Men, continuing the story here in Ruth chapter 2 from this morning, let's actually back up
to chapter 1 verse 22.
The Bible reads, So Naomi returned and Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law with her,
which returned out of the country of Moab, and they came to Bethlehem in the beginning
of barley harvest.
Now in verse 1 of chapter 2, it brings up the fact that Naomi has a kinsman, meaning
a relative, somebody who's a fairly close relative.
But it's not really Naomi's relative, it's a relative of her dead husband.
It's a kinsman of Lamelech, and this guy's name is Boaz, okay?
But in chapter 2 verse 2, it says, And Ruth the Moabite is said unto Naomi, Let me now
go to the field, and glean ears of corn after him, in whose sight I shall find grace.
And she said unto her, Go, my daughter.
So in verse 2, she's not setting out to go to Boaz's field or to go to a field of someone
that's a relative.
She's just going to go find any field that she's able to glean in, whoever lets her do
it basically.
And then in verse 3 it says, And she went and came and gleaned in the field after the
reapers, and her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz.
So notice that word hap, it's saying like, it just happened to be, it just happened to
be that she ended up being in the part of the field that belonged to Boaz.
Because you know, they've got this great big barley field, different people own different
portions of it, and it just happened to be.
But obviously this is the plan of God.
Obviously God's blessing her, because as we talked about this morning, she sought first
the kingdom of God, she chose to leave everything behind in the land of the Moabites, and she
said that Naomi's God was going to be her God, and so forth.
So God blesses her by working it out to where she ends up gleaning in the field of a guy
who is related to them, or kin of them, through marriage, not by blood.
Now notice what it says in verse 2, Let me now go to the field and glean ears of corn
after him in whose sight I shall find grace.
What does this mean to glean?
Well in those days, and it's actually explained in the Law of Moses, that when they reap their
field, they're not supposed to go over it a second time or a third time and just carefully
get every bit of grain or fruit that the field produces.
But what they're supposed to do is that as they go through and reap their field, there's
going to be a little bit that you drop, a little bit that you spill, a little bit that
you miss.
You know, if you're picking crops, you're just not going to see one, a leaf is covering
it or something.
And so there are going to be a lot of things that you don't catch, because you're going
for speed.
You know, there's a lot to do, it has to be harvested in a short amount of time, so these
workers are just kind of cranking through the field, reaping as much as they can, and
they're going to drop stuff, they're going to miss stuff, and so the gleaners would come
through and get everything that they missed.
And the Bible explains in the Law of Moses that this was a way for poor people to take
care of themselves.
People who have no job, people who have no property, they don't have their own land or
their own field, they could go through and just pick things off the ground and glean
after the reapers, and this is a way that they could survive.
Now, first of all, at any time, if you're walking through a field, you're allowed to
just pick fruit off of anybody's tree and just eat it.
That was always allowed, okay?
But you weren't allowed to have any kind of a container or vessel, okay?
So if I'm walking through an apple orchard, I could just, according to the Bible's law,
I could just reach up, grab an apple, it doesn't matter whose field it is, I could just grab
an apple and just eat it.
But what I can't do is I can't start filling my backpack with apples, okay?
Well, this is different though because with the gleaning, because this is a special thing
of gleaning where they're reaping the harvest and you're going behind them and gleaning,
you know, you're allowed to fill a container.
So here, she's actually, you know, gleaning after the reapers and she's filling a container
because remember, her and her mother don't have any resources, mother-in-law I should
say, don't have anything going for them and so this is how they're going to feed themselves
is just by Ruth going out and gleaning.
But you know, the first thing that jumps out at me in this story is that Ruth is proactive
here to get out and make something happen and work hard.
You know, her mother-in-law doesn't have to tell her, hey, are we going to do some
gleaning or what?
You know, what are we doing?
You know, Ruth brings it up and says, let me now go to the field and glean ears of corn
after him and whose side I shall find grace.
So she's proactive and we're going to see a little bit later that she is a hard worker,
okay?
The Bible reads in verse number four, and behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem and said
unto the reapers, the Lord be with you, and they answered him, the Lord bless thee.
And one gets the feeling that this is kind of a common greeting, right, that this is
kind of a way that a master would greet the servants out in the field would be to say
something along these lines and then they have their customary reply, the Lord bless
thee.
And the thing I want to point out about that is that this is the proper name of God, the
Lord in all caps, which the Jews later would become so superstitious that they'll never
pronounce it out loud.
But here, of course, we see people pronouncing it out loud and just using it even as a common
greeting because that's just the most common name of God that they would use at that time.
Then said Boaz unto his servant, verse five, that was said over the reapers, whose damsel
is this?
And the servant that was said over the reapers answered and said, it is the Moabite-ish damsel
that came back with Naomi out of the country of Moab.
And she said, I pray you, let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.
So she came and have continued even from the morning until now that she tarried a little
in the house.
