Well, turn with me in your Bibles to Ruth chapter two. We are going through a study of the book of Ruth. Ruth is fairly easy to find. If you don't have a Bible with you, you can pull the one out in the sheet in front of you. And it's the eighth book of the Bible. So you can find it very, very quickly there. 259, I think, somewhere around there is the page. I left that on my sheet. It's very, very close. Eighth book of the Bible will be in Ruth chapter two. You know, the Super Bowl was two weeks ago and in the sporting world, that means it's so old that people have already forgotten about it. And about two weeks ago history was made because for the first time, we had an African American coach coaching in the Super Bowl. And in this case, it wasn't just one, but it was two. Both Lovey Smith of the Chicago Bears and Tony Dungee of the Indianapolis Colts became the first African Americans to coach in the Super Bowl. Tony Dungee, of course, goes on to become the first African American coach to win the Super Bowl. But what is so amazing about Tony Dungee, and I'm sure you've heard already, is that you can judge Tony Dungee not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. Because he is a man of incredible character. He is a man who understands what it means to be a Christian and to live a graceful life as a Christian. He understands what it means not only to be a football coach and a Christian, but to be a Christian football coach. He understands how to apply grace to his everyday life. When he was an up-and-coming assistant coach looking for a head coaching job, he was interviewed for this job. It was going to be his first head coaching job, and I'm sure he had been nervous. He was being interviewed and the owners across the table. And if you've ever been in an interview situation like this, you know your goal is to say the right answer. You want to say whatever it is the person interviewing you wants to hear. You want to phrase it as well as you can. And so the owner said, is coaching your number one passion. Well, you know what the right answer is. Tony Dungee knew what the right answer was, but Tony Dungee could not lie. And he said, I will try my hardest to win a Super Bowl. I will work very, very hard, but coaching is not the most important thing in my life. I will not be sleeping here at the office. I will not be doing this 24 hours a day. Honest, truthful, bold. He didn't get the job, of course. Later on, he had another opportunity and he was hired by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as their head coach. And Tony Dungee, they say at the beginning of every season would gather all his players around. And how many of you played football or some sport in high school, any sort of sport? Probably all coaches are the same, football and notorious. But most of you, right? And he said, you know what coaches are like. Tony Dungee gathered all his players around. He says, men, listen to how loud I'm speaking now. This is the loudest you will ever hear me speak. Can you coach football and do that? I mean, he never yelled at his players. I mean, no, you could parent and do that. So I mean, it's an amazing, amazing thing that is able to take a team to the Super Bowl. He said, he only lost it once with his players at Tampa. There were one in eight. You know, he's coaching a Tampa one in eight. He lost it. But he didn't lose it about them losing. He didn't lose his team. He didn't go ballistic because somebody missed an assignment. He went ballistic because they were supposed to show up at an elementary school to sign autographed graphs to encourage at risk kids and a couple of players didn't show up. And he couldn't handle that. He couldn't put up with that. Tony Dungee was a man who lived with and who lives with an incredible character. One of my favorite former players, the Tampa Bay Bucks was the guy named John Lynch. And now it's with the Broncos, great football player. John Lynch just loved Tony Dungee. He said, Tony Dungee was such an example. He said, you've seen people who have those bracelets to say, WJD, what would Jesus do? John Lynch said, he wanted a bracelet that said, WTD, what would Tony do? He said, if I could just figure out what Tony would do, I would know the right thing to do in any situation. What made Tony Dungee so special, what makes him so unique? Well, Tony Dungee understands grace. And because he understands grace, he wants to win. But more than that, he wants to honor God. And he wants to love people even more. Tony Dungee is understanding of grace does not merely impact what he does on Sundays at church. The impact merely his religious life is understanding of grace impacts every single aspect of his life. And a true understanding of God's grace is not just a religious concept. It impacts every single thing you do. It is the overarching story of everything that is in your life. If we truly grab hold of God's grace, it changes everything about us. And we see this in the book of Ruth. We're in the book of Ruth chapter 2. And the Ruth is a well-loved story. It's a short story. That's one reason it makes it attractive. Only 86 verses. But I think many reason people find Ruth attractive is it has all the elements of a great story. I mean, it's a love story. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. They get married. They live happily ever after. It's a rags the richest story. Poor girl starving and ends up being rich. It's a Cinderella story. Again, poor girl meets Prince Charming. They live happily ever after. It has all the elements of a great story. But for us, even more than all of that, it's a story about how God's grace can transform a person completely. Now, we're in the second episode of the story. So let me give you an update on what happened in last week's episode if you weren't here. And last week's episode, we met Naomi. Naomi was married to a man named Alimalec. They lived in Bethlehem. Famine comes to Bethlehem and so they have to leave. They go to Moab, a nearby country. While there, they're there with Naomi, Alimalec, and their two sons. The two sons get married. Alimalec dies. Naomi is a widow. Then her two sons die and they have no children. So she is there with her two daughters-in-law in a man's world, remember? And they have no way to provide for themselves and say they have no men at all. And so she leaves to go back to Bethlehem. One of her daughters-in-law, Orpa, stays behind. Ruth goes with her. They get back to Bethlehem. Her hometown, people are glad to see you. And they say, oh, here's Naomi. Her name, by the way, means pleasant or lovely. And she says, don't call me Naomi. Call me Mara. I want a new name. Naomi doesn't suit me. Naomi means pleasant. Lovely. Mara means bitter. And she was bitter. She was angry. She says because God has turned against me. God is my enemy. He's made my life miserable is what she's saying. So she is a bitter woman. And Ruth is there by her side the whole time all the way. Now it's the first episode ends with the- imagine you're watching a TV scene as the screen starts to go black. You see the sunset, but you see one little ray of hope. Something good is about to happen. Episode one ends we read. So Naomi returned from Moab, accompanied by Ruth and Moabitis, her daughter-in-law arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning. You just that little note, something good is about to happen. So let's pick it up. Ruth, chapter two, we're going to read the whole chapter. Now Naomi had a relative on her husband's side from the clan of Alimolec, a man of standing whose name was Boaz. And Ruth, the Moabitis, said to Naomi, let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor. Naomi said to her, go ahead my daughter, so she went out and began to glean in the fields behind the harvesters. As it turned out she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Alimolec. Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters. The Lord be with you. The Lord bless you, they called back. Boaz asked the foreman of the harvesters, whose young woman is that? The foreman replied, she is the Moabitis, who came from back from Moab with Naomi. She said, please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters. She went into the fields and has worked steadily from morning till now, except for short rest in the shelter. So Boaz said to Ruth, my daughter, listen to me. Don't go and glean in another field and don't go away from here. Stay here with my servant girls. Watch the fields where the men are harvesting and follow along after the girls. I've told the men not to touch you. And whenever your thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars, the men have filled. At this she bowed down with her face to the ground. She exclaimed, why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me, a foreigner? Boaz replied, I've been told all about what you've done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, how you left your father and your mother and your homeland, and you came to live with the people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel under whose wing you have come to take refuge. May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my Lord, you have given me comfort and have spoken kindly to your servant, though I do not have the standing of one of your servant girls. A meal-time Boaz said to her, come over here, have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar. When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and had some leftover. Boaz gave orders to his men. Even if she gathers among the sheaves, don't embarrass her, rather pull out some stalks from her from the bundle and leave them for her to pick up and don't rebuke her. So Ruth gleaned in the fields until evening. Then she thrust the barley she had gathered and amounted to about an effa. She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over from what she had eaten, after she had eaten enough. Her mother-in-law asked her, where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you. Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz, she said. The Lord blessed, the Lord blessed him, Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. He has not stopped showing us kindness to the living and the dead. She added, that man is our close relative. He is one of our kinsmen redeemers. Then Ruth the mobitis said, he even said to me, stay with my workers until they finish harvesting all my grain. Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, Ruth, you'll be good for you, my daughter, to go with this girls, because in someone else's field you might be harmed. So Ruth stayed close to the servant girls of Boaz, to glean until the barley and wheat harvest were finished, as she lived with her mother-in-law. This is God's holy and inspired word. As we look at this story a little bit more this morning, the first point that we see is those who get grace give grace. Those who get grace give grace. Now here again the story, Naomi is sitting there stewing in her bitterness. Ruth realizes that they are going to starve unless they do something. They don't have meals on wheels. No one's going to come by and feed them. She has to do something. So Ruth is going to take action. Naomi's there bitter. Ruth says, I'm going to go get us something to eat. And so she sets out to go gleaning. Now gleaning is something that's not as familiar to us because we don't live in an agricultural society. But what this was was something that was really quite dangerous for Ruth to do. She was going to go out while the farmers were harvesting the grain and she was going to go out where they've already harvested and picked up any leftover grain, anything that fallen on the ground, anything they dropped, anything they maybe had not picked. And so she's going to gather all of this. But she's going to do this while they're harvesting. Now they get an image of this. Imagine you've seen the orange groves, well we used to have them here in Orange County, but you've seen the orange groves. Imagine this during orange season. And the workers are out picking all the oranges. And you decide you're going to go into those orange groves and pick up whatever fruit they miss and you have your little basket and you're going to gather whatever fruit they dropped on the ground. Now wouldn't you be a little scared to do that? I mean you think with the owner of the field of the grove sees you gathering your own little harvest basket, he probably is not going to take too kindly to that. He's not going to think too highly of that. In fact you could get shot if you go into the wrong grove and do something like that. And so here's what Ruth is doing. She's a foreigner, she's a woman, she's in the man's society in a place not friendly to foreigners. And she's going in and she could easily been accused of stealing or been run off or been mistreated. But she's not because it just so happens. I love the way the writer puts this. It just so happens that she ends up in the field of Boaz. Just by chance she got lucky in and up in the field of a nice man. Well into the writer is making a point here. Ruth is being proactive in seeking to provide for her family and for her and for Naomi. God is being active in providing for Ruth. We see that the emergence here of human responsibility and divine sovereignty. Ruth is taking the steps necessary. She's taking a risk. She's putting her own life at risk to care for Naomi, but the whole time God has Ruth in his hands. He is caring for her. We see his provenance at work once again, caring for his children. And so she happens in the field of Boaz. And so she goes there. She begins to gather grain. And we see in Boaz just an example of just what it means to be a man who understands grace. Boaz is described in the first versus a man of standing. Oftentimes that was a word used for a war hero. But here it means a man of wealth, a power of influence. He is a BMOC. I mean he's a big man on campus, big man around town. He is someone when he walks by, people say sir to him. He is a man of power quite the contrast to Ruth. For servant girl, foreigner, living there as an alien, Boaz mighty powerful. And so yet Boaz, rather than using his power to intimidate Ruth, uses his power to protect Ruth. You know what it's like. There are two different ways you can use power. And in some of you probably have had a boss that was like this. There are certain bosses, certain people have power. When they walk into the room, what they want is everyone to tremble. In fact, they sort of bow up. They sort of bark orders and they want you to be intimidated by them. And you can use power that way. But Boaz shows us how to use power. What it means to use power properly. And so rather than using his power to intimidate her, he uses his power to comfort her. And he tells her she's free to glean in his fields anytime. In fact, he says stay here someplace else you might be heard. Now, it's important to see here that what Boaz does here is not grace. He is not showing her giving her charity. He's not showing her grace. There's nothing gracious about this. What Boaz is doing here is justice. And there's a difference between grace and justice. Grace is and grace, by the way, we get our English word charity from the Greek word for grace. Grace is giving someone something they do not deserve, something they do not have a right to justice is giving someone something they do deserve that they do have a right to. For example, when you go to work and you get your paycheck, hopefully that is not grace. That's justice. You've earned that pay, right? You've been there, you've slaved, you work hard for it. I mean, you don't just say boss man, you're so kind to me to pay me for the work I've done. You say, no, I deserve it. I earned this check. But charity, on the other hand, is something you did nothing to do to deserve or earn. Well, in this case, what Boaz is giving to Ruth is not charity, even though he's allowing her to pick in his fields. It's not charity. It is justice. And here's why before the Israelites settled into the land, God gave them certain commandments about how they were to treat the poor. In at least three different instances, we read in the law twice in the book of the Leviticus, once in the book of Deuteronomy, about gleanings. And here's one of the places where we read this. Leviticus chapter 19 says, when you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyards a second time or pick up the grapes that are fallen, leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God. Here's what he's saying. He said, when you harvest the field, he goes, don't harvest all the way to the edges. Don't maximize your profit. God's saying, I want you to be inefficient in your harvesting. Why? So that the poor and the alien and the stranger can come and gather grain. Now, why does God do this? Is he saying, I want you all to learn how to be gracious, to be charitable? No. Every single time that God talks about this, he says, I am the Lord your God. And then more specifically later on, he says, because I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt. What God is saying is, ultimately, I am the owner of the land. You may own your particular plot of land that may be yours, but ultimately I am the ultimate owner. You, on the other hand, are a manager and a steward. The plot of land you own, your manager or steward of that, ultimately, though, I am the owner of that land. And so God says, since I am the owner of the land, it's my land. Yes, you're free to make a profit of it, but the land, since it belongs to the Lord, is here for everyone, not just for the land owner. Therefore, everyone who lives in the land has a right to share in the profits of the land. Everyone, not just the owners, the poor people living in the land, the aliens living in the land, have a right to share in the profits of the land. And so it's a principle of justice, not a principle of charity. Now, what we see though with Boaz is he's simply doing what the law requires. He's allowing the poor to be cared for by the land. God said that. It's just, it's God's land. Therefore, the poor have the right to eat off the land. But what distinguishes Boaz is that he is living a life of justice. One person said that the way he could stand out for the crowd is you don't have to do anything special. Just do what's right. And Boaz in a way is doing that. He's standing out from the crowd simply by not doing anything extraordinary, but simply by obeying the law, by obeying the commands. Now, in this day that Ruth is happening, very few people knew the law of God. And those who didn't know the law of God usually didn't keep it. And the reason was this is the days of the judges. During this time, the book of judges tell us there was no king in Israel. So everyone did what was right in his own eyes. So it's kind of like the Wild West. There's no king. There's no ruler. There's authority. So everyone's going to do what's right in his own eyes, which means a whole lot of people. If there's no government, no police force, no sheriff in town, then a lot of people aren't going to do what's right. And so Boaz even says this. He says, Ruth, you have a right to glean here. You're welcome to glean here. In fact, stay here because if you go anywhere else, you might get hurt. But he's enforcing justice at this point. The poor have a right to the prophets, some of the prophets of the land. Now, it would be easy, I think, for us to, to miss though, hear something else that happens. He not only shows her justice, he moves from justice to grace. He doesn't always say, you can gather the gleanings. Notice what else he does. Boaz is there. He walks in. Now again, mention Ruth. She's over there picking up little scraps of grain. The boss walks in. She's a foreigner. She's a woman in a position of great weakness here. She's in his field. And he, all of a sudden, speaks to her. She has to be intimidated at this point. She has to be scared because she doesn't know if he's going to throw her out, if he's going to have her who knows what he's going to do to her. And he speaks words of comfort to her. And then what does he do? He says, hey, tell you what, why don't you and I have lunch? Now, I know what you're thinking. You know, you're thinking he's checking her out. You know, he's making his move. That's not it at all. In fact, if you were someone reading the story back in the days that were written, you'd realize this was a shocking, shocking thing. I mean, he has been cart-right. This is his ponderosa. She is a servant girl going around begging, picking up scraps and been cart-rights inviting her to the big house to eat at the big table. That's what's happening here. And he's treating her with dignity and respect. And she is so shocked by this. I mean, she's just stunned. She says, why would you treat me this way? You know, I'm a foreigner. You know, why would you ever treat me so kindly? And he doesn't even stop there. He gives her plenty to eat. He gives her food from his table. He gives her so much that she has to take him with doggy bag with the leftovers. And then beyond that, he says she can just, you don't have to just glean, gather all the grain you want. And he tells us workers, hey, as you're going along, drop some stuff on the ground so that she can pick it up. And she gathers so much grain, then when she gets through threshing it, she has a whole efa. Now, this is an amazing whole efa. I wish they'd translate those for us. And efa is not quite sure, somewhere between 10 and 20 leaders. So think of your little two-liter bottles. It's somewhere between 5 and 10, two-liter bottles of grain. Now, that was enough grain for her and Naomi to eat off of for a whole week. And he invites her back every day throughout the entire harvest season. So during that harvest season, Ruth would have gathered enough grain to feed her and Naomi for an entire year. Now, catch this. There's been a, it's someone to point this out to me after the first service. They've just got through with this terrible famine. You know, he's probably is thinking about storing up all the grain he can. And yet he is not only going to give her a couple of bucks so that she can get a lunch somewhere. He's saying he's providing food for her and Naomi for an entire year. That's not justice. That's grace. That's grace. He's going far beyond what he needs to do. Why? Now, why is, why is Boa as so generous? Ruth asking this, why are you so generous? And he says, he says to her, verse 11, I've been told all about what you've done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband. How you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with the people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you've done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wing you have come to take refuge. He says, Ruth, I know what you've done. You sacrificed everything. And you've thrown yourself at the mercy of God. You're living by faith is what you're doing. You're living, you're giving out grace because you're trusting that ultimately God is a gracious God who's going to care for you. And he says, and he does. God is a gracious God. He's going to care for you. And Boas then cares for her. Boas is gracious because he understands grace. He understands that all that he has, all the wealth that he has, all the power that he has, all the influence he has, everything he has has come from God. He has received a blessing from God and therefore he realizes he is to be a blessing to others. When you realize that everything you have, every good gift comes from the Father of God. When you realize that even the very work of your hands ultimately is a gift that God has given you, then it changes your perspective on everything. The more we understand that we are recipients of grace, the more graceful we will live. And so here is where Ruth is a picture of us. As Christians, we look at Ruth and we say, that's us. She's poor, she's destitute, she's a foreigner, she has no right to claim anything. And yet Boas showers her with mercy, grace upon grace upon grace. And the same way we go before God as sinners who are bankrupt, have no claim to his grace or his mercy. We have no right to demand anything from him. And yet God, out of simply his love and compassion on us, sent his son Jesus to die for us so that we might know his love and his kindness and his goodness. We are here only by the grace of God. And when we understand that, it causes us to be gracious as well. That's why I referred to this already in Deuteronomy 24. When God commanded Israel to care for the poor, he said this, he says, remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That's why I command you to do this. Here's the point. Our behavior is tied to our redemption. We were slaves to sin. We're under the judgment of God. God redeemed us. Therefore we are to live this way. Now you cannot reverse those two. We do not live a certain way so that we will be blessed. Rather, it is because we have received God's grace. We live a certain way. Now that's very, very important. In fact, it's so important. I believe this is the key to Christian living. If you want to know how to live the Christian life, this statement, I'm about to give you is the key. It's not a key. It is the key. Very important. You might want to write this down. Here it is. The indicative precedes the imperative and the role is not reversible. Now, doesn't that stir your hearts? I mean, you just go home and go, wow, I'm so glad I came to church today. The indicative precedes the imperative and the role is not reversible. That's a statement that only an English teacher could love. Here's what it means. The indicative, the promise blessings of God that you have a recipient of God's grace that God loves you and accepted. That's who you are. That's an indicative statement. In Christ, you're loved and you're accepted. You get hold of that. That comes before the imperative which is go and show grace to others. Now, the reason he says that role is not reversible is that many of us believe, mistakenly believe, something that's counter to Christianity, that the way we become accepted by God is by keeping the commandments.
You understand who you are in Christ. You're accepted in Christ. You're embraced in Christ. Then, therefore, live out the imperatives. Take that home, memorize it. You don't have to credit me. They came from Herman, Ritterboss. If you ever reading him, you'll want to know where it came from. That's a very important indicative precedes the imperative. Know who you are because we are redeemed. Therefore, obey these commandments. Now, what does that look like? Let's get down to some practical application and we just have time for two points of practical application. First aspect is if we understand grace, then we're going to understand how grace affects our attitude towards the poor. So we see first grace and the poor. Those who have been gripped by the grace of God will always seek justice for the poor. Now, remember, here's what we said earlier. The reason the Israelite landowners, the farmers, were to allow the poor to come into their fields at any time and pick up the leftover grain is because ultimately God owns the land, not the landowner. God is the ultimate landowner. And therefore, since God owns the land, then what the land produces ultimately is to care for all the people within the land. The landowner is to be cared for, the poor, the aliens and the strangers, all who live there. You say, well, we don't live in Israel. God doesn't own this land. Well, no, not at all. Here's what Psalm 24 says. Psalm 24 says, the earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world and all who live in it, for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters. Here's what the Psalmist is saying is that God owns everything. We then are just stewards. And so the first principle in understanding anything about wealth and anything about money and they go over this quite well in our financial peace class. The first principle is understanding, we are not owners, we are managers, we are stewards. That's the stewardship principle. God owns the land, God owns everything. And so since God owns everything, we are managers or stewards and just as in Israel, all those who live in the land have a right to be sustained by the profits of the land of the same as true today. The poor have a right to have their needs met by the production that comes from the resources of the land. Now, you say, now, is that communist? Not at all. The Bible, nowhere, advocates communism. The Bible is very clear on private ownership, bow as owned this land where he was. In fact, by the way, communism, it just doesn't work on a practical level. I don't know if you saw this US news world report had an article on the founding of Jamestown, you know, the first permanent settlement, English settlement in