Listen or read the following transcript as Sinclair Ferguson speaks from the second chapter of Ruth
The following unedited transcript is provided by Beluga AI.
Shall we turn together to God’s Word in the book of Ruth, the second chapter.
1 Now Naomi had a relative of her husband’s, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz. 2 And 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.” And she said to her, “Go, my daughter.” 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 Elimelech. 4 And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. And he said to the reapers, “The Lord be with you!” And they answered, “The Lord bless you.” 5 Then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers, “Whose young woman is this?” 6 And the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered, “She is the young Moabite woman, who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. 7 She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.’ So she came, and she has continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest.” 8 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. 9 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.” 10 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?” 11 But 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. 12 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!” 13 Then she said, “I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, though I am not one of your servants.” 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. 15 When she rose to glean, Boaz instructed his young men, saying, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. 16 And also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her.” 17 So she gleaned in the field until evening. Then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. 18 And she took it up and went into the city. 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. 19 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.” So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz.” 20 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!” Naomi also said to her, “The man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.” 21 And Ruth the Moabite said, “Besides, he said to me, ‘you shall keep close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest.’” 22 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.” 23 So she 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. (Ruth 2:1-23, ESV)
May God, who has inspired His Word, grant us a blessing from it.
I didn’t have the privilege of being reared in a Christian home, although my parents, I believe, did later come to Christ. And because of that, there are some passages in the Scriptures which I first encountered, I suppose, in somewhat surprising ways and many of you, I’m sure, may share that experience. And that, as a matter of fact, is true of the book of Ruth. My first encounter with some of its words was not here in the pages of the Old Testament, but I’m slightly embarrassed to confess, in a magazine to which my mother subscribed in the 1950s when I was a little boy.
I was, I suppose, being born some years after the war had ended in days of some privation. We had very few books in our house and I was an eager reader as a little boy and used to read everything I could lay my hands on, not stopping short of my mother’s magazine, despite the fact that the stories were largely of a romantic kind. And as a seven-year-old, I was a decidedly unromantic little fellow. But in this magazine, The People’s Friend, it was called, I’m sure there’s a Welsh language equivalent.
In the 1950s, it was still possible to write romantic tales in those days involving young ministers going to new congregations and discovering that the choir suddenly filled with the young hopefuls in the congregation, sometimes pressed there by anxious mothers. And some of these stories, I noticed, the titles stuck with me more than the contents. They would be called things like, “Where you Go, I Will Go,” or “Let Nothing But Death Separate you From Me.” And so, these words that we drew attention to yesterday, I always associated with a romantic narrative. There is no doubt, as you know, that the Book of Ruth contains one of the great romantic narratives of all human literature.
But as we saw yesterday, those words that Ruth speaks to Naomi in verses 16 and 17 are by no means merely words of human devotion. They are words at the center of which lies her taking hold of God’s covenanted salvation. “Your God will be my God, and your people will be my people.”
And so, in the opening chapter, the author of the Book of Ruth establishes for us that what this book is about is not merely human relationships, but about the providence of God and the way in which the providence of God brings us gloriously, first of all, to conversion and salvation. And then, as the providence of God works in our lives, we are able to recognize the fulfillment of the promise of Jesus, that never has one of the Lord’s people yielded up anything in consecration to Him, but has discovered in a multitude of different ways that the Lord is no man’s debtor and no woman’s debtor either.
We are given that little hint, you remember, at the end of chapter 1, as we were given a hint at the beginning of chapter 1, that this family that has gone away full and now has come back empty, has nevertheless returned at a time when the Lord has visited His people and the harvest is beginning.
But one of the questions that we are intended by the narrator of this great story to bear in mind is that Naomi has prayed for this daughter-in-law called Ruth, and she has prayed for the Lord’s blessing upon her life. And one of the things clearly the author means us to have an eagle eye on the lookout for is the question, is this prayer going to be answered? If God is the hearer and the answerer of prayer, if He keeps His covenant promises, is this prayer that we read in chapter 1 in verses 8 and 9 going to be answered in the way we might naturally anticipate by the Lord who opens His hand to satisfy the needs of every living creature?
8 But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. 9 The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!” Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. (Ruth 1:8-9, ESV)
And so, as he turns us to the second chapter, he begins the second chapter as he, may well have been a she, began the first chapter by giving us a hint of how the narrative is going to develop. And there are one or two things here that we ought to notice generally to help us to understand what is going on in this story.
The first is this, that it is characteristic of biblical narrative and certainly Old Testament narrative that if you are told something that is virtually redundant, that is to say, if up front the author tells you something that you would have been able to learn in any case from the story itself, the author means you to focus on what he has said, and he means you to be asking the question, how is it that this piece of information is going to prove to be significant in the sovereign providences of God?
And that’s true, isn’t it, of the opening verse of chapter 2?
