Redeeming Love - Studies in the Book of Ruth
6 - The Providence of God
Naomi has returned to her homeland of Judah after ten traumatic years in Moab. She has brought her daughter-in-law Ruth a Moabite woman with her. They are now home in Bethlehem and chapter two of the book of Ruth begins with a reference to a man called Boaz. Verse one says, “Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side from the clan of Elimelech, a man of standing, whose name was Boaz”. The Hebrew word translated “a man of standing” means a man of wealth and property. It was harvest time and workers were needed in the fields. It appears that Ruth was aware of the law of Moses that allowed for the owners of a field to permit gleaners to gather grain after the reapers had passed by. This was so that the poor might have their needs met. In Deuteronomy chapter fourteen verse nineteen we read, “When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands”. How did Ruth know this? It is likely that Naomi had taught Ruth the scripture. She had talked to Ruth about the things of God.
Your family, friends and neighbours will not know what God requires of them unless they are told. So it was that Ruth followed on after the gleaners. She asked Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favour”. Naomi gives Ruth permission to go. Not all field owners allowed the poor to gather grain in this way. But Ruth gathers in the field of Boaz, Naomi’s relative. Verse three says, “As it turns out she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelech”. This shows that Boaz was being obedient to God’s word in allowing the poor to gather grain. Boaz was evidently a spiritual man with an eye to pleasing God. We can tell whether someone has a love for the Lord by their obedience to God’s Word in their lives. There were many in Bethlehem professing to love the Lord, but they did not obey the Scripture and did not permit the poor to gather grain after the reapers in the field. We read in James chapter one verse twenty-two, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says”.
Ruth begins to work in the field and Boaz appears. We read in verse four, “Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, ‘The Lord be with you!’. ‘The Lord bless you’, they called back!” Working relationships between employer and employees would be much better today if the Lord was brought into the workplace! We read in verse five, “Boaz asked the foreman of the harvesters, “Whose young woman is that?” The foreman explains who Ruth is, and when Boaz hears that she is Naomi’s daughter-in-law he is concerned to provide for her. He immediately looks to her welfare and says to her, “My daughter, listen to me. Do not go and glean in another field and do not go away from here. Stay here with my servant girls. Watch the field where the men are harvesting and follow along after the girls. I have told the men not to touch you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled”. So Ruth works all day in the field until the evening came. In verse eighteen we are told that she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an epah. She carried it back to town and told Naomi how much she had gathered. Ruth told her that she had been working in a field belonging to Boaz. Naomi saw God’s hand in all this. She says in verse twenty, “The Lord bless him… he has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead”. She added, “That man is our close relative, he is one of our kinsman-redeemers”.
The significant thing about this story is the evidence we see of God at work in providence. Providence is God’s activity in the everyday activities of your life. In them He works out his plan and his purpose for you. Benjamin Franklin put it like this, “The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs the affairs of men”. Do you recall those words in verse three of this chapter, “As it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz”? and in verse four, “Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem”. Think about those words, “As it turned out ... just then”. Most people would call this a coincidence and simply chance happening. Some would argue that it was fate; it was simply how it turned out to be. No, there is more to it than that. This was no chance meeting. It was not a coincidence. It was God at work. He was fulfilling his purposes for Ruth, Naomi, Boaz and the nation of Israel and ultimately the whole world. God is in the detail!
We read in Proverbs chapter sixteen verse thirty-three, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord”. By his sovereign power He is doing all that needs to be done to achieve his goal. The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is that the Christian acknowledges God in all his ways. God is doing what needs to be done in world history, and he is doing what needs to be done in everyone’s personal history in this journey called life. So God commands us in Proverbs chapter three verses five and six, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight”.
Consider Esther, another godly woman in the Bible. God is not mentioned once by name in the Book of Esther, yet his activity can be detected in every chapter. In the deposing of Queen Vashti, and in the search for another queen for King Xerxes, even in Esther’s appearance that attracted the king to her, and his inability to get to sleep one night can be seen the working of God. During that sleepless night he requested to have the history of his reign read to him and he was reminded of Mordecai the Jew who had saved him from assassination. All of these things, and more, were the effect of God’s activity to save the nation of Israel from a plot by Haman to exterminate them. God did all this without removing man’s free choice to make his own personal decisions. It is no wonder that Paul says in Romans chapter eleven verse thirty-three, “Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and his paths beyond tracing out!”. In Esther chapter four verse fourteen, Mordecai, Esther’s uncle says to her, “and who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” God had so worked in the current affairs of the nation, and in individual lives, that Esther was in the right place at the right time.
So be comforted by this truth that God is at work in your circumstances. He is working in them for your good and for his glory. Jesus said in Matthew chapter ten, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows”.