Ruth 1:10 – “Carried”

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

¹⁰Then they said to her, “No. We will return with you to your people.”

I’m thinking it worthwhile to pause and consider what is going on here in the book of Ruth. Our girls, Ruth and Orpah, are at a point in their lives where they must make a decision.

They must make a decision.

Here they stand, probably at a ford on the east side of the Jordan River, at the border between Moab and Israel. They must either go forward, cross the Jordan into Israel, or turn around and go back to Moab.

They must make a decision.

Either choice offers attractive possibilities, but is also fraught with fearful possibilities. Apart from faith, I don’t know why the girls would want to go with Naomi. Obviously there was a very strong bond of love between them (much to Naomi’s credit). But faced with a life of destitution with this older woman or “going home to mother,” I don’t know why they would choose the former. On the negative side of the ledger, it would seem like the decision to go with Naomi is social suicide. As I have often noted before, Israel and Moab are bitter enemies. These girls will be foreigners in Israel and widowed foreigners at that. Going to Israel means saying “Good-by” to their families and everything they’ve ever known. It means going to a world of very different customs, and a world where they may, rather than finding a new husband, actually be shunned.

Faith introduces a whole different set of factors to consider. To go to Israel is very deliberately to forsake Chemosh and embrace Yahveh. These girls grew up in a world ruled by this god named Chemosh. To step forward is to forsake him and hope that Yahveh, the God of Israel, is in fact the true God and that He will accept them. To step forward is to walk into Naomi’s world – which I believe was a world the girls saw as a world where people actually love and trust each other – which was very different than their world where they grew up having to fear every moment their parents might choose to sacrifice them to Chemosh. As I have noted before, I do not doubt that the very practice of child-sacrifice would have created a world of suspicion and doubt, where even your own mother’s embrace could not be trusted. So, to go back would mean going back to the comfort of the known, but to a world far less than they now know it could be.

What will they do?

They must make a decision.

I am pausing to point this out because this is precisely where we find ourselves from time to time. We must make a decision.

There simply is no “I don’t want to decide today.” We must make a decision.

And those decisions are sometimes life altering. As Frost wrote, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

People down through the years have been merciless to poor Orpah. She’s the evil, worldly, godless, faithless one who came to this point and chose badly. For myself, I sincerely wish she had chosen to go on with Naomi. I wish she had chosen the God of Israel. But I have a difficult time being so hard on her. She had to make a decision. I know how that feels. I know how it feels when it seems like none of our options are good ones, where no matter what we do, it’s hard to say how it will turn out. Yet we must make a decision. I personally can’t be too hard on Orpah because, having been at this same point in my own life many, many times, I have often made what turned out to be very bad decisions. And I can honestly say that much of the time, I really thought I was making good decisions. I thought I was doing what the Lord would have me to do. I prayed, I even sought counsel, and I had to make a decision, and so I did. But the years pass, I learn more and more to see my world through the Lord’s eyes, and I realize they were bad decisions. How can I be too hard on poor Orpah? There she stands, crying her eyes out, a young girl who ought to have a father’s or a husband’s strong arms around her, but instead she lives in a tragic, bleak world. And now she has to make a decision.

Here is where I believe faith enters. Here is where faith is indispensable to sanity.

Now, I need to insert here that my young idealistic heart would have quoted Prov 3:5,6 at exactly this point: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.” I would have said, “You just pray and trust God and do what’s right and you’ll always be on the right path!” That would be nice, if I had some kind of perfect “follower” button I could push. The problem is that I know from hard experience that I bring to even a promise that simple my own blindness and arrogance and, in spite of it all, can still make what turn out to be very bad decisions.

What I need is a God who is bigger than my endless stupidity. I need a God who is bigger than even my bungling attempts to have faith! I need a God who is bigger than my bad decisions.

And now an old man says, “Praise God – that is precisely who my Lord is!”  In Isaiah 46:3,4 He says to me, “Listen to me, …you whom I have upheld since your birth,

and have carried since you were born. Even to your old, old age and gray hairs, I am He, I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you …”

“From birth, even unto old, old age, I will carry you.”

 He will carry me.

He’s bigger than me.

He’s bigger than my bad decisions.

As I sit here and the events of my life pass through my mind, I see the whole mixed bag of good decisions and bad, and some I still don’t know whether they were good or bad. And what I see is a God who’s been bigger than it all. I see how He took even my bad decisions and used them for my good. Even while I was being an idiot, He was carrying me. He gave me my choices, He let me choose the path, and sometimes the path led straight into the fire. Yet He knew I needed to get burned. He knew He could use it for my good. On the other hand, there have been many paths I would have taken, but He blocked my way. At the time, I couldn’t understand. It seemed like the right thing to do, yet something stopped me. And now I look back and think, “Thank God!” He kept me from bad decisions that would have in fact been my ruin.

