Good to be able to sing from the heart such things as those, and to really be in the enjoyment of them.
I am going to turn you again this evening to the little book which goes by the name of Ruth, and then to chapter 2, verses 11 and 12.
And Boaz answered and said unto her, It hath fully been showed me all that thou hast done unto thy mother-in-law since the death of thine husband, and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore.
The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to take refuge.—Ruth 2:11-12
Now, two fragments—two words only—in those two verses: “Thou art come.”
And I want to say a little this evening about what we have found.
I could wish that you were familiar with the whole of this story we have in this tiny book. It would help me a lot if I could be sure of the background of knowledge. But I am not going to rehearse the story. You will probably, if you do not already know it, pick it up from what I say.
But I think it might be helpful to those who are not acquainted with it if I just read again that wonderful passage containing the great decision which this young woman, Ruth the Moabitess, made. We have it in chapter 1, verse 16.
And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, and to return from following after thee:
for whither thou goest, I will go;
and where thou lodgest, I will lodge;
thy people shall be my people,
and thy God my God;
where thou diest, will I die,
and there will I be buried:
the Lord do so to me, and more also,
if aught but death part thee and me.—Ruth 1:16-17
That really does give me the background of what I want to say this evening in connection with what we have come to.
I begin by pointing out how unsuspecting was Ruth of all that to which she was coming by her great decision—how unsuspecting of the greatness and the values bound up with that decision.
I think it is very possible that Ruth did not know of the ban which rested, by God’s edict, upon her nation, her people, and herself as included therein. For some very good reasons, God had pronounced a ban upon the Moabites and said that a Moabite should not come into the house of the Lord for ever.
It is probable that Ruth did not know of that ban, that edict, any more than those who are outside of Christ are alive to, are aware of, what a position they are in as under judgment.
It is probable that if there are any people here tonight outside of Christ, they would be either amazed or offended if they were told that they lie under the judgment of God. And yet the Scriptures declare it to be so. Outside of Christ, all are in condemnation.
Whether any such are here tonight know it or not, there is the fact. She may not have known about that ban, that divine edict.
Perhaps the reason for this decision—she came with her mother-in-law Naomi from her country into the land of Israel—was just that she felt it was something she must do.
Probably, if you had weighed it up, thought about it, considered it, and then Naomi had said everything she could to get her to go back and not accompany her—if you had asked her why it was that she decided, and was so decided about it—the probability is that her answer would have been, “But I cannot explain. I cannot give you any reason for it, but I just feel it is something I have got to do.”
Now, that is very often the only reason, at the beginning, why people come to Christ. They feel somehow that they have got to do it. They cannot explain or give reason, but, “Well, that is all. I just felt I had to. There was a something working in me, and all I can say about it is, I felt I just had to do it.”
It was a big thing. I had thought about it; I had weighed it up. I had perhaps asked God—I did not know—but there you are: I could not get away. And I think probably that is exactly how it was with Ruth.
Because, you see, there were costs attached to this—costs enough to discourage, and even to disconcert. It was no small thing. As Boaz said, she left her father, her mother, and her country to go into a strange land, “unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore.”
There were costs attached to it which, if they had been placed before her as something in themselves, might have been regarded as something she could not do. She could only say, “There you are. I just could not help it. I just had to.”
The urge, the constraint, the drawing, the something working in me, was more than all my reasoning, all my arguments, and every other consideration.
And you know, dear friends, that is just it. As it proved, although she did not know it and could not explain this thing at all, she could not define it, it came to be seen afterward that there was a mighty will at work upon her.
Yes, all undefined, all unexplained, without any bribes or any offers or any prizes or anything to try to get her mind to go this way, there was this working of God—this working of God.
I am not prepared to wait until the end of this meeting to apply the message. I am far from sure that there are not some here now just like that.
I cannot help feeling that, in thinking of those hymns, someone has been a bit wistful. Someone has been feeling, “Oh, I wish I could really sing that from my heart. I wish that were true of me. I wish that I were in the good of that.”
