The Christmas Story Shines Through the Book of Ruth

The Book of Ruth: if you look at it closely and in depth, you will realize that it has many elements that connect with Christmas; it is a very interesting book. When I began to ask the Lord, “Father, why do I feel this affinity in the Book, yet I do not know exactly where those points of affinity are between the Book of Ruth, the principles this book points to, and the Christmas story?” I began to explore: okay, where are those connections, and why does this Book remind me so much of the theme of Christmas? And frankly, it has opened up a new perspective on the Book of Ruth that I did not have before; it has enriched me, and I want to share some ideas about that with you.

And I do not want this to be seen as merely a discussion or some theological lecture, because this has many applications for our lives; I believe it is a very practical teaching. But it also sometimes teaches us how we should explore the Scriptures, because the Scriptures sometimes have themes beneath the surface that we will not discover unless we set out to examine them more deeply, and a whole dimension of this book has opened up to me.

If you think about it: why was this little gem, this small book, placed there in the Old Testament, when it is actually the story of two women who set out in search of a new life, then have a few adventures and meet this man named Boaz, and eventually he decides to marry this woman Ruth, who is from another tribe, from another foreign country, and they live happily ever after; everything ends well.

But I believe that the Lord often places—I believe that every Book in Scripture and every passage has a reason for being there. The Holy Spirit guided the men who wrote these Books—I say men and not men and women because all those who wrote the sixty-six Books we have in Scripture were men—everything has meaning, purpose, and significance.

Looking at this now, I think the Holy Spirit was recording there certain principles concerning Christmas and the Messiah who was to come, as well as the Gospel story and the themes of the Gospel, centuries before these things took place. We are talking about 800—no, much more than that—it is the time of the Judges; imagine, David is still three generations away from being born, and before him came Saul. In other words, this is before the time of the kings; this is the time of the Judges, when Israel was governed by judges—that is, people whom God sovereignly chose and appointed to deliver the people when they were under oppression, and so forth, and to lead His people. There was no king; there was no institution called the Monarchy, which begins with King Saul.

So centuries and centuries beforehand, God is—as it were, the Holy Spirit has always been hovering over history and guiding history toward Christ. Throughout Scripture, beginning in Genesis, when God tells Adam and Eve—or tells the serpent—that the woman would strike it on the head, meaning that she would cut off its head, and the serpent would strike the woman on the heel, God was already speaking about Jesus Christ, who would deal the serpent a mortal blow through His Coming, and God was already thinking about Christ. That is why it is said that the entire Old Testament, the whole Bible, points from different perspectives toward the person of Jesus Christ and toward the theme of Christmas, the birth of the Son of God.

And it seems to me that, in a very beautiful way, this Book encourages and invites us to think about the themes of Christmas and the themes of the birth of the Son of God and the person of the Son of God. We are going to see how that happens and why I believe this book is a book that we might almost call messianic in a sense, and that this is one of the reasons why this book is here. Otherwise, you might think, “Wow, where are the teachings in this book?” It can be difficult to see it in its full magnitude, but it is a very profound book.

So the Book of Ruth has many affinities with the theme of Christmas and with the principal themes of the Gospel. It is as though God placed it in the Old Testament to remind us that His plans are eternal and that He has been planning the Christmas story from the beginning. This explains why this little book, which might not appear to have much justification for being in the Scriptures, is there.

Here we see something like the subconscious of God—God does not have a subconscious, just in case, right?—but something like brooding: God is brooding over these themes, the subconscious of God already processing the themes of the Gospel and Christmas hundreds of years before Christ came. It reminds us that the whole Bible is connected through hidden connections and that we must learn to discern these connections by studying it carefully.

By the way, let me give you this as a little bonus—I will not charge you for the comment I am about to make. Sometimes unbelievers out there, in order to attack us concerning some of our beliefs, say to us, “Ah, then why does the Bible say such-and-such in this passage, while elsewhere you do not do what it says there?” They do this to confuse and neutralize us regarding the things we believe.

