2) Seeking Grace

2) Seeking Grace, Ruth 1:18-2:4

We left off last week listening to Ruth’s interchange with her disheartened mother-in-law, Naomi. And we saw in Ruth 1:16-17 her incredible statement of faith. Let’s look at it again.

16 And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:

17 Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.

This was a statement of absolute commitment, and as we saw last week in II Timothy 1:12, that’s what saving faith really is. Paul said, I know whom I have believed, and then he clarified that by saying that Christ would keep that which I have committed unto him.

The Bible promises that our faith will be tried – not to undermine it, but to refine it. Job said it perfectly – when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. And here we are getting a first glimpse of the unshakeable faith of an amazing woman. She has never been beyond the borders of her native land. Growing up in Moab, she’s been taught from earliest memories that the Jews just over Jordan were her people’s enemies, and that the worship of their Moabite god Chemosh was better than the Jewish worship of Jehovah.

And then, as if to prove what she’s always heard, a family of Jewish refugees fleeing a famine in Israel move into their town.

See! Moab really is better to live in than Israel – Chemosh is better to his people than Jehovah. (The idea of God chastening His people when they rebel doesn’t spin as favorably for the local cult.)

Ruth’s experiences are screaming that it was a huge mistake to turn from Moab’s worship of Chemosh to Israel’s worship of Jehovah. Ever since joining this family, her father-in-law has died, her brother-in-law and her own husband. And you can imagine when the Moabite women draw from the communal well each morning, how they’d point out the curse her life has been under since she joined that Jewish family. Now her sister-in-law gives up and returns to Moab, and Ruth’s own mother-in-law, instead of urging her to press on, uses irrefutable worldly wisdom to urge her to depart also.

Yet despite her background, all her childhood conditioning, and the tragic circumstances of her life even now, she delivers this magnificent statement. It’s as if she can see that the worst day in Zion is better than the best day in Moab. And by the end of the story, we can all see in hindsight what she saw by faith.

Even in that backslidden Jewish family, in their traditions, their laws and their stories, there is a sense of promise, a sense of hope unlike anything Ruth ever experienced in the child sacrifices of the cult of Chemosh.

So when Naomi starts talking about returning to her family’s stake back in Bethlehem to finish out her grim days on the charity of relatives, Ruth determines to go with her.

She says, “Quit trying to talk me into leaving – I’d die first!” Since her husband was dead, Ruth was technically under the guardianship of her mother-in-law. She says, “Even if you die, I’m not going back. I’m going to go wherever you go, I’m going to join your people, I’m going to follow your God, live where you live, and die where you die – and may God strike me dead if I don’t!” And indeed, God does strike all dead who don’t! How quickly we would silence temptation if we answered its appeal like this!

And notice her new loyalty – she swears it all by the Lord – by Jehovah, not by Chemosh!

Ruth 2:11 points out that she has left her father and mother and the land of her nativity. Jesus said whosoever loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. The Bible repeatedly says that God’s followers are citizens of a kingdom they have never seen; they are on a pilgrimage to a land beyond their sight.

Ruth has just vowed, thy people shall be my people. But Deuteronomy 23:3 pronounced a curse on the Moabite people – An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD forever.

According to the law, Ruth and all her people were forever excluded from being able to join the nation of Israel. Most other Gentiles could become part of the nation, but never the Moabites or their northern cousins, the Ammonites.