1 Now Naomi had a relative of her husband’s, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz. (Ruth 2:1, ESV)
Now, all of this we’re going to learn in the course of the narrative in any case, but the reason the author draws our attention to this fact is to say to us as we go through this narrative, keep your eye fixed upon Boaz, because it may be, as a good author, he doesn’t tell you yet that it will be, but he’s saying to you it may be. It may be in ways you would never expect, certainly in ways that these women would never expect. It may be that this man is going to be the answer to the prayer that has been offered to the Lord in the opening chapter.
But while we are told that, indeed, the reason why we are told that is this, because this narrative, like many biblical narratives, proceeds at two different levels. One of the things that Scripture does to us as it takes us through these narratives to unveil the providential purposes of God is to enable us to look at human experience as it were on a split screen.
You wonder where these people in television dreamed up the idea of splitting the screen, and you go back to the pages of Scripture and you notice that the Scripture writers used a very similar technique, not to make some sporting occasion appear more exciting, but to give us an important insight to the nature of living for the glory of God.
And what happens on the split screen is this. We are brought through these narratives from two different points of view. One point of view is the point of view of the participants in the drama, and they have very little knowledge of what God is doing. They cannot see the end from the beginning. They may know that God is sovereign, but they have no idea how it is that God will prove to be sovereign. But then there is another perspective, the perspective of the narrator, and the narrator does know the end from the beginning. The narrator does have insight into what God is doing, because the narrator is able to look backwards and see the footsteps of God running through the narrative until God has begun to consummate His purposes. So, we are given not only the human point of view, but the divine point of view.
And of course, the reason we are given these two different points of view is precisely because we are always in the situation and circumstances, not of the narrator of the drama of living the Christian life, but we stand in the shoes of those who are involved in the Christian life. So frequently, we cannot see what it is that God is doing.
The Scriptures are saying to us, “Come up here for a moment, friend.” Like in the book of Revelation, they are giving us, as it were, an open door into heaven, and saying “Come up here and see how God is seated in majesty and glory upon the throne, and try to look at things from God’s point of view.”
And here are some lessons in looking at things from God’s point of view. This is the kind of God He is. This is the kind of thing He does. Look out for His signature in your life too.
It is important for us always to remember, always to remember, therefore, that Scripture sheds divine light on the darkness of our lives, not because we have the ability to interpret the movements of God in and of ourselves, but because God’s Word sheds this light upon our path. It is a lamp to us. It illumines our understanding of the ways of God, so that when we are in this situation where we are in the darkness, we cannot see the hand or purpose of God. We know the kind of thing He does. We know the kind of God He is, and we can trust Him, because He is not only the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the great patriarchs and the great apostles, but He is the extraordinary God who did extraordinary things in the lives of these most ordinary people.
So that God writes, as it were, in large capital letters the principles of His providence, so that when He writes them in small and sometimes microscopic writing in our lives, we are able to see that this is the same God, the same pattern, and the same gracious providence.
That leads me to say a second thing by way of general introduction to this narrative in chapter 2. You notice how the biblical writer puts it. He tells us that Ruth the Moabites said to Naomi, “I’m going to the fields to glean.” And then he goes on to say in verse 3, “She went out and began to glean in the fields behind the harvesters. And as it turned out…” Now that’s a very Christian translation of what the writer actually says. What the writer really says is something like this, “The happenstance that happened to her was this.”
And I think that’s very significant for this reason. Perhaps you’ve found yourself in this kind of situation where you’ve said to a fellow Christian, “you know when I was doing this, it just happened,” and immediately everywhere you go one of these Christian brothers or sisters turns up, immediately the answer is given to you, “Nothing just happened.”
You know there is a great story about one of the most famous Christians of the twentieth century whose name I had better not divulge that he used to walk on the beach and one day somebody said to him, “How are you keeping?” And immediately he said, “I’m not keeping, I’m being kept.”
And many of us have that kind of instinct to speak as though Scripture described life only from one point of view. And it’s so easy for us to fall into giving the mistaken impression that we have special insight into the mind and will and providences of God. But you see the author of this book is comfortable enough to say to us, from Ruth’s point of view, it just happened.
But, you can see, you imagine listening to this story round the campfire, we should be having these addresses in the evening on the beach round a campfire. Can’t you see a little smile playing on his lips? He knows that nothing, nothing just happens. But he also knows that from our point of view, our understanding is so limited, our appreciation of the ways of God, our ability to second guess what God is going to do is so limited.
There are many things in our lives that simply seem to happen to us by happenstance. And even in this world, we may never understand why they came to pass. Remember those marvelous words of the Puritan John Flavel when he says that the providence of God is constantly like a Hebrew word. It can only be read properly backwards.
