Includes a suggested introduction to the lesson, text outline and highlights, illustrations to share, group discussion questions, and spiritual life application. A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRODUCTION/ILLUSTRATION:

Carl Sandburg wrote about a slave auction that came to the attention of Abraham Lincoln. It involved the sale of “Eliza, a beautiful girl with dark lustrous eyes, straight black hair, rich olive complexion, only one sixty-fourth African, white yet a slave. A young Methodist minister, Calvin Fairbank, bid higher and higher against a thick-necked Frenchman from New Orleans. Reaching $1200, the Frenchman asked, ‘How high are you going?’ and Fairbank said, ‘Higher than you, Monsieur.’” The bids slowly rose to $1585, which the minister, backed by funds from abolitionist Salmon Chase, won. The auctioneer asked Fairbank, “What are you going to do with her?’ Fairbank said, “I’m going to free her!” and the crowd shouted and yelled with glee. (Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln, The Prairie Years and the War Years, p. 93)

In this morning’s lesson, we find another story of redemption, which prefigures the greatest redemption story of all: how Christ redeemed us from our sins with His blood. 

CONTEXT (this is a bit longer this week but it’s necessary to understand what’s going on in the focus passage):

This week we conclude our summer study of Joshua, Judges, and Ruth with our second and final lesson from Ruth, rounding out that story. We saw last time that Ruth, a Moabite, showed very surprising faithfulness to her mother-in-law Naomi, and returned to Israel with her after the deaths of both of their husbands. In Israel, she gleaned from the field of a man named Boaz, who showed her favor for her work and faithfulness to Naomi. 

After last session’s episode from Ruth 2, Naomi asked Ruth where she gleaned that day, and she told her it was in Boaz’ field. Naomi responded with praise to God, who had not withdrawn His kindness! She said, this man is one of our “closest relatives.” (NASB) In Hebrew this is “a relation of ours, the man; one of our kinsman-redeemers he is.” (I know that sounds a bit like Yoda from Star Wars — maybe they envisioned him as speaking like an ancient Hebrew!) 

The root is the Hebrew verb “ga-al,” which means “to redeem.” “Go-el” is a participle, indicating “one who acts as a redeemer.” This term “kinsman-redeemer” was important because because it reflected an Old Testament practice God had commanded: 

Remember, a few weeks ago in Joshua we studied how the land of Israel was divided up by lot, and every family received an inheritance in the land. It was God’s plan that each family would KEEP that inheritance permanently. This is reflected in several commands in the Law:

— In Leviticus 25:25 God commanded that if a man became poor/in debt and had to sell his property, someone from his family had the right to “redeem” that property, or “buy it back,” in order to keep that property in the family, so the inheritance wasn’t broken up. 

— In Deuteronomy 25:5-10, He commanded that if an Israelite died and left a widow, his brother (or nearest relative) should marry the widow and keep the property “in the family,” so the inheritance would not be broken up. But it made provision that he could refuse to redeem her publicly — and then the right to redeem the widow, and the associated property, would pass to the next closest relative.  

So this is what Naomi is referring to: Boaz, whose field Ruth “just happened” to glean, “just happens” to be one of Naomi’s family’s closest “kinsman-redeemers.” (Of course none of this “just happened;” it was all God’s providence.)

So as Ruth 3 opens, Naomi tells Ruth she wants to seek some “security” (NASB) for her — the Hebrew word is “manoach,” meaning “resting place.” (The word was used of the dove in Genesis 8:9, it didn’t find a place to rest when the water still covered the earth.) Naomi told Ruth that Boaz was her “kinsman redeemer,” so she should go and lay at his feet — basically making an appeal for him to redeem her.

Naomi tells Ruth to do 3 things:

— Wash herself

— Put on perfume, and

— Put on her dress. It’s not, as some translate, “best clothes,” but rather the Hebrew “simla,” a cloak or outer garment. (It’s certainly not seductive night clothes or prostitute’s garb as some suggest!)  Naomi tells her then to uncover Boaz’ feet and lie down, and “he will tell you what to do.” 

