Dennis Tuuri

All flesh shall see the token. We’ll be talking today about the book of Ruth. We’ll turn there in just a minute for the scripture reading. We’ll begin reading in the first chapter, the first few verses. But I want to do an overview of the book of Ruth. Ruth herself is a picture that all flesh indeed shall be recipients of the great mercy and kindness of our Lord God. Ruth is an advent story, a longing, a waiting for something to happen, for difficulties to be reversed, for emptiness to be filled, for God’s wing of grace and mercy to be put over his people once more.

And ultimately an advent story speaking of the advent of the king to come. First David, but then the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ as well. May we hear the herald’s voice crying to us in the book of Ruth to prepare our hearts for the celebration of the Christmas season and for rejoicing in what God has accomplished as pictured in this wonderful story. We go to Bethlehem in the book of Ruth. As we’ll go to Bethlehem, so to speak next week, I’ll be speaking on the four songs of Christmas from the Gospel of Luke, great advent of the Lord Jesus Christ at the house of bread.

Bread to feed the whole world. In the book of Ruth though, the situation is different in Bethlehem. Please stand and we’ll begin reading in Ruth chapter 1 beginning at verse one. Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem, Judah, went to dwell in the country of Moab. He and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech. The name of his wife was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem, Judah.

And they went to the country of Moab and remained there. Then Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left, and her two sons. Now they took wives of the women of Moab. The name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth. And they dwelt there about ten years. Then both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman survived, her two sons, and her husband. Then she arose with her daughters-in-law that she might return from the country of Moab. For she also had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited his people by giving them bread.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your scriptures. We thank you for this wonderful, mysterious, awe-inspiring time of year. A meditation on the thing that is incomprehensible, the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, the reversal of the world’s direction, Lord God, that happened definitively two thousand years ago and which we are the recipients of these glad Lord’s day mornings.

Prepare our hearts, Father, in this last week of Advent for celebrating the incarnation of our savior and also looking forward to his coming again, his second coming, Lord God, when all things will be brought to perfection. We pray to that end you would bless the scripture to our use today, Lord God. May your spirit transform our lives through it. Make us joyous, make us filled with awe at what you accomplish through your purposes. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. We’re on a brief hiatus from the book of Hebrews. Spending some time here in the month of December focusing on Advent, the season of the year when we look forward to a celebration of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Advent is among other things a remembering of what Jesus has done and a preparation. We have the great promises of the Old Testament fulfilled and the coming of Jesus Christ two thousand years ago.

We have the herald John the Baptist crying out to prepare the way of the Lord. And there’s a sense in which the Advent season is a time of preparation of our hearts, a reconsecration, I guess we could say, as we look forward to the coming of the new year and a celebration of the Lord Jesus Christ. We of course have that every Lord’s day. We prepare for the advent of Christ in the context of his ministration to us by the Holy Spirit.

Song of Songs was our text last week and we looked at this wonderful love story that was described for us there picturing the greater love story of Jesus and his bride. No doubt today we turn to another love story that of Ruth and Boaz and we’ll see there as well you know foreshadowings of what will happen when the Lord Jesus Christ comes. So we’ll look as an overview of the book of Ruth today. Last week though in the Song of Songs we saw that at the middle of that book there’s this great marriage that happens and the effect upon the wife that she comes to a place of peace in that seventh concluding section that we dealt with specifically last week that forms the basis for the watts version of those texts from the Song of Songs that we sing we’ve sung now as the song of the month “Seal Me Upon Thine Arm.” We saw that the concluding section begins with the bride leaning, reposing as it were in peace upon her husband coming up from the wilderness. But the conclusion of that book and that section is the wise saying, you know, “Come let us flee away,” come back and just as the book of Revelation closes with the prayer “Come quickly, Lord.”

So the Song of Songs points us beyond the immediate marriage of Solomon and his bride to the marriage of Jesus and his bride and his coming, but then beyond that to his second coming as well. So Advent’s a time when we recognize that while the fullness, the definitive turning of the world has happened two thousand years ago, there is a culmination of that and a perfection and a completion of that at the end of time with the return of Jesus Christ.

We are, as some have said, in a perpetual marriage feast period of history. The marriage celebration has occurred. The Lord Jesus Christ has come. Vows have been exchanged. The marriage feast, the reception has begun, but the consummation of all things awaits us with the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. His second advent is always a part of what happens, a celebration of that and a preparation of that during every Advent season.

And so we look forward to that. Now, you know, the celebration of Advent is who knows when it started. Some say St. Nicholas started it. Some say St. Gregory. It’s probably at least goes back to the sixth century or earlier. Why four weeks? Well, we don’t really know that either. Four seems to be a number of completion and wholeness and stability. There were four thousand years of human history leading up to the first advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so some think the church chose the four for that reason. There are four gospels. There’s four seasons to the year. And as we look at the Advent wreath, we can sort of see the light of the Lord Jesus Christ and the seasons of the year circling around the grace of God. In the center, of course, is the Son himself, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we have those kind of images at the season of Advent. One of the great Advent songs that of course we sing in this church and most of the church does sing is “O Come Emanuel.”

