While we’re here in Lamentations 3, it would be good to remind ourselves of the cumulative effect of redemptive history. First, you get a story in Genesis like Joseph, which is all about how bad things happen to a good man under the providence of an all-orchestrating God to bring good out of it in the end, and then you get story after story like that — you get Job, you get Ruth, etc. And so, the prophets learned these things. They knew these things. The prophets didn’t just learn theology out of the blue in a moment with inspiration. It was a cumulative effect of redemptive history and a history of revelation that God used when he inspired these men.

And so, here we are in Lamentations 3, which is hard to find because it’s so tiny, sandwiched in there at the end of Jeremiah. In that chapter, you not only have this phenomenal statement that the mercies of God are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23), in the worst possible circumstance of Jerusalem being under siege and women eating their own children — I think that’s the worst thing that happens in this book, emotionally — but you also have Lamentations 3:37–38, where the prophet says:

Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?

Here we have a Naomi lesson. Jeremiah learned this from somewhere. He didn’t make this up. He is saying, “Is it not from the mouth of the most high that good and ill, that is, blessing and calamity, go forth?” He didn’t have the world carved up like, “This the part that God does and this is the part that Satan does. This is the part that God does and this is the part that free will does.” He didn’t carve up the world that way. That is not the way the biblical writers saw the world. They believed God to be over all things. There’s no season, no moment, when he drops Satan’s leash. He loosens it and he tightens it, but he never drops it.

And so, I at least am going to commend to you a vision of God for survival in your bitter providences that is different from some solutions that are very popular in our land these days. I see this vision everywhere in the Bible, and I see it in almost all hymns. There are very few hymns that celebrate the free will of man. Does that strike you as odd? It’s not something to be celebrated for one very simple reason: If you have it, you’ll die. It’ll kill you. You are free to do one thing: Go to hell. If you escape, it will be because God’s glorious grace has triumphed over your will, which was dead and enslaved to sin. That’s why we don’t celebrate it. We just bring it in to solve problems, and it’s not a very good solution.

We’ll say more about that in a minute, but Marty, you’re at fault for this first five minutes here because you chose the hymn and you chose the text. It’s a horrible, horrible book. And in the middle of this horrid book of weeping and lamenting and Babylonian captivity and horrid things going on, that hymn was born. And that’s where most hymns are born that mean anything to us. They’re born out of pain. Most hymns that move us deeply were written by people who have walked through fire. We sang It is well last night, and you know the story behind that. I won’t go into that.

Laughing at the Time to Come

All right, here we are. Let’s go back and pick it up where we left off. We’re right near the end of chapter one. We’re going to take a few more minutes on it, and then read chapter two. I think we can finish chapter two this morning and be on track.

I said Ruth was an ideal woman, and gave you several reasons why, because of her wonderful response, faith in God, and freedom from the securities and comforts of her homeland. She was ready to courageously go out and venture into something new in the unknown, and she had a radical commitment to Naomi that is just amazing, and to Naomi’s God, even though Naomi’s God, according to Naomi, was against her. But Ruth still said, “Your God will be my God” (Ruth 1:16). So here’s a woman who had embraced a great, sovereign God.

While I’m on the ideal woman, let me just quote one verse from Proverbs 31, which is the chapter everybody thinks about when they think about the ideal woman. This is my favorite verse in that chapter. Proverbs 31:25 says:

Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.

Think about that — Strength and dignity are her clothing and she laughs at the future. I think that means when she contemplates all the pain and all the happiness that the future may bring, she is in the future’s face with laughter, saying, “You think you’re going to threaten me, future, given what I have tasted of God and his sovereignty and his goodness? Try me.” And she laughs at the future. She doesn’t cower before the future, she doesn’t murmur about the future, and she doesn’t cravenly worry about the future; she laughs at the future. She says, “Try me. Test me, given what I have seen of God and what I know of God. Go ahead, make my day, future.”

So that’s my vision of the ideal woman. Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she walks into the future, or away walks from Moab and everything she’s known and grown up with, and experienced as a married woman for 10 years or as a widow, and she leaves it all to head for a place where there used to be a famine, where Naomi says, “I can’t give you anything.” In fact, we’re going to find out Naomi doesn’t give her anything. She has to go out and beg as soon as she gets there, and pick up pieces of grain left over from the rich people. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself here.