And so the author is bringing us to live as it were with a split screen in our lives, not a split personality in our hearts, but a split screen in our lives to recognize the contingency of the events of the world in which we live. Everything from a human point of view could be quite different from the way it is, but at the same time to recognize that in the midst of the confusion and the happenstances and the surprises of life, there is a sovereign God in heaven whose hand is upon every moment of our lives and who reigns over every inch of the universe in which we live.
So that we know that to us there is nothing that just happens, but everything that happens, happens under the sovereign wisdom and purpose of our heavenly Father. Father. And therefore, we are able to be confident, not because we know exactly what God is doing in an unpredictable world. We are able to be confident because we know that what is totally unpredictable to us is utterly predictable to Him who reigns and rules in heaven and has numbered my days and into His heavenly book written His purposes for me before one of them was given birth to see the light of day.
Still, against that background, looking at this passage as it were with this split screen in mind, you remember how the narrative proceeds. Ruth enters and tells her mother-in-law that she is going to go out into the fields to glean. She is obviously one of those women who wants to roll up her sleeves and get on with the business of living. “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find,” and notice the significant word, it’s significant because it speaks of the character of God, “Anyone in whose eyes I find favor.”
And of course, she is referring to this great teaching of the Old Testament that expresses the love and concern of God for the poor and the stranger and the marginalized in the way in which He gives His law in the book of Leviticus, for example, and sets down that those who are able to farm and harvest must obey this divine commandment not to harvest their fields until all the crop is exhausted, but to leave around the border of the fields a border that the poor and the needy may come to and glean for themselves so that all those who are within the compass of God’s covenant, the haves and the have-nots, may be fed by the bountiful hand of their heavenly Father through the commandments that He has given to them in the law.
9 “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. 10 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. (Leviticus 19:9-10, ESV)
And so she goes out into the field with her mother-in-law’s blessing, “Go ahead my daughter,” and she begins to glean and as it happens she finds herself working in a field belonging to Boaz who belonged to the clan of her father-in-law. And then certainly as the older versions put it in verse 4, although this is somewhat muted in the new international version from which I’m reading, “Just then Boaz arrived.” “Behold,” says the narrator, to use the old-fashioned language, and you see what he’s doing. Here it just so happens that Ruth is gleaning in the field of Boaz and just at the time that she is gleaning in the field of Boaz, what else should just happen? Well just then, just then, Boaz appears.
4 And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. And he said to the reapers, “The Lord be with you!” And they answered, “The Lord bless you.” (Ruth 2:4, ESV)
And Boaz engages, you’ll notice, in two conversations. The first is a conversation with his foreman, the second is a direct conversation with Ruth. In the conversation with the foreman, he learns something about this young woman upon whom apparently his eye had already lighted and about whom apparently, he already knew something.
And in the second conversation, he addresses her specifically and directly and it’s fascinating to notice what happens here having greeted his harvesters.
5 Then Boaz said to his young man who was in charge of the reapers, “Whose young woman is this?” 6 And the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered, “She is the young Moabite woman, who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. 7 She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.’ So she came, and she has continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest.” (Ruth 2:5-7, ESV)
Now there are some commentators and scholars who understand that what the foreman is saying is not so much that she has been working steadily in the field, but she has been standing here all day until now, somewhat conveying the impression that Ruth is less than your typical quiet, mousy, Old Testament lady believer. She’s been standing here and she won’t budge until she speaks to you because she wants to glean in your field. Seems to me to be much more likely that the way in which we have it, for example, in the New International Version, is the intention of the author. She has asked to glean, she has gone into the field, and she has worked steadily until this time. Persistence has been the hallmark of her labor.
And so Boaz engages her in conversation. He engages her in conversation that will bring her blessing, that will give to her supply. And he provides for her need in a wide variety of different ways. And then we have this marvelous ending to the passage. The passage ends with Boaz, as it were, providing a superabundant supply for this young woman. She’s able to go home on the one hand with the doggy bag left from her lunch. But as we’re told towards the end of the passage, she actually goes home with what, verse 17, amounts to about an ephah of threshed barley.
17 So she gleaned in the field until evening. Then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. (Ruth 2:17, ESV)
Now an ephah of threshed barley amounts to, I think, somewhere in the region of thirty pounds in weight. And it wouldn’t at all surprise me, but the author of the Book of Ruth means us to see this scene almost as a little comic interlude. Here is this girl, and she has left the home empty. And as she staggers home with these thirty pounds of grain in her shawl, hardly surprising, her mother-in-law asked her almost breathlessly, “Where did you glean today? Blessed be the man who took notice of you.”
19 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.” So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz.” (Ruth 2:19, ESV)
But you see, if we’re meant to smile at that point, at Naomi’s astonishment, you see that what we’ve got here is the author taking up a theme that we’ve already explored in the first chapter. In the first chapter, the family went away full and they came back empty. They were emptied by God’s sovereign providence, emptied of self, that they might be filled with His provision.