And I have thought about that. By the way, it often bothers me to hear that nonsense, but sometimes they corner us in a television interview where we have three seconds to answer. And I believe one of the answers we must give unbelievers is this: if it has often taken those of us on the inside, who study Scripture deeply, centuries to unravel all the complexities of Scripture, how much longer will it take someone on the outside to understand why?

The Bible is a seamless book. It consists of 66 books, but in a sense it is one Book; it is the mind of God. It must be read as a single book, in which different teachings found in different places qualify and complement one another. And a person who has possibly never read the Bible—or, if they have read it, has read it with a critical attitude and from the outside—will never be able to understand its complexities. Things that seem like contradictions to the unbeliever make perfect sense to us because we have already been on the inside and we know that all these Books, all these teachings, speak to one another and qualify one another. That is why we must know the Scriptures.

We must know them very deeply. We cannot just grab texts by the hair, so to speak, and yank them out to prove our own teachings; that is one of the serious errors of evangelicals. We must be studious people. And I see this complexity here. Well, enough preamble. Where do I see some of these similarities between the story of the birth of the Redeemer of humanity and this Book of Ruth?

Let me read a passage before that, simply as a point of connection. Ruth chapter 4, verses 14 through 18. Boaz—you remember, right? Briefly, the story is that Ruth arrives in Bethlehem with her mother-in-law after both women lose their husbands in the land of Moab. They arrive in the city from which Naomi originally came. There, one day, Ruth goes out to gather a few sheaves of wheat during harvesttime in a field owned by Boaz. Boaz is a businessman, an entrepreneur, a landowner; he owns land. And in Israel there was this custom whereby the poor followed behind those harvesting the wheat, and if any grain fell, so that it would not go to waste, the poor had the right to come and eat it. It was a form of social assistance.

So Ruth goes to the field owned by Boaz to do that, and then Naomi discovers that Ruth is doing this and says, “Ah! He is my relative; he is related to me, so stay close to that place and keep going every day.” Boaz notices this beautiful young woman who is eating from the grain in his field, and, impressed by her—by her character, the beauty of her soul, and all that—he calls her over and says, “Look,” because the man is no fool, “do not leave this place; stay here.” This man has quite a discerning eye, doesn’t he? He says, “Do not stray from this place; there is something good for you here, so stay.”

And Ruth, who is no slouch either, says, “Okay, if you say so.” Then there is this matter that when a man dies—well, I do not want to get ahead of myself—without leaving children, his closest relative is supposed to marry the widow so that his line will not perish and so that his family name will remain. And so, in the end, as the saying goes, “God makes them, and they find each other,” and eventually Boaz and Ruth end up getting married. They live happily ever after; everything turns out well in the end.

But what we see here, then, is the end of the story. Look at what it says here in chapter 4, verse 13: “So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his woman,” his wife, “and he went in to her, and Jehovah enabled her to conceive.” Notice that it says, “Jehovah enabled her to conceive and give birth to a son. And the women of Bethlehem said to Naomi,” the mother-in-law, “‘Praised be Jehovah, who has not left you without a kinsman today.’” Look how interesting; it says, “‘whose name shall be celebrated in Israel.’”

They did not know that they were prophesying here, because, listen, if any name has been celebrated throughout the entire world, it is the Name of Jesus: “He shall restore your soul and sustain you in your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you”—that word restorer, in fact, is a word used frequently for Jesus—“who is of more value to you than seven sons, has given birth to him. And Ruth took the child, laid him in her lap, and became his nurse,” that is, his caregiver, the one who attended to him and cared for him, “and the neighboring women gave him a name, saying, ‘A son has been born to Naomi,’ and they called him Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.” How beautiful, isn’t it? So I believe Naomi was something like the great-grandmother of King David, from whom, ultimately, who descends? Jesus Christ, of the line of David, of the tribe of Judah, right? This is the end of the Book. How beautiful.

