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Rahab (Joshua 2; 6:23)
Because of her faith, Rahab was part of the ancestry of the Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 1:5), was named in the faith “Hall of Fame” (Heb. 11:31), and was used by James as an example of faith leading to good works (James 2:25). Her spiritual experience was like that of the believers in Thessalonica (1 Thess. 1:9).
Moses had sent twelve spies into Canaan and only two of them, Caleb and Joshua, had faith to believe God could give Israel the land (Num. 13). Perhaps that is why Joshua sent only two spies into Canaan!
Rahab’s faith possessed her entire personality. She had fear because she heard how Israel’s God had delivered the Jews from Egypt and destroyed the Gentile nations. She knew enough facts about God to want to trust him. “I know that the LORD has given you the land” (Josh. 2:9). She willingly confessed her faith in the living God and proved her faith by her works. Alas, many people hear the Word and tremble but never act upon what they know. Even demons can do that (James 2:19)!
In one of his early sermons (1857), Charles Haddon Spurgeon described Rahab’s faith in an alliterated outhne, something unusual for him. Her faith was:
saving faith
singular faith—she alone was delivered with her family
stable faith—nothing moved her
self-denying faith—“She dared to risk her life for the sake of the spies”
sympathizing faith—she wanted mercy for her family as well
sanctifying faith—she never returned to being a harlot
CHS, 3:97–104
In a later sermon focusing on the scarlet cord from the window (Josh. 2:17–21), Spurgeon saw Rahab as an example of a true believer (55:516–28). She had obedient faith and immediately tied the cord from the window. She believed the promise that the spies made to her and proved her faith by her works. She made an open declaration of her faith. Her whole house was dedicated to the Lord.
In a third sermon, Spurgeon amplified the uniqueness of Rahab’s faith. She was not in a believing nation, her parents had given her no instructions, and her knowledge of the true God was very slender. What she had to believe was very difficult—that the Jordan River would open up so the Israelites could cross, and that the strong city of Jericho would fall. However, Spurgeon believed that as great as her faith was, it was still flawed because she lied to the men who asked about her visitors. “But at the same time, please to recollect that she did not know that it was wrong to lie.”
CHS, 18:397–408
Rebekah
[T]he first reference to her domestic life is one of the sweetest in the annals of womanhood. It is contained in a single sentence, stating that she supplied to Isaac the place of his deceased mother (Gen. 24:67). The heart of Isaac had been overshadowed by the death of Sarah; Rebekah crept into the vacant spot and rekindled the ashes on the scene of the vanished fire. Rebekah’s first love for Isaac was a mother’s love. It is a great mistake to imagine that maternal love is something which can only exist between mother and child. There is many a woman whose attitude to her husband is instinctively that of motherhood. Not seldom is the feminine nature the stronger. Where it is, female love takes the form of protectiveness.
GM-RWB, p. 83
[S]he watches the growth of her two boys and she makes a dreadful discovery. She finds that her firstborn is utterly unfit for the great destiny that lies before him … she sees that Jacob and not Esau is the man for his father’s priesthood…. If she wants Jacob to be the heir, it is not because her heart yearns for him, it is because her heart yearns for the God of her clan…. Has she not observed how Jacob clings to the clan of Abraham and how Esau associates with the children of Heth! Has she not pondered how Jacob worships at the altar of God while Esau spends time in the hunting-field!
GM-RWB, p. 87
[Genesis 27] I have always recognized this incident as the one blot of her life. A blot it certainly was—deep, dark, disconcerting. But it is none the less a blot with pure ink and the very ink with which she is writing her life. This woman’s sin was not, as most sins are, the fall from an habitual path of righteousness; it was a fall in her habitual path of righteousness. David fell by revolt from God, Solomon fell by forgetting God; but Rebekah fell by fanaticism for God…. Rebekah’s darkest deed came from the sense that she was obeying the Divine Will. She never dreamed that she was working for any end but the cause of Providence. She was wrong, as Saul of Tarsus was wrong.
