Ruth: A Life That Speaks Volumes (Episode 4)

we're all called to different kinds of work maybe yours is creating spreadsheets or writing different kinds of reports maybe you teach college students or kindergartners or maybe like ruth your work is gleaning grain no matter what kind of job you have your work can be an act of worship this is the women of the bible podcast and i'm your host aaron davis right now right this very moment i'm talking to you in part because it's my job but more importantly because it's one way i can use my life to bring glory to god what you can't see are the camera operators and audio techs who are worshiping too through their work we've been walking through the study ruth experiencing a life restored in this episode we'll see that ruth worked hard and her faithfulness even in the mundane tasks like harvesting grain caused others to take notice maybe you're listening to this episode as you wash the dishes or fold the laundry or finish that report as you do let ruth's story remind you that it's more than work it's worship [Music] i came to jesus kicking and screaming i'm fond of saying kicking and screaming obedience is still obedience how does my work ethic show that i value work as i was walking through some of these darkest moments the valley may be long and it may be very dark but god promises to be with you in the midst of it everything i get in this world and this earth is a treasure and a gift do not turn off the podcast at this moment i often have to think god is not oblivious to the situation that i'm in [Music] i am loving walking through the book of ruth with you i hope that you are loving walking through the book of ruth with us i hope you need no introduction but just in case somebody's just joining us tell us your name and anything else you want us to know hey guys it is forza collins here and i don't know what else to share your favorite color purple purple color of royalty all right and your name and whatever you want us to know default a favorite color if you can't think of anything there you go kristen clark from the great state of texas i've got a cute little malty poo named sadie oh i love you yeah they just make the noise yeah people are listening and going oh sadie and i'm aaron davis and in this session we're going to consider our work as an act of worship uh so let's catch people up we've been this is session four and we are just finishing chapter one we finish one chapter of ruth we're gonna have to speed it up a little bit to get through it but recap we've mostly been talking about this woman named naomi what has happened in naomi's life so far in this first chapter portia what comes to mind naomi has left her native land and has gone to moab where much trouble and just death she experienced the death of her husband and her her sons and so then from there she decides okay time to go back home got to turn around and um she goes you know returns to bethlehem and ruth decides okay i'm gonna stay with you orpah does not right and um now we get to kind of learn a little bit more about ruth yeah here we have made it all the way to session four and we've barely talked about ruth right i feel like this book of the bible could have been named many things um it could have been named naomi it could have been named kinsmen redeemer nobody asks my opinion on the naming of books but certainly ruth is important and we've barely talked about her so let's catch up a little bit on ruth kristen would you read us ruth 1 8-18 but naomi said to her two daughters-in-law go return each of you to her mother's house may the lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me the lord grant that you may find rest each of you in the house of her husband then she kissed them and they lifted up their voices and wept and they said to her no we will return with you to your people but naomi said turn back my daughters why will you go with me have i yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands turn back my daughters go your way for i am too old to have a husband if i should say i have hope even if i should have a husband this night and should bear sons would you therefore wait till they were grown would you therefore refrain from marrying no my daughters for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the lord has gone out against me then they lifted up their voices and wept again and orpah kissed her mother-in-law but ruth clung to her and she said see your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods return after your sister-in-law but ruth said do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you for where you go i will go and where you lodge i will lodge your people shall be my people and your god my god where you die i will die and there i will be buried may the lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you and when naomi saw that she was determined to go with her she said no more so we've already looked at this part of the story but it reminds me of that strategy sometimes in movies and tv shows where you see the story from one person's point of view and then they tell that exact sequence of events again from a different point of view that's kind of what we're doing here we've thought about this from the perspective of naomi let's now think about it from the perspective of ruth so ruth a moabite um with her mother-in-law she's buried her father-in-law she's buried her husband yeah and now her mother-in-law is trying to send her away her sister-in-law makes that decision to go ruth decides to go with naomi into a foreign land which we can assume she's never been to before because for naomi moab was the foreign land but for ruth judah is the foreign man so as you look at these verses again do that kind of change them frame as you look at these verses again and consider ruth what do you see about her character i love how you portia tell us to use our