Today, as the Lord shall lead and enable, the message is going to issue from a consideration of the Book of Ruth, which you will have before you.
Let me say that the outline, which is represented as “The Relationship to Heart,” is only for the purpose of either informing or reminding you of its content. We do not propose to study that outline as such. Many of you will not need to be acquainted with its content; others may have such a need. But we all need a refreshment in our memory of what is there.
This book is, in a peculiar way, very full, because of the comprehensiveness concentrated into so small an area. Its peculiar setting, of course, was brought before us at the beginning of this conference:
Through adversity unto enlargement, establishment, and life.
That would be so apparent if only, just now, you could read the little book right through at a sitting. We are not going to take it up in that particular way, although that will always be governing and lying behind what we have to say.
If I were to take any particular fragment from this book which I consider to be the key to it, I think I should take from Ruth 4, the last clause:
To raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance.
Add to that, if you like, what is in Ruth 4:15:
He shall be unto thee a restorer of life.
I think everything in the book circles around and finds its focal point in that fragment, in that fact: to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance.
By universal consent, this book goes by the name of Ruth. But why not Boaz? Is it not the Book of Boaz? He was on hand to begin with. You will have the slightest suggestion, I hope, of no invidious comparison. He was not a woman; he was a wealthy man. He was a religious and highly respected man, a man of outstanding personality, an honoured and distinguished citizen.
He seems to have been the chief and most responsible actor in this drama. Yet his name was not put to the book. Who was Ruth, after all? What was Ruth?
She was a widow—nothing discreditable or dishonourable about that. She was a Moabitess, and there was a good deal discreditable and dishonourable about that, as we shall see. She was a stranger, an alien in the land.
Why, then, did she go down in history, and why does her name remain? You see, the answer to that question is, firstly, the message of the book. But more than that, it is the sum of the whole Bible, or the whole plan of redemption, in all its principles and in all its glory, gathered into this little book which you can read in ten minutes.
There is no more comprehensive book in the Bible in relation to the principles of God’s way of redemption. This book needs to be rescued from the back seat. I trust that today something will be done toward that end.
I have said that the whole great plan of redemption is here in principle. I do not know how very much is here to help the message for the life of the Lord’s people. I can testify that, although I have read it many times and have known it for many years, some early morning hours recently, far west of America, brought a new thrill to my own heart as I meditated in this book. I felt the Lord was speaking to me in relation to this problem.
Well, let us come to it and begin to extract, or take up, some of the beautiful and wonderful things it has to say. The book is so simple, is it not? There is nothing profound here. We are not dealing with mysteries. It is one of the easiest books of the Old Testament.
And so these wonderful things about the Lord and His people—you and me—are brought to us without any strain, without any effort, in the very simplest way. We must not stumble at the simplicity.
This book unfolds itself, or its message, along certain quite clearly discernible lines which run right through it. But we note its historic setting. The place which Ruth holds in the history of the Old Testament is created for us in the very first sentence:
Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled.
“In the days when the judges ruled”—although it must have been written long after those days. Its own internal evidence shows that it was written when there was a king. This is not a sequel to the Book of Judges; this is something that actually took place in the days of the judges.
Now, of course, you need to be reminded as to the content of the Book of Judges. All that we can say at the moment is that the Book of Judges is one of the most terrible books in the whole Bible. Indeed, some of the most shocking things in the Bible are found there. There are things which you do not like to read; you like to pass over them. You can hardly understand them.
Yes, dark and terrible, and at times a very evil situation. You take the Book of Judges: people have gone to lengths which are altogether beyond imagination—the depths of iniquity in the human heart, the remote distance from the thoughts of God to which His people can travel.
It is difficult to speak in exaggerated language of some things in that book. I think that all of us who have read through the Book of Judges have been amazed at the patience of God, the willingness of God to come back to His people.
Well, right in that book, while that condition in general obtains, you set this contrast, this glorious interjection which is given to us in the Book of Ruth. So we are brought to see God acting with the long view in the midst of such conditions and at such a time.
Look at the last words of the Book of Judges:
In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
The last words of the Book of Ruth are:
And Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David.
God acting with a long view in such conditions and at such a time—wonderful to contemplate.
Everything seems to be a contradiction of God; indeed, it is. Everything seems to say that the situation is utterly hopeless. This is spiritual calamity in its last stages. And right in the midst of that, God is acting with a long view, and He is acting toward that day, bringing in David and the glorious kingdom; and through David, another great event—David and David’s greater Son.