So this guy seems to be impressed with her work and even making a point that she's been
added a long time and not really taking much of a break because he says that she's continued
even from the morning, the word even there is emphasizing like even from the morning
until now that she tarried a little in the house, meaning that she only briefly took
a break in the house and she's just been working nonstop from morning, taking a little
break.
And this is obviously very hard work.
So Ruth's out there, she's working hard in the field.
And it says in verse eight, then said Boaz unto Ruth, hearest thou not my daughter, go
not to glean in another field, neither go from hence, but abide here fast by my maidens.
Let thine eyes be on the field that they do reap and go thou after them.
Have I not charged the young men that they shall not touch thee?
So he's reassuring her, nobody's going to mistreat you.
Stay in this field.
You know, you could reap other places, but no, no, no.
Stay in this field.
Don't reap somewhere else because I'm going to watch out for you.
I've commanded the young men not to touch you.
Nobody's going to slap you around or nobody's going to, you know, uh, do any workplace harassment
with you or whatever, or behave inappropriately with you.
So you know, you don't have to worry about it.
I've commanded them not to.
And she says, or I'm sorry, Boaz says, and when thou are to thirst, go into the vessels
and drink of that which the young men have drawn.
So Boaz is going above and beyond.
Not only is he allowing her to come in and reap his field after, you know, not reap,
but glean the field after the reapers.
He's also saying, hey, you know, we've got water, we got refreshments, nobody's going
to give you a bad time.
Come here day after day.
He's making her feel welcome and comfortable doing this and really going above and beyond.
Verse 10, then she fell on her face and bowed herself to the ground and said to him, why
have I found grace in thine eyes that thou shouldest take knowledge of me seeing I'm
a stranger?
She said, look, I know I'm a foreigner, I'm a mobile, why do you care so much about me?
Why are you being so nice to me?
And Boaz answered and said unto her, it hath fully been showed me all that thou has done
unto thy mother-in-law since the death of thine husband and how thou hast left thy father
and thy mother in the land of thy nativity and art come unto a people which thou knew
is not heretofore.
The Lord recompense thy work and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel under
whose wings thou art come to trust.
Then she said, let me find favor in thy sight, my Lord, for that thou has comforted me and
that thou has spoken friendly unto thine handmaid.
And then notice this last statement, though I be not like unto one of thine handmaidens.
She's calling herself his handmaid, but then she's even saying, you know, I'm not even
really worthy, I'm not even like your handmaids because they're actually of a higher rank
than I am.
I'm so lowly, I'm lower than your handmaids, but yet I'm thankful that you're treating
me so well and I'm, you know, and she's being very humble.
And so some of the attributes that I want to point out about Ruth here that we could
learn from is that first of all, she's a hard worker.
She gets out there, she works hard, and she's humble.
And you know, there are two kinds of people in this world, you know, there are people
that when you praise them and give them a compliment, it goes to their head and they
become prideful and arrogant.
It's really sad because you want to give somebody a compliment, you want to encourage them,
and then it causes them to get a big head.
And then other people, when they receive a compliment, they can humbly accept that compliment
and it makes them even want to do better.
It makes them even want to be a better Christian and do better.
And that's what we see with Ruth is that, you know, she's given a compliment, she's
praised by Boaz, but she remains humble.
And by saying, oh, I'm not like one of your handmaids shows her humble attitude.
And of course this humility pays off because what does Boaz respond to, to her?
You know, first he just said that she has access to the water cooler, okay?
But now she gives this humble response and what does he say next?
He says in verse 14, in meal time, come thou hither and eat of the bread and dip thy morsel
in the vinegar.
And she sat beside the reapers and he reached her, I mean, he's passing the food to her
at the meal.
So she's sitting close enough to him to where he's actually passing her food and they're
eating together.
She's at the table with the boss man and she sat beside the reapers who are of the higher
status and she reached, or he reached her parched corn and she did eat and was sufficed
and left.
The word left there means that she left food on her plate is what it's saying.
It's saying she had been given so much food at the meal that she's able to eat all you
can eat, eat as much as she wanted.
She got full and then she even left, meaning that she could have had more if she wanted
to.
So, you know, this is a veritable feast for her where she gets this all you can eat meal
with Boaz and she can eat as much as she wants.
She could have even had more than she did.
And so we see that humility pays off.
The Bible says that whosoever humblest himself shall be exalted.
You know, if you want to be lifted up in this world, if you want to climb the ladder, so
to speak, the way up is down.
Okay, you've got to be a humble person.
Being prideful and arrogant and haughty and blowing off your mouth and throwing your weight
around.
You know, maybe that's the way that the world thinks or does things, but honestly, according
to the Word of God, if you want to succeed, you've got to be humble and let God exalt
you.
The Bible says, humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up.
So we see Ruth is a hard worker and she's humble and God's blessing that.
God's rewarding that.
And so now she's getting to eat with everybody, she gets a drink, she's out there working
in the field, and it's a pretty sweet deal considering her situation.
And it says in verse number 15, and when she was risen up to glean, Boaz commanded his
young men saying, let her glean even among the sheaves and reproach her not and let fall
also some of the handfuls of purpose for her and leave them that she may glean them and
rebuke her not.
