This morning, we’re going to continue in our study in the book of Ruth.
We started two weeks ago as we were introduced to Elimelech and Naomi who chose to leave Israel and the famine in the land to follow their “luck” with a foreign god and his country instead of allowing the sovereign Lord of lords to protect them. Then, Elimelech died, and left Naomi, and his sons Mahlon and Chilion to really struggle. After that, the boys married idol worshipers and then the boys died too. That left us with a widowed mother and her two widowed daughters-in-law to somewhat fend for themselves in a land that is strange and far from home for Naomi.
Then last week, we looked at Naomi’s resolve to return to the land of Judah with her two daughters-in-law. As they were on their way, she begged the young ladies to return to their idols and families in Moab and let her, overflowing in bitterness towards God, go on by herself. Eventually, Orpah returned to Moab, but Ruth decided to make a total break with her past. She told Naomi that she would go with her wherever Naomi went and that Ruth would follow God and stay with Naomi until the day she died. After this moving speech, the two widows resumed their journey and returned to Bethlehem.
In Chapter two, we pick up the next part of Naomi’s and Ruth’s story.
Ruth 2:1 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 win 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. 4 And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. And he said to the reapers, “The LORD be with you!” And they answered, “The LORD bless you.” 5 Then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers, “Whose young woman is this?” 6 And the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered, “She is the young Moabite woman, who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. 7 She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.’ So she came, and she has continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest.”
Last week, I used the Alexanders as an illustration for how people might talk in a small town like Goodfield. Today, I will use the Kuntzs and Coulters, because I think the parallels are pretty good there.
So, to paraphrase the story…Bill and Maurine left Goodfield for ten years. While they were gone, Bill and their kids all passed away. When she returns to her home with Christine in the fall of 1985, it’s already harvest time and they obviously haven’t planted anything since they’ve been gone for a decade.
In those days, people didn’t have Social Security, food stamps, Temporary Aid for Needy Families, life insurance, pensions, or any of those kinds of resources from the government or corporations to help people in need. As a result, Maurine and Christine were on their own trying to figure out how they were going to live. They had a house to live in, but no food.
So, since it was harvest time, Christine went out to the fields to try and find some corn that the combines hadn’t picked up. You know how that works…the combine goes through the fields harvesting the corn, but some kernels fall on the ground, sometimes whole ears fall and don’t make it into the combine, sometimes as the farmer turns the combine, he misses a couple of stalks in the corner of the field, and sometimes, as the corn is put from the combine into the wagon or semi a little bit gets spilled.
So, Christine knows that even though their fields don’t have corn growing, she can get some out of other fields.
For some reason, Maurine is still so upset with God that she doesn’t give Christine any directions on where to go to find her corn. As she sets out, she just so “happens” to come across a field that young Kenny Coulter owns and farms (sorry Madeline…he’s single in this story so you just have to watch from the outside).
At some point, Kenny comes out to check on the harvest…some things don’t change in farming do they? Even though he hadn’t farmed in twenty years, Karen’s dad was ALWAYS checking on the tenant to make sure he was farming the land properly!
As Ken surveys the harvest, he sees a young girl that he doesn’t recognize picking up the extra kernels of corn. Kenny, thinking he knows everyone in the Goodfield area asks Jim Morris, his farm hand, who she is, and he responds that it’s Maurine’s daughter-in-law who had appropriately asked about gleaning in the field and then who had been working really hard all day to get the food.
After finding out who Christine is, Kenny steps away from Jim to go and talk with her.
Ruth 2:8 Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Now, listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. 9 Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping, and go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn.” 10 Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” 11 But Boaz answered her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before. 12 The LORD repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge!” 13 Then she said, “I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, though I am not one of your servants.”
Kenny goes over to Christine and tells her that he has heard the whole story about how she and Maurine have struggled and how Christine has done so much to help Maurine out. He speaks a blessing on her for what she has done and also tells her that she needs to stay with his servant girls to glean and that he will make sure that no sexual harassment will come from the workers in the field. She should even feel free to grab a Dr. Pepper from the guys’ ice chest during break times instead of trying to find her own drink somewhere.
