One of the things that's so difficult
for a fallen man to come to terms with is the character of God. We lost sight of God in the garden
when we fell, just like Elimelech lost sight of God when he took
his family away from the house of bread. Everyone in Bethlehem
survived the famine. Elimelech went away doing his
own thing and doing it in his own way. And yet, in the midst
of all of the darkness and in the midst of all of the sadness,
our God sovereignly reigns and rules. is to bring His people
to Himself. To have, as this Ruth did, have
this meeting with Him alone, personally. And that's exactly
what happened with the woman at the well, and that's exactly
what happens with everyone of God's people when the Lord Jesus
comes and reveals Himself to them. It's always personal. There's no doubt in our story,
in this beautiful picture, that Ruth loved God. And yet one of the problems that
the children of God have is, does God love me? And here in
this picture, in this chapter 3, we actually get a remarkable
picture of the sovereign hand of God and we get a remarkable
picture of his love for his bride as he draws her to himself. It is. We'll just be going briefly
through it, but I just want us to see the picture and I want
us to see, if the Lord would allow, the many, many, many parallels
between this picture and another woman who had lost everything.
That woman of the world, she'd had five husbands. She was born
to a nation that, according to the Jews, were cursed. She was,
in many ways, the most unlikely person in all of Israel to be
the object of God's love. There she was, even amongst the
Samaritans, she was rejected and had to come by herself to
the world in the middle of the day when everyone else went in
the morning and the evening. God saves sinners. The Lord Jesus Christ came into
this world to save sinners and in his salvation of sinners he
actually reveals the glory of his character. We see the glory
of God in how high he is. And we see the glory of God in
how low he stoops. And we see the wonder of the
glory of God in how intimately he deals with his people as he
brings them to himself. And Naomi in this picture represents
the church. And she says in verse one, my
daughter, shall I not seek rest? Isn't this a desire, every one
of God's children? Shall I not seek rest for you? Shall I not seek rest? Shall
I not seek peace, quiet? Shall I not seek a place of contentment
that it may be well with you? And of course, the question is,
how do you find this contentment? And verse two says, now is not
Boaz of our kindred? Naomi had lost absolutely everything. She was destitute. She'd sold
her place. And according to the law of Israel
there was, there was a way, there was a way for someone who was
absolutely destitute, who'd lost everything because of their sin
and their wickedness and their rebellion against God, to have
it returned to them. And it's a glorious picture of
the Lord Jesus Christ. We lost everything. We lost everything
in our fall in our Father Abban, and we lost everything by our
own activities as we came into this world. And it's just through
the work of a kindred, a kinsman redeemer. And where do you find
him? Where is he to be found? Where
do you find the kinsman redeemer? Well, she tells us where he is.
And he's exactly where he was there as he is now. Behold, he
winnoweth barley in the threshing floor. How does he winnow, people
these days? How does he separate? How does
he gather his grain to himself? through the preaching of the
gospel. Wherever the gospel is preached, there is a winnowing
work going on. That's where he is. He's always
amongst his people. He's always in the preaching
of the gospel, revealing himself. That's where he's to be found,
and that's what he is doing. But also, the time of winnowing
is the time, the time that love is revealed. It's the time that
fruitfulness is gathered. And you can think of the Lord
Jesus Christ gathering his fruit to himself. And so her advice
to her, it's an act of repentance, isn't it? Wash thyself therefore,
verse three, and anoint thee, and put thy raiment upon thee,
and get thee down. You get down. You get down. You come down. You come down,
is what she did. always in our meeting with the
Lord Jesus Christ. If he's going to be exalted,
you have to get down. And he's brought her down, hasn't
he? He's brought her down to this
place, but now he brings her to this special time of love
in this place. Get thee down to the floor, and
make thyself not known to the man, until he shall have done
eating and drinking. And when it shall be, when he
lieth down, thou shalt mark the place. You shall mark the place.
Where is he? He's in his winnowing floor.