And I wanted to mention the origins of that and spend just a few minutes here talking about that and sort of again explaining what we’re doing in the Advent season and some of the significance of it for the church. Since at least the ninth century, “O Come, O Come Emanuel” has been sung by the church. It’s that old. Now, the version we sing isn’t that old. The version we sing has been rearranged some. The early church in the final week of Advent, the last seven days would recite what are known as the O antiphons or the greater O antiphons.

“Oh desire of nations, oh king, oh rod of Jesse”—oh not as a the letter O but O, you know, remarking upon the greatness of these titles of Jesus. So there were these seven O antiphons meant that the choir or the choir and the people would sing these antiphons these statements and then a response that was written for them back and forth. And these seven antiphons were sung the last seven days leading up to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The celebration of that is at Christmas. And the seven antiphons would be sung throughout those seven weeks, seven days rather. And at the end of each of those, they’d sing the Magnificat. So the culmination of the seven O antiphons was the great song of Mary that we learned and maybe we’ll sing again one year perhaps next year in our worship service. “My soul have my soul have magnified the Lord.” So the great song of Mary and I’ll be talking on that next week as we speak of those four wonderful songs found in Luke’s gospel.

The seven antiphons track history. And so, I’ve got on your second page of your notes, there’s a version of these seven antiphons and their responses. And the verses, probably not the original verses, surely not, but the verses of “O Come Will Come Emanuel” in their original order. Probably in the thirteenth century, they were rearranged. The tune we know now probably goes back to the thirteenth century, a plain song, so to speak.

And the rearrangement of the verses and the dropping of a couple probably happened in the twelfth, thirteenth century. Modern versions of the nineteenth century. But originally there were seven verses that tracked the seven O antiphons as part of the final week of the Advent celebration. Now in the handout I’ve provided for you I’ve listed the Latin term. Remember the liturgy was in Latin. So the first O antiphon is “Oh Wisdom, oh holy word of God you govern all creation with your strong yet tender care. Come and show your people the way to salvation.”

This is a reference to Wisdom as the creating being of the world. Wisdom is carved out through seven pillars. Jesus Christ is Wisdom incarnate and he is the creator of the world. And so the first title of Jesus of these seven titles is Wisdom. And in the Latin “Sapientia” was the Latin term. I’m probably slaughtering the pronunciation of that, but that was the term for wisdom. The second O antiphon we’re a little more familiar with, “Oh sacred Lord of ancient Israel, who showed yourself to Moses.”

And we’re familiar with this lyric. “Oh come, O come thou lord of might who to thy tribes on Sinai’s height in ancient times did give the law.” We sing that particular verse. And “Adonai” is the Latin term for Lord. And so we have creation. And then we have the marriage of the Lord and his people. The covenant, the Mosaic covenant entered into at Sinai. And the next of the seven O antiphons refers to “oh root of Jesse.” “Radix Jesse”—root of Jesse. And Jesse is, will be, we’ll see in today’s book in Ruth, is described the father of David. And so Jesse and the advent of Jesse, the genealogy of Jesse begins here in our story in Ruth with Ruth and Boaz. And so we’re moving historically through the Old Testament and through created history in these titles of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the root of Jesse.

The fourth title is “Clavis David.” “O king of David” or “Key of David” rather. Now we see David and the key of David is described in Isaiah and the book of Revelation. It shuts and no one can open. It opens and no one can lock. The Lord Jesus Christ is the key of David. Kingship now is what’s talked about. The next is “Oriens.” “O Dayspring.” So now we move to prophetic texts in the title of Jesus as the dayspring. So you see, we’re tracking Old Testament history from creation and the fathers through the judges and the Mosaic covenant through the kingly period and now into the prophetic period.

We’re tracking Old Testament book and we’re tracking the history of the world leading up to the coming of Jesus. “Oriens,” “Orient” east, you know, the kings of the sun rising in Revelation. Literally the translation is the king of the kings of the east. The sun comes from the east and moves to the west. When we were kicked out of the garden, we were kicked out to the east and we had to come back in the west.

The door to the temple is on the east of the temple. We come back into the temple from the east, moving westward. And so Jesus brings salvation from the east to the west. You see, that’s the idea. And to orient geography and direction is to think in terms of the east because that’s where our fallen state is, in the east. Today in today’s text, Naomi has to leave Bethlehem, Judah, Ephrathah, and go instead to Moab.

Moab is on the east. It’s a picture of being kicked back out of the garden, being sent into exile. We’re in the east, and we’re going to come west. Well, “Oriens,” “Dayspring,” sunrising is another title of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Rex Gentium,” the king of the nations. You know, now seeing the coming of Jesus as the desire of the nation, this next title that’s given to us in the seven O antiphons and the corresponding verse of “Come Emanuel,” and then finally “Emanuel,” God with us. With us God. And this of course is the incarnation of Jesus, his final title. This is the consummation of these seven O antiphons. We begin our song today with this verse, but historically it was the last verse because it tracks now the advent of Jesus.