Calamity According to the Will of God

Let’s finish chapter one. We’re at Ruth 1:20, and Naomi is going to return now. She’s resolved, she goes back, and she arrives in Bethlehem. Then the women come out and they’re amazed — they hadn’t seen her for at least 10 years or more, probably — and in Ruth 1:19 they say, “Is this Naomi?” And now in Ruth 1:20–21, she says:

Do not call me Naomi (pleasant); call me Mara (bitter), for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”

She just stated four things about God there, and we have to decide if her theology is right or wrong. What do you make of this theology? Naomi has a theology. There’s one thing she knows for sure. In fact there are three things she knows for sure. First, God exists. It never enters her mind that he doesn’t. In fact, atheism is just not an issue in the Old Testament. The fool says in his heart there is no God, but nobody else thinks that way (Psalm 14:1). So no matter what happens to you, that’s not one of the solutions — there’s no God. That’s just not on the agenda. She’s sure of that.

Second, she is sure God is almighty — he’s God. And third, she is sure that he’s the one who afflicted her. She’s sure of those three things. Is she right? Well, the author doesn’t say she’s wrong, but is she right? I think the aim of this book is to say she’s right in her vision of the sovereignty of God, but she’s wrong to say that he brought her back empty. Do you see that at the beginning of Ruth 1:21? She says:

I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty.”

In other words, she has been so oppressed and defeated and discouraged and hurt by the six hammer blows of painful, bitter providence that we mentioned last night that she’s blind to what God is up to in her life. She won’t let go of her faith. She says, “He’s God, he’s sovereign, and he’s done it. I’m going home. I’m not rejecting him, but I’m empty.” I think this book is written to say, “Believe that way, but let the whole story teach you she wasn’t empty when she came back. She had Ruth loving her, and Ruth was willing to serve her till the day she died.”

Ruth did serve her. Naomi may have had a bad back, or who knows what. She didn’t go down to Boaz’s field to glean. Ruth served her. Ruth was going to go get food. Ruth was going to take the initiative to make sure they didn’t starve. Naomi wasn’t empty; she had Ruth. And she had forgotten she also had a Boaz back there. She had a distant relative, two in fact, and they didn’t come into her mind, but they will in chapter two. We’re going to watch Naomi become the theologian in chapter two. Naomi becomes the good theologian in chapter two, and I’ll point it out when we get there. The lights go on in chapter two, and she sees the providence of how it was that Ruth just happened to go to the field of Boaz. That has to be interpreted, and who gives the interpretation? Naomi will give the interpretation.

Learning from Naomi’s Pain

So there’s a season of darkness, and there’s a season of blindness. There’s a season of shortsightedness in this woman’s right theology, and that has to be cleared up. That’s why I think the book was written. It was written to say that God is indeed sovereign, but if you only have a sovereign God, you’re going to go around saying, “I am empty under his heavy, sovereign hand,” which is not true. It’s not true of anybody in this room. You are not empty. You may feel empty, but you are not empty. This book is written to give you hope that you are not empty. No, the Lord had not brought her back empty. She made that mistake, and the book is written to correct it. So let me sum up chapter one with four lessons that I was intending to give you last night. I’ll use them as a transition now to chapter two.

1. The Almighty Reigns

Lesson number one: God the almighty reigns in all the affairs of men. This is an assumption of this book. It’s everywhere and it’s taught here, and it’s also taught in all those other parts of the Old Testament that we’ve been mentioning along the way. He rules nations and he rules families. He rules in your kitchen and he rules in the US Congress. He never drops the ball. Whatever the saints doubted, they didn’t doubt this in the Old Testament. God was involved in every part of their lives. Nobody could stay his hand. He gave rain and he took rain. He gave life and he took life. We live and move and have our being in this God (Acts 17:28). From the toothpick to the Taj Mahal, nothing is properly understood outside of a relationship with the sovereign God.

We’re going to meet Boaz, and there’s a little statement from him that shows how utterly God-besotted and God-saturated he was. So when I say toothpick to Taj Mahal, I’m trying to cause you to get all compartmentalization out of your life, as if you have a God compartment that can handle the beauty of a Taj Mahal, but toothpicks are just what we use to pick our teeth; they don’t have anything to do with God. Well, they have everything to do with God. They come from the trees he made, and your teeth came from God, and the food that’s between them came from God. Everything has to do with God. One of the functions of the Bible is to make us a God-besotted people.

