Podcast Summaries

The Old Testament reading is taken from the book of Ruth, chapter 3, verses 1 to 18, which can be found on page 269 of the Old Testament part of the Church Bibles. Naomi, her mother-in-law, said to her, My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you. Now here is our kinsman, Boaz, with whose young women you have been working. See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor. Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes, and go down to the threshing floor. But do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, observe the place where he lies. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down, and he will tell you what to do. She said to her, All that you say, I will do. So she went down to the threshing floor and did just as her mother-in-law had instructed her. When Boaz had eaten and drunk and was in a contented mood, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. Then she came stealthily and uncovered his feet and lay down. At midnight the man was startled and turned over. And there lying at his feet was a woman. He said, Who are you? And she answered, I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your cloak over your servant, for you are next of kin. He said, May you be blessed by the Lord, my daughter. This last instance of your loyalty is better than the first. You have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich. And now, my daughter, do not be afraid. I will do for you all that you ask. For all the assembly of my people know that you are a worthy woman. But now, though it is true that I am a near kinsman, there is another kinsman more closely related than I. Remain this night, and in the morning, if you will act as next of kin for you, good, let him do it. But if he is not willing to act as next of kin for you, then, as the Lord lives, I will act as next of kin for you. Lie down until the morning. So she lay at his feet until morning, but got up before one person could recognize another, for he said, It must not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor. Then he said, Bring the cloak you are wearing and hold it out. So she held it, and he measured out six measures of barley and put it on her back. Then he went into the town. She came to her mother-in-law, who said, How did things go with you, my daughter? Then she told her all that the man had done for her, saying, He gave me these six measures of barley, for he said, Do not go back to your mother-in-law empty-handed. She replied, Wait, my daughter, until you learn how the matter turns out, for the man will not rest, but will settle the matter today. This is the word of the Lord. Thank you, Lucy. Good morning. Great to be together. It is on, Brian. So, yeah. It is on, Brian. OK. OK. Brilliant. OK. Apologies. It wasn't on at my end. It is on now. We're good. We're good. Good morning. It's great to be together. If I've not met you before, my name's Gemma. I'm the vicar here, and it's always such a privilege to be able to open God's word together and explore it. So I really encourage you to have the Bibles open. Page 269. We'll be referring back a little bit to chapter 2 as well. So hopefully you've got a Bible nearby. Let's pray. Lord God, we thank you so much for your word. Thank you that we can hold it in our hands and that you speak to us through it and you speak into our hearts and shape our characters and our actions. And so I pray that you would be speaking to us today and that we would be ready to hear from you and to act on what we hear. Amen. If you're here and haven't been here for the last couple of weeks or listening to this and haven't heard the other two sermons about the book of Ruth, I'd really encourage you to go back and listen to them through our website. I am going to kind of recap a little bit as to kind of where we've got to because we're very much like diving in in the middle of this story. And this is the kind of, this is the really meaty bit of Ruth, the story of Ruth. And a couple of weeks ago at Explorer 4, our afternoon service, we were exploring this story because we're doing a series at the moment on women of faith. And I was a bit sad that we had to kind of slightly gloss over the events that happen in chapter 3. They're quite complicated. They're not massively kind of family friendly. And so we sort of jumped from Boaz let Ruth glean in his field to, and then Boaz and Ruth were married. But chapter 3 sits in the middle of those two important events. And we're going to really kind of dig into that today. So by way of a recap, we have journeyed with Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi, from Ruth's homeland, which was Moab, the other side of the Jordan River, back to Naomi's home of Bethlehem. And they were escaping the famine in Moab. And these two women have shown an extraordinary commitment to each other. It's been forged out of the sadness of their bereavement. Both have lost their husbands. And on arriving in Bethlehem, they've been looked after by this prominent landowner called Boaz. He has shown himself to be devoted to the Lord, faithful in following the Israelite laws. And he ensures that foreigners are provided for. And the way that he does that is he lets Ruth glean in his field and blesses her with an abundance of grain. And that frees Ruth and Naomi from the daily pressure of having to search for food. And Boaz has been described in chapter 2 as a man of noble character. And in Hebrew, the word for this is chali, C-H-A-L-I. And we see this in the way that he has generously welcomed and blessed Ruth in keeping with the Israelite laws, but also because of her connections with Naomi, who is one of his relatives. And in chapter 2, we observed Boaz praying. He's a man of prayer. He praises Ruth. He has good things to say about her. He protects her and even changes the way that the work was done in his field in order to ensure the best outcomes for her. And when you think about it, that is so astonishing, isn't it? That she turns up unannounced. She's at the absolute bottom of the societal pecking order. And here is Boaz going out of his way to help her. Don't know whether you ever watch Panorama, the documentaries. They obviously cover a whole range of things. I was watching Panorama quite recently, and it was focusing on several families in the UK whose children were not able to go to school because of different emotional and physical needs that they had, which meant that they just weren't coping in mainstream school. And the parents who were interviewed were just at their absolute wits' end. They were really struggling to come to terms with the fact that kind of their child was being left out of education because there just weren't enough places in schools that could provide those sorts of things that their children needed. And they felt really stuck and let down by...

