Ruth Chapter 2:1-23

See, often we get in the middle of the circumstance and say, Oh, God changed these circumstances. And sometimes God will say, Well, I'm not going to change their circumstances until their circumstances help change you. And then once you're changed, OK, then we can change the circumstances. That's the emphasis for Him. The emphasis for us sometimes is wine, our circumstances. Thank you for the things that come to us that help to change us.

Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. David is the senior pastor of the bridge in Cartersville, North Carolina. When it seems God is not acting fast enough, remember, we are interested in changing our circumstances, but God is interested in changing us today. Pastor David encourages us to be patient and seek God's direction as he continues in the book of Ruth Chapter two.

But before we begin today's teaching, many people think Christianity is a list of do's and don'ts, an impossible standard that beats you down and robs you of joy. But the truth is, God's word is a lifeline of hope and troubled times. We want to help you rise above the difficulties of life by sending you a copy of Pastor David McGee's four part teaching series, Living Life by the Book. This empowering resource shows you how to walk with God through everyday life and learn to experience joy, even in hard times. Living Life by the Book is our thanks for your generous gift today to help more people hear God's truth on this station and beyond so they can cross the bridge from death to life.

Please visit crossthebridge.com today to give and get your copy of Living Life by the Book. Now here's David McGee with part three of his teaching, The Lord Will Repay. We're continuing our verse by verse study through the book of Ruth.

So let's jump in. Ruth Chapter two, verse one says, There was a relative of Naomi's husband, a man of great wealth of the family of Elimelech. His name was Boaz. So Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, please let me go to the field and glean heads of grain after him and whose sight I may find favor. And she said to her, go, my daughter. Then she left and she 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 family of Elimelech. Verse four, Now behold Boaz came from Bethlehem and said to the reapers, the Lord be with you.

And they answered him, the Lord bless you. Then Boaz said to a servant who was in charge of the reapers, whose young woman is this? So the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered and said, it is the young Moabit woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. And she said, please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.

So she came and has continued from morning until now, though she rested a little in the house. Verse eight, Then Boaz said to Ruth, you will listen, my daughter, will you not? Do not go to glean in another field, nor go from here, but stay close by my young women.

And let your eyes be on the field which they reap and go after them. Have I not commanded the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn. So she fell on her face, bowed to the ground and said to him, why have I found favor in your eyes?

You should take notice of me since I am a foreigner. Verse 11, And Boaz answered and said to her, it has been fully reported to me all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband and how you left your father and your mother in the land of your birth and have come to a people whom you did not know before. The Lord repay your work and a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge. Verse 13, Then she said, let me find favor in your sight, my Lord, for you have comforted me and have spoken kindly to your maidservant, though I am not like one of your maidservants. So she noticed she was different.

Being different can be a very good thing. Verse 14, Now Boaz said to her at mealtime, come here and eat of the bread and dip your piece of bread in the vinegar. So she sat down beside the reapers and he passed parched grain to her and she ate and was satisfied and kept some back. This is an interesting picture. The reason this is an interesting picture is it talks about vinegar.

Vinegar in that day was made from soured wine, made from grapes. So Boaz is inviting her to take part and to eat bread and to have wine. I think it's an interesting picture.

Why? Because those are two elements that we use in communion, the bread and the wine. And there's a picture here that we're going to see develop more and more as we go through the book of Boaz being a type of, or a picture of Jesus. Ruth really has nothing to offer him, just like we have nothing to offer Jesus. Yet Boaz pursues Ruth, encourages Ruth, seeks her out, speaks to her, calls her name, encourages her, tells her he's going to support her and look after her needs, just like Jesus does with us. Verse 15, And when she rose up to glean, Boaz commanded his young men, saying, Let her glean even among the sheaves and do not reproach her. Also let grain from the bundles fall purposely for her. Leave it that she may glean and do not rebuke her.

Wow. In this step, Boaz is taking her beyond what her legal rights were. Her legal rights were just to glean behind them. In other words, as they picked, she could come behind them and get this stuff.

He's saying, you know what? Let her up with the people that are picking. As a matter of fact, drop some stuff for her to get. And, you know, I bet you're seeing the character of Ruth the first couple of times that happened. She was like, Hey, you dropped something. They're all, well, can't go back and get it.