I think that very first point is a tremendously inspiring one, a tremendously reassuring one, a tremendously comforting and encouraging one. We are sometimes in times when the situation is spiritually very desperate and very difficult, and the thoughts of God are far from being represented and expressed among His people. Things have gone far from them.
I say it is reassuring to recollect that in worse things than these, God acted secretly and sovereignly with the long view to have it as He ever intended it to be. It is there that He did it.
Well, if we said no more, I hope that is a message here right at the very beginning. But let us break this up and take out these linking lines along which the message is unfolded.
The first line, of course, is a dark line. It is the line of tragedy.
In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land.
We know that again and again in the history of Israel the Word of the Lord was fulfilled in that very way. In faithfulness to Him, He would bless His people in their field, in their basket, and in their store. But should they be unfaithful, His curse would rest upon their field, their basket, and their store.
That was fulfilled again and again. Outstandingly, you remember, in the days of Elijah:
Thus saith the Lord, there shall not be rain upon the earth.
And there were the dry and devastating results. When you look at the Book of Judges, you are not surprised, are you? This famine was not just something that happened; it was a part of the divine judgment because of the spiritual state, because they had lost distinctiveness.
Read in the Book of Judges, and it seems that even the best people were implicated in this. Even in Gideon’s own home, the home of his father, there were idols. Later, after the Lord had used Gideon so mightily, there came further decline.
They lost the distinctiveness of the Lord’s people, who were called to stand apart from all other gods. Consequently, they lost ascendancy over their enemies. The case is constantly repeated: defeat, subjection, and accusation by one nation or another.
They lost ascendancy, lost unity, and became a disintegrated people morally and spiritually. They had no authoritative testimony in the world. It was gone. God was not all in the land where He had so signally and wonderfully moved in order that He should be the only God of Israel.
We have spoken about this earlier: dividedness God was against, and singleness God sought. God moved, firstly, in calling Abraham out from among the worshippers of many gods, that He might be their only God. Then He brought them into Canaan and commanded the destruction of the nations because of their gods: clear that land of idolatry, bring His people into a land where He alone—He alone utterly—was the object of their occupation and worship.
But here there are idols, other gods in the land, and their testimony is gone. He is not all. No wonder there was a famine, a famine in the land.
You like to translate that into spiritual terms. You see, it works that way spiritually now, as it worked literally and historically in the old dispensation. The measure of our food, our spiritual resources, our plenty, our increase, and our enlargement is governed by our conformity to the thoughts of God.
There is a very great deal of spiritual famine abroad today. Yes, a lot of people are very hungry; indeed, they are starving. Everywhere you go, you have this complaint: “We cannot find bread. We cannot find any spiritual food. There is a famine of hearing the Word in enablement.”
You know, Bible teaching is not always feeding. There may be plenty of Bible teaching; indeed, there may be Bible institutes, and the people may still be starving. A large percentage of the Lord’s people may attend them and go through their sessions and still be poor things, scraggy things, in their spiritual life.
Let us not confuse these things with food. There is food, and there is a dearth of real spiritual food, largely because the full thoughts of God for His people do not obtain and do not govern. It is otherwise where they do.
And a certain man of Bethlehem-judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons.
Elimelech, his wife, and sons were very decent people. They were very nice people. They were very good people—Elimelech and his household. Nothing against them in their moral life, their respectability, perhaps in their God-fearing attitude.
But here is the thing: how often good, honest, and sincere people of God become involved in tragedy because of the general state of the church.
Look at this line of tragedy. Here it is in Ruth 1. They went to sojourn in the country of Moab. The name of the man was Elimelech; the name of his wife, Naomi; and the names of his two sons, Mahlon and Chilion. They came into the country of Moab and continued there.
Then they took wives of the women of Moab: the name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth. They dwelt there about ten years. Mahlon and Chilion died, both of them; and the woman was left of her two sons and her husband.
Then Naomi said:
Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.
I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty.
Why call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?
It is tragedy, is it not? Tragedy. And it is the tragedy of good people being involved in a situation which, on the part of a larger people generally, is not according to the Lord’s mind.
You see, this man evidently lost heart. Elimelech lost heart; he lost hope; he lost faith. He said, “It is no use staying here. There is nothing for us here. There is no prospect here. There is no way here. We had better get out.”