Now to some, this whole thing appears to be borderline, if not outright, immoral. Is she seducing Boaz? Many people DO believe Naomi was basically trying to “lure” Boaz in via seduction. It certainly may seem so to us! But there is strong evidence that it is not necessarily so. For example:

— In II Samuel 12:20, KING DAVID performs the exact same three actions after the death of Bathsheba’s son, that Ruth did here! It says he: “washed” himself, “anointed” (put on perfume), and put on his “simla.” By these actions David was saying, I am no longer mourning my son. That is over. I’m going to go on with my life now.

Evidently Naomi is telling Ruth the same: get cleaned up, stop wearing your mourning clothes. This is not “seduction,” it’s more like, “look your best for this,” and get ready to get on with your new life.

I like Matthew Henry’s comment:
“The course Naomi advised appears strange to us; but it was according to the laws and usages of Israel. If the proposed measure had borne the appearance of evil, Naomi would not have advised it. Law and custom gave Ruth, who was now proselyted to the true religion, a legal claim upon Boaz. It was customary for widows to assert this claim, De 25:5-10. But this is not recorded for imitation in other times, and is not to be judged by modern rules. And if there had been any evil in it, Ruth was a woman of too much virtue and too much sense to have listened to it.”

I don’t know how to put it any better than that! We don’t need to read anything immoral into this. This was their custom, and God used it for His purposes, as we shall see. 

So Ruth told Naomi in :5, “All that you say I will do” and she did. She went to the threshing floor and lay at Boaz’ feet — and that brings us to our focus passage for today, starting in Ruth 3:8:

OUTLINE:

I.  The Promise of Redemption (3:8-13)

II. The Fruit of Redemption (4:13-17)

TEXT:  Ruth 3:8-13, 4:13-17

I. The Promise of Redemption (3:8-13)

:8 “It happened in the middle of the night that the man was startled and [a]bent forward; and behold, a woman was lying at his feet. 9 He said, “Who are you?” And she answered, “I am Ruth your maid. So spread your covering over your maid, for you are a [b]close relative.” 10 Then he said, “May you be blessed of the LORD, my daughter. You have shown your last kindness to be better than the first by not going after young men, whether poor or rich. 11 Now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you whatever you [c]ask, for all my people in the [d]city know that you are a woman of excellence. 12 Now it is true I am a [e]close relative; however, there is a [f]relative closer than I. 13 Remain this night, and when morning comes, if he will [g]redeem you, good; let him redeem you. But if he does not wish to [h]redeem you, then I will redeem you, as the Lord lives. Lie down until morning.”

So Ruth was laying at Boaz’ feet, and :8 says was startled awake, and asked Ruth, “Who are you?” I guess that would be the obvious question!

Her response was obviously schooled by Naomi: “I am Ruth your maid. So spread your covering over your maid, for you are a “go-el,” — that’s the ’kinsman redeemer’ we were talking about. Boaz had the right to redeem Ruth and her husband’s inheritance in Israel. But the big question was: WOULD he? If he didn’t this episode was going to end in shame for Ruth & Naomi.

But his response in :10-13 could not have been more encouraging: 

— “May you be blessed of the LORD, my daughter.” Those are great first words for someone to hear who’s obviously concerned about what his answer would be! 

— He commends her in :10 for not going after younger men, so he was obviously a somewhat older guy. 

— He tells her in :11 that he will do what she asks

— He does give a caveat/warning in :12 that there IS a closer relative than himself, so he is going to have to clear it with him first. 

— But he assures her in :13, “I will redeem you.” I will be the “go-el” you are looking for. 

“I will redeem you.” What precious words they were to Ruth. “I will redeem you.”