What's he doing? He's winnowing. He's winnowing
this world through the preaching of the gospel. And you mark the
place. You mark the place. I love what
Psalm 37 says, Mark the perfect man, take note of the perfect
man, that's the Lord Jesus Christ. You mark the place where he shall
lie, and thou shalt go in and uncover his feet, and lay thee
down, lay thee down, and he will tell you what thou shalt do. You go in, you uncover his feet,
And He'll tell you what thou shalt do. He'll tell you what
He's able to do for sinners. He'll tell you what you need
to do. And what she has to do at the end of the chapter is
just wait. She has to wait as He does the
work of redeeming her. Verse five, and all she said
unto her, all that thou sayest to me I will do. And she went
down, she went down unto the floor and did according to all
that her mother-in-law bade her. And when Boaz had eaten and drunk
and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the
heap of corn. She came softly and uncovered
his feet. You might recall the women who
sat at the Lord Jesus' feet Mary sat at his feet, and the Lord
Jesus says it's a good thing to do to sit at his feet, and
that prostitute in Luke's gospel came into that meeting with the
Pharisee that had treated the Lord Jesus with contempt, and
she sat at his feet, and she wet his feet with her hair, and
she anointed them with the anointment. It's a good place to be, isn't
it? To be at his feet, to be at his feet. Verse eight, and it came to pass.
Don't you love that word? It came to that phrase? It came
to pass. It came to pass. What comes to
pass? Everything that God ordained
from the foundation of the world, everything that comes to pass
in this world is always coming to pass because of the sovereign
hand of our God. That's what it is for him to
be God, isn't it? I find it really annoying when
I come across people who deny the deity of the Lord, professing
believers who deny the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ is God. Jesus Christ is God. Therefore
he does as he wills in the armies of heaven and amongst the inhabitants
of the earth, and none, none can say to him, what are you
doing? None can question him. You can't stand against our God
and not lose enormously. Let's go on to verse eight. And
it came to pass at midnight, God meets his people in the darkness
of this world, in the darkness of their sin, that the man was
afraid and turned himself, and behold, a woman lay at his feet. And he said, who art thou? Who art thou? When you meet with
the Lord Jesus Christ as he did with the woman on the well, who
are you? Go and bring your husband, he
said, to her. She said, I haven't got one. Who are you, Jacob? What's your
name, Jacob? I'm a deceiver, I'm a supplanter,
that's my name. When you meet the Lord Jesus
Christ, as the woman of the world is, and as Ruth does, you'll
actually meet yourself. Who are you? I love what she
said. I am Ruth, verse nine. I am Ruth, thine handmaiden.
Spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaiden, for thou art
a near kinsman. Spread your wings. the wings of the covenant God
of Israel, hadn't she? Spread your skirt over me. It's a glorious picture, isn't
it, of the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ has a bride in this
world, and the glory of salvation is his union with his bride,
that he and his bride are one. Spread your skirt over me. There
are two words that describe the gospel most succinctly, and they
are substitution and satisfaction. Substitution, the Lord Jesus
Christ standing in our place, the Lord Jesus Christ and us
being one. And satisfaction, God saw the
travail of his soul and he's satisfied. God is perfectly satisfied
with the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he speaks
blessing to me. Let's go down to verse 11. And
now, my daughter, fear not. I will do to thee all that thou
requirest. She'd expressed her need for
him to cover her, to cover her with the robe of his righteousness. She'd expressed her desire for
union with him. I'll do all that you require,
all that you require. What was Naomi's request for
her? I'll seek rest for you that it
might be well with you. But our God, our God, to deal
with us, has to honour every aspect of His revealed character,
and He must honour His law. He says in verse 12, Now I know
it's true that I am a near kinsman, thy near kinsman, howbeit there
is a kinsman nearer than me. A kinsman nearer than Boaz. Brothers and sisters, to the
law of God. We owe the law of God absolute,
perfect obedience in thought and in word and in deed. And the Lord Jesus Christ cannot
and will not save anyone apart from the fulfilling and the honouring
of his holy law. Boaz says, Tarry, stay here this
night, and it shall be in the morning, that if he will perform
unto thee the part of a kinsman, then let him do it, but if he
will not, then I will do the part of a kinsman to thee, as
the Lord liveth. And she stayed there, she lay
at his feet, and they rose up early in the morning, and he
protected her honour. Ruth had taken an enormous risk,
hadn't she, that night. She'd come to the threshing floor
and she had one thing, she had one thing that was esteemed in
the eyes of the people, that she was a virtuous woman. And
if she had been seen at the threshing floor with Boaz, all of that
would have been gone. She took a risk, brothers and
sisters, she took an enormous risk that night. But no risk
we ever take to be in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ and
to honour him will ever be seen as a risk that costs us anything.
They'll not be ashamed, those that trust him and rely on him.