Back to the text…
Ruth 2:14 And at mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine.” So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her roasted grain. And she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over. 15 When she rose to glean, Boaz instructed his young men, saying, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. 16 And also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her.”
Kenny went so far as to invite this beggar, widowed, foreigner to come and eat lunch with the field hands. It seems that she may not have even had lunch of her own to eat, because Kenny provided lunch for her…and it was such a lunch that she had leftovers that we read later she took home to Naomi.
After lunch, Kenny takes things a step further…he instructs Jim and the other men to not only let Christine gather corn from the edges of the field and from the ground as the Levitical law demanded, but they are now to let her get some corn from the stalks that haven’t been harvested and they are even to purposefully drop some corn for her to easily pick up! Boy… Kenny is quite a nice guy isn’t he!
Christine keeps working after lunch and we’re told how that evening went for her:
Ruth 2:17 So she gleaned in the field until evening. Then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. 18 And she took it up and went into the city. Her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. She also brought out and gave her what food she had left over after being satisfied. 19 And her mother-in-law said to her, “Where did you glean today? And where have you worked? Blessed be the man who took notice of you.” So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz.” 20 And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by the LORD, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead!” Naomi also said to her, “The man is a close relative of ours, one of jour redeemers.” 21 And Ruth the Moabite said, “Besides, he said to me, ‘You shall keep close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest.’” 22 And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, “It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, lest in another field you be assaulted.” 23 So she kept close to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the barley and wheat harvests. And she lived with her mother-in-law.
Now, I’ve been using corn in our story with Maurine, Christine, and Ken, since that’s what we grow around here, but remember, in the story, Boaz is harvesting barley. While we don’t grow barley around here, most of us have probably seen wheat or barley kernels. They are SMALL compared to corn or soybeans. So, as we think about the story here, we need to remember that Ruth is picking up tiny little pieces of grain and putting them into her basket. I don’t know exactly how that works that someone is able to walk in a field where they’re cutting the crops by hand and you have little pieces of the grain laying in the chaff and under the footprints of the guys working in the field.
At any point, we’re told that Christine gathered up enough barley that when she had crushed it into barley flour that it was about an ephah’s worth. As I tried to figure out how much that was, one estimate was about five gallons. So, you can imagine, how hard would it be to pick up little barley pieces and then have enough that when you crushed it down and got rid of the hull that you had a five gallon bucket full…I guess that’s a pretty good day’s work!
At any rate, Christine returns to Maurine with this five gallon bucket of barley flour and the left-overs from her lunch and Maurine is shocked with how much food she had. She immediately asked where in the world did Christine glean??? It was obvious to Maurine that God had given some kind of special blessing to Christine and that the man who had helped out should receive a blessing from the Lord for that!
Remember, Maurine did not tell Christine where to go look for barley, so she wants to know where she ended up. Christine of course is a foreigner, and she innocently tells Maurine that some guy named Kenny is the one who helped her.
At this point Maurine comes to life…I can hear her saying…Ken…Kenny Coulter? THE Kenny Coulter who was raised with Bill? THE Ken who helped build the barn across the road from here? THE Ken who is one of our relatives? THE Ken Coulter who is one of the heirs of the Robinson farming dynasty? THE Kenny who could provide us with Angus meat for the rest of our lives?
As all of these thoughts are going through her mind, and probably coming out of her mouth, Maurine gets really excited! This Kenny, whose field Christine had “accidently” stumbled across that morning was a man who while not an exact relative as in a brother or uncle to Bill Kuntz, was indeed close enough of a relation that he could fulfill the laws given by the Lord to marry Christine and make sure that all of Bill’s land would be taken care of and that Christine and Maurine would be taken care of.
Now, remember from last week, Naomi was so upset with God and what He had “done to her” that she wanted everybody in town to call her bitter-old-woman! However, we see in these verses some major thawing in her anger as she is clearly recognizing God’s hand in this set of circumstances of leading Ruth to the particular field of a kinsman-redeemer who could possibly be the answer to their needs on so many levels…whether from the extra barley, the huge lunch with left-overs, ongoing opportunities to glean throughout both the barley and wheat harvests, protection for Ruth while she was out in the fields, and maybe…just maybe…Boaz would exercise his responsibility and would marry Ruth and give them long-term security and hopefully a son to carry on the Kuntz family name!
