Last week, we began to see this account of the book of Ruth. As mentioned, this is a lovely love story that most of us have read. It is a sweet story that tugs at our heartstrings, and rightly so. The Gentile outcast comes back to Bethlehem and gets married to the wealthy, kind, and honorable man who also ‘happens’ to be in the lineage of Jesus.

This is the kind of tale we get from Disney and the Women’s Network, but long before either of these, God has these lovely stories that get our attention and tend to stick with us. However, the love story of Ruth carries a heavier lesson about the nation of Israel; they rebelled against God, and He scattered them looking for food. They went to Moab, almost as far back as Egypt, and there they found death and loss. Then the few that are left make the journey back to the land of Israel, and there, God blesses and restores them.

This story is repeated time after time in the history of Israel. Each time, Israel turns its back on God, goes looking for hope elsewhere, and finds more pain. Then they return to the Promised Land, and God preserves them, the few, and rebuilds them. One day, Israel will never leave the land ever again, and God will be their God, and Jesus will be their King. Just take the time to read Zechariah 12.

When we meet Ruth in chapter 2, she is about to go out and glean food for her and Naomi to eat and live. She goes to glean in a field; the law permitted the poor to gather food from the edges of the fields and to go through the harvested areas and find food that the harvesters had missed. Ruth was out doing this to provide for her and Naomi.

The Bible tells us in Ruth 2:3 that she ‘happened’ to end up in the field of a man named Boaz. He was a member of Elimelech’s family, Ruth’s father-in-law. We see the idea that she just ‘happened’ to end up in his field, but we know that there are no coincidences with the Lord. She did not know Bethlehem, so God, in His providence, led her to Boaz’s field. Boaz comes to see the work that is being done and notices this stranger amongst those working his fields. The workers tell him that it is the Moabite girls that came back with Naomi (Ruth 2:6). They describe her as a diligent worker, and then Boaz tells her not to glean in any other fields, but to work in his (Ruth 2:8).

We find out that Ruth has been noticed by the town of Bethlehem (Ruth 2:11). “And Boaz answered and said to her, ‘It has been fully reported to me, all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you have left your father and your mother and the land of your birth, and have come to a people whom you did not know before.’”

When we read the text, we find that Ruth is humble and astonished that she would receive such favor from this man. God tends to help Jews to be blessed wherever they go, not only that, but there are Gentiles who love the Jews. Ruth loved Naomi and followed her; Ruth had no idea what awaited her in Bethlehem, only that Naomi was going there, and she was going with her. It was reciprocal.

God is blessing Ruth with good favor; she is getting the attention of the kind, wealthy man, and Naomi is being blessed because, with Boaz, she has a chance to get back some of the land that Elimelech sold when he hastily left to go find food. As well, Ruth, who is still a young woman of childbearing age, will get a husband, have children, and be well cared for.

We Gentiles, especially those of us in the Gentile New Testament church, need to love the people and the nation of Israel. Our Gospel is a Jewish Gospel. It is about a Jewish Rabbi named Jesus who claimed to be God in the flesh, the God-Man. He preached the Good News of the Kingdom and told us that He was the ONLY way to God, the door, the narrow way, and that in Him and Him alone there was the offer and power to get eternal life. He died in Israel, was buried in Israel, and resurrected in Israel, and will be returning to Israel.

There is this heresy running around in the ‘Christian’ world saying that the church has replaced Israel. Nothing could be further from the truth, nothing. Please read Romans 9–11, but I will put Romans 11:25-29 here.

²⁵ “For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. ²⁶ And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: ‘The Deliverer will come out of Zion, And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; ²⁷ For this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins.’ ²⁸ Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. ²⁹ For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”

Notice in verse 25, Paul tells us not to ‘be wise in our own opinion,’ then he states the truth in verse 26, ‘all Israel will be saved.’ When Jesus returns, there will be mass repentance of those who see Him at that time, and ‘all Israel’ will be saved. God has not abandoned modern Israel, and in the days of Ruth, He had not abandoned Naomi.

Ruth works the rest of the day, and she goes home to tell Naomi all that had happened. As she recounts the day, Naomi finally is able to see God’s hand, and she blesses Him (Ruth 2:20). For all this time, Naomi had been in gloom, accusing God of abandoning them and even deliberately having His hand against them. But this account of Ruth’s day brings some light to her darkness and hope to her despair. This is what we have in the Lord that no other ‘religion’ has: we have hope, supernatural hope that God is always working to provide and show His love to us, His people.

