Mercy, Blessings, and Character (Part 2 of 2)

You have probably heard of Ruth from the Old Testament. She was a widow and her dire circumstances led her to seek the provision of anyone who would show her some favor.

Was it merely a coincidence that brought her to the fields of Boaz? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg highlights God's unfolding goodness in the midst of our random choices and the only fitting response. We continue our study today in Ruth chapter 2. God's providential care in the story of Ruth as elsewhere is expressed through the outworking of our free human choices, our decisions, and our responsibilities.

And especially when life appears, as it must have done to Naomi, to be just a jumble of unconnected threats. You say, well, you've made enough of that. You can go on now. All right, fine. I think we got that point you said. Fine.

I hope you do, because it's very, very important. I find as I move around, and even in my own congregation, that people are buffeted from one side or the other, and they think that a view of the sovereign purpose of God is that somehow or another you've got a divine puppeteer who's just moving people around, that we've got nothing to do with anything. We just sit around and wait for him to move and pull the levers. It's not so. Others are running around as if their whole future depended upon them. If I don't do this and I don't do that, I'll never get this, and so they're just busting a gut trying to take care of everything.

They're as crazy as the other group, just on a different side. What do you need? You need to read your Bible.

You read your Bible, you'll be tremendously helped. So she goes out, and she works in the field belonging to Boaz, and then the boss shows up, verse four. What happens when the boss comes? Depends what the boss is like. We've all worked for bosses, haven't we? I've had a number of bosses in my time. You'd be surprised at all the jobs I have.

I don't have enough time to tell you of all of them. For example, I was once a cheese cutter in a small supermarket in Yorkshire. Spent all day Saturday cutting up big blocks of cheese.

It was a wonderful job, demanded tremendous intelligence, as you would understand. And what you had to do was slice it up, and then you put it in the cling wrap, and then you put the label on it after you'd weighed it. I did this with a friend of mine, and then you put it on the hot pad to stick the label with the weight and the price on it, and then that sealed the back of the thing. And then when you filled a tray of it, you took it downstairs into the store and you put it in the thing. And then you came back up and you did it again and again and again. And Monday morning I came in. Monday afternoon, I should say, after I finished school, I came in and the boss was waiting for me. He said, come here and have a look at this.

So that's the way they speak in Yorkshire. And so I went over and he took me to the place where I'd put all the cheese from the Saturday. This was Monday afternoon when I finished school, and he began to turn them over. And as he turned them over, the cheese had already, in places, started to become toasted cheese.

But at quarter past, half past four on a Monday afternoon, it just struck me as very funny. And so I just stood and looked at the cheese and laughed. And that was it. Goodbye and thank you. He told me, get your coat, get your coat, lad, and get up the street.

I said okay. So I left there and I knew I'm dead meat because if I go home now I got fired and that's not good. So I went to Woolworth's and in Woolworth's I got another job stacking Easter eggs. And I could tell you about a lot of other bosses, but Boas was a nice boss. Because he shows up and he says, good morning everybody. The Lord be with you. May God's presence and his favor satisfy your souls.

That's not a bad, that's not a bad boss. And they replied, look at the group, and may the Lord bless you. Hey, it's a great day, isn't it? It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood.

You expect Mr. Rogers to come out here at any time winning a cardigan. And he said the Lord be with you and the Lord bless you and you bless the Lord. And it's just a wonderful time. Notice that they're not taking the name of the Lord in vain. They're not profaning his name.

They're recognizing that God is in everything. I need to move quickly here, but you can tell a lot about a person by their hellos and their goodbyes. You can tell a lot about yourself about the way you say hello and goodbye. You want to be different? Be different in your hellos and be different in your goodbyes. And am I missing the point or is the average American boy hopeless at hellos and goodbyes? We'll leave the girls aside for a moment.

But the average kid, you see him in the hallway or in the street, hey Joe, how are you? Good. Sorry, son? Good.

Were you burping or was that a word? What are you saying? Good. Okay, fine. See you around, Joe.

