Welcome to Healing Scars with Pastor Burton. Here you'll find practical, relevant, biblical information.
The Bible will be broken down verse by verse so that you get the full context of the scripture to better grow in your relationship with Jesus.
Sorry, we're working through some technical difficulties. We had to reboot a few things today.
So, we're good there. So last week we started off in the Book of Ruth. We're looking at Ruth chapter 1.
In the Book of Ruth it is a redemption story. Last week we started off looking at how Naomi and Ruth were basically,
they'd hit point blank bottom, rock bottom. They're starting over.
Listening to our prayers and everything this morning, another way of putting it is it's a second chance.
We all need a second chance, don't we? So we're going to continue to build on that.
This week we're going into Ruth chapter 2. So last week, we're going to recap a little bit more on it though.
We saw loyalty, we saw love, courage. We're looking at character. Character was front and center on display for everyone to see.
And faith is found in realizing that no matter how hard the situation is that you're in,
whatever hardship it is that you're going through at the time, we have to take that leap of faith,
trust in the Lord, and turn back to Him. We have to return.
You recall the family, they had left Bethlehem. They'd gone and they'd backslid.
They left the promised land because they didn't trust that the Lord was going to provide for them.
So now, here we are after all this loss, Ruth and Naomi have returned.
And last week, a lot of the focus was on Ruth's mother-in-law, Naomi.
This week we're actually going to see it shift gears and that focus is going to turn over and we're going to be looking at Ruth more now.
She was an outsider, or I shouldn't say was, she is. She's an outsider. She's in a foreign land.
Well, there's a lot of danger there, right? She's coming from a nation that is absolutely hated by Israel.
So she's looking to make her way in an unknown place at an unknown time with a lot of uncertainty.
The security that she had is gone. The security she could have had had she remained behind in Moab is gone.
However, because of her faith and her loyalty, we're going to see how God begins to change things,
to start to work in her life to bring things full circle and to turn things around for good.
That second chance is starting as she's traveling that proverbial road of redemption.
So go ahead, open your Bibles, apps, whatever it is that you're using and join me in Ruth chapter 2.
We're going to start with Ruth chapter 2 verses 1 through 3.
The word says, Now Naomi had a relative on her husband's side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelech,
whose name was Boaz. And Ruth and the Moabites 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, entered a field and began to glean behind the harvesters.
As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelech.
So we're seeing Ruth and Naomi, they have returned. Well, Naomi has returned.
Ruth is new in this land, but they've gone back to Bethlehem, right?
They're starting their new life together. They're starting to find their way,
trying to get in the ebb and flow of this new life that they're starting.
In Bethlehem, they came back at an ideal time. It is a very moderate climate. It's great for farming.
Matter of fact, it is so good for farming that they have two harvests every year.
And at this particular time, we know that this is springtime because what they're doing is this is when they're harvesting their grains.
They have one harvest in the spring and another in the fall. And in the spring, this is always wheat and barley, that type of stuff.
That's how good this climate is. So when they return, this is what they're going into.
And the farmers, they would go out with their own people. They'd bring on hired hands to go out and take care of the harvest.
They'd be cutting down stocks. They'd be making bundles. If you've never seen a farm, if you think back to old cartoons like Snoopy and all,
it has like the like hay bales kind of coming up like this, the band around it. And that's basically how they're putting all these stocks and everything together and banding them up into these bundles.
Some much smaller than that as well where they could carry them, you know, all sizes.
And in the process of this, though, as they were moving through the field, a lot of grains were dropped. They were left over.
And God had handed down a law previously saying that those grains and everything that was dropped and left behind, the things that had fallen, were to be left alone,
that they weren't supposed to go and pick it back up. We're going to look at that for a little bit more clarity in Leviticus 19 verses 9 through 10.
Leviticus 19, 9 through 10, the word says, When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.
Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner.
I am the Lord your God. And this is repeated again, virtually word for word, in Leviticus 23 verse 22.
And I think back, you know, remember when you're in school and your teacher repeated something?
It's usually pretty important, right? It was something to take note of. And that's no different.
It actually comes from that's something that's been done throughout time.
When something's repeated, we should definitely be listening to what's being told. All right.
In Deuteronomy 24 verse 19, the word puts it like this.
When you're harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheave or a sheaf, do not go back and get it.
Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow so that the Lord your God may bless you and all the work of your hands.
So the Bible makes it very clear who the leftovers are for. Right.
This law, it provided a way to take care of the needy, to take care of the poor.
And also was a reminder for the landowners and those of esteem not to hoard everything for themselves.
That's probably something we can all, you know, especially, you know, politicians come back and learn from today, isn't it?
You know, we see a lot of people like it's mine. I want it all. I need to have everything.
You know, between it from collections to whatever, you know, it's we live in a very greedy world and that was recognized and that's what it's being provided for.
You know, because, you know, in life, you know, God, he gives us so much. He provides so many great things to us. Right.
Things that we tend to take for granted at a certain point.
But, you know, I'll remind you the blessings that we have in our life, the gifts, the talents that we have.
Those are more blessings from him. And these are things that we should be using as the church to take care of one another
and to reach out to the rest of the world to take care of those who are less fortunate and those who are struggling.
We can't lose sight of that. That's part of being the church. That is what love is.
You know, we've talked about this before. Love is action, not just empty hollow words to be spoken.
You know, when somebody passes on or they step out of your life, you know, because friendships come and go, people move on, all that kind of stuff.
When it comes to love, we know those who love us long after they're gone because of the sacrifices
and the things that they did to help us and to improve our life. Right.
So, coming back to Ruth, I said, here she is. She's a stranger. She's in a foreign land.
She could have sat around waiting for her mother-in-law to take care of her after all, this is her mother-in-law's land. Right.
This is her mother-in-law at this point, really her mother who she, you know, she could very easily just look to to take care of her
and to provide for her and, you know, make her life run as smoothly as possible, even for the suffering that they're going through.
However, she didn't look at it that way. You know, she wasn't sitting around hoping for good fortune.
She had a different mindset. You know, instead of sitting around and waiting for a handout,
she changed around to go out to work and try to get a hand up in any way that she could.
She's rising above the status that she, that most of us would fall into and looking for a way to get out of it.
You know, it's that mentality of going out and looking for what God has for us, that there's something better out there.
I can't just wait here and wait for it to come to me. I have to go out and look.
And she wasn't shy in saying what she needed or putting in the work. She went out to the fields and she got to gleaning.
Now, gleaning, this isn't a term that's used for gathering, specifically for gathering all those grains and things that were dropped and left behind.
Right? That's why even in the Word, it talks about do not go back and glean.
It's giving those seconds, that extra portion that was left over.
You know, so in her, she took that leap of faith. She stepped out. God provided for her.
He blessed her. And we're going to start seeing more of this as we go through this chapter.
You know, in the church, you know, this is where we use some of that Christian lingo.
We say, you know, she's being blessed abundantly, right? Abundantly meaning greatly or a lot or highly.
You know, it's basically saying he's blessing her not just this much, but this much.
You know, and I say lingo because even here in the church, we have a lot of terms, a lot of things that we like to say.
And people who are new on their walk, people who are new and joining the church, they don't understand these words necessarily.
So we need to remember that when we use these words, we need to take time every so often to go back and define what they are for those who are new in their walks,
so they can learn and understand and grow as well. You know, and we have this everywhere we go.
We have certain ways that we talk to our friends, certain ways that we talk to our family that makes sense, right?
We go to our job. There's not a job out there that doesn't have his own lingo.
So we need to remember to break things down, break down language for others to understand as well.
You know, otherwise we might as well be speaking a foreign language.
I don't know about you. I don't speak a whole lot of Greek.
All right. So I said Ruth here, you know, Ruth is a great example.
None of us should be sitting around waiting for a handout. You know, we should accept the blessing that we have,
use it for that hand up and not be so prideful that we have that mindset that we're entitled to something, that we're owed something, right?
That's part of where our culture has kind of fallen back today because everybody is like, oh, I'm entitled.
They owe me this. I did this. So they need to take care of me.
You know, there's a lot of empty promises out there even.
You know, when you look at the military, you have people, you know, myself, Brian, Pastor Mark, you know, several others, Brother Robert, you know, who enlisted.
They served their time. And when you enlist, they say, yeah, we'll take care of you.
And it's a very broad statement. And people take that and use it as a type of entitlement to say, oh, they're going to take care of me after service as well.
But that's not the fact. They'll take care of you while you're there.
They make sure you have the tools, sometimes a bare bone minimum, right?
