Deo Gloria
Sermon for October 4, 2020
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: Ruth 2
Theme: First Impressions
Two weeks ago we began this sermon series on the book of Ruth entitled “The Family Tree.” Together let’s watch a video that recaps chapter 1.
So here’s an interesting quote: “You never get a second chance to make a great first impression.” – Will Rogers. That’s pretty true, isn’t it? Maybe your spouse didn’t make such a great impression when the two of you first met. Or maybe a job interview didn’t go so well because you didn’t dress the way they were expecting. Or maybe your daughter’s date didn’t give you such a great first impression. First impressions can be accurate, and they can be somewhat off. Either way, you only get one chance to make a first impression.
Today, as we look at Ruth ch. 2, we’re going to learn a few things about first impressions. Last time we met Naomi and Ruth. Here in chapter 2 Ruth meets someone else, a man named Boaz. Their meeting is no coincidence but providence. We pick up the story at v. 2:
And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.” Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.” So she went out and began to glean in the fields behind the harvesters.(vv. 2+3)
Ruth and Naomi had moved to Bethlehem. The famine was over. There was food once again. But they still had to go out and get it. You see, things were a little different back then. They couldn’t just go to Coborn’s and buy a loaf of bread or maybe buy a bag of flour and bake some bread. No, they had to go out in the field and harvest the grain so they could have something to eat. So notice what Ruth does. She offers to go out to the fields and harvest some grain. Obviously she is younger and stronger than her mother-in-law, so it would make sense for her to do it. But Ruth was doing something else as well. Remember, Naomi had been married before, married to a man named Elimelech who owned property and land in and around Bethlehem. Naomi had social standing before she left. Now that her husband had died and her two sons had died, well, it would have been rather embarrassing for her to go out in the fields and glean. So Ruth spares her mother-in-law that embarrassment. She goes to glean herself.
I should probably explain a little bit about gleaning. Gleaning was God’s way of providing for the poor, the widows, and the foreigners in the land. In his laws for the Jewish people, God had specified that when harvesting, workers were not to go back and pick up the grain that accidentally fell on the ground. They were to leave it there. The poor then could come behind the workers and pick up what had accidentally fallen. They would not have to pay for it. It was theirs. I find it fascinating how God provided for the poor, and yet did so in a way that it was not a handout. They had to work for it. And yet, God was still providing for them. So Ruth, as both a widow and a foreigner, went out to glean in the fields because they had arrived at Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
Next let’s skip back to v. 1: “Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, from the clan of Elimelech, a man of standing, whose name was Boaz.” And then jump ahead to v. 3: “So she went out and began to glean in the fields behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelech. Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters.” This is not a coincidence. God was at work here, working behind the scenes as he so often does. In the book of Proverbs it says, “In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.” So many times we do our thing. We have our plan. But don’t forget—God is also at work. A new job, a new neighbor, a broken down vehicle, you bump into a classmate you haven’t seen in quite a while—how often things that seem like random coincidences turn out to be God working in our lives! That was the case with Ruth and Boaz.
So let’s talk about Ruth. Though she was still a new face around Bethlehem, she already had a reputation. Boaz comments about this in v. 11: “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.” Boaz had heard about Ruth. He had heard about what she had done for Naomi. He had heard about her faith. News spreads quickly, doesn’t it? But usually the kind of news that spreads isn’t good news. Here it was. Ruth’s good reputation preceded her, and it was well deserved.
Look again at v. 7, where the foreman gives this report about Ruth: “She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She went into the field and has worked steadily from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.” Remember what I said about gleaning? God had established that provision in the law to provide for the poor. And yet, what did Ruth do? Even though she had every right to glean in that field, she asked permission. And then she worked hard. Except for a short rest in the shelter, she worked all morning long to get food for herself and her mother-in-law.
And later she shared what she had gathered. Look at verses 17+18: “So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah. She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough.” Because of her hard work, and something Boaz did, which I’ll get to in a minute, Ruth brought home a substantial amount of food, about a half of bushel. And some leftovers from lunch as well, for Naomi. Are you getting an idea of the kind of character Ruth had? You’re also probably seeing why her reputation preceded her. You can imagine what kind of first impression she would have made on Boaz.
Next let’s look at Boaz. He had a reputation too. Again in v. 1 we’re told: “Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, from the clan of Elimelech, a man of standing, whose name was Boaz.” Boaz was a man of standing. People looked up to him. But it wasn’t his position they looked up to; it was his character. Look at the exchange he had with his harvesters when he arrived at the field: “Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, ‘The LORD be with you!’ ‘The LORD bless you!’ they called back”(v. 4). What a greeting! Imagine a boss greeting his workers like that today, “God be with you!” And his workers responding, “God bless you too!” What would people today think? “There’s a lawsuit in the making.” Right? Boaz was a man of standing. He was a godly man.
And his reputation, like Ruth’s, was not a show. It was well deserved. Look at what he said to Ruth and the kindness he showed her in verses 8+9: “So Boaz said to Ruth, ‘My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with my servant girls. Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the girls. I have told the men not to touch you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.” Boaz helped Ruth. He took care of her. He made sure she was safe. He made sure she got food for herself and her mother-in-law. He even had her come over to eat with the workers. He gave her lunch, with leftovers. Boaz, a rather wealthy man, a man of standing, helped this lowly foreigner.