And the interesting thing, one interesting thing about these O antiphons is got it on the bottom of your handout. The church was self-conscious about this. This isn’t just some cool little trick. But if you take the first letters of these seven titles of Jesus that track history, and then put them in reverse, they spell a Latin phrase, “Ero, cras,”—”Tomorrow I will be” or “I will come.” So it is this picture again of the Advent season and after the seven days of the recitation of the O antiphons Jesus comes in terms of the liturgical movement of the church and we had the fulfillment of them with the Magnificat and Mary and the singing of the magnification of God by his servants that Jesus has come and delivered.

So it’s a wonderful illustration of some of the beauty and depth of Advent celebrations that the historic church has participated in. And this would form an excellent devotional period for the last week of preparation for the celebration of Christmas. And so if you take these outlines home, you could recite these O antiphons and sing “O Come Emanuel” the way that the church did a thousand years ago.

And by doing that, you teach your children covenantal history that came and developed to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we’re looking today at another phase of covenantal history. We’re moving from “to thy tribes on Sinai’s high” to the “root of Jesse” and then to the “key of David.” All in this book of Ruth. Ruth is this transition period. “Now in those days when the judges ruled,” you see, is the way the book starts.

And it’s going to conclude at the genealogy leading up to the birth of David. So the book moves us from the second O antiphon to the third O antiphon Jesse and even to the fourth the key of David. And it is an advent story, and the movement of history from the period of the judges to the period of the kings. And so as we look at this story of Ruth, we’re sort of, as I said last week, as I said earlier, we’re back to where we were last week.

We’re at another love song. I love one of my favorite Christmas songs since we started singing here at the church is “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.” Love is the great message of Christmas. You know, from one perspective, a very vital one in the scriptures, the advent of Jesus Christ is the coming of the bridegroom to enter into the covenant vows with his bride definitively and then the consummation at the end of time.

And so we have here another beautiful love song in this book of Ruth. And it’s a song that I hope will help us to a story rather that will help us to see some fairly easily remembered aspects of the great reversal that happens with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The definitive salvation affected by the incarnation, the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. The book of Ruth, like the Song of Songs, is a love story.

And the Song of Songs is about the love of a king for his queen, a king for the people that he governs, a ruler for those that he governs over, Jesus for his people. And in the same way, what we see in the story of Boaz and Ruth, it is also a story of the coming of a king, the bridegroom. Ultimately in the text is the lineage that will lead up to the coming of the king, first David, and then the greater David as well.

And so we have this wonderful story pictured for us here. And I’ve got three simple points I want to make in terms of what happens in this book, giving us an overview of it. And I want to sort of start at the middle of the book and work our way outward to the edges. The climax of the book is found in chapter 3. And if you have your Bibles with you, you could open to chapter 3 and we’ll take a look there at midnight at the threshing floor. We’ll take a look at the movement of not being under the wing of a man to becoming under the wing of a man.

We’ll look at love in the temple, so to speak, in chapter 3 of this wonderful story. It’s kind of at the middle. Now, let me just explain why we have these three outline points that I’m using today. There is in the book of Ruth three specific words that are used twice and twice only, and they, these three words, if you remember them, you really can remember the book of Ruth. The first word is wing or wings.

And so we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes. It’s used twice. First Ruth has come under the wing of God and now she’ll come under the wing of Boaz. And the second word that’s used twice and twice only is empty. Naomi moves from being empty to not being empty, being not empty. As the story progresses through this pivotal turning point, prior to this, the word empty is used. After this turning point in chapter 3, then Naomi will be not empty.

And the third word that’s used twice and twice only is lad. The word son is used a lot in the opening chapter, but the particular word used to describe Naomi’s two sons that die, the word used is lad, young son. And at the end of the story, of course, Ruth will give birth to a son and explicitly it’ll be referred to once as a lad. So we have this wonderful imagery. At the middle of the protection of Yahweh, the covering of Yahweh, the wing of Yahweh developed through people.

Boaz’s wing is spread over Ruth. And this leads to fullness going from being empty to not being empty. And this leads to a story of the coming of the lad. Naomi is ladless. At the end, she has a lad again, a baby. And so what a wonderful story for Christmas. We have at Christmas time the great extension of grace to us. And we show grace and kindness to others. We have a wonderful story of this first point of a movement from winglessness to becoming under the wing.

Here happening in our own church. This week, we have the Evans bringing back two young girls. They placed the wing of Yahweh, the covering, the care for and nurture of Yahweh over two girls by bringing them under the wing of the Evans family. And it’s a wonderful picture. It’s what we see at Christmas time, this wonderful extension of grace to those in need. And we see at Christmas time a wonderful filling up.

