“1 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham: 2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3 Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, 4 Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5 Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse the father of King David.
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On the evening of April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot and killed Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Two months later, after the close of the California primary, Sirhan Sirhan shot presidential candidate Robert Kennedy at a Los Angeles hotel. Kennedy lingered on for 26 hours. During those 26 hours, many Los Angeles radio stations played one song over and over again –Jackie DeShannon’s version of What the World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love. “What the world needs now is love, sweet love, it’s the only thing that there’s just too little of, what the world needs now is love, sweet love, no not just for some but for everyone.” The song would end and begin again. “What the world needs now is love, sweet love…”
Now that song is syrupy. It’s light-weight, but it was a good choice. The world certainly needed love. It certainly needs love. The church acknowledges that. It is founded on God loving the world by sending His Son. We might change ‘Love, Sweet Love’ to a more biblical category—Steadfast Love. What the World Needs Now is Love, Steadfast Love.
That was true in those traumatic days in the 60’s. That is true today. You don’t need to watch much news to see how badly the people of this world need God’s steadfast love. We Americans like to think that barbarism is in the past, but we live in an ever-coarsening culture. We’ve got mass shootings. The war on drugs is over and drugs have won. There is an alarming rise in teen suicides, especially among LGBTQ youth. Love isn’t all our age needs, but it certainly needs love, steadfast love.
The book of Ruth gives us eyes to see steadfast love. This is a theological look at history. It zooms in from the chaos of the culture of that day on to a few individuals. It gives us eyes to see steadfast love on the most local scale. That’s good because that’s where you live. That’s where everyone lives—on the most local scale.
This sermon will be a bit different in that we don’t have any points. I know there is a point to the sermon, but there aren’t any points. We will just work our way through the book of Ruth making observations as we go.
The story of Ruth begins without Ruth. It begins with a man named Elimelech. During the days of the Judges, which was sort of like America’s wild west, an Israelite named Elimelech left the Promised Land. He would have said he left because of the famine, but that’s not how the author of Ruth wants us to see it. God had made clear in the Law of Moses that when a famine hit the Promised Land, it was only a symptom of a deeper problem. The presenting problem, the famine, was meant to drive the people to deal with the deeper problem, the sin.
That’s often the way God works in our lives as well. What you tend to name as your problem is usually just a symptom of something deeper—your separation from God in some area of life. Reckless spending is just a presenting problem; what are you refusing to find in God that drives you to reckless spending? You need to look past the symptoms to the root. What satisfaction are you looking for outside of God?
Elimelech dealt with the symptom rather than the root. Elimelech and his family left Bethlehem, which in the Hebrew means ‘house of bread.’ He didn’t stay in Bethlehem. He went where the grass looked greener.
Elimelech took his family to Moab. This was another sign of disobedience. Moab was a dirty word in Israel. The founder of that nation was born out of a drunken liaison between Lot and his daughter. More recently, Moab was one of the first nations to invade and oppress Israel once they took the Promised Land. The oppression only ended when the judge Ehud sank his sword deep in the belly of King Eglon.
Elimelech was unwise to leave the Promised Land for Moab. It didn’t fix his problems. In fact, he died in Moab. His sons also died after marrying Moabite women—Orpah and Ruth.
It certainly seemed God’s hand was against this family. That’s what Elimelech’s widow said. Her name was Naomi, which means pleasant. When she saw her friends again, she told them to call her Mara, which means bitter. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.”
Maybe that’s you this evening. Maybe you think God’s hand it against you. If you are a child of God, this story is certainly for you. It will give you eyes to see what you can’t see. It will show you how God moves in mysterious ways.
Naomi received news from home. The famine had ended. The Promised Land was bursting with bread and Elimelech’s easy answer of Moab had left Naomi emptyhanded. Our easy answers tend to do that.
Naomi was going home with her tail between her legs, but she was going home. She told her daughters-in-law to home too. They needed to go home to their parents. They needed to find new husbands. They needed homes of their own and they were very unlikely to find one in Israel. Why would any YHWH-fearing man surrounded by eligible, God-fearing women choose a Moabite widow?
That’s sensible. Naomi’s next comment was not sensible. She urged these girls to stay with their gods. As Naomi told Ruth, “Look, your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”
Most Ancient Near Eastern people believed in territorial gods. Moab was Chemosh’s territory. Philistia was Dagon’s territory. Babylon was Marduk’s territory and Naomi seemed to think that Israel was YHWH’s territory. ‘Girls, stay with your god. Why would YHWH take notice of you? You are not one of His people. Stay with Chemosh.’