This man lost heart, hope, and faith, and made a terrible mistake which led to all this tragedy because of the state of the Lord’s people.
Oh, how many things there are in the lives of so many of the Lord’s people which would never be if the Lord’s people, as a whole, were right. Think of all the things that have come into Christianity which ought never to have come in, and would never have come in if the original possession of the Day of Pentecost and afterward had been maintained.
All the things that came in when spiritual decline came in are a terrible, terrible heritage of the day when the church began to lose its spiritual position. How many have become involved!
We have got to take this attitude toward people who seem to be in a mess. Why are so many in a mess? Not always through their own fault. Because they have not got the help which they ought to be having by the church and amongst the people of God. Things are not in the condition in which they can get their help amongst the people of God.
The state of the Lord’s people collectively has a very tragic repercussion upon the individuals of the Lord’s people and their lives. When the Lord’s people collectively are in a right spiritual state, corresponding to the mind of the Lord, the Lord’s thought, the Lord’s revealed will, then the individuals find their faith amongst the Lord’s people and are saved from a lot of mistakes.
They find their life there. They find their guidance there. They find their protection there. They find their wisdom there. That is how it ought to be.
But because that state is not as the Lord would have it, lots of people are making terrible mistakes and terrible blunders. They are impelled into this hopelessness and tragedy in many individual lives because they have not got the values of the corporate and collective life of the Lord’s people as they should have.
We must be very considerate and very understanding. The blame is not always upon the individual. They have become involved in a Christianity which has brought in a lot of things that God never intended, and which never would have been if things had continued as at the beginning.
Here are decent, respectable, nice people, God-fearing in their own hearts, moving out on a line of terrible tragedy because the nation was wrong, because the corporate body was wrong.
They are not altogether without blame, because there is individual responsibility. Tragedy does overtake those who surrender their faith and principle to a policy of personal security.
They knew quite well that the covenant related to that land which was their home. They belonged to the covenant land and the covenant people. But God had said things about other lands, and especially about Moab.
Whether they slipped up in forgetting their Bibles or not, I am unable to say. But, you know, we get into a lot of trouble by not knowing our Bible, doing a lot of things which are altogether wrong, whereas the Bible has something to say about that very precisely.
If only we would know our Bibles, read carefully our Bibles. David got into a terrible, terrible bit of trouble on one occasion because he had forgotten concerning the moving of the ark. You remember: they put the ark upon a cart. But the Lord had said that the Levites should carry the ark, not a cart. It was there in the Bible.
David may have been very upset with the Lord for smiting Uzzah to death. But he went and had it out with the Lord, took his Bible, and found where it was written that the Levites were to carry it. He had adjusted things, but that did not mean that he was saved from the tragedy.
Listen to this: the Lord has given us His Word and made known His mind to us. He will not save us from the tragedy that follows our ignorance of what we could know and should know.
That is a very deep lesson that comes out of this case. Tragedy can overtake those who surrender faith. Ah, yes, it was a call for faith, was it not?
You see, the whole of this wonderful story in this little book works out to its triumphant issue because, somewhere, faith came back where faith had been lost. You must not anticipate, but you see, it came back right into the family circle of Elimelech.
The loss of faith takes to tragedy. The recovery of faith issues in recovery and glory. It is that surrendered place. Ah, yes, a very severely tested place, it is true—but you have a principle here.
The Lord Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights and was hungry. The situation, perhaps physically, was quite critical, perhaps desperate. And Satan said, “Command that these stones be made bread.”
Here is a test of faith in the Father, is it not? You see the principle? Faith in the Father will lead us to do the right thing; unbelief will lead us to do the wrong thing. What a tragedy it would have been if the Lord Jesus had surrendered faith in His Father to apparent necessity, to circumstances which seemed, after all, so forceful and so serious.
Elimelech, under testing, surrendered to circumstances. He surrendered to policy. And one of the most disastrous things is policy: policy which acts over against what God has said, allowing policy to govern for our own advantage, our own security, and our own well-being, when God has made His mind about it perfectly clear in His Word.
You see, we cannot, after all, preserve our fullness. I am referring to Ruth 1:21:
I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty.
We cannot preserve our fullness off God’s ground. We may have a lot, but get off God’s ground and you cannot keep it. They thought they would keep it all by going to Moab, preserve their fullness. They went out full, evidently; they took everything with them. They thought they would be quite secure.