So, as you can see, there are many things there meant so that whoever has eyes to see may see, and whoever has ears to hear may hear, concerning this Book. The first thing I see here is the following: Ruth is a Moabite, meaning that she came from the nation of Moab, which, incidentally, was an enemy nation of Israel. In the books of the prophets there are many attacks from God, many denunciations of the tribe of Moab, which was hostile to the nation of Israel. And it is ironic that in the lineage of David and Jesus Christ there is an ancestor from Moab, one of the outsiders. Those people had no right to be where Ruth places them; they had no right.

They had done everything possible not to deserve a place in the lineage of the Son of God. She comes from a pagan nation. Does that not remind you of us Gentiles? The Bible says that we were a people who were not a people and that God has called us His people. We Gentiles are a graft; we are from the outside. Who are the insiders? The Jews. As Paul says, for example, in the Book of Romans, they are the natural heirs of the Gospel, and yet the Bible says that they rejected the Gospel, right? Now, God has a plan for them as well.

It was not as though it suddenly occurred to God, “Well, since the Jews rejected Me, then I am going to go”—no. From the beginning, His plan was that all the nations of the Earth would be part of the Kingdom of God and that Christ came for all nations, right?

Notice who comes to see Jesus in the Christmas story: it is always the outsiders. The first are these wise men who come from Babylon and other pagan nations that did not know God, and they are among the first to learn that the Child Jesus has been born. And they travel from far away, just as Ruth travels from far away to reach Bethlehem. So you see this theme.

Who else is there? The shepherds, people whose work involved dealing with goats, hides, and all that. If you look into the Jewish religion, people who worked with hides and with animals like that were regarded as almost unclean. They too are outsiders—the ones who come and are the first to witness the Son of God.

For the Lord Jesus Christ has never come seeking the exalted, the insiders—no. The Lord has always shown a preference for the poor, the weak, and the outsiders. The rich and the kings despised Him; even the Jews, who were the insiders: “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him,” the Bible says. That is why the Lord has always shown a preference for the poor, for outsiders, for those who do not deserve it.

Because it says that when we were lost in our sins and rebellions, Christ died with us. The story of the Gospel, of Christmas, is always the story of a God who gives people what they do not deserve and does not give them what they do deserve. So Ruth is like an example of that, of that person who does not deserve to be in the lineage of the Son of God. To me, that is the essence of Christmas: this human race that has so greatly despised the Lord and so greatly offended Him—Christ died for it. Christ came into the world to save what had been lost, to seek what had been lost, and to forgive what did not deserve forgiveness.

And Ruth is like a type of that Gospel, inserted centuries beforehand and placed within the lineage of the Son of God so that it might be known that in that blood of Jesus—for that reason the Bible calls Him the Son of Man, because the Lord Jesus Christ embodies all humanity in its entirety—He did not come only to seek one small portion, but everyone. And Ruth is like an outstanding example of its inclusive nature.

I believe in the inclusive Gospel—not as they portray “inclusive” nowadays—but yes, in that sense the Gospel is absolutely inclusive; there is nothing more inclusive than the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you know? So in that sense Ruth is like: look, she does not deserve to be included, but God includes her in the lineage of His Son, and it is by grace.

One of the themes of this Book is grace, mercy. Boaz has mercy on Ruth, receives her, allows her to eat from the produce of his land, and blesses and accepts her; all of that is by grace, as you will see later. Just as the Gospel is by grace, Christ came into the world by grace, by mercy; He gave Himself to us by grace and mercy.

But then Ruth, being a Moabite from a foreign pagan nation, is a type of the Gentiles, and the Bible always speaks of Christ coming to bless the Gentiles. If you look at Luke 2:32, which is where we have the account of the birth, of Christmas, it says that: “Jesus comes as a light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of Your people Israel.” You see? In other words, there is something there: God never forgets His people Israel. Never allow anyone to say: no, now Israel does not count; now it is simply one more nation. No. Israel will never be just one more nation in the heart of God. God is deeply in love with that rebellious people who are His people, and He still has plans for that people.