Yeah. Now Joe is a teenager. How are you, Joe? Good. Joe is now working. How are you? Good.

Joe is a complete ignoramus. If somebody says to you, good morning, sorry to be so basic. Or they say, how are you? You say, I'm fine, thank you, and how are you?

If you care. Of course, if you're completely wrapped up in yourself, just say good and keep walking. But if you have any interest at all in the fact that there is another specimen of humanity within your airspace about whom you may just have the slightest consideration, then perhaps you may do them the courtesy of acknowledging their existence and inclining your mind to their circumstances. And when you say goodbye to people, remember this, there will be a last time for every goodbye. There will be a last time that you're reversed out of the parking space. There will be a last time you greet your roommate. There will be a last time you say goodbye to your mom and you may never know when that last time is. Therefore, you should treat every hello, and I'm not talking about walking around with a French horn or something, you know, like, hello, you know, I don't mean that, I just mean a basic hello and goodbye.

God be with you, because if He isn't, you're on your own. The average American that happened to me the other day at the airport, and I'm sorry, this is an American feature, this is the place where it is easy to make friends and lose them immediately. This is the land of acquaintance. This is the land of ships passing in the night.

This is the land of transience. This is the land of, hello, I must be going. I'm standing at the airport like a doofus, waving to nobody, as the guy who has dropped me off has already tuned in his radio station, kissed me goodbye a long time ago, metaphorically, and has now moved on to his next thing.

But I'm there to say, bye! Now I don't expect him to come out and hug me and kiss me and, you know, play musical instruments, but we just spent two days together. See, where are you getting all this from? I don't know, I'm just making it up mainly, but it just struck me, it just struck me that in the greetings, in the greetings, there is an expression of who we are and what we are. And this approach on Boaz's part, I don't think it's formal and ostentatious, I think it's casual and it's sincere. I don't think he wrote in his day timer, you know, or in his palm pilot, 7 a.m., greet the harvesters with the usual, the Lord bless you, you know. No, he just said, hey guys, what a great day, isn't it amazing that we have a harvest, that God is our provider, that we have the privilege of employment, that we have the opportunity to work together in this way?

May the Lord be with you, and they replied, and may he be with you too. And then it is in that environment that this lovely encounter takes place. Now, if we make any attempt at all at getting beyond chapter 2, I need to just fast-forward right through the chapter, I just want to go to one concluding thought.

Because what happens here in relationship to Boaz and Ruth is really fantastic. He takes her and he introduces her to the group, he takes her and shows her where the water cooler is in verse 9, he shows her around, you can get a drink from the water jars over here, he says. She is so overwhelmed by it, she says, why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me a foreigner? It's not that she's sitting, having a drink of water and saying to herself, you know, hey, I nailed this. We'd like it back and tell Naomi how smart I am, you know, I chose the right field, man, I'm good.

And, you know, and I could tell the way he looked at me, you know, he's kind of jazzed, he likes me. And, hey, it's no surprise, look at me, you know, I'm beautiful. And, man, I am good, you know, I am good. No, you're not.

No, I'm not. Whatever you're really good at, you're good at it by the grace of God. Therefore, every benefit, every blessing, every encouragement, every point along the journey that points to it must elicit the same response. Naomi, I think I'll go out and see if I can glean in someone's field in whose eyes I may find favor. Then she finds favor, and her response is the right one, verse 10, why have I found such favor? You see, the unfolding of God's goodness to us must not produce in us self-aggrandizement and self-assertiveness, but must produce in us this sense of wonder. Why did I get such a wonderful privilege as this? Whatever that privilege may be, however apparently trivial it may appear to be.

So you've got, really, the summary. Let me go and find favor, verse 2. Verse 10, why have I found favor? Verse 13, may I continue to find favor.

That's really it. I'm gonna begin today, and I'm gonna ask God for favor. When I discover his favor, I'm gonna say, why should I have discovered your favor? And then, having discovered your favor, I want to discover more of your favor.