But she said, “Full I went out; empty I came back.” We can preserve nothing at all if we get off God’s ground, if we get onto ground that is foreign to God. And Moab was altogether foreign to God and foreign to God’s covenant. Indeed, it was worse than that.
So Naomi said those terrible words:
I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty.
The Lord hath testified against me.
The Almighty hath afflicted me.
You see, God acted sovereignly in disapproval, but to get them back. And the discipline under God’s hand is always intended to be, firstly, corrective and then restorative.
God is sovereign, and He acted sovereignly with them. So He brought this adversity upon them. He could do no other. In His kindness, in His mercy, and according to His beneficent purpose, He chastened.
David said:
Before I was afflicted I went astray.
I feel that is here in this case. It is all the dark line. Here is death: Elimelech is dead; his two sons are dead. Deadlock, impasse, no way through. Everything has come to a deadlock. It was cancelled, all tied up—barrenness.
Deadlock, when we act contrary to the revealed mind of God. A terrible lesson. Yes, deadlock—no way through; barrenness; no ministry—if we are off the true ground.
Take it to heart. God has made His mind perfectly clear on all matters concerning our life and our service. He has laid down His principles. He has told us where and on what ground He will meet us. He has told us that it is in His house that He will meet His people.
He has told us that He has appointed in His house certain things and certain people, under the Holy Spirit’s anointing, for our direction, our safety, and our good. Let us get off that ground and see what happens. God forbid that you would, but it is apparent and quite clear: it is limitation, spiritual death, and barrenness.
The lives of many are moving on toward their close with a story of barrenness which might have been the story of fullness and richness of service, because they would not and will not recognize God’s principles amongst His people.
Say what you like about it. Blame the Lord’s people; blame the Lord’s servants, if you will. God’s Word is perfectly clear. We shall find our way and we shall find our service on the ground that God has laid down.
And if we, knowing that—or having had it given to us in the Word of God, and therefore we should know it—ignore it, argue ourselves out of it, depart from it, or violate it, then spiritual death, spiritual barrenness, and spiritual deadlock follow. These are things that we should take to heart. Hard as they sound, let us lay them to heart.
The inheritance, with all that is ours by right, by covenant, as in this case, either falls into abeyance, with us deriving nothing from it, or we pass it to others. There is a terrible warning in the Book of Revelation:
Let no man take thy crown.
The crown may pass to others.
Well, that is one of the lines along which this whole story unfolds. It is the tragic line; it is the dark line. I know you are oppressed by it still, but it is as well that we recognize the message of this. Dear friend, it is not only a message which applies to us individually in our Christian lives; this is the major line of the whole doctrine of redemption.
Until you recognize the ground and the reasons for death, deadlock, and barrenness, you are not in a position to appreciate the wonderful, wonderful mercy of God.
So we pass to the next line along which the book unfolds. We could gather that under one little phrase and title of the Lord, well known to us in the New Testament: the God of hope.
The God of hope. That is a dark and terrible background, but over that and in that: the God of hope.
Look at Ruth 1:6:
Then she arose with her daughters in law, that she might return from the country of Moab: for she had heard in the country of Moab how that the Lord had visited His people in giving them bread.
And Ruth 1:22:
So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter in law, with her, which returned out of the country of Moab: and they came to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest.
Good news from a far country. Good news in a far country. She had heard, out there in the land of Moab, that God had visited His people.
It is difficult to place this in the Book of Judges, but it was evidently one of those periods when the situation changed for a little while—under Gideon, for instance, under Deborah, and under others. In a long dark day of four hundred years, it was evidently in one of those brighter periods in that dark history that the Lord visited His people and gave them bread, and they came at the beginning of the barley harvest.
There is a place where God meets us, but He will only meet us in that place. And that place is resurrection—on resurrection ground.
“The Lord is risen indeed.” Thomas said, “I will not believe it.” So he was not with them when the Lord appeared. He went away, outside, wondering perhaps morosely in his despair and darkness. The Lord never went after Thomas.
He let him get on with it, let him stew in his misery. He never went out. “Here is the place where I meet you.” Where? Where you believe that I am risen. “Be not faithless, but believing.”
It was a question of faith, was it not? To believe in the resurrection. The good news had gone out: “We have seen the Lord. The Lord is risen.” But he would not believe the good news, so he was left outside in the dark.