God worked through Naomi despite her mistaken theology. God works through us despite our mistaken theology. Those of us in this church who are elders and teachers the responsibility to know God’s word and to lead this church by God’s word. We will blunder. God working despite Naomi’s theological blunder is a good reminder that our God isn’t limited by our mistakes.
Naomi essentially told a Buddhist to stay with Buddha rather than to come to Jesus. Ruth came anyway. Verse 16, “But Ruth replied, ‘Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May YHWH deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”
Ruth knew that she was giving up any hope of a husband and a family. This was like giving up your identity for an Ancient Near Eastern woman. She was forfeiting normal, understandable desires. Why?
People usually forfeit normal, understandable desires for some sort of glory. Musicians live on the road for a chance at the big time. Actors take any job they can find in New York or LA in hopes of making connections. They push everything else aside in pursuit of a dream. Why did Ruth sacrifice everything?
She sacrificed everything to take care of her mother-in-law. That’s steadfast love. Friday we buried Ella Mae Kooistra. Her children talked about her steadfast love for Willis in his illness. They talked about your steadfast love for her in her illness.
The Lord used Ruth’s steadfast love for her mother-in-law to bring her to Himself. “Your God will be my God.” God uses all sorts of means to bring lost souls to Himself. I just finished reading a memoir of a young woman who came to faith at Oxford. God used her love of literature to bring her to Himself. God uses friendship to bring lost souls to salvation. God uses tragedies to shake people out of their blindness so they can see the light. God can certainly use you.
Ruth went to Bethlehem with Naomi. Naomi thought that God had forgotten about her. She told her friends back in Bethlehem, “I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty.” Was Naomi empty? Remember we are working through the book of Ruth to gain eyes to see. This is theological history. What was God doing? If you can see it Ruth, you can see it better in your own life. Did Naomi come home empty? No, she came home with Ruth. At the end of the book the women of the town will tell Naomi, “your daughter-in-law, who loves you… is better to you than seven sons.”
Naomi didn’t see that at the beginning. There are certainly more than a few kindnesses from God in your life that you are not seeing.
Naomi didn’t see God’s kindness in Ruth. She only saw her shame. Chapter 2 begins by telling us that, “Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelek, whose name was Boaz.”
Naomi knew about Boaz. She knew she had a wealthy relative. Why didn’t she ask him for help? Well, what would Boaz say? She had run away from the Promised Land. She had lived in Moab of all places. Her sons had married pagan women. She had brought one of them back with her. Naomi didn’t need Boaz shoving her disobedience in her face. ‘What did you think disobeying God was going to get you, Naomi?’
Now Ruth didn’t know about Boaz. Ruth only knew they needed to eat. She asked Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.”
Remember that these were the days of the Judges. These were dangerous days for women. Judges 19 is one of the most graphic pictures of sexual assault imaginable. Ruth was a vulnerable young, foreign woman with no one to protect or avenge her. Ruth knew that. She went because she and her mother-in-law needed to eat.
Here we see the hidden hand of God. The author puts it this way, “as it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz.” This was no coincidence and the author wants you to know it. This was the steadfast love of the Lord. God was caring for Ruth and she didn’t have a clue. My guess is that you can look back on times in your life when God was caring for you, directing your steps, and you didn’t have a clue.
Ruth had wandered on to a field belonging to Boaz. Boaz arrives and the first thing we see in him is godliness. He greets his workers saying, “YHWH be with you!” That might just be a cultural saying, like ‘God Bless You,’ but I doubt it. The author of Ruth wants you to see the difference between Boaz and the culture around him. There weren’t very many people who cared about the Lord in those days. Boaz did.
We see that he’s different by the way he treated Ruth. He said to her, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with the women who work for me. Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you.”
Do you see the danger of those days? Boaz had to tell his workers not to abuse her. Have you ever needed to clearly tell your workers not to sexually assault the women they work with? This was the age of the Judges and Boaz was a rarity—he was a godly man.
Ruth asked him why he was being so nice to her. “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?”
If you’ve ever found yourself in difficulty in a foreign country, you know just a little bit about what Ruth meant. Years ago, I was in France and I was trying to find my way towards Normandy, where the D-Day beaches are located. I was at a train station. Now many train stations in Europe have signs in the native language and in English; not so in France. France doesn’t want the English language on any of their signs. I went to a ticket booth and asked the woman for help. I said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak English.’ She said, ‘I’m sorry too,’ and that was all she said. That woman clearly spoke English but she wouldn’t speak it to me when I needed help. I didn’t know what train I needed. If anyone would have helped me, I would have said with Ruth, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?”