He's basically saying, I want you to spill on purpose, you know, because she's gleaning
and picking up whatever they drop.
He's saying just, you know what, every once in a while, just drop an entire handful of
grain on the ground so that she can really clean up, so to speak, okay, and get a lot
of grain.
So then at the end of the day, in verse 17, it says, so she gleaned in the field until
even and beat out that she had gleaned and it was about an ephah of barley.
So she has this huge take home, you know, way more than you would expect from just being
a lowly gleaner out in the field.
I mean, she ends up getting an entire ephah of grain and being able to bring this home
to her mother-in-law.
And of course, when she brings it to her mother-in-law, her mother-in-law is really
impressed and blown away by how productive she was.
Now look, she started out by working hard.
She started out by being humble.
That's when the handfuls of purpose started being dumped behind.
And what we have to understand is that when we go to our job and work hard at our job,
God sees that and he's going to bless that and he will give us a bonus.
You know, he will give us extra.
Even if our boss isn't necessarily a righteous person, being a good employee on a job where
the boss is unrighteous gets you even more rewards from God.
And even if you're at a job where the boss does not notice the good work that you do
and he doesn't really recognize the fact that you're going above and beyond, you have to
have the faith to believe that God is always recognizing that even if your earthly boss
doesn't and that he will reward you according to your works.
You know, in this story, Ruth says, you know, why are you doing this for me?
Why are you helping me out?
Why do you even care about me?
And it says in verse 11, and Boaz answered and said to her, it had fully been showed
me all that thou has done unto thy mother-in-law since the death of thy husband.
And you see here in the story, Boaz represents God.
You know, if we took a symbolic look at the story and God sees everything that we do,
you know, he sees how we treat family, he sees our personal life, he sees us reading
our Bible, praying or not doing those things.
He sees us going to church and soul winning and these things are not going to go unnoticed
by God.
Just like Boaz noticed these things and paid attention to these things and rewarded this
lowly servant girl, he's doing it because he knows that she's righteous and godly.
And you know what?
God is going to look at us as well and he's going to pay attention to those things.
He's going to note those things.
Now, you might be tempted to think to yourself, well, maybe Boaz is just into Ruth.
You know, maybe Ruth is just such a gorgeous babe and he's just into Ruth so he is giving
her these benefits because he thinks that she's cute or something.
And so, you know, this is how he treats all the girls or something.
But that is not true.
That is not what's going on in the story.
And the proof of that is that when Ruth approaches him in chapter 3 about getting married, he's
not just falling all over himself to marry her, which if he was really just jazzed about
her because she's just so beautiful and he just really wants to get with her, then when
obviously then he would have just immediately taken her up on the offer to marry him.
But actually when Ruth, and we're not to that part in the story yet, but in chapter 3 when
Ruth approaches him about marrying her and says, look, because of the fact that you are
the kinsman of my dead husband, you know, then that gives you the right basically to
marry me and take his property.
You know, when she explains that to him or brings that up to him in Ruth chapter 3, he
doesn't just jump on that and say, oh man, I've had my eye on you ever since you got
here, you gorgeous thing, you.
That's not what he says.
What he actually says is, well, you know, there's another guy who's also a kinsman.
There's another guy who's also related that could actually do the same thing for you.
And if he does it for you, then great.
If he takes care of you, if he does it for you, great.
But if he won't do it, then I will.
How romantic, you know.
But you know, when we look at that story though, you know, we're looking for a spiritual application.
We're not looking for a romance novel here in the book of Ruth, okay?
If you're looking for one, you might get a little disappointed with how some of the story
plays out here.
And look, I'm not saying that obviously he didn't love her and that he didn't.
I'm sure he did and I'm sure it was a wonderful marriage and they lived happily ever after.
But what I'm saying is that he's not just treating her this way because of the fact
that he wants to get with her.
You can tell that that's not on his mind based on chapter 3.
What takes place in chapter 3 shows, and he's not one of these slimy bosses who just wants
to rub up against all the workers or something because of the fact that, you know, he's
very appropriate and polite in chapter 3 and he's not even just chomping at the bit even
to marry her and he treats her appropriately and so forth.
You know what I mean?
She's just like, hey, spread thy skirt upon me for thou art a near kinsman.
He's like, all right, wait a minute, you know.
So that shows his character and that's important when you're interpreting chapter 2.
You know, what he admires is the godliness.
What he admires is the work ethic.
What he admires is the humility.
That's what he's rewarding in chapter 2.
And so we can get a picture from this of God looking down and seeing the work that we do,
seeing how we treat people, seeing how we're loyal to family and loyal to friends and how
we take care of the people in our lives and, you know, he recognizes that.
He acknowledges that.
Don't ever think that it's not seen or not noticed.
If your boss doesn't notice, it doesn't matter.
God notices and you will eventually be paid.
You will eventually be rewarded.
You'll eventually be promoted.