But once you're done, whether you're hurt or you serve your time and leave or you serve all this time and you retire,
at the end of the day, you're not there. You're not working for them. Guess what? Bye bye. Have a good life. Good luck.
So it's one of those things we need to change our mindset that we're owed things. We're not owed anything.
When we come to these things, we're having these hardships. It's a reminder that's a storm around us.
We should be looking to God. We should be focused on Jesus and leaning on him to help us in our lives.
All right. They say we can't wait for things to come to us. Not only that, we can't just wait for things to be provided,
even with leaning on God. We need to take that step out and start working towards it, not sit on our laurels thinking,
OK, it's going to get better. If you sit around and you do nothing, it will never get better.
You have to put in the work. You have to take those first steps to start getting there. Right?
I mean, I could sit here and I can hope a hamburger pops up in front of me. I love hamburgers.
But unless I order it, say something to somebody or go out and get it myself, it's just not going to appear, is it?
That's a very oversimplified way of putting it, but that's really how our lives work.
And so that's what Ruth is doing here. She's taking those steps. She's going out in faith.
And she knows God's going to meet her. And we need to know that when we step out in faith the same way
and we start doing things, we're not going someplace blindly when we say,
Hey, I'm thinking about it. This is where my goal is, but I need to go here first. Right?
It's the Holy Spirit guiding us, the Holy Spirit working within us saying, Hey, here you go.
Here's where the light's pointing this way. Start moving.
You know, we, you know, same thing with like navigation. You're going somewhere you've never been before.
Most of us these days, we pull out our cell phone, we bring up our navigation app, right?
And we trust our phone's going to get us there or pretty close to it.
Someplace where we can at least find where we need to go if it's not exact. Right?
We trusted it. We need to trust in the Holy Spirit to guide us the same way in our lives.
You know, we should be pulling up our Bibles. We should be reading it. We should be following it.
You know, because the word is there. We have the instruction what we need to do in our daily lives.
What people hold back, we hold back from a lack of faith. We give it to a spirit of fear.
And that's the enemy. That's the enemy working in our lives.
That's the enemy trying to pull us away from Jesus to get us to stop listening to him.
And it's very easy to get caught up in what the enemy is saying.
Because I want you to remember the devil, no, Satan, before he fell, his origin, he was an angel.
He is a fallen angel, but he's still an angel nonetheless.
So it's very easy to listen to what he has to say when he's whispering in our ear because he has a very sweet voice.
Right? That's what angels are. You think of angels as these angelic, we say angelic for a reason.
They're these beautiful beings that are working all around us in the spiritual realm.
And Satan is no different. So it's very hard because what we're expecting to hear is this dark, evil, gravelly voice.
And that's just not the fact. That's not the case.
That's why we have to listen. That's why we use words like discernment.
Because we have to pay attention to the facts that are around us and take what we're seeing and what we're hearing
and what we know from the word to filter through all that.
That's what the sermon is, is filtering through all this stuff to get to the truth of the matter.
You know, we shouldn't be paralyzed by fear. We should be like Ruth and we should step out.
Just going to bring us back to Ruth chapter 2, verses 4 through 7.
The word says,
Sometimes pronounced Shiv, behind the harvesters.
She came into the field and has remained here from morning till now except for a short rest in the shelter.
So Boaz, he's a landowner. So he's paying attention to what's going on.
He recognizes when something's off, there's somebody he doesn't recognize.
It's kind of like when we're at home and somebody pulls into our driveway.
Right? Like who is that? We're looking out the window. What are they doing?
You know, if you live in an apartment complex and you hear certain sounds or someone banging on,
you're like, what's going on out there?
You know, there's something that grabs your attention.
You're aware of what's going on in your area, your property where you live that's out of the norm.
Right? So, you know, he wanted to know, you know, who's this stranger? What are they doing?
And so he asked, his hired hand, you know, or his hand here was keeping an eye on things while he was gone.
And so he's able to say, you know, this is who she is. This is what she's been up to.
Not only that, but we see here he talks about how Ruth came.
And she, even though she had the right to just go out and start gleaning, she came up and she asked.
She was very humble about what she was doing.
She knew she was in a, she could potentially be walking into a dangerous place.
So she came, she humbled herself and she asked permission, hey, is it okay if I do this in your fields?
And of course, they, you know, they honored the law and they allowed her to do it.