And that wish may just be the quiet, but strong and deep, work of the Spirit of God, creating something that you cannot define any more than, “Well, that is the way in which I feel I ought to go. That is the way. In fact, I know certainly that I shall have to go. I put it off, but I know I have come to it.”
Perhaps Ruth had no more than that. And she had plenty to discourage her. Her very mother-in-law was seeking, it seemed, to send her back, saying, “Do not come. Your sister has gone back. You do the same.” But no, no. She would have said, I think, “No use. That is the way I feel I have got to go. And so, whatever it means, I am going.”
Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to return from following after thee:
for whither thou goest, I will go.—Ruth 1:16
Well, that is all there was to this great decision, I think, when it was made. But then, what a tremendous amount came to be afterward shown as bound up with it.
These two fragments in the statement of Boaz to her—look at them, for they really are an explanation. They are an explanation of this decision under divine constraint:
Thou art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore.
Thou art come to the God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to take refuge.—Ruth 2:11-12
That is the explanation: a place amongst the people of God, and a place under the wings of the Lord. That does not sound very much, does it, as stated? But oh, what a lot is in there—what a lot is in it.
Let us turn for a moment to the story. You know that the property of Naomi’s husband, and therefore Ruth’s own husband, had been disposed of because they had left the land. They had lost it; they had forfeited it.
But when they came back, this man—the man Boaz, this great man—by strange and wonderful providences came across their path, so to speak, or they came across his. And it was found that he was a near kinsman who had the right to redeem this lost inheritance.
To make the story short, he decided to do so and set about dealing with the difficulties, to which I will not refer at the moment. The main difficulty was another man who was a nearer kinsman and therefore had a prior right to redeem.
These two, Boaz and the other man, met in the gate, where these transactions of redemption of lost possessions were carried out. Boaz challenged the other man and said, “Now here, you have the first right to redeem this lost inheritance. Are you prepared to do so?”
The man said, “Yes, all right.” But then Boaz said, “The day that you redeem the inheritance, you have also to redeem Ruth, the Moabitess, with the inheritance.” And the man said, “No, I am sorry; I cannot do that. I cede you the right of redemption.”
And so Boaz redeemed the inheritance, but he also redeemed and purchased and married Ruth.
And that was all in this strange, mysterious urge abroad in her heart. It was urging her, firstly, in the direction of redemption—of being purchased—and then married, joined to Christ through redemption.
We have sung it tonight: redeemed and purchased with His blood; redeemed and sanctified. She, outside the pale, an unclean thing in Israel, redeemed and, by union with this great Israelite, sanctified.
You see the picture? The urge of the Spirit of God upon you contains this: your redemption from the ban, from the condemnation, from the judgment that lies upon all who are outside of Christ. Redemption—oh, wonderful story! Purchase: “Ye are bought with a price.” And joined to the Lord, the Lord Christ.
All that is in the urge, in the constraint, in that something that is making you desire, long, and wistfully say, “Oh, that I knew all that in my own life and experience.”
Yes, that is a work of the Spirit of God, urging you in the direction of redemption and union with His Son.
But then next, there is more—there is more to follow. “Thou art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore.”
Yes, you say, that is the Old Testament—the beautiful Old Testament story, a beautiful idyll of long ago. But is there anything now to correspond to that?
The answer, of course, depends upon whether you agree that the New Testament belongs to now. Does the New Testament belong to now, or does it only belong to long ago, when it was written? No, of course not. It belongs to us now. It is contemporary. It is right up to date, and everybody who comes to Christ finds that it is the most up-to-date document in existence.
Well then, have we got something in the New Testament that corresponds to, and is illustrated by, Ruth—the stranger, Ruth the alien, Ruth under condemnation—being brought into redemption and union with Christ? Yes, we have got it. Here it is. Let me read it to you.
