Preached in Markham Baptist Church, August 5, 2007

Today in our survey series we come to one of the most beautiful stories told in the Old Testament - the book of Ruth.  It is only four chapters long yet it contains more wonderful truth about the nature of God’s love for you and me that can be contained in all the world’s libraries. 

It is a story of redemption.  That is a theological word that describes how God has purchased us out of the state of sin and death and brought us into His Kingdom of holiness and life.  When we read about redemption, we often think of two words - power and purchase.  We see God’s power in redemption illustrated for us in the book of Exodus – God is able to redeem His people from slavery by His mighty hand.   We see God’s purchase in redemption in the New Testament – in 1 Peter we read that “For we know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” (1 Peter 1:18-19)

And this idea of purchase is echoed in the letters of Paul. (see Ephesians 1:7) So we understand that a transaction has occurred, the price for our sins has been paid.  Christ’s death is the price of our redemption and we freed.  

So we read in Galatians 4:3-5, “So also, when we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world.  But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.”  

Power and purchase.  But there is another aspect of redemption that is often overlooked, and the book of Ruth emphasizes this for us and that is that behind the power and the act of purchase is God’s love. 

You are redeemed because of God’s power.  You are redeemed because God paid the price for you in Christ -  but this was not a cold business transaction. Your eternal situation has been transformed because of God’s great love for you. This small book of Ruth has this majestic theme – you are loved by God.  You may think you are small and insignificant, but you are loved by God and He seeks to redeem you.  I know that sounds like a cliché, but it is the truth and as we come to this table this morning and celebrate the redemption that is ours in Christ, please know that you are loved - as an individual.  God loves you so much that He did not count the cost, did not add up a profit and loss sheet when thinking about your redemption – but in love He gave himself for you in the person of Christ on a cross.

So the book of Ruth.  As we open the book we discover when these events take place - “In the days when the judges ruled”.  It is one of the dark times of Israel’s history as it is described in the previous book just before Ruth - the book of Judges.  It is a time when God has brought His people into the promised land but the people of God do not want God to rule over them.  They want Him to rescue them out of trouble – and so He sends them many great warriors (judges) like Samson and Gideon and Deborah – but they do not want God to rule them.  So it is a dark time of rebellion and war and idolatry.  

But in the midst of this dark time we have this beautiful love story.  God’s redemption is at work.  Your life may dark and filled with depression and difficulty and trouble, but don’t ever doubt that God’s redeeming love for you has stopped.  He is still at work.  And He calls us to trust Him in faith. 

If you read the book of Judges you will read a refrain over and over again – “In those days Israel had no king.”  No king, no king, no king – you hear it over and over again in the book of Judges.

If you turn to the last word in the book of Ruth, what is the last word in the book of Ruth?  David.  Now there is going to be a king in Israel, now there will be one chosen by God and sent by God.  Here will be a man after God’s own heart.  No King, no king, no king – God will bring His people to their king.   It’s the story of redemption.   It is our story – of how God in love brings us out of a dark and lost situation to the feet of our redeemer and King – Jesus Christ, the one in the line of David. 

There are three parts to this book.  The first part tells us of how Ruth is brought to her redeemer. 

She is a woman who is hopelessly lost.  Verse 4 of chapter one tells us that Ruth is a Moabite.  This is not good.  The Moabites earned a place of infamy in Israelite history when they hired a sorcerer by the name of Balaam (Numbers 21-24) to speak a curse against the Israelites.  But when this failed they easily seduced the people of Israel into worshipping their idols (Numbers 25).  As a result the law of God says in Deuteronomy 23:3  “… no Moabite or any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord even down to the tenth generation.”  No Moabite for 10 generations is allowed to come and worship the living God – that’s a long time! 

Ruth is not only lost, she is hopelessly lost.  Between her and God stood the law of God that could not be erased, it could not be changed – unless – unless the one who wrote the law did something to meet the demands of the law. 

So the story progresses to show us how God – in His great love brought Ruth to the foot of him who could meet the righteous demands of the law – her redeemer.

John Phillips suggests that there are five links in a chain that bring Ruth to her redeemer.  The first link in the chain is a famine. 

Ruth 1:1 - “in the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land”.  Isn’t God good?  Here is little Ruth completely separated from God – excluded from citizenship in Israel and a foreigner to the covenants of the promise without hope and without God (see Ephesians 2:12) – she was an object of wrath, (See Ephesians 2:3) separated from God until the 10^th generation yet because of His great love for her God who is rich in mercy used an event in a foreign land, which Ruth knew nothing about, and about which she could have probably not cared less to bring her to the feet of her redeemer. 

Perhaps that is part of your story, it is often how God works.  He uses an event which we know nothing about, about which we could probably not care less to bring us to the feet of our redeemer. 