2. Bitter Providence

Lesson number two: God’s providence is sometimes very hard and very bitter. It’s not wrong to call it that, as long as you’re not faulting him and becoming angry at him. It’s not right to be angry at God. Let me clarify that and say it again: It’s never right to be angry with God. But it is right to say you are if you are. Can you make that distinction? It’s never right to be angry with God, ever. It’s a sin to be angry with God, but it’s right to say you’re angry to God if you are, because hypocrisy doesn’t make it any better. Two wrongs don’t make a right. So if you’re angry, repent and tell him you’re angry, ask for forgiveness, and ask him to give you more trust in his goodness in the thing that’s making you angry. There’s no sense in playing games with God.

There are many hard providences, as Psalm 34:19 says:

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

It’s not always sin that brings us into our afflictions. Many of our afflictions are not owing to sin in the specific instance of the doing of them. It might be due to original sin, but not specific sins we’ve committed.

3. All Things for Good

Lesson number three: His purposes in all of our afflictions are for the good and ultimate happiness of his people. This is happening in the worst of times. In the Book of Ruth, God was quietly working through the pain of a little family, which had been reduced to just a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law, to do something incredible. And right now, wherever you are in your pilgrimage from the famine to Obed — even if you’re just heading for Moab and you have 10 hard years in front of you, or you are just coming back from Moab, or maybe the baby’s just been born in your life and you’re dancing for joy — this book is written to keep you on that path and not let you leave it.

Sometimes it takes years to understand some of the reasons for the calamities. Let me give you an illustration. This was really pointed for me because of my sister and my father. I have one older sister who lives in Charlotte, and my mother was killed in 1974 in a bus accident in Israel. My father was very seriously injured in the same bus accident, but he survived. I can remember being in the ambulance 10 days later with my father. As we were driving, my mother’s body was in a hearse behind us, and we were in the ambulance in front. As I sat nursing my father, who was still very seriously injured, he just kept crying, saying, “Why me? Why me? Why am I spared? Why am I alive? Why did I stand up just as the collision happened so that the lumber that came through the windshield didn’t hit me in the face? What’s the purpose? There must be a purpose.”

That was 27 years ago. At my father’s 80th birthday, which was last year, the ministry that he has come to lead gave him a retirement party. He’s very slow to stop working. He’s still working. This ministry had grown up about five years after my mother’s death in a way that nobody dreamed; it’s a mission that he leads and 40,000 students around the world are involved in its correspondence courses. The board of his ministry invited me to come speak at my father’s 80th birthday retirement banquet, and I said, “I would cross the galaxy to do this on a weekend, so yes.” I stood up and I said, “Not many sons get to preach at their father’s funerals,” and they went, “What does that mean?” And I said, “That’s what I’m going to do here because I’ve spoken at so many funerals, and I’ve heard so many sons and daughters and uncles and aunts get up at funerals and say, ‘I wish daddy could hear me say this,’ or, ‘I wish such and such…’ so I’m going to say everything right now that I will wish to say I had when I speak at his funeral.”

He was sitting here and my sister was sitting there as well, and I just laid out 10 reasons why I love my dad and what good he’s done for me. Then I closed by pointing out that the ministry he had, with those 300 people at the banquet supporting his ministry, would never have happened had my mother lived, because my father was on a very different trajectory of ministry and this would not have come into being. And therefore, here’s one of probably 10,000 good reasons God had that I do not know about as to why my mother was taken at age 56 and not my father. When I was done, my sister was just weeping at the table, and she’s three years older than I am. When I walked down, I wasn’t sure what I was going to hear, but she gave me this big hug and she said, “I never have seen any good in it. Maybe that’s it.”

So she’s really struggled with this, and I don’t think my sister has the depth of theology on this issue that I would like her to, but if she ever hears this tape, Beverly, read The Pleasures of God, and let’s talk about it. There aren’t a lot of churches that teach this — that help saints get ready to handle bitter providences in a God-exalting, God-centered way.

