3 From a Foreigner to King Jesus (Ruth)
3
From a Foreigner to King Jesus
Ruth
Alistair Begg
I recently came across a book review that described the author’s work as “the supreme example of purposeful boredom in literary form.” In stark contrast, the book of Ruth is arguably one of the loveliest short stories ever written. It is literary art and theological insight at its very finest.
Just as jewelers routinely present diamonds on a dark velvet cloth as a means of showing the gems at their sparkling best, so here against the dark and somber background of the period of the judges, the book of Ruth shines. The time of the judges was at the very least unstable. If there had been blogs in those days, they would have been filled with reports of civil unrest, moral decay, religious declension, and unchecked corruption. This is the recurring cycle throughout the book of Judges, which ends with the observation, “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit” (Judg. 21:25).1
Then with the turn of a page we discover another side to the story here in the book of Ruth. We learn how God was at work in a very unusual way in a sequence of events involving a Bethlehem farmer, a foreigner from Moab, and a lady who had faced a triple bereavement.
If these four short chapters were made into a movie, and if we were responsible for the musical score, it would surely begin in a minor key with the tone of a lament. A plaintive background refrain would epitomize the sadness and disappointment that unfolds in just a few verses. The camera would linger on the face of Naomi, a lonely lady living in a foreign land in her declining years with no children to care for her and no grandchildren to cheer her spirits. Who, then, could ever dream that Naomi’s sad predicament would, in the providence of God, lead first to the conversion of her daughter-in-law Ruth and through that lineage to the birth of David, the great king of Israel, and then to the Messiah himself? Although this is not the main emphasis of the book of Ruth, the story provides an opportunity to make clear to the Naomis of our culture and in our churches that God defends widows and cares about their suffering (Deut. 10:18; Ps. 68:6).
PREACHING CHRIST FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT
CHALLENGES
How should we preach Christ and the gospel from the book of Ruth? Learning to do this is the journey of a lifetime. “No man knows how to preach. . . . It is right that the vast difficulty of the task should humble you. It is wrong that it should paralyze you.”2
Our listeners should be able to follow the progression of thought that introduces them to the person and work of Jesus, in Old Testament narrative. That is not as straightforward as it sounds, and it involves hard work on our part to ensure that we do not lead them on a theological wild-goose chase! As a young minister I made a number of false starts in attempting to teach Ruth because I was not yet clear in my own mind about the way in which the various lines came together in Jesus. If there is fog in the pulpit, we should not expect clarity in the pew. When it comes to our preaching Christ in all the Scriptures, our congregation should not be mystified by our wizardry, exclaiming, “How did he do that!” Rather they should be edified by our clarity, declaring, “That makes sense to me.” We should have confidence in unfolding the Scriptures in this way because Jesus explained to his followers that the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms (the threefold division of the Hebrew Bible) point to him (Luke 24:44).
ASSUMPTIONS
We come to Old Testament narrative with certain assumptions. (At least, I assume we do!)
OBSERVATIONS
Let me add two observations: First, the Old Testament Scriptures can and should mean more to us than they did to the people of the Old Testament because we live in the light of their Christian fulfillment. Once again our pattern in this is clearly Christ addressing Cleopas in Luke 24. It is hard to imagine Jesus doing what he did in that passage and leaving out the book of Ruth.
Second, the genre of the text should determine how we proclaim Christ. Our exposition will go badly wrong if we can preach exactly the same kind of sermon regardless of the genre—Old Testament narrative or New Testament epistle or Gospel. The genre determines how the whole story unfolds. So when we approach the book of Ruth, we must immerse ourselves in the sights and sounds and smells and tastes. The book of Ruth is in that sense “sensual” (not in the sense of arousing erotic notions). It is full of the senses. The book is crafted so wonderfully that it introduces little glimpses here and there that give the reader the sense that there is something more that is beyond this if we will simply read on. Ruth invites us to feel deeply, and our understanding of the gospel will enable us to apply the text properly.