imaginations but read between the lines what what do you see about the character of ruth here in these verses she had such an interest in the god of israel which really to me is mind-blowing because here she is this moabite woman she's grown up in a land where all of these false gods are the ones that are worshipped and somehow she she just has this heart for the lord and she wants to go back with naomi to go worship this one true god and to me that's just mind-blowing is this foreign land like you said she knows really nothing about these people um but she wants to go back and she's willing to leave everything behind in order to do it we know that she'd heard stories about god because the text tells us that that naomi had heard the stories that god had visited his people for me that's so compelling the power of the stories of god on the people who do not know him yeah and so yeah we see this real interest in the lord from her portia what conclusions do you draw about ruth's character you know what really stands out to me is what she says in verse 17 may the lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you that the lord you know not everybody is saying the lord she didn't say may your god do or may or the god of israel right she said may the lord which like for me indicates lord over her life and so that that submissiveness there even though she doesn't know everything about you know this guy the one true god there is still like an initial just submissiveness and a trust um in the one true guy i'm glad you pulled that out of the text it doesn't follow our you know she didn't walk through the romans road or pray sometimes the things we think you need to pray but isn't it in a way a declaration of faith yes he's the lord yeah the lord is going to do what the lord is going to do so we see faith in her we also see loyalty to her mother-in-law and man i want to hire ruth to write for me this is her language here where you go i will go where you stay i will stay your people will be my people it's so poetic so she's very articulate she seems very calm to me as well also we don't ever see hysterics right um from ruth and i don't want to villainize naomi or orpah at all um that would maybe make it easier to understand i was like well these were the bad women and ruth is the good woman we really don't know enough about either of them to do that um but we know we love ruth and we're gonna love her even more as we continue learning about her in ruth chapter two portia can you pick it up for us and we need to hear ruth chapter two uh verses one through seven all right now naomi had a relative of her husband 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 i feel like happened to come should be an air quality and now right right sorry you are fine and 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 so as we're trying to continue to get a picture of ruth's character as we head into this next part of the narrative what else do we learn about our character we know she has some faith we know she's loyal we see her to be calm and then they get to israel which by the way all anyone there wants to say about her is that she's from moab right who is this well she's the moabitess from moab um that's all anybody there wants to say about her but what else do we learn about her character in these next set of verses kristen she's a hard worker this girl gets to work she's like all right we gotta eat we need some food i'm gonna go out and i'm gonna find food for naomi for me and she goes out and she works hard it does wow maybe it's the farm girl in me but i just so admire the quality of hard work i want to be the hardest working person in every room and i have a saying that i say some people are work horses some people are war horses some people are show ponies and i i want to be a workhorse you know somebody that just works so hard and so i super admire that in the character of ruth listen this harvesting business that is hard work and she just gets after it kind of with a happy heart she goes to work um i want to take us just a little bit further and then we're going to unpack this i'm going to read us ruth 2 8 through 16. 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'm a foreigner but boaz answered her all 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 to you by the lord the god of israel under whose wings you have come to take refuge oh if you're writing your bible i'd circle that wings the lord repay you for what you have done and a full reward will be given to 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 serpent 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 listen if you've read the story of ruth and kind of thought like she was working in a garden you should um pay attention to these verses again because it's like she might get attacked by young men we got to make sure that we protect her because if she's not here she will get attacked in another field i think that's important what does that reveal about her character portia that she was willing to go to work without knowing boaz's protection was going to be there for her does that show you anything fearless like she is like i'm going to do this and and once again i'm using this imagination but i really would like to think that it's because she's trusting in the lord like she is like i'm not gonna worry about my life i know that i have to go out here and try to get food for myself and my mother-in-law so i'm just going to do it and trust that everything is going to be all right yeah there's a fearlessness in her i like her more and more the more we read fearless hard worker faith-filled a woman who speaks grace she's not this like that that's why i want to reframe ruth it's not like in the beginning she was just this destitute woman with nothing to offer and at the end she had somehow transformed the some of that's true but right here in these early