You know, just because we can do something doesn't mean we should just necessarily jump into it.
It doesn't give us the, that position to be rude or impulsive or just walk over people and do whatever we want.
It's like, oh, well, the rules say I can do it. So leave me alone. Go away. Right?
For all she knows, this could be someone who doesn't care about that, you know,
or has a certain way that they want them to go about it.
The Bible just says, hey, leave it for them. It doesn't say how they can go about it. Right?
So somebody could very well be like, you know what? This is my land.
You can be here from this time to this time, but you're going to stay all the way over there.
And this is all I'm going to allow you to pick up. Right?
They could have some very specific rules about that.
You know, some people you go to their house and as soon as you go in the door,
they have a little station there, very common in Asia where you have to take off your shoes,
you know, maybe put on some shoe covers or foot covers or something
because they don't want you trampling dirt and things through their home for one reason or another,
either because they have carpet that's hard to keep clean or maybe they have somebody sick
that's living in a home so they're trying to keep germs, you know, at a minimum, that sort of thing.
So they don't want you tracking all this stuff in.
So very much, you know, that could be the case.
Some people, they could care less about the law.
They're like, what are you doing here? Get out of here. Right?
It could happen. So she's being respectful and she's going, she's asking.
You know, especially as an outsider, you know, I remind you, you know, she's a Moabite.
She's from Moab.
This is another nation who oppressed Israel and refused to let them walk through their land during their exodus from Egypt.
You know, we talked about this last week where even the word says don't even be friends with them.
And so they're button heads constantly.
So she's in a very, very dangerous situation potentially.
You know, Ruth's work in the field, it could be viewed by some as well as being very menial, right?
Meaning very entry level, very basic, no real skills needed. Right?
And we take things that we see as menial and we tend to look down on it and it was no different then.
You know, you think of drivers, janitors, right?
People who are doing very basic things, food servers. Right?
And people tend to look down on them instead of realizing, hey, they're providing a service that is truly needed.
They're taking care of stuff that other people don't want to. Right?
I mean, in the military, we talk about, hey, when you get something, leave it better than how you found it.
Talking about equipment or if you go someplace, taking care of the area, that sort of stuff.
But what do people do when they go out?
You can drive down the road and you see people throwing stuff out the window, trash, cigarette butts, drinks, food, right?
Onzar, probably most of us in here have done it at some time.
And here's someone who's taking it upon themselves to take the job like, you know what, let me go clean up after them.
And for some, depending on where you've worked, you might have run into some of these guys that come in after hours, they clean.
And some of them actually legitimately love what they do. It's a calling. Right?
It doesn't matter if people are looking down and say, you know what, my bills are paid.
I got job security. I got health care. There's a lot of stuff that goes into it.
When the Lord provides you with something, you should be happy to have it.
There's a lot of people out there who don't have jobs, a lot of people who are struggling.
So no matter where that job falls, we should all be very grateful that it's there.
And if it's not our job, we should be grateful that there's somebody there who actually step into it and do that.
Instead of giving them a hard time, she's like, hey, you know what, thank you. I appreciate you.
I see what you're doing and you're doing a great job. You know, we should be lifting people up, not pushing them down.
You know, and so Ruth, you know, here she is. And this is one of those menial jobs, one of those kind of dreadful tasks.
Likely it was just as boring as it was tiring.
And we know it's tiring because Boa has a hand here, has already told her.
She's been here from morning till now working, except for when she took a small break.
So we know she needed to take a break in there as well.
You know, so it's a, you know, a degrading job for some point as well.
And, you know, nothing's changed since then.
You know, slogans like strength and steel, prepare and able, you know, going back to, going back to Koch's, the military we joke, death from within.
We picked on them. We shouldn't. We should be grateful that they're even there in the first place.
You know, some of us have even been asked at some point to do something that we consider beneath us.
Oh, that's not my job. That's not my job description. That's not my scope of practice.
That's not what I was hired for. Those are very lazy, distasteful words.
When you've been asked to do something, it's because that person is seeing you and they're trusting that you are the person for this job.
You can get it done. This guy over here, it might actually be on them,
but they're not getting it done or they need it done faster. So they're trusting in you.
We need to recognize that. Not only that, sometimes we're being asked to do a task that isn't normally something that we would do,
but it's because God has put us there to shine a light for somebody or to serve some purpose for somebody or even yourself.