Look, I know what it's like to have a job where the boss does not reward you for excelling,
doesn't care, you know, treats you unfairly.
I've been there.
I've had a job like that and I've also had a job where the boss really acknowledged you
doing extra and he would reward you and pay you and take care of you.
You know, I've had both.
I've done both.
But I'll say this.
I feel like as I look back over my life, I've never done anything that went unrewarded by
God.
You know, any work that I did, whenever I worked hard, even if the boss shortchanged
me, somehow God always ended up coming through for me and I got some windfall.
I got some handfuls of purpose.
I got some extra that I didn't expect to bless what I did, you know, and so you can't just
look at the earthly situation and say, well, what's the point of working hard?
Nobody's even going to care if I work hard.
I might as well just phone it in and do the minimum.
No, the Bible says, Whatsoever thy hand finds to do, do it with thy might.
Everything we do, we should do it as unto the Lord and not unto men, knowing that whatsoever
good thing any man do it, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond
or free.
And so the hard work that we do, it never goes unnoticed.
The acts of kindness, the love that we show for the people in our lives, all of that is
seen and rewarded by God 100%.
Don't worry about it for one second.
You know, your paycheck might not reflect it this week, but give it a few years and
you're going to just see blessings coming your way and say, you know what?
God knows that I worked hard and now he's rewarding me.
Okay?
It will come.
You will look back and see that it was worth it.
Or you can just continue having this attitude of, well, if you don't pay much, you don't
get much, and just doing the minimum at your job and you know what?
God sees that.
He's going to keep you at a minimum job.
He's going to keep you at the bottom because of that attitude right there.
You know, you start acting like somebody who works hard and gets paid well and God will
make sure that you start actually getting paid better.
Okay.
So we see that in the case of Ruth.
I mean, there's no reason why Boaz would even treat her so well being a foreigner.
You know, I mean, what's this, what's this, uh, what's this illegal doing here, you know,
in my field that, you know, taking jobs away from Israelites or whatever, but yet that's
not the attitude.
He's giving her preferential treatment.
I mean, he's treating her better than the Israelites because he likes her character,
her godliness, her virtue, and he likes the fact that she chose to forsake everything
in order to follow the Lord.
You know, he's a spiritual guy.
That's why when he greets the reapers, he's talking about Jehovah God when he greets them,
and he recognizes the fact that she's made a spiritual decision here.
She's humble.
She's a hard worker.
He likes that.
He rewards her and takes care of her.
And you know, God's going to do the same thing for us.
These stories are in the Bible for a reason, and they're to be examples for us in our lives
so we can look at these characters and see what they did right and do the same thing,
and see what they did wrong and avoid those things.
That's what these stories are for in scripture.
And so it says in verse number 18, and she took it up and went into the city and her
mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned and she brought forth and gave to her that she
had reserved after she was sufficed.
So you know, there's basically a splitting up of the food.
They both have enough and they both have abundance.
After they've both eaten and set aside what they need, they've got extra because you know,
she brought home a considerable amount.
She brought home the full ephah.
And her mother-in-law, verse 19, said unto her, Where has thou gleaned today?
And where wrought is thou?
Blessed be he that did take knowledge of thee.
And she showed her mother-in-law with whom she had wrought and said, The man's name with
whom I wrought today is Boaz.
Now remember, she did not set out to go to Boaz's field and her and her mother-in-law
had not talked about this.
She just happened to be in Boaz's field.
That was just her hap to light upon that part of the field.
And so just now, Naomi is realizing the coincidence, right, in verse number 20.
And Naomi said unto her daughter-in-law, Blessed be he of the Lord who hath not left off his
kindness to the living and to the dead.
And Naomi said unto her, The man is near of kin unto us, one of our next kinsmen.
And again, not by blood, but just by marriage.
And Ruth the Moabite has said, He said also unto me, Thou shalt keep fast by my young
men.
Of course, fast here is not talking about speed.
Fast means basically tight or close in this context.
Keep fast by my young men until they have ended all my harvest.
And Naomi said unto Ruth her daughter-in-law, It is good, my daughter, that thou go out
with his maidens.
And then I like this phrase at the end here, that they meet thee not in any other field.
They don't meet you in another field, you know, because that would be awkward, you know,
to meet you in another field after this guy was so nice to you and he's giving you good
treatment and even the handfuls of purpose and he told you that you're welcome and everything.
You know, don't let them meet you in another field.
So what this is showing is obviously loyalty to your job on one level, right?
You know, saying, look, don't be somebody who's kind of trying to play both sides and
trying to sort of have, you know, one foot over here, another foot over here and you're
kind of this double agent or something.
And he's saying, you know, don't be found in another field.
And you know, part of the lesson about this spiritually is that, you know, if the Lord
has been good to us, then we need to be loyal to the Lord and we need to be laboring in
his vineyard and serving him and not serving other gods, which obviously that's not really
a problem in America.
We're not, you know, surrounded by false gods or whatever.
But you know, the Bible talks about a great big false god called Mammon and he says you
cannot serve God and Mammon.