So yes, I think there are reasons for why my mother was taken, as many reasons as I can think of why she shouldn’t have been. Still to this day, I have sons who are now my age that I was when my mother died that I would like to ask questions about because of my life, and my dad wasn’t around as much as my mother was, and therefore, he can’t answer my questions about what I was like when I was 14, or 15, or 20, or whatever. I would like to be able to have that insight so I can understand my sons better, but it isn’t there. When something like this happens, an amputation happens. You’ll never get that arm back. You’ll never have her back, and you have to trust there are other things God is doing, and they are right and they are good. So that’s the third point. The purposes in these hard providences are good and good for us.

4. Free to Take Risks

And lastly, lesson number four: If you believe this, if you laugh at the future, if you’re that kind of woman or that kind of man, you will be one of the freest, most risk-taking, sacrificial, gutsy ministers in the world. I don’t mean clergy either. I mean doing the hard things in life for the good of other people. Like Ruth, you will leave your homeland, commit yourself to somebody, and stay in the commitment. You go to the hard, unknown place because you’ve got a great, sovereign God who rules the world and lets nothing befall you but what is good for you, even if it hurts.

Though he slay me, I will hope in him (Job 13:15).

That produces a certain kind of man and a certain kind of woman with radical allegiance and sacrifice and commitment. We need more of them. There’s so much soft Christianity in the world today, and I’ll tell you the Great Commission is not going to be finished by soft, middle-class, American, secure, comfortable Christianity. It’s going to be finished by risk-taking, lay-down-your-life, martyr-like women and men. Namby-pamby theology isn’t going to produce that kind of people.

Sermons that just coddle people and try to make them happy that they’re in church that Sunday, and make them feel good about their jobs and their families — just a feel good theology that doesn’t have any spikes in it and no fiber in the trunk — are just going to blow over. They’re just going to produce touchy-feely, oh-poor-me Christians who don’t take any risks and don’t do anything hard, who always blame God when things go wrong and try to give him praise when things go right, knowing they’re hypocritical. Well, I’m not interested in furthering that kind of mushy Christianity. I’m much more interested in Ruth — her kind of person and her kind of theology — Naomi’s kind of theology and the Bible’s kind of theology.

From Famine to Barley Harvest

Let’s go to chapter two which talks about the barley harvest. Ruth and Naomi came back at the end of the barley harvest, which is just full of hope. Naomi had Ruth, but she didn’t realize what a blessing that was. She was too oppressed at that point. But then she came home and people were recognizing her. Now what? Well, in chapter two, the mercy of God is going to become so obvious that Naomi wakes up to it and gives the best interpretation of it. So let’s read Ruth 2:1–23, the whole chapter, together.

Now Naomi had a relative of her husband’s, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz. And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favor.” And she said to her, “Go, my daughter.” So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz …

That’s a remarkable understatement — “She happened to come.” We’ll come back to that and ask what the right interpretation of that happening is. Did it just happen? What’s this writer doing in saying it that way? Who in this chapter will come back at the end and interpret that statement correctly?

…She happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech. And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. And he said to the reapers, “The Lord be with you!” And they answered, “The Lord bless you.” Then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers, “Whose young woman is this?” And the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered, “She is the young Moabite woman, who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.’ So she came, and she has continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest.” Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Now, listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping, and go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn.”

Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” But Boaz answered her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before. The Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge!” Then she said, “I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, though I am not one of your servants.”

And at mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine.” So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her roasted grain. And she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over. When she rose to glean, Boaz instructed his young men, saying, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. And also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her.” So she gleaned in the field until evening. Then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. And she took it up and went into the city. Her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. She also brought out and gave her what food she had left over after being satisfied.

And her mother-in-law said to her, “Where did you glean today? And where have you worked? Blessed be the man who took notice of you.” So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz.”

Now pause here for just a minute. I think between Ruth 2:19–20 something almost like a new birth happens for Naomi. She thinks, “Boaz? Boaz!” And everything comes alive, or starts to. This is the point where Naomi sees light and sees hope, and the next words are really quite amazing.

And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness …

Now here is a very crucial grammatical question: What is the antecedent of the word whose? What are the possibilities? First, it could be Boaz, and second, it could be God. But which is it? It’s a very important question. I'll tell you what I think in a moment and come back to that.

