“OH that I knew where I might find Him!” was Job’s cry. “When He hath found it,” was the blessed word of the Lord Jesus. And, truly, when the heart deeply feels its need, it is not far from meeting with Him whose joy it is to meet that need.
So with Ruth. They had heard in the distant fields of Moab that the Lord had visited His people with bread, they had returned to the house of bread, two poor desolate widows with no resource but God; and what was the next thing? The bread was there, but how were they to get it? The simple faith of the outcast Moabitess lays hold of her true place, and of the provision God had made in His Word for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow (Deut. 24:19). She has only to take her place as one who is nothing and has nothing, in order to claim God’s promise. And so she goes out in faith to cast herself upon the goodness of God, to glean after him in whose eyes she may find favor.
Acres upon acres of harvest field stretch before her, undivided by hedges or walls as with us, and perplexing the stranger’s heart as to which little plot out of the whole belongs to the unknown friend in whose eyes she is to find favor.
How is she to choose? She leaves the choice to God; and, guided by His hand in that mysterious way which down here seems chance, she lights upon a little plot belonging to Elimelech’s friend, Naomi’s kinsman, that wealthy man, Boaz.
So in simple language, that the needy heart can understand, God points to Him in whose eyes the stranger and the outcast may find favor. There is but One, the One who was born in the manger in Bethlehem, who ate with publicans and sinners, who went to be guest with a man that was a sinner, who suffered a woman that was a sinner to weep out her tears of repentance over His blessed feet, who hung between two sinners on Calvary’s cross, who took a sinner with Him into Paradise — Jesus, the friend of sinners.
Boaz, then, comes from Bethlehem, the house of bread, to meet the outcast damsel who was seeking bread, and his eye travels straight to her as she stoops to glean in the heat of the day, humbly following behind the reapers, taking the stranger’s place. Little rest has been hers as yet, says the steward, who knows his master’s heart. The meeting has come; how will the wealthy man receive the poor outcast?
It is most beautiful, yet simple, to see how God’s way of grace shines out in this meeting. First Boa; calling her by the gentle name, “my daughter,” teaches her the first simple lesson: “go not to glean in another field.” There is only one place where the sinner’s need can be met, there is only one person who can meet it.
Elimelech had wandered away to the fields of Moab, and there had found nothing but bitterness and death. Now God had drawn the outcast from the fields of Moab to the field of Boaz by a chain of love whose links Ruth could never know at the time, and the lesson is driven home, “go not to glean in another field.”
Are there not some who have tasted that the Lord is gracious, but who, nevertheless, have not learned the simple lesson?
Are you seeking satisfaction out of Christ? Are you trying to find something for your heart in the fields of Moab? There is only bitterness and emptiness there.
“Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to Me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). Thus the first lesson leads quickly to the second: “When thou art athirst, go to the vessels and drink of what the young men have drawn.” The well is deep, as the poor woman of Samaria truly said; but the water of life has been drawn from the deep well of the heart of the Father, and now whosoever thirsts “let him come and take of the water of life freely.” Jesus gives it — “He would have given thee living water.” The thirsty soul, drawn from the dry plains of the Dead Sea, takes it, and thirsts no more.
Perhaps you will say, “This is all very simple, I know all this.” That may be, but have you really learned what it is to be drawn from the fields of Moab to find that there is One and only One who can satisfy your heart? Have you learned what it is to come as an empty sinner, one who has nothing, not even a title to God’s goodness, to be met by all the fullness of God’s grace in His own beloved Son? If you have, you will certainly not grumble at these simple things, but will bow down, like Ruth, before Him in joyful worship. You will not want to leave the little plot of the field of Boaz.
S. H. H.