Ruth 3:1 – “Good”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of this verse:

¹And Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, “My daughter, should I not seek for you a place of rest which will be good to you?”

In my last post from chapter 2, I noted how much Ruth, Boaz, and Naomi all remind me of Jesus. Chapter 3 begins in the same vein.

Stop for a second and think about Ruth. It has been a wonderful and entirely unexpected blessing for her to have stumbled into the fields of Boaz, then to have him receive her so graciously. Although the work has been hot and tedious, her gleaning in his fields has provided barley and wheat for her and Naomi probably enough for the whole year ahead. Being a Moabite and a widow, Ruth had no reason to expect anything but poverty and deprivation in Israel. Yet she has been treated kindly and won’t have to go hungry at least for a year.

All of that is well and good. However, it does nothing to resolve the larger issues in Ruth’s life. As she looks ahead, life is still a gloomy, endless struggle to survive. She’s had to work hard for this grain and next year she’ll just have to do it again, and the next year and the next year. And she can only hope that Boaz will continue to allow her in his fields. What if something happens to him? Will his heir be so gracious?

Ruth has to feel all of these things, though, based on our text she utters not the slightest complaint. She goes on humbly, dutifully carrying the load she bears. But again, she is a real human being. She is young. She is a young woman. She had a husband once but now she sleeps alone. She once looked forward to having a family. Now she has only days of hard work ahead.

Into this lonely world steps Naomi who says to her, “My daughter, should I not seek for you a place of rest which will be good to you?” Naomi is looking out for her. Naomi wants to do her good.

Her words immediately remind me of Jesus.

Who can read those words and not hear, “Come unto Me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28)? The same Lord said back in Jer 6:16, “Stand in the way and see and ask for the old paths wherein lieth righteousness, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” “Rest unto your souls.” Our God is a God who looks down from Heaven and longs to give us rest. This word “rest” in Hebrew is a colorful word that gathers in everything we can mean when we use the word: “a resting place,” “calmness,” “freedom from troubles and anxiety,” and all those kinds of things. It is obviously closely akin to the concept of peace, and it is what God wants for us. He sees us, like Ruth, battling our way through life, “eating our bread in the sweat of our face.” He sees that all our “victories” are invariably temporary and that, like Ruth’s barley and wheat, though they may sustain us for a while, we live in a world where we can never stop fighting just to survive.

And Naomi adds, “… which will be good to you.” She longs to see Ruth in a place “which will be good for you.” I’m reminded of the Lord’s words to Israel, “Be careful to obey all these regulations I am giving you, so that it may always go well with you and your children after you …” (Deut 12:28). “So that it may always go well with you …” The Lord wishes us good, and that not only to us but to “your children after you.”

This one simple verse before us reminds us that our Boaz, our Kinsman-Redeemer, is a God who longs to give us rest and longs for good things to be our portion.

I say all this to point out (again) that our God is a good God, a God who longs to do us good. His very law itself was intended for our good.

And all of this needs to be said because, in this fallen world, we are naturally inclined not to see Him in His goodness. Like the devil himself, we too easily think hard thoughts of God. We too easily assume He is harsh and demanding. Our natural bent toward legalism teaches us to see Him as cruel and judgmental and impossible to please. Every rung we climb on the ladder of righteousness only shows us He is higher yet.

But Naomi’s words would remind us that all those thoughts we naturally think toward God are an unfortunate illusion. All those hard thoughts derive not from the truth but rather from our own twisted misperceptions. The real God who lives in Heaven and who would be our God is a God of grace and kindness, a God who longs to give us rest and to do us good. Oh, yes, it is true that He punishes sin, that there is a place called hell, that He may in anger bring down horrible judgments on us. But like a genuinely loving parent, He resorts to those things only when we engage in our own self-destruction and cruelty and utter impenitence. I believe with all my heart that when He has to deal finally with those “whose names are not written in the Book of Life” and He has to “throw them into the Lake of Fire,” He will do so with tears in His eyes. That was never His intent. He would have done them good, if only they’d let Him. “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, will rest in the shadow of the Almighty” (Ps 91:1).

Again, like any genuinely loving parent, our God longs to do us good. Just like Naomi’s words, He asks, “… should I not seek for you a place of rest which will be good to you?”

But having pondered all of this, may we be reminded they are Naomi’s words. They are a person’s words. And they are a godly person’s words. They are a godly person’s words as that person looks into the life of someone else. That is precisely the effect God desires to see – that having drunk deeply of grace ourselves we should in turn extend that grace to those around us. As we learn to live in the glow of our God’s love to us, I believe the unavoidable result is that we are changed to love others more. Viewing His image, “we are changed into that image, from glory to glory.” I’m not so sure the change is even a “choice” to love so much as a choice to see God and then to simply allow that love to flow through us. We are indwelt by the Spirit of Christ. If we only allow it, how cannot His great loving heart spill out of ours? Out of the abundance of our hearts, our mouths will speak. If those hearts are full of the love of Christ, how cannot our mouths spill out that same love to others?

This is a wonderful little verse to remind us what a loving God we have:

“And Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, ‘My daughter, should I not seek for you a place of rest which will be good to you?’”

But realizing they are Naomi’s words, we’re also reminded that God’s love in our hearts moves us to love others. Naomi longed to see Ruth find a “place of rest” and one that “will be good to her.”  Just like Naomi, it is good and right for all of us to be constantly looking about us desiring to do good to others, to be “watching out” for their welfare.

May the Lord give us eyes to see the needs of others, may He give us hearts to love and do what we can, and may He allow us to actually so touch the hearts of people around us that they realize there is such a thing as grace.

