Life will layer you with dirt. Life will
layer you, like Naomi, with bitterness, with experiences that all of
a sudden become the focus. The Bible does not say the treasure was sitting in
the field waiting to be discovered. The treasure was actually hidden beneath something that
had to be dug through to recognize what was there all along. This is a message for somebody
who is guilty as charged. "Lord, I have gotten more focused on the field, the work, the stress,
than I am the blessings and the treasure. I have gotten more focused in my relationships
on what annoys me about that person." May I remind you that's what attracted you
to them in the first place? Now you want to be annoyed by what you were attracted to,
because like the country preacher said, "Before marriage, opposites attract.
After marriage, opposites attack." You loved he was quiet. "Oh, he's mysterious." Ten years in that field, talking
about, "I can't get him to talk. He's mysterious." Now you're
miserable. Now you're magnifying everything that makes you miserable. I
wish I could do a Bible study on this. Sometimes I hate this format. I wish I could
have the 10 people who are the hungriest. I wish I could just come over to the house,
and Holly could cook something for you, and then I would serve up the
dessert of the Word of God. I would say, "Did you save room for dessert?" and
you'd be like, "Yeah, yeah. I was hungry today. I went through a breakup last month. I've been
asking God why. I've been wondering is there anybody for me. I'm hungry today. I don't have
the money my neighbor has. They think I do. I'm driving a car. What they don't know is
every time I stop and think about the payments, I almost wreck. They're impressed with my car,
but they don't know I can't even afford what I'm driving in. I'm hungry today. Tell me something.
I made some mistakes. Tell me something. I passed up the best thing that could have happened.
Tell me something. I could have bought Apple for $3 a share, and I didn't. All these regrets
in here. I'm hungry today. Give me something." If I could talk to the 10 hungriest people
in the room, here's what I would tell you: when Ruth said, "Why would you notice
me, a foreigner?" it's a wordplay. The Hebrew word for foreigner means notice. Don't you see what's happening? She's blown away.
When's the last time you were blown away by God? When's the last time you were blown away by
his benefits? I'm not talking about a BMW. I'm talking about forgiveness. When's the last time you thought about, "Oh
my you, Lord. You didn't have to love me. You didn't even have to give me the chance
to live. I'm not even supposed to be here." When's the last time you thanked God for
your church? (Just slipping that in.) You've been here a minute. What used
to blow me away is now just benefits. I think we have to walk through our field and
glean. "Lord, I'm thanking you for this. Lord, I am thanking you for that. Lord, I'm thanking
you for the thing that I don't like right now, trusting that you are going to use it in
my future." That's the beauty of this text. You can walk through your own field. This is my
challenge to you. What would it look like for you to walk through your own life like a foreigner
in the field? What would it look like for you to go back through the things God has done
for you and the things he is doing? Because here's the trick: it is easy to see what God
did after you're on the other side of it. That's when we say things like, "It was the
best thing in the world that they broke my heart. It was the best thing in the world
that I had to move. It was the best thing in the world. If I hadn't have gone through
that, I wouldn't have this." The trick is not recognizing God's guidance later. The trick
is…Can you recognize God's guidance in real time? To say like Jacob, "The Lord was in
this place, and I was not aware of it." To say, "Oh, God must be here too.
Oh, God must be using this too. Oh, God has a plan for this too. Oh, I
can't wait to see how God works this in. Oh, I can't believe God let me be
in this field at this time." She gleaned and gathered and gleaned and
gathered and gleaned and gathered, not knowing that Boaz was going to end up being her
husband, not knowing that Naomi knew who he was, not knowing that God would put her in
a position to be a part of the lineage. Can you stand there in the field, surrounded
by dirt, or are you going to say, "God, I don't want the dirt; I want the treasure. God,
I don't want the pain; I want the progress"? I used to always say, "God, I don't want the
V-ups; I want the six-pack." You know what I'm saying? "I don't want the discipline, but,
God, I do want the benefits of commitment." You have to glean and gather in those moments when
you don't even know why you're here or how this is going to turn out. The most delicious
verse in the text to me is verse 17. After Ruth got done gleaning
in the fields and gathering, the Bible says something. It's
almost something you would skip over. It said that after she gleaned
in the field until evening, "Then she threshed the barley she had
gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah." See what I'm saying? That is the
least sexy verse in the whole passage, but it talks about the next thing Ruth had to
do and that you and I have to understand too. It said after she gleaned in a field where
she didn't even have the right to be, after she gathered everything she could, she
threshed the wheat before she took it home. When she finished threshing it, they measured it,
and it was an ephah, which means nothing to us, but if you look it up and search
the word ephah in the Bible… Do it. You'll find it again in 1 Samuel 17:17,