You keep it. What a beautiful story. What a beautiful picture, again, of the grace of God. Because see, the blessings of God, and I spoke about this just a moment ago, but let's be sure we're on the same page. We do things for the Lord. God blesses them, but God blesses them way out of proportion of what we do. It's not like he goes, okay, you did a little bit. I'll bless you a little bit.

No, we do a little bit. We take small feeble steps towards God. God dumps bucket loads of blessings upon us. You could do a small thing for the Lord and reap huge benefits. It amazes me sometimes the way the Lord does that. When we do small things for God, and God blesses them in big ways.

It's the next life lesson. God blesses the small things we do for him in big ways. I can tell you so many times and so many stories of when I just did something really incy-teensy, little bitty thing, but God blessed it in a big way. God blesses the small things we do for him in big ways.

I understand. We're in this passage just talking about the harvest. There's always a spiritual connotation, a connection with the harvest. Certainly as a church body, we can look at the harvest and say, wow, there's an application not only personally for us, but there's an application, I think, for the body here that as we do small things for God, God will incredibly bless this body. While I can sit here and say, yes, staff has worked so hard and leadership has worked so hard and people have poured themselves out, that still doesn't account for what the Lord's doing here in pouring himself out and blessing people and causing people to grow and seeing people get saved and seeing people walk closer to him. That's what grace is about, just dumping bucket loads of his goodness on you. A long time ago, a lot of us got sold this fake bill of goods that if you chase God long enough and you pull on his coattails long enough, you're just going to wear him down and he's going to get so weird of you chasing him and you praying that he's going to feel like he's got to bless you.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I've got three kids and I want to bless them. They don't really have to talk me in to blessing them. I want to bless them. I look for opportunities to bless them. Well, if I, being an earthly father, want to do that, how much more your heavenly father is looking for opportunities to bless you? As you take those small steps and stepping out and serving him and pouring your life out, he is going to bless you.

We see it here as people pour out their life and they give, whatever, an hour or two or whatever they have and God takes that corporate effort and brings people into the kingdom. Verse 17, so she gleaned in the field until evening and beat out what she had gleaned and that was about an ephah of barley. That's a lot of barley. 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'd been satisfied. She shared with her mother-in-law because her mother-in-law was in need and she was going to help her mother, the mother-in-law, she was going to help carry her load, if you will.

Why? Because that's part of what we should do as believers. That's part of what a follower of Jesus does. You know, it's interesting, early on our children's ministry was, you know, we had people come in and we were trying to serve but it was difficult. We were stretched thin. I'll never forget the story of one couple showing up, you know. They showed up early for the service and they were looking around in the classroom for who was supposed to teach the class, you know. And then another family came in and dropped their kids off. Oh, praise God, you guys got the class.

All right, awesome. That's not one of our better moments. We've grown a lot along the way in case you're wondering where your children are at this very moment. They're being loved on. But you know what's cool, and I'll never forget this, I don't mean to embarrass this couple by mentioning this, but Kevin and Jen Thoman who've been here a long time, they came to me and they said, you know, we love this fellowship.

How can we help? I said, you guys got kids? And they said, no.

I said, why do you ask? I said, well, we really need help in Children's Ministries. They said, well, okay. We'll help in Children's Ministries. They didn't have any kids then.

They do now, but they didn't then. But they said, if that's where the need is, that's where we'll pour our lives out. That's one of the ways that Kevin and Jen over the years have just endeared themselves to my heart.

That's part of the reason why Kevin was the first elder. You're listening to Pastor David McGee on Cross the Bridge. He'll be back with more in just a moment. But first, there's so much waiting for you at CrossTheBridge.com. If you haven't visited CrossTheBridge.com yet, come by today and check it out. While you're there, you can sign up for Pastor David's free daily devotional. Listen to more teachings from Pastor David and read about what God's doing through your support to proclaim his word through radio, internet, and mobile technologies. Also, you can give online to help encourage more people in their faith on this radio station and beyond. And when you do, please request your copy of Pastor David's four-part teaching series, Living Life by the Book, as our thanks for your generosity.

Visit CrossTheBridge.com today. Now back to today's teaching. Pastor David McGee, verse 19. 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. See, because she came back with an ephod barley. That's a lot.