You see, I love Prov 3:5,6. I love that promise “Trust in Lord with all thine heart …” But my greatest comfort isn’t to be found in what a great job of trusting I’ll do, of how my choices will turn out so well. My hope is in this One named Jesus, “for He shall save His people from their sins.” My hope, when I look ahead to life, when I look ahead to what seems to me like too many decisions I have to make, my hope is my great Savior God who carries me.

And so, back to our girls, my hope is that, like Ruth, when I come to those momentous, life-changing decision points, that I will choose well. Sadly, I fear for Orpah, she chose to go back “to her people and her gods,” while Ruth said, “Your people shall be my people and your God my God.” My hope is that my faith, even as small and fickle as it may be, will be the victory, not because it is great, but because He is great.

There is no question in my mind, for the Ruth’s and the Orpah’s of this world, for the me’s of this world, the only real hope, the only real sanity in the long run is to lay hold of this great Savior God, our Father, to try to trust Him, to try to have faith, to try to make good decisions, and in the end, to live in the quiet peace of knowing He’s carrying me!

Ruth 1: 9a – “Menuchah”

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

⁹May the LORD give to you and may you find rest each [in] the house of her husband...”

I’ve already noted how Naomi’s simple prayer alludes to the fundamental responsibility of a husband to provide to his wife “rest.” Before I leave this verse, I want to note how this is actually and ultimately true because Jesus gives His people rest. Naomi here prays that the girls might find “rest” in the home of another husband. Later, in the opening verse of chapter 3, when Naomi realizes Boaz’s affection for Ruth, she says to her, “My daughter, should I not seek for you a place of rest which will be good to you?”

In both cases, the word translated “rest” or “resting place” is the Hebrew word “menuchah.” I’ll record a lot more thoughts when I come to 3:1, but this “rest” is such a wonderful thing, I can’t resist scratching down a few thoughts now.

Jeremiah will write (about 500 years later!), “Stand at the crossroads and see, and ask for the old paths, wherein lieth the good way, and walk ye in it, and ye shall find rest unto your souls” (6:16). Isaiah writes, “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and confidence is your strength…” (30:15). Isaiah also says, “But the wicked are not so, they are like the troubled sea, which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. ‘There is no peace,’ saith my God, ‘to the wicked’” (57:20,21). In John 14:7 and 16:33, Jesus said to us, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you … I have told you these things, so that in Me you might have peace.”

These verses are a very small recounting of the many, many, many verses in the Bible where we learn that our God wants us to enjoy menuchah, “rest” and peace. Even as I type, more such verses come to my mind. But, probably the crowning passage of them all is Matthew 11:28-30: “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and heavy-laden, and I shall give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”

What an utterly unfathomable blessing – to embrace this Jesus as our King, only to find that, far from being a demanding, austere ruler (as too many people imagine Him), His rule brings us peace and rest! That is the kind of King He is – One whose rule means great happiness – menuchah – for His people.

And that is precisely why a husband should provide a place of “rest” for his wife – because their marriage is modeling Christ and His church. Just as we’re told in Eph 5, “…Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives …” Being a husband and having a wife is all about what we give to them. It's all about providing for our wives menuchah.

When a girl wakes up in the morning to realize, “I’m married now,” the very thought ought to bring her a sense of joy and expectation, of security, and of love. She ought to be able to look at the man lying next to her and see a rock. Hopefully her father has always been that for her and all that’s changed is that the Lord has given her a new rock. But whether that was the case or not (and perhaps more so if it wasn’t), it’s a husband’s place to be the rock that gives to his wife a world of menuchah.

Now, the fact is, in the real world, life is hard and always will be. To be a wife is going to be very, very hard work. Regardless of whether she will be a stay-at-home mom or a working mother, it will be hard. But there is a vast difference between the “hard” of taking care of a baby who doesn’t sleep at night, as compared to the “hard” of a husband who is insensitive, or unreliable, or unfaithful, or even cruel. I’m certain that, even after marrying Boaz, Ruth still had a very busy schedule. The woman of Proverbs 31 is a very busy, hard working woman. But, again, there is a vast difference between facing the very painful realities of life alone or facing them under an umbrella of love.

What Jesus calls us to is, in fact, a yoke. It is a yoke that is “easy” and a burden that is “light,” but it is still a yoke. We need only read Hebrews 11 again to be reminded that His yoke may cost us our very life itself. But, again, I would suggest that even deep pain is a different experience whether we face it alone or under an umbrella of love. In Jesus’ case, the very yoke itself is bringing us menuchah. Consider His words again, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and heavy-laden, and I shall give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” The menuchah He offers is a menuchah under a yoke! Even the best husband can’t shelter his wife from the fact that life is hard. But, like Jesus, what he should provide her is that umbrella of love that turns her “yoke” into a menuchah.