GM-RWB, p. 91
Rebekah desired nothing for herself, but everything for Jacob: for him spiritual blessing—at all events, temporal distinction. She did wrong, not for her own advantage, but for the sake of the one she loved…. Throughout the whole of this revolting scene of deceit and fraud, we can never forget that Rebekah was a mother.
F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 4:127
Beware of that affection which cares for your happiness more than for your honor.
F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 4:131
Faith is living without scheming.
Reuben (Gen. 35:22; 49:4)
That sin deprived him of the primacy—that one sin. Was not this arbitrary? Not so: since it was the index of his character, and was the unerring evidence of an unstable nature, for sensuality and instability are one.
Meyer, Israel, p. 151
Ruth
Judges is the book of “no king” (Judg. 17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25) when people did whatever they wanted to do and the nation was in a mess. We are living today in the book of Judges, for there is no King in Israel. First Samuel is the book of man’s king, when the nation asked for a king and God gave them Saul. It’s obvious that Saul was never meant to establish a permanent dynasty because he did not come from the royal tribe of Judah (Gen. 49:8–12). God used Saul to discipline the nation and make them long for something better. Second Samuel is the book of God’s king—David—and the book of Ruth tells us where he came from. David is a type of Jesus Christ, and as we pray “Thy kingdom come,” we long for the Lord Jesus to return and establish his glorious kingdom.
WWW
The book of Ruth takes place during the period of the judges. It is hard to believe that in such turbulent and decadent days, God could be working in Israel, but he was—and he is today. Ruth is the key character in a beautiful love story, reminding us that Jesus is calling his Bride today in spite of what the wicked society is doing. But Boaz is not only the bridegroom, he is also the lord of the harvest, just as Jesus today is reaping a harvest of those who trust him. Whenever we get cynical and critical because of the mess this world is in, we should read the book of Ruth and remind ourselves that God is at work getting a Bride for his Son and reaping a harvest of souls.
WWW
God is named twenty-five times in eighty-five verses. The providential hand of God is seen throughout the entire book. Men may be disobeying the Lord, but God is still at work in the land.
Being a Moabitess, Ruth was not allowed to enter into the nation of Israel (Deut. 23:3), but she put her faith in Jehovah (Ruth 1:16–17; 2:20) and surrendered to the Lord of the Harvest (Ruth 3:8ff).
Every language spoken among men has its own stock of cruel proverbs and satires and lampoons at the expense of their mother-in-law. But Ruth and Naomi go far to redeem that relationship from all that obloquy.
AW-BC, p. 202
The women are so delightful in this delightful little book that there is no room for the men. The men fall into the background of the Book of Ruth, and are clean forgotten.
AW-BC, p. 205
From gleaning in his fields, and from falling at his feet, on till she sat at his table and lay in his bosom—Ruth from first to last had nothing in her heart but pride and respect and love for Boaz…. With all that, it is not at all to be wondered at that the Church of Christ, with such a dash of romance and mysticism in her heart, should have seen in Ruth’s husband, Boaz, a far-off figure of her own Husband, Jesus Christ.
AW-BC, pp. 206–7
[Ruth 1:16] This was a very brave, outspoken confession of faith. Please to notice that it was made by a woman, a young woman, a poor woman, a widow woman, and a foreigner. Remembering all that, I should think there is no condition of gentleness, or of obscurity, or of sorrow, which should prevent anybody from making an open confession of allegiance to God, when faith in the Lord Jesus Christ has been exercised.
CHS, 46:289
All literature abounds in love stories; but this is the only instance of a great love story about a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law. Too often that relationship has been the theme of vulgar jest and jibe, but here in the Book of Ruth it is lifted into the heavenly places…. But it was more than her mother-in-law and her mother-in-law’s people and land, that Ruth chose. She chose Naomi’s God. “Thy God shall be my God.”
CEM, Way of a Man, p. 25