And he talks about people who've made a god of money.
So he says, you know, covetousness is idolatry.
So you know, we want to make sure that we're loyal to the Lord.
All the blessings, all the benefits that he has given to us, you know, we need to show
some loyalty to him.
Let's work in his vineyard.
Let's stay with him.
Now this reminds me also of another scripture in Luke chapter 10.
If you want to keep your finger here in Ruth chapter 3, go to Luke chapter 10 because there's
the idea of being loyal to your job, meaning, you know, you're not secretly working with
the competition at the same time or something but that rather, you know, you're upfront
and open and loyal to your boss at work and that you're, you know, you're ethical and
moral with the company that you work for.
Also spiritually, you know, we don't want to commit a spiritual adultery but we want
to be faithful and loyal to the Lord.
You could obviously apply this to marriage and say, you know, you be faithful to your
spouse and so forth because that's one of the things that spiritually represents our
walk with God.
But in Luke chapter 10, there's a similar verse.
It kind of reminded me of this when it says, you know, don't let them find you in another
field basically double dipping.
You know, you're gleaning over here and then you're, you're moonlighting over here when
he's taking care of everything that you need and so forth and he told you to just glean
in this field.
You know, you can glean as much as you want in this field.
It reminded me of this phrase at the end of verse seven.
Just look at the end of verse seven, go not from house to house.
So you look at that phrase going out from house to house and I know this is ridiculous
but I've had some people literally pull this verse out and say the Bible is telling us
not to go soul winning door to door, which is funny because you know the whole context
of Matthew chapter 10 and Luke chapter 10 is he's sending them out two by two and they're
going into all the towns and villages and preaching the gospel.
So it's a great soul winning passage.
And of course we've got verses like Acts chapter five verse 42 and daily in the temple and
in every house they cease not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.
The Bible tells us to go out into highways and hedges and compel them to come in that
God's house may be filled.
And what you have to understand about soul winning is that it doesn't have to be done
house to house.
You know, the idea is that we're getting out there and we're talking to people about the
gospel, right?
We're going to the lost.
The reason why we go door to door and why we'll always go door to door is because of
the fact that that is really the only way to systematically talk to everyone in a city
of over four million people.
I mean, if you have a city of over four million people, how can you systematically get to
everyone?
You know, you've got to be organized because here's the thing with a church our size going
out literally like 200 people out knocking doors or something in the course of a few
weeks.
Think about the fact that you're going to just keep talking to the same people over
and over again.
You're basically going to be annoying one group of people by approaching them like 20
times and then another group of people is not hearing the gospel at all.
That doesn't make any sense, does it?
We don't want to annoy these people 20 times and then these people have heard from us zero
times.
So the idea of going house to house and, uh, marking it on a map is to actually make sure
that we can fulfill God's command to preach the gospel to every creature.
And obviously we have the example of going to house house from the book of Acts where
he says daily in the temple and in every house they cease not to teach preach Jesus
Christ.
And then also Acts 20 20 on the wall here and how I kept back nothing that was profitable
unto you but have showed you and have taught you publicly and from house to house.
So there's scripture on going up and down the highways and hedges, going from house
to house, et cetera.
So what does this mean?
See but you see how somebody can just rip a verse out of context and just, you know,
go not from house to house.
I'm done soul winning.
Well, that's convenient for your lazy rear end, but let's get the actual context.
It says in verse number five and into whatsoever house you enter, first say peace be to this
house and if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it.
If not, it shall turn to you again.
Now notice that when we looked at verse seven, we didn't even look at the whole verse, did
we?
We just looked at the end of the verse.
Now let's get the whole verse.
And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give for the laborer is
worthy of his hire.
Go not from house to house.
Okay, stay in that house, eat and drink what they give you and go not from house to house.
And then he goes on to explain more instructions about the preaching that they're going to
do.
What you have to understand is that in the ancient world, you know, there's this thing
of hospitality where basically you'd stay at people's houses a lot.
Okay.
Nowadays, you know, you just, everybody goes to the hotel.
But back then it was a lot more common in the ancient world that you would go to people's
houses that are strangers.
And that's why the Bible says, you know, be not forgetful to entertain strangers for thereby
some have entertained angels unawares.
If you go back to the Old Testament, you know, you have strangers that show up and people
entertain them, meaning that they have them stay at their house, they feed them, they
take care of them, and they send them on their way.
And, you know, part of that process would sometimes even involve the giving of a gift.
Not only just food and clothing and shelter and what they, their immediate needs being
met for the trip, but a lot of times a gift would even be imparted.
And it was, it was often a reciprocal arrangement where, you know, somebody would stay at your
house and you'd take care of their physical needs and give them the bath and the food
and the bed to sleep in.
And then when you're in their city, they repay the favor.
And so you have these kind of guest-friend relationships.
And I did a whole sermon on this several months ago.
I, I think it was called hospitality or something.
You know, we looked at examples of this in the Bible and, and talked about it.