And already, like a motif running through this narrative, God is saying to us in His Word, “Do you see what I do with my children? When my children are mine, when like Ruth they have said to me, ‘you are my God and your people will be my people,’ I never remain their debtor.” This young woman goes out from her mother-in-law utterly empty, utterly empty. And she comes home almost staggering under the weight of the fullness of provision that God has given to her in His graciousness and His favor towards her.
And it’s interesting in this context that it is Naomi. Now we ought to have a lot of time for Naomi, although in my own opinion, I don’t think she’s a woman that I would want to trust absolutely. But it’s in this context that Naomi, whose prayer in chapter 1 is in a sense the secret that is beginning to be unpacked in chapter 2, it’s Naomi again who in the Scripture here is given the role of putting her finger on exactly what it is that is happening in this narrative.
She says in verse 20, “The Lord bless him, the Lord bless him.” He, that is I think fairly certainly, not the Lord, although if you’re using the New King James Version, I think it probably suggests that it’s the Lord, he, that is Boaz, Boaz has not deserted his responsibility of showing kindness to the living. And because of course showing kindness to this particular family, because showing kindness to Ruth and Naomi, showing kindness also to the dead.
And then she adds, and this I think is just a little hint that this woman may not necessarily be trusted with your life. She says, “Can you see the sly look in her face or in her eyes? That man is our close relative. He is one of our kinsmen, redeemers.” Naomi, if I am not mistaken, is a character straight out of The People’s Friend. And you can tell, you can tell if Boaz had been the new minister in the Highland Presbyterian Church that there was one daughter-in-law that would soon be in the choir.
But she puts her finger on the theology of what is happening here when she says, “This man Boaz, and whether or not the text refers to Boaz, ultimately, of course, the text refers to what God has done in Boaz, Boaz has not deserted his responsibility to show the Hebrew word is, sounds almost Welsh, I think, the Hebrew word is hesed. If you are transliterating it, it’s H-E-S-E-D or perhaps even C-H-E-S-E-D.”
And it’s one of the great key words of the Old Testament Scriptures. It is one of the great characteristics in the Old Testament of God Himself. God is one, in our older translations certainly, this word was usually translated something like loving-kindness. When God reveals Himself through Moses and speaks about Himself as a God who is full of loving-kindness, this word hesed is the word that is used.
And it means not simply loving-kindness of an ordinary kind, in a sense not even loving-kindness of a divine kind in a general way. It speaks about God’s total commitment, His absolute loyalty to bring to fruition the blessings He has promised to His people in His covenant with them, whatever it should cost Him personally to fulfill them.
Now you understand that this is one of the great keys to understanding the Old Testament, indeed understanding the Gospel as well. At the heart of the Old Testament lies this great covenant that God has made with His people through Moses. And as He pledges Himself to the people and says, “I will be your God and you will be my people,” He tells them that as they respond to Him in faithfulness, He will shower them with His blessings. If they respond in disobedience, they will encounter the darkness of His curses.
And the whole of true religious life in the Old Testament is set within that framework. Our God is a covenant-making, covenant-keeping God. As we live responding to His promises, He showers His blessings upon us. As we live unfaithful and disobedient, we encounter the darkness of His chastisement and His curses.
And when we see the words in the New Testament, blessing and cursing, we mean infinitely more than when we say to someone who has sneezed, “Bless you.” When we say, “Blessed be God, because He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” what we mean is that in Christ Jesus, the covenant blessings promised to Abraham and through Moses have been showered upon us in Jesus Christ because God’s chesed, God’s loving-kindness has been poured out upon us in His loyalty to His covenant promise, whatever the cost to Himself.
Even when the cost is the death of His well-beloved Son, He is utterly faithful to the covenant promise He has made to show us His gracious and saving loving-kindness. So, when Naomi says, “This man Boaz has not deserted loving-kindness, covenant loyalty,” one of the old Scottish commentators translates as “leal love,” His loyalty love. It’s almost as though the narrator is saying to us, “Now just stop there, just stop there, because this is precisely what is going on in this passage.”
This passage is a demonstration of the leal love of the Heavenly Father as that leal love, that loyalty love, that covenant love and kindness of the Heavenly Father is manifested in the ways in which He begins to work in the lives of His children. And what is so significant about that is this: that this, of course, is what Naomi had prayed for in Ruth 1:8. Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back each of you to your mother’s home. May the Lord show kindness,” it’s the same word, chesed. “May the Lord show His covenant love and loyalty to you in bringing blessing upon your lives.”
8 But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. (Ruth 1:8, ESV)
But Orpah turns away from the prospect of that covenant love and blessing, whereas Ruth clings to it, “your God will be my God, your people my people, I take this covenant.” And in this covenant, the Heavenly Father begins to shower down upon her the blessings of His own infinitely sovereign and supreme chesed.