Boaz noticed Ruth. He had his reasons for doing so. He told her, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”
Boaz was impressed by Ruth’s steadfast love. This tells you that steadfast love was rare in those days. It is rarer than we would like to think in our day.
Boaz took care of Ruth. He told his harvesters to keep tossing barely in her path for her to pick up. Went she went home that first day after work she had about twenty-two liters of threshed barely. That is a ludicrously large amount of barely. Naomi asked the obvious question, “where did you work?”
God’s kindness to Ruth startled Naomi out of her bitterness. She recognized that Boaz wasn’t going to judge her. He wanted to help her. Maybe God has startled you out of your bitterness. You may have been as bitter as Naomi –“The Almighty has made my life very bitter”—and then the Lord was startlingly generous and you were as dumbfounded as Naomi. You realized anew what Jesus meant when he said, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?” Do you see Jesus’ Father as that generous?
Naomi saw God’s generosity. She knew that Boaz was a God-fearing man. Boaz wouldn’t judge her for leaving the Promised Land. Boaz was taking care of her.
Now Naomi and Ruth could have lived off what Ruth gleaned. They could have scraped by for years working in Boaz’ field. Naomi wanted something more for Ruth. She told her, “my daughter, should I not try to find a home for you, where you will be well provided for? Is not Boaz, with whose servant girls you have been, a kinsman of ours?”
If you remember the sermon on Tamar, you remember the importance of this kinsman. A kinsman had the responsibility of marrying the widow of a relative. Now Ruth’s was an unusual situation. She wasn’t an Israelite. No one would have blamed Boaz for not marrying her. Naomi was betting that he would, and she was betting quite a lot.
Her plan was for Ruth to find Boaz at night and to lie down next to him and let him take it from there. That’s risky in itself but it was even more risky because of the times. It was harvest time and that meant there were parties. There was feasting and drinking at the threshing floor and that also meant certain women were plying their trade. Boaz would have several reasons to think that Ruth was one of those women. Naomi was betting that he wouldn’t
Ruth found Boaz sleeping on the threshing floor. As the owner of the field, Boaz would have slept there to protect his grain. She laid next to him and he woke up. Not surprisingly, he asked her who she was.
Ruth went off script. Naomi told her to let Boaz take the lead. She didn’t. She proposed marriage and she said that part of the deal was that Boaz would have to take care of Naomi and that any child they had would inherit Naomi’s land.
Women didn’t propose to men in that culture. Poor women certainly didn’t propose to rich men. Foreign women who had worshipped other gods certainly didn’t propose to godly men. They certainly didn’t propose with conditions of their own—'you need to take care of Naomi.’ That’s what Ruth did.
Boaz accepted. Why? There is not one word about Ruth’s physical appearance. Boaz tells us why he accepted he. He told Ruth, “YHWH bless you, my daughter. This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier.”
Ruth’s earlier kindness was sacrificing everything to take care of Naomi. What was this new kindness? What was this greater kindness that Boaz was talking about? “This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier.”
Ruth was risking her reputation to take care of Naomi. She was risking embarrassment to take care of Naomi. She was risking rejection to take care of Naomi. Boaz didn’t reject Ruth’s proposal because of its condition. He thought its condition was godly. He thought it was full of steadfast love. Boaz married Ruth because he knew Ruth’s heart. She was full of steadfast love. He told her, “All the people of my town know that you are a woman of noble character.”
In the arrangement of the Hebrew Bible, the book of Ruth doesn’t come after the book of Judges. It comes after the book of Proverbs. It comes right after Proverbs 31, “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.” A wife of noble character who can find? Boaz. Boaz did. Ruth, “all the people of my town know that you are a woman of noble character.”
Why? Why did everyone know it? They saw it. They saw her steadfast love. Ruth was full of steadfast love.
She is a lot like her descendent. Jesus was full of steadfast love. He too left his father’s house to care for others. He too put himself in harm’s way for the sake of others. He also put everything on the line to show steadfast love. The women of the town described Ruth this way, “your daughter-in-law, who loves you… is better to you than seven sons.” Do you recognize that Jesus is better to you than whoever you long could ever be?
You need eyes to see your own life for what it is. God’s word gives you those eyes. The story of Ruth gives you those eyes. It trains you to see God’s steadfast love on the most local scale, which is where you live.
What the World Needs Now is Love, Steadfast Love. That song could play over and over again on every radio station and it still wouldn’t show how badly we need this love.
God showed steadfast love to this world and to each person in it, each person you will come across tomorrow, this way—He sent His one and only son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. God grant the world eyes to see. Amen.