And he loads her up with a veil. He loads her up with a veil.
with the fruits of that harvest as a pledge that there's much,
much more to come. And I love the conversation he
had with the mother. When she came, verse 16, when
she came to her mother-in-law, she said, who art thou my daughter? And she told her all that the
man had done to her. And she said, these six measures
of barley he gave me. And he said to me, go not empty
unto thy mother-in-law. And then she said, this is faith,
isn't it? This is the faith of God's children,
isn't it? What do you do? What do you do?
You sit still. You sit still. People in religion are always
trying to get people to be busy, to be busy, to be busy. We're
actually saying to people, sit and wait on the Lord. There'll be plenty of things
that'll happen in the midst of all of that, but if you wait for
him to do as he has promised, you will wait in peace and you'll
be satisfied in joy at the end of it all. Sit still, my daughter. got a glorious description of
our Lord Jesus Christ. Until thou know how the matter
will fall, for the man will not be in rest until he hath finished
the thing this day. And what was the thing he had
to finish? The Lord Jesus Christ had to go to the gate of the
city, and the ten elders, of course, are a picture of the
law. And he, the Lord Jesus Christ, commands them to sit. And the law takes, but it cannot
give life. The law commands, but gives no
ability to obey its command. The law says, I'll save you if
you keep me. And you break every tiny one
of God's commandments every moment you breathe on this earth. We
cannot keep the law. Through the law, there is the
knowledge of sin. But someone went to that law, didn't he?
He honoured and obeyed that law absolutely perfectly. While Naomi
and Ruth are sitting at home, the Lord Jesus Christ goes to
that law and says, you can have me, you can have my perfect righteousness. He's the only person that ever
walked on this earth that kept one of God's laws, and he kept
them perfectly. He obeyed them from his heart,
his soul, his mind, and his strength. And on Calvary's tree he bore
all of the sins of all of God's people, and he suffered all of
the curse and all of the wrath that a holy law of God demanded
of him for all the sins of all of his people, because he was
united with them. he died on Calvary's tree because
God made him who knew no sin, he'd never sinned himself, but
such was his union with his people that when they sinned he owned
their sins as his. And that's what he says in the
scriptures again and again and again. It's a glorious picture,
isn't it? Ruth and Naomi sitting at home,
and who does all the work? Who does all the work to honour
the law? Who does all the work to suffer all the wrath of God
on both tables of the law, both in terms of a perfect obedience
to it the Lord Jesus Christ kept at every little tiny jot and
tittle. And in suffering the punishment
of God, he kept it for his people in such a way that the wrath
of God says, it's finished, it's finished. And he comes back. The law says,
I cannot redeem. The law can curse, but it cannot
redeem. And Boaz, said unto the elders in
verse 9 of chapter 4, You are witnesses this day that I have
bought all that was a limericks. The Lord Jesus Christ bought
the field that he could have the pearl at great price. He
bought this world, he owns this world, and he rules this world
that he could have his bride out of this world. I've bought
them. I've bought them. He's redeemed them. Did he get
what he paid for? Of course he did. Of course he
did. The transaction of salvation is a transaction between God
the Father and God the Son. He got exactly what he bought. I have bought all that was Alimelech's
and all that was Chilian's and Marlon from the hand of Naomi. Moreover, Ruth the Marbitess,
the wife of Marlon, I have purchased to be my wife. If you're the
bride of Christ, he's purchased you. I've purchased to be my
wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance."
And so here we have the Lord Jesus Christ pictured so beautifully
in his love, in his redemptive work for his people. And Ruth,
who knew something of her love for God, comes to know God's
love for her. It's a glorious picture. I want
us to picture what happened the morning after the wedding. If you believed lots of people
today, they would say that when Boaz got up the next morning,
he would say, okay, Ruth, here are the rules. I'll just give
you 10 simple rules to obey me. This is what you must do. These
are the things you must do. It was offensive, wasn't it?
Just as it's offensive to put God's people back under the law. Faith works by love. Faith works by love, not by rules
and regulations. He who is love reveals himself
as love to his people. He's loved us, he says, I have loved thee, Jeremiah 31.3,
I've loved thee with an everlasting love. I've loved you everlastingly,
he says. Therefore, With loving kindness
have I drawn thee. And he draws us to himself. He
makes us to know what we are. He makes us to know what he is.
He makes us to know the power and the wonder of his redeeming
love for his people. May the Lord bless his words
to our hearts and may we see in this some pictures of what
is happening at the well in Samaria and what's happening in this
world right now. Amen.