“But Christ comes for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of His people Israel.” In Mark chapter 12, verse 21, it says that: “In His Name the Gentiles will hope”; in His Name they will hope—the Gentiles will have hope. So, number one: Ruth’s being a Moabite included in the lineage of Jesus reminds us that the Gospel and the Coming of Christ are for all nations, including all those peoples and nations that do not deserve salvation, because salvation is by grace and not by works, so that no one may boast. Amen? Are you beginning to see now that I am not going crazy here, that this makes sense? It is not that the cold has fried my brain or anything; this has meaning here.

Look at the second thing here. The story of Ruth takes place mostly in Bethlehem. What is significant about Bethlehem? It is where Jesus was born, isn’t that right? Wow! Hundreds of years beforehand, God is, as it were, rehearsing His Christmas story there—a little rehearsal, because it is a small rehearsal in the town where His Son would be born hundreds of years later. Do you think that is a coincidence? I do not believe in coincidences. Why does God choose this? But that is how it is.

Look it up in Micah; I think it is in chapter 5 of Micah. Let me see if I can find it, because I always forget where those little books are—Micah chapter 5, I think it is, hmm, verse 2. Micah chapter 5, verse 2: this is a messianic prophecy written later, by the way. When the prophet Micah writes this, I do not think he even knows who Ruth was; these books were written at different times, but not everyone had them readily available there.

But here the prophet Micah says: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah”—if you think about it, Bethlehem was an insignificant little village, okay? It always has been; it is a tiny place, a little dot in Israel right now, and in fact what is happening there in Bethlehem now is interesting. But it says: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah.” We are talking about—according to what I noted here years ago—this prophecy being proclaimed between 640 and 710 BC, 700 years beforehand, and it is clear that Jesus was born in Bethlehem; that is historically incontrovertible, okay?

I can say that with greater certainty. When you go on a tour of Israel, there are many things the tour guides tell you: the Lord Jesus Christ stood here and ate some hamburgers, etc. I take those things with a grain of salt, but some things are indeed very clear. One is that Bethlehem exists—it is there; you can go there today—and that historically there are more historical documents affirming the fact that Jesus was born in Bethlehem than there are for many other historical figures who have lived whose historical record we do not question.

Okay, then, where was I? So notice: we know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and we also know that this book dates from around the eighth century BC, and here in this book, eight centuries before Christ, this prophet says: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too small to be among the families of Judah”—small because it was an extremely tiny town—“from you shall come forth for Me.” Who is the one who says “Me” there? “From you shall come forth for Me the One who will be Ruler in Israel.” Listen: if I were Pentecostal, I would start speaking in tongues right now, and so would you.

Because what it is saying is tremendous: the One who will be Ruler in Israel. That is a messianic prophecy; if there is any messianic prophecy, this is it, okay? And how beautiful that it says “Me.” It is as though He were saying, “He will come forth for Me.” The Father begot the Son, and it also indicates the intimacy with which God views His Son, that Son, “for unto us is born today”; “unto us is born today,” it says, right?

It is as though one always tends to personalize it, because Christ is my Savior, your Savior; He is the Son of God, God is His Father. So it says: “From you shall come forth for Me the One who will be the Ruler of Israel, and His goings forth are from the beginning, from the days of eternity.” Oh my, my, my, my! Any Jehovah’s Witness who tells you that God created Jesus Christ—you know they say that, right?—that He is not eternal but that God created Him: that is a lie from the devil, forgive me. I love Jehovah’s Witnesses, but that is clear.

If you read Isaiah, among the names given to Jesus is Everlasting Father. Wow, that can also blow your mind if you think about it: Everlasting Father. So how beautiful that is: “His goings forth are”—how beautiful that is, His going forth, right? His goings forth, His entrances, the places through which He moves: His goings forth are from the beginning, from the days of eternity. So it is interesting, because this is what happens—something about prophecies; you are learning many little things here, and I am giving them to you here for free.

