Good morning, everyone. For those of you who don't know
me, my name is Vance Furtado. I'm a volunteer teaching pastor
here at Resurrection Church, as well as an elder.
And if you are visiting us this morning again, we want to say
welcome to you. And please, if you get a chance,
fill out that little card in the Pew in front of you so that we
get an opportunity to say hello. All right.
We are continuing our series this morning called Christmas
Roots, which has a study in the small but beautiful Old
Testament book of Ruth. Now last week, Pastor Daniel
took us through the 1st chapter, and it's my privilege to take us
through Chapter 2, Ruth Chapter 2, which we're calling
Providence in the field and later.
So we're going to go in there momentarily.
Before we do that, I'd like to share with you a true story out
of my own life that illustrates something that we're going to
see in today's message. I was in my late 30s, so you
obviously, you know, this was some time ago and I was teaching
at a local Christian School in northeast Bakersfield called
Heritage. I've been there eight years
teaching Bible, history and other subjects and I was making
28,000 minus paying for Linda, my wife and our two kids medical
insurance. No, it wasn't very much back
then either. I worked summers to try to earn
a little bit of extra money. Linda was working crazy hours,
and I mean crazy hours at our business, sometimes getting up
at 3:00 in the morning to start work so that she could get stuff
done at home with her business before our kids even got up.
She was starting to have health problems, especially high blood
pressure, because she wasn't sleeping enough.
So our kids had and our children Joe and Kathleen were still
pretty young. They had basically 2 absentee
parents who were doing their dead level best to try to
provide and we were barely making it.
And some of you know exactly what I'm talking about because
you've been there or you are there.
Something had to change. So I was teaching a Bible class
at the old church and a friend of mine, my Co teacher, he
offered to give me an opportunity that I had dreamed
of for years. He was willing to allow me to
help me to be able to go back to school to get my doctorate so
that I could teach at a Christian university or at a
seminary. That had been my dream.
But am I sacrificing my family again to do this dream?
So Linda and I were praying about it and I started to take
the first steps to do that all right, taking a special exam,
signing up for some classes. But is this the right thing?
And then another opportunity was presented.
A friend of mine, she got a job teaching at current high school
district and she got it bam, right away.
So I started thinking, Lord I have tried twice before to get a
job teaching in Kern High School District and both times flopped.
Should I try 1/3 time knowing I suck at job interviews and I do?
What do I do? The job will pay enough for me
to support our family to where Linda can leave her business but
it's a new job. I applied, I went through three
job interviews and I got offered a job teaching at a place called
Nueva High School in Lamont. I didn't even know Lamont had a
high school, and it does. You can barely find it, but it
does. I would be teaching continuation
students. Now, some of you know what that
is, but let me explain it to the rest of you.
Think back to when you were in high school.
Do you remember the kid that maybe you sat by in class that
was always popping off, always creating trouble, maybe getting
into fights on campus, coming into class smelling funny?
You know what I mean? All right.
And then suddenly that kid disappeared.
You didn't see him anymore because they came to me.
That's the kind of kids that I taught because I took the job.
Did I? No.
This is definitely God's will. No, I'm struggling.
I'm trying to figure it out. Should I have stayed where I
was? It was comfortable.
We were poor, but I was comfortable.
Should I have gone back to school?
That would have taken another three or four years.
Or do I take this job having to basically learn to be a teacher
all over again? Well, let me tell you, it was
incredibly hard, but eventually, eventually, I really liked it.
And I remained at that school for 21 years until I retired.
So here's my question, all right.
During all those months of uncertainty, anxiety, Linda and
I are trying to figure out the next step for me.
I was floundering. It's like I was drowning and I'd
pop back up again, and then I'd go back to drowning again.
During all those months of uncertainty, I was just
floundering. Or was I being guided by God
himself? And the answer is yes.
Yeah, that's how it is sometimes with God.
OK, we don't always figure it out, but He's in charge.
As a matter of fact, that's exactly what we're going to see
in the Book of Ruth, chapter 2. See the prophet Jeremiah in the
Old Testament. He figured out something that I
did not understand, and here's what he wrote.
I know, O Lord, that the way of a man is not in himself, but
that, and that it is not in a man who walks to direct his
steps. In other words, we're uncertain.
We're not sure what the next step is.
That never happens to God. What this is called, everyone is
the Providence of God. I know it's a big word.
