Providence in a Field of Barley | Ruth 2 | July 12, 2026

We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

And if you would like a paper copy to follow along with, just raise your hand and someone will get you a copy.

They will be delighted to do that.

And we say this many times.

If you would like to take a copy home with you, if you need to copy it home, please take it as our gift.

We would be delighted for you to have it.

And would like to welcome some of our friends who have joined us online in the last week.

So we're glad you're with us this morning.

And in the last week, here's some of the places people have joined from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada, friends to the north, Greensboro, North Carolina, and Loveland, Colorado.

Yesterday afternoon I was thinking, I was reading through these, and I was thinking about how I'd make a snappy little comment about how great it would be to be in Loveland, Colorado instead of Nashville in July.

And then I looked at the weather forecast for today, and it's going to be 100 degrees there today.

So yeah, I don't care if it's dry heat.

That's still plenty hot.

In any case, welcome friends.

So has anybody been following the World Cup?

Yes, yes.

More hands up than in the 9 o'clock.

I don't know what it is with the 9 o'clock.

So there were some great games yesterday.

I could just see highlights of them because I was getting ready for this morning.

The England and the Norway game, and then what was it, Argentina and Switzerland, man.

And I've got to say I've really enjoyed watching these games.

I'm more of a hockey and football fan, but gosh, the athleticism.

The games have been so good, and the athletes are just unbelievable.

But there's something that I just can't get my head around about soccer.

And I'm kind of hoping that somebody knows a lot more about the game can help me with maybe you can fill me in afterwards, because there's just two words that just don't seem like they make sense fitting together in the same sentence, and that would be Norway and soccer.

It just, I mean, ice hockey, yeah, you know, speed skating, downhill skiing, bobsledding luge, all these Nordic sports.

Yes, for sure.

But soccer, I mean, when do they practice?

When do they play their games?

They have about a week and a half of summer, right?

I just, somebody help me.

That's all I'm saying.

Well, we're gonna continue our study of Ruth today, and we're gonna be taking a look at chapter two.

And Pastor Tommy walked us through chapter one last week, and we met Naomi and her husband Elimelech.

They were from Bethlehem, and there was a famine.

So Elimelech moved his wife and his two sons to the land of Moab.

And the two sons met Moabite women there.

They got married and they lived there for about 10 years.

Well, then the husband and the two sons died, and it left all three of the women as widows, if you'll remember.

Well, then Naomi hears that there's food again in Israel in Bethlehem.

So she wants to move back.

She tells her two daughter-in-laws, love you, but please stay here with your families, your native country, um, get married again.

Orpa, one of the daughters-in-law, does that very thing.

She hugs Naomi, but she stays.

The other daughter-in-law, Ruth, as we know, commits her life in every way possible to Naomi.

And so Naomi and Ruth return to Bethlehem just at the beginning of the barley harvest we read, and we'll read that verse here in just a minute.

So much of the first chapter has been about hardship and heartache, but at the very end of that chapter, there's a turn towards hope.

And that's where we'll start today with this turn towards hope.

And we're going to witness the providence of God doing extraordinary things in ordinary ways through ordinary people, working in the lives of Ruth and Naomi, and someone new that we're going to meet today, a man named Boaz.

Well, in a tip of the hat to the artist Sting in his song Fields of Gold, I'm calling our message today Providence in a Field of Barley.

Because that is what we witness.

And so I would like for us to pause, pause for just a minute, think back over the last week, over this season of your life, and consider this question while we're reading through the passage.

Is it possible that God is working behind the scenes in your life right now?

Is it possible that He really is doing that?

Do you believe that?

Do you live like you believe that?

Do I live like I believe that?

You know, believe that the unseen providence of God is at work in our lives right now, despite our circumstances, despite our mistakes, our sin even, is He at work?

So I would ask you to just ponder that while we read through our passage.

So let's let's pray together, friends, and then we can read our passage.

Lord, we come to you this morning with hearts full of all sorts of things that have gone on or not gone on in our lives in the last week or two weeks or month.

So many things that either fill our hearts or break our hearts.

And so we come here today.

We bring all of ourselves to you.

And ask that you would meet us right where we are.

I ask that you would speak to us through your word.

Holy Spirit, open our eyes, ears, hearts, and minds.

