Tuesday, December 10

SOMEONE IN CONTROL: THE STORY OF RUTH

Ruth 1-4

     A famine spread throughout all the land of Judah.  Since there was so little rain, the people could not raise enough grain to make bread.  When the word spread that there was food in the country of Moab, Elimelich moved there from their hometown of Bethlehem with his wife, Naomi, and their two sons.  As the years passed, Elimelich died, and his sons, whose names mean “sickly” and “wasted,” married Moabitess women, but soon died themselves.  The people of Moab were the descendants of the incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughters.  With all of the pagan worship of Chemosh, the fire god, Moab was not a good place for this family.  When Naomi heard “that the Lord had visited His people in giving them bread,” (1:6b) she decided to go back home—the Lord was revealing her need for the true Bread of Life.

     Both Ruth and Orpah, Naomi’s daughters-in-law, loved her and wanted to go with her.  When Naomi tried to encourage them to stay and be happy in their own land, Orpah did, but Ruth would not.  She told Naomi, “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for wither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” (vs. 16)  This was the Lord calling her out of the world, and unto Him.   She may not even have known it, but the true God was in total control.  This is especially seen in what happens next.

     It was harvest time in Bethlehem.  The grain was ripe in the fields, and the reapers were busy cutting the grain and binding it into bundles.  As was the law among the Israelites, the reapers left some grain for the poor to gather.  Naomi told Ruth to glean in the field of a very rich man named Boaz, a relative of theirs.  When he found out who Ruth was and how kind she had been to poor Naomi, he returned that kindness by letting Ruth have even more grain and kept her out of harm’s way.  What a beautiful picture of the provision and protection that comes from the very hand of our Jesus—our Kinsman Redeemer!  Boaz is a sign of that, in that he was Naomi and Ruth’s “kinsman redeemer.”  In this, the nearest kin to those in need was to step forward, marry the widow, and carry on the family name.  Another man, however, was a closer relative, but he refused,  saying, “lest I mar mine own inheritance,”(4:6)—so, Boaz was next in line.  I don’t know who this other relative was, but Oh, what a blessing is missed when we refuse to take that step with God, worried that somehow it is going to “mar” our own lives.  Boaz on the other hand, gladly took that place, and what a beautiful wedding it must have been—the bridegroom and his bride, Jesus and His true Church—brought together by the sovereign hand of Almighty God.  In this time of Christmas, will you be so led?  Someone was in total control?  Yes—Boaz and Ruth were the great grandparents of King David.  Further down the line?   Jesus the Christ!  What an awesome God!  

~ June Johnson