Words fail to express how much I enjoy the book of Ruth. But is not part of the charm of the book the very fact that in the end, our man Boaz provides Ruth with the very thing our hearts know is good and right – a menuchah, a place of rest, a place of love and hope and security.

We husbands should hear the Lord’s words, “Go and do thou likewise.”

Ruth 1:9b – “Bacah”

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

⁹...Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voice and they wept.”

The word translated “wept” catches my attention. It is the Hebrew verb bacah. The word shows up in Psalm 84 where it says in vv5-7: “Blessed are those whose strength is in You, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Bacah, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.”  “Valley of Bacah” could actually be translated “valley of weeping” or “valley of tears.” I believe this is where the old folks got the name for this world, this “vale of tears.”

Once again, I love studying the book of Ruth as it is such a simple book. The book presents to us real people living real lives. Today we find this older woman of faith standing with two Gentile girls and all of them crying their eyes out.

Life hurts.

It hurts for people of faith. It hurts for people without faith.

But what does the book of Ruth teach us? It teaches us that our God is the Great Cause. It teaches us that, even as people live their simple everyday lives, as they face this or that and make decisions, our God is sweeping it all to His ends. And His ends are good ends.

If only these ladies could have read the book! Naomi and Ruth would know they don’t need to cry at all. The world looks hopeless for Naomi, but unbeknownst to her, this Ruth is an enormous gift to her, and there is a Boaz just ahead who will be her kinsman-redeemer to restore her property and her family line. For Ruth, as she stands there crying, she’s faced with this decision. She can stay in Moab with her family, her people, her language, all that is familiar – but I believe that, in Naomi and her family, Ruth has caught a glimpse of life under the God of Israel. She deeply wants that. But it means going to Israel as a Moabite widow – destitute, a foreigner, perhaps a hated foreigner. It’s all an ugly black hole of uncertainty and fear for her where all choices are painful and ugly. But, if she could read the book, she’d know the Lord plans to wed her to a man of kindness and love like she could only dream of. If only she could read about David, her great grandson. If only she could know that, through Boaz, she will actually join the line of the very Messiah Himself! If only Orpah could have read the book, if she could have seen the kindness the Lord had planned for Naomi and Ruth, perhaps she could have had the faith to go with them, to see what story the Lord would write for her.

If only they all could have read the book. They would know they don’t need to cry. Instead they could have actually run ahead in joyful anticipation of all the Lord’s blessings! If only we could read our book. We would know we don’t need to cry. We could actually run ahead in joyful anticipation of the Lord’s blessings!

But is that not faith itself? “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith is believing that our God is the Great Cause. This book teaches us to live our simple lives, be about our simple duties, doing the things we should do, and believe our great God is weaving it into His wise and good and glorious plan, that all His thoughts toward us are kindness.

Yes, life hurts. The pain hurts. Go ahead and cry, girls, but oh may it somehow lighten the load for you to believe that in fact God is planning to give you a future and a hope!

Yes, life hurts. The pain hurts. Go ahead and cry, all of us, but oh may it somehow lighten the load for us to believe that in fact God is planning to give us a future and a hope!

This little snip of a verse, Ruth 1:9b, is us. The whole story is us. ^“Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voice and they wept.” This world is a Valley of Bacah, a Vale of Tears. But God grant us the faith to find our strength in You, to set our hearts on pilgrimage; that, as we pass through our own Valley of Bacah, that we might make it a place of springs; that the autumn rains might also cover it with pools. May we go from strength to strength, till each of us appears before You in Zion.”   

Ruth 1:8,9a – “Faith and Love”

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

⁸And Naomi said to the two of her daughter-in-laws, “Go. Return each to the house of her mother. May the LORD do love with you as you have done with [the] dead ones and with me. ⁹May the LORD give to you and may you find rest each [in] the house of her husband...”

There are several things that strike me from these verses. First of all, every time I study in this first chapter, I’m struck by how important it is for us to slow down and realize the depth of emotional pain the people are suffering. We do them and ourselves a great disservice when we just read coldly about these three women, what they do, and what they say. Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah have been dealt life’s most bitter blows. They have been bereaved of their husbands and, in Naomi’s case, her children. In their culture, the loss of their husbands (and Naomi her sons too) has left them utterly destitute. No matter what they do, at this point their lives are hopeless. It is precisely into this hopelessness that Naomi’s faith expresses itself in the words before us. Naomi has nothing to give these girls, so she gives them faith and love.