???DISCUSSION QUESTION???
“Can you share a time when you were in trouble and asked for help, and someone said ‘I will help you?’ How did you feel?”

(When I was in college, I still had my first car, one of those of Chevy Vegas — some of you remember those! As happened with a lot of those, I had engine trouble, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t have money for a shop to fix it, and I had NO mechanical aptitude to do it myself. But I had to drive, to be able to work. I was in a really bad spot. But I remember my Uncle Rick, an ex-Marine who served in Vietnam, told me: “I’ll help you.”  And he came out to our house, and I remember holding the light for him late at night as he took that engine apart and fixed it. But when he just told me: “I’ll help you,” I was so relieved. Just that promise that he was going to do it, that help was coming, relieved my mind so much.)

The way you felt in your situation when that person said “I will help you,” has to be the way Ruth must have felt that night when Boaz said “I will redeem you.” It had to be a great relief! Perhaps she had been sleeping very fitfully before then — indeed, likely she didn’t sleep at all, wondering what was going to unfold! But now perhaps she could at last rest — for she was going to be redeemed. Whether it was Boaz or this other man remained to be seen, but she knew for sure: HE PROMISED HE WOULD REDEEM HER! 

What a great word! And again, we see in Boaz a fitting picture of God. God said the same thing to lost mankind. When we His creatures, were in hopeless despair in our sin, God promised that He would redeem us:

— Job in his desperate situation held out the hope of a promise of a Redeemer: “I know that my Redeemer lives.” (19:25)

— Isaiah 1:27 “Zion will be redeemed with justice, and her repentant ones with righteousness.”

— Isaiah 52:3 “For thus says the Lord, ‘You were sold for nothing and you will be redeemed without money.’” 

(The Book of Isaiah is full of verses and promises about God’s redemption. Isaiah 53 does not use the specific word “redeemer” or “redemption,” but it sure clearly teaches that the Messiah was coming who would suffer and pay for for our sins, to redeem us!). 

— Micah 4:10 “Writhe and labor to give birth, Daughter of Zion, Like a woman in childbirth; For now you will go out of the city, Dwell in the field, And go to Babylon. There you will be rescued; There the Lord will redeem you From the hand of your enemies.”

So God promised repeatedly that He would redeem us — and what He promised, He was faithful to perform (Rom. 4:21) — He actually DID redeem us in Christ:

— Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us.”

— I Peter 1:18-19, “knowing that you were not [a]redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, 19 but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.”

— Colossians 1:13-14 “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

— Revelation 5:9 “And they sang a new song, saying,

‘Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.’”

Scripture gives us many pictures that illustrate our salvation, and “redemption” is one of the best of them. God “redeemed” us. Just as Boaz redeemed Ruth from her difficult situation, so God redeemed us from the curse we deserved for our sins.

ILLUSTRATION:

Shariq Khan, a former Muslim, wrote this on X, 7/01/26: 

“You know what shook me when I was Muslim?

The story of Hosea. God tells a prophet to marry a woman He knows will betray him.

She does. She runs to other men. She ends up enslaved, sold, used up, worthless to the world.

And God tells Hosea to go BUY HER BACK. 

To pay money for his own wife who cheated on him, and love her again. Hosea 3.

I thought it was the most humiliating command in the Bible. Why would any man do that?

Then I realized I was the wife.

I gave my heart to everything but God. I chased other masters. I sold myself cheap. I made myself worthless.

And God looked at me, the betrayer, and didn’t say “you’re not worth it.”

He said, “Name the price. I’m buying her back.”

That’s the Gospel. God doesn’t wait for the unfaithful to come crawling back clean.

He pays to redeem them while they’re still dirty.

Islam told me to make myself worthy of God.

Hosea showed me a God who pays to redeem the unworthy.

The cross was Him naming the price.

Praise the Lord.”

It was an inconceivably costly price that God was willing to pay for our redemption: as I Peter 1:18-19 says, it cost the very blood of Christ, shed on the cross for us. 