That's like five or six days' worth of food. So she recognized that that was an abundance. So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, the man's name with whom I work today is Boaz. Then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, blessed be he of the Lord who has not forsaken this kindness to the living and the dead. And Naomi said to her, this man is a relation of ours, one of our close relatives. King James used the word kinsman.

Now we'll talk about that in just a second. But look at verse 20. Naomi is jumping up and down praising God. And she said, blessed is he of the Lord.

Do me a favor. Let's flip back to chapter 1, verse 20. Let's compare these verse 20s. Chapter 1, verse 20, it says, Naomi speaking, she said, but she said to them, do not call me Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt me very bitterly with me. There's a little bit of difference in those two verses, isn't there?

One verse she's going, all right, call me Mara, don't call me Naomi. Don't call me goodness, call me bitter. Now we all have those days whether we will admit it or not.

And then in verse 20, she's saying, oh, blessed be the Lord. The difference was one day. One day everything changed. The life lesson here, what a difference a day can make.

What a difference a day can make. You may be struggling right now. You may be going through a hard time and just trying to hold on. Man, just hold on. Just endure. Don't get weary and well doing. Because what a difference a day can make.

You might go to bed some nights and really be just, man, going through it. But God has a plan. God knows your breaking point. And He knows your bending point. And while He's willing to let you get to the bending point, He won't let you get to your breaking point. But you have to trust that He knows where that breaking point is. And a day can make all the difference. One day you can be bitter and fed up and cynical and complaining. And God can change it all in 24 hours.

He can do this. And maybe you're feeling like you're at chapter 1, verse 20. But God can so quickly move you to chapter 2, verse 20, and make your head spin. He doesn't need a lot of time.

You know, if He didn't need billions and billions of years to make the earth, you know, oh, let's not go off on that. Then He can change your life like that in just a moment's time. And in that moment, everything can change. She uses the word kinsman. There's a beautiful picture here.

We're going to start to open this up this evening. Now, the word in the Hebrew is goel, go-el, G-O-E-L. It means kinsman, redeemer. It's a very important word.

And it carries a concept with it. It is spoken of in Leviticus in Deuteronomy. Leviticus 25, 25, it says, if one of your brethren becomes poor and has sold some of his possessions, and if his redeeming relative, goel, comes to redeem it, then he may redeem what his brother sold. Another passage of Leviticus 25, 47 through 50 says, now if a sojourner or a stranger close to you becomes rich and one of your brethren who dwells by him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner close to you or to a member of the stranger's family, after he is sold, he may be redeemed again. One of his brothers may redeem him, or his uncle or his uncle's son may redeem him, or anyone who is near of kin to him and his family may redeem him, or if he is able, he may redeem himself. So the whole redemption thing in the Bible said that if you were a kinsman redeemer, if you were a goel, you could go set somebody that you were related to out of poverty, out of bondage.

It's a beautiful picture. They took it one step further and they started teaching and practicing that you could redeem the land as well. This is interesting. What's also interesting is the word goel. Now, I'm not a Hebrew scholar. I love, I know some Hebrew and I love digging in the language. And as you go further back, Hebrew is an interesting word.

It's a little bit like Chinese in that there's pictographs. In other words, early Hebrew had pictures in it and the letters were after pictures. And so when you go into, when you look at goel, the G is the Hebrew word gimel. And the word picture there was a camel's neck. And so that word meant lift it up because lift it up like a camel's neck because as you watch the camel walk, you'd see him lift his neck up.

That's interesting because some of you know or maybe some of you know what El is. El is the name of God, El Shaddai, Elohim. So there in this Hebrew word goel, redeemer, kinsman redeemer, is a word picture that says when God is lifted up. Our redemption was a plan from the beginning that when God was lifted up, he would redeem all of us. And I don't think that it's happenstance that we find those words of Jesus in John chapter 3 verse 14 through 17. It says as Moses lifted up, gimel, lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. That whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus is our goel. To be our goel, there needed to be three things.

There needed to be a relationship, an ability, and a willingness. That's why Jesus was born of a woman. That's why he referred to himself 76 times as the Son of Man. It was the term he used for himself more than any other.

He's saying, you know what? We're related. And he took pleasure in that. He was our relative. And he had to be able, he had to have the ability to redeem us. In other words, he had to be a sinless sacrifice.

He qualified there. And he had to be willing. Remember Jesus said, no man takes my life from me.