Sometimes we come to Christ and it is calculated and we know the path but often we are brought to Christ as a sovereign loving act of God over which we have no control.  We like to think we had control over it – we talk about finding Jesus – as if he was lost and needed finding – we like to think it was all our doing. 

But the truth is that somewhere back in history in a foreign land and culture, God was at work on a hill called Calvary through His Son Jesus Christ.  Then He set the whole machinery of the universe in motion in order to bring you face to face with your Redeemer – God’s Son, Jesus Christ.   

For Ruth the first link in the chain that brought her to her redeemer, a famine.

The second link in the chain was a family.

The text tells us that Elimelech, his wife Naomi and two sons move away from the promised land and find a nice little back split in Moab.  Now the story is filled with all sorts of ironies.  The first irony is that Elimelech’s name means, “My God is king.”  Here is a man whose name speaks of God’s sovereignty yet by his actions is proving that God is not king in his life whatsoever.  He leaves the promised land where God has promised to provide for His people and meet with His people and moves into the most godless, cursed nation that he can find.

Elimelech denies the very sovereignty of God in his life by moving from the place where God had chosen to put his name.  He had no business moving to Moab.  

The second irony we read at the end of verse 2 that they come from Bethlehem – which means “house of bread”.  During a famine he leaves a city called the house of bread! 

I’m sure he had lots of excuses – “You don’t know how hard it was to find food, even in a town called the house of bread.  It is an economic depression you know!  I do intend to come back some day soon. I have to do this for my family.”

He denied the sovereignty of God in his own life, took his future into his own hands, moved his family away from the place where God had put His name, where He met with his people, walked out of fellowship with God and went down to Moab just to make some money.  And he never came back and the sad thing is what he thought he was doing for his family for their benefit was actually harming them.  He lost his family in Moab.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Ruth got to know the family very well and ended up marrying the oldest son Mahlon.  And it is safe to assume that while this family wasn’t the poster family for the Israelite nation, they must have taught Ruth about the living, redeeming God.  They must have taught her the great truths of God’s redeeming power as displayed at the exodus - how He had the people of God smear the blood of the lamb on their door posts so that death would pass over them.  They must of taught her about how God parted the sea and enabled them to walk across on dry land.  They would have taught her all about the celebration of the Passover and how they gave thanks for the redemption that was theirs because of God. 

And I can imagine her listening to it all and saying, “I wish I could be redeemed. I wish I knew this redeeming God of yours. I would so love to live under His gracious rule and know His full favour.  How will I ever be saved from this curse? I’m a Moabite.”  

Isn’t that often how God works to bring people to Himself?  He will introduce someone who knows about God’s love and who will explain how Christ’s death removes all our sin through faith.  The people may not be all that they should be, but at least they know God and know about the Redeemer.  It is a link in somebody’s life to bring them to Christ.

The third link in the chain is a funeral.  In fact, in the span of 10 years there are three funerals.  First Elimelech dies, then Ruth’s husband dies, then her brother-in-law dies.   This leaves Naomi, Ruth and Orpah destitute. 

In verse 21 Naomi describes her situation with these words, “I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty.”  I think that’s a powerful verse, for it describes what needs to happen in each of our lives.  God has to empty us out of our self-dependence and self-reliance.  There has to be a funeral in our lives – we’ve got to recognize our poverty.  For some of us our pride needs to die, or our apathy, or our dependence upon religion.  All that needs to die so that we recognize that we need a Redeemer.   

A funeral.      

The fourth link in the chain that brought Ruth to her redeemer is faith.  After her husband and sons had died Naomi turns to her daughters in law and says, “Girls, I’ve heard that God is working in the promised land.  I’ve decided to go home.”  And with that she gives them each a kiss on the cheek and heads out the door.

But Ruth clings to Naomi and in one of the most wonderful confessions of faith says at verse 16, “Don’t urge me to turn back from you.  Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.  Your people will be my people and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.  May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” 

This wasn’t a passing phase with Ruth.  It was a deep-seated faith that Naomi’s God had the key to life and she had to discover this God for herself.

It takes faith to come to our Redeemer.  There will be many obstacles that will stand in your way, that will oppose your coming to the Redeemer.  And it takes faith to continue on when the world says stop.   

It takes faith to cling to our Redeemer.  There will be many who will say give up believing in God and eternal life through faith in His Son.  Give up living for Him – come live like us, enjoy life like we do – come give up that holy living – stop praying – stop worshipping on a Sunday, come shop with us, come play with us, come be with us.  And it takes faith to say, “No - I want God as my God.  I will not go back to the old way of living.”  

It takes faith – and the book of Ruth shows us what God can do with one ordinary person who does nothing extraordinary by the world’s standards but she has faith in Him – because of her faith she is the one who would further the line of David and ultimately the line of Jesus Himself. Read the geneology of Jesus in Matthew 1 and you’ll know what I’m saying. 