verses we see a woman of virtue and her reputation had preceded her all the way from moab the word to judah yeah what had boaz heard about our girl ruth what does it say he had seen that she was a woman of great character really and going with her mother-in-law leaving behind everything i mean that really impressed him that was like wow okay right this woman's seriously willing to make sacrifices yeah willing to follow the lord no matter the cost and i think he really saw that in her character yeah and we see humility there's never a point in this story we don't see humility in ruth right and isn't humility tricky the second thing you think you've got humility that slips right out of your hands and you either either the lord builds it in you or he doesn't you either have it or you don't it's not something you can drum up in a tough situation it's so attractive in the character of ruth i think and part of what boaz must have been drawn to i think her willingness to sacrifice uh and it takes humility to i think glean on the edge of somebody else's field who you don't ask to say hey will you if i found favor and if you care can i please just get some of your yeah your wheat your leftovers and you know have you ever stepped into a room of women where you don't know a soul and felt that feeling oh yeah and that's what she did you know she didn't know anybody there and so she kind of joins this female work crew who she doesn't know and is probably not immediately accepted because everybody's talking about how she's in moabitus and um so yeah a ton of humility and uh just such obvious hard work and she's generous towards naomi and to this point in the story had naomi been pleasant or unpleasant how would you describe it in fact she had her name changed from naomi which means pleasant tomorrow tomorrow which means bitter so she's pleasant towards the woman who no longer wants to be called pleasant that is right there is hard to do um so i think we see um an attitude towards work and an attitude towards others that we can all emulate i want to drill down on this concept of work so how would you assess or describe our culture's view of work kristin ooh i don't know i feel like there's twofold it's like work like crazy hustle hustle work is everything work is everything it's it's all of your success it's your identity your work just do it like crazy and then there's kind of this other side that's like ah work is a burden yeah i don't wanna work so i'm just gonna kind of be lazy and do my own thing do what makes me happy right and i just kind of grind through work so that i can live my best life on the weekend yeah i see both of those too and both are kind of oppressive frankly right i mean that hustle culture can make me feel all kinds of pressure i don't think the lord intends for me as can work being the part of my life i don't want to do the necessary evil the necessary evil your thoughts on how our culture views work portia you know i i always go back to genesis and how i think we miss the fact that we were given work before the fall sister are you looking at my notes because we're that's about exactly what we're gonna talk about but it's so important yes take us there and so like in my mind i'm like okay we were created to work to do work but the thing is our work should not consume us and our work should not like that's not where the glory goes the glory goes to god and so anytime when we're working and i feel like we make an idol of that work we're in dangerous territory and then on the flip side of that when we are just totally against working and just want to sit back and kick our feet up once again we're in some dangerous territory i think that there's a healthy balance that that god intentionally put in place he created us to to work but also you know he gives us he worked six days and rested on the seventh so he models everything that we're supposed to be doing and i i think we just need to go back to the beginning and take some notes well i think part of the reason the three of us are such close friends is because we're all a little type a right is that a fair assessment a little bit so i like to say i'm not type i am type double a like get the job done all the time i have a sign in my office that says people over projects because i have to remember not to just think that my to-do list is my be-all end-all so i think i gravitate most into work is my identity but i can see the other camp gravitating towards work as a waste of my time and i think ruth is going to give us maybe some healthy perspectives on work i want to read us a comment that came in through grounded which is a video cast we do on revive of hearts and i love this comment this takes us all the way back to coven19 uh she's referencing that but she says thank you kovid19 for reminding me that work is a privilege she had that in all caps but you know means we mean business work is a privilege she said i don't have to work but i get to work and help provide for my family may i never take work for granted and i've thought about this comment many many times the privilege of work and i think ruth must have felt that because if she didn't get to work in boaz's field that day what was gonna happen yeah for her and naomi they were gonna go hungry they were gonna go hungry so you you do hear that in a response like i'm so grateful i can glean in this field i'm so grateful for my job i'm so grateful that i can serve the lord through working i don't know that i always have that heart attitude you don't see her complaining either like could i get a better field maybe one in the shade you know maybe some ac why isn't naomi out here working why am i the only one right right none of that in her life none of this is the work the lord has given you she does he works to the glory of the lord yeah so portia i'm so glad you mentioned genesis we see god doing the work of creation in