You know, we symbolically, I suppose, we hang our stockings by the chimney either on St. Nicholas Day or some people on Christmas Day and they’re empty and it’s an acknowledgement that apart from the coming of Jesus, we’re empty. But when Jesus comes, he fills us. He fills us, doesn’t he? He gives us wonderful gifts and blessings. And the picture of that is that empty tree and then the full tree or the empty stocking and the full stocking, et cetera.

This movement from empty to being not empty. And then third, all of this is because the coming of the lad, the ultimate son, the incarnation of the greater Obed, the son of Boaz and Ruth, the Lord Jesus Christ. So this is a wonderful story and it’s a wonderful story any time of year, but it’s a particularly a pregnant story, I could say, at Christmas time. So let’s look first at the middle, chapter 3, and we see the wonderful turning point of what happens in this book.

So turn to chapter 3 of your books, your Bibles, Ruth, and we’ll begin to talk about this. Verse one. Then Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, “My daughter, shall I not seek security for you that it may be well with you? Now Boaz, whose young women you are with, is he not our relative? In fact, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor. Therefore, wash yourself, anoint yourself, put on your best garments, and go down to the threshing floor, but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking.

And then it shall be when he lies down that you shall notice the place where he lies, and you shall go in, uncover his feet, and lie down, and he will tell you what you should do.” And she said to her, “All that you say to me I will do.” What a wonderful picture of obedience of this daughter-in-law. All that you tell me I will do. She’s trusted Naomi. She’s following her God. And Naomi is taking care of Ruth in the best way she can.

She seeks security. She seeks covering. She seeks protection and nurture for her daughter-in-law. So she went down to the threshing floor and did according to all that her mother-in-law instructed her. And after Boaz had eaten and drunk and his heart was cheerful, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. And she came softly, uncovered his feet, and lay down. Now it happened at midnight that the man was startled and turned himself.

And there a woman was lying at his feet. And he said, “Who are you?” So she answered, “I am Ruth, your maidservant. Take your maidservant under your wing, for you are a close relative.” Unusual courtship story. Unusual way to seek out a husband and yet here it is. What is he doing? What’s going on? Well, the threshing floor was where all the grain would be brought in. It’s harvest season. There’d be a lot of grain there.

And typically the man would stay there to guard it, I suppose, to watch over it. And this is where Boaz is. He’s the holder of all the wealth, so to speak, the grain. And he would sleep there. And so, you know, they trust him. Naomi knows him. He’s been kind to Ruth already by this time. And so the story is that Ruth goes and lays down at his feet and she stays there. By the way, the story makes that clear that after their discussion, after he wakes up and agrees to provide his wing over her after this, she still is at his feet.

So no hanky-panky is going on here. But what is going on is Ruth is finding her husband. We have here another wonderful picture. Now, usually these pictures in the Old Testament are at wells, midnight at the oasis. You know, you go to the well, you find a bride. Here it’s a threshing floor, but the same sort of imagery and overabundance. The place where everybody’s going to come to eat and drink and be married.

That’s where Boaz is and that’s what he’s doing. And Ruth goes there under her mother-in-law’s direction seeking a husband, seeking protection. And very significantly, the text tells us that it is at midnight that this encounter happens. Now, they’ve met before, they’ve talked before, but this is the definitive movement. The engagement, we could say, the what effectually becomes the betrothal of the two happens at this threshing floor between Ruth and Boaz.

And ultimately, this is a picture of the coming of the greater Boaz, the Lord Jesus Christ, a marriage being wedded to him. In the southern in the northern hemisphere, that is this happens during at the time of the winter solstice. It happens at midnight, right? Christmas Eve services are common. It’s the darkest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, the days are the shortest, the night is the longest.

In the middle of the night, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the whole world moves from darkness to light. The Old Testament happens with days begun by darkness and ending in day. The New Testament, it’s perpetual day. The world transitions forward at darkness at midnight. The darkest hour is always just before the dawn, the old expression goes. And here it is. Now, there’s been other. There’s lots of these kind of midnight transitions in the Bible.

The definitive one, I suppose, is Passover. Passover also happens at night. And the deliverance of God’s people happens at night. It’s a movement. It’s a transition. And Advent is a looking forward to the great transition, remembering what happened two thousand years ago. And the definitive moving away from night when the Lord Jesus Christ returns and all things are brought to consummation. This is midnight at the threshing floor.

This is Passover Redux. This is the movement of Ruth from requiring a wing, being wingless so to speak, and coming under the covering of her husband, her kinsman redeemer Boaz. This is that definitive movement. This is at a threshing floor. This is significant. The temple is the imagery, of course, of God’s people being gathered to him as they were at the tabernacle at Sinai. They were wedded to God in a covenant, right, so to speak.

The temple is the reminder of that. The temple was built, we’re told in the scriptures, on a threshing floor that David had purchased and Solomon eventually builds the temple on the threshing floor. So we have temple imagery happening here. The lineage, the genealogy given at the end of this book, we’ll stop with David, but the implication is it leads to Solomon who will build the temple. The picture, the demonstration that God weds his people and definitively comes to them at the threshing floor to bring them to himself to cover them with his wing.