“May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead!” Naomi also said to her, “The man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.” And Ruth the Moabite said, “Besides, he said to me, ‘You shall keep close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest.’” And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, “It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, lest in another field you be assaulted.” So she kept close to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the barley and wheat harvests. And she lived with her mother-in-law.

A Sweet Providence Unfolds

Let’s go back and take it a section at a time. We’ll focus on Ruth 2:1–7. There are three things we see here: First, we meet Boaz; second, we see the character of Ruth; and third, we see a very merciful providence behind the whole scene.

Let’s talk about Boaz for just a minute. Boaz was a relative of Elimelech, and that means that the bleak picture that Naomi described — that there was nobody who could marry Ruth to fulfill Chilion’s name — was wrong. There was somebody, but she was blind. She forgot that there was Boaz, and it’s a bright crack now in the clouds of bitterness. Ruth 2:1 says he was a rich man, and then Ruth 2:4 — here’s an amazing thing — says that he was also a godly man. I think if you were to ask why the writer chose to quote this little greeting in Ruth 2:4 — “Boaz came to Bethlehem and said to the reapers, ‘The Lord be with you,’ and they answered back, ‘The Lord bless you.’” — the answer would be something like this: This man’s business was so God-saturated that he related to his employees and his employees relate to him in an utterly God-besotted way. He greets them with God, and they greet him with God. God is all over this man’s life. That’s why just a little thing like a greeting makes a big difference.

So we have a rich man who’s a godly man, and of course, the way he treats Ruth is full of portent about his own growing affections for her and the dignity and care with which he wants to care for this woman, although he addressed her as “daughter.” That shows he was older, and it sort of puts the brakes on our libido, making us think, “Hm, is anything going to happen here or not? Why is he calling her a daughter? That’s not what you call a possible wife.”

A Modest Romance

This writer is very delicate in the way he moves us towards that evening, where she goes and lies down beside him in the middle of the night. He’s going to handle this very carefully and get us ready. By the way, this just comes to my mind. I should keep my mouth shut on things like this, but I’m a real prude when it comes to movies and stuff like that. I don’t even like kissing in movies because that’s somebody’s daughter rubbing her mouth all over that guy’s mouth. Now, I just imagine the implications of such an unbelievably unrealistic statement as this. I mean, it would shut Hollywood down. It would all be over for most drama and everything. Well, so what? That’s just where I am. I don’t want my little girl Talitha rubbing her mouth all over anybody’s mouth but one — not mine, but her husband’s, period.

The point is this: There’s a movie called A River Runs Through It. Have you ever heard of that movie? I love that movie because I’ve got those two boys. I have the literature-oriented, University of Chicago type, and I also have the type who gets himself killed because of his temper. I know those two boys; they’re my sons. In the movie, the dad is a Presbyterian sovereignty of God preacher, and I’m a Baptist sovereignty of God preacher. We went to see that movie as a family, and you know what? There’s a girl in the movie in love with the older son, and they take a walk before he has to decide whether to stay in the hometown and be her husband in a kind of hometown way or go to the big city at the University of Chicago and get a degree in literature and fulfill a dream.

They walk off together into the orchard and everybody wonders what’s going to happen. I’m getting ready because I have my whole family there for this scene that’s coming. They stand less than a foot apart from each other, and it’s full of romance and full of emotion, and they don’t even kiss. There was not one kiss in that movie, and it was one of the most romantic, sexually powerful movies I think I’ve ever see. Nobody took their clothes off. Nobody touched anybody inappropriately, except the second son who beat people up. And they stood there in this moment and the camera faded away, and they went their own way. All that said to me, in parenthesis, is that very powerful, beautiful, glorious things about this wonderful thing called sex that God created can be done even in drama without those things.

The Character of Ruth

Let’s just talk about Ruth for a minute. Boaz is a wealthy, godly man. Now what about Ruth? What do we learn about Ruth here? The character of Ruth comes out powerfully in this. I see three things.