genesis 1. um but kristin could you read us genesis 2 15. yeah the lord god took the man and put him in the garden of eden to work it and keep it this is before the fall which we know happens in genesis 3. i can't take credit for this this comes from my pastor who said this in a sermon recently but he reminded us that work just work is not a fruit of the curse sometimes it can feel like christ oh i wouldn't have to work if there wasn't the world wasn't so broken but actually what is a part of the curse is fruitless work you know the lord's talking to adam and eve and the serpent he's handing down those curses he tells adam you're going to work the land and it's not going to produce the fruit that you want and so uh work is good work is part of god's plan and let's be honest most of our work is gleaning right most of it feels pretty redundant right pretty tedious yes i'm really looking forward to there not being laundry in heaven because i don't know much laundry or dishes or dishes i don't mind the dishes i do mine the laundry so we could work together on that but in the bottom of all my laundry baskets at home is this verse he who can be trusted with little can be trusted with much i've written it there with sharpie because if i cannot be trusted to fold the laundry with joy i cannot be trusted to do anything else with joy yeah but a lot of it just feels menial right i once heard another pastor say the lord must care about the mundane because there sure is a lot of it he cares about our hearts in the muncher right and so as you think about your work i think there's this mindset right now tell me if you're hearing this that like your work should be totally fulfilling every minute yes or you're missing it and that god what most wants for your life is for you to live your dream and that that's supposed to feel good all the time right and that's that's not what we see in ruth right and it's not what we see elsewhere in scripture so let's head to a couple of passages that i think illuminate that who's got colossians 3 23-24 i have it whatever you do work heartily as for the lord and not for man knowing that from the lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward you are serving the lord christ we don't have to get out like our our commentaries and compare the original languages talk to a bunch of old theologians to understand what's happening in this verse it starts out with whatever you do yes work for the lord because the lord is your boss i was i was having a conversation with a friend recently and i was frustrated about some things happening at work and that friend just cut right to the choice chase and she said oh i thought you worked for jesus oh and i was like okay yeah where did you go from there she was reminding me that the lord is my boss and if the lord is my boss then i should work differently yes than if he isn't portia can you read us ecclesiastes 9 10. yes whatever your hands find to do do it with your might for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom and shield to which you are going whatever your hand finds to do both of these verses they start with like that whatever yeah whatever whatever all of it can't be accepted except for this except for this yeah everything is worship all work becomes holy work and you know it makes me think about this she and i just had this conversation the differentiation between paid and unpaid work and i think our culture wants to put more value on that work that you get paid for but doing the laundry doing the dishes whatever it is being a mom that's work too and it's valuable in god's eyes and isn't it in those for me i don't want to say this is true for everybody but for me isn't it in those unpaid areas of work where we find the most resentment yes and frustration and where we maybe are most prone to forget the lord is my boss i'm doing this for the lord you know if i think i'm doing the housework for my family then i'm frustrated with them right i live with all boys my house was last clean in 2008. it has not been clean since then and i can be frustrated by that except for am i working for the lord not that i think the lord cares intensely about how clean my bathrooms are but i think he cares intensely about how clean my heart is yes and if i'm willing to do it for his glory so i think that that differentiation i think that that's not an easy word i think that differentiation does exist in our hearts and can be really dangerous ground and i wonder if god gave us the mundane to expose our heart motive yeah right because without if all work we were getting praised for getting these accolades and getting paid you know it might not show where our real motives are and who we're really working for whose glory we're really after right but actually it was ruth's willingness to do the hard work that got her noticed and so as this is all as this whole book of ruth is a picture of bigger things the lord does pay attention when we work in humility the lord does notice when we're willing to do the heart without the complaining which is so hard that's another all things whatever do all things without grumbling and complaining like you mean all things all things lord it's all things second corinthians tells us that god loves a cheerful giver yes not that person who serves while grumbling not that person who serves angry but that person who serves cheerfully so here's a little heart check yeah are we ruth in the area of our work are we willing however you define work are we willing to work with humility cheerfully now there might be somebody listening who thinks not my job i cannot do my job cheerfully i cannot do my job with humility maybe you picture us all working in idyllic work settings where all we do is sip gourmet coffee and talk about jesus all day wouldn't that be great but there are challenges in my area of work there are challenges in your area works and