What is Providence? Here's a good short definition
of it. Providence asserts that God,
having called the world into being, continually sustains,
renews, and orders it. In other words, the Lord is in
charge and nothing is beyond his power, including everything
that's happening in our lives. The main point of this message
is this, guys, what we see is coincidental is often
providential. All right, let's take a look now
at Ruth, Chapter 2. I invite you to read along with
me as we take a look at this chapter of Scripture.
After we've read through it, then we'll go back and talk
about it. All right, here we go.
Now. Now I only had a relative of her
husband's, a worthy man of the clan of Eli Melek, 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, and whose side I shall find favor.
Now that word favor, I underlined it in my Bible
because it's important. 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, who was of the clan of Eli Malik.
And behold, Boaz just 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 women who came back with Naomi from
the country of Moab. She said our excuse me.
She said, please let me glean and gather among the sheaves
after the reapers. So she came and has continued
from early morning until now, except for a short rest.
Then Boaz said to Ruth, Now listen, my daughter, do not go
and glean in another field or leave this one, but keep your
eyes to my young women. Let your eyes be on the field
that they are reaping, and go after them.
Have I not charged the young men not to touch you?
And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the
young men have drawn. Then she fell on her face,
bowing to the ground, and said to him, Why have I found favor
in your eyes, that you should take notice of me since I am a
foreigner? But Boaz answered her.
All that has been done, all that you have done for your
mother-in-law since the death of your husband, has been fully
told to me. And how you left your father and
mother and your native land, and became 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 seek refuge.
Then she said, I have found favor in your eyes, my Lord, for
you have comforted me and spoke kindly to your servant, though I
am not one of your servants. And a meal time Boaz said to
her, Come here, eat some bread, and deep dip your morsel.
That's a piece of bread in the wine.
So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her the roasted
grain, and she ate some until she was satisfied and had some
leftover. When she rose to glean, Boaz
instructed his young men, saying, Let her glean even among
the sheaves and do not reproach her.
He and also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it
for her to glean and do not rebuke her.
So she gleaned in the field until evening beat out what she
had gleaned, and it was about an EFAF of barley.
She took it up and went to the city.
Her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned.
She also brought out and gave her what food she had leftover
after being satisfied. And her mother-in-law said to
her, where did you glean today and where have you worked?
Blessed be the man who took notice of you.
So she said to her mother-in-law with whom she had worked, and
said, The man's name with whom I work today is Boaz, and I only
said to her daughter-in-law, may he be blessed by the Lord, whose
kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead.
Naomi also said, This man is a close relative of ours, one of
our Redeemers. And Ruth and Moabite said,
Besides, he said to me, You shall keep close to the young,
to my young men, until they have finished all my harvest.
And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, It is good, my
daughter, that you go with his young women, lest in another
field you be assaulted. So she kept close to the young
women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the barley and wheat
harvest, and she lived with her mother-in-law.
So point number one, what we see in this chapter is Ruth's great
need provision. That means food, but it's more
than food actually and favor. OK, Now before we talk about
this, two important facts we have to remember from chapter 1,
from Pastor Daniel's message last week.
First of all, Naomi tried really, really hard to get rid
of Ruth. We used to say try to beat her
with an ugly stick didn't work. It says Ruth clung to Naomi.
It's the same word used in Genesis 2 to describe the
relationship between a man and a woman in marriage.
She was holding on to Ruth for dear life.
Ruth couldn't get rid of her, and she finally gave up.
So then they arrived in Bethlehem, where Naomi was from.
Ruth had never been there. She's a foreigner and we're told
last verse of chapter 1, the barley harvest has just started,
meaning God's at work. Food is being provided again,
the famine is over. So they arrive and Ruth has to
do something. They're going to starve unless
Ruth takes action. So Ruth, in desperate courage
and resolve, she tells basically her adopted mother, I'm going to
go out into the fields and I'm going to get food.
Now, it takes real courage to do this.
She's never been there before. She has no idea what's going to
happen. But you know what?
To obtain a blessing often takes a risk.
I remember years ago when I was still teaching, I was working at
my desk in my classroom, and it was like lunchtime for the
students or snack time or whatever.
And these two girls came in, two high school girls, and I was
just kind of working away. And one of the girls, she was a
bit more talkative. The other one, she was pretty
quiet all right. But I had them both as students,
so they came to my desk. And it turns out the quiet girl,
she needed to ask me something, but she had her friend come with
her. So they both talked with me
about it was an assignment or something like that.
And I said, yeah, that's no problem, you can go, you guys
are fine. Here's how you do it.