Speak to us, Lord.

Walk amongst us and meet us right where we need to be met.

I'm gonna lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, so I am gonna start with the last verse of chapter one.

So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, with her, who returned from the country of Moab, and they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest.

And barley harvest in Israel, it's it's kind of March, March, April, mid-spring, around the time of Passover.

And then when the barley harvest is done, it lasts a couple of months.

A few weeks later, the wheat harvest starts, and that lasts a month or two.

So mid to late spring, early summer is when the grain is harvested.

So chapter two, excuse me, verse one, now Naomi had a relative of her husband's, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz.

We're gonna meet Boaz in this chapter, but the author is just giving us this little, I don't know, this little foreshadowing, this little heads up.

Hey, here's this guy you're gonna meet.

And this translation calls him a worthy man.

Other translations say he was very wealthy.

So he's a man who is, he is of good standing, has great health, great, great wealth, and great character.

And just keep that in mind because we're gonna meet him in a little bit.

Verse 2, 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.

So I'm gonna turn over to Leviticus for just a second, chapter 19, verse 9 and 10, because this idea of reaping or harvesting and gleaning, which is where people came in after the harvest is to pick up the leftovers, this is the way God cares for the marginalized, the poor, the immigrant, and this is his heart, and it's written into Levitical law.

So I'm going to read from Leviticus 19.

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest, and you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard, you shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner.

I am the Lord your God.

So we see here that God is intensely interested in the good of those who are marginalized, outcast, the poor, the widow and the orphan, the immigrant, the foreigner.

So he is providing two things here.

He's providing in his law a way for them to get food.

They get to go in and gather what's left over and gather around the corners of the barley and wheat fields.

But in addition to that, he is giving them dignity because although they are outcast and marginalized, they are able to work and they are able to provide for themselves.

He's providing that dignity for them.

So Ruth, she has said to Naomi, Let me go and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favor, whoever is going to give me permission to glean in his field.

And Naomi said to her, Go, my daughter.

She's rolling up her sleeves and getting to work.

Verse 3, 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 Limelech.

And that happened to come, you can almost see the author being tongue-in-cheek.

She just happened to come to the field, the part of the field that belonged to Boaz.

And then right after that, the next verse, and behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem.

It's almost like the author said, Hey, she just happened to be right there in that field, and uh, here's Boaz, come from Jerusalem.

A little subtle tongue-in-cheek humor here.

Well, so Boaz came from Bethlehem and he said to the reapers, The Lord be with you.

And they answered, The Lord bless you.

So we're already seeing a little bit of the character of Boaz, the way he greets his employees.

He's a man of character, a man of faithfulness.

Verse 5, then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers, whose young woman is this?

He immediately notices Ruth.

And the way he asked that question, it doesn't indicate that he thinks a woman is a piece of property.

He doesn't mean it like that.

He's asking, What family, what clan is she from?

He's trying to care for her and protect her.

Verse 6 the servant who is in charge of the reapers answered, She is a young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab.

And she said, Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.

So she came, and she's continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest.

So we're getting a little look into Ruth's character as well.

She is a hard worker, very diligent.

Well, 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.

Remember, we're in the time of Judges where every man did what was right in his own eyes.

It's a little bit like the wild, wild west.

And Boaz is looking out for Ruth.

He's saying, Do not go to these other fields because you are not safe there.

Follow my young women who are working for me doing the harvesting.

Follow them, you'll be safe.

I have made sure my male employees, my young men, know to take care of you and look out for you.

And he's also, when he asks and offers water for her to drink, that's not something normally people gleaning around the edges of the field would do.

He is inviting her in to get water from his employees.

He's inviting her in.

Verse 10.

Well, 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?

She is well aware of the humbleness of her position, a woman, a widow, a foreigner, and she is overwhelmed with the kindness of Boaz.

Verse 11, Boaz answered her, 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 came to a people that you did not know before.

Her character has gone ahead of her.

The Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.

So good of Boaz to recognize the sacrifices Naomi has made, and so cognizant of by coming to Israel, to Bethlehem with Naomi, she is coming to Yahweh.

And this idea of under whose wings you have come to take refuge, it's like little chicks running under the mama hen for safety and for warmth.

We've got a little picture from the farm from some chicks that hatched out a couple of about a month or so ago.

