In the book of Ephesians, we're reminded that God is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think. And today, on Truth for Life, we'll see this truth in action in the Old Testament story of Ruth. Alastair Begg walks us through Ruth's experience gleaning in Boaz Field, and we'll discover how an invisible God makes himself visible. We're focusing on Ruth chapter 2, verse 14. Things have actually turned out really well for Ruth.
It's true to say that her circumstances are not the best.
However, their poverty has not neutralized them. and Ruth has shown herself to be an initiative-taking kind of young lady. She had told her mother-in-law that she was going to go out and to glean in the fields to pick up leftover grain. There in that 13th verse, you will notice that she'd been touched by both the provision and the protection afforded her by this individual called Boaz. And as this day unfolds, Ruth's spirits must have lifted within her as she said to herself, I can't wait to get back and tell Naomi what is being going on today.
This has been a day to be remembered. She may even have felt that by the time she reached what we have as verse 13, she had completely maxed out. Surely it had been a wonderful day. There couldn't be very much more that she could enjoy, surely, of the kindness and favor of this individual. This was a wonderful thing, this God of Israel, under whose wing she had taken refuge, when she had committed herself to God, when she had heard of him from Naomi and from others, she had only wondered at the prospect of what it would mean.
She could never have known. Just how dramatic would be the provision of this wonderful God. She had taken refuge in him, and now she was discovering that he was able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that she could ask. or even imagine. The day started.
I think I'll go out into the fields and pick up the leftover grain. Maybe there's someone in whose eyes I find favour. That seems like a distant memory even now. In light of all that has unfolded.
Now, what I want to do is just give you three phrases to summarize the balance of the chapter. Verses 14 to 16. We might consider under the heading all that she wanted. And more. all that she wanted And more.
Notice the invitation that is extended to her at verse 14. At mealtime, Boas said to her, Come over here and have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar. It was a gracious invitation. We've learned in the past studies that the law had made provision for those whose circumstances was as Ruth's. But the law was given within the framework of God's covenant care.
Therefore, for the law to be applied Demanded that the application of the law be made in such a way as to reinforce the character of a covenant-keeping God. He had revealed himself as one who, quotes, executes justice for the fatherless and the widows. who loves the foreigners and gives them clothing. This is how God has revealed Himself in the Word. He said, I execute justice for the fatherless and for the widows.
I love the foreigners and I give them clothing. Then he gives His law to His people. Not in order that they might become legalists, but by their obedience to his law, they might display his character.
So that as Boaz takes up the instruction of the Old Testament and puts, if you like, hands and feet to it. This girl, Ruth, discovers the heart of God in the hands. of boys. And Boaz is a wonderful example of God's grace. You find in him just the overflowing generosity of someone who has discovered who God is and has discovered that he has been entrusted with the provision of making this God known.
Listen. How does an invisible God become visible to the 21st century? By the hands And the hearts of those who declare themselves to be members of his covenant family. How does the 21st century meet God? The invisible God becomes visible.
In the care. of his people. If you doubt that, go back and read 1 John.
So, the invitation was a gracious invitation, and it was a generous invitation. She'd already enjoyed the privilege of being shown around, as it were, by the boss. He had taken her all around in a very magnanimous fashion, and he'd shown her the way to the water cooler, there in verse 9. And then, when she goes to take her place, he says to her, Excuse me, why don't you come over here? Come over here and sit with us.
So she's invited to join the harvesters. and to participate in their meal.
Now, again, just try and get your head into this. Here's a girl who leaves in the morning. She says to her mother-in-law, I think I'll go and see if I can scrape something up in the fields. And it's only the early afternoon and look at her. She looks like she's a member of the group.
She looks like she's been there forever. What a wonderful picture of grace and generosity. It's the way it ought to be in the church.
Somebody says, I think I'll go and see if God is around. I think I'll go and try church. I think I'll go and find out what it's about. And there ought to be a sense in which, by the early afternoon, they have been gathered up in the company of the faithful because of the kindness and the generosity and the expressions of God's covenant care. Oh would that it might be so in increasing measure.