Why is this so significant? It’s so significant because it is the clue to the way in which Ruth is brought onto the stage of this narrative and described, and the way in which then correspondingly, Boaz is brought onto the stage of this narrative and he is correspondingly described.
You see what is happening? You remember that what we have been invited to ask by the narrator is, “Will they or won’t they?” Let’s, as it were, ask the question of and let’s not get lost in contemplating the glories of the providence of God. Let’s not get so lost in the theology that we don’t grasp the fact that there is also the beginnings of a divinely given romance involved here. And Naomi’s prayer has given us a hint of that. The introduction of Boaz has given us a hint of that. “Will they or won’t they?”
And what is being set out before us here in the second chapter of the book of Ruth is almost irrespective of the question “will they or won’t they,” we also need to ask ourselves the question, “How is it that the providential purposes of God…” Now we have no secrets here of this kind, do we? You all know how the story ends and from that point of view, I am at something of a disadvantage, I can’t keep back from you the end of the story. You know, you know what’s going to happen.
But you see, what the narrator is doing for us here is not only hinting to us that it may well happen, but he’s beginning to uncover for us why it is that it’s so appropriate for it to happen. Indeed, if I can put it this way, what we have here in the rest of the narrative, along that line of the narrative that speaks about the romance of this man and this woman, is in a sense a rewriting of the end of Genesis 2, but in a fallen world.
Here is this man who is alone, and it is not good for him to be alone. And here God, as it were, goes not into his rib, but into the far country in order to bring to him a woman who is suitable for him. So that when Boaz awakes, as it were, as we shall see in the next chapter, he quite literally does. He quite literally awakes in the middle of the night. You can almost hear him gasp with Adam, “At last, at last, here is someone who is really suited to me.”
And so there are many things going on in this passage that are so applicable to us at all different kinds of levels of our Christian living. There is the general principle that the loving loyalty of the Lord that manifests itself in the loving loyalty of these two people is a picture of the renewed character to which God calls us, whatever our sphere of life and work and ministry and service may be.
But there is also this dimension. If it is true that what we have written into this narrative is a kind of rerunning of the Garden of Eden, but in a fallen world, not an unfallen world, isn’t there much counsel here that perhaps many of us who are younger need to take to heart as we think together about what it is going to mean for us, “At last,” to awaken and say, “God may have taken His time, but at last I see that this is the one who is suited for me.”
And then since many of us are married, there is the portrayal here of the kind of character that ought to be exhibited, the loyalty love, the loyalty faithful blessing, which God intends to manifest in our lives because this is what godliness really is. Godliness is being like God, and being like God is not becoming a superman or a superwoman, but becoming a real man or a real woman who manifests this most glorious characteristic of God, the desire He has in His heart to bring blessing to others at whatever expense to Himself.
Now, how does this work out? Well, I think etiquette, if nothing else, demands that we begin with the ladies. What about Ruth? How is covenant kindness seen in Ruth? Well, it is clear that this is the first thing that has attractedBoaz’s attention. Even before he had seen her and met her, the thing he knew about her was that this woman, who had been gloriously converted, who had taken the covenant for herself, Moabites though she was, was characterized by covenant love and loyalty within the relationships of what was left of her family. He says, “I’ve been told all about you, and I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, how you left your father and mother, your homeland, and came to live with a people you did not know before.” And you see what he’s saying. The thing I’ve heard about you is that you’re really a godly woman, because this great characteristic of God has come already to be manifested in your life.
But it’s clear from the passage that this great characteristic, this hesed that was displayed in Ruth’s life, was manifested in a number of other ways. Let me simply point out one or two of them to you. First of all, it was manifested as she had been brought into the covenant of God’s grace. It was manifested in what you remember Peter calls the meekness and the gentleness of her spirit. You remember how Peter says in 1 Peter 3:3-6, that this was the great characteristic of the godly women of the Old Testament. They were all, now we mustn’t misunderstand them, they were all quite different in personality. Quite different in personality, quiet and loud. But in spirit, whatever their personality, there was something that always characterized the godly women of old, and it was what Peter calls their meek and gentle spirit.
3 Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— 4 but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. 5 For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, 6 as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. (1 Peter 3:3-6, ESV)
When you see this manifested, I scarcely need to point it out to you, in the description that we are given of Ruth, the meekness with which she has received, the hardness, even the experience of life’s harshness in the providences of God. That’s what meekness is in part. Meekness is our submission to the Word of God and to the providences of God, especially when that Word cuts across our native desires and when those providences cut across all that we might long for ourselves. It is to put our hand to our mouth and say, “Lord, you have done it, and if you have done it I will trust you.” And that disposition towards the Lord always demonstrates itself in a disposition towards others.