portia i'd like to hear from you because your work life has been primarily in the secular yes marketplace um and so i think of that woman who might be serving under a boss who's a bit of a tyrant or a lot of a tyrant or serving beside that co-worker who the things she talks about the things she's got posted the things she's looking at and this woman is listening and thinking i don't know how to serve with joy in that place what would you say to her first that god is not oblivious to where he has allowed you to work and as christians i think it's not an accident right it's not it's right it's not an accident he knows and i i don't know where this line of thought came from that as christians we're just supposed to be in our own little christian bubbles and there is no ministry outside of that but that is not the truth and i believe that god does strategically place believers in hard workplaces so that the light of christ can be we need believers in every single industry yes yes yes and so i and that's what i look to in in my profession is lord how do i um as a representative of you how do i go into my job or how do i engage with the various people that i engage with and show the light of christ how do i how does my work ethic show that i value work that i believe that work is something good that was created by god and so everything that i do in my work i'm thinking about how can that reflect the glory of god to somebody who may be a believer somebody who's nominally you know christian or somebody who just doesn't know jesus at all i want them to look at me and not see porsha in how she works but to say man that that has to be something deeper there that must be you know what is this jesus that she's talking about you know we see that in boaz and ruth i mean the reality is that boaz was a man of faith but he's it's still her work ethic that he noticed yes it's still her integrity that he paid attention to and that probably would have been true whether he was a man of faith or he was not a man of faith i think this idea of calling has gotten pretty warped and wasn't true for generations you serve the lord with gladness where you were working in the field where you were taking care of babies i mean i think our christian sisters throughout history didn't have quite so much angst about it because they didn't have the opportunity right to quit their homestead and go pursue a more christian right opportunity for work and so we can get kind of bound up and all of that and scripture's just saying whatever you do wherever you are work hard for the lord and that's a heart check for me in this story well i can't wrap up this session without talking about boaz uh we already read about them but so as we've thought about what we could take away from ruth's character what can we glean see what i did there what can we glean about boaz's character from these verses here in chapter two what kind of man does he seem like to you he seems like a man of compassion and grace and kindness the way that he cares for this woman that he doesn't know he's heard about her but he just he extends so much kindness and compassion towards her he does yep i look at that adjective you know that's another one of my big things i love looking at the adjectives in the text and um boaz is described as a worthy man like so what does that mean you're like a noble man so he's got some um you know he like there's something about him he's just not any old type of guy but he is um an upstanding guy so i think that he um you see just even from what he does with and how he engages ruth he has character good character and um a very respecting you know man oh i hope my sons grow up to be worthy men what a great way to describe him i met a woman once and she introduced me to her husband and she said this is my husband john i don't know if that was actually his name but she said this is my husband john he carries the banner that's how she introduced him and i just love that she was saying he's a worthy man wow he carries the banner of faith a family and he just acted like he'd been introduced that way a million times and uh that's i think we could say this is boaz he carries the banner i also see he has a culture of honoring the lord in his business he's trained his workers what was that little thing they said back and forth to each other be with you and they responded the lord blessed you i don't think that happens spontaneously so he comes to his workers and they start their interaction with this little cadence which i love actually it was intentional that i added boaz on as an afterthought because i don't want us to fixate on boaz we can do that with this book of the bible because boaz points forward to a better boaz in jesus and the qualities we see in boaz that compassion that generosity being worthy interacting with people as if they matter those all point to our kinsmen redeemer he has these qualities of a kinsmen redeemer but boaz is not the point he's not the hero he points forward to jesus and in the study we give the the qualifications of a kinsmen redeemer they have the right to be a kinsmen redeemer they have the power to be a kinsmen redeemer and they have a willingness to be a kinsmen redeemer and all three of those point forward to jesus our kinsmen redeemer so as we move toward the end of this book of ruth we'll see it was all about jesus all along thanks for watching this episode of the women of the bible podcast be sure to subscribe and be the first to watch new content from revive our hearts like more podcasts teaching videos and testimonies come back next week for another episode of ruth experiencing a life restored

Channel: Revive Our Hearts

Views: 15,153

Keywords: Ruth, women of the bible, revive our hearts, nancy demoss wolgemuth, erin davis, women's ministry

Id: PFmu9H58H5Y

Length: 35min 22sec (2122 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2021