And look at those little peepers.

That's what we do when we run to the Lord for refuge.

And that's what Boaz is saying that Ruth has done here.

And her response, verse 13, then she said, I have found favor in your eyes, my Lord, steadfast love, steadfast kindness, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, though I am not one of your servants.

She says, Even though I am not one of your employees, you have been so kind to me.

Well, then we're moving on in the day.

Verse 14, 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.

So again, Boaz has not left her out with the other people who are gleaning, but instead he has invited her into the family, so to speak, into where his employees are eating, and he has blessed her with bread, wine to dip the bread in, this roasted grain.

And for Ruth, who has been hungry for who knows how long, she ate and ate and ate until she was satisfied and she still had food left over.

Verse 15 When she rose to glean, she's not done with her day.

She's still going back to work.

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.

So he's saying, Okay, keep your eye on her, and then I want you to work it out so she's able to get some of the choicest grain to glean.

And by the way, some of the stuff you already have bundled up, find a way for some of that to kind of get loose and fall in her path.

He is really providing for her.

So verse 17 so she gleaned in the field until evening, till sundown, and then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephawh of barley, which is about 30 pounds of barley, 30 pounds of grain, which is enough to feed her and Naomi for a couple of weeks.

And she took it up and went into the city.

So she wasn't afraid to carry that 30-pound sack of barley back to town.

Her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned.

She also brought out and gave her what food she had left over 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.

In other words, boy, you left and things were pretty bare here, and look what you have come back with weeks' worth of food.

So Ruth told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked, and said, The man's name with whom I work today is Boaz.

And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead.

And Naomi also said to her, The man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.

And Ruth the Moabite said, Well, besides, he said to me, You shall keep close by 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 out with his young women, lest in another field you be assaulted.

So she click kept close to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the barley and wheat harvests, and she lived with her mother-in-law.

So she was harvesting grain for several months, and they were well cared for.

Well, this chapter, it's filled with God's providence towards Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz, as well as foreshadowing God's providential care for us some 3,100 years later, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, who was Himself a descendant of Ruth and Boaz.

We see here that God's heart is always aware and eager to care for the marginalized, the poor, the outcast, the widow, the orphan, the refugee.

And for us, in that same way, Jesus moves towards that outcast part of our lives, the brokenness in us.

His instinct is always to move towards the sin and the suffering, the brokenness he sees in us, not away from it.

Let's take a quick look, a few ways God is at work in this passage, and consider how he might be at work in our lives as well.

Well, the first way that we see God is at work in this passage, it's by how Ruth and Naomi are surprised.

By hope.

You know that that last chapter, the chapter one, was all about hardship and heartache.

And when they moved back to Bethlehem, if you remember, Naomi said, Don't call me Naomi anymore, but call me Mara, because God has dealt bitterly with me.

But we see in this chapter how she's moving from bitterness towards blessedness, and it all hinges in this simple way on that 30-pound sack of barley.

God is working behind the scenes in their lives.

At the end of our passage, that we just read, Naomi is blown away by the amount of food that Ruth brought back.

And she says, Blessed be the man who took notice of you.

And then when she finds out it's Boaz, she says, May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead.

So Naomi is surprised by the provision of the Lord, both in the provision of food, but also the provision of this Redeemer, this kinsman redeemer in Boaz, which we'll find out, it is going to change the trajectory of their lives.

Naomi's hope is kindled because of what Boaz did and because of who Boaz was.

And Ruth in the field experienced that same infusion of hope when she encounters that unexpected favor and kindness from Boaz.

And she responds the only way she knows how by falling on her face before him and saying, How in the world have I found this favor in your eyes since I am a foreigner?

I would argue that whether we're by nature optimists or pessimists, I believe that many of us still lean towards hope.

No matter how we're wired, we still lean towards hope.

Or at least we have a longing to lean towards hope.

Lately I've noticed some trees in our backyard.

They're on the western side of the backyard, and over the years, they've started straight, but over the years they've become in their own slow way that they grow and move, they become bent and curved because they're leaning towards the light.

They're leaning towards the sun that rises in the east.

And it's the same with us.

We're created with a desire for justice and for righteousness.

So we lean towards the light.

That time when everything will finally and fully be made right.