those who had the power to make a difference. And basically, the conclusion at the end of the documentary was that the education system is broken. And that is probably not news to very many people. And we know that there are a great many other systems within our land and within our world that are also broken. That are meaning that they're not able to provide what they're supposed to be providing because the system itself has gone wrong. And Ruth and Naomi are stuck within a broken system. It's a system that meant that women were at the bottom of the pile, and particularly those whose husbands had died or left them. Boaz's generosity meant that Ruth and Naomi had enough to eat for the time being. But what would happen to them when the harvest was over? Widows had no long-term security. And if Ruth remained unmarried, then there was also no one to carry on the family name and protect the land of Elimelech, who was Naomi's husband who died. So there is something very broken about the system that exists within this story. And part of that brokenness is the patriarchy. And it's just important, I think, to note that patriarchal society, which obviously is a really strong theme throughout history, and we see it particularly in the Bible, and particularly in the Old Testament, that is not how God intended society to be, I don't think. Boaz does act honorably when he seeks to ensure, and we see this in chapter 2, that the male workers in his field leave Ruth alone and don't molest her. But clearly it's not okay that that kind of abuse against women was commonplace, that he was having to kind of call it out and say, actually, don't do that. I believe so strongly that God's plan from the beginning was that men and women would be equal and that everyone would be loved and cherished by everyone else. And human sin is what has caused every person and every society since then to fall very far short of God's ideal. And what we will see as we kind of dig in a bit more to chapter 3 is that Ruth and Naomi do go to extreme lengths to forge a way out of that broken system and to create options for themselves where there appears to be none. And we might be tempted to judge them for that. Oh, here are kind of two sort of women trying to like wield their power and kind of trick Boaz into marrying Ruth. But I think we need to remember that even today, vulnerable, oppressed, systematically disadvantaged women across the world have little other option but to turn to desperate measures, perhaps crime, maybe prostitution, to seek a way out of life-threatening poverty. Desperate times may require desperate measures, but desperate measures usually come with dangerous risks. And what Ruth did at the threshing floor was a dangerous risk. That's why we've called today's chapter Loving Through Risk. We might also have called it the chapter of the three plans, because first we hear Naomi's plan, then we get kind of Ruth's interpretation and enactment of that plan, and then finally we hear Boaz's plan. So Naomi has concluded that Boaz would make a good husband for Ruth. And so she gives these bold instructions to her daughter-in-law. Ruth is to go to the threshing floor, a secluded place outside of the town where they threshed the grain that had been gathered in. A place associated in that culture with sexual immorality, with prostitution. Ruth is to dress well, she's to wash and to wear perfume. And Naomi says to Ruth, wait until Boaz is asleep, and then quite literally lie in wait for him, at his feet, in the place that would normally have been reserved for the man's wife. The signal that Ruth is to communicate to Boaz is clear. I would like to be your wife. That's what she's communicating through what she does. And the way that the passage is written, and we don't know who wrote Ruth, but whoever wrote it seems to be highlighting that there was a very real opportunity, note that word, for immorality. Not only the location, this all happened at the threshing floor, also the reference to them lying together, we kind of get the sort of euphemism of that. The reference to Boaz's feet that were uncovered by Ruth, the word feet here in Hebrew could also be used for a different part of Boaz's anatomy. Here we have a man and a woman alone at night. The chances for a sexual encounter were high. And that makes it all the more surprising and wonderful that Boaz and Ruth are chaste and honourable in their actions. What Ruth was doing was not trying to seduce him, but to make a culturally understood non-verbal request for protection and for marriage. It was really bold. It was very risky. But Ruth did it. And so she follows Naomi's plan, but she adds a strategy of her own. Naomi's mentioned that Boaz is a kinsman redeemer of Elimelech's, Naomi's husband who had died. Just hopefully do this quick deep dive into what a kinsman redeemer is. If it feels a bit much, just zone out for the next minute. A male relative who had the responsibility and indeed the right to act on behalf of another relative who was in trouble, in danger or in need. And their basic duties were that if a relative became so poor that they had to sell themselves into slavery, the kinsman redeemer was the one that was responsible for purchasing their freedom. And the second responsibility was that if a married man like Elimelech died without having any children, as Elimelech did have children, but the kinsman redeemer could be required to marry the widow. Any children from that marriage would legally be considered heirs of the deceased husband, ensuring that his family line and property rights continued. And so that practice helped to ensure that if a man had died without any children, his name and his legacy within the community could continue. Hopefully if you've sort of followed that, you can sense that there is now some hope. But there were some problems as well. Because in Ruth's case, two things made this situation really unusual. So firstly, Boaz wasn't a brother of the man who had died. He was a more distant relative. And so it wasn't clear if he had the same obligations as a brother would have. And secondly, Ruth is a foreigner. Naomi's not, but Ruth has married Naomi's son and Ruth is a foreigner. And now Ruth's husband has died as well, leaving them without any children. And the laws about kinsman redeemers didn't specifically say anything about what to do with foreign widows. So when Ruth says to Boaz, who has just woken up and is startled, I am your servant, Ruth. Spread the corner of your garment over me since you are a kinsman redeemer of our family. What she's really saying, if we translate kind of in a way that code, is Boaz, will you buy the land that was owned, the land near Bethlehem that was owned by my mother-in-law Naomi's husband, Elimelech. Will you then marry me, Ruth, so that I hopefully can give Naomi and Elimelech an heir?

