WHAT RUTH & BOAZ TEACH US
Consider what godliness means for ordinary living.
Ruth and Boaz provide excellent examples of godliness in daily living.
Ruth’s godliness showed in these ways:
- Total commitment to God once she found him – even at the cost of another quite attractive future.
- Willingness to work. It was in the way of her work that she found Boaz. She worked hard to meet her own and Naomi’s needs – she proved her godliness by not being lazy and self-pitying.
- Accepting advice. She accepted Naomi’s advice and was willing to listen. She was not rebellious and determined to follow her own ideas.
- Pure in her approach to men. She did not flirt but could recognise a godly man when she saw him. She set her heart on a man who loved and served God.
- She was willing to wait for God to things out for her and Boaz to be together.
Boaz’s godliness showed in these ways:
- A leader and yet humble. He mixed freely with his people and even served them. He was in charge but he wasn’t aggressive or overbearing or angry.
- He was a real man – strong and meek together.
- He looked out for the needy and looked for ways to help them – he felt a responsibility towards those who needed a hand up.
- He treated Ruth with kindness and respect and encouraged her faith in God – he talked openly about spiritual things to the woman he was interested in.
- He had self-control to wait until marriage before having sexual relations with Ruth. He honoured God’s establishment of marriage as the proper and safe setting for intimacy between a man and a woman and the raising of children.
- He arranged things out in the open, trusting God for their outcome, rather than trying to sort things out with secret deals.
- He acknowledged that it was God who was at work to find him the perfect partner.
- His leadership in the community was based on their respect for his godliness.
Seek a husband or wife who shares your faith in God and your determination to be godly in everything. Sex without commitment is a shallow and brief pleasure that is deeply disappointing. Sex within a God-centred marriage becomes a small but very fulfilling means of expressing the joy there is in love. Sex in God-centred marriage brings children into a safe and happy home. Ruth and Boaz’s love story breathes the joy of anticipation and the value of doing things in the right order. Their love story stands in total contrast to the cheaply given sex and the serial partners of our permissive society. Ruth and Boaz stand out as intensely in love, respectful and sensitive in communication, powerfully self-controlled, sold on righteousness, delighted in anticipation and joyful in commitment.
Keep your eye on God’s prize. Don’t be distracted into grabbing short-term benefits or thrills. Live with the long term in mind and although in the short term there may be some apparent set-backs and losses, you will be assured of long-lasting (eternal) joy. This is the beautiful thing about righteousness – it cannot be extinguished. Imaginations and possessions eventually fade to nostalgia and evaporate, but God’s righteous purpose lasts forever. Included in God’s righteousness are his faithfulness and his immutability (that is, his unchangeable permanence). Consider what this means for investing your faith in the Son of God – your future is established in God himself, not in a place or things that might change, rust, be stolen or fade. God is eternal and nothing can cancel his plans. Ruth and Boaz’s story teaches us to trust that God will bring us through the set-backs and upsets and apparent losses. Abandoning our faith is not an option.
Consider Ruth and Boaz - Was there ever a happier outcome for two people? Trust God with your life’s outcomes, for at some points the things he calls you to avoid may seem very attractive and you might feel the cost of being holy is too great to pay. Remember Ruth. Remember Boaz. Remember even Naomi. Don’t throw away your faith.
Hebrews 10.35 Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. 37 For,
“Yet a little while,
and the coming one will come and will not delay;
38 but my righteous one shall live by faith,
and if he shrinks back,
my soul has no pleasure in him.”
39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.
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