We have that desire, that awareness in our hearts, no matter who we are, we lean towards it.

Famed journalist Norman Cousins once said, this is not up on the slide, he says, the human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope.

And so we are pulled towards hope.

And yet we have to hold that pull, that leaning intention with our circumstances, don't we?

Because I know that for many in our congregation right now, many of us are dealing with really hard and heartbreaking circumstances right now that we might say are almost hopeless.

And so that creates a tension in us.

Even as we hope for better circumstances, I would argue that our hope needs to be based on something deeper than circumstance, something that cannot be extinguished by disease, by broken relationship, by death.

Warren Wearsby puts it like this: He says, for the Christian believer, hope is not a shallow hope soul feeling generated by optimistic fantasies.

Hope is an inner sense of joyful assurance and confidence as we trust God's promises and face the future with his help.

That is the Christian's anchor of hope.

Well, the next way we see God at work in this passage, it's in the lives of Boaz and Ruth, and we see that character matters.

For Ruth and Boaz, their character, it's gone ahead of them.

In Ruth, we see her rolling up her sleeves, getting to work.

Again, she realizes she's a widow, a woman, a foreigner with no rights at all.

And yet, in spite of all those obstacles, she still went out to find work.

And once she was there, working in the field, her character spoke for itself in the way she worked all day long, just with a short break.

And then after that midday meal, she got right back to work, continued on till evening, beating out the gleanings, getting that 30-pound sack of grain, carrying it home, and did not forget to bring along her leftovers for Naomi.

So her work ethic has gone ahead of her.

And not only her work ethic, but her love and her care for Naomi, that sacrifice in leaving her family and her country in order to honor her commitment, that's also gone ahead of her because Boaz, Boaz heard about all of this before he even met Ruth.

Well, in Boaz, his character has gone ahead of him as well.

He's a man of wealth and of good standing.

But in the time of the judges, where we read again, where every man did what was right in his own eyes, Boaz stands out.

He loves the Lord.

He loves the law of the Lord.

He cares for all who are in his sphere of influence, whether they are his employees working for him, or they are a young widowed refugee who he has just met for the first time.

His faith and his character that created this culture of faithfulness and kindness with all who work for him.

We saw that just in the way he greeted his workers.

He's a man who values relationships.

He's not afraid to bring God into the conversation at his work.

He noticed Ruth immediately, knew that she was not one of his employees, and inquired who her family was in order that he might care for her.

And from the outset, he gave her permission to work in his fields, he gave her protection, and then he gave her provision.

And the real test of character in our lives, which we see both in Boaz and Ruth, it is not how we react to the rich and famous or react to people that we might want something from, but how we respond to the poor and to the marginalized.

That's who Boaz is.

And that character in both Ruth and Boaz will continue to show up in the next couple of chapters.

We could say that Boaz exemplifies what Proverbs 3 talks about.

It says, Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you.

Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.

So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.

So Boaz, we can call him a Proverbs 3 kind of man.

He's walking in this truth, and Proverbs hasn't even been written yet.

And by the same token, we can say of Ruth that she's a Proverbs 31 kind of woman.

Charm is deceitful, beauty is vain.

But a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

Give her up the fruit of her hands and let her works praise her in the gates.

So this the character of Ruth and Boaz, the way they lived their lives, it ended up, it made it possible for them to meet out in the fields of barley.

And so it is for us.

Our character is a testimony going before us, speaking of how God is working in our lives.

And we might ask, okay, well, can God work through us and give us this kind of a forward-speaking testimony despite sinfulness and inconsistency in our lives?

Absolutely, yes.

He has to, because we're all inconsistent and sinful.

And yet, when we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives, when we're being remade into the image of Christ, the character of Christ living in us goes before us as a living testimony.

Dane Ortland says this in gentle and lowly, this is not a slide.

He says, only as we drink down the kindness of the heart of Christ, only as we do that will we leave in our wake everywhere we go the aroma of heaven and die one day, having startled the world with glimpses of a divine kindness too great to be boxed in by what we deserve.

So I would encourage us, are we living that way?

Are we allowing the Holy Spirit to conform us to the image of Christ, to where the image of Christ goes before us and then the aroma of Christ goes behind us.

And then another way we see God at work in this passage are in the just happens, the happenstance, God in happenstance.

