As we start this sermon, we are going to practice a little Hebrew. Are you ready? I want to hear you say this word, “chesed”. Ok say it: (chesed) Make sure you put the ch sound at the beginning of it. Good, now clap whenever it is used. Does anyone know what this word means?

Shorthand, it means love in Hebrew. But this word, chesed, this word for love in Hebrew has deep shades of meaning. And most of them relate to a loyalty to covenant.
Today we can use the word love in all sorts of ways:
• I love my wife
• I love my car
• I love peanut butter chocolate cheesecake
• I love this weather
• I love the color yellow
• I love the Broncos (that is the only time you will hear me saying those words)
• I love to go to Waterworld
• I love my favorite coffee cup
• I love the smell of fresh baked pizza
• I love God

Our nation is a nation that has been blessed with more material resources than any nation on earth. We have indoor plumbing, nearly every adult has a car, and we throw away more food than many nations consume.

Yet we are a nation that is starved for the experience of love. And we chase after all sorts of false gods that offer all kinds of false loves. That is how we can use the same word to describe our affection for the color yellow and the worship of our Lord.

We as a culture often believe love and sex are synonomous. We spend millions of dollars on cheesy romance novels. We spend even more on porn. People fall in and out of love more often than they change clothes it seems. We are confused about what love really is often times.

Possibly what we are most confused about love is in the belief that love is a feeling. That feeling we call love is not really love, it is hormones and chemical imbalances. Love, as the Bible describes it, is an action. Love as the Bible describes it, is based on a choice, not a feeling. And true love is not best described by that sense of euphoria we feel. Love is best described by God. God describes his love most clearly in Scripture.

So this year as we approach Valentines, we are going to take a look at some of the many things that the Bible has to say about love, about marriage, and about sex. So often we get things wrong in this regard.

In the coming weeks we will talk about the gifts of singleness and marriage, and how they each are callings to truly love others in a Biblical way. We will talk about how love is defined in I Corinthians 13. We will look at how temptation to disobey the boundaries of sexual love that God has given us lead to all sorts of problems. And, we will discuss some principles the Bible gives us about how to love one another in the bond of marriage.

Anyway…back to this word “chesed”. It is the most prominent Hebrew word for love in the Old Testament. And, as I said, this word for love relates to the concepts of covenant and loyalty. The idea is that we love God best by keeping covenant with him, and we live best when we are faithful first to God and then to each other. Faithfulness in covenants with God and each other is what defines love, according to the meaning of the word, “chesed”.



COVENANT


The book of Ruth, with almost universal agreement among scholars, is about a series of events that encourage us to live lovingly, hesed kind of love, that kind of love that is kind, faithful, steady, and honest.

It is most of all about God’s faithfulness. But, it is also about how by living the way God wants us to we are blessed. Because the best kind of relationships are the kind of relationships that have steadfast love for God and one another as part of them.

Interestingly, though, we are not left with a comfort or assurance in the goodness, the lovingkindness, and the faithfulness of God as we begin this story. No, the first thing that we learn is that Naomi has had her husband die. Then she has had her sons die. And there are three survivors. One named Orpah. One named Ruth. And then Naomi. Three widows. No visible means of support.

Naomi and her husband had been immigrants to Moab from Israel. She decides she is going to trek back to her people. She encourages her daughters-in-law to do the same. Orpah does as Naomi instructs her. She heads back to family after a tearful departure.

The Bible says that Ruth did the opposite. Ruth clung to Naomi the Scriptures said. Naomi told her she needed to come back to her people. Ruth would not go. She said the words that are often said at marriages to communicate the faithfulness, the chesed, of committed love. Ruth said:

“ Entreat me not to leave you,
Or to turn back from following after you;
For wherever you go, I will go;
And wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
Your people shall be my people,
And your God, my God.
17 Where you die, I will die,
And there will I be buried.
The LORD do so to me, and more also,
If anything but death parts you and me.”

Naomi and Ruth head back to Israel, and then to Bethlehem within the nation of Israel. People greet Naomi. She says, “Call me Mara, for I am bitter. The Lord has dealt harshly with me.” She said “the Lord has dealt harshly with me”. This detail of Naomi’s experience is included so that we will ask the question of whether this is Naomi’s perception or is this truly what God is doing. Is God full of lovingkindness? Is God a God of steadfast love? Naomi has her doubts, as might you if you lost your husband, and then all your children in close succession.

Chapter 1 ends by telling us that they have arrived at the beginning of the barley harvest. This is good because it is a time of plenty for the people of Bethlehem. But neither Naomi or Ruth had planted anything.

Thankfully, there was this provision in the law of God. This provision allowed for the widows, and the poor to follow along with the harvesters and to glean the scraps that the harvesters drop or miss.

Ruth goes to glean, and by God’s grace she is gleaning on the land that is owned by Boaz. Boaz is a relative of Naomi. He comes out from town to see his workers. He blesses them in the name of the Lord. He notices Ruth. It turns out, his foreman have noticed her as well. She has not been taking breaks. She has been working hard. And she is outworking all of the other gleaners. It is her only source of income.

Boaz introduces himself to Ruth. He tells her to stay with his crew. He convinces her it is safer than being a strange woman going from field to field. She thanked him for his lovingkindness, or chesed, toward her. He invited her to eat with him and his paid staff. She ate till she had her fill, and kept some for Naomi as well.

