Welcome to Pathway. My message today is part of a series. The series is called Resting in the Love of God. We are meditating our way through a book in the Bible called Ruth.

Today is part 7 in the series. The title of my talk today is: The Scandal of How Little God Cares

 

Stay with me.

Previously in Ruth, we meet two women, Naomi and Ruth. Naomi, the mother-in-law is from the land of Judah. Ruth, her daughter-in-law is from Moab. They have both suffered great loss. Naomi has lost her husband and both of her grown sons. Ruth has suffered the loss of her husband, who was one of Naomi's sons. They are both in pain.

And Naomi is also in despair. She is angry. She is hurt. And for the whole first chapter, she's lashing out at God.

Naomi is the poster child for the accusation of how little God cares.

Not only are they both in pain, they are also penniless. So, as we've gone through the story, we saw that Ruth decided to go out and glean.

Gleaning was an ancient practice in which poor people could pick up dropped grain on a farmer's field. There were rules for this, but it was required under the laws of Israel.

So Ruth heads out, and she turns up on the fields of a man named Boaz.

It turns out that Ruth is very bold. She asks for special permissions that go way beyond what the laws of gleaning permitted.

Last time we saw this incredible, brilliantly written dialogue between Ruth and Boaz... and in it there was grace, more grace, amazing grace, and super grace.

It's incredible... Ruth asks for special privileges way beyond gleaning. 

 

Boaz grants the special privileges... that's grace in action.

Ruth takes full advantage of everything grace offers her... that's faith in action.

When that grace met that faith the result was mini-fireworks. So much so that Ruth gleaned an incredible amount of barley.

 

Let's pick the story up in Ruth 2:18.

We're going to do exposition, which means line by line study of the words of the Bible.

Yes, when I say "ephah" you're supposed to say wow. Because in 1 Samuel 17, an ephah of grain is enough food to feed a whole regiment of fighting men. When the grace flows, that's how God rolls.

"Then she took it up and went into the city, and her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. So she brought out and gave to her what she had kept back after she had been satisfied." (Ruth 2:18)

Ruth comes home with a mountain of food. She actually had three kinds of food.
One is all the barley she had gleaned. This in itself is a huge amount—a whole ephah!

The second all the leftovers from lunch (v. 14) that Boaz threw for his workers.

Third was the extra dessert... called "parched grain." This was a kind of snack or gift food. I'm calling it caramel corn, you can make it something else. You can make it gummy bears. Nobody really knows for sure, so use your imagination.

All of this is the first good news in the very long, very sad story of Naomi's life.

"And her mother-in-law said to her, 'Where have you gleaned today? And where did you work? Blessed be the one who took notice of you.' So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked, and said, 'The name... of the man... with him... I worked... today... is... Boaz!!'" (Ruth 2:19)

 

It's actually funny, because Naomi is dying to know how Ruth got so much food. This is a world record for one day of gleaning. How did this happen? Ruth knows, and we know, that it's grace. The kindness of God was at work.

It was grace that motivated Ruth to make such a big, bold request.
It was grace that she just so happened to "randomly" show up at the fields of Boaz... a man she had never heard of before.
It was grace that gave her permission to glean on the fields right on the heels of the reapers... something that wasn't allowed.
It was grace that gave her permission to glean among the stacked-up bundles of grace, among the sheaves... that wasn't allowed either.
It was grace that gave her a full lunch with the paid harvesters.
It was grace that gave her all the leftovers.
It was grace that gave her the leftover dessert.
It was grace where Boaz basically says, I'm going to give you the complete benefit package of being one of my employees, Ruth says But I don't work for you or make any money for you, and Boaz says, I know. Here's the benefit package anyway.

So there's so much grace and so much abundance that Naomi and Ruth are set up with provisions for the better part of a year.

And Ruth saw this all happen, but Naomi didn't. So she's dying to know.

And Ruth is awesome because she takes her own sweet time getting it out. The name... of the man... with whom... I worked... today... is... Boaz!

Ha! Take that crabby mother-in-law.

"Then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, 'Blessed be he of the LORD, who has not forsaken His kindness [hesed, grace] to the living and the dead!' And Naomi said to her, 'This man is a relation of ours, one of our close relatives.'" (Ruth 2:20)

I want to give some love to a really important word in this verse:

Kindness... this is the Hebrew word hesed, which means grace. It's one of the top two words in the Old Testament Hebrew for grace.

You don't deserve it, but God does good stuff anyway.
You don't earn it, but God gives good stuff anyway.
You push him away, but God loves you anyway.
You have something bad coming, but God forgives, God forgets, and keeps calling you home.