It could be positioning you to meet that one person to make that next step in your life. Right?
We don't know. So we should be like, you know what? Okay, no problem. Let me do it.
I'm not saying you can't get frustrated. We're all going to get frustrated, but we need to be grateful that we have that work.
You know what? Not only that, it could also be that you're given this task to test you, to test your mettle,
to see what you're made of, to see how passionate you are about something and how far you're willing to go to do the job that's being asked for
or to attain the goal and work that goal that you're working towards. All right.
Let's go back to our reading here in Ruth 2 verses 8 through 12. The word tells us,
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 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 and whenever you go thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.
At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She asked him, Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me a foreigner?
Boaz replied, I have been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband.
Now you have left your father and your mother and your homeland and come to live with the 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.
You know, likely Ruth had chosen this field randomly. She was walking along like, Okay, this looks like a good place.
And she had taken that initiative. She had gotten to work and you know, this is long work with little rest.
Sometimes in life that's what we need to do is a lot of work with little rest.
Right? It's kind of like my job right now. I'm working 12's every week just there before I go out and do things. I go home. I'm exhausted.
But that's what I need to do to get where I need to be. Right? I'm sure I'm not the only person in this room that's doing that.
You know, working one, maybe two jobs or more. You know, going from one station to the next, trying to get through the day.
Right? It could be very tiring, very exhausting. But she's doing it. She's doing it with a glad heart.
You know, not only that, you know, glad, God had led her to a place where she was going to be in front of Boaz.
She was going to catch his eye. She didn't give into pride. You know, she had this reputation that was starting to build up.
It was following her around. People were hearing of her. Right?
This is, even though this is Bethlehem, this is still a small community. So people know people. They hear what's going on. They see what's going on.
People are telling friends, family. So she's not going unnoticed.
You know, she's displaying qualities of being brave, being loving, being faithful.
She's hardworking in all these areas of her life. You know, character, character amounts to a lot.
Because that's, you know, that's what we build our reputation on, is our character. Right?
Everybody wants to have people think good of them. It's not always going to happen. You're not going to please everybody.
But when you're doing the best you can and you're working as hard as you can, people recognize that.
You know, and not only that, you know, she's starting over.
She's, she's, she's, she has that second chance. She's capitalizing on it.
And she's living a life that we can all learn from the example of.
You know, it's one of those things where we all need to take that moment. We need to step back and say,
Hey, if I was arrested and I was charged with being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict me?
And hopefully the answer to that is yes. If it's not, you need to evaluate what you need to change and what you need to start doing in your life. Right?
Boaz saw all this in her. He was recognizing it. God's light was reflecting back in the world off of her.
Along with what he'd heard of her. And he respected it. He respected it so much that based on just what little he saw,
what he had heard on top of what he'd already heard about her reputation, that he's like, you know what?
We need to bump her up. We need to make sure she's blessed more. And he moves her up directly behind his people. Right?
He tells her, go ahead and move up. You guys leave her alone. Let her do this. If you get tired, you get thirsty, you need anything, take care of it.
There's water over there. Go help yourself. Right? He's very, being very giving. He's taking his gifts.
He's taking his blessings and he's using it to bless her as well. You know, he, he moved her from the back of the fields to being directly behind those harvesters.
And this is an ideal thing because this allows her to get, you know, the best grains. You know, instead of being here's the harvesters,
here's a group of people, and then here she is back here. She's now up here. So she's, she's already, you know, getting, getting better than what she had.
You know, God absolutely blesses us all when we do the right thing for the right reason and we let him shine through us.
Psalm 41 verse 1, the word says, blessed are those who have regard for the weak. The Lord delivers them in times of trouble.
I said, Boaz, he recognized what was in front of him. You know, we need to be aware. We need to use those blessings to help others.
And that's what he's doing. You know, especially somebody like this is somebody who's really needy. He knows she's suffering, that she's going through a hardship.
That's one of those things, you know, the church, its fellowships, the places of worship, we, you know, should all be a safe haven for people who are in need, people who are hurting.
We should never be trying to use that cookie cutter mold to say, oh, you belong, but you don't.
You know, we should never have that mentality like they don't quite fit in. We don't want to be rude, but let's pray them out.
Let's pray them into a better place that they can leave us alone. That's never the answer. That's not what the church should be.