And the thing is that prophets would often write things, and it was as though the Holy Spirit entered into them at a certain moment, and they would write something without realizing what they were writing, but it was God Himself speaking—and whoever has ears to hear, let him hear. The Lord Jesus Christ often did that: He would bring out a passage and say, this had to do with Me; this was a prophecy of the Holy Spirit, because this is within the context of other things.

But it says: “But He will give them up until she who is in labor has given birth.” Who is she? Mary. But then they put something else in there. That is why these things can sometimes go right over one’s head unless one understands how Scripture speaks, and one does not see them. But then you see this here, right? Bethlehem had a very important place in the mind of God from the very beginning, and that is why this story of Bethlehem, where Ruth arrives, is not a coincidence; it is as though God is doing something there where Jesus is born.

How beautiful. Later it says: “And He shall stand and shepherd His flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the Name of the LORD His God; and they shall dwell securely, for now He shall be great to the ends of the Earth.” That is still there in that—wow, that is a prophecy! To whom else could that apply but Jesus? We understand it; the Jews are still waiting for the Messiah. They know that it applies to the Messiah, but they think His plane has not arrived yet. We already know that He arrived, left, and is coming back again.

So again, that is why Bethlehem, where Ruth and Naomi arrive, has a very powerful meaning and some very powerful associations there with Christmas and the birth of the Son of God. A third thing, then—notice what I have said: the fact that Ruth, a Moabite, is a pagan reminds us that the Lord came to the Gentiles. Second is the fact that this story takes place in Bethlehem, where Jesus was born and where it was prophesied that He would be born, and that also connects us with the Christmas season.

The third thing is that Boaz is from the tribe of Judah. That is clear, and I do not have time to prove it, but it is from the tribe of Judah that the Messiah is born, because David is born from the tribe of Judah, and Boaz is, as it were, David’s great-grandfather through Obed, his son. So it is clear: Boaz also comes from the tribe of Judah, and Jesus is born from the tribe of Judah, and that is a very important connection in this Book.

So, as a direct ancestor of Jesus, we see this: He had to come from that tribe. Here we are reminded of the God who fulfills what He promises. We have to remember that Christ, always associated with the Lion of the tribe of Judah, is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, from which David came. If you go to the Book of Genesis, I think it is in the chapter—let me see; it is when Jacob is about to die and blesses his sons. It slipped my mind a little here. Forty—I knew it was in the forties, but my faith failed me; it was a little before that.

Look here: once again, we are talking about many centuries before the seventh or eighth century—two thousand years, three thousand years before?—perhaps before He is born; well, a little over a thousand years before Jesus is born, three thousand years before our time. When Jacob is about to die, he blesses all his sons, among whom is Judah. Judah was one of Jacob’s sons, one of his 12 sons: twelve tribes, twelve sons.

So look at verse 8 of chapter 49, when Jacob prophesies over his sons and blesses them. Jacob is, as it were, in a prophetic trance and begins to bless his sons and declare things that are going to happen; through his blessing, he imparts spiritual DNA to each of his sons. Parents have great power to bless or curse their children, by the way; always bless your children. Never say: oh, I will see you in prison when you are older. Be careful with that, because you may be marking him with something. “You will never amount to anything; you are a problem”—you are cursing your children. Bless them, bless them, and declare God’s blessing, because as their father or mother you have great power, let me tell you. Never underestimate the power a father or mother has with their mouth to bless through their thoughts and their prophecies.

Then Jacob prophesies over Judah. Judah’s turn comes, and in verse 8 he says: “Judah, your brothers shall praise you.” Did you know that the tribe of Judah is the foremost tribe? There is no doubt about that in all Israel. The tribe of Judah has always been viewed as the head, as the leader. It says: “Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies”—in other words, you will rule over your enemies—“your father’s sons shall bow down before you.” In other words, all your other brothers will bow down before you, just as they have bowed down before the Son of God; you will be the leader.

“Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He crouched; he lay down like an old lion—who will rouse him?” He is saying—he is assigning a role as head and leader to Judah and his descendants, of course, because it is the tribe from which the Son of God is born. Look how interesting this is in verse 10: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah.” In many Bibles that is probably marked in red; it is in mine. If yours does not have it, change Bibles; that means it is not as good as mine.