Tiny stories are hugely appealing in our time. Adults have a peculiar sense of nostalgia for the phrases that the Oxford English Dictionary says have introduced and concluded stories since the fourteenth century: “Once upon a time”; “And they all lived happily ever after.”
Did you find it interesting that Dreyfus and Kelly, the philosophy professors from Berkeley and Harvard, sought to bring their philosophy down to this level by writing a book called All Things Shining?4 In it they suggest that it is in the little glimpses and moments of time that we may be able to find significance. In reading the classic novels we may find meaning and purpose. If we have been feeling gloomy, we may find an antidote in reading Moby Dick, for example.
Here is a way for us to say to people, “You don’t need to read the Western classics to find meaning in a secular age. I’ve got a classic for you right here: the book of Ruth.” I’ve done this from time to time when I’ve met people named Ruth, perhaps in a restaurant or on a plane: “Ruth, do you know there’s a book called Ruth?”
“No!”
“Oh, yes. It’s a great book. You should read it. It’s short, but it’s super.”
THREE CHARCOAL SKETCHES
I’m going to present three charcoal sketches from the book of Ruth.
My art teacher in grammar school was Mr. Walker. When I would ask him for help with an assignment he would take his pencil and begin to sketch, and as he did so he would say: “I’ll get you started, Begg, but I’m not going to do it for you.” I am taking a leaf out of his book and will leave you to fill out the picture on your own.
CHARCOAL SKETCH 1: THREE WOMEN ON THE ROAD TO SOMEWHERE
With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah. (Ruth 1:7)
This scene on the roadway is not so much a Kodak moment as it is a Kleenex moment. The dialogue is full of pathos, and we should not think of the tears in terms of polite sniffles but rather of great breath-catching, heart-rending sobs.
The backdrop to the scene on the road is that of poor choices, sad experiences, and deep disappointments that are intertwined in these women’s lives. In the book of Judges God warned his people that if they were unfaithful to his covenant promises, the consequences would be dire. Disregarding the warning the people rebelled and found themselves facing famine. Yet, because of his loving-kindness, his hesed love, God held out to his people the promise of forgiveness and grace if they would return to him in repentance and faith.
This huge drama is played out here in a microcosm as the camera zooms in on the family of Elimelech. Elimelech’s name means “the Lord is king.” Ironically, he did not feel the Lord to be king over the circumstances of the famine. Had he done so, he would have stayed put in Bethlehem. But instead he left Bethlehem (which, ironically, means “house of bread”) and set off for Moab. Instead of trusting the Lord with all his heart, he relied on his own insight. Pragmatism won out over obedient faith.
It was Naomi who provided the theological explanation for these events: “The LORD’s hand has gone out against me” (Ruth 1:13). In other words, “I can’t explain my life apart from God’s intervening work.” They had made certain decisions, and in light of these found themselves in this place and condition.
But God had kindly provided food for his people in Bethlehem (Ruth 1:6). Consequently, Naomi decided to return home. Naomi’s journey is aptly summarized in this stanza from George Herbert:
Or if I stray, he doth convert
And bring my mind in frame:
And all this not for my desert,
But for his holy name.5
Consider the scene as she stood in between Moab and Bethlehem, encouraging her two daughters-in-law to return to their homeland where they would find security. She urged them to count the cost. They had to choose: “Yahweh plus nothing in Bethlehem or everything minus Yahweh in Moab.”6 With that choice set before them, Orpah returned home, but Ruth refused to follow Orpah even though Naomi pressed her, “Look, you’ve still got a chance to return with your sister-in-law, Orpah. You could catch up with her now. Go back with her.”
She couldn’t be persuaded to return. This was essentially Ruth’s conversion. How do we actually fathom this? How do we plumb the depths of divine persuasion? How do we understand this mystery? Presented with the exact same circumstance and urgings from the same lips of the same lady, one went back to Moab and the other used the language of the covenant and said, in effect, “No, I can’t go back because I’m no longer what I once was. I am no longer trusting in the gods to which my sister-in-law has now returned. Don’t ask me to leave you. I’m going where you go, and from now on your God is my God.”