First, we see Ruth’s initiative to care for her mother-in-law. Do you see that in Ruth 2:2? She asks, “Let me go to the field and glean along the ears of grain.” She doesn’t say, “Good grief, I wish I hadn’t come here. I didn’t know how poor we were going to be. And what are you going to do? I mean, you know people in this community. How do you get food here and how do Jews do this? I’m a Moabite.” That’s the attitude so many people have when hard times come, but Ruth has a capacious heart. She’s not going to feel sorry for herself. She looks at the situation, she measures the possibilities, she sees what poor people do, and she says, “Let me go pick up pieces of grain and we’ll have something to eat.” So she’s an initiative taker, not an oh-poor-me woman who, when she gets into difficult circumstances, feels sorry for herself.

Second, she’s an incredibly humble young woman. There’s no presumption in this woman at all, demanding her own rights. In Ruth 2:7, the servants report to Boaz what she had said when she came early in the morning, “Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.” She didn’t do it in a sly way, or even because poor people have a right to do it. The Old Testament says they have a right to do it. Rather, she asked to do it. She said, “Would this be okay?” She’s a humble, meek person. She’s obviously strong as an ox too because she works all day and carries the grain home at the end, but strength and meekness are such a beautiful combination. She reminds me at this point of another woman who was a foreigner and said to Jesus:

Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table (Matthew 15:27).

Jesus responded to that by saying, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done to you as you desire” (Matthew 15:28). In Mark 7:29, he even says “for this statement you may go your way…” Jesus loves humility. He hates the attitude that demands rights, in both men and women. It’s the attitude that says, “You owe me this. This is my right.” That whole demeanor is displeasing to the Lord. Sometimes it could just be scorn because of doormat theology, but everybody knows the difference between a strong, meek person and a wimpy, doormat kind of person who has no strength within. We know when submission and meekness and asking for permission rather than demanding a right is coming from strength or not.

Third, Ruth is industrious. She took initiative, she was humble, not presumptuous, and now we see that she was also industrious. In Ruth 2:7, it says she had continued from early morning until the afternoon without resting, even for a moment. Then Ruth 2:17 says she went on gleaning even until evening, and when she was done gleaning, she beat out the grain, taking all of what she picked up to get the grain out of it so she didn’t have to take all the chaff home, and then she hauled it home with her lunch bag to Naomi and gave it to her. That’s a long day. So she is an initiative-taker — humble, meek, not presumptuous, and very industrious. Those are the qualities we see.

A Merciful Providence

Now what’s the merciful providence? We’ve met Boaz, we’ve seen some qualities of Ruth, but what’s the merciful providence here? Ruth 2:3 says:

So she set out and 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 clan of Elimelech.

It says, “she happened to.” I think this writer is subtle here in letting you test yourself as to whether you’re catching on to the point of this book. He doesn’t get in your face here and say, “Do you get it? Here’s the point: God took her to the field. This is the providence of God here.” He just says she happened to come there, and you’re left to answer what do you believe about this? What do you believe about this? Do you believe accidents happen? Do you believe God just has nothing to do with such things? Or do you believe that the providence of God, which is what this book is about, is over little things like how Ruth was working around and came to a part of the field that happened to be owned by the one whom she married someday, and who would bear a child that would be the father of the King of Israel, who would be the father of the Messiah. That “just happened.” What’s your view of God here?

This is a test for the reader to ask. The rest of the book will, I think, bring great clarity, and Naomi is the one who is going to bring that clarity in a moment. But I think for those of us who have read the Bible, we ought to say with Proverbs 16:9:

The heart of man plans his way,
     but the Lord establishes his steps.

I try to help people, especially young people who are trying to figure out the will of God for their lives, and I’ll say, “Love God, and do as you please” — that is, don’t fret too much. God is going to direct your steps. Your main business is holiness. Love him and devote yourself to him. Be in the word, be in prayer, want to be a holy person, and keep yourself free from sin, and as far as these decisions go, regarding where you should go to school or things like that, don’t fret about it. God is going to guide his holy people, and you will know.

Stunned at Mercy

In Ruth 2:8–9, Boaz approaches Ruth, shows her great kindness, provides food and protection for her, and gives her something to drink, so the tide is clearly turning here. I’m going to come back to Ruth 2:3 in a minute, but I want to go next to the question in Ruth 2:10–13 about why these good things had happened to her. It says:

Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?”

Now, before I answer that question — and an answer is given here that we need to see if we understand — let me observe something about this woman that’s so beautiful. I’m sure these things are meant to be seen and embraced by us. She’s astonished that he’s nice to her. She says, “Why have I found favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me when I’m a foreigner?”