OK, you're good. All right, see you and the 2
girls turn. And they left and I went back to
working at my desk. But as they stepped out of my
classroom, the talkative girl said to the quiet one, See, he's
not so scary after all. If you don't take a risk, you
don't get a blessing. So Ruth goes out what she can
do. This is how it was set up in Old
Testament times. According to Deuteronomy 24,
when a farmer harvested his fields, he was to go through
once, whether it was grain, barley, olives, grapes,
whatever, he went through and he had it harvested.
But once he harvested his field, he was not to go back a second
time. Whatever would fall on the
ground, grapes, olives, wheat, whatever, whatever would fall on
the ground. Then the poor people could come
along and they could pick up this food.
Yeah, it that's called gleaning. It's back breaking stoop labor.
But if you didn't do it, you starved.
They also left alone the corners of the field so that also the
destitute like Ruth and Naomi could go to the corners of the
field and get some food there. Now maybe.
Maybe at the end of that, because Ruth is gathering for
two people, not just herself but also for Naomi, she might have
enough to feed them for one day, but it's better than starvation.
So it says verse 3, she goes out to the field.
Notice it's singular because it's not other fields.
It's one big field, and there's no sign saying which part of the
field belongs to which part. She goes out there and she just
happens to go to the part of the field owned by Boaz.
Coincidence or Providence? There's no sign saying harvest
here. This guy's nice harvest.
No, she just goes out there and she asks around and she starts
to work back breaking stoop labor.
And then Boaz comes out to check on his workers.
He just happened to come as Ruth is there working again.
Coincidence or Providence? Ruth does not know one part of
the field from the other, but the Lord does.
A person's heart plans his way, but the Lord determines his
steps. Boaz, who knew everybody in
Bethlehem because he's the elite of the city.
He's in the top 5%. The ESV Bible describes him as a
worthy man. The Christian Standard Bible
describes him as a man of noble standing.
He's at the top. Ruth is not even on the scale.
She's not even an Israelite. It's like a wealthy rancher
comes out, checks on everything that's happening on his ranch,
and he notices A ditch digger that was hired just for the day.
That's the social difference between these two.
And he tells her, stay in my field, have lunch with my
workers, which means it's like she's now part of his extended
family. Here's even more food that you
can gather because he tells his workers, I don't care what the
law says. Leave her more.
The Lord had moved Boaz's heart to give her a great blessing.
It was so far above what the law required.
Guys, it was crazy. But all that is an illustration
of how God cares for us. How much does God care?
Well, I had to pick just one verse, but this is just one
verse and a whole mess of them. It says this Blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
Now, having food to eat, that's a blessing, but having spiritual
blessings that last throughout eternity and the fact that God
gives us every single one of them in Jesus, that's amazing.
Now why? Why did Boaz do all this?
Well, he tells Ruth because she doesn't know why either.
And it has to do with Boaz knows about Ruth.
She doesn't know him, but he knows about her.
She, he knows her character. He knows that she is coming and
acting out of love for her adopted mother.
That's what's motivating her. Courageous, unselfish love.
Jesus himself said no greater love exists than this, that
someone laid down his life for his friends.
John 1512 And Jesus did the ultimate sacrifice.
He laid down his life for us, but we weren't his friends.
Scripture actually calls us his enemies, but Jesus loved us
enough to do that. Now it says she gathered an
EFAF. That's nice.
What in the world is an EFAF? OK, I had to do some checking on
this because I got different answers.
But basically an EFAF is 30 to 50 lbs of food.
You're don't get that picking up little grains at the end of the
day. Maybe you get couple handfuls.
So you got to picture this in our heads.
She gets all this food, wraps it up probably in some cloth that
she's had, and she's trundling it back to Bethlehem, kind of
stumbling along because it's a lot of food.
So it's enough to feed her and Naomi for two weeks.
So when she arrives at the house and there's the food, Naomi's
like, where'd you work? Who helped you?
What happened? Because this is unheard of.
So Naomi is revived. Naomi is excited.
Naomi at the end of chapter 1, she said, don't call me Naomi,
call me Mara, because Mara means bitter and I'm bitter.
I'm angry at God. She's not angry anymore because
she sees God's kindness in what Boaz has done.
Not only has God in his Providence met her need, He's
gone over and beyond that. See God's kindness.
That's that word we saw as kindness in the chapter.
It's a beautiful Hebrew word called hesed.