When the widow And the poor. And the homeless. And the bitter. Decide to go. in search of this god.
And she received the roasted grain. From his hands. And she ate until she was satisfied. And in verse 14, she even had some left over for what? You colonial types call a doggy bag.
This is one of the early doggy bags of the Bible, as far as I can see. She said, somebody came to her and said, Would you like a doggy bag for that? And she said, Yes, I would. I'm not sure what it is, but I will have one. She ate all she wanted and she had some left over.
There's just this wonderful sense of generosity and grace, isn't there?
So, the invitation was gracious, the invitation was generous, and I would like you to notice that the invitation crossed. economic, social and racial lines. Boaz ate with the harvesters and he made them happy by his company. He could have eaten by himself. And he found his happiness in his isolation, but he ate with them and found contentment in their satisfaction.
He's the bridge that says, you know, I know you come from a foreign place, but you're part of us now. Under the shadow of God's wings, you have come to dwell. I heard what you said for Naomi, and so on.
Now come here and join with us.
So she's a foreigner, she's an alien, she's a stranger, she is from a completely different ethnic and racial background, but she's welcome as a result of the invitation of Boaz. And the more I read the story of Ruth, The more I wonder if there isn't in this story a very strong word from God concerning this very issue. If you turn for a moment, and this is a slight detour, but it is an important detour, because I want to tackle these issues not in abstraction, but when they come to us from the scriptures. If you turn to Deuteronomy chapter 7 for just a moment, I want to point something out to you. When the Lord your God brings you into the land you're entering to possess and drives out before you many nations, the Hittites, the Girgushites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebuzzites, seven nations larger and stronger than you, and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally, make no treaty with them, show them no mercy, do not intermarry with them.
Do not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons.
Now, just stop there for a moment. It is that kind of passage of Scripture. Which historically has been used in support of apartheid. The notion being that somehow or another the people of God were defined in racial terms. But if you read the fourth verse, the concern was not racial, the concern was theological.
The concern was religious. The reason that God did not want intermarriage was not because the races would be interwoven. Which was not ultimately a concern, but was because the purity of monotheism would be eroded as a result of that. It is not possible to defend, as some have tried, racial segregation, racial discrimination on the basis of some supposed biblical principle of racial purity. And indeed the first principle of the whole idea of the Christian discussion of the question of race needs to be built on one significant statement in Acts chapter 17 and verse 26.
When Paul, in speaking to the intelligentsia in Athens about the way in which God has created the universe, he says to them, And he says to them with great clarity. Verse 26 of Acts 17, from one man. He made every nation of man. Therefore, as far as mankind is concerned, there is only one group. There's only one group.
And the issue can never be a color issue or an ethnic issue or a racial issue. The issue is only the purity of loving God with all our hearts. And the invitation to become a member of the covenant people of God was made as a result of a response to faith in his promise, which was universal in its appeal. And which was immediate in its application. It had nothing to do with color or with ethnic background.
And so the emphasis of the New Testament is that the gospel transcends all racial barriers. And you say, well, how did you get to that from here? Because I think that this truth is foreshadowed. in the activities of Boaz from Bethlehem. Reaching out To Ruth.
From Moab. Otherwise, he is a violator, as we will see in chapter three. of the very law of God which demanded, apparently, the purity of race. It couldn't be. What was going to allow them to share the same life?
to share the same bed, to share the same future. The awareness that they had been made one. in the covenant love. of God. People say, well, you know, the Bible, it's really got nothing very much in it at all, you know.
Well, we'll leave it there, shall we? It was a gracious invitation, it was a generous invitation, and it was an invitation that crossed.
social and economic and racial Barriers. The provision that was given or granted was discovered by Ruth. on the path of duty. Boas gives orders in verse fifteen. If she gathers among the sheaves, don't embarrass her.
Pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up and don't rebuke her. What stopped him from actually just saying, hey, don't go back there this afternoon? I'll give you some stuff to take home to Naomi. I'm the boss. I mean, it all it all comes to me in any case.
Why didn't he do that?
Well, we don't actually know. But presumably because if he had done so, he would have deprived her of a sense of accomplishment. He would have deprived himself of the wonder of watching this girl fulfill her strategy and complete her commitment. And he would have deprived her of the tremendous sense of achievement that would have been hers when she went back up the street carrying this phenomenal bundle. I mean, if somebody had given it to her, she said, Well, I got it given to me.
But when she gets home, she says, you know what? What a day. What a bundle? What a God under whose wings we have taken refuge. I think I can call you Naomi tonight.
I don't need to call you Mara. The bitterness has been replaced. With bounty. We may go out with weeping and then we return with joy, you know, bringing in. The sheaves.
And her activities in making discovery of this provision were unhindered by rebukes or by embarrassments. You see the humanity of this.
Now, guys, I'm sending Ruth back out there.
Now, listen, don't embarrass her. Don't be doing any ethnic jokes.
Okay? When we're doing any of those mobile jokes, don't do that. It's not going to go over well. Don't do that. And don't make her feel bad if she starts fiddling around in the wrong places.
In fact, in order to make it good for her, why don't you just pull some stuff out and let it drop?
So in other words, he knew that the law demanded that he shouldn't deal with the perimeter. But when the love of God fills a heart, That's not sufficient for Boas just to give people the dribs and drabs off the corners. He says, give her the stalks out of the very heart of it, you see. It's a wonderful picture. You need to ask yourself the question.
Some of you are in the kind of work situation where, on a routine basis, new people come. Do you make them welcome? Do you take satisfaction in making a stranger feel comfortable, or do you find it more pleasant to make your poor neighbour seem unhappy, at least for the first few days? Do you introduce them to others? Do you bring them into the core of things?
Or do you just let them sit and find it all out for themselves? The Christian ought to be the first one to include. The member of the covenant love of God should be the first to say, You're welcome. We're glad you're here. Please participate.
I know you have no one to sit with. Why don't you join me? And yet, unless we're brave enough to stand against the tide, which is often perverse, we may find ourselves caught up in the wrong side of the equation, knowing what we ought to do and yet failing to do it. All that she could have wanted. And more.
Now we need to move on, and maybe we can't finish this, but verses 17 to 20, I put under the heading non-stop kindness. Non-stop kindness. The opening sentence of verse 17, combined with the second half of verse 7, provides a further picture of Ruth as an industrious worker. You don't have any sense here. It says that she gleaned in the field until evening.
There is no hint of her attempting to leave early on the strength of her boss's interest in her. Rather, she threshes out the barley, she separates the good stuff, the edible stuff, from the chaff. That makes her burden lighter. But scarcely could her burden have felt lighter as she was filled and thrilled with the prospect of sharing it with Naomi. She had put together, we're told, about an eifah.
There's all kinds of commentaries about what the size of this is. It's five gallons, it's this, it's that. Frankly, I'm not sure what it is. But the best I found was that somebody said that it was a name that was given to a vessel large enough to carry an average sized person.
So if you imagine that an average sized person is, let's say for the moment, five foot four, and you could fit them in a drum, it's like a fairly substantial garbage can full of this stuff. And this is what she managed to put together. The kind of stuff that she'd put together would have taken somebody half a month to do. But here is the result of an industry. She was on her way home.
with a superabundance. She carried it back to town. And her mother-in-law was watching out the window, that's my paraphrase, verse 18, and she saw how much she had gathered. You can imagine her eyes popping out of her head as she sees dear Ruth coming up the road with this thing probably tied, you know, around her forehead and then hanging down her back, a great gigantic burden. Pounds and pounds and pounds of the stuff.
She'd get off in the morning. I'm going to go and see if I can find favor. By the middle of the day, she's asking, why have I found favor? By the early afternoon, she says, can I keep finding favor? And by the early evening, as she makes her way up the road, she is overwhelmed with favor.