May the Spirit of Christ be our spirit all day every day wherever we go.

James 2:18-26 – “Rabbi, I Want to See”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁸And someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works. Show me that faith without the works, and I will show you my faith out of my works.”  ¹⁹You believe that God is one? You do well. The demons also believe and tremble. ²⁰And, O empty man, do you wish to know that the faith without the works is worthless? ²¹Was not Abraham our father justified out of works offering Isaac his son upon the altar? ²²You see that the faith worked together with his works and the faith was completed out of the works. ²³The Scripture was fulfilled, the one saying “Abraham believed God and it was imputed to him into righteousness,” and “He was called a friend of God.” ²⁴You see that a man is justified out of works and not only out of faith. ²⁵Likewise was not Rahab the prostitute also justified out of works, welcoming the messengers and sending [them] out a different way? ²⁶For just as the body without the spirit is dead, thus also the faith without works is dead.

This is going to be another one of my “I don’t know” posts. I have been studying this passage and pondering over it pretty much this entire month. I keep hoping some lights will come on but alas, here I am, and I don’t think I know any more than I did. So in this post, I’ll try to summarize my ignorance.

As I recorded in my last post, to me this matter of “faith and works” is patently obvious. To be born again is to live again and to live is to move and breathe. Action always accompanies life. Action doesn’t impart life, it is the expression of it. Works don’t give life. It is genuine faith that imparts life to the soul. The works are simply the expression of that living faith. And so, Abraham, being alive, lived his faith and obeyed God. Rahab, having come to faith and become alive, started making decisions consistent with that living faith.

The key words repeated all through this passage are “show me/show you” (v18), “you see” (v22), and “you see” (v24). James’ whole discussion is centered around this idea of what you “see.” You can’t “see” faith. But a faith that is real will produce a life which can be seen, which I believe is his point.

All well and good. James isn’t contradicting Paul. He isn’t “adding works to faith” in a soteriological sense. He’s making the rather obvious assertion that real faith lives.

This is my rub. I’m not sure who he’s talking to or why. If he is addressing genuinely born again people, I’m thinking they already know this. As I quoted from Ezekiel in my last post, the Lord said,

“Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes …” (36:26-27).

Genuinely born again people are indwelt by the Spirit and God Himself “causes us to walk in His statutes.” From the second I became alive in Christ, I was aware I was alive. I had something totally different going on inside of me. I wanted to know God. I wanted to follow Jesus. I had absolutely no idea what that meant, but it was all there.

So … do you need to tell born again people that their faith should be accompanied by works? Obviously Jesus seemed to think so:

“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned” (John 15:5,6).

John himself says,

“If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we

lie and do not practice the truth” (I John 1:6).

Clearly, we need to be told that real faith produces works, produces a changed life, produces observable action.

But then, in v20, he addresses “you foolish man” and seems to be making his point to people who want to assert that they can have faith without works. Can genuine believers really think that someone can have faith and it produce no change in their life? Or is he talking to the many people who sit in the pews and claim faith but obviously don’t live it (of which there are many, of course). My problem with thinking James is addressing them is first of all that I know by experience that those people aren’t listening to a word you say, so why address them at all? Also, that would imply James is addressing this book to unbelievers, which would seem contradictory.

If he’s addressing believers, it seems unnecessary. If he’s addressing unbelievers, it seems pointless.

I suppose it comes down to the problem that the visible church will always (in this world) be comprised of tares and wheat, and Jesus specifically said the tares would not be plucked out lest the wheat be damaged. The whole Bible is full of warnings against “wolves in sheep’s clothing,” and people who say, “Lord, Lord.” Paul had to admonish the Corinthians to “examine yourselves and see if you be in the faith” (II Cor 13:5).

Perhaps that is the key here. Somehow we need the Lord to make the matter clear. Perhaps believers need to know this so they aren’t discouraged by all the people who claim faith then don’t live Jesus. Perhaps we need to know this so we don’t listen to everyone who gets up and claims to have faith. Perhaps it needs to be said on the chance that someone really would ask themselves whether the “faith” they claim is actually changing their life?

Perhaps all of this is true – it just doesn’t seem to tell me anything I didn’t already know.

And that is what bothers me. How can I read and study a passage of Scripture and come away feeling I didn’t learn anything? That usually means I didn’t “get it.” What bothers me too is reading those words, “You foolish man,” and wanting to believe he is talking to someone else, while the voice way down deep inside of me is saying, “Don, you’re the man!”

If David didn’t see that he was “the man” in Nathan’s story, he would have missed Nathan’s point and gone on blindly in his sin. If I can’t see when I’m “the man” I fear I’m missing the point … with the frightening implication that, in some way, I’m going on blindly in my sin. The whole point of studying the Bible is to see my sins so I can be different. To have studied a whole passage and walk away unchanged is a sad disappointment. But if I am “the man,” I still don’t see it.

His point is clearly that “faith without works is dead.” That I think I understand. I just feel there’s something more going on that I’m missing.

Hmmmmmm. Well, the good news is that the Lord is still on His throne. He sees all things clearly. He knows that I’ve sincerely (albeit with my evil self-deceptive heart) tried to understand. Perhaps I’m just not ready to see something here. Time for another Habakkuk. I’ll just stand at my post and watch and see what He will tell me.

I guess I’ll just leave this with the prayer, “Lord, help me let my faith live. Help me to do the “works” that accompany faith, whatever and wherever  You wish to be. If I’m missing something, please help me to see it. Rabbi, I want to see.”

With that, it’s time to go back to the OT and continue my study in Ruth. I’ll study a chapter or two there and, Lord willing, come back to continue on in James.