When Boaz talks to Ruth he also tells her that the word is out about her. He knows that she has come as a immigrant worker. And that she has come to take care of Naomi. He tells her that God is faithful, and that he will take her under his wing. God will show Ruth his chesed for her chesed to Naomi

Boaz continues to show chesed, or faithful love, to Ruth. He orders his men to let grain drop for Ruth, so that she will have over and above what she usually has. He makes sure she has enough to eat and enough to drink. He has been looking out for her.

Naomi is excited. She tells Ruth that Boaz is a good man, a close relative, and thus a resource for help for them. She encourages Ruth to continue to glean in Boaz’s field.

It gets to a point when the winnowing is nearly complete, and the harvesting process is nearly done. This is good for the people, the end to a time of hard work. This is a time for action of Ruth and Naomi. After this party, the time to see Boaz every day will be lost, and the hope of their connection with him with be done as well.

Boaz obviously has a soft place in his heart for young Ruth. It is time that Ruth and Naomi make their advance. It is their last opportunity before winter approaches.

You see, Boaz was in the position of being a close relative, which means he also had the opportunity to be a kinsman-redeemer. A kinsman redeemer, through a process of Levirate marriage and family property rights laid out in the law given to Moses, had the opportunity to both claim the inheritance of Naomi’s family and take Ruth as his wife.

So, Naomi sets up Ruth to go to the harvest party. She covers herself for most of the party. But, as Naomi instructed, she keeps a close eye on Boaz.

This is a party, and it appears that the women are not near the men at the party. The barbeque comes out, as does the cooler. People eat. They drink. And Boaz drank enough of the harvest wine that his heart was made cheerful (Boaz was a good man, not a perfect one), and he felt sleepy, and he found a place to lie down a take a little nap.

Per Naomi’s instructions when he fell asleep with that smile on his face and started snoring, she snuggled herself up next to him. She uncovered his feet or his legs the Scripture says. Basically, she uncovered him on the lower half of his body, and then placed herself cuddling in his lap. I imagine some breeze blew along at some point. In any case, something startled him, and awoke, and groped around. While trying to figure out where he was and what was going on he looked down and there was this woman lying in his lap.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I am Ruth,” she said. I am your maidservant. Take your maidservant under your wing for you are a close relative.”

Now this is not the best pick up line I have ever heard. Can you imagine? “Hey baby, this is Ruth. We met at a family reunion, and I thought, that is just the man I want, and what better place to find a man than at the family reunion.”

Ruth was instructed by Naomi to say nothing. But Ruth is startled into saying something. She says that she wants Boaz to put his “wing over her”. Putting a wing over someone is something someone does when one person decides to take care of another in Hebrew idiom. It is something that God does for us when he is faithful to us, he takes us under his wing of protection.

Putting a wing over someone was also an allusion to a husband taking a woman as his wife. In a marriage ceremony there would be a big party, and then at some point the husband would come and take his cloak, or his wing, and set it over his wife, like a teenage girl taking her boyfriend’s letter jacket when I was in high school, and they would go to their home and become husband and wife.

Here they were. This well respected, handsome, wealthy middle aged bachelor. This young attractive widow dressed beautifully. In a compromising position. What would Boaz do? He could have had his way with Ruth right there. She was that needy. She was that vulnerable.

Boaz chooses live in love. In the lovingkindness of integrity and covenant. Of obeying God’s word. And he tells Ruth they will wait. And he will go to the gates, where business is done, and he will negotiate for the right to marry Ruth, because there is a relative that is a closer relative to Naomi and Ruth than he that could lay claim to Ruth and Naomi and their small parcel of land.

So Boaz goes to the city gates. He says there is this land that he wants but the other man has first rights to it. The man says he wants the land. Oh no!

But then he says that the land comes with two widows that the man will be obligated to support if he takes it. The man wants no part of the women. He basically says, “I want nothing to do with the women. Too much headache for me. If you want the land, it is yours!”

That day, because of how the law works, Ruth became his wife by right. And the men patted his back and blessed him. Ruth and Boaz had a child, and Naomi was the nanny for the little guy. His name was Obed. The women of the city said that God had been faithful, or shown his hesed, to Naomi, by giving her a daughter in law that was better than seven sons, and a grandson in her old age. They said that God had given that baby to Naomi out of his faithful lovingkindness, his hesed.

And that little baby, born of a immigrant worker and a middle aged farming leader, was born to faithful, loving parents. Obed, that little baby, as it turned out was the grandfather of David. In Bethlehem. He brought hope to a peasant widow, a bitter woman without hope, and a lonely bachelor waiting for God’s woman to come to him in God’s time. God was loving because he was faithful to his promises. God is good.

Out of the union of the faithful Ruth and the loving Boaz came a king named King David. Best King Israel ever had. And out of this amazing story of hope came the line of the King of Kings, Jesus Christ, who came to show God’s love and faithfulness to a world who also often believes hope is lost. That like Naomi is bitter and feels abandoned.

Even now, God is reaching out in his loving kindness, or his hesed to the world. He is reaching out through the Word of Jesus. He is reaching out through his Holy Spirit working through frail and feeble vessels like you and I. As we are faithful to live holy lives in commitment to God, as we are faithful to live loving lives with grace and integrity with one another, as we are faithful to share about the faithful love of God, with others, we are able to bring the love of God to the world. A world that is hungry for the kind of love that last that more for a night or a season. A world that is hungry for the kind of love that doesn’t run when it gets difficult. A world that is hungry for the love that we can only find with God and those who are faithful to loving as he has loved. Amen.