Sermon Tone Analysis

Love Story: God’s Epic Tale of Redemption

The Risk of Love Dr. David Platt July 19, 2009

THE RISK OF LOVE

All right, if you have a Bible, and I hope you do, let me invite you to open with me to .

Part 3 of a love story known as the Book of Ruth.

And tonight things are going to get a little dicey.

is the climatic turning point in this story, and it is the height of tension, drama, suspense, and the reality is—just kind of hold onto your seats, because Ruth is about to turn up the temperature on the romance in this chapter right here in ways that are going to shock us.

And here’s the deal.

I am praying that tonight, I am praying that tonight you will see, maybe in a new, maybe all together fresh way, the depth of the love of God for you.

If you are here tonight and you are not a Christian, and I hope, I’m praying that tonight in this room for the first time, your heart will be opened wide to the great love of God.

And if you are a Christian, that tonight your mind will be renewed and your heart rekindled by picture of God’s unfathomable love for you.

So if you’ve not been here the last couple of weeks, I want to make sure to catch you up to speed before we dive into , and what’s happened in the story to this point and for some this will just be a reminder, but the story of Ruth begins, , with Naomi, along with her two sons, following her husband, Elimelech from Bethlehem to Moab.

Moab’s a place of the storied history, and it’s not a good history, not a good history with the people of Israel.

They go there, as soon as they get to Moab, unexpectedly Elimelech, her husband, dies, and then her two sons die, and she is left alone with two Moabite daughters in law.

They are three widows, childless, no heirs, no family to carry on their line.

And so what, what happens is Naomi hears that there is food in Bethlehem, and so Naomi decides to go back to Bethlehem, tells her two daughter in laws to stay there in Moab.

One stays and the other, Ruth, looks at Naomi and says, “I’m going with you.

Your people will be my people.

Your god will be my god.

I’m going to be buried with you.

I am committed to you.”

And so at the end of , Ruth and Naomi walk together back into Bethlehem.

Naomi tells her friends who recognize her that she is bitter.

She went away full and she has come back empty with nothing in her hands.

That leads us into .

The major problems in the book are twofold at this point.

These are two women in need of food and in need of family.

First, in need of food, is tackled in .

Ruth goes out into the fields to glean.

It was harvest time, and she just so happened to find herself in the fields of a guy name Boaz.

And Boaz just so happened to walk up when Ruth was working in his field, and she caught his eye.

And the rest is what dreams are made of.

It was a meal of roasted grain.

It was a bushel full of barley on her back as she walked away.

It was oil and vinegar.

I mean it was, it was an incredible romantic scene in .

She comes back to her mother-in-law, Naomi, and Naomi is giddy, to say the least.

She is bumbling with her words.

She cannot believe all this grain that has been brought back.

And

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the best part is when Ruth tells her whose field she had been in.

She had been in the fields of Boaz, and Naomi immediately recognizes Boaz is from the clan, which is a larger family group, the clan of Elimelech, which means he is uniquely qualified to care for them, and to provide for them, and to protect them, to take them under his care.

And so Naomi says, “Ruth, stay in his fields.

Everyday you go to his field.”

And that’s what she did.

Everyday throughout the harvest season she’s in Boaz’s fields, week after week after week in the harvest season, she is in Boaz’s fields.

Which leads to the most anti- climactic ending to , when it says so she lived with her mother-in-law.

Disappointing.

Food has been taken care of.

They have enough grain probably for at least the rest of the year, but family is still a void.

What you’ve got at the end of is the odd couple, still the odd couple.

Ruth and Naomi.

Ruth living with her mother-in-law.

Boaz has done nothing.

That sets the stage for some of the shadiest verses in all the Old Testament in .

Okay.

And I’ve, I’ve prayed like how to preach this text.

It just doesn’t seem appropriate in this setting, I’ll be honest with you, but it’s scripture.

And so we’re just going to pray that God will give us grace to understand the meaning of this text in an appropriate way.

So .

Now what we’re going to do is we’re going to walk through this story, just like we have the last couple of weeks, just kind of phrase by phrase, verse by verse, and just pause and put ourselves in the story and feel what’s going on, to imagine the scene, to hear what the original hearers were hearing, and to put ourselves in the middle of the story.

So .

This whole chapter, it’s under a cloak of darkness.

It happens from sunset to sunrise.

Verse 1, “One day Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, ‘My daughter, should I not try to find a home for you, where you will be well provided for?’” ().

That’s Hebrew for, “Ruth you need a man.

You need a husband.”

“My daughter, shall I not try to find a home that word home?”

And you might even have a little note in your Bible that takes you to the bottom where it says “where you will find rest”, and this is a phrase that is very common to describe the rest, security, comfort that you would find as a woman in arms, in the home of a loving husband.

You need a husband, Ruth.

So here’s the plan that the scheming mother-in-law is going to concoct.

Verse 2. “Is not Boaz, with whose servant girls you have been, a kinsman of ours?

Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor” ().

Pause here.

Two things about Boaz.

Number one, we’re reminded that Boaz is a kinsman, which basically means that Boaz is an eligible bachelor for Ruth, particularly eligible.

And we’re going to see this even more next week in , this picture of the kinsman, the kinsman redeemer.

We saw it last week at the end of .

It’s kind of a thread that’s been woven throughout.

We’re going to see it really camp out in .

But the picture is, “Ruth Boaz is an eligible bachelor for you Ruth.”

And then second, “tonight, he’s going to be winnowing barley on the threshing floor.”

What would happen is at the end, after all the barley had been harvested, you would have a secluded area, most likely on the side of a hill or something where in the evening when there was this cool breeze that was coming across, what they would do is basically, you take the pitchforks and you toss the barley up into the air and the wind would come and blow away the chasse, and the grain, which was heavier, would fall to the ground.

And so this is what winnowing is.

And Naomi knows that that evening Boaz is going to be winnowing barley in a place that’s more secluded.

Up until this point, Boaz has just been in the field.

It’s not like Ruth could go up to Boaz in the middle of the field and say, “Hey, have you ever thought about marrying

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me?” It’s not happened to this point, but this is a unique opportunity that is set before them.

And so here’s, here’s what Naomi says needs to happen.

And this is where it just gets downright shady.

Verse 3, she says, “Wash and perfume yourself, and put on your best clothes.

Then go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking.

When he lies down, note the place where he is lying.

Then go and uncover his feet and lie down.

He will tell you what to do” ().

If you are hearing this in the original context, you are blushing big time right now.

Like if your children are nearby, you are totally covering their ears as they’re listening to this.

Can you believe that Naomi just said this?