Unfortunately, there are fellowships and there are parts of the church that are doing exactly this.
And that's where we need to shine and we need to speak up and say, no, this isn't right. That is not what we're supposed to be doing.
We're supposed to be loving on people and taking care of them, offering that hand up, right, giving them a shoulder to cry upon.
We should never deny access and we should never try to deny them access to God.
Because when we push people out, we push people away, we tell them you don't belong.
That is exactly what we're doing. And we should never be that person. At that point, we're doing the enemy's work, not God's.
Right. We're giving into our own pride, our own self-image, and we're tarnishing it all.
And because of who we represent, we're being poor ambassadors to God, right. Poor ambassadors to Christ.
These are all things we need to keep in mind.
Ruth 2 verses 13 through 16, the word tells us,
May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my Lord, she said.
You have put me at ease by speaking kindly to your servant, though I do not have the standing of one of your servants.
At mealtime, Boa said to her, come over here, have some bread, dip it in the wine vinegar.
When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain.
She all she wanted and had some left over.
As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, let her gather among the sheaves and don't reprimand her.
Even pull out some of the stalks from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up and don't rebuke her.
So Boaz, he's already shown her love, he's already shown her respect, he's already blessed her pretty well, right.
And now he's stepping it up.
You know, Ruth has remained humble. She's saying, you know, thank you.
It's like, I'm not even one of your servants and you're still like, just thank you. Thank you.
Right. She's accepting what he's given, but she's not trying to take more.
You know, she's not one of these people where you give them an inch and they try to take a mile.
They try to take advantage.
You know, she's not in that position where she's mistaking his kindness for weakness.
Because kindness is not weakness. Kindness is strength.
Sometimes it's really hard to be kind.
You know, in her case, you know, seeing this, that it's, you know, kindness, it's that strength that comes from appreciation.
You know, when we're truly grateful for things.
And you look at what happened with Emile. She's not greedy about it.
She doesn't ask for more. She's not a glutton. She's not just scarfing stuff down.
She's eating sensibly. You know, she's keeping her strength.
And when she's done, what's left? She actually has food left over.
And it calls that out for a very specific reason. We're going to see that here shortly.
You know, Boaz, he's going, he knows the law. He knows what she's entitled to, you know, by the law.
And he's going up above and beyond it.
That's love.
That's God's love.
You know, all he had to do is let her glean. Instead, he's moving her up.
Not only that, he's telling his people, not only she moved up, but I want you to drop stuff.
I want her to have the choicest grains from everything that we're pulling up.
I don't want her to just have okay. I don't want her to just have good.
I want her to have the choice. You know, that premium grade A top shelf stuff.
He didn't need to do that. Not by a long shot. Most people wouldn't do that. Right?
But that's what he's doing.
You know, the gifts he received from his Lord. And this is actually his fortune.
So remember, back then, they didn't use money like we did.
They didn't have the same kind of coin, the same kind of bills.
Their fortune, their wealth in these days, it came from their crops, their land, their livestock. Right?
These are all the things that they depended on for their livelihood, for their sacrifices, for bartering.
So in doing this, he's getting a much more tremendous gift than what we can see at face value.
Because he's saying, hey, you know what? This is worth a lot, but I want her to have it.
It's that joyful heart. And unknowingly to him, he's not providing for just one person.
He's providing for two, because he's providing for Ruth and he's providing for Naomi.
And when we give of things, that's something that we have to keep in mind.
Yes, we might be dealing with one person that's in front of us,
but that one gift that we're giving might impact many others.
We don't know who they have to go back to. We don't know what their story is. You know what? It shouldn't matter.
So I'm going to tell you about a story, $100 lesson here basically.
Billy Graham shared this story. He was out with his wife. He was visiting a church.
It was one of the few occasions where he wasn't there as a guest speaker.
He wasn't preaching. He wasn't evangelizing.
It's one of those rare times where he got to just go in, sit down with his wife,
and be fed by the word, to actually just listen to a sermon and hang out like everybody here.
Rare occasion for him. He was a busy dude. He was always out preaching.
So it comes time, the collection plate's being passed through.
He reaches into his pocket. He's like, you know what? I want to give something here.
I want to give him $10. He reaches into his pocket.
He pulls out a bill and he realizes, oh, that's not a $10 bill. It's a $100 bill.
