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

“But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

“So, the last will be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few chosen.”

Over the past few months, we have been exploring Jesus in the Old Testament, and we will get back to that in a bit. But for now, we will take a bit of a break and look at some other things.

Last Friday night, I had the chance to attend a ‘lock-in’ hosted by one of our sister churches in Michigan. As the kids played and hung out, I had the chance to chat with one of my dearest friends for hours. He is a pastor like me, and we often spend time chatting about things we are learning in the Bible as we study. He is also preaching about Jesus in the Old Testament in his church.

In the course of that, he observed this pattern, and we explored it for about an hour or so in our discussions. We are familiar with the verses quoted above; they remind us to be humble and to put ourselves last.

In one text about the man hiring workers in Matthew 20, the man hires workers at different times of the day and pays them the same at the end. The men who worked 12 hours got paid the same as those that worked one hour. The ones who worked longer were upset and complained. The man makes the statement that he had honored their agreement and that he had the right to pay people whatever he wanted.

There is a law to be learned here that those who served God all their lives and those who served God for a few minutes are all going to get the same reward. We are not rewarded on merit, BUT by the grace and goodness of God. This is the surface lesson to be learned here. But if you are a student of the scriptures, you will know that the ‘milk’ of the Word is just that and if we keep reading, looking, asking, studying and talking to each other, we will find that there are layers to the truths and the verses. This is one of the occasions.

God has a habit of choosing the second or the last over the first. The most obvious of that is with Adam. In 1 Corinthians 15:22, we are told this: in the first Adam, all men die, but in Christ, all men can be made alive. In 1 Corinthians 15:45-47, we see that the Last Adam was a life-giving spirit. So, the first Adam was not the one God sent to redeem us, but the second one, Jesus.

All the way through the Bible, this principle continues. In Genesis 25:23, we see this verse, “And the Lord said to her: ‘Two nations are in your womb, two peoples shall be separated from your body; One people shall be stronger than the other, And the older shall serve the younger.’”

God chooses the second over the first. Later, we see in the New Testament in Romans 9:13 that God chose Jacob over Esau. As we move further into the scriptures, we find this second over the first in places that we did not even recognise.

In Exodus 1, we see the birth of Moses. We know that Moses becomes the man who leads Israel out of Egypt and to the edge of the Promised Land. But many of us may not put together that Aaron was actually born first. Thus, God chose the second over the first. In Exodus 7:7, we see that Aaron is 3 years older than Moses to lead Israel. This is not to diminish Aaron’s part, but Moses obviously was the leader, and the Torah is called the Book of Moses, not the Book of Aaron.

Back in Genesis 14, we meet a man named Melchezidek, who is the High Priest of Salem, and in Hebrews 7:3, we see that this Man has neither mother nor father, and He does not have a beginning nor an end of life. Jesus, we are told in Hebrews 6:20, is a High Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Notice that Jesus is not a priest after the order of Levi under the family of Aaron, but rather the order of Melchizedek. Not the priesthood of Aaron; his could not offer eternal life, but the High Priest Melchizedek can (Hebrews 7:22-25); only the priesthood of Melchizedek can offer salvation to the ‘uttermost.’

We are told in Hebrews 7:11 that the priesthood of Aaron could not offer perfection; it could not offer eternal life. Back in Exodus 34:33, we see that Moses needed a veil to cover his face because his face shone every time he came down from meeting with God. The people asked him to wear a veil so that they would not see the shine on his face, but the shine faded.

In 2 Corinthians 3:13-16, we see that the veil was to cover that which was fading away; in contrast, Jesus removed the veil. So, the covenant that came with the first veil was passing away, but the covenant that came with the second veil is eternal. The law could not offer eternal life, but the cross can and does.

In Hebrews 12:18-29, we see a tale of two mounts; the Law was given on Mount Sinai, and Jesus died in Jerusalem on Mount Zion. God rejected the first; no flesh can be justified by the Law. Justification can only come from Jesus’ death on Mount Zion.

Even as we look at Jesus’ first miracle that is recorded in John 2:1-10, we see that the first wine offered during the wedding is inferior, and when Jesus sends His wine to be accepted, the governor of the feast is astonished because the last is better than the first.

God chose David, the second king, over Saul to bring the kingly line and promise. Elisha performed twice as many miracles as Elijah (2 Kings 2:9). Elisha had a double portion of Elijah’s spirit.

Israel was given Jerusalem, but we await a New Jerusalem, which is the second over the first. The Jews are currently blinded by the first covenant, but in Hebrews 10:16-17, God promises a new covenant with Israel where He will remember their sins no more.

We can go on and on; I hope that you will begin to look for this pattern as you read and study.

Finally, we see in Hebrews 9:11-12, not by the blood of goats and calves, BUT by His own blood. “But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.”

When we read in Exodus through Leviticus and all the way to even Jesus’ day, we see the blood of animals is shed for the temporary covering of sins; the High Priest had to enter the Holy Place yearly to offer a sacrifice, and daily that priests had to kill millions upon millions of animals as a picture of the blood that Jesus would shed one day. But here in Hebrews, we are told that with Jesus’ own blood, He died once for our eternal redemption.

I am so glad that I am under the second covenant, the one that Jesus paid for in His own blood. Nothing in my hands I bring; simply to the cross I cling. I pray the same for you.