the United States. And when they first, you know, you know, notice by our fourth father's where communist almost when they first tried to settle Jamestown, they decided they weren't, no one was going to own anything. They're just going to own everything in common and everyone's going to get the produce of the land and all the gold that they were going to find and everything else in the fields. Well, you know what happened? Nobody worked. Nobody worked. And the whole colony almost dissolved because it went so bad. Finally, somebody said, this isn't working. We're going back to land ownership here. Everyone's on their own private ownership because it works. And so the same thing the Bible teaches private ownership. But at the same time, it says, while you own your land, God still is the ultimate owner. And therefore, what you produce is not just for yourself, but it's for the poor as well. We're stewards because God owns the land. Everyone who lives in the land, including the aliens and the strangers, not just the owners are to share in what the land produces. So the owners were required in Israel as a principle of justice to allow part of the field to be gathered by the poor. You say, well, that didn't apply to me. I'm not a farmer. You know, what do I have to do? Well, it still applies. What we need to do is acknowledge that everything you produce, all the hard work you do, all the money you make, all that you produce, ultimately is yours by God's grace and God's grace alone. Yes, you're like Ruth. You're responsible. You're diligent. You're proactive. You go out there and you make it, but it's still ultimately God's land. And because it's God's land, it's God's resources, it's God's money, all that you produce then is not just for you, but it's also for the poor whom God loves. Here's the point. God has blessed you so that you might be a blessing to others. That is a principle that is very clear throughout the Old Testament. Now, look at how they gathered mana. You know, they gathered mana that some could gather a whole lot of mana, some were disabled, couldn't gather any mana. And it was the care for everybody. God's providing for everyone through the resources. And so as Christians, we have to understand them. And as a principle of justice, the poor have a right to be cared for. And so as Christians, we are to be people who desire justice. But not only we motivated by justice, but as Christians, we're motivated also by mercy. The primary motivation for Christians compassion for the poor is not simply make sure they're sustained, but it goes beyond that. It bow as doesn't just make sure Ruth has enough to eat that day. He shows incredible generosity. And why would he do this because he understands God's generosity towards him. The apostle Paul was on a fundraising trip to gather money for starving people in Jerusalem. And so as he was gathering money in food for the starving people in Jerusalem, you know, he went through and he began to explain to them why these people who had plenty. In some cases, just maybe just barely enough, actually, why they should actually sacrifice and give of their wealth, the care for the poor in Jerusalem. And here's what he said. He says this in the second Corinthians chapter 10. He says, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor so that you, through his poverty, might become rich. Here's why we are generous. Here's why we give to the poor because we recognize we were poor and God gave to us. And so as Christians, we have two motivations. One, justice, the poor have a right to the prophets of the land. Secondly, we're giving because of mercy and grace because God has given graciously to us. So in caring for the poor, we're motivated by both. But secondly, second point, practical application is not only does grace apply to the poor, but grace applies to business. Now Boaz is the businessman. He owns this field. He is his field. He can do with it what he wants. And yet we see here that Boaz is a model for us today. He's a businessman who understands grace. Again, he has the primary principle, God owns everything. And if God owns my field, therefore I'm to run my business in a way that honors God. And so he has foreman, he has employees, he has people, and he treats them in a way that brings honor and glory to God. And so it affects the way that he does business. And so what the Bible says then is the Lord owns everything, including where you work. Now you may say, time out, mark our work for publicly traded company. And you may say that the Lord owns it, but the SEC says that the shareholders own it. And so my goal and running my company and being a manager with this company has to always be to increase shareholder value. That has to be, if I can get another penny for share, I'm going to do what it takes to get another penny for share because ultimately the shareholders own the company. They're the ones whom I'm accountable to. True, the shareholders do own the company, but ultimately God owns everything. And so yes, you have the accountability to shareholders, but ultimately you're accountable to God for how you do things as well. So the question is if God's the owner, how does it affect how you do business or this approach it from a different angle. Second Corinthians 10, Paul says that our commission as Christians is to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. That means we're to seek to bring everything in creation under the Lordship of Christ. Abraham Kiper, the prime minister of the Netherlands, put it this way, he said, there's not one inch of anything in the sphere of all creation where the King Jesus cannot say mine. So if you're calling, and this is your calling, if you're calling is to bring everything including your workplace under the kingship of