If you look long enough at the circumstances around you, you will see that God is leaving crumbs of hope, little streaks of light in the darkest days to help you, encourage you, and let you know He is there.

We are told in Ruth 2:23 that Ruth worked in Boaz’s fields for all of the barley harvest and then also into the wheat harvest. This would have been a few months of work. This was hard work, gleaning grain and then having to beat it out and take the kernels or grain home each night. But this Ruth did faithfully.

Sometimes, it takes a while for things to work out. Things may stay the same for a while as God is working. It took about ten years for the cycle of leaving Bethlehem and them returning in chapter 1. Here we see that a few months have to pass; Ruth and Naomi are doing what they can, working, obedient and faithful.

One of the hardest things to learn how to do in life is to wait on God. We all like to quote Psalm 46:10; some translations have it as ‘Be still.’ Others as ‘stop your striving,’ and I saw one the other day that said ‘drop your hands,’ and wait on God. Let God be God. You do faithfully what you can do, and let God do what He does. Ruth and Naomi just had to be faithful and wait.

We too are waiting; we have seen the restoration of the nation of Israel in 1948; we have seen the retaking of Jerusalem in 1967, and in 2017, we saw that the USA recognized Jerusalem as the Jewish capital. We see Ezekiel 37-38, we can see the bones come together, we see the sinews and the muscles coming together, and maybe even the skin has been restored, but the bodies were still dead until the prophet called the wind from the four corners of the earth.

And so, we wait with bated breath, wondering how much longer Lord? How much longer until these evil men receive their due? How much longer until the killing of Christians all around the world is avenged and He repays those that have hurt our brothers and sisters? How long, Lord, until we see Jesus, and our faith becomes sight?

God’s time is perfect. You and I may go home before all this happens! Why? Because God is patient and loving and wants to redeem as many as will answer the call to repentance.

Keep working, keep looking, keep trusting, keep hoping. God did not fail Ruth and Naomi; God has not nor ever will He fail Israel, and He will not fail you and me.

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario

We took a break from Jesus in the Old Testament, but we are back, and this journey will take us through the book of Ruth. We will take each chapter and explore the lesson or lessons to be learned. In chapters 3 & 4, we will begin to explore the character of the ‘Kinsman Redeemer’ in the person of Boaz, and he will be the picture of Jesus for us.

So, now that you know where we are going, we can journey through the book and enjoy the story.

There is an old song for kids that goes, ‘A little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down.’ I recall getting the polio vaccine in a sugar cube as a young teenager in Barbados. Well, the story of Ruth is a beautiful love story, the Gentile woman who leaves her homeland to come to Bethlehem to care for her mother-in-law. She had nothing, and through the grace of God, she comes into the family of Jesus the Messiah. This is the sugar, but in the depths of this book, there is a lot of medicine for us to ingest. And if we do it, we will grow in many ways and see and appreciate God’s kindness and grace in new ways. I pray that you will enjoy this journey, and maybe we can see some new things together.

We begin the story in verses 1-5, with Elimelech taking his family from Bethlehem to Moab because there is no food. There is great irony here: Bethlehem, where they lived, is called the ‘house of bread,’ and there was no food. They travel back across the Jordan and almost all the way back to Egypt once again to find food.

While in Moab, the two sons find wives, and then they and their dad die. This is a great picture of what happened to Israel as they melted into the pagan world around them. They married Gentile wives and followed their gods. Even the great Solomon fell into that trap (1 Kings 11:1-13). They went to Moab looking for hope; they found more pain and more loss. They went out from Bethlehem full and ended up in Moab with just three widows. Widows were the most lowly people in the world back in those days. They had no men, no money, and Naomi in particular was a stranger in Moab.

In verses 6-18, we see the journey back to Bethlehem. Naomi finds out that God had blessed Bethlehem with bread. She decides that there is nothing here for her in Moab, and she and her two daughters-in-law begin to journey back to Israel. As they are about to leave, Naomi urges the ladies to return to their families and find new husbands (verse 9). She asks God to bless them and deal kindly with them (verse 8).

At first, both ladies are determined to return with Naomi, but Naomi is insistent that they return home; there was no hope in her womb for them, no more husbands to be had, and she encourages them to return to the pagan Moab and find hope there.