Well, I don't want to hold the plate up. I want to keep it going.
So I'm just going to put it in there and it'll be fine.
Plate comes, plate goes. Later on, he gets home. He's sitting there with Ruth.
And they're talking. And he tells her about hiccups. He says, you know what?
I meant to give $10, but all I could find was a $100 bill. So I put it in there.
So I guess we're going to get blessed for that $100.
She says, oh, no. No, you're not. No, we're not.
Billy was kind of taken back. He's like, what do you mean?
She says, it was not on your heart to give $100. It was on your heart to give $10.
So that $10 is what will be blessed. That $10 is the blessing.
Because that was what was on the heart.
See, she remembered something that he had momentarily forgotten.
When we give, and yes, we should give, but we need to remember to give with a joyful heart.
We need to give because we want to. In 2 Corinthians chapter 9 verses 7 through 9,
so 2 Corinthians chapter 9 verses 7 through 9, the word tells us,
each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give,
not reluctantly or under compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver.
And God is able to bless you abundantly so that in all things at all times,
having all that you need, you will abound in every good work as it is written.
They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor, the righteous endures forever.
This is telling us we can't be legalistic in our giving.
When we give, it can't be, I'm doing it because I have to.
I'm giving it because this is what is expected.
When we give, it should be because we love the God, you know,
we love the Lord with all of our heart and we want to.
And that is the key piece. You get people out there saying you have to give,
you have to give that 10%, you have to do this, you have to do that.
We cannot be legalistic. We need to pray, we need to talk to the Lord,
and we need to give what He puts on us. Maybe it's more, maybe it's less.
Maybe you're at a point right now where you're struggling and the only thing you have to give is a smile.
You know what? If it's on you, you see somebody and all you can do is give that smile.
Give that smile because that smile might mean the world to that person.
You might be the only person who smiled at them that day.
You know, people get hung up on ties. Ties is not always about money.
It's about giving happily. Form our gifts and our blessings.
If you can sing, sing. If you can dance, dance.
If you can teach, teach. Doesn't matter. Whatever it is that you have,
use it to bless others.
That's what this is. That's what Billy had forgotten in his moment.
And we all fall into that part at some point like, oh man, I don't, okay, let's do it.
No. It's not on your heart. Don't do it.
If it's on your heart, go full throttle. All right.
You know, when we give and we give like that, even if it's just that smile, that's love.
That is what brings joy to God and that's what brings joy to us. Right?
So going back to Ruth chapter 2 verses 17 through 23, we're going to that home stretch guys.
All right. The word says, so Ruth gleaned in the field until evening.
Then she threshed the barley she had gathered and it amounted to about an Ipah.
An Ipah's weight of measurement comes out to about 30 pounds. Pretty good, right?
All right. She carried it back to town and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered.
Ruth also brought out and gave to her what she had left over from the meal after she had eaten.
Her mother-in-law asked, what 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.
Lord bless him, Naomi said to her daughter-in-law.
He 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 guardian redeemers.
Then Ruth the Moabite said, he even said to me,
stay with my workers until they finish harvesting all my grain.
Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, it will be good for you, my daughter, to go with the women who work for them.
Excuse me, to go to the women of Boaz and glean until the barley and wheat harvest were finished.
Sorry, I lost my place here.
Let me backtrack, I apologize.
It will be good for you, my daughter, to go with the women who work for him because if someone else is filled, you might be harmed.
So Ruth stayed close to the women of Boaz to glean until the barley and wheat harvest were finished and she lived with her mother-in-law.
So remember, when we came to the end of chapter one, when Naomi and Ruth came back to Bethlehem,
she said, don't call me Naomi, right?
Don't call me precious because I'm not precious, because that's what Naomi means, right?
Instead she said to call her bitter because she was going through a bitter time in her life.
And she didn't want to put on a fake face, she didn't want to put up a fake front and act like everything was okay
when she was struggling and didn't know what was going to happen.
So we're starting to see things turn around here, right?
Not only that, we're seeing Naomi, she never really lost her faith.
She was just dealing with hardship.
And here she is seeing what's in front of her, hearing what's going on with her daughter-in-law, and she's saying, you know what?
Thank God, thank God and bless him.
He's gone above and beyond and he's taking care of us.
He didn't have to do all that. So thank God.
You know, it's that reminder that even at our lowest point, God is still with us.