But what you see here is that's what, he's talking about going to someone's house and
basically you're using their hospitality and he's saying don't go from house to house basically
just like collecting more, being greedy is what he's saying.
Because when he sends them out, he tells them not even to take two coats, don't even take
a purse with you of money, don't even take two pairs of, of shoes or two stabs, you know.
Just bring the basics.
Just be shod with sandals, not put on two coats and go and preach and rely on hospitality
is what he's saying.
Rely on people's hospitality as you're out.
What he doesn't want them to do is go here, get the meal, get the gifts and then hey let's
go across town and party over there, get the meal, get the gifts and being basically a
glutton and a wine bibber and just kind of racking up all the gifts and yeah we're here
representing Jesus so please wine us and dine us again.
You know he's just saying be humble and just accept the hospitality from that one person.
If the person is a godly person, if he's the son of peace, quote unquote, then you know
what, receive his hospitality and let that be enough for you, not like alright now let's
make it a progressive dinner and let's go down over here.
That's what he's talking about.
So he's not saying don't go house to house preaching the gospel, he's saying don't go
house to house collecting food and drink and gifts.
Does everybody see the difference?
So you see how this phrase has been ripped out of context.
He's not saying don't evangelize from house to house, he's saying don't eat and drink
such things as they give from house to house, don't abuse hospitality, don't double dip
or take too much, don't be greedy is what he's saying and that's basically the same
type of a concept that we see back in Ruth chapter three, sorry, Ruth chapter two because
in Ruth chapter two he's saying look, you know, you're getting this hospitality from
Boaz in the sense that he's letting you glean and you have access to the lunch and the company
lunch and the water cooler and these different things.
He's saying, you know, don't let them catch you in another field, moonlighting, double
dipping, you know, be satisfied with the extreme generosity that Boaz is showing you and don't
feel like you got to get it somewhere else and again, we can take a spiritual application
of this and say, you know what, the Lord daily loadeth us with benefits.
Let's not try to have it both ways where we're trying to get the best that the world has
to offer and the best that God has to offer and trying to have kind of one foot in the
world and one foot in the Christian life, you know, let's get all the way in the Christian
life.
Let's be in that field and you know, that has all the bounty that we need.
Whatever God blesses us with should be enough.
You know, we should be content with whatever God blesses us with, not looking at all the
other fields and thinking about, oh man, look at that and wishing that we could be somewhere
else other than serving God, being fed by God, being taken care of by God.
That ought to be enough for us and of course, because Ruth obeys this and is content to
stay in Boaz's field, you know, eventually she's going to end up, you know, literally
owning the place, right?
Because she's going to end up becoming Boaz's wife and having access to everything, okay?
And so God will bless that loyalty and faithfulness.
Now, when it comes to today's soul, another misinterpretation from Luke chapter 10 is
that people will sometimes grab a hold of Matthew 10 and Luke 10 and say, hey, that's
how we need to do soul winning today.
You know, we need to just go out there with the shirt on our back and not bring anything
and just rely on hospitality.
This is not true because he specifically says at the end of the Gospel, he says, hey, do
you remember when I sent you out there without anything?
Did you have any lack?
Did you lack anything?
Did you run out of stuff?
And they said, no, we didn't lack anything.
They're basically telling Jesus, we had enough food, we had enough drink, we had everything
we needed.
So God sent them out and told them not to bring anything and everywhere they went, they
got hospitality, they always had a place to stay, they always had food, they always had
drink, everything.
But then he says to them, hey, did you lack anything?
And they said, no.
And then he says, okay, but now I say unto you, bring stuff.
You know, I'm paraphrasing, of course, but he basically says to them, well, now I'm saying,
you know, bring the shoes, bring the purse, bring the, and he even tells them, you know,
even to, if you don't have a sword, you know, sell your garment and buy one.
So he's telling them to bring the gear.
So you don't want to take scripture out of context and say, you know, God wants us to
go out there soul winning and just rely on hospitality alone.
You know, in fact, that's how we're going to do these soul winning trips now, Raymond.
Okay, there's no more lunches, there's no more dinners, you know, you got to go out
and get that from, from the son of peace, you know, hopefully the son of peace lives
in Flagstaff or Heber or these different places, but no, cause that's not the instruction that
Christ gave.
See, this is kind of a, it's sort of a miraculous thing, you know, he's sending them out and
just all their needs are always met everywhere they go because God has already planned in
his providence who's going to take care of them and he's got it all planned so that they
can just travel light because they're basically, you know, evangelizing the whole country in
just a few years under Christ's supervision.
And so they travel light, they go out there and obviously there's a lot of symbolism,
that's a whole other sermon, but the point is that we got to get scripture in context
because when we go out there soul winning, we're not relying on hospitality to feed and
water us.
Now look, we've all been given water out soul winning, right?
And sometimes we've even been given cans of soda or even entire meals.
Who has ever been fed an entire meal out soul winning?
Put up your hand.
I mean, there's like literally more than 10 people just put their hand up all together.