You see it here, for example, again in verse 10, she exclaimed, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me, a foreigner?” There’s this, now the world would cringe at this kind of thing today, but the world would cringe at it because the world has never received the grace of God that humbles it and makes it meek and makes it really appreciative of every favor that the Lord extends to us through His people. Isn’t that why this time in which we live must be one of the most ungrateful times in all human history? In the western world, in a world that has received the gospel of Jesus Christ, why is there so much grumbling and complaining? Because men and women and young people know nothing of the grace and favor of God that is utterly demerited, that makes us meek and gentle and appreciative of every touch of God’s kindness that is displayed to us through others.
And it’s also characteristic of her. You notice this in another way, and this comes out too, I think, in verse 10. She thinks of the rights that are hers under the law of God as privileges given to her by the grace of God. My, that’s a great key for godly living, isn’t it? She understands that the rights that are given to her under the law of God are actually privileges given to her through the grace of God. That is to say, she recognizes what the unbeliever can never recognize. The unbeliever always looks at God’s law as its enemy, given in His anger. That’s how the unbeliever thinks about the law of God. He thinks God’s angry with him and has given him this law to condemn him, and he or she sees no more.
Whereas the believer recognizes that the God who gave the law is the God who gave His Son, one and the same God, and He is given His law in His grace and favor to direct our lives that they may be wholesome and holy and well-pleasing to Him, and here is this law being administered in Ruth’s life. She’s grateful for the provision God makes because she knows that she deserves nothing. That is to say, one of the leading characteristics of her life that enables this loyalty love to flow is that in the presence of God as a sinner, her mouth has been shut. She’s nothing to say in self-defense, and now her mouth has been opened in gratitude for every morsel of favor that comes to her from the Lord’s table.
Can you notice that this loyalty love is displayed in another way? It’s displayed in the consistency with which she pursues the specific tasks that God in His providence has given to her. The foreman noticed that. The foreman apparently, I suppose many foremen are like this, what they call the Peter principle. We rise to the level of our incompetence, and the foreman in this passage seems to be at least marginally contrasted withBoaz. The foreman would rather choke than pronounce this girl’s name. “This Moabite,” he says, “she came from the land of Moab with Naomi.” You can almost feel the shiver going up his spine. He shouldn’t even be speaking about this Moabite, but nevertheless, he puts his finger on it. He says, “She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She went into the field and has worked steadily from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.”
Can you see what he’s saying? He’s saying one of the expressions of God’s grace and favor that has manifested in her life is her wonderful consistency in going about the duties God has given to her with a holy consistency, a holy consistency. I am not really surprised that when Boaz came to his field and saw this young woman Ruth gleaning there, that he immediately recognized there was something different about her.
You know, we’ve lost, I think we’ve almost lost the conviction that the grace of God produces this character in the lives of His people, that their very presence and demeanor and manner tells whose they are and whom they serve. You know, that great story, I think it’s my favorite of all American stories that B. B. Warfield tells in a little essay he wrote entitled, “Is the Shorter Catechism Worthwhile?” And he describes this occasion in some western city last century, which was full of rioting and hubbub and confusion.
And a stranger who was visiting there noticed coming down the main street in the midst of all this confusion, there was a man who just had something about him that made people in the street in the midst of the confusion actually turn around and stare at him. And the man came nearer and nearer. And I suppose this stranger had been well brought up, his mother had said, “Now you never stare at strangers.” And as the man came nearer, you could almost think he was saying, “Now I mustn’t stare at this man.” But as the man passed him, he found himself drawn almost like a magnet to turn round and look at him.
And to his horror, he realized the man had stopped him and turned round, was looking at him and was actually coming towards him. And came right up to him and tapped him on the chest and said to him, “What is the chief end of man?” While he was mighty relieved he learned his catechism, he said, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Do you know what the stranger said to him? Listen to this. “I knew you were a Shorter Catechism boy by your looks.” Now that’s a very real thing.
And I think it was evident here. There was something about her. I learned that lesson, you know, although I failed so frequently to, I think, really believe that God works in this way. But I learned that lesson the night I was converted. In the service in which I was brought to living faith in Christ, this young business executive in Glasgow gave a testimony.
And his testimony, as I recall, now this was 1963, but I think I’ve got the details right. His testimony was this. He’d been moved to this new office and in the first few weeks he was moving around the various aspects of the work, getting hands-on experience. But he frequently moved along one corridor and he passed, now don’t you young people, if I can call you young people, it’s not a very good expression, I apologize for it. Don’t laugh when I say he passed a room that had a sign on it, “Typing Pool.”
And every time he passed, there were three typewriters in the room. And every time he passed, he noticed there was one of these typewriters that was going with a consistency that was absent in the other two. And at first it was just a fact, but as he passed again and again and again, he kept on noticing it, it became a source of irritation to him and eventually almost exploded on one of the other men. He said, “you know, every time I pass that typing pool, there’s one of these typewriters going with a consistency that you never hear in the others and it’s begun to annoy me.”
