Seize the Moment – Day 729
Build a Good Reputation!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Wednesday, March 16.
Do you have a good reputation? If you do, it is easier for people to trust you. People won’t be quick to believe accusations against you or listen to gossip about you. But, if your character has been compromised, people tend to think the worst of your actions and mistrust your motives.
Ruth and Boaz have been presented as virtuous characters with righteous motives. Their good reputations are necessary for us to not read into their behavior on the threshing floor in Ruth 3, especially when reading Naomi’s advice to Ruth in verses 3-4:
Wash yourself therefore, and anoint yourself and put on your best clothes, and go down to the threshing floor; but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. It shall be when he lies down, that you shall notice the place where he lies, and you shall go and uncover his feet and lie down; then he will tell you what you shall do.
While we want to think the best of what Naomi is asking Ruth to do to secure Boaz, the biblical language is neither simple nor innocent. The Hebrew is suggestive, filled with idioms and sexual innuendo, which honestly would not be very surprising considering this was happening in the time of the Judges, when people did what was right in their own eyes.
It is because of Ruth’s and Boaz’s good reputations that I interpret this story without it including a Hollywood scandal. It was Boaz himself who said of Ruth in verse 11, upon awakening to discover her at his feet: “Now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you whatever you ask, for all my people in the city know that you are a woman of excellence.”
Seize the moment and build a good reputation (Proverbs 22:1; Ecclesiastes 7:1; 1 Timothy 3:7; 1 Peter 2:15).