???DISCUSSION/APPLICATION QUESTION???

We can only imagine how Ruth must have responded to Boaz’ promise to redeem her. But a better question for us is:
“How should WE respond to God’s redemption of us?”

(— For one, we need to make sure we RECEIVE it! God’s giving us this gracious, free “lifeline,” we need to make sure we take hold of it! 

ILLUSTRATION:

In 1830, George Wilson was sentenced to hang for robbing the U.S. mail and jeopardizing the life of a mail carrier. President Andrew Jackson offered him a full pardon — an amazing offer — but Wilson, shockingly, refused to accept it! That’s inconceivable to most of us, why would someone refuse that full, Presidential pardon? 

But how much more foolish is it for someone to reject the redemption that GOD has offered us, through the death of His Son? Make sure you do not reject God’s gracious redemption in Christ. As the scripture teaches, if you trample on the blood of God’s Son that He paid for your redemption, you will not escape if you neglect so great a salvation.

— For those of us who HAVE received God’s redemption in Christ; we should be AMAZED by it. We should have the attitude expressed by that now-saved Muslim man, who said it “shook him.” It ought to shake us every day, to think that we have been redeemed by the blood of Christ.

Instead, sadly many of us are so used to the term, we hardly think anything of it. Perhaps this story of Ruth and her redemption by Boaz will help spark a new appreciation of our redemption from our sins by the Lord. 

— Closely related to this, we should WORSHIP Him for it, like the elders do in Revelation 5. Every morning, among the first thing we pray, we should thank God for things — and among the first things we should thank Him every morning for should be our redemption. We should sing/pray songs like “Amazing love, how can it be, that Thou my God should die for me?” 

— We should SHARE it: “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so” (Psalm 107:2) We should proclaim and share our redemption with others. 

II. The Fruit of Redemption (4:13-17)

:13 “So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife, and he went in to her. And the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. 

14 Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed is the LORD who has not left you without a redeemer today, and may his name become famous in Israel. 15 May he also be to you a restorer of life and a sustainer of your old age; for your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.”

16 Then Naomi took the child [e]and laid him in her lap, and became his nurse. 17 The neighbor women gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi!” So they named him Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.”

We see several “fruits” of redemption here:

A. LIFE:  “the LORD enabled her to conceive” — literally, “He gave to her, Yahweh, conception.” This emphasizes that life is a gift of God. Sometimes we say things like, “I’m going to wait to have children,” or “I’m going to have children when x-y-z” or whatever, as if WE have total control over that. We obviously have a very important role in that — but it is NOT entirely up to us. Only GOD is the giver of life. Genesis 2:7 says, “Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” It is GOD who “breathes into our nostrils the breath of life.” 

This is why we Christians have such a respect for life. Life is a gift from God. We are made “in His image” Gen. 1:27 says. We don’t destroy that; we respect it:

— This is why we don’t abort babies. God gave them the breath of life.

— This is why we obey God’s command to put the highest penalty on those who purposefully take innocent human life, and enforce the death penalty upon them, as Genesis 9:6 instructs us: ““Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.”

This verse reminds us of the precious nature of human life, and that it is a gift from God. Here this new life is a fruit of Ruth’s redemption.

And in the same way, when God redeems us, we receive new life

For Ruth & Boaz, a new baby was born. When we are redeemed, we are “born again” as Jesus said in John 3, and have a new life in Christ: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; old things have passed away, new things have come.” (II Cor. 5:17)

ILLUSTRATION
When William Wilberforce, a rich young member of Parliament in England, was saved in the 1700s, he called it his “Great Change.” He had a brand new life in Christ that now affected everything he did. This should be true for all of us who come to Christ.  A new life is a fruit of our redemption. 