I mean, I've been literally invited in for a dinner where it was like on the level of
like a Thanksgiving dinner.
It was like a big bird in the middle of the table.
There's like mashed potatoes, corn, gravy.
I was like, man, do you guys eat this way all the time?
This is great.
You know, cause I might need to do a little follow up, but anyway, actually though, uh,
the funny part is that, you know, they didn't even get saved, you know, but anyway, I was
in the middle of giving the guy the gospel and then his wife's just like, Hey, it's dinner
time and he's just like, you know, why don't you just come in and eat with us and we'll
continue the conversation.
I'm just like, uh, let me think about it.
Sure.
Let's go.
You know, it was a great meal.
I've gotten a complete meal, probably three times total I can think of that I've actually
been fed an entire meal just randomly out soul winning, but I've been given hundreds
of water bottles and, and you know, snacks and things.
I mean, when we, you know, we went to Dearborn, Michigan for soul winning and man, when we
went to Dearborn, Michigan, all the people who watched too much Fox news told us like,
don't go there.
You're going to die.
They're going to kill you.
The place is under Sharia law because it's all been exaggerated and people are just like,
please, pastor Anderson, we love you.
We don't want you to get stoned to death.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
They're like, there's a video on YouTube Christians being stoned in, in Dearborn.
Hey, I go to YouTube and search the Christians being stoned and in Dearborn, you know, and
guess what it was?
It was Muslims throwing empty water bottles at Christians.
Not exactly a stoning and the Christians were purposely provoking these Muslims.
They weren't going in there and preaching the gospel like we do.
They're going in there and bullhorning.
They went to some Muslim event and are just bullhorning all these really offensive things
and it's all these kind of clowns that are just looking for attention on YouTube by just
saying shocking, screaming, shocking things through a bullhorn at an Islam event and look,
we all know that Mohammed was a pedophile on the record.
It's admitted.
They, they, they openly believe that he, that he did that, but basically does that mean
that we just, you know, go to a Muslim event and start screaming, hey, Mohammed's a pedophile.
That's not going to accomplish anything.
You know, we, we, we preach Christ crucified, right?
That's what we, that's the power of God unto salvation is Christ crucified and so we're
not going there just trying to incense these people and create a scene so that we can have
a cool YouTube video or something like that.
That's not what we do.
We're, we actually love people.
We actually care about people and I guarantee you that those people that are bullhorning
and getting water bottles thrown at them, I wonder how many salvations they had that
day because I don't remember the exact numbers, but I want to say that we had approximately
30 some salvations that day and I would say around 10 of them were Muslims that day that
we, you know, we had a lot of people that were not Muslim saved, but I think I want
to say we had about 62 soul winners that day out there all day, 62 people soul winning
and it was a pretty, a pretty receptive area cause there were a lot of, uh, you know, non-Muslims
that were pretty receptive too and, and we ended up getting a bunch of people saved,
you know, but, but, but, you know, but we didn't make a viral video about getting stoned,
but that's not really the goal, is it?
You know, it's a lie.
And, and I even ran, it's so funny, um, after the event I went to the airport to, I went
to the Detroit airport to fly back to Phoenix after the Marching to Dearborn event, which
was our first, uh, you know, soul winning event in another city by the way.
I get to the airport and this guy walks up to me, he's like, oh hey, you're Pastor Anderson,
so cool to meet you and it was just, you know, coincidence that I ran into this guy and he
said that, he said, I'm, I got to admit to you, I was literally planning on going to
the event, uh, today cause it's like the evening.
I was literally planning on going today, but I, I got too nervous about Dearborn cause
I'd heard about, you know, the horrors of Dearborn.
Of course it was a complete, uh, exaggeration.
There's no Sharia law there.
You know what it is?
It's basically just a neighborhood that has a bunch of Muslims living in it in addition
to non-Muslims and it basically just feels like Detroit.
It is Detroit.
It's part of Detroit.
It's like a Detroit suburb.
It's not a big deal and just shows how people are so scared of their own shadow and they're
scared of phantoms and boogeymen that don't even exist because we got there and everybody
was nice to us and you say, where did you get off on this story, Pastor Anderson?
It's because of the fact that I was fed in Dearborn.
In Dearborn, a lot of the Muslims were inviting us into their houses so they could stone us
in the living room.
No, no, they actually would invite us into the house and they literally brought out like
trays of cookies and pastries to us, you know, and they were, because they were doing like
a hospitality thing where they literally, who was that, was anybody at that event that's
here tonight at the Dearborn Soloning, Michigan?
One, two, wow, okay.
Not a lot of people, I mean, most people obviously were from that region, wasn't a lot of people
from Phoenix that went, but a few of us were there and I mean, you know, they're bringing
out like trays of cookies and pastries and everything like that and so yeah, you get
that hospitality from time to time, but it's not reliable enough to where you, you know,
you would just be comfortable on just, hey, this is what we're eating, guys.
You're eating the gleanings of Payson, you know, it's not that reliable, okay, because
you could go weeks without anybody offering you stuff.
