Ruth 1: 16-18
But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
Ever look up at the night sky? On a really clear night you can get a great exposure to many stars, the moon, and even some ‘unidentified by the naked eye’ masses of , well, stuff. I remember looking at something shiny with a smoke trail coming from one end and lights on the other end. No, wait, that was an airplane. As it got into my range I saw ‘Southwest’ written on the side! For that type of study of the sky, I really needed a telescope.
I feel like for a more in-depth study of the Word, we also need a telescope. Oh not the kind needed to study stars, but the kind that looks deeply into the past of the people and their stories, then describes how they all fit into God’s timeline.
For this study, I would like to introduce you to Ruth. I’m sure you are somewhat familiar with Ruth’s story. She was a Moabite woman who married an Israelite man. Now, this was at a time when Judges ruled in Israel. They may have been good, fair Godly judges, but they were often evil. At this particular time there was a famine in Israel, so the family of Naomi and Elimelech left the area of Judah and moved to Moab where there was food, but the people were not Godly. The couple had two sons, but sadness found them when first Naomi’s husband, then her two sons died in Moab. Since Naomi and her family were living in the land that her daughters-in-law came from, she told Ruth and Orpah to return to their own families. Custom was that if one son died, the next son in line would marry the widow. There were no more children for the two women to marry, so Naomi implored them to go home and be taken care of by her father once again. Ruth would not have it! She was committed to Naomi and wanted to stay with her. Naomi planned to return to Judah and her relatives rather than stay in Moab, an ungodly country.
Let’s pull back for a minute with that telescope, shall we? Looking at a larger picture, Ruth had lived with, cooked with, even worshipped with Naomi during her courtship and marriage to Naomi’s son. I believe she saw something different than what her life was like at home and she wanted it!
Back to the story. Naomi and Ruth return to Judah. A small town, it was made clear to everyone that Naomi was back, and she brought her daughter-in-law, the Moabite with her.
After all the return greetings and settling in took place, Naomi had a job for Ruth. Since they were both widows with no one to support them, they could ‘glean’ grain from other fields. Since the reapers could not capture every grain that fell, they left some behind so people like Ruth, and other poor people could at least get some food to sustain themselves.
So, let’s look through that long lens again. Ruth goes into the field of a man named Boaz. She could have gone to any field because they all were all supposed to allow ‘gleaners’ but she went to Boaz. Do you remember Rahab? She was the woman that hid Joshua and Caleb under the straw on the rooftop, keeping them safe from the warriors in Jericho. Rahab was a redeemed Gentile, prostitute, and the mother of Boaz! Are you seeing how this telescope is catching connections further and further beyond our present events? So, sweet Ruth, goes to glean at the field of Boaz. He immediately recognizes her as someone he has not seen before, but someone he wants to know a little better. He blesses her with extra food and an offer that she can return to his field all the time and she will receive special treatment by his workers. She must have been a cutie!
When Ruth gushes all this information to her mother-in-law, and Naomi realizes the magnitude of the blessing her daughter in law received that day, she begins to think. She alone knew that Boaz was related to Naomi. Ruth was not even from that country, maybe she didn’t even have the same ‘gleaning’ custom in Moab. Maybe she did not have the ‘kinsman redeemer custom either!’ But, Naomi knew! She gave Ruth explicit instructions to get, and keep the attention of Boaz. It worked. Now Boaz responds by telling Ruth he will redeem her, but there is a closer relative than himself he must check with. Once all the formalities were done, Boaz was free to marry Ruth and redeem her. They married, and now, looking ahead in our telescope, this Moabite woman became the mother of Obed. Obed is the father of Jesse. Jesse is the father of David, David became the King of Israel. Fourteen generations later, Jesus the Messiah was born through this line of ancestors!
So, through the ancestral line of a Moabite widow, Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God, enters this imperfect world. It is fascinating to me that our God who has all resources at His fingertips, could have planned that Jesus be from a long ancestry of Kings, prophets and priests. Instead He chose a prostitute and an idol worshiper. Through our ‘telescope’ we clearly see in the story about Ruth and Boaz, the ‘foreshadowing’ of THE Redeemer coming to carry our sins to the cross. I don’t know about you, but with His ancestry, I have no problem feeling that I fit in to the family! I’m pretty sure that’s the way He planned it.
Question: What do you think about God using these types of people in the ancestry of His perfect Son?
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