And so many details in our story today seem to just happen.

Ruth decided, just happened to decide this one day to glean in the fields, and Naomi just happened to approve of the idea.

And then Ruth just happened to pick the part of the barley fields that were owned by Boaz, and Boaz just happened to start his barley harvest that day and just happened to visit his fields.

Taking it at superficial surface value as individual events, one might just shrug their shoulders and go, eh, whatever, coincidence.

But when we back up and we look at the story as a whole, we see how God is weaving all of these seemingly disparate events together, and they're all part of his plan to guide redemptive history because out of Ruth and Boaz's image, lineage, we have King David and then we have King Jesus.

And if we use the analogy of a tapestry, from the back side it looks like a bunch of knots, broken thread, dead ends, it's just a mess.

But then when we turn it over, gosh, it's this beautiful tapestry, this beautiful work of art on the front side.

And Satan would seek to get us so focused on our circumstances, seeing only the broken and the jumbled pieces on the back side of the tapestry, that we doubt God and his plan and provision, and we miss the art that he is weaving in our lives behind the scenes.

Dale Ralph Davis puts it this way in his book on Ruth called No Hopeless Future.

You might say, Well, I don't see much evidence of God's providence at work in my life.

I'm tempted to reply, of course you don't.

God is more subtle than that.

He wants you to think, search, ponder, and as we sometimes say, exegete your circumstances, look at them carefully and scour them a bit so that you'll see there's been a lot of just happens that will lead you to praise.

Even walking into a particular barley field can be a step into providence.

So my question for us is can we do that?

Can we ponder and prayerfully examine our lives to put together these puzzle pieces of the just happens in a way that helps us understand even just a little bit of what God is up to?

And when we start to look at our lives that way, we realize that almost everywhere we go, God is at work and we are stepping into providence and standing on holy ground.

Whether we're in publics or Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts, we're stepping into Providence, stepping on holy ground.

That brings us back to that question I asked us to consider earlier.

Is it possible that God is working behind the scenes in your life right now?

Is it possible that he's doing that?

So as we consider that question, it leads us to this last point, this way of thinking that curious hearts see God's hand at work.

Being curious is such a good way to approach our lives.

And I made the statement earlier that God does extraordinary things in ordinary ways to ordinary people, and when we start looking for that, we see God's hand at work.

We begin to see God's hand all over the place.

We see the holiest of moment, the moment, the glory of God in all sorts of ordinary places.

A good cup of coffee, a really nicely well-prepared meal, prepared with love.

Sunset, just happened to run into somebody.

When we read stories like Ruth and Boaz in Scripture, we're reading, you know, these giant billboard-sized statements of God's hand at work.

And yet in our own lives, it's typically written in smaller letters.

But when we have, when we're curious and open and seeking, we could still recognize his handwriting, even in the most mundane of moments, even in the hard moments.

Every moment becomes alive with the presence and the glory of God, stepping into providence.

And Isaiah 49 reminds us that no, no matter what our circumstances are, we are not forgotten.

We are seen, we're remembered.

God has engraved us on the palm of his hands.

We are not forgotten.

And it's not a far correlation to make here with the nail-scarred hands of Jesus.

We are engraved on his hands.

Imprinted.

Your name and mine.

I'll close with this thought from Sinclair Ferguson.

In the midst of our confusion and the happenstances and surprises of life, there is a sovereign God in heaven whose hand is upon us every moment of the day.

A God who reigns over every inch of the universe in which we live.

Friends, the God, that God who reigns over every inch, every single inch of the universe.

He has his hand upon us every moment of every day.

Because we know that, we know that he's at work, we know that nothing is accidental, but rather everything is providential.

He is indeed working behind the scenes in our lives.

Amen?

Let's pray.

Lord, we're grateful for this story.

Grateful to see these large examples of the way you are working behind the scenes in people's lives.

And it gives us encouragement to trust you with all sorts of events and circumstances that we might not understand.

So we give our lives to you, Lord.

We ask that when you when your ways are evident, help us give thanks for that.

But when your hand is mysterious and unseen, help us have curious hearts that seek you out and that trust in your character.

We don't quite understand your ways, we do understand and trust your heart and your love and care for us.

Help us, like Ruth, to recognize your favor that you have lavished upon us, even in unseen ways, Lord.