Now if we went around like Buddhist monks like with a little begging bowl and looked
pathetic then yeah, they'll probably give us some scraps or something, but is that what
Christ has commanded?
No, it isn't because you got to get it in context of, hey, that was a special thing
and then now in the Garden of Gethsemane and around that time of the Last Supper and all
that, he's telling them, hey, look, now the instructions have changed and by the way,
one of the instructions in Matthew chapter 10, Luke chapter 10, he specifically says
in Matthew chapter 10, you know, not to go to the Gentiles.
Only go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Don't go to Samaritans, don't go to the Gentiles, but what's the command now?
Go teach all nations.
So we can still learn from those chapters, but there are a few things that have changed.
So the takeaway is don't be greedy, don't double dip and so he says here in, back in
Ruth chapter 2, I'll wrap up here, keep fast by my young men until they've ended all my
harvest.
Verse 22, and Naomi said unto Ruth her daughter-in-law, it is good, my daughter, that thou go out
with his maidens, that they meet thee not in any other field.
So she kept fast by the maidens of Boaz to glean unto the end of barley harvest and of
wheat harvest and dwelt with her mother-in-law.
And so the big takeaways from this chapter are work hard, be humble, God sees everything
that you're doing and not just your hard work out on the job, but just he sees the
kindness to your mother-in-law, right?
I mean, you know, if you love those that love you, what thank have you?
But if you love your mother-in-law, then is your reward great and, no, I'm just kidding.
But anyway, you know, he sees the kindness toward family.
He sees the kindness toward friends.
He sees the loyalty.
He sees you on the job working hard, doing your best.
He sees you in your home life, being kind to your family, treating your loved ones well.
Every good deed that you do, every single good deed that you do is seen by God and will
be rewarded by God, period, period, 100%.
There's no doubt.
It's not like he's got, oh, I missed that.
I missed that one.
I meant to reward you, but I got busy.
The hairs of your head are numbered.
And so he will reward every good deed.
He sees everything and nothing that you ever do good is, you know, isn't that nice?
You know, to me, it's frustrating from a human standpoint.
It's frustrating to be at a job where it doesn't matter whether or not you excel.
You know what I mean?
Like some companies, it's like you could go there and just work your tail off and another
guy just shows up and slacks off and you both get paid the same.
You both get the same raises.
You get the same, because it's just like based on time.
Like you've been here for six years.
You've been here for 15 years.
It's just like nothing based on performance.
It's out there, folks.
Or it's just a big company and you're just kind of this cog in the machine.
You know, I've always wanted to work at a company where I could shine.
You know, where I could really work hard and do good and actually climb the ladder and
succeed and excel, you know, and do my best and get rewarded for it.
You know, not everybody has that opportunity.
Some people are stuck in a job where they don't really get to excel like that.
But isn't it a blessing to know that even if you're at a job that's not really that
good about rewarding performance, to know that God's up in heaven.
Just every time you do something awesome, he's just like writing it down.
Every time you do it, every time you go soul winning, every time you're reading your Bible,
every time you're helping people.
You know, the Bible says that if you give to the poor, you're lending to the Lord.
Giving money to the poor is like giving God a loan, the Bible says.
And it says he will pay you back.
God's not going to renege on his loan.
You know what the Bible says, the wicked borrow with and payeth not again.
God looks at it when you do good deeds for other people, when you help people and bless
people and give unto people, he sees that as you're loaning to the Lord and he feels
obligated to pay you back.
I mean there's so many promises in the Bible that every good thing that we do is going
to be rewarded.
And you say, oh yeah, that's just going to be when I get to heaven, great, but what about
now?
God's going to reward you in this life, period.
The Bible says the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth.
Now I'm not preaching a prosperity health and wealth gospel, but I am saying this, that
God will reward you in this life for the good things that you do in this life.
And the ones that nobody sees and the ones that your boss doesn't recognize, those are
the ones that are going to get you rewarded the most.
And so don't despair, don't dismay when you're not getting recognition.
Or you know, let's say you did nice things for your spouse and your spouse doesn't reciprocate.
That can be frustrating too, right?
You know, you bend over backwards and do something nice for your spouse and maybe you're going
above and beyond as a spouse and your spouse is kind of phoning it in as far as the relationship.
Well guess what, you know God sees that too.
Just like he saw the kindness to the mother-in-law, just like he saw the hard work, he sees all
that.
So any righteous act or virtue that you show, it always gets rewarded.
And keep in mind, God is up there, he's watching, and he will take care of you.
Let's bow your heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for the fact that we know that you're there thinking about
us, caring about us, and that you're keeping track of everything and rewarding us, Lord.
Thank you for the privilege of serving you, Lord.
We feel in many ways like Ruth where, you know, we're not even worthy to be your servant,
Lord.
You, like Boaz, have taken knowledge of us and you've given us all these benefits that
we don't deserve, just like Boaz gave to Ruth.
Lord, help us to let this story become a part of our thinking and let us be better Christians
for it.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.