B. WITNESS: another fruit of redemption is that OTHERS see and proclaim what God has done for us. We often talk about our need to witness, and we should. (“Let the redeemed of the Lord say so” Psalm 107:2) 

But when God has really done something in His people, OTHERS see it and remark upon it:

— That happened here, didn’t it? Verse 14 says “Then the women said to Naomi, ‘Blessed is the LORD, who has not left you without a redeemer …” and so on. They witnessed to HER (and undoubtedly others) about what God had done.

— Psalm 126 says “When the LORD brought back the captive ones of Zion, we were like those who dream. (:2) Then they said among the nations, ‘the LORD has done great things for them.’” The nations themselves were saying what God had done!

— We see this in I Thessalonians 1:8b-9 too:  Paul said “in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. 9 For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God.” Again, the peoples were all talking about what God had done in the Thessalonian believers. 

When God redeems us, a fruit of it is a witness, from us and even from others, that glorifies God for what He has done.

C. PURPOSE: Naomi, whose life was so “bitter” previously, now has great joy in her new grandson. Isn’t it a sweet picture we find in :16, “Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her lap, and became his nurse.” The Hebrew word means a “bosom, lap” or even an “embrace.” So she was just loving on this baby boy! 

Many of us who are grandparents can totally identify with this, right? 

My brother-in-law shared this little meme on Facebook this morning, and I thought of it as I was studying these verses today, so I think it must be providential for us to share it: 

Many of us as grandparents know the great joy that Naomi was feeling here. It would not be hard to get any grandparents in your group to share about that!

But think of the road Naomi had traveled: she went from hopeless — remember she’d said “Don’t call me Naomi (“pleasant”) call me Mara or “bitter” (1:20). She felt like she had nothing to live for. But now, when God’s redemption came, she had this new purpose and joy.

It’s interesting that :17 “the neighbor women” gave the baby his name. Usually the parents or grandparents do, but in this case the neighbor women did. The community was really involved in this manifestation of God’s redemption! They gave the baby the name “Obed” which means “servant.” 

And as we talked about last time, God’s work of redemption here gave them a meaningful heritage for the future too, as :17 says: “He (Obed) is the father of Jesse, the father of David.” This was obviously written in the time of David, when people knew who he was. And they could see that there was indeed a purpose in all that had happened. And more than they even knew then! Because this child was ancestor not only of David the King, but of the Messiah, Jesus Christ Himself, as Matthew 1 shows us. It was all in God’s purpose. When God redeems us, He gives us purpose. 

And He does this for us too. When we are redeemed in Christ, we get a new purpose for our lives, that gives us new, meaningful relationships with others, most importantly a new and ultimately meaningful relationship with God, and a new purpose for our life, with eternally meaningful work we get to do for His kingdom. The important thing is, that we know that we HAVE this redemption. It comes to us only by faith in Christ. Which leads to our conclusion:

CONCLUSION:

NOTE the role of FAITH that Ruth demonstrated throughout this story, for example:

— It took a lot of faith for her to go to Judah with bitter Naomi, who had no husband, no riches, no more sons to give!

— She said she’d follow Naomi’s God, Yahweh; that was faith.

— She followed Naomi’s instructions about going to Boaz at the threshing floor. That took a lot of faith! Perhaps she wasn’t really that familiar with the customs involved. But she followed the instructions by faith.

— And she had faith that Boaz would keep his promise and redeem her. 

So for this redemption story to unfold, it took faith on Ruth’s part.

And if WE are to receive our own redemption story from God, we must exercise faith too: specifically, faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord & Savior. We must come to put our trust in the One this book of Ruth points to: the descendant of Ruth & Boaz, and Obed, and David the King, who came to Earth in God’s perfect timing, who lived a perfect life, died on the cross to pay for our sins, and rose again to be the living Savior of all who would repent of their sins and put their faith in Him. 

You can have a new life; you can have a great witness; you can have a new purpose — but to receive it, you must exercise faith. Put your trust in Jesus as your Lord & Savior, and you too will experience the great Redemption of God! 

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