In doing these things, he also modeled kindness to his workers. “As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, ‘Even if she gathers among the sheaves, don’t embarrass her. Rather, pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don’t rebuke her’”(vv. 15+16). Boaz gave these instructions to the workers, and in doing so, not only showed kindness to Ruth, but also was teaching his workers how to be kind.
But Boaz had a reputation not just for being respectful and kind. Look at v. 12: “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 pointed Ruth to the LORD. Boaz, you see, was a believer, a man who was looking forward to the coming of the Messiah, the promised Redeemer, and he was not afraid to show that.
All of this touched Ruth. “May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my lord,” she said. “You have given me comfort and have spoken kindly to your servant—though I do not have the standing of one of your servant girls”(v. 13). Literally, Ruth says that Boaz spoke to her heart. This gives us a glimpse of what will come in the next two weeks.
So, when Ruth goes home, she let’s Naomi know what happened:
Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!”
Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said.
“The LORD bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “The LORD has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our kinsman-redeemers.”(vv. 19-20)
This is the turning point for Naomi. Remember last time how she didn’t even want to be called by her name anymore? Instead of being called Naomi, which means “pleasant,” she wanted to be called Mara, a name that means “bitter.” But now she is starting to see that this meeting was no coincidence. She is seeing that God has not stopped showing kindness to her.
Naomi mentions something sort of in passing, something that will become very important in the next two chapters. She says that Boaz is a close relative and one of their “kinsman-redeemers.” The Hebrew word is goel. A goel was a member of the extended family whose job it was to redeem what needed to be redeemed. That might mean buying a piece of property if the land had been sold by a poor relative. If a poor relative had to sell himself into slavery to pay off his debts, the goel was to pay for his freedom. A goel was even to avenge a relative’s murder. Boaz was one of these kinsman-redeemers. And as I said, that fact will become very important, especially in the last chapter of Ruth.
So what do “first impressions” mean for us? We’ve been talking about Ruth and Boaz for a while, but what does this have to do with us? Let’s be honest, our reputations, our first impressions, can be a bit of a problem. What is our reputation? What kind of reputation have you given yourself? Loud? Obnoxious? Pushy? Arrogant? Selfish? Lazy? A parent who is more interested in sports than your kids, more interested in your career than your family, someone who is more interested in your looks than the substance of your character?
Or what have we done with someone else’s reputation? Do you like to gossip? Do you like spreading bad news about others? Do your Facebook posts or texts show that you’re more interested in people’s mistakes than the good they have done? Do you realize how important your reputation is to God? Did you know he thinks it’s so important that he gave a commandment to protect your good name? The 8th Commandment says, “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.” And perhaps you remember Luther’s explanation too: “We should fear and love God that we do not tell lies about our neighbor, betray him, or give him a bad name, but defend him, speak well of him, and take his words and actions in the kindest possible way.” Let’s face it, we have a problem. We have ruined other people’s reputations by our words and our actions. At times we have ruined our own reputation by our words and our actions. And for that we need to ask God for his forgiveness.
Where our bad reputation was deserved, Christ’s reputation was spotless. Lies against him didn’t stick. In his trial, those false accusations didn’t work. He was holy. He was perfect. But then he chose to receive the worst reputation—crucifixion. The Bible says, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree”(Galatians 3:13). Can you imagine someone boasting about their brother like this: “Oh yeah, my brother was executed in an electric chair.” That’s the reputation Jesus chose for himself—crucifixion, execution as a hardened criminal. His reputation was spotless, but he chose to become the worst of all so we could become the best of all. He took our sins. He took the bad reputation we gave ourselves. He took our lies and our gossip and our hurting other people’s reputations. He took it all on himself and paid for it all with his own life so that we might be forgiven. His reputation was spotless, and he has now given us that same reputation: spotless, holy, perfect in the eyes of God, so that we might live with him in heaven.
But we aren’t there yet. So how can we gain back a good reputation here? The answer is simple to say, but not so easy to do. Make sure what you say and what you do match. Like Boaz, speak and act in ways that glorify God. Like Boaz, defend others. Speak well of others, as the 8th Commandment says. Men, if you are over others at work, be a man of strength like Boaz—not a macho man, but a godly man. Don’t exercise your authority in a way so everyone knows you’re the boss. Model what you want your workers to be and do. Be hardworking. Be kind. Be compassionate. How do we gain a good reputation? By putting Christ first, by living our life the way he wants us to and by looking to Christ for forgiveness when we fail. We gain a good reputation when we live our lives to God’s glory.
So now you’ve been introduced to all of the main people involved in the book of Ruth. Ruth and Boaz have met. Both have a good first impression of the other. And their relationship will continue to grow and bloom as the story progresses. May the same be true of us! For our Savior’s sake may we too leave people with a good first impression so they’ll want to know the rest of our story. And we in turn will have the opportunity to share with them the story of our Redeemer, Jesus! Amen.