I lay it down. So here in the Ruth, here in Boaz is a picture of what Jesus did for us. Our kinsmen and redeemer saw us in bondage, saw us in pain, saw us in suffering, and they redeemed us. Understand, redemption is different than atonement. Atonement is more of a Hebrew scripture, an Old Testament guy.

The Hebrew word there is kophar. It's where we get our word for cover. In other words, the sins were covered. Redemption is much more. Redemption is the sins have been wiped away and has just been covered over. They've been washed because Jesus was willing to redeem us.

Talk more about the goel and see some more pictures later. But verse 21, Ruth, the Moabite said, he also said to me, you shall stay close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest. It's kind of a little interesting side note. Actually, he had said, stay with the young women. And she said, he said to hang out with the men. Well, let's see what Naomi says in verse 22. And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, it is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, to clarify, and that people do not meet you in any other field.

You know, it's interesting. You realize what Naomi wanted to change. Naomi wanted her circumstances to change. What did God want to change?

Naomi. I relate to that because I think we probably are alike and that I get in certain situations and I wish the Lord would change the circumstances. God is much more interested in changing us than our circumstances.

That's the final life lesson. We're interested in changing our circumstances. God is interested in changing us.

We're interested in changing our circumstances. God is interested in changing us. See, often we get in the middle of circumstances, oh, God changed these circumstances. And sometimes God will say, well, I'm not going to change their circumstances until their circumstances help change you. And then once you're changed, okay, then we can change the circumstances. See, sometimes we find ourselves in trials and tribulation. God changed this and God's like, I'm changing you. That's the emphasis for him.

Emphasis for us sometimes is what? Our circumstances. God, thank you for the things that come to us that help to change us.

Remember that, loved ones, when those things happen and you think God is not acting fast enough for you. Verse 23, so she stayed close by the young men and young women of Boaz to glean until the end of barley harvest and wheat harvest and she dwelt with her mother-in-law. The harvest was about six weeks, the barley harvest was. Now, it's interesting, this place, this field of Boaz, it was just a mile outside of Bethlehem. It was to be later the place that David was looking after the sheep of the solar. Later on it became the shepherd's field where the shepherds were looking over the sheep when the angels came and said, got good news. And we're going to see as we get into the genealogy in Ruth 4, how God is just weaving this wonderful story together, bit by bit, piece by piece. And Ruth and Naomi, clueless of what God was doing.

Loved ones take heart. I understand a lot of times you don't know what's going on in your life and you think you need to have the answers. You don't need to have the answers.

You need to have Him. And in due time, He'll give you those answers. It may be till you get in heaven that you get those answers.

It may not be before. But even as Ruth and Naomi are on this precipice of huge blessings and blessing the whole earth and they didn't understand that, God took the small things that He did and blessed them in big ways. The events in your life, if you will follow God, will bless you and bless those around you in huge ways if you just trust Him.

And don't become weary and well-dealing. Jeremiah 29, 11 says, For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. And Romans 8, 28 says, And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. See God is working with us. He's working in us. He's working through us and He's working for us. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short, simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking Him to help you to live for Him. Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me, that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead, that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned and I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer, according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. Jesus said He would not turn anybody away who comes to Him. And He came for those people who knew they needed forgiveness, those who were sick, not the righteous. So congratulations, friend.

You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If you prayed that prayer with David for the first time, we'd love to hear from you. You can call us toll free at 877-458-5508 to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ. Do you ever feel beaten down or even crushed by the difficulties of life? We all do sometimes, but Jesus offers a life of hope, and we want to help you embrace it. Discover how Christ empowers you to rise above life circumstances with Pastor David's four-part teaching series, Living Life by the Book. This uplifting resource takes you through the Book of Ruth to reveal how the simplicity of living for Jesus can bring you joy even in the darkest times. Living Life by the Book is our thanks for your generous gift today to help more people hear God's truth on this station and beyond so they can cross the bridge from death to life. Please visit crossthebridge.com today to give and get your copy of Living Life by the Book. You know each day comes with its share of stresses, so what better way to wake up than with an encouraging word from the Lord. Visit crossthebridge.com and sign up now for David McKee's email devotionals. Each devotion includes a scripture and a message from the heart of David McKee. It's easy and it's free. Sign up today at crossthebridge.com. Thanks again for listening. Join us next time as we continue in the Book of Ruth.