The wing is a significant term in the Old Testament. In Exodus, we’re told that God’s wing is over the people as they come out of Egypt. As they move through the wilderness, God like an eagle covers his people with his wing. And that action of God described in Deuteronomy goes back to the movement of the Holy Spirit over creation to bring about form, light, and filling in the creation. The spirit moves over the face of the waters.

The spirit flutters. That fluttering is described in Deuteronomy and that’s associated in Deuteronomy and other texts with the eagle that represents God moving his wings over his people. So the wing being asked for here by Ruth is from one perspective a new creation. She becomes a new person by being wedded eventually to this Boaz. She becomes, she comes into her fullness. She moves from requiring a wing, from being wingless to coming under the wing of Boaz.

Now, there’s a sense in which she’s already under the wing of God. We read in chapter 2:12, we would if we turned there, that she has come under the wing of Yahweh. She has moved from being a Moabite, cursed, right, outside of the people of God. Moab was one of the two sons of Lot, cursed by God, enemies of God. And yet this Moabite is converted. She becomes one who follows Yahweh by following Naomi and she comes under the wing or covering of Yahweh.

But the way Yahweh works is that’s demonstrated, that’s made act, that’s activated, that’s reified, I suppose we could say, actualized by coming under the wing of someone specifically. And she at this wonderful midnight romantic tryst, this meeting Ruth comes under, asks to be brought under the wing of Boaz. And he says yes. He says yes. Now there’s things he’s got to do. He’s got to, you know, give the nearest relative a chance to redeem the land of Naomi’s sons.

And one of them was married to Ruth. And all that stuff will happen. But the real movement of this book here at the heart of it is a transition of Ruth coming under first the wing of Yahweh in conversion and then secondly this great picture of the Gentiles being wedded to the Lord Jesus Christ with his coming, the coming of the greater Boaz, a seeking to be put under the wing, the covering at the threshing floor.

You know, there’s a picture of this in our church we had last year when Frank and Maria got married. Those of you that were here remember that there was a shawl placed over the two of them, a piece of clothing. And Ruth essentially is asking the garment of Boaz be placed over her as a picture of their covenantal union together as husband and wife. And Frank and Maria in various traditions there’s this common garment as part of the liturgy of the marriage service. And so part of this story of Ruth, the heart of the story is this transition from having no covering to covering, coming under the covering and wing first of Yahweh and then his people.

And as I mentioned, the wonderful picture of that we have at this Christmas time at Reformation Covenant Church are Bob and Patty bringing these two girls under the wing of Yahweh and then specifically under the wing of their household as well. This is a time of year of giving. This is a time of year of extending the grace of Yahweh, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ to others. This is a time of giving, protection, guidance, nurture to other people. This is a time where we celebrate the marriage of the bride of Jesus Christ to him, the coming in of the Gentiles to be wed to Christ.

And we have this beautiful cameo image now of the Gentiles represented by Ruth the Moabite meeting Boaz representing the Lord Jesus Christ in his advent. What will happen through the genealogical results of this union will be the birth of the savior who will definitively wed his people to himself. We are part of that bride of Christ wedded to him. We’ve come under the wing and covering of Yahweh. We have the responsibility to bring people under our wing or covering the way that Boaz brought Ruth under his wing or covering. Yes, we have a relationship with God that is not dependent upon people.

But certainly the story of Ruth is a picture of the grace of God moving through people, through his people. First Naomi to bring Ruth to faith in Yahweh and to accompany her back into the promised land. And then secondly Boaz giving his grace and mercy to her. And so we have this wonderful opportunity that we think of primarily at Christmas time but really is ours year round to talk to people about the wing, the care, the nurture of Yahweh and to bring them under our care and nurture as well.

Now there is in the context of this a demonstration of hesed. The second thing that happens in the book of Ruth is there’s a movement from being empty to being not empty. There is a demonstration, there’s an evidence of God’s hesed. The Hebrew word hesed is used here to talk about the loving kindness shown to Ruth. And this word has always discussed at some length. It means kindness. So that’s a basic meaning of it.

But it also means covenant loyalty. And so the context here is the covenant loyalty to Ruth who has been brought into salvation through the work of the unlikely evangelist Naomi. If you look at verse chapter 2 verse 20, we see this term used. And now before the marriage we have Ruth has gleaned in the fields of Boaz and Boaz has bestowed great kindness upon her. Has shown, in verse 20 we read that Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “Blessed be he of the Lord who has not forsaken his kindness to the living and the dead.”

Now this word kindness is this hesed, this grace, mercy, kindness, covenant loyalty. Ruth has become the recipient of the hesed of God. And as a result of this demonstration of hesed in terms of gleaning in the fields of the near relative, Naomi is moved from being empty in chapter 1:21 to being not empty at the conclusion, the marriage proposal, as it were in chapter 3. Now this hesed isn’t just Ruth obtaining food.

This hesed more specifically is how it happens, where it happens, very specifically what we read about in the context of Ruth coming back to Bethlehem in chapter 2, that we have the laws of God that were established for gleaning of course in this period of time. And the text tells us, turn to chapter 2, verse one, and we’ll read there. We read that there was a relative of Naomi’s husband, a man of great wealth of the family of Elimelech.

His name was Boaz. So Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Please let me go to the field and glean heads of grain after him in whose sight I may find favor.” Now, what’s happening here is Ruth doesn’t know about Boaz. She’s not saying, “Let me go find the field of Boaz.” The text is telling us that there is this man named Boaz, and he has great wealth. Ruth is simply asking her mother-in-law, “Let me go glean, and perhaps I’ll find someone who will care for myself and you and put us under his care and protection.”

So Naomi says to her, “Go, my daughter. Go ahead. Go glean in the fields.” And what do we read next? We read that as she left and she went and she 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 family of Elimelech. Boaz came from Bethlehem and said to the reapers, “The Lord be with you.” And they answered, “The Lord bless you.” So you see the hesed, ultimately what Naomi is really exalting over is not just the grain that Ruth has received, but rather it’s that the Lord God has in his providence led her to the very field of one of their near relatives who has this obligation and opportunity to be the kinsman redeemer for Naomi and for her land because her husband and her sons are dead.

And so the hesed of God is a provision of grain but ultimately it’s the provision of what will become his wing over this family through Boaz. So we have here the hesed of God and it operates, as I put on your outline, through chance, through a happenstance. The scriptures tell us that she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz. She lucked upon, she chanced to come to the field of Boaz.

You see, the text wants us to understand that what we think of as chance occurrences, just things that kind of happen to fall out in a particular way, these events, in the context of this wonderful story, are the very means whereby God demonstrates and activates his hesed toward his people. His covenant loyalty to those who love him. His mercy to us. His kindness to us is mediated even through the acts of chance.

And in this story, this act of chance or happenstance is absolutely critical to what happens. This is what establishes the relationship that will turn the whole story at midnight as Boaz consents to her request that he take care of her and he’ll do more than take care of her. He will marry her and bring her under his wing. This happens through the chance, the happenstance of God. Wonderful picture of the way God moves and the result of this happenstance event, this demonstration of the covenant loyalty and kindness to Ruth and Naomi.

The result of this is a filling up of Naomi. She comes back to Bethlehem empty, she says. And then at the end of the marriage proposal, as it were, in chapter 3, Boaz sends her back with Ruth back to her mother-in-law, tremendous amounts of grain so that she not be empty, the text tells us. So she moves from being empty to not empty. Naomi, through the hesed, the covenant loyalty, the kindness of God. This picture of being empty and then filled is really a major theme of the book.

You, as we read the first few verses of the first chapter, we saw an unusual famine. We saw a famine in breadland. Bethlehem means house of bread. Ephrathah, and that is described for us in the text that this man was an Ephrathite. It’s not an Ephraimite. It’s an Ephrathite. Bethlehem is in the region of Ephrathah. And Ephrathah means fruitfulness. And we have a place of breadland, of fruit land, the breadland and fruit land.

But the text tells us at the beginning of the story, there’s a famine there. And the very place whose names mean tremendous blessing of food and fruitfulness and wine, ultimately that very place is a place of famine. The text begins with that famine. Why? Because God’s people have been disobedient. There’s an emptiness there. There’s an emptiness, however, that becomes filled. After ten years, Ruth, Naomi returns because she’s heard that Bethlehem is once more a place of bread.

A place of bread as its name indicated. There’s this movement from being empty to being filled. This is an unusual Exodus story for us. It is an Exodus, right? They, we’ve seen people leave the land before because of famine in the land. In the book of Genesis, we saw Abraham leave because of famine. We saw Jacob’s twelve sons go down to Egypt because of famine. But when they come back, when Jacob comes back, when his sons come back, when Abraham comes back, they come back full.

But in this case, Naomi comes back empty. And so she has to be filled. She has to be the recipient of the loving grace and kindness of God. It’s an unusual Exodus story. And I think what it wants us to see is that the wilderness is where they’re coming forth from. Moab is on the east. And really, Bethlehem prior to, you know, at the beginning of the story, is the place of Egypt.

It’s the place they have to come out of and they have to go into the wilderness and then return and upon their return they come back and will be filled by God there back in the land of Canaan. In the same way in the Christmas story and the greater story of Bethlehem, the Lord Jesus Christ must leave there because a pharaoh, Herod, is killing off the children. And so he has to go down to Egypt and then come back.

All that’s prefigured for us here in the curse upon Bethlehem and then the reversal of that curse as Naomi comes back with Ruth. So we have, at the middle of the story, this wonderful marriage and wing covering. This produces a filling where there was once emptiness. And this demonstration of grace to others is an important part of our Christmas celebrations as well. Many of you will go to the McLaughlin Center this afternoon and evening to show the grace of God.

To bring fullness to those people in terms of joy, celebrating the Christmas season, acts of benevolence. The Salvation Army is out there helping people. You know, the Salvation Army really was founded upon the same principle that’s being described in this book of Ruth—gleaning. Notice that the grace of God, the hesed of God is carried out in the context of chance occurrences certainly, but also in the context of his law.

The law provided for this gleaning that was required of people to let the poor glean the edges of their field. There’s no distinction between God’s grace and his law. His law does involve his hesed and loving kindness, his grace to others. And that law of gleaning was applied by the men that started the Salvation Army in an urban context, not an agrarian context, by people giving gleanable items to the Salvation Army who could then use those items to help people be filled, to give them work, to give them benevolence of people that allowed them to glean, so to speak, these aspects of things that they had extra in their home.

So the very bell ringers we hear on the corners, we can hear in there ringing out those bells. We can hear the hesed of God at work once more as people are allowed to glean in an industrial urban setting. And this should remind us of this gleaning event in the book of Ruth that God used to bring Ruth to fulfillment and to bring her under the wing and married to Boaz. So there’s this wonderful picture of a reversal of emptiness given to us through the hesed and the mercy of God.

And we want to be those kind of people. People who first of all see chance occurrences as the predetermined hand of God at work to demonstrate his loving kindness, his covenant loyalty to us. That’s certainly one thing we should take from this text. We see things happen by happenstance and this text reminds us that behind chance occurrences, behind things that just happen to occur, we see the sovereign work, the covenant loyalty that God has to his people, his kindness and actions to us.

I had a conversation with one of you this past week in which a chance occurrence, the printing of a fellow’s name in a paper was used by God, a different fellow altogether, to bring one of you to a position of rest in God. Chance occurrence. Seeing something in a paper, seeing something that isn’t related directly to what is bothering you. And yet, the Lord God is using a chance occurrence, a happenstance.

It just so happened that this man read this in this paper and it just so happened this led to a series of events that brought him to a further sense of peace. May the Lord God grant us to see in the chance occurrences of our life, his loving kindness, his hesed, moving us from being empty to being full, full of grace and then moving us and encouraging us to be the dispensers of his grace, his forgiveness, his kindness and his filling to others as well.

May we see that and then the third reversal. We’ve had the reversal of winglessness, the reversal of emptiness. We’ve had this wonderful turning point of coming into salvation, as it were, the Gentiles being wed to the greater Boaz, being demonstrated for us. We’ve seen this filling that happens as a result of the chance happenstance of God demonstrating his hesed. And the third reversal is the reversal of ladlessness. As we go to the outer sections of this book, we see that there’s a reversal of ladlessness. This is the third set of terms. The lad, the two lads die in chapter 1. There is a lad born in chapter 4. And this lad is a picture of the coming of the king and also the coming of the bride. Very interesting the way this book brings to a close.

Turn to chapter 4 and we read the story of the happy result of the union of Ruth and Boaz. First we have the redemption of Ruth described for us. And then at the end of the book in verse 13, so Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. And when he went into her, the Lord gave her conception and she bore a son. Then the women said to Ruth—no. Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord who has not left you this day without a close relative.

May his name be famous in Israel. And may he be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age. For your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is better to you than seven sons, she, lost two, now she has a daughter, worth more than seven, has borne him.” Then Naomi took the child, laid him on her bosom, and became a nurse to him. And here that word child is the second occurrence in this whole book of the word lad.

Earlier called son, now called lad, to connect it up to the lads that she lost at the beginning of the story. She now Naomi has a lad restored to her laid on her bosom and she becomes a nurse to him. Also the neighbor woman gave him a name saying there is a son born to Ruth. But no. Not to Ruth. There was a son born to Naomi. And they called his name Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.

What’s happening here? What’s going on? Well, the big picture is Ruth has certainly borne a son and that’ll lead to the coming of Jesus. Of course, the genealogy is given at the end of this chapter. But now the text wants us to associate this son given to Naomi. Why? Naomi and Ruth are merged here, aren’t they? They’re both mothers to the child. A son is born to Ruth, but a son is born to Naomi. Why? Because Naomi and Ruth are a picture of the coming together of Jew and Gentile to form the bride of the Lord Jesus Christ.

When the greater Boaz, the greater Obed, the greater Jesse, the greater David comes, the Lord Jesus Christ, Jew and Gentile, that bipolarity, waiting, waiting, waiting four thousand years to be brought to unity and reconciliation that happens finally in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the wonderful, beautiful picture is Naomi the Jew, Ruth the Moabite or Gentile, now both seen as the mother to this lad that is born.

There’s a reversal to Naomi of ladlessness to having a lad. Yes, the daughter is worth more than seven sons. There’s that. But then there’s the fact that Naomi has borne a son. So the women sing here at the end of the book. There’s the coming of the king to affect all of this. The thing, the two thousand pound elephant in the room of the story, has been the king. When we read in chapter 1 that “a certain man”—first of all we read that it was in the period in the days when the judges ruled and at the end of the chapter, end of the story, what do we read?