Wherefore remember, that once ye, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision, in the flesh, made by hands;
that ye were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ.
For He is our peace.—Ephesians 2:11-14
Could you have a better commentary, an exposition of the story of Ruth, from that truth to the letter? “Thou art come unto a people whom thou knewest not heretofore”—unto the people of the Lord. You are now the people of God.
When you come to look at that letter from which I have just read—the whole letter—you have some wonderful things said about this people of the Lord. This people of the Lord, not of the Old Testament, but now: the majority of us here tonight who have our citizenship in heaven, who have been born from above, who do form for God His new nation, His new covenant people.
Wonderful things are said. The first thing is that this people is an elect people from all eternity.
Now Israel, at its foundation, was an elect nation. God chose Israel from among all the nations. He elected Israel. But the election of Israel is only a shadow of this greater election of the church.
The election of Israel was a time matter, after all. But here, in this wonderful document from which I just read, we are told that this people, to which you and I—most of us here tonight—belong, and to which the Spirit of God is urging everybody else to belong, has been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.
It is a wonderful thing to think that that simple act, upon an undefined and unexplained urge of the Spirit of God, involves this: that you come afterward to see that your decision, as it is termed—rather, your response to this constraint of the Spirit of God—was bound up in something which God had already planned and marked out before ever this world was.
A wonderful thing—not just something of the moment, of your lifetime, something in itself. You decide for Christ. You decide to give yourself to Christ. You decide to be a Christian, however you may put it. What you really decide to do is to fall right in with the eternal plan of God.
And you do not know that when you make the decision, any more than Ruth did. She made her decision simply because she felt that was the thing to do; and all unsuspectingly, she found eventually that she had come right in and was part of a covenant people, an elect people.
With them, in the next place, was the covenant of God—the covenant of God.
In my translation, I did not read it as it is translated: the word “Lord” is the covenant name of God. The Lord recompense thee. Under whose wings—the God of Israel—thou art come.
That name is the name which implies and means the covenant God. It is the name which has to do with man. A little technicality, by the way: when God created things—heaven and earth and these things—He was called by another name. But when it comes to dealing with man, His name is changed, and He is called the covenant God.
And she had come, not knowing it, right into the realm of the divine covenant. God made a covenant, and you know that covenant is a tremendous thing, even with Israel.
In the prophecies of Jeremiah, a very, very strong way is taken indicating how permanent His covenant was with Israel. He said, “Look at the stars. If you can cause to cease the ordinances of the heavens—the sun, the moon, and the stars—then My covenant will cease with Israel.”
It shall be as long as the sun, the moon, and the stars. Well, what are you going to do about that? But even so, even so, it is not like the covenant made in the blood of Jesus Christ with you and with me. This is an eternal covenant of another order.
I cannot say, even if I were able to explain that, all I am trying to say is that here is something tremendous that she had come into: an elect people, and into the place of God’s covenant.
And that is all in the direction of this constraint of God’s Spirit, if it is upon you. And, dear friends, those others who have come in response—this is what we come into. It is something very great.
Going further in this letter from which I have read, this people is not only an elect people and the covenant people of God; it is a people called with a great vocation.
People here who know this letter to the Ephesians know what I am talking about. Here it is made known that this people stands in relation to God for a very great purpose—a great vocation, a heavenly vocation.
And I have often put it here that when we really come to the Lord Jesus, one of our first senses is that we have come into the very purpose for which we have our being. There is now purpose in life. Well, that was not so before; but now we know there is a purpose in life.
But, oh, this tremendous vocation with which the church is called! The apostle says, “Walk worthy of the calling wherewith ye were called.” Great vocation.
Now, in the case of Israel, amongst whom Ruth came, or of which Ruth became a part, Israel was raised up to be a nation by which God should be made known to all the nations—what kind of God He is: a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, plenteous in lovingkindness.