And the man who apparently wasn’t a Christian said with complete casualness, “Oh he said, that’s so and so and mentioned the girl’s name, she’s a Christian” and walked away. And here was this young man standing thinking, “What on earth can be the connection between the way someone types and being a Christian? What on earth can be the connection?” Because unbelievers don’t really believe that faith in Christ can make any difference to their lives.
And it was a fishhook, a divine fishhook, thrown by God’s grace through the life of a girl he had never at that point seen that was the means of drawing this young man to Christ. Now, it would be great to be able to say something like, “I was that man,” or “They met and fell in love and lived happily ever after,” but I don’t know what happened. But I was profoundly impressed.
And you see that time and time again, the presence that’s created in the believer who has come to rest under the wings of the Almighty. And of course, Boaz was putting his finger on the source of her life when he says in verse 12, do you notice this is another significant prayer? May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel. And then He uses this expression that’s so frequently used in the Psalms, “the God of Israel under whose wings you have come to find rest.” She had rested in the covenant loyalty of the Lord, and the covenant loyalty of the Lord worked in her to produce covenant faithfulness in her life. That’s a woman worth noticing at any age or stage, my friends, that’s a woman worth noticing.
But then of course, there is Boaz. How is the fruit of God’s covenant mercy and loving kindness displayed in him? Well, it’s displayed because he’s exactly the man who is described in Proverbs 3:3, who demonstrates covenant loyalty and faithfulness. But how does it appear? Let me suggest simply a number of ways briefly.
3 Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. (Proverbs 3:3, ESV)
It manifests itself, first of all, in his attitude to Jehovah and in the sheer God-centeredness of his life. You see that in what he says in verse 4, “Just then Boaz arrives from Bethlehem and he greets the harvesters. The covenant Lord,” he says, “be with you.” And you can tell by the setting and by the bearing of the man as the narrative proceeds, this is not some cheap blessing. This is a man who is so centered upon God Himself that his chief desire for others is that they similarly should be centered in the blessing of the Lord. And he is concerned that the blessing of the Lord should fall upon these people who work with him and for him.
And it reveals himself almost in the same breath in his attitude to others. You see, his principal concern for these workers is not simply that they may glean a good harvest, but that they may know the Lord’s presence. He exemplifies in the Old Testament what Paul speaks about in 2 Corinthians 5. He said, “We used to know Christ according to the flesh. We don’t know Christ according to the flesh any longer. We don’t judge Him by worldly standards any longer. And because that’s true, we don’t look at others according to the flesh either and judge them by worldly standards. We think about others from the divine perspective and we seek for others the divine blessing.”
16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. (2 Corinthians 5:16, ESV)
So that what he is praying for them here, he uses the great covenant name of God, is the covenant benediction of God. What lay at the very heart of the covenant, “I will be with you as your covenant God.” The Lord who has made His covenant with His people, he says, “be with you in this way.” So that he’s not only centered upon God Himself, but his heart is taken up with the blessing of God on the lives of others.
But there’s another indication of this and it’s deeply moving. It’s in the man’s attitude to the needy and the marginalized and the poor. You see, what characterizes this man is that because God is his covenant God, God’s law is his way of life. This man exemplifies the book of Proverbs. He exemplifies the first Psalm. He is the man who knows the blessing of the Lord because he walks in the way of the Lord and his life is fruitful in this sense. And one of the ways in which that is demonstrated is because no detail of God’s law is too small for him to put into practice.
Indeed, Boaz wonderfully demonstrates the significance for an old testament believer of the new testament statement that love fulfills the law. And you see that here. That statement doesn’t mean love ignores the law because it’s more important than the law or we can abandon the law because our lives are full of love. What it means is this, that love shows what the intention of the law really is. And the intention of the law to leave that margin for the poor and the needy, for the stranger and the oppressed round the outside of the field at harvest so that those who are marginalized might share in the benediction of the divine harvest.
You see how Boaz interprets that. Not as a man who goes away and does his psalms Pharisee-like and says now margin. What profit margin? Margin? Is a margin this or perhaps this or just that? Love shows the fullness of the grace of God in the law. And you see, you can see this man taking the law of God into his hands and using it as an instrument to display the riches of the loving kindness of Jehovah. He’s almost heaping blessing upon this girl and her mother-in-law. As she staggers home with these pounds of grain upon her shoulder and comes in perspiring, one would think, almost dropping at the foot of her mother-in-law, and her mother-in-law looks down and says, “Where on earth have you been?”
