The story of Ruth is one that many people have continued to abuse time and again believing it to be a story about other things minus Christ. Somehow many preachers excite audiences with this story of Ruth and Boaz, yet in all this excitement nothing of Christ is ever expounded.
The story of Ruth and Boaz is not there to teach us anything other than the gospel! If someone is allegedly preaching about how the story of Ruth and Boaz is about how daughters in law must cling to their mothers in law then perhaps you ought to be very worried.
The gospel is more than personal relationships. The gospel is about how Jesus Christ has died for His elect all for their redemption to the Glory of the Father!
Before we get into the implications of this story, here I present a brief background of the story:
Ruth and Her sister Orpah where Moabites they got married to A Jewish family that had immigrated into Moab due to a famine in Israel.
Unfortunately the Jewish Husbands to these Moabite women died and so the two women where left with nothing other than their own mother in Law Naomi.
Naomi being sn Israelite by birth thus resorted to return to Israel, Ruth though a Moabite insisted she would follow Naomi.
Boaz another one of the key characters of the book enters into the picture much later, and his significance will be explained later on in this brief exposition, but briefly Boaz is that Christ like figure who comes up and Marries off Ruth and thus takes up the responsibility on behalf of Her late husband
Moving on, We must understand that God through Naomi, Boaz and Ruth was working the elaborate plan of redemption. Ruth was not redeemed by Boaz because of her kindness as it might seem or because she had insisted to be follow her mother in Law.
The primary cause of Her insistence to follow her mother in law, and the primary cause of Her kindness was God who worked these in Her. God causes His creatures to will all according to His purposes and for His Glory.
Ruth was redeemed by Boaz because God’s sovereign will determined it that even though a Moabite, Christ would eventually be brought about through the lineage of Boaz
and Ruth.
Ruth did not decide that she would eventually want to be part of Christ’s genealogy. This could only have been tha plan of God who accomplished it in the very way that it played out.
Boaz being related to both Naomi and Ruth was there to fulfill a particular requirement of the law accordding to Deuteronomy 25:5 – 6
5 If brothers are living together and one of them, at his death, has no son, the wife of the dead man is not to be married outside the family to another man: let her husband’s brother go in to her and make her his wife, doing as it is right for a brother-in-law to do.
6 Then the first male child she has will take the rights of the brother who is dead, so that his name may not come to an end in Israel.* – Deuteronomy 25:5-6
The responsibility “to redeem” belonged to the closest relative, brother, uncle, uncle’s son, or a blood relative from his family (Lev. 25:25, 48-49). The person (kinsman) who “redeemed” the one in financial difficulties was known as a kinsman-redeemer,
What day thou buyest the field of the hand of Naomi, thou must buy it also of Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance.”
Thus the kinsman-redeemer had a duty protect life, property, and family name of a close relation or for executing justice upon his murderer.
However Before Boaz could have even offered to be the redeemer,
We notice that the kinsmen who ought to have redeemed Ruth and Naomi, concedes this right to Boaz. Reason being he believed the act of redeeming Ruth and Naomi might endanger His own estate.
This must remind us of past shadows and types and saviours which could not offer us redemption. Mt Sinai cannot save the believer, Only Christ can reedem His Bride the church.
Boaz is a type Of Christ, like Christ who redeems His bride the church, Boaz redeemed His bride Ruth. Ruth is a type of church, she is the bride just like the New Testament chuirch is always referred to as the Bride of Christ. Ruth is a type of a church, she points to the coming of the gentiles into the New Testament church,
When we say Boaz is a type of Christ who redeems the church, I don’t mean to say that people can go through Boaz to be saved but rather what we mean is that Boaz acted in much the same manner Christ would in the story of redemption.
Boaz was but a shadow of greater things in Christ, and as with shadows and types, He could never be a perfect replication of Christ, just as the goats and sheep where but types only albeit imperfect.
Now Christ has come and has totally been revealed, He has not redeemed his church by way of perishable silver and gold but, he has redeemed His church by His blood and He did not thus die forever but rose again and triumphed over death.
Boaz redeemed Ruth for just but a lifetime that at one time came to an end, Yet Christ has redeemed His bride forever, with an everlasting redemption.
The death of Ruth’s husband necessitated the coming of a redeemer. A dead husband could not have been of any use to Ruth.
Even so with the law, It is no different from Ruth’s dead husband. The law is dead! The church was not redeemed by the law, or as a requirement of the law because the law was but a shadow of a better and more excellent thing to come: Jesus Christ.
Yet the church has been redeemed by God’s Grace in fulfillment of what God’s plan of salvation that has always been communicated through the ages.
Here we see Boaz coming in the place of Ruth’s dead husband, taking His place as a redeemer. Christ has taken up the place of the old covenant that was but a shadow of Christ, The Old Covenant is obsolete and dead.
The sacrifices and the rituals of the law are dead and Christ has come to take up their place forever. Christ’s redemption is not a temporary redemption but an everlasting redemption.
Christ died and paid for all our debts that we could otherwise could never pay. He paid for those sins of the elect, of those that God has already predestined unto eternal life. On account of His righteousness we are righteous. God has declared us as just. Christ is our kinsman redeemer.
REFORMISSION 