If any of you feel that you are insignificant, that God cannot use you, that your job is a deadend that the light at the end of the tunnel has gone out – God is calling you to have faith in Him and He will look after the results.   

A famine, a family, a funeral, a faith, the last link in the chain that brought her to her redeemer was a field.

In chapter two we see Naomi and Ruth having arrived in Bethlehem but they are very poor.  They have nothing.  So Ruth says at verse 2, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain.”  This is possible because the Mosiac law stipulated that when harvesting the people of God were to leave the edges of the field unharvested (Leviticus 19:9) and anything they did not pick up the first time the scythe went down the field, they were to leave behind for the poor, the alien and the widow (Deuteronomy 24:19).

And you can see Ruth in your mind’s eye leave the little shack in which they live and she is looking for a field to enter.  She doesn’t know which one she should enter. After all, she knows what the Israelites think of the Moabites so she is hesitant – and she almost turns to go back home – but she doesn’t; she goes into a field. And all the angels in heaven are watching and God is watching and like He has so many times before God nudges his angels and says, “Watch this.”  Of all the fields that Ruth could have chosen Ruth chooses the one field that belongs to the man who is able to redeem her. 

The world calls it luck, but we believers don’t believe in luck, we call it providence.  It means that God’s hand is invisibly at work guiding us to the place where He wants us to be as we have faith in Him.

Ruth goes into the field of Boaz, her redeemer.  Boaz is struck with Ruth - he is inspired by her kindness to her mother in law (2:11) by her loyalty (2:11) and blesses her with an abundance of food.

Having been brought to her redeemer, the second great part of the book tells us how Ruth is taught about her redeemer.   John Phillips says that when Ruth got back from the harvest on that first day, I can see her come through the door, staggering under the weight of this great big pile of barley and she dumps it all out on the kitchen floor and she says, “Hello Mom, I’m home.”

And Naomi comes out running, “How did you do, Ruth?  How did you do?” And she sees all that stuff and she’s shocked and says, “Where did you get all that? I’ve seen widows glean before but they never come home with that.”  I imagine that she thought the worst of Ruth, that her old Moabite habits had gotten the best of her. And that she had been in the bar and not in the field.  “Where did you get all that?”

“Well you see, Mom,” says Ruth, “I met a man today.”

“You met a man???? What do you mean you met a man?”

That was worse.  I mean in that day and age, young women didn’t go around meeting young men.  That kind of thing was arranged by the family.

“Met a man? What’s his name?”

“O mother I will never forget his name. His name is Boaz.”

And immediately the light went on in Naomi’s head and at once she began to teach Ruth two important truths.  She taught her her relationship with Boaz, and she taught her her rest in Boaz. 

As soon as she heard the name Boaz Naomi says at verse 20, “He is one of our kinsman redeemers.”

And Ruth would say, “What?  I thought he was simply a nice man.”

And Naomi said, “Yes, yes he is a nice man, but he is more – he is a kinsman redeemer.  Let me explain.” 

And we can see Naomi open her Scriptures and turn to the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and say “The law of God states…”

“O I know about the law of God,” says Ruth, “It says that I am not allowed to enter into the assembly of the Lord”

“That’s true” says Naomi, “But it also states that if a woman’s husband dies that the next of kin is to marry the woman in order to raise up children and keep the man’s name alive.  This next of kin was to aquire the deceased man’s property and keep it in the family.  All of this is out lined in Leviticus 25:25-34.  And Deuteronomy 25:5-10.”

“There are some stipulations – the kinsman redeemer must be related by blood to those he redeems.  He must be able to pay the price for the redemption – that is, there must be no mortgage on the house or any other debts.  He must be free himself of all debt – obviously or he would not be capable of redeeming the property.  And he must be willing to redeem. 

“This man Boaz is your very close relative – he is your kinsman redeemer.” 

Isn’t that the message of the gospel that we celebrate every Christmas?  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ.  He stepped out of all the beauty of heaven in order that He might be our kinsman.  Only a kinsman could redeem.  And because we could become no kin of His, He became kin of ours. 

Then Naomi taught Ruth about her rest in her kinsman redeemer.  In chapter three she tells Ruth that she doesn’t need to work any more.  She doesn’t need to glean in the fields any more.  All you need to do is place yourself at his feet and look up at him and say, “I am yours, would you redeem me?”

That’s exactly what Ruth does.  She lays at the feet of Boaz and asks him in verse 9 of chapter 3, “Spread the corner of your garment over me.”  There is nothing untoward about this.  Nothing inappropriate in this.  She is simply saying, “Cover me with your protection, cover me with your redeeming power.”