The Lord, I say, did not go after him. It was not until he came in. Why he came in on that day, I do not know. Something had been going on in him. Perhaps he came to the place where he said, “Well, I am certainly getting nowhere along that line. This is getting me nowhere. If there is any hope anywhere at all, it seems to be among those people in that room. The very least I can do is go.”
Ah, yes, and then he got onto the ground where the Lord was believed and where they were enjoying the reality of His resurrection. The Lord met him, and he met the Lord.
There is always a ground like that. The story of the prodigal has that aspect, has it not? The elder brother would not go in. All right, but he would stay outside as miserable as he could be. All the rejoicing was inside. He had to come onto resurrection ground in order to be in the good of resurrection life and joy.
That is the place where the Lord meets us.
You see, the barley harvest. Now, you Bible students know quite well that barley is always a type of resurrection. It is always the type of resurrection, the first of the harvest from the grave.
Barley is referred to quite a lot in this little book, is it not? One, two, three, four, five, six times in the little book barley is referred to. And from the barley harvest Ruth comes into her new life and her new fullness by what Boaz gives her on the score of barley.
Everything is, so to speak, resting upon the barley, is it not? From the barley harvest.
What about those barley loaves with which the Lord fed the multitude? What did He go on to say immediately afterward?
My flesh is meat indeed.
“How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” Well, the mystery of Christ imparting Himself to us is only known by us on resurrection ground, is it not? The Holy Spirit ministers Christ after His resurrection—His risen life ministered to us.
Barley loaves, you see. I need not say more about the meaning of barley. You can go through the Bible with it and see it: always this one thing—resurrection, resurrection.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you.
You can read that right into the Book of Ruth. That is so. God always moves back, as well as forward, on the line of resurrection. That is the message here. He is moving back on the line of resurrection.
In other words, God is always on the positive line. This situation gives no pleasure to God; it is not satisfactory to God. This tragedy of things, either in the land or in the lives of these few, gives God no glory. He always reacts to a situation like that on the principle and line of resurrection. He is on positive lines.
Do you believe this? Are you somewhere in this tragic situation, the situation of tragedy? Have you come to an arrest, a deadlock? Have you come to an impasse, barrenness? Do you feel you are cut off from the Lord’s ground? Listen. Listen.
The Lord does not accept that, and He does not want you to accept that. The Lord does not believe that is the ultimate thing. The Lord acts on positive lines. There is no despair, I believe, so deep and terrible that the Lord will not react to it in resurrection.
Lay hold of this great thing: God is the God of resurrection. God is the God of the barley harvest. His answer to death, His answer to desolation: He is the God who raiseth the dead.
If you feel like that, believe Him as that. Believe Him as that. Good news for you, as for Naomi—good news. The reversing of all our misfortunes is in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
Do you have that? Yes. And so it says they went out of the country of Moab. Out of the country of Moab. They had heard good news of resurrection, believed it, and acted upon it.
They did not say, “Oh, that old talk. I do not believe that is true. That is only a rumour.” No. They believed the report. They believed the report that there was resurrection, and they put their things into action and went. They embraced it by faith and found it to be true.
The thing that you and I are called upon to do many times in our lives is to believe in the God who raises the dead, to lay hold of that resurrection by faith, and to commit ourselves to it definitely—to move our faith by our works.
And on that ground we inherit the fruits of His resurrection. The curse is removed.
You see, Moab lay under the curse. It remained under the curse. It was an accursed country and people. In itself, Moab was still under the curse, but they left the ground of the curse because of resurrection. You can see the doctrine, cannot you? The New Testament is there.
Yes, the curse is upon all this creation as it is. But because Jesus has been made a curse for us, and has borne that judgment and risen for our justification, on the ground of resurrection we leave the ground of Moab, the place of the curse, and come into the fruits of His resurrection. And how rich they are.
Beware of getting back into the land of Moab. That is, beware of the earth, of touching in your spirit realm that which still lies under the curse and this world still lies under judgment.
Beware of a voluntary touch, in spirit and in life, with that which lies under judgment, or it means depriving you again of your spiritual life, your joy, and your peace. Beware of the earth—Moab.
God’s action in resurrection is to make this place true to His name, to make His place what it should be. You see, it is Bethlehem, and Bethlehem means “the house of bread.” When there is a famine, let us have a state of things altogether contrary to its name.