It's the Lord's unexpected, wonderfully rich, Amazing Grace
that shows up when we least expect it was a coincidence or
was a Providence. It's sort of like last week.
Linda and I were out of town because we're visiting our
daughter, son-in-law and our granddaughter down in San
Marcos. Our granddaughter, Beverly,
she's 19 months old. She has no idea what time is.
It doesn't really matter because the world revolves around her.
All she knows is that when she sees now Papa and grandma, big
smile breaks out because it's party time.
The good times are going to start.
All right. This is Grace.
All right, what are you going to give me?
What you bring for me? No, that's grace.
Let's move forward now to our time.
All right point #2 our great need and God's provision was
fulfilled with the arrival of the Son of God about 700 years
after the book of Ruth was finished.
The Old Testament writing stopped around 400 BC.
God didn't speak through prophets anymore.
Everything stopped and the people noticed.
Why are we hearing from God? Well, because God went silent.
But the people knew someone was coming, someone whom they
desperately needed, because places in Scripture in the Old
Testament talked about him. One of them was the passage we
just heard earlier. For to us a child is born, to us
a son is given, and his name shall be called.
Wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father and Prince of
Peace. One of those titles would have
been enough, but that one title wouldn't have covered everything
for Jesus. So Isaiah wrote down all four,
and even that wasn't totally sufficient.
The point is, is this is who is coming.
Some of what we read there happened the first time he came.
Some of it happens when he comes back because the next line of
the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end.
Not a whole lot of peace out there in the world is there, and
there won't be until Jesus comes back.
Just as Ruth desperately needed favor, so also Israel and all of
us need God's favor. We need the provision that God
provided in Jesus. He's the perfect God, man who
will provide salvation for us. God is absolutely in control.
And at the end of those 400 silent years, we're told, but
when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son,
born of a woman. When time was right, when
conditions in the world was right.
Most importantly, when people were desperately seeking to have
a real and authentic relationship with the living
God, that's when Jesus showed up.
So applications and conclusion. What does the word Providence
really mean? It's simply guys, the idea that
God provides, whether we see it and recognize it or not, He
provides. He provided for Ruth, for Naomi,
and he sent his son into this world to provide the only way we
can know God. Now, maybe you're here visiting,
perhaps because of the baptisms that will happen later.
You have a friend or a family member, or maybe you're just
visiting and he's thinking, well, I don't know about all
this, preacher. Well, let me tell you something,
all right. God provided for you to hear
this message. He preserved you, He protected
you, and He brought you into this building or else online so
that you would have the opportunity to meet His Son
Jesus. And by the way, He planned this
for you before you were ever born, because according to Psalm
139, God knows every single one of our days before we even
existed. So maybe you're here and you
don't know Jesus. I'm going to give you an
opportunity right now to come to know the Son of God.
So I'm going to ask all of us, please to bow our heads, close
our eyes, simply so that we can kind of push things out.
If you want to know Jesus, I invite you to pray this prayer
with me, whether silently or out loud, God hears.
Dear God, I ask you to take away my sin.
I ask you to give me new life through your Son, Jesus.
I thank you, Lord, for the fact that I can have a relationship
with you. Come into my heart and into my
life. Lord Jesus, if you prayed that
prayer, would you mind just raising your hands so that I can
see? Thank you.
You may put your hands down. Amen.
Let's go ahead and stand, please.
At this point in the service, I need to mention a couple of
things. First of all, if you were one of
those who prayed to receive Jesus, welcome to God's family.
Also, I invite you to go to the tables.
We have one in this wing and one over in this wing.
Lights will come on momentarily where you can meet with someone
and we can chat, have a chance to talk with you and get to know
you and explain to you a little bit more about what it means to
walk and to know Jesus. So we invite you to do that.
The other thing is, is that we're going to have baptism
shortly. And so if you're one of those
folks that's signed up for baptism, you want to head right
over here. There's a side door that's open
over where Brenda is. Please head in that direction
now so that we can get you ready for baptism.
All right. The other thing is, fellow
Christian, how often do you think God has taken care of you,
watched over you, protected you, and you didn't even know it?
See, sometimes we're really not grateful for how God takes care
of us. Amen.
So what do you need God to do for you today?
If you have something Lord's been working on your heart about
whatever it is, I'm going to invite you to come forward for
prayer. Our prayer team.
Please go ahead and come forward, guys, we want to pray
with you. We want to do for you whatever
we can to help you on your journey with God, so as Katie
plays, you come forward as the Lord leads.