We read of the lineage of David, a movement from judges to the king. We read of a certain man of Bethlehem Judah. Why Judah? That’s where Bethlehem was. But Judah was the one from whom the king would come. The Lion of Judah, the Lord Jesus Christ. The name of Naomi’s husband is Elimelech. “El-Melech”—God King. “God is king” is what’s going to happen in the context of this book. The Ephrathites of Bethlehem Judah will come to great fruitfulness and feeding when the king comes.

This is a story of the advent of the kingly line. Yes, the advent of David, probably written as a tract to help people understand the origins of David as he made his claim to the kingship apart from Saul’s sons. We had this great tract probably written and distributed at that time. But of course, what it really is a picture of the great reversal as the lad, the baby that was born whose birth we celebrate now, who was born two thousand years ago, was born as King of Kings and Lord of Lords bringing Jew and Gentile together.

You know, we talked about the threshing floor of the temple, but another architectural element of the temple that Solomon would build were two great pillars at the front of the temple. The name of the one was Jachin. And the priests were anointed there. “Jachin” interpreted as “He shall establish.” And the name of the other pillar was Boaz. Boaz. Reminding us of this Boaz. And at that pillar, Solomon and those that after him arranged that’s where the kings would be anointed is at the pillar of Boaz.

The temple is the house of the king and the priest. The Lord Jesus Christ who would come as king and priest who would bring his people definitively into marriage with himself on that threshing floor. Who would bring his people and reverse their emptiness by filling them? Reverse their losses by giving them all things through the Lord Jesus Christ. Reverse their widowhood by wedding them again to God the Father through the work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Reverse their curses and make them blessings once more through the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ the great king. We have moved in this text from judges to kings. And in behind this we read the subtext. What was the period of the judges? Well, as we read the book of Judges in preparation for the reading of the book of Ruth, we know that three times in the story of the book of Judges, the phrase was repeated.

“Now everyone did what was right in their own eyes. There was no king in Israel.” There was a king, of course. There was a king established at the tabernacle, the throne room set up at Shiloh. The implication of the verse is that the period of the judges is marked by God’s people not acknowledging his kingship over them. And as a result, we have this wonderful story that God will move them to a demonstration of what true kings should be like with the coming of David.

But ultimately this will point to the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ as well. We read this wonderful story of the movement of coming under the wing of God at the center of the story through us being wedded to the greater Boaz, the Lord Jesus Christ. We read this wonderful statement of going from being empty to not empty, that our lives are filled because of the work of Jesus. We read of this wonderful message of going from no children to having a child. And significantly, the child who would produce the blessings that this story tells of.

You know, it’s interesting at this time of year as well. We gather together with relatives and family. It was wonderful. Christine and I—Christine mostly babysat for our three grandkids this last week and she was like Naomi I thought sitting there on the floor playing with her grandchildren. Restored her youthfulness, restored caring for little ones once more. And what a delight it was to her and to those of us who are older, caring for our grandchildren.

This is the joy of Naomi. This is the joy of the season where the Lord Jesus Christ has come to reverse our isolation, our being cut off, to bring us into community, to bring us under his wing, to bring us from being empty to not empty. This is the coming of the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. We are Eve in a sense and our first husband failed us. But the second husband, the greater Adam, has wedded us to himself by his coming near.

He is the great kinsman redeemer who would come to the threshing floor of the temple, would do his salvific work for us, not just as king, but as priest, and produce our redemption. May we then see in this story the movement from judges to kings. An acknowledgment that indeed we have a king who reigns over us. May our celebration of the Advent season be a celebration of the advent of the king so that we do not do what’s right in our own eyes, but we are those who follow after the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, in chapter 1, we have this wonderful statement of Ruth’s devotion to Naomi. And may it be the statement of our devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ as well. Naomi tried to send her back and Ruth said to her, “Entreat me not to leave you or to turn back from following after you. For wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people. Your God, my God. Where you die, I will die.

And there I will be buried. The Lord do so to me and more also. If anything but death parts you and me.” May the Lord Jesus Christ grant that our celebration are looking forward to a commemoration of his advent this next week. May it also serve as a time when we see ourselves in the form of Ruth being wedded as Gentiles to the Lord Jesus Christ. And may the Lord God grant that everything we do this week and the rest of our lives be not as we see fit, but acknowledge the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ, the greater Boaz, who has wedded us to himself.

And may we be those who are only parted from this kind of obedience in this life through death than to serve Jesus face to face. Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for this time of the year. We thank you for this beautiful picture in the book of Ruth of the coming of Boaz the Redeemer. We thank you for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we come forward now, Lord God, may we indeed consecrate ourselves afresh to seeing all things, even the happenstance occurrences of life being given to us through your hand of covenant loyalty and grace.

May we come to you, Lord God as your subjects who love you, Father. You are king. May we obey you. And more than this, in this story and the wonderful story in the Song of Songs we saw last week, we see your great love for us. May we then consecrate ourselves afresh in obedience to you, the one who loves us and sent your son to be our savior and king. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.