Now, I don’t know how it is for you. Perhaps, your life has always gone perfectly! You’ve never made a business decision that didn’t work out well. You’ve never done something stupid where you or someone else near to you got hurt…whether physically or emotionally. You’ve never had a job that you didn’t like or a boss that didn’t like you. You’ve never had the markets go poorly such that you wondered about your retirement account. You’ve never had UAW go on strike so you had to work on the floor instead of in your office. You’ve never had someone close to you walk out on you and leave you in a lurch. You’ve never been part of a church where people keep leaving and you wonder what the future is going to be. You’ve never had children quit following the Lord or do things that embarrass you or other Christ followers.
You get the point…. We’ve ALL had something bad happen to us or even because of us! Like Naomi, it becomes easy to become angry and bitter towards the Lord! It is easy to shake our fists at God and ask, “Why me???!!!!”
However, the problem is that we don’t see the whole picture! We don’t know what God is doing behind the scenes! We don’t know what divine appointments He’s already orchestrated so that His glory would be done and so that as Paul reminds us in Romans 8:28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
I will never forget the day that I came over to Goodfield four years ago to meet with my Regional Young Life Director. We met at The Busy Corner where he told me that the money had run out for McLean County Young Life and that after struggling with it for over twenty years, they had decided to go with volunteers and no paid staff…I was out of a job…I was out of a ministry that I PASSIONATELY LOVED!
Did God know what was going on with His ministry? Did God know what I would do next? Had God forgotten me?
The good news was that there was a youth pastor position open up by Flanagan, and one in some town called Congerville. I applied for both of those jobs and due to changes in what was going in each church, they both changed their minds and didn’t hire youth pastors at that point.
In a strange set of circumstances, I ended up at The Baby Fold applying for a job and then I ended up getting a different job…one that really matched my skills and gifts better. I must admit, even in those days when it was obvious that the Lord had miraculously provided a new job for me, I still questioned whether, as Naomi believed, if God had abandoned me.
As Karen and I have been able to look back over the past four years, we CLEARLY see the hand of God in allowing me to work in an agency where I’ve learned so much about things that are helping us raise our foster and adopted kids. We’ve seen friends come to know Jesus in that process. We’ve seen the Lord do many things!
Yet, there was that time where we too questioned whether God really knew what He was doing. I hope that from this little story from our life and more importantly from the things that we see God doing in the book of Ruth that you know…at least with your head (even if you can’t force your heart to believe it yet) that God is indeed working things out…whether we can see what He’s doing or not.
As we close today, I want to encourage you to think through if there are issues in your life that look hopeless like these two widowed ladies. Do you wonder if God is still at work? The resounding answer is YES! HE IS!
The very same God who could orchestrate:
· Ruth picking the right field to go to
· Boaz coming to that particular field on that particular day at that particular time
· Boaz noticing Ruth out of all the others around
· Boaz doing special things to bless Ruth
· Ruth taking advantage of working hard to glean all she could
· Naomi recognizing God’s hand of blessing on Ruth
· Boaz being a kinsman redeemer who could really help the family
· Boaz taking care of Ruth throughout the harvest
This very same God can also orchestrate the solutions to whatever problem you might be facing! You may not understand what is going on; you might not be able to see the upcoming answers today; you might not even have enough hope left to trust that the Lord will indeed do what He has promised. Yet, He is working! He is in control! He is making sure that everything will work out for good and for His ultimate glory.
Just like Ruth’s kinsman-redeemer, Boaz, lived and was there because God sent him, our Redeemer, Jesus, lives to help us in the good and the bad parts of our lives. The song that we’re going to close with today reminds us that He is right there to help us in every aspect of our lives.
One of the verses and the chorus state:
The very same God that spins things in orbit
He runs to the weary, the worn and the weak
And the same gentle hands that hold me when I'm broken
They conquered death to bring me victory
Now I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives
Let all creation testify
Let this life within me cry
I know my Redeemer, He lives
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