And what she says is, “I’ve met a man who walks in the law of the Lord, who meditates on it day and night and has proved to me that the law can be the chief delight of a child of God.” His tenderheartedness. Did you pick that up in our reading? Those little details that we’re given of his tenderheartedness. “He spoke kindly to me.” Why is that so significant? Well, of course, it’s our Lord Jesus who has taught us why it is so significant. Because in a sense, it’s the ultimate test of a man’s life. Not how he has reacted to the great, the famous, the rich and the noble, but how he has responded to the marginalized, the unnoticed, the poor, the struggler, and the needy.
You remember how our Lord puts it in Matthew 25,
40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ (Matthew 25:40, ESV)
It’s almost as though He’s saying, that’s the real measure of a man. Not whom he knows. That’s the real measure of a minister of the gospel, isn’t it? Not what platform he speaks from or what crowds.
But do you see, does he seek the poor and the needy, Jesus-like? Because he himself has been poor and needy and has been sought, Jesus-like. No man, no wonder we are told in Ruth 2:1, that Boaz was a man of standing. A man of standing. But you notice that his loyalty, love, his covenant faithfulness, and we ought not to miss this, is also manifested in the way in which he deals with matters that concern the heart.
1 Now Naomi had a relative of her husband’s, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz. (Ruth 2:1, ESV)
you see, he’s noticed her. And he’s noticed more about her than that she’s a diligent worker. That comes out very clearly in Ruth 3:10-11. And we’ve got to steal a little, at least from this chapter, to grasp what is happening. “you have not run after the younger men.” Well, he must have noticed something about her to say that. She couldn’t have been bad looking if he was saying that kind of thing. If he was saying, you know, I see these young men, I know what these young men are interested in. I see you. There was something there.
10 And he said, “May you be blessed by the Lord , my daughter. You have made this last kindness greater than the first in that you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich. 11 And now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you all that you ask, for all my fellow townsmen know that you are a worthy woman. (Ruth 3:10-11, ESV)
But you see how he responds when there is something there. What a lesson there is for us here. You see how he responds when there is something there. And I think we are perhaps meant, I don’t know, I’d put it any more strongly than that. I think we’re meant to begin to notice there is something of a difference here between Boaz and Naomi. When Boaz sees there is something there in his heart, what is his response? Well, first of all, it is characterized by respect. That’s written all over his response. Second, it’s characterized by a desire to protect. Thirdly, it’s characterized by a desire to provide.
And within these instincts that arise in his heart, not simply because it looks as though the man is beginning to be attracted to the woman, but because this is what it means to be a true man of God. What does Boaz do? He exercises his duty. He responds in grace and he acts with patience.
And I think if I’m not mistaken, it’s exactly there that he contrasts somewhat with Naomi. Do you notice how the narrative ends? She says,
19 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.” So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz.” 20 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!” Naomi also said to her, “The man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.” (Ruth 2:19-20, ESV)
Now, as the narrative flows on, it’s almost as though Ruth didn’t hear that. She’s just overcome by the kindness this man has shown. It’s Naomi who has begun to draw conclusions from circumstances. You can almost see the little wheels in the female mind. And they exist in the male mind too. Let’s not be confused about that. The little wheel is going. He’s a relative, one of our kinsmen redeemers. Let’s work him over.
But here is this man of standing. You can understand Naomi, can’t you? After all these years away from the ordinances of God, you can understand if her anxiety led her to impatience, if she wanted to take her own prayers into her own hands in her own way, just as they had formerly taken their own prayers into their own hands in their own way. You can understand and perhaps even forgive her impatience.
But, oh, here’s a man of substance, duty, grace, patience, covenant, loyalty. These never appear on the spur of the moment, instantaneously. They are principles to be permanently settled, especially when we are younger, but not only when we are younger, permanently settled as marks of godliness before they ever come to expression in a life of romance.
And to me, the most amazing thing perhaps is this, that Boaz was able to be this kind of man in a world in which he knew, he says it in Ruth 3, in which he knew young men run after young women and young women run after young men. And Ruth, too, was able to be in the profoundest sense a woman of spiritual substance, although her background was pagan idolatry. And it is to this covenant loyalty, and it is to this covenant loyalty, leal love that God calls us. While they are suited for one another, what will happen next? Well, watch this space.
Let’s pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we praise you that you’re a God of such loyalty and love for your children. We praise you again for the marvelous way in your Word in which you draw us in to these stories of your purposes of grace in the lives of others, and for the marvelous way in which your Spirit takes your Word and unpacks it for us personally in ways that no one who expounds it could ever have dreamt, in ways that those who sit beside us as we listen could never imagine. You bring your Word to bear personally upon us, and you speak to us.
And we pray that in whatever areas of our lives, whatever failures we may have, wherever we may have failed in the past, in our personal relationships, whatever the secret desires of our hearts may be today, whatever the future may hold for us, give us grace, we pray, to settle in our hearts in response to your Word.
That since you have shown your covenant loyalty to us, we will live in covenant loyalty to you and in covenant faithfulness to one another, we pray in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