May I continue. And of course, what a wonderful provision she gets. And Boaz gives instruction, verse 15, to his men, even if she kinda messes up and gathers among the sheaves, don't embarrass her, pull out some stocks for her from the bundles, leave them for her to pick up, and don't rebuke her. And so Ruth goes, gangbusters at it, she gleans in the field until the evening, she threshes the barley, she gathers it, she's got a huge big sack, huge big thing. And Ephah, which down at the bottom of my Bible says is probably three-fifths of a bushel, which is of course no help to me because I don't know what a bushel is, but I'm glad because you haven't got a clue either, so I'm just gonna tell you it's about 22 liters, and since you don't know what liters are, you're completely at sea.

It's a big bundle of stuff, all right? She went off in the morning with squat, and she comes back with a huge big thing, she's coming down the street, Naomi had watched her go, now she's watching for her come back, and here she comes, just a walking down the street, singing, you know, I gleaned good, I gleaned good, I gleaned hard, I gleaned hard, you know, so she's coming down the road, and Naomi's watching for her, and she comes back, and she puts the bundle down, verse 19, because we got to stop, she puts the bundle down, and Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. Where did you glean today?

Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you, and she told him, Boaz, and Naomi says, may the Lord bless him. See how blessings come around? Boaz shows up at his work, and he says to his workers, the Lord bless you. They said, and the Lord bless you too. Boaz is now going on with his evening, and somewhere in a house far removed from him, there is an unknown widow praying down the blessing of God upon this same man.

He hasn't stopped showing his kindness. This man is our close relative, and verse 21, then Ruth the Moabitess said, he even said to me, stay with my workers until they finished harvesting all my grain. In other words, he is providing for her the place of protection and of provision. You gotta remember this is a Jewish lady here. If you know Jewish moms, and I grew up, a third of my class in Glasgow were all Jewish, so I spent all my time with Jewish boys and girls. I'll tell you all about that in another time, but I met a lot of Jewish moms, and Jewish moms are heavy-duty. They're wonderful ladies, but they know what's going on, and they make it very clear that they are in control of what's going on, and you see this coming in here, don't you? It's basically, it's the end of the day, and it's he said, she said, she said, he said, what did you say, and then what did you say, and where did you go, and he took me to the water cooler, and how did that feel, and what did he say, and he said this, and she said that. It's just this animated conversation, you know, between these two ladies, and she says, he actually said to me, you can stay with my workers, and Naomi said to Ruth, it will be good for you, my daughter, to go with his girls.

You notice that? To go with his girls, because in someone else's field, you might be harmed. See the protection of Naomi, because she knows all those harvesters are all out there going, hey, hey, who's the cute one? Who's the girl? Where did she come from? Who's the new one? Even Boaz shows up, and he says, who's this? And the person says, this is the MOBA test.

It is. What she liked, she's good. She works hard. She doesn't ask for anything.

She's a good, good worker. Boaz says, that's interesting. In other words, he's not attracted to this girl in the first instance, because of her shape, because her shape would have been, would have been obscured by her clothes. You want to snare somebody by your shape? Go ahead. You want to marry a shape?

I've got news for you. You marry a shape, this shape won't stay that shape. And you, Mr. Fancy Pants, you don't understand, you ain't staying that shape either.

In fact, you're already not that shape. It is one thing for a girl to make herself attractive. It is another thing for a girl to make herself seductive.

You girls know the difference, and so do we men. The attraction here is not an attraction of physicality. It is an attraction of character. It is an attraction of endeavor. It is an attraction that is built out of the things that are lasting values on the journey of life. Take my advice as an old man.

