Amen. Please be seated. There's a blessing to come and to bring God's word to bear upon us this morning. We continue in our study of the Book of Ruth as I have offered you to preach here at Redeemer.
We left off last time, if you recall, Naomi and Ruth have made it to Bethlehem. We might wonder at what the Lord is going to do. It seems as if there is something a foot in Bethlehem. God seems to be restoring and to be a blessing His people.
We're going to see this morning that both Ruth and Naomi are going to be recipients of that blessing. Yet while we don't behold the blessing but we behold the one who gives. And so would it be that we would behold God this morning. Before I read God's word here from Ruth chapter 2, would you please pray with me?
Oh God, we know that in the beginning you spoke all things into being. And it is by your word, even the living word in Christ that we have been restored. We have been made new. We have been brought from death to life.
And so God we do ask that you would visit us with blessings even this morning. That you would give us your spirit. You might open our eyes that we might see wondrous things from your law. Might we see Christ.
Pray and ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Ruth chapter 2 beginning in verse 1. This is God's word.
Let us give you. Now Naomi had a relative of her husband's, a worthy man of the clan of Elemelek, whose name was Boas. And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him and whose sight I shall find favor. And she said to her, Go my daughter.
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 Boas, who was at the clan of Elemelek. And behold, Boas came from Bethlehem. And he said to the Reapers, The Lord be with you.
And they answered, The Lord bless you. Then Boas said to his young man who was in charge of the Reapers, Who's young woman is this? 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. 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 sure rest. Then Boas said to Ruth, Now listen my daughter. Do not go glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. 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 your thirsty go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn, 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'm a foreigner. But Boas 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 in your native land And came to a people that you did not know before.
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. Then she said, I found favor in your eyes, my Lord, for you have comforted me And spoke kindly to your servant, though I am not one of your servants. And at meal time, Boas 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. When she rose to glean, Boas instructed his young men, saying, Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. And also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her. So she gleaned in the field until evening.
Then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. And she took it up and went into the city. Her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned, and she also brought out and gave her what food she had left over after being satisfied. 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 Boas. And the yummy 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. And Ruth in Moabite said, Besides he said to me, You shall keep close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest. And Naomi said to Ruth, Her daughter-in-law, It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, less than another field you be assaulted. So she kept close to the young men of Boas, Gleaning until the end of the barley and wheat harvest, and she lived with her mother-in-law.
The grass-witters and the flower falls, The word of our God stands forever and ever. Thanks be to God. You know, it may not seem like it, but fall is upon us, right? With temperatures reaching in the 90s yesterday, we might scratch our head and wonder when the rains will come, and when the temperatures will change, but I can assure you that fall is upon us.
And you know the seasons change whenever you see the signs. When you walk into Walmart and you see Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and all at the same time, you know, the seasons are changing. When your Saturdays are dominated by college football, or when you see pumpkins showing up on people's doorsteps, or when you see the foliage start to change, you can tell that fall is in the air, even when it's hot outside. And this morning, what I want you to see from our text is that as Christians, and consequently, when we look to the Scriptures, we also look to our own lives, we see God's great love on display for us.
We see that the Lord, our triune God, our covenant-making God, and covenant-keeping God makes good on His grand promises. And so when we read this morning of this interchange between Ruth and Boas, we should see behind the scenes. We should peek behind the curtain. We should read between the lines.
God is sovereignly orchestrating and establishing even earthly events to bring about the good of His people, but ultimately His glory. And this morning, what we see are the telltale signs of things changing, of God's love going forth, of His blessings being made known. We see the signs. This morning, specifically, we see God's covenantal care.
We see God's covenantal concern, and we see God's covenantal certainty on full display in this passage. Again, as surely as we see the seasons change, we see in our text this morning the telltale signs of God's covenantal love at work. What reminds you that when we speak of God's covenantal love, that promise that He will be our God, and we will be His people. As we see this thread running from Genesis to Revelation, this isn't some esoteric theological thing that we merely think about.