“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes”—that is an image of Jesus—“and to Him shall the peoples gather.” Wow. This is also speaking of a messianic prophecy. Judah—it is saying: you will be—the scepter, that is, kingship, will never be taken away from you, just as He told David: your lineage will never cease to be; His kingdom will have no end, Isaiah says concerning Jesus.

So these connections—Boaz from the tribe of Judah, Ruth an ancestor of David, in Bethlehem—form a very close connection. I see here, don’t I, that God who fulfills what He promises, that God who has always been associated with the lion. Look how many allusions there are to Judah as a lion; the lion is the king of the jungle. It is the quintessential animal; it is like the glorious animal—strong, courageous, beautiful in appearance, fierce and fearsome. The Bible says it does not retreat when the hunters come.

It is an image of a leader, of a king, and all of that is embedded there, and Boaz is involved in it, and his descendant is from that tribe of Judah. And here I see yet another link in this matter of God, in a strange way, reflecting on what He is going to do. I am going to go a little faster because I know we are already finishing, but I want you to leave with this thought in your mind.

Another thing I see here that joins the Book of Ruth to the Christmas account is that Boaz is a man advanced in years. I do not think he was an exceedingly old man, but in those days perhaps people did not take such good care of themselves or whatever. Still, there is an account here in which Boaz tells Ruth when she approaches him: “Blessed are you, because you did not go after the young men”; you went to a mature man. Perhaps he thought: I am too old for you; you could have sought a much younger man, because she is a woman with much stronger values than mere appearance. That is what he means to say to her.

But Boaz is a man advanced in years, and in the end he has a son. Notice that in the Book of Ruth—I was going to say the Gospel according to Saint Ruth, but in a sense it could be. When Ruth, right there in that passage I read, right?—it says that: “The LORD enabled her to conceive and give birth to a son.” Those expressions are used only for something special, as though God directly intervened. It is not 200 percent clear; I would not dare say it, but it is as though there were a miracle there. Perhaps Boaz was already too advanced in years to have children; I do not know. But the idea is that the birth of that son falls outside what is chronologically normal. Perhaps not for Ruth, because she was a relatively young woman, but Boaz was more advanced in years.

So this also reminds us of people like John and Elizabeth and his birth. Elizabeth was a barren woman, already advanced in age, and God gives her a son at an advanced age. Mary, a woman who could not have children because she was a virgin, and Jesus is born of her through God’s intervention in her body. Neither of those two women could conceive naturally; divine intervention was required for them to give birth.

It reminds us of the God of the impossible, who gives a family to the one who has none. Listen to this: the Bible has a long history of deliverers with miraculous births to fathers and mothers who could not conceive. Many times the Lord marks out a deliverer with a miraculous birth. Think, for example, of Isaac, who is born to Abraham when he and Sarah are a hundred years old and he and Sarah closed up shop a long time ago—they can no longer have children—and yet God miraculously makes them fertile so that they have a son who is the great father of the faith: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all of them. He gives this man a lineage because through that man something great has to happen.

God loves to tell the world: I choose what can no longer give life so that it may give life—a life that heals, liberates, and blesses. God delights in the impossible. When people say, “Oh, there is no more,” He says, “Oh yes, not only is there more, but I am going to give until it overflows.”

Think of Gideon, who is born through a miraculous intervention: an angel comes and tells his father, “A deliverer for Israel is going to be born.” Think of Samuel: Hannah could not have children, and, frustrated to the extreme, she goes to the temple, and God blesses her there, and she has Samuel, the great prophet Samuel, right? Think of John the Baptist, and think of Jesus and others that escape me.

It was not Gideon; it was Samson. I always confuse these two characters. I am going to have to go to a psychiatrist to have him psychoanalyze me: why do I always confuse Gideon with Samson? Gideon—you must be saying over there, “What is the Pastor talking about?” All these names ending in “-on” in the Bible confuse a person.

You see this, don’t you? The fact that Boaz is a man advanced in age, that God gives him this son sovereignly—there are, as it were, overtones here of that son who was to be born to a couple who were not supposed to have a child—and all of this is clearly indicated here.

Another point—I am almost finished. Both accounts include the theme of redemption through grace and mercy. Boaz seems to be a type of Christ in redeeming Ruth. The story is this: in Israel, as I was telling you, when a man died without having children, the law dictated that his closest relative—his brother, for example—take the widow as his wife, marry her, and have children with her so that this man’s lineage would continue.

So Ruth’s husband dies; they have no children, and then, when Ruth approaches Boaz, since he is a distant relative—but through Naomi, because he is not related to Ruth; that is what is interesting, again, like—oh, do not judge me here, because think about the fact that Joseph was not Jesus’ natural father, and yet He is seen as the son of Joseph and Mary. Here Naomi is the relative; Ruth is not, but even so Boaz feels the responsibility to marry Ruth in order to give descendants to his distant relative, and so he redeems her in a sense. He gets her out of a difficult situation, in the sense of having no children, and he does it in a way that is, as it were, by grace.

Look at chapter 3, verse 10, at how Ruth reacts. He is saying: “And he said, ‘Blessed are you of the LORD, my daughter. You have shown more kindness at the end than at the beginning, in that you did not go after young men, whether poor or rich. And now, do not fear, my daughter; I will do for you all that you say, for all the people of my town know that you are a virtuous woman. And now, although it is true that I am a close relative, nevertheless there is a relative closer than I. Stay here tonight, and in the morning, if he will redeem you, good; let him redeem you. But if he does not wish to redeem you, I will redeem you, as the LORD lives. Lie down until morning.’”

How beautiful this story is, isn’t it? This woman is redeemed—that is the word. It was a different idea of redemption, but it was the same idea of taking a person out of her anguish, her barrenness, her poverty, and giving her life, giving her descendants, as Christ did with us. Christ adopted us; He redeemed us. He redeemed us from that slave master who held us captive to sin, death, tragedy, and a world without purpose or meaning. Christ adopts us. The Father adopts us as His children, the Bible says; He redeems us, gives us a name, and blesses us, just as Boaz also did with Ruth, right?

And what is interesting is that this is also a story in which the one who has the right does not do what he has to do, and then the second one comes and does it, because Boaz, since he is a man of integrity, says: “You know what? Yes, I am in love with you; I love you; I would like to marry you, and I want to do it properly. But you know what? There is someone who is more closely related than I am, and I am going to follow the law, go by the book, and go to that person. I am going to tell him, ‘Look, you have the right. If you want, marry her, because legally you are the first one who has the right.’” He does not hide that.

This Book is also a book of integrity, nobility, and generosity—the character of Boaz, the character of Ruth. Do you remember that I told you that last Sunday? That is why God blesses these people: because they have a heart that God sees. You had better cultivate a clean, beautiful, noble, lovely heart at all times, no matter what you see others doing, no matter whether anyone sees you or not. Guard your heart, for from it flows life. Make sure that your actions are upright in every way possible, because God always sees the heart; He sees what is done in secret.

Even if no one sees you, even if you are locked inside a safe in the middle of a bank vault, God sees you, so always do what is right, and you will be blessed. That is why Boaz says, “Look, there is another relative closer than I am. I am going to give him the opportunity, and we will see what happens.” When Boaz gives the opportunity to the man who has the right, the man says, “You know what? I cannot, because it would damage my inheritance,” and so on. “So you redeem her,” and that is the story.

The Hebrews were the ones who had the right to salvation, and they rejected it, and so the Lord gave it to the Gentiles, the Church of Jesus Christ. Here we are, a bunch of Dominicans, Caribbean people, Central Americans, and South Americans, speaking Spanish, and we are children of God; and these poor Jews, who are the ones who should be enjoying the salvation of the Gospel, are still over there waiting for the Messiah. What a thing! Because they rejected it. They could have done it, but they did not.