God never leaves us, he's always there with us.
Sometimes it's because of our own pain, we don't hear him.
And other times we have to remember we don't hear him because the teacher doesn't always speak during the test.
And there's a lesson for us to learn.
In verse 20 here, we see the term guardian redeemer.
Now, this of course is the English translation.
What it is, it's a Hebrew legal term that's talking about the obligation to redeem a relative who's going through serious difficulty, through serious hardship.
And we can learn more about that in Leviticus 25. For time's sake, I'm not going to go into it.
But looking at the last passage of Ruth here, we see God's been with her the whole time, just like God's with us.
She didn't always know him. She came from a pagan society that worshiped false gods.
So what little she knew of God was what she had learned in this period of time from Naomi.
Living with her, asking her questions, hearing her pray and talk about her own faith and all the things that have gone on in her life.
So she's still learning. However, God placed her right where she needed to be.
She ended up in Boaz's field. That wasn't coincidence.
Right. It turns out Boaz is a relative. That's not coincidence. God led her to this place.
Yes, there's hardship, but he was leading her someplace.
We have to remember things are going to get tough. Jesus told us life is not always going to be roses, right?
It's not going to be all just candy and cheery and happy. Things are going to get hard.
And that's what she saw. You know, God, he's always in control.
And no matter what's going on in our life, no matter how bad it gets, he can take those things and use them for good.
Not only good for us if we're willing to listen and to do the things that he set in front of us and put on our hearts, but to build into his kingdom as well.
You know, God, he's doing things behind the scenes. We're not even going to recognize everything that's going on.
That's what behind the scenes is, right? So when you watch a movie, you have the primary actors right here front and center.
But then you have everybody, all the background actors in the back. They're doing things. They're helping to help paint that scene.
Right. God is in the background. He's working. He's doing all this stuff. He does it for all of us.
You know, there's no such thing as luck. There's no such thing as coincidence. It's all God. God working.
We don't always listen. We don't always do what we're told. But he's in the details. He's developing our character.
He's molding us, guiding us to where we need to be, trying to help us to recognize that we need him, that we need a relationship with him,
that we can't just do it all by ourselves and we need to stop listening to the enemy when he tells us you're not enough, you're not good enough.
No, we're not good enough. We never will be while we're on this earth. But that doesn't matter to God because he loves us.
That's why he sent Jesus to die for us, why he made that sacrifice. You know, he's helping us to learn. He's helping us to grow.
He's helping us to be better than we are. And that should be the goal of all of us, to be better today than we were yesterday,
to be better tomorrow than we were today.
It gets a lot easier when we recognize that he's there with us and working as well.
Because when we work with him and we know he's in our life, that he's doing all this stuff for us,
it's a lot easier for us to accept the things that we may not want to do, to accept the ugly things that have been placed in front of us,
to do the things that nobody else wants to do and not follow the crowd. Because following the crowd is real easy.
Jesus told us he's on the narrow path, not the wide one. We need to make sure we're staying on that narrow path, finding that gate to him.
And don't get caught up thinking, oh, I'm going to be blessed while I'm on this earth.
Yes, we're going to be gifted. We're going to be blessed while we're here. But ultimately, our best blessings, the best things for us,
the greatest things God has waiting for us are stored in heaven. And the Bible tells us that.
All right, let us pray. Lord, we thank you for bringing us here today. We thank you for the fellowship that we've had.
We thank you for the time that we've had in your Word. We ask that you help us to meditate on what you've spoken to us today.
And to remember that we are worthy of the second chance that you've given us and that we need you in our lives.
That we need to look to you and learn from you on how we need to work, how we need to treat others,
and how we need to move into the world so that we can show your light and we can tell people about the Gospel so that they could come to know you as well.
We need to remember that whatever our hardship is, it's not because you hate us, but because you love us.
Because there's a lot of ugliness in this world and we need to know what that ugliness is so that we can show the light to others
and so that we can recognize when they're in that darkness.
We thank you for reminding us that we need to love and what love really is, not just through your Word, but through your actions and through your sacrifices.
We ask that as we go out into the world, as we leave here today, that you guide us to where we need to be safely.
May you help us to be the best ambassadors that we can be. In the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.
Thank you all for joining us here today at Healing Scars with Pastor Burton.
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We look forward to hearing from you all. God bless.