Ruth 3:15-4:22.
Before Ruth returned to her mother-in-law, Boaz gave her six measures of barley to carry home. Now seven in the Scriptures is the perfect number and six is just short of it. It would remind us, in a typical way, of how we have been blessed so abundantly in Christ, but one thing still awaits us—the very thing that awaited Ruth. She had been abundantly blessed by Boaz, but she was soon to become his bride, and then her blessings would be complete. And so we are now espoused to Christ, and the marriage day is coming for us. The coming of the Lord will be the blessed moment when we (the Church) will be called home to be His bride (Matt. 25:6). May we be found rejoicing in our portion now, and sharing it with others of the family of faith too, like Ruth, while we await “the marriage of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:7).
Naomi told Ruth not to be impatient, but to wait for Boaz; for she said he would not rest until he had finished what he had begun. How good to know that Christ, our heavenly Bridegroom, is more earnestly waiting to have us, His bride, than we are to be there. “He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Phil. 1:6.
In the morning Boaz went down to the gate of the city and sat down, waiting for the nearest kinsman to Naomi to come by. When he came along he asked him to stop and sit down, which the kinsman did. Boaz then took ten men of the city and asked them to sit down also. Undoubtedly this figures to us the ten commandments, for the law had to come first, like the nearest kinsmen who had the first right of redemption.
Boaz then asked this kinsman if he would redeem the land of Elimelech who had died, and the kinsman said he would. He then told him that, along with the land, he would also have to redeem Ruth the Moabitess, and take her to be his wife. The kinsman then said he could not do that, for he would mar his own inheritance by marrying such a stranger and an outcast as she. How clearly we can see the law typified in all this. The children of Israel, like the nearest kinsman, said they could keep God’s holy law when it was given at Mount Sinai, but they could not, and they only earned its curse. “The law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good,” Romans 7:12; but we are the poor outcasts, like Ruth, and the law could not do anything for us. It could not redeem us.
But here Boaz stepped in and said he would redeem Elimelech’s inheritance, and take Ruth to be his wife. What a beautiful picture of the blessed Lord Jesus, who stepped in when we were ruined and undone, cursed by the law, and redeemed us to Himself. The first kinsman then took off his shoe, giving up forever any right to the inheritance, and it was given to Boaz. All right, all power, belongs to Christ now, our mighty Redeemer, and just as Ruth was associated with Boaz in his newly purchased possession, so we, the Church, will be associated with Christ in His place of headship in a coming day. He will then, like Boaz here, publicly own us as His bride.
Israel too, as a nation, having lost all claim to blessing on the ground of their own faithfulness, are thus pictured as strangers, for they, on the ground of pure, sovereign grace, will be brought into earthly blessing—we, the Church, into heavenly blessing.
ML 03/28/1954