What Ruth tells us is this is God's outworking in us, His providing for us, His blessing us, His meeting our needs, and ultimately sending us on Jesus that we might be redeemed. So understand that this is not merely some theological ivory tower thought, but here we see Ruth and Naomi experiencing God's covenantal love. We do so this morning as well. Now, just to note about the word covenant before we dive into the text, I'll be using that term a lot, and I want to at least attend the definition.
So when we talk about God's covenant, we talk about the way in which God deals with His people, the way in which God deals with His people. It's a promise to bless His people, a pledge to unite them to Himself to the point of even curse and death that the feet should ever fail to provide for them. You can look between the exchange between Yahweh and Abraham, and you can see this. This idea of covenantal love is rooted in who God is, and a promise to be our God and for us to be His people.
A covenant is something like a bond established by God with man which promises blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. So simply, covenant for this morning is the divine way that God interacts with and provides for His people, for their good and for their glory. Or maybe if you know the children's catechism, what is a covenant? But it's a relationship that God establishes with us and guarantees by His word.
And so for example, when we speak of God's covenantal care, it's how God's promise to care for His people works out in their daily lives as He is promised in the Scriptures. It's what biblical narrative provides for us, an opportunity to see God's gracious promise keeping at work in normal everyday life. And He has provided for Ruth, He has provided for Naomi, and surely He will provide for you and for me. So first, I don't want you to see this this morning, our first point.
We see the Lord's covenantal care. The Lord's covenantal care. If you recall previously, Naomi's and Ruth's outlook in Bethlehem is grim. From a worldly standpoint, there is little hope.
And yet we find Ruth's resolve to go and make good on the promises of God to provide. Remember, we had seen last time of this seeming conversion of Ruth, and she puts God's word to test here. Notice that trusting in the Lord's provision for Ruth doesn't necessarily mean sitting around and twilling her thumb and waiting for manna to come from heaven. She's not waiting for quail to appear on the ground.
But surely the Lord supplies graciously in the way that He oftentimes shows forth that He will meet our needs time and time again, even sometimes out of the blue. But here it would seem that Ruth, the Moabitis, is setting her heart to trusting in the Lord's provision. She's going to take God at His word. You know, if we read in the law given at Sinai that God had promised His covenantal care for those that are poor and needy, we see God's compassion for those that are in need.
And so we read that she, Ruth, desires to go glean, which is particularly expressed by the Lord as a specific activity that those are in need are to go and do. So wait for them to find sustenance. Leviticus 19 commands the Israelites saying, 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.
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.
See, gleanings mentioned here in verse 9 are specifically those crops which have fallen to the ground, whether naturally or by harvest, or even those things that have been left behind that the poor and the needy were to have access to. In fact, there's a more direct command given in Deuteronomy 24. When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.
He even tells him, don't go back and get it. Don't go pick up what you've dropped. And so, gleaning is that Old Testament provision to the poor and the needy, to the foreigner, and to the widow, of which Ruth is both. Yet it would seem that the Israelites often did not necessarily comply with the Lord and understand the blessings promised by God, which is again a sign of the times here in the days in which the judges ruled.
We read that there is some hope that Ruth might find a field in which the men who own and work it shall allow her favor and allow her to glean. We read this in the text. However, I want you to see the glory of gleaning and the profound beauty of such an allotment of grace. In fact, I believe that this underscores in a way the grand display of providence that we will shortly witness, that God makes all things happen.
He orders all things according to his will. I want you to imagine yourself in ancient Israelites, widowed and destitute and in need of food. You know God's word. You know his law.
You know that a good Israelite laborer would not go back and pick up whatever crop was dropped or vegetable or grain that had fallen to the ground by whatever means. And so, you search it. You find it. You pick it up.
You eat it. You even see that you take it home and you find yourself nourished in some way. You've been sustained. I want you to take a second and think about this.
Think of all the circumstances or as many as we can, which must have coalesced and come together for you just to eat that little bit of food. The stumble of the harvester with his arms full or a basket teeming, dropping some of his crop or the wind and the rain that the Lord sent which would shake loose that provision on a particular day at a particular time to maintain a particular freshness and in rightness enough at least not to make you sick. That you might find it. That you might eat it.
That you might eat sustain. You know, church, cleaning is a grand display of God's sovereignty and power to ordain even the most seemingly mundane and regular circumstance of your life for the good of his people and for his glory. You know, it seems to be a beautiful depiction of God's grace to his people. And here it wets our appetite and it prepares us for the events that are to follow.
Indeed, it's the means by which Ruth and Naomi are provided for and it's the beginning of this great story of redemption and restoration. I wonder if you heard it from your own kids and I would admit to you that I'm guilty of it myself. Maybe some of you live in an ingredient household. You know what that means.
You might have flour. You might have butter. You might have oil. You might have chocolate chips.
You might have salt. You might have baking powder. You might have other materials that you need. But you don't have cookies, right?
You have to put all those things together before you can have them. And maybe your kids have been like me. You open your pantry and you look in and you go, ah, there's nothing to eat in this house. You know, what's interesting is this attitude is something that we experience and that we express often if we are honest with ourselves.
And when we have this sort of dissatisfaction and we have sort of this discontentment, it really reveals our heart attitude, which fails to recognize and thank the Lord for his normal everyday care for us. You know, our lack of contentment, even for those of us who didn't have pantry stocked or refrigerators teeming with food. I mean, if you look back on those days and see how you got by, have you ever been in days of leanness? And you can express and you can proclaim and you can praise God that you are here today by the very hand of God our Father who establishes his will and ordains all things to come to pass.
Who has put food on your plate in your bellies? Whether that be by providing you food from unsuspected places or whether we get to enjoy fellowship meal after worship today. But here we see out mind and Ruth that our very lives are sustained by the ordinary covenantal care of God. And I wonder sometimes we lose a sense of wonder in all at just how glorious our God is.
And imagine it's something like living in the mountains and seeing it day after day. You get so used to it that you stop taking in its majesty or the beauty. Maybe you have known people who lived on the beach at the coast and day after day they watch the sun set over the horizon. It just becomes another day.
You know, we need to understand that such small details are part of a momentous grace and glory that God has shown us. We see that every difficult situation God has ordered your life and he has provided that you may turn to him to repent of your sin to confess his name as Lord and to follow after him in faithfulness. There's a call here for us to orient ourselves and to humble ourselves before our maker and our sustainer who orders the planets in such a way that we survive and thrive. Who establishes the chemical and geological and biological order of this very planet that we live and might know him.
Church, we might proclaim with the chronicle or yours, oh Lord is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty for all that is in the heavens and the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom of Lord and you are exalted as head above all. And that we might be so amazed at God ordering all things to care for our needs that we might look to Christ who is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. Do you want to behold the glory of God?
Do you want to behold the majesty of God? We'll love it again to look to your ordinary everyday life to see his covenantal care on full display. We beat of your heart that every pump of your blood with every firing of synapses in your brain, the Lord is sustaining you in caring for you and we find this greatly on display in Christ that he's not only met our every physical need, but he's met your every spiritual need in him forever. The mark of God's covenantal care is providing for the needs of his people.
Secondly, we want you to see this morning as the Lord's covenantal concern, not just a covenantal care, but covenantal concern. We see this on display in this interchange between Boaz and Ruth. But I want you to see one thing first. I want you to notice and recognize the way which this scene comes about, the context of this first and faithful meeting of Ruth and Boaz.
In verse three, we may miss the author's intent. So she set out, Ruth set out, and she gleaned in the field after her reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz. She happened to. You and I both know that nothing merely happens with the Lord.
The Hebrew literally reads her chance, chanced upon. There is no happenstance with the Lord. There is no chance. And I think what the author is trying to communicate is divine providence through the eyes of Ruth, through her finite understanding.
Additionally, we read that the author brings to light a specific detail about Boaz, who was of the clan of a limalek. It's here that the Hebrew audience and our Old Testament informed minds will begin to see potentially the Lord's intention for Ruth and for Naomi. It's that faithful chance meeting in a romantic comedy. Or it's that happenstance that just so happens to come to Boaz.
I remember being in Ireland with my wife and we were at the Trinity College Library and I look across the room and walk someone decked out head to toe in Clemson orange. And here I am in the midst of halfway across the world, across the Atlantic. I get to meet someone who lives only about 30 minutes from where we did in Rock Hill. That's not merely a happenstance.
That is God's ordering and ordaining. We did not accidentally bump into each other in Europe. But it was even that was by God's design. Clemson fans are everywhere.
I'm waiting to meet them here in Arkansas. But we understand there's no coincidence when it comes to the Lord. And so we see the Lord's covenantal concern here by this chance meeting of bringing together Ruth and Naomi for the first time and Ruth and Boaz. As she happens upon this field in chapter three, we will see kind of how this continues on, but she happens upon this field and this will be the beginning of the Lord's great work in her life.
But I want you to see something here. What's interesting about this book is we see these characters and these real individuals exemplify and express characteristics of the Lord himself. For better or for worse, we are spitting images of the folks who raised us. And it's always interesting to get to know families, because youth, whether you like it or not, you're a lot like your parents.
Or you can think about it this way. You talk like them. You look like them. You have similar mannerisms and likes and dislikes.
You may reflect your friends that you spend lots of time with. You look a lot like what you love and what you cherish. You look a lot like the ones who raise you and who mold you and who shape you. And so it's no wonder that Boaz here reflects the covenant concern of the Lord.
First, I want you to see that Boaz shows concerns for Ruth's safety. And in verse eight, we have the first interchange between the two. And what is Boaz's first words to Ruth? Listen, my daughter, do not go glean another field or leave this one, but keep close to them, my women.
Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping and go after them. Have it not charge the young men not to touch you. And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn without going into much detail. Can you imagine how Ruth, a widow, a foreigner in her present state could easily become a victim of some sort of attack or some sort of assault?
And so we see here Boaz reflects the covenantal care, the very heart to show concern for his people, to show Ruth. We should see in the Lord's desire for his people to dwell in peace and to dwell in safety, to seek righteousness and faithfulness. And you realize that this is partially the reason for God granting us his law, commanding us to seek righteousness. We are commanded so that we might not only prosper, but that we might also dwell in safety.
Consider the words of David. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple, the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing in the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes, the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.
The rules of the Lord are true and righteous all together. The Lord is establishing our steps, and he seeks our own safety as he would guide us and as he would direct us. When you tell your children not to play in the road or to run to the parking lot, you're concerned for their safety. When you tell your children they must eat their vegetables before they can have their dessert, it's for their well-being.
When you tell your children that they must do their homework and make certain grades for concern for their future. And when the Lord exhorts us against drunkenness, it's for our good and for his glory. When the Lord condemns sexual sin, it's for our good and for his glory. When the Lord commands us to humility and to serve one another, it's for our good and for his glory.
And so we see in this the great wisdom of God to guide and direct our steps. Our great and glorious Father who like Solomon to his son gives wisdom. That we might know his covenant blessings and that we might walk in his steps in his ways. God's commandments are like the roadblock that prevents you from falling to despair because the bridge is out.
God's commandments are like caution, high voltage signs that is penned to the fence warning you not to touch. God's commandments are given for our good and protection, and yet so often we want to stuff our ears and we want to turn away from them. We want to see how close we can get to the edge of that proverbial cliff before we fall. Our knee jerk reaction is how far is too far, not how might I honor the Lord and listen to his commands.
In church there is no safer place for you and I than following after and seeking the revealed will of the Lord by loving him and by doing what he commands. There is no safer place to be than by seeking to do what the Lord has commanded by the power of the Spirit in us. Secondly, what you see here is the Lord gives abundantly according to his covenant promises. We see that the Lord is a good gift giver and there is a sense in which God is not the stingy Father that we have to twist his arm to fill us and to provide for us.
He is certainly not stingy with his grace and his mercy. He is also not stingy with the things of this world. We have this account of Goa as providing bread and wine as a meal. Notice she ate until she was satisfied and she had some leftover.
This allows even her to take food from what had already been reaped and to take it home. She instructed them and harvesting the scatter even more for her to clean from the ground. There is this theme of abundance in this chapter. I love the picture that Sinclair Ferguson paints here of Ruth returning to Naomi.
He argues that there should be a smile on our face at this point. He says here is the young widow who immigrated with probably little more than the clothes on her back. That morning she left the bear cupboards in the home of her Jewish mother-in-law. Now only hours later she statters home with 30 pounds of out and eph of grain over her shoulders.
Like a sack of potatoes or maybe one of those really big bags of dog food. Here is Ruth maybe even comically under the weight of it all stumbling her way back home literally weighed down with the providence. There were providential care and provision of God. You see God's concern is for us to have in his abundance blessing according to his steadfast love.
We see here the covenantal concern and lastly and briefly we see the Lord's covenantal certainty. This is our last point that in the Lord there is covenantal certainty. There seems to be a softening of Naomi's disposition, a recognition of the Lord's care and concern. Here we have Naomi taking in this very clear display of abundance even the leftovers from her meal.
And she says this may he, Boaz, be blessed by the Lord whose kindness has not forsaken the living and the dead. She wishes blessing upon Boaz. I think again here the wheels are turning, the cogs are whirling and Naomi is feeling more of her namesake. Pleasant, less Mara bitter.
For surely we are blessed and joyful when we rejoice in the covenantal faithfulness of God. And in fact throughout this chapter we see this reflaying of blessing. We see this refraying of kindness and it provides a little bit of a current moving the plot forward. It's what moves this plot forward, the love that God has for us.
And verse five, Boaz's reaper say to Pym the Lord bless you, Boaz. Indeed in short order, Boaz will be blessed. He will meet Ruth. And in verse 11, Boaz responds to Ruth's question of why would you serve me and allow me to be here.
He says, the Lord repay you for what you have done. And a full reward given you by the Lord, the God of Israel under whose wings you have come to take refuge. You see this phrase, under whose wings you have come to take refuge is covenantal language. Ruth has been blessed because of her faithfulness to the Lord and Naomi, but even more so the Lord's faithfulness to her.
And here in verses 19 and 20 we have Naomi acknowledging the faithful care and concern of Boaz which reflects that of the Lord. What I want to end our time with this morning is considering the certainty of God's covenantal faithfulness. You see Naomi should not be surprised. Naomi should not be shocked.
And I don't think she is. For God's grace and his mercy, his steadfast love towards us, it never runs dry and it is never fickle. In fact, we know it because the author of Hebrews comments that when the Lord had no greater name to swear by, he swore by his own name to be faithful to his covenant which he has established with us. And surely he was faithful, no matter the cost for Paul writes.
We know that the Lord has greatly lavished upon us grace and mercy in Christ. In him Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us and all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. When commentator writes God's covenantal faithfulness, his loving kindness has been poured out on us all. He has been loyal to his covenant promise, whatever the cost to himself, even when that cost was the death of the Lord.
The cost was the death of his son. Church, through this passage we look upon the cross. We see the most glorious and grand expressions of God's covenantal faithfulness and loving kindness that he would take the punishment of sin upon himself, that he would bear that covenant curse for us, that we might find shelter under his wings, being found in him on the last day. You see Naomi is understanding that she shouldn't doubt the Lord's promises.
Friends, you shouldn't either. Don't doubt the Lord's promises. We wonder if he is ever good or powerful or right or faithful to keep them for surely he has done so in Jesus. And we behold the greatness and the glory of Christ crucified.
We begin to see things like leaning and these happenstance meetings. We begin to see God in full display and glory. That's the one who has loved us, the one who has saved us, the one who has redeemed us, the one who has met every one of our needs and will meet every one of our needs. We see that this morning as we look to Christ.
Lord, we thank you that you would visit us with such a shirring blessing. Oh, God, that you would show us that your love and your care is at work in us and through us, that we see it every day, every moment of our lives. And God, what an exercise it would be for us just to take ten minutes and consider the wonder of your providence, the wonder of your sovereignty to order and ordain all things. And God, would we be humbled?
We cherish you all the more. We love you all the more. We give praise. So, God, would you be with us now as we do that as we would sing unto your name and ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen. Let's sing our advice to the same as we sing our hymn of trust. All must be well.