Ruth 1:1-21 – The Fall and Rise of Israel :: By Sean Gooding

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

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