So here in this story there are also these overtones that the one who has the right does not do it, and then the one who does not have the right is blessed. That other man might have been the ancestor of the Son of God, but no; it was Boaz, because he had integrity, love, grace, and generosity. How beautiful the Word of the Lord is, isn’t it?

The last thing I see here is that Ruth takes refuge under Boaz’s protection; it is as though she covered herself under Boaz’s wings. One of the most romantic scenes in the entire story is when Ruth approaches at night the tent where Boaz is sleeping, and she arrives very quietly and secretly so that no one will see her. There is nothing dirty here or anything like that, you know? This was something very symbolic. And she approaches Boaz’s bed, takes Boaz’s blanket, lifts it, and lies down at his feet as a sign of: I am going to take refuge in you. Will you receive me? Will you adopt me? Ah, how beautiful that is!

And she offers herself as if to say, “Hey, would you like to take over my life and bless me?” Listen, that moves me. It is a very poetic, very beautiful story, a precious love story. So Ruth takes refuge in Boaz as if she were covering herself under his wings. Incidentally, he uses that expression—that she, like us, has to take refuge under the wings of Jesus, right?

In verse 10: “Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and said to him, ‘Why have I found grace in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?’” So this story, right, of that God who blesses those who draw near to Him. “And Boaz answered and said to her, ‘I have been fully informed of all that you have done’”—it is there; we are talking about chapter 2, verse 10 and following, Gonzalo—“He said to her, ‘I have been fully informed of all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you left your father and your mother.’” Here it reminds me of what the Lord Jesus Christ says: “He who does not leave his father and his mother is not worthy to be My disciple.” Do you see? These are things that whoever has eyes to see should see.

“Leaving your father and your mother and the land of your birth, you have come to a people whom you did not know before. May the LORD reward your work, and may your reward be complete from the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” The Lord Jesus Christ has said: “The one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.” And the Lord Jesus Christ once said to Jerusalem: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who stone your prophets! How often I wanted to cover you with My wings, as a hen covers her chicks with her wings, but you were not willing.”

The Lord always wants to cover with His wings those who draw near to Him, but you have to draw near to Him. If you do not draw near to Him, you will not be able to receive. The one who is not humble, the one who does not draw near to the Lord—in James it says: “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.”

For Christ’s saving power to be fulfilled, we have to draw near to Him, shelter ourselves in Him, come to His feet, allow ourselves to be covered, take refuge in Him, be redeemed by Him, and receive the covering of His grace and His mercy; otherwise, the miracle of salvation does not take place. The Christmas story has always been about that, hasn’t it? The God who sacrifices Himself and comes so that we may have life, and life abundantly. But we have to draw near to Him and seek protection under Him, and if we do, He never rejects us, just as Boaz did not reject Ruth.

The Book of Ruth is an eminently Christmas-centered Book, and we will never read it the same way again when we see these resonances in this book concerning the Christ who has always been in these pages, if we have the understanding to see it that way. Let us bow our heads for a moment, and I want you to thank God for making the Christmas story possible, and because He has been thinking about it since the world began and since before the world began. He has always been there, rehearsing the story of Christmas and salvation—themes that bless and inspire us as much as this wonderful book does.

May God grant that the Christmas story may always shine in our hearts, and we thank the Lord for this. Father, thank You. We worship You; we bless You, Lord. You are our God. Thank You for having us here this morning. Thank You for Your people who have come to take refuge under Your wings, because we know that one moment in Your house is far more powerful than many days in the warmth of our homes. I bless Your sons and daughters who have come. Thank You for this teaching about Christmas.

We surrender ourselves to You now. Guide us and remain with us, Father, through the rest of this day, and bring Your people with blessing. We receive this Word, Father, and we thank You because You are a God who always makes sense; there are no coincidences for You. In the name of Jesus, amen and amen. Glory to the name of the Lord. Glory to the name of the Lord. Amen, amen. God bless you.