Do you know how much God is prepared to open the windows of heaven to you? And pour out the choicest blessings upon your life? Do you think that somehow or another he wants to eke it out an ounce at a time? That he wants simply to bless a church, you know, with a wee bit here and a wee bit there. We make our God too narrow by false limits of our own, and she goes up the road.
And Naomi says, Whoa. And Ruth says, If you think this is good, wait till you see what I've brought you, and out comes the doggy back. Which uh reinforces what had happened earlier in the day. She'd ate eaten all she wanted and she had some left over. She, who was the beneficiary of leftovers, would have been unjust and inhumane if she hadn't in turn shared what she discovered.
So, verse 19, Naomi, full of questions spilling from her overjoyed heart. Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you. Who was the man who took notice of you?
Calm down, Naomi. Hang on. Give me a minute. Let me get my shoes off here, and I'll just give you the whole story. His name was borrows.
Woohoo, said Naomi. Two things you need to know. He is a man of continual kindness. And the word here is chesed. It is the word of the loving kindness, merciful provision of God.
This man is marked by the Hesid kindness of God. He has shown kindness to us in bereavement. He has shown kindness to us in encouragement. And my dear Ruth, here, you are back with such a bundle. May God bless this man for his continual kindness.
And by the way, just and we can talk about this later, she may have said, but I have to tell you, this man is a close relative. He is one of our kinsmen, redeemers.
Well, Ruth must have said to herself, I wonder what that means. They're just in the same way that you are. And in our next study, I'll explain to you exactly what that means. But notice finally. Non-stop kindness in verses 17 to 20.
All that she wanted and more in verses 14 and 16 to 16, and in verses 21 to 23. She said he said. Then Ruth said, he said, Naomi said, Ruth said, and so on. It's just he said, she said. If you just read it.
So she said to him, Do you know what he said? He said to me, Well, you're going to love this, Naomi. He said to me, stay with my workers until they finish harvesting all my grain.
So guess what? I have a job. This isn't a one-day wonder. Tomorrow I have a place. Tomorrow I have protection.
Tomorrow I have provision. And Naomi said to Ruth, It will be good for you, my daughter. to go with his girls. Huh? The maternal instinct is coming out.
I get to go with his workers. I'm very pleased. And I hope you'll have a nice time with his girls. I don't want you in the field with any Tom, Dick, or Harry. Do you understand that, Ruth?
Now, it may be that Naomi is already thinking two steps ahead. She says, Boys, he's a continual kindness. He's a close kinsman. I mean, there's an opportunity here that I don't want to see squandered. You stay exactly where I'm telling you to stay.
And when you get in his fields, you stay with his girls. Do you understand that? Don't you be coming up the road here tomorrow afternoon with some guy called Fred. You just stay with his girls. You stay with his girls in the fields.
Listen. And listen carefully, and I'm not going to say it in my own words, I say the words of a Scottish commentator from 100 years ago. What number of young persons? Take rash steps in the journey of life. which cannot be retraced.
Because they rather choose to follow the impulse of their own passions. than to ask and follow the advice of those who brought them into the world. In verse 23.
So Ruth did exactly what she was told. She stayed close to the servant girls of Boas. And she gleaned. Until the barley and the wheat harvests We're finished. She stuck with the job.
She stuck with Naomi. And you have this wonderful story, as it has this beautiful balance in it. And she kept working. And she kept living with her mother-in-law. Until the barley and the wheat harvests We're finished.
Making the reader say to himself or herself as he closes the book before he falls asleep in the evening. I wonder what's gonna happen now. Then the harvests are over. And I wonder if Ruth's got something going with that Boaz guy. How good?
That Ruth and Naomi Loved one another. How good that they lived in the company of one another. How wonderful that they lived in peace. And unity. with one another.
How wonderful. To live Under the shadow of God's wings. in the companionship of those who have taken refuge. In him. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alastair Begg.
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