give them a grandson, which would then ensure that both Ruth and Naomi were provided for indefinitely. It's an escape the system kind of plan, but it is a very risky strategy because she doesn't know how Boaz is going to react. And so what happens next is nothing short of astonishing. Boaz seems to instantly kind of see something about Ruth's character. It's like he looks into her heart and sees that what Ruth is doing in asking to marry Boaz is as much for Naomi's sake as it is for her own gain. And Boaz is overwhelmed by Ruth's selflessness, and so he agrees to her plan, to her request. Imagine how Ruth would have felt hearing Boaz say, this is verses 10 to 11, may you be blessed by the Lord, my daughter. You have made this last kindness greater than the first in that you've not gone after young men, whether poor or rich. And now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do all that you ask, for all my fellow townsmen know that you are a noble woman. And there is that word again, charlie in Hebrew. Boaz, the charlie, the noble man, now names Ruth charlie, noble woman. And so in this really short time, Ruth has gone from being this moor about outsider with nothing to a respected woman in Bethlehem, and the possible future wife of Boaz. So things are looking really promising, but there was one more complication. Boaz knows of someone who is an even closer relative to Elimelech, who has the right of first refusal. And so Boaz says, I'm going to look into all this in the morning, but for now, Ruth, you can go home quietly before anyone sees you. Take these six measures of grain. That was a lot, probably about 80 pounds. Probably very significant that it was six measures. Seven in the Bible is the number of completeness. Six is incomplete. Ruth is almost there. They've almost got their plan over the line, but not quite. There is a promise, but the story isn't over. And at the end of Ruth chapter 3, we are still waiting to find out what happens. And I'm so tempted to carry on and preach into chapter 4, but that wouldn't be fair because we're going to do that in two weeks' time. It is a wonderful story. And like many stories, perhaps all stories, it works on more than one level because it is a story about Ruth and Boaz and their family. But it is also a story about you and me. Because Ruth is the archetypal outsider. She's a widow. She's a foreigner. She's a destitute woman in ancient Israel. She has no money, no status, no protection. She was vulnerable to abuse and she would have had no legal recourse if that had happened. Her circumstances could not have been worse. And in this deeper metaphor, Ruth is every single one of us. We are all helplessly trapped in the broken system of sin and escaping from it is a problem that we can't solve on our own. And every single one of us needs a redeemer. And so into this story, quite a few generations later, but in the line, the family tree of Boaz and Ruth, enters Jesus as a baby in Bethlehem. To be a kinsman redeemer, you needed two things. You needed to be related and you needed to be willing. And by taking on human flesh, God becomes our brother, our friend, like us, close enough to redeem us and yet perfect enough to pay the full price for our salvation. And he is willing. He's willing to offer his life to redeem, to buy back, buy out of that broken system, all who trust in him. And so Boaz in this story is a herald, a signpost to the compassion and the generosity of Jesus. And just as he's extending kindness and protection to Ruth, a foreign outcast, Jesus hangs on the cross extending grace to all who are spiritually helpless. And so the book of Ruth isn't just a love story between Ruth and Boaz, although it is that. It's a picture of the greatest love story that the world has ever known, the love of God for his children. A love that caused him to go much further than a threshing floor at midnight. It caused him to leave the glory of heaven and come as a baby to Bethlehem where he didn't find refuge, where he was the outcast. There was no safe refuge for him there. And then quickly he was driven out having to flee for his life with his family into Egypt. And yet the love that is God and is within God caused Jesus to abandon that eternal glory of heaven and become a willing servant. Someone who had no reputation, who was despised and rejected by those who would eventually nail him to the cross. And there, in the midst of a darkness far deeper than any ordinary midnight, Jesus offers himself up for the sins of his people. And through that ultimate sacrifice, he offers us his name and he declares that everyone who trusts in him will be called children of God, heirs of the kingdom, included in the family because of our trust in him, our kinsman redeemer. So where do we go from here? What do we do with Ruth chapter 3? We turn to God in praise and thankfulness for all that Jesus has done for us. And then we turn to the world and we ask that God gives us eyes of compassion and hearts that are Charlie, that are noble, so that we might be those who, like Boaz, go out of our way for the stranger in our midst. And that we might be those who, like Naomi and Ruth, act with courage and determination to seek to find another way, even in the face of the human systems that we exist within, that have been broken by human sin. And in order to do those things, we will need to be brave and we will need to take risks. But when we do it, it will be totally worth it. Thank you, Gemma. Let's pause.