Christ, how does that affect how you do business? How does it affect what you do? For example, would you run a business where you pay your employees so little they need food stamps to survive? Would you withhold information from a potential customer in order to close the deal? Now, how would your business be different? And here's the question you have to ask yourself because every situation is different. How would your business be different? It Jesus really working? How would it be different? And so we begin to ask yourself that. And you say, again, I know you're saying, I know what you're thinking. You're saying, Mark, that's unrealistic. You're a preacher. We really appreciate you do. But tomorrow morning, you know, we got to go back to the real world. And in the real world, this stuff just doesn't work. I mean, that's nice. When I got religion over here, but I got work over here. And so, you know, we're going back to the real world. It works in the real world. Let me give you a couple of examples of people who live by their values. First one, as far as I know, it's not a Christian. But, but seeks to have a company that does something more, the simply increased shareholder value value. You've heard of the Mexican chain, Chipotle. Chipotle was started and that the owner of the, excuse me, the founder of the business, Steve L's said he wanted to serve food with integrity. Now, when I first read that, I said, man, it's not a great marketing campaign or what? But you end to read about him. You can read about him. He's been a fortune magazine CNN money magazine online all over the place and you ask him, what does he mean by food with integrity? And here's what he says. He says, seeking out ingredients, they're sustainably grown and naturally raised with respect for animals and the land and the farmers who produce the food. Now, you may say, that's not my agenda. That's not my point here. I was saying he's got a particular set of values and he's seeking to run a company by those values. And people said you can't do that and make profit. Over the past year, Chipotle is as traded on the New York Stock Exchange is partially owned by McDonald's, 50% I believe. But on the New York Stock Exchange, over the past year, stock has gone up 54%. And he says it's because he's the founder says part because he's seeking to live out his values or take an example of one of this distinctly Christian. Go down the road. Who would like to go to Chick-fil-A for lunch today? You can't go there. Why? Have a sign. Very bold. It says closed on Sundays. Why? Because true Kathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A teaches Sunday school on Sundays and says he teaches Sunday school on Sundays. He doesn't want anyone else to have to work on Sundays. He works for him. When he was founded the company, I believe 1967, later on he was trying to get into shopping malls and the shopping malls were getting to be big at that time. They said you have to be open on Sundays. He says I'm not going to be open on Sundays. They said you have to. He says I'm not. They said that's our busiest day. If you want to make money, you're going to be open on Sundays. He says I'm not going to be open on Sundays and everybody predicted failure. At the reading of the last article I read of him in 2005, he had 38 straight years of unprecedented sales growth. Unheard of in that business. 38 straight years of sales growth. Why? Well, he's a man. He says I've got these values. I'm concerned about profitability and they're doing just fine. But I have values and I'm going to run my company according to my values. Now, does it always work that way? No. Sometimes living out your values is going to cost you. You're going to lose money. You're going to lose profit. It's going to cost you. But our ultimate motivation is saying my ultimate goal in life is to see Jesus Christ as King. Now, here's the point. Here's the point. When we get God's grace, we want to give God's grace. And the more we understand God's grace, we want to live it out. And as Christians, what we're doing as Christians, this is what you are, you are a testimony to the coming kingdom of God. That's who you are. You are a witness in the world. And as a testimony to the coming kingdom of God, we say there's a king named Jesus and he's bringing us kingdom and one day he's going to make all things right. And the world is saying how do I know that message is true? And they know that message is true by not by what you say about how you live. And in this sense, we are all like movie previews. You ever go to the movie theater and you watch the previews, you are the preview of the coming attraction of the kingdom of God. And the question is, and looking at us and living out the kingdom, the question is does anybody want to see the movie? Now, is it real? Is it true? We are living out the kingdom and we're to be living out the kingdom values and I care for the poor and our work and our families and in everything. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you and praise you for being a God who shows us great grace and great mercy. And we pray, Father, that is we leave here today. That we would leave reflecting on how gracious you have been to us and that in response to that grace that we would seek to be graceful in the way that we live. But we're not doing this in any sort of attempt to pay you back. But rather it's because our hearts have been so gripped by your love that we cannot help but be changed. So Lord, help us to bring your kingship over everything that we do. Give us compassion for the poor. Give us a compassion for those who work for us. Give us integrity in our business dealings. May we live in such a way that we bring honor to you the king. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.