The kind of jewelry you want to find your girl wearing is the jewelry from 1 Peter of a gentle and a quiet spirit. And the kind of attractive qualities that you're looking for in a guy is, first of all, a guy who doesn't take himself too seriously, who's able to laugh at himself, who knows, frankly, that he has a large pain in the neck because his mother told him that and his sisters confirmed it. This is just a sidebar in closing on how to find a wife or a husband, but as soon as you know he's there, then you can continue the conversation. If he isn't there, then let him chew in the oven for a while in the hope that he may get there, but pay no attention to him at all because you don't want to have any time with him. None at all. So Naomi, the time is gone, we're done. Naomi, she says, it'd be good for you to stay with his girls. Ancient Scottish commentator gets the last word.

Here it is. What number of young persons take rash steps in the journey of life which cannot be retraced because they rather choose to follow the impulse of their own passions than to ask and follow the advice of those who brought them into the world? It's interesting, isn't it?

When did you get so smart? It's only a matter of a few years since you would go up and down the stairs asking your mother, do you think the shoes go over these trousers? Do you think that this goes with this? What should I do with this? Do you like my hair like this? What about that? Do you like this? Should I get that?

What course should I take? Could you help me with this? And so on. And then all of a sudden you come walking in the door with this guy. Say, who's this? This is, you know, Bartholomew.

Well, who the devil's Bartholomew? He's the love of my life. He's my ticket to Nirvana. He's my future, aren't you, honey? I hope not. Why?

Because I never met the sucker before. Well, who are you? I'm your dad. You mean you got a say in this?

I hope so. I love you with a passion. I've watched you every inch of your growth. I think I know you as well as anybody on the face of God's earth.

I'm glad you brought him home. But honey, don't let a friendship be anything more than a friendship when it begins. And most of the foul-ups in interpersonal relationships in your arena have to do with a physicality that is driven by a culture in which we live. And one of the ways that you can stand true and obviously definitively different in this community is to learn not to go with the rash impulses of your passions, but to check them against the advice and counsel of those who love you most and care for you most, so that together you may be able to go forward and, like Ruth, say, I'm going to go and find favor. Why have I found favor? I hope in the rest of the day I will live under God's smile. Are we seeking the favor of God? That's Alistair Beggs' challenge to us on Truth for Life. Alistair will close today's program with prayer in just a minute, so please keep listening.

Today's message touched on the importance of how we say goodbye. The sad truth is at some point we have to say final goodbyes to the one we love, but the Bible assures us that those who trust in Jesus have the hope of an eternity in heaven. Ever wondered what that is gonna be like? Well, we don't have all the answers, but the book Heaven on Earth does give us a glimpse of what we can expect. The author of the book, Derek Thomas, dives into Scripture to show us what the Bible reveals about the life to come. This book offers great comfort, particularly if you or someone you love is dealing with the reality of dying. In fact, when you request your copy of the book Heaven on Earth, you might want to order a second copy to pass along to a friend. But don't delay, today is the final day we're mentioning the book on this program, so click the book image in the app or give us a call at 888-588-7884. If you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book Heaven on Earth, write to us at Truth for Life. Our address is P.O. Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio. Our zip code is 44139. And if you're enjoying our current series, you can own all of Alistair's teaching geared to a college audience.

It's available on USB. 38 messages on topics like friendship, humility, temptation, purity, and more. The series is titled Lessons For Life.

You'll find it online at truthforlife.org slash store or look for it in the mobile app. Now here is Alistair to close with prayer. Father, thank you again for the Bible.

Thank you for the story of Ruth. Thank you for the privilege of being in this place at this time today. Anything that is just drivel, we pray that you will banish it from our minds.

Anything that is untrue, that it may be corrected in our own reading and further study. And only that which is of yourself and makes for the building up of men and women may it be retained and may it stir within our hearts a passionate longing to live for the praise of your glory. We thank you for the prospect of this day, for the privilege of this time, for all that remains to us to enjoy in seminars and studies and praise and the interaction with our friends. We commit our loved ones into your care, and we thank you for your abiding love. In Jesus' name, amen.

I'm Bob Lapine. Being a person who is fully committed to Jesus may not earn the approval of others, but how does God view it? Tomorrow we'll find out how one woman's act of wholehearted devotion made a lasting impression. I hope you can join us. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.