God calls people to respond to his unerring loving-kindness and grace, and people must trust God as Ruth did. God does not believe for us. We believe. And Ruth believed. Do you? Are you a believer? Have you turned your back on the substitute gods of the world by which you live by nature? Have you been embraced by the loving-kindness of God as it has been shown to you in so many different ways?
Some years ago when Jim Boice was still alive, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals visited Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was scheduled to speak on a Saturday morning, and early that morning I was studying my Bible in a deserted coffee shop. A Chinese student at Harvard came into the shop, and when she saw my Bible, she asked, “Are you a Christian?”
I replied, “Yes, I am.”
She said, “I’m a Christian, too.”
When I asked how she had come to trust in Christ, she answered memorably, “I entered through narrow gate.”
That is what happened in our text. Ruth entered through the narrow gate.
God was reaching into Ruth’s life across the barriers of race, and her picture was painted in the great scene in Revelation: persons “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9). Those people are worshiping King Jesus, who descended from this woman Ruth.
CHARCOAL SKETCH 2: THE NAME OF THE MAN IS BOAZ
The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz. (Ruth 2:19)
I grew up in Glasgow, which in the 1960s had a Jewish population second only to London’s in the United Kingdom. Many of my friends were Jewish, and I was often in their homes and learned to appreciate the caring role of their mothers. When I read of Naomi, I see them in my mind’s eye: “Where did you glean today? And where have you worked?” (Ruth 2:19, ESV). Learning that Ruth worked with Boaz, Naomi praised God, whose kindness had forsaken neither the living nor the dead. We might imagine her saying: “Oh, Boaz! Boaz is a nice boy, Naomi. Boaz is a kinsman redeemer. You should stay in his field, Naomi. That is a good field.”
It is at this point in our “film version” of the story that the music under the dialogue would change from a minor to a major key. Famine has been replaced with a rich harvest. The plaintive sounds of the lone bag piper have given way to the arrival of the minstrels! The music changes because the mood has changed. The story is not complete, but in the barley harvest we are given a sneak preview of the fullness and richness that is in the offing. To this point neither Naomi nor Ruth could conceive of all that God had in store for them.
Chapter 2 begins by introducing this new character: “Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, from the clan of Elimelech, a man of standing, whose name was Boaz” (v. 1), causing the reader to ask, “I wonder what he’s like and if he has a big part in this story.”
Do you ever wish that you didn’t know how stories like this end so that you could read them with an initial sense of discovery? (Think too of the story of Joseph.) Maybe if I live long enough, I will have forgotten the endings of most of them.
Ruth had been learning how the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob made provision for the poor. So Ruth’s request was based upon the fact of God’s providence: “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor” (2:2). The word “favor” sends the reader in a particular direction.
Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner? (2:10).
“May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my lord,” she said. “You have given me comfort and have spoken kindly to your servant—though I do not have the standing of one of your servant girls.” (2:13)
This loving-kindness of God runs all the way through this narrative. God is providentially at work in all free human choices including the very field in which Ruth “happened to come to.”
The drama intensifies at the end of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3. Naomi suggests that Ruth pursue Boaz, who is a kinsman redeemer.
How do we communicate the concept of a kinsman redeemer to people today? We mustn’t say more than we need to, but we mustn’t say less than is required. The challenge is to get it clear in our own minds so that we can briefly explain that the word translated “relative” (“kinsman,” NASB) refers to a redeemer and is used of Yahweh himself in other contexts. Yahweh is the divine “next of kin” for his people. He comes alongside them as the one who both has revealed himself and will redeem his people.
So Boaz has the right to intervene in the circumstances of Naomi and Ruth. He can meet their needs and treat them as if they were his very own.