He raised them up as a nation for that vocation. But here is this people, this people to whom you are being urged and of which we are a little part—a whole with a great heavenly vocation, not an earthly one; an eternal one, not a temporal one; to serve the purposes of God in this universe, as this letter has it, unto the ages of the ages.
Could our little Ruth have suspected all this in that day when she said, “I will”? And you, dear friend, when you respond to the constraint of that Spirit, will find right unto the end of your life, no matter how long you live, that it is one continuous discovery of how much there is in Christ, to whom you have come.
That is how it should be, and that is how it can be: a people whom thou knewest not heretofore.
And the next thing in this letter is the conduct of this people. I just cited the fragment: “Walk worthy of the calling wherewith ye were called, with all lowliness and meekness.” Then it makes some practical applications—husbands and wives, wives and husbands, children and parents, parents and children, masters and servants.
Christians in the world. In effect, He is saying this: “Look here, when you come amongst these people, these people have a testimony, and you have got to take on responsibility for that testimony and be loyal to the very vocation of this people.”
Come in and stand truly with them, that in every relationship of life, in every connection of life, it might be seen that this is no ordinary people. This people is different. This is a heavenly people.
You are taking on the conduct of this people. Yes, it is true: Christians are different, and their conduct and behaviour is supposed to be different from all others—on a very much higher level, it should be, than others.
And then, come amongst this people. Well, you may say, “It is all different. It is all strange.” But I venture to say that it was not very long, if it was long at all, before Ruth said, “I do not know, but I feel more at home amongst these people than I did in my own country.”
“Somehow or other, I feel these people are more my people than even the people among whom I was reared. Somehow or other, I feel this to be more of my family than even my natural family.”
Now, is that true, Christian? Is that not exactly what happened? It is not that we cease to love or be concerned for those of our relations who are outside of Christ, but somehow or other, those inside of Christ have become our nearest relations. We feel more at home.
And when we go back home to the unconverted relations, we do not feel at home at all. You feel strange, is it not true? People we knew not heretofore, we seem to know now better than we have ever known anyone else. We are at home.
I am sure that was true of Ruth. But that is a very vivid, wonderful reality—a wonderful reality. But, you see, it involves responsibility. “Thy people shall be my people.” Their interests must be my interests. Their testimony must be my testimony. I must be loyal. I must stand with them in what they stand for.
And finally, in this letter, strangely enough, these people are not universally liked. You think they ought to be. Wonderful people like this, with all these things true—well, they ought to be the most liked people in the world.
Somehow or other, no one likes them. They are all disliked by other people, and somehow, whenever they are present or are mentioned, the very atmosphere seems to get thick.
That is exactly where this letter to the Ephesians finishes. There is this people right at the centre of this letter, and then it says: principalities and powers, world rulers of this darkness, hosts of wicked spirits—all against them.
They are involved in a great spiritual conflict. You are involved in that when you come among them.
Yes, we do not want to tell you otherwise. You are involved in that. You are probably going to be very much disliked if you become a Christian. You are going to find that your very presence sets up an antagonistic reaction. And if it does not come from men, it will come from the unseen. You will know it.
I am being quite frank about it. That is what it means to come to the people whom thou knewest not heretofore.
But there is the other side—the other side: “Thou art come unto the God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to take refuge.”
Under whose wings? Refuge. Right. The wings of the Lord are over the people of the Lord.
And I want to point out here that the Lord’s wings are over His people. You want His wings over you? You will not get them out in the world. You will get them in the midst of His people.
Somehow or other, the Lord has appointed that all the blessings that He will give are found amongst His people, and are not to be had apart. You have got to come in with the Lord’s people to get the wings of the Lord.
Whatever it is that the Lord would have for us, we are going to find it relatedly and not independently, corporately and not in a detached way.
Now, this is very true of the letter from which I have read, and keeping true to the Scripture. But, you see, here is the protection of the wings: “Under whose wings thou art come to take refuge.”