the chapter where David fought Goliath. It said the day he went down there, his dad
sent him to his brothers with an ephah of grain. So it's a measurement. He had three
brothers who were down at the battle, and his father sent him with an ephah of grain. So, we still don't know how much it is, but that must be a lot of grain if it fed three
teenage soldiers in the heat of battle. Remember, we're down to just Ruth and Naomi. They are the
only two left. They don't know about Boaz yet. They don't know who he is yet, what he's going
to do yet. Oh, and there's God, the character who is not named by the other characters
but is implied, because he's always working. Even when he's not named, even when he's not
seen, even when he's not felt, even when he's not speaking, he's still speaking. Even if
you're not hearing it, he's still speaking. She gleaned an ephah, enough for three teenage
soldiers for just her and her mother-in-law. That made me wonder if we can
find out about how much grain is in an ephah. When I found out how
much an ephah was, I was blown away It turned out that an ephah is somewhere
between 30 and 50 pounds. In a day! She has only been in this field one day, and she's
not even an experienced laborer, and she's one woman. When she measured it after she threshed
it, it was 30 pounds. Thirty pounds of grain after she threshed it. See, you can't really
measure it until after it has been threshed. You don't really know what you
have until it has been threshed. You think you know what you have, but
you don't really know what you have… You don't really know what you have until Naomi
turns to Ruth and Orpah and says, "Y'all, leave," and Orpah says, "Okay," and Ruth says,
"I'll stay," because she was being threshed. Naomi was being threshed. She lost her husband.
She lost her boys. She's being threshed. That word doesn't even sound appealing…thresh.
It sounds violent. It is violent. It's a violent process. The process of
threshing is not nice like gleaning. It's not taking a journal and writing to Jesus
a love note for all of the beautiful sunsets. "O Lord, I saw that sunset today. I'm just so
proud that you did that just for me. Lord, you are such a great artist. I saw the sunset, and I
saw your eyes, and I'm so thankful." Threshing is different than that. When they threshed the grain,
they would have the cattle to beat the grain out until the stalks and the seeds were separate,
until the grain and the husk were separate. When it says Ruth threshed… It
was a process of separation. It was a process of separating the grain from the
husk, or what they call the chaff. The way they would do it is that after it was beaten, after
it was trodden, after it had been laid out on the threshing floor… Now, all a threshing floor
is… It's not fancy. It's just a solid surface in a high place. The reason it's in a high
place is because you would thresh at evening. The process of threshing was very simple. After
it had been beaten, you would take the grain that was left on the floor. You would sweep it up
and gather it from the clean surface. You would throw it up into the Mediterranean wind, and
the grain would fall back down to the ground, but the chaff wouldn't fall back to the
ground. The chaff would be blown away. The chaff, the stuff that couldn't
stay on the threshing floor, would be blown away into the evening wind
that came off the Mediterranean Sea. I see a lot of you on the
threshing floor of life right now. I hear from you. I meet you. Even when I study,
it's like the Spirit of God brings you to my mind. I see the things you're going through in your
life right now not as a process of destruction, but as a process of threshing. See, you don't
know what you have until it has been threshed. You don't know what's real
until it has been threshed. You don't know what's edible, you
don't know what's sustainable, you don't know what is substance until it has
been threshed. A lot of us have been in a big wind lately. The winds will blow and beat against
every house. Whether you build it on the rock of Jesus or whether you build it on the shaky
foundations of the world, the wind will blow. The wind has been blowing, but you
have been misinterpreting the wind. You have been thinking that the wind
was sent by the Enemy to destroy you, but it wasn't. It was sent so that all the
chaff could be blown away. See, God is dealing with your insecurities right now, and he has you
on the threshing floor. You're watching people walk away and opportunities evaporate and things
you used to know that you're now separated from. But this wind is not sent by the Enemy. This wind is under the control of the
mighty hand of an all-seeing God. The grain that falls back to the ground is all
you need to live on. The rest will be blown away. The Lord told me to preach to you Blown Away!,
and he said to tell you, "When you see what I'm going to do after you get done going through what
you're going through, if you will keep gleaning and stay in my hands through this process… When
you see what I'm going to do through your life, when you see what I'm about to
do… Your eyes have not seen, your ears have not heard, nor has it entered
into your heart what I have prepared!" When you bump into Boaz, you're going to be blown away! "Now unto him
who is able to do immeasurably…" Blown away! High-five at least six people and tell
them, "You're going to be blown away." It's a promise. It's not a problem; it's
a promise. Everything you're going through is going to serve the purpose of the
God you belong to. You're going to be… Threshing hurts like hell, but
sometimes it comes from heaven.