Ruth would understand this. The marriage of Boaz and Ruth gets to the very heart of this concept. That is why when Paul speaks of marriage, he speaks of the great mystery between Christ and his church, an amazing marriage in which God has taken the initiative. This illustrates the glory of the gospel because it foreshadows Christ, who in himself is the only one who has the right to take and bear as his own all that spoils and ruins, all the loss, hurt, disaster, alienation, brokenness, and sinful messed-up-ness of things. This physician heals by taking to himself our diseases. He bears them in himself.
CHARCOAL SKETCH 3: A SON HAS BEEN BORN
Then Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap and cared for him. (Ruth 4:16)
The women of Bethlehem gave quite a baby shower at the birth of this son! They had witnessed the sorry arrival of Naomi and Ruth recorded in chapter 1, and now they led the praise as they saw the hand of God in this provision. In the everyday events of village life and among ordinary people, God was at work. Naomi had announced, “The LORD has brought me back empty” (1:21), but here we see her with her hands full as a result of God’s provision. Ruth had turned her back on all that represented security in her homeland only to discover true security in the God of Israel, “under whose wings,” said Boaz, “you have come to take refuge” (2:12). The Lord who had visited his people and given them food 1:6) had given Ruth a son.
But this story does not end with Ruth and Boaz sending out their birth announcements or even with the pictures of a happy grandmother cradling the boy who had the potential to put some zip into her closing years. Instead it finishes with a family tree, the genealogy of David the king of Israel. The women prayed for this child in Naomi’s lap, “May his name be renowned in Israel!” (4:14, ESV). Little did they know of the extent to which their prayer was to be answered.
One of my friends recently reminded me that the providences of God are seldom, if ever, self-interpreting. In other words, the explanation for what happens in our lives is usually quite literally “beyond us.” We see that here in the lives of these central characters. Was it right for Elimelech to forsake the “house of bread” in search of bread? Had he not done so, his sons would not have married the Moabite girls. If that had not happened, Ruth would not have come to Bethlehem, and there would have been no marriage to Boaz, and thus no Obed, and so no Jesse, and thus no David. But it doesn’t even end there. We find this family tree in the first chapter of Matthew and we read on to the staggering conclusion: “. . . the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ” (Matt. 1:16).
We began by noticing that this story is set at a time when there was no king in Israel. It was in that context and in the lives of ordinary people that God was preparing the way for Jesus, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. In the experience of famine and darkness he was paving the way for Jesus, the bread of life and the light of the world!
CONCLUSION
In All Things Shining, Dreyfus and Kelly observe that when you search for shining moments, you must be aware that they do not cohere or combine to make any sense at all. That’s existentialism.
But Ruth is a different kind of story. In Jesus all things hold together. He, as the Mediator of a new covenant, extends his blessing to sinners by bringing them into a covenantal relationship with himself. And if they will turn to him, he will welcome them with open arms.
John Calvin writes that when we have preached in this way, then we show that the only haven of safety [cf. Ruth 2:12: “under whose wings you have come to take refuge”] is in the mercy of God, as manifested in Christ, in whom every part of our salvation is complete. As all mankind are, in the sight of God, lost sinners, we hold that Christ is their only righteousness, since, by His obedience, He has wiped off our transgressions; by His sacrifice, appeased the divine anger; by His blood, washed away our sins [stains]; by His cross, borne our curse; and by His death, made satisfaction for us. We maintain that in this way man is reconciled in Christ to God the Father, by no merit of his own, by no value of works, but by gratuitous mercy.7
1 Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations in this chapter are from the 1984 edition of The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
2 James S. Stuart, The Heralds of God, Warrack Lectures on Preaching (New York: Scribner’s, 1946), 104–5.
3 See Benjamin B. Warfield, “The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity,” in Biblical Doctrines, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1932), 141–42.
4 Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly, All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age (New York: Free Press, 2011).
5 George Herbert, “The 23d Psalm,” accessed at http://www.georgeherbert.org.uk/Archive/selected_work_09.html.
6 Sinclair Ferguson, Faithful God: An Exposition of the Book of Ruth (Bridgend, Wales: Bryntirion, 2005), 38.
7 John Calvin, Reply to Cardinal Sadoleto.