Now part of this was an act of grace on Ruth’s part.  Again we need to understand the customs and the laws of the day.  The law stated that she could take him before a public court of elders and say this man is my kinsman redeemer.  And it would all be very public and possibly embarrassing.  Instead Ruth goes to him and asks him in private – if you would like to redeem me, I accept the offer.  She is giving Boaz the chance to reject her.  That’s why Boaz responds so thankfully in verse 10 and says, “The Lord Bless you, my daughter, This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier.” 

But it is also an act of humility.  She could have dug in her heels, couldn’t she? So many do when it comes to accepting the Redeemer.  She could have said, “Why should I humble myself?  Why should I bring myself to lay down at his feet?  Who does he think he is? Sure big kinsman redeemer – well, I can get on just fine without him thank you. I’m not going to do that.” 

But she didn’t - she humbled herself and placed herself at his feet and she found rest in her redeemer. 

It is that way for all those who humble themselves at the feet of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.  What bothers you?  Are you haunted by your sin?  Are you bothered by guilt and a conscience that just won’t quit?  Do you know that when you confess your sin to Jesus Christ He takes it all away and cleanses you so that you are brought into His glorious rest?  This is what He says, “Come to me all you who are weak and burdened and I will give you rest.” 

Having been brought to her redeemer, having been taught about her redeemer we see the last movement of the book of how Ruth is bought by her redeemer.

In chapter 3 Ruth accepts Boaz’ proposal.    Boaz says that there is another kinsman redeemer who is closer to Ruth than he is.  “First thing in the morning if he wants to redeem, good; let him redeem.  But if he is not willing, as surely as the Lord lives I will do it.”   Ruth accepts the proposal.

Then we see Boaz’ single-minded purpose.  “As surely as the Lord lives I will do it,” he says.  And Naomi says at verse 18, “This man will not rest until the matter is settled today.” 

What drives this man?  Why will he not rest until the matter is settled?  He sees a bargain?  No. He has a high sense of duty?  Perhaps.

What really drives this man to redeem Ruth is love.  He loves her.  He has showered her with blessing.  He has recognized her as a person of worth and loves her with an undying passion. 

It is what drives our Redeemer in His relationship with you and me, you know.  He loves you.  He loves you so much that it doesn’t even matter if you don’t love Him - He is willing to give His life for you.  He loves you so much that He has already showered you with blessings.  He recognizes you as a person of worth and loves you with an undying passion.

There is a single-minded purpose about Boaz – he has his eyes set on Ruth and is not about to give up the issue easily.  With single-minded purpose Boaz sets about purchasing Ruth.  

There is another who could possibly redeem Ruth.  So the next morning Boaz goes to the city gates, where the elders are gathered.  This group is like Judge Judy.  They are the public court – the places where decisions are made for the whole community.  And in front of this court Boaz says to this nameless relative – “Have I got a deal for you – being the next of kin it’s possible for you to redeem the property of Elimelech.  You could redeem it right here and now and it would all be yours.”  And the next of kin says – at verse 4, “I will buy it.”

And Boaz says, “Wonderful, but you also know that the day you purchase it you also get what’s behind curtain number 2.” 

“What’s behind curtain number 2?”

“Well, Ruth the Moabitess of course.  You have to marry her and continue the name of the house of Elimlech.”

And the man says, “Sorry I’m not going to take that deal. I have no interest what so ever in forfeiting my name so that the name of Elimlech can continue.”  And he says to Boaz, “It’s all yours.”  And he signs off the deal by removing his sandal, an old way of saying, I’m done with it.

And Boaz says, Great.  I’ve got it.   And he seals the deal saying, “Today the property of Elimelech belongs to me as well as Ruth.  In order to maintain the name of the dead with his property so that his name will not disappear from among his family or from the two records.”

Isn’t that the result of redemption?  When you were redeemed by Jesus Christ your name will not disappear from among the family of God - you will live on forever in the house of the Lord as one of His children.    All because of our Redeemer’s single-minded purpose and His loving purchase.

Finally, notice after Ruth is redeemed and she gives birth to a son named Obed, notice who gets the praise at verse 14 -Naomi says, “Praise be to the Lord who this day has not left you without a kinsman redeemer.”

Is that your testimony?   Do you recognize the links in the chain that have brought you to the feet of your Redeemer?  Have you been taught about your Redeemer so that you know that He is near of kin to you, that you may find rest in Him? 

Do you know that you have been bought by Him not with gold or silver but by His precious blood?  Have you accepted his proposal?  Do you know that you have been purchased by Him?

Then give Him praise!  Sing to Him in joy and thanksgiving – for you have been redeemed!

Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - August 2007

ENDNOTES:

1. John Phillips, Exploring the Scriptures, (U.S.A. Loizeaux Brothers, 1993). 

2. I was also helped by a lecture by John Phillips given at the Stephen Olford Centre for Biblical Preaching delivered in 1995. 

[Home] [Coming Up] [Programs] [Sermons] [About Us] [Contact Us]