You want that proved from this very little book? Naomi, with her husband, left the place of the covenant people and went into Moab. And what happened? They lost it, and they lost the protection of God. Calamity upon calamity fell.
Naomi put it this way: “I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty.” She deserted the place where the wings were.
It is always, let me say to Christians, a disastrous thing to leave the place where the Lord is and where the Lord would have you. They may have thought that it was going to ease the situation, but it made it a thousand times more difficult.
Not until they came back to the place where the Lord was did they find the Lord’s wings and their refuge.
And that is a word to Christians. Remember, remember: forsake the place where the Lord is—wherever that may be, where the Lord wants you to be—and you forsake the Lord’s protection. Forsake the fellowship of His people; forsake the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is, and you will probably find trouble.
Protection is found there, in the house of the Lord, amongst the people of God. And so, when they came back, it was just put like this: “Under whose wings thou art come to take refuge.” Come where the wings are.
And ought that not to be—well, I must put it like that—it ought to be like that. And it is, where things are as the Lord would have them, that people find amongst the Lord’s people a refuge.
Wonderful thing, is it not, to belong to the Lord’s people? And when the Lord’s people are as the Lord would have them, oh, what we owe to the Lord’s people. When we are in trouble, what a refuge they are. What a thing it is to have them pray for us, to take us on their hearts, to care for us.
Oh yes, a refuge amongst the Lord’s people. It is a sorry thing to be a lonely soul with no spiritual fellowship. Yes, that is where the wings are.
And I perhaps will close with this. The Lord is more than once in the Bible spoken of as having wings, in this representative or symbolic way. There is one instance in which His wings are referred to in the history of Israel. You find it in the Book of Deuteronomy.
As an eagle that stirreth up her nest,
that fluttereth over her young,
He spread abroad His wings,
He took them,
He bare them on His pinions:
so the Lord alone did lead him.—Deuteronomy 32:11-12
Of course, you know the truth of nature. The eagle’s high, high eyrie, overlooking the immense abyss—the time comes when the mother eagle, seemingly so cruel and harsh, takes the young and pitches them out. Why, they have never yet been on the wing. How cruel!
But then she flutters over them, and then swoops under, catches them on her wings, and takes them back to safety. And her cruelty is only her way of teaching them to fly and to take responsibility for themselves.
And the wings of the Lord are said to have fulfilled that function with His people. Oh yes, it is a terrible experience, a frightening experience, through which the Lord takes us. But His wings—ah, His wings—are training us to take responsibility.
And they will never let us down. They will never let us down. The crash that we fear will never come. Why? It is the wings of the Lord.
Not only under which we have come to rest: a great thing to have the Lord, and the wings of the Lord, and the shelter of the people of God.
And so I finish. I say, if you have not come, the Spirit of God is just laying His gentle constraint upon you, and yet sufficiently firmly to make you know where you ought to be, what you ought to do, the step that you ought to take. If you have not responded, come.
And although everything may seem strange, and it may seem a great venture, and there may seem great risks and great importance in the choice, you are going to find that there are very great compensations, far outweighing everything else.
But the Lord is not going to tell you all about this, make it all plain. Although I am telling you about it, it is only information. It cannot be real to you until you have made your response.
It is not only what someone else knows, or what other people know. You do not know it until you have made response. What we can say to you is that the gentlest influence of the Spirit of God upon your heart, constraining you toward Christ, involves the greatest things conceivable, wrapped up in your response.
Immense things, the missing of which would be irreparable. If you have not come, come.
I said just now, it looked as though Ruth was leaving home and kindred and country. But in effect, she really only came home. I am certain she was able to say later, “This is really home to me.”
And so we say: come home. Come home. If you have gone away, come back. Come back. You know you are not happy. You know you have left home.
And if you are at home, stay at home. Do not run away. Do not be driven away. Do not allow anything to force you away. However difficult it may seem, your refuge is at home, abiding in Christ.
Shall we pray?