How often do we send people out to find hope in our modern Moabs? We have the truth, we have the actual Person of hope, the actual eternal hope, and we are either complacent in sharing the Gospel or indifferent to their needs, and in the same way, we send people away to find hope elsewhere.

The great division of two ‘churches’ (verses 14-17): in one ‘church,’ we have Orpah, who kisses her mother-in-law and returns to her people and her gods. But in the other ‘church,’ we have Ruth, who clings to Naomi, and she declares that she will follow the God of Naomi and live and die where she lives and dies.

There are two kinds of ‘churches’ in our world today: there is one that is ALL religions of religious institutions that either claim no god, multiple gods, add to the Biblical account of God, are blasphemous, err doctrinally, and in some cases, like the SDA or JWs, actually pervert the scriptures and flat out lie about what it says. The other ‘church’ is the one that obeys, follows, and lives and dies for the God of Israel.

The other ‘church,’ Ruth, is the one that Jesus built. The story is here in the Old Testament, and we are seeing it play out. Be wary of churches that decry Israel, that believe that God has moved on from Israel, and that the promises that are promised to Israel have now been put onto the church. This is simply not true.

Our salvation has Jewish roots. Jesus is a Jew; He is of the lineage of Judah, and one day He will reign as a Jewish king on a Jewish throne in the Jewish city of Jerusalem in Israel. I do not know how someone can come to the conclusion that God is done with Israel; He would have to be done with Jesus. The entire Gospel is about a Jewish God-Man who died in Israel, in Jerusalem, was buried in a Jewish tomb, and resurrected in Jerusalem. There is no part of the salvation story that is not rooted in Israel.

Most often, the Orpah ‘churches’ hate Israel or are at least indifferent to the importance of Israel to the future that we are looking for. Jesus will return to Jerusalem (Revelation 19), and in the book of Revelation, the church is not mentioned after chapter 3. But Ruth, she is all in; nothing but death will separate her from Naomi. So, they return to Bethlehem, the house of bread, and the whole city is astonished to see her.

Naomi is a bitter woman. Her name actually means “blessed”; Naomi means “blessed.” But she looks at her past, about 10 years since she left with her husband, and she wants the people who receive her back to Bethlehem to call her ‘Mara,’ bitter. She says that the Almighty had dealt bitterly with her (verse 20).

In verse 13, she says that the Lord’s hand has gone out against me. In verse 21, I went out full, but I came back empty. Yet, there was the faithful and loving Ruth standing next to her.

Israel, for the most part, hates the New Testament church; they hate our Jesus. But if we are to be true to our Savior, the local New Testament church is the most loyal friend that the nation and people of Israel can have. We are the modern Ruth. We are instructed to pray for the peace of Israel (Psalm 122:6). We are longing, like Paul did in Romans 9-11, for Israel to repent and return to God.

There are missionary ministries like Jews for Jesus that take the Gospel to the Jews. You see, we, the New Testament churches, are the grafted olive branches; we are the branches, and Israel is the vine. And one day soon, Jesus will return to restore Israel, as we see in Zechariah 12:10. When that happens, the people cheering the most will be the New Testament churches.

But back to Naomi, she was convinced that God was against her. He had dealt badly with her, and she had no hope. Just call me bitter, not blessed. We live in a world that wants to make up their own identities, but Naomi is called blessed, NOT bitter. In fact, the only person who called her bitter is her. She has no clue that Ruth is the greatest blessing that she has; Ruth is going to show genuine love, grace, and kindness to her. God had not dealt badly with her; He brought her home, He made sure she was not alone, and He had protected her on the journey: two women traveling in a harsh place when women were just chattel. God had brought them home.

All too often, we spend so much time looking at the things that have gone wrong; we cannot see, or we choose not to see, the goodness of God. What are you missing in your life? Are you looking for the goodness of God? Has God put a Ruth in your life? Someone who loves God and loves you for you? Naomi had nothing to offer Ruth, no more sons, no money. Ruth just loved her for her. Do you have someone like Ruth in your life? If you do, stop and thank God for them. Naomi is blessed; she just can’t see it yet.

Israel (Naomi) ran to Moab, lived in Moab, married into Moab, and suffered in Moab, but God brought her back and restored her. And in the meantime, the Gentile church (Ruth) was picked up along the way; this was the plan all along. The Gentiles, you and I, were never an afterthought; we were a part of the plan from the beginning.

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario