, it's so much fun to officiate weddings where there's a connection. I had never met the groom, um, but I had got to know the bride a little bit. So I've been percolating on this sermon all week. And again, the wedding theme and weddings are on my mind this time of year in general. So I met the groom at the rehearsal. This was at Belcroft north of Bradford. I met the groom at the rehearsal. Tall, tall guy, good dude, sensitive, and uh we got talking about vows. You know, vows are a big deal to some, not tall. Some just want to get to the party. But for some, vows and the ceremony is a big deal. So the videographers are there, the photographers are there, I got enough microphones on me. I don't know where they're all going, but I'm wired up pretty good. Um the processional comes, you know, there's a hundred or so people there, and it's vow time. So I don't, if we say the bride and groom are here, I don't stand there staring in like um, you know, Wolf Wolf Blitzer doing an interview. I stand out of the way and invite the couple to share their vows with each other. Well, the bride does a great job. Beautiful, beautiful vows. So then I step in and I make a comment that um, well, those are very good, and certainly feel no pressure, Mr. Groom, as you now share your vows, and I hand him his vow book. And he's been working hard on these vows. I mean, there's been emails, there's been rewrites. Man, seems like a lot of work, but um anyhow, he starts. And I could tell, and I'm off to the side, and I'm looking at him, I'm looking at both of them, and again, I want to be out of the camera shot. He is quite choked up. And he starts, and they're fabulous, they're really, really good. And I'm thinking, man, I gotta, I wish I had had some of this material. I well, I made it 49 years without it, so but it's it's good stuff. But what struck me was the emotion, and he found it really, really hard. He was getting choked up, and and of course, everyone's watching you, and there's video, and you get you get stressed out. And I'm watching this, the words are beautiful, and she doesn't have her flowers in her hands, and um she took a step towards him, and she touched him to put both her hand both her hands on his arm and just said something very quiet to the effect, I've got you. And I'm watching this, and it was one of those moments where this couple are gonna be fine. They clearly they get it. In that little moment, my this whole story crystallized in about two seconds in a simple act, and they won't even know they've done this. But I notice just that interaction between the two. He's taller, she looks up and just holds him and says, I gotcha. And they finish their vows, and we sign, sign, sign, and then you may now kiss a beautiful bride, and the rest is history. So we often live in a culture that says, that's not my problem, someone else is gonna deal with it. And that's not what we do. I've got you. You know, people don't need to figure themselves out or figure things out by themselves. See, the story of Ruth gives us another picture. When someone is hurting, God's people are called to move and to move towards them. So we become a community, don't we? When we carry one another, we become people who notice each other, and we say, you don't have to walk through this alone. Well, our story winds down, and uh of course it has a happy ending. Ruth and Boaz have a child, and as we've seen, the uh the end result is uh King David, and we fast forward to Jesus. Well, there's some great parallels here as we uh as we conclude. Ruth was vulnerable, Jesus moves towards the vulnerable, Jesus welcomes outsiders. Ruth had no way of securing her future on her own, and Jesus offers us a future we can't create for ourselves. Jesus doesn't redeem us because we've earned it, he does it simply because he loves us, and that's the heart of grace. We sometimes imagine that we need to get ourselves out of this mess before God will receive us, and the gospel says that's the opposite. And, you know, redemption, as I've learned the hard way, doesn't erase the past. Naomi's husband still died, Ruth's husband still died, their grief was real, losses were real, pain wasn't imaginary, but God didn't allow the pain to have the final word. So sometimes maybe we feel a little bit like Naomi. We've experienced loss. We have chapters closed that we don't want to close. We wonder what the futures hold. And some of us are more like Ruth. We're just trying to be faithful and hang on and uh yeah, be faithful, what what we've been given or the cards we've been dealt. Um so we do what we can. And we're reminded that we're not going to be able to see what God's doing always, but that doesn't mean that God's not doing something. So we ask, what is the faithful thing again that God is asking me to do today? And then we trust our Redeemer with the rest. Friends, our story isn't finished. God's working. He's working through the simple, he's working through the ordinary. So we show up, we love people, we keep our word, we encourage someone, we pray, we forgive, we be generous, because we don't know what God's gonna do with it. And that's my biggest takeaway. We don't know what God's gonna do with our story. It's not over. Ruth didn't, but God did, and that's good enough. So maybe we, when we pray this week, we don't ask, God, just show me the plan. Show me the plan you've got for me. Maybe we just say again, God, show me what faithfulness looks like today, and we trust Him with tomorrow. Amen. Bow your heads with me as we prepare for our final song. Jesus, thank you for these stories, these stories that are a compass to you. We thank you for the faithfulness of these uh these characters in the Old Testament, how they loved you, how they served you, how they were faithful throughout the uh the narratives. Thank you for a summer of of learning more about these, and we may we be um yeah may we be eager to uh to continue to learn and take away the truths that you have for us. Thank you again for the opportunity to be faithful to you. And uh thank you for the story of Ruth this morning, and may we apply it to our lives. Amen.