She’s just the opposite of the folks in Luke 13:1–5, who came to Jesus and said, “What about those people whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices? How do you handle that problem of evil, Jesus?” I remember hearing the sermon of R.C. Sproul on this text that just blew me away, years ago. It was really helpful. It was called The Locus of Astonishment by R.C. Sproul. Here are these people who were astonished that something so horrid would happen — that Pilate would come crashing in with his soldiers and take some of the Jews who were offering sacrifices, and he would kill them and put their own blood in with their sacrifices in order to make a mockery of the whole system. And they came to Jesus and said, “Oh, what a horrible thing.” They were astonished. And Jesus gave an answer that is absolutely mind-boggling to people who have another kind of theology. Jesus said:

Do you think that these people are any worse sinners than the rest of the people in Galilee? No, I tell you. But unless you repent, you will likewise perish.

That’s not what they came for. They came to get help with the problem of evil. Then he adds to it:

Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

What is he saying? He’s saying, “You know what you should be astonished at? That you weren’t under the tower. They weren’t any worse sinners than you. You should have been under the tower, and the fact that you are astonished that bad things happen to bad people shows that your astonishment is misplaced. You should be astonished that when you got up this morning, you were breathing. You’re in paradise.

Everything in my room down there at the Shepherd’s Inn is flawless. If I want hot water, I just push it this way. If I want cold water, I push it the other way. It’s incredible. If I flip the switch, there’s light. If I flip the switch down, it’s dark. I can make the temperature go up or down like it’s nothing. It’s usually too cold for me, so I’m turning it up. We have lights, a bed, pillow, one to go between my knees even. I learned to do that when my wife was pregnant. You’re in paradise. Are any of you astonished that you’re here and not in hell? You’re on the outskirts of paradise. And you know what? Some of you are murmuring, saying, “The hill is steep.” We are murmurers to the core. So Ruth, thank you. Thank you for falling down and saying:

Why have I found favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me?"

She models for us the astonishment of grace. She was astonished that she had been treated so kindly. Here’s a woman who was begging. She was poor, and she was astonished that she had been dealt such a kindness in the midst of her long, hard, sweaty, painful day, by which she got food for maybe a few days.

Put Away Complaining

Oh, what a need we have in the church to stop murmuring. It says in Philippians 2:14–15 that saints are to shine like the stars in the sky because they don’t murmur. Put away all murmuring and complaining. Be astonished at every good thing that happens to you. The reason we’re so hypercritical, the reason we’re so prone to complaining, the reason we murmur so much, the reason we find so much fault with our spouses, is due to the fact that we have a misplaced astonishment. We are astonished when bad things happen to us and generally blame somebody. We ought to be astonished at the 10,000 good things that have happened to us, and understand that the bad things would be a lot worse if we got what we deserved.

C.J. Mahaney, who’s one of my friends and is a pastor around Washington, D.C., has a line he says. Whenever anybody asks him, “How are you doing C.J.?” Do you know what his answer is? He says, “Better than I deserve.” He says that answer has brought him more evangelistic opportunities than anything he’s ever said. For example, somebody might walk by him and say, “How are you doing?” And he will say, “Better than I deserve.” And sometimes they will reply with, “Why, what’s wrong?” And then he can say, “Well, I’m a sinner before a holy God, and he sent his Son into the world to die for me.” It’s just a perfect statement — “better than I deserve.” That’s always true. If you don’t believe that, you’ve got a very wrong understanding of grace and of sin and you need to have Ruth work on you a little bit here.

I have not paced myself well again, so let me just see where we’ll pick it up here. We’re going to do a question and answer here in a half an hour and you can go anywhere you want with that, but tonight we’re going to pick it up where we left off here, and we’re going to ask what the theological answer is for the question, “Why have I found favor in your eyes?” It’s a very profound question. In fact, it’s an answer that will undergird the book of Romans, I believe. You think this afternoon about the answer to that question, and why God favored her in this way. The answer is given in Ruth 2:11–12. Is it a gospel answer? Is it a legal answer? What’s the bottom line answer to the why question of Ruth 2:10? That’s where we’ll pick it up. Let’s pray, and then we’ll take our break and come back for the Q&A.