Note again how Naomi, in the very depths of grief and loss and hopelessness, is still a woman of love. Though smitten in her own grief, she can look out and love her daughter-in-laws. First of all, it is great love that she urges the girls to go home. The fact is, it would be a great benefit to her to “keep them around.” She could certainly use their help. She certainly needs their company. But she realizes she has nothing to offer them. To follow her back to Israel is to follow her into a world where they may be hated and shunned as “foreign women.” They have a far greater chance of remarrying if they stay in Moab. Naomi looks beyond her own needs and sincerely urges the girls to do what is best for them.

Then, notice what this grieving woman says to the girls: “May the LORD do love with you as you have done with [the] dead ones and with me.” Notice how she commends these girls. It has often been the case in human history that one of the most likely sour relationships is that of mother-in-law/daughter-in-law. It is easy for a mother to think no one can care for her son like her. It is easy for her to be critical of everything her daughter-in-law does. And of course the daughter-in-law knows all of this and easily resents it. And yet what do we find here? Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah love each other. And Naomi, who could be lashing out in anger, instead commends these girls for how they had cared for her sons, and prays the Lord’s kindness on them.

Then she prays asking for each of them what she doesn’t have – a husband. She is old now. Her own chances of remarrying are very slim. They have the advantage of youth. But, rather than selfishly resenting their advantage, she actually prays its benefit into their lives.

What an amazingly kind woman! I like what someone said, “This generous, unselfish spirit is one of the secrets of Naomi’s influence. Note: If we had more like Naomi in the church, we might expect to win more like Ruth from the world.”

Then just pause a minute and note her faith. Like Job, even in the depths of her own loss, what comes out of her mouth? The LORD. She can’t look at these girls and look at life and look into the hopelessness and yet, what does she see? The LORD. As Thomas Constable said, “Here is the central theme of the Bible: all of life is traced directly to the hand of God.” That is faith itself – to see God as the Great Cause of all things.

Finally I find it interesting that Naomi specifically prays that the girls would find “rest” in the house of a new husband. The word translated “rest” can also be a “resting place.” But it is definitely the idea of rest. What strikes me is that one of the things a wife can expect from a husband, and certainly one of the things a husband should strive to provide for his wife, is “rest.” Rest in what sense? I would suggest that’s true in a lot of ways, but what first comes to my mind is security. A girl ought to grow up in a world where she “never has to worry” because her Dad “takes care of everything.” But whether she had that kind of Dad or not, she ought to have a husband who does.

I remember asking an older woman once what she appreciated about her husband. She said, “He has always been a good provider. All down through the years, if we got short on money, or the kids needed things, or whatever, I never had to be the one to think about where it would come from. My husband always took it on himself to find some part-time work or do whatever he had to in order to provide for them. I never had to worry.” That is rest.

When Ruthie wanted to start dating Josh, she asked him to meet me so we could get to know each other. Somehow, even as I spoke with this young man, I knew he would take care of my daughter. I don’t remember how, but I just knew that he would be one of those men who would always see it as his job to take care of his wife and children. Of course they ended up married and he has in fact been exactly that. He is a man. He provides “rest” for his wife, my daughter.

And of course “rest” goes beyond providing materially. We could talk about the “rest” that a wife ought to feel knowing that her husband loves her and that he loves her alone, that she has no reason to ever be concerned about this faithfulness. We could talk about the “rest” of knowing her husband loves God and having the security of how that relationship will always make her husband a “strong” man. She should find “rest” in knowing he will always protect her. And so many other ways. But every husband should strive to provide his wife with “rest.”

I believe that is a very important lesson for any man to learn.

And here we learn it from the mouth of woman swallowed up in grief, yet still having faith and still reaching out in love.

James 5:19,20 – “Truly”

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

¹⁹My brothers, if someone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, ²⁰know that the one bringing back [the] sinner out of [the] error of his way will save his soul out of death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Like I John, these last two verses are a very abrupt ending for James’ book. Obviously that was deliberate.

What’s interesting to me also is that, in a sense, this verse embodies everything James himself has been doing for five chapters – he’s been trying to bring all of us sinners back out of the error of our way!

As I think back through the book, I notice (along with a lot of other writers down through the centuries) that James has been particularly concerned not so much with what we believe but with how we live. In Romans, Paul spends the first eleven chapters delving deeply into the theology of the Gospel, into right “thinking” about God, and our sin, and salvation by grace. James, in a sense, picks up at that point, goes to people who say, “Okay, we believe all of that,” and then asks us all “but are you living it?” We are all imminently in danger of saying we believe the Gospel but then living lives which completely contradict it. He would turn us sinners from the error of our ways!

I think it worthwhile to note that James, in particular, is writing to Jewish believers. Paul is writing primarily to Gentiles, of course. Back then, the entire Gospel was a new thought to Gentile peoples. Their first order of business, in a sense, was to understand the Truth at all! But Jewish people grew up in a culture that was immersed in God and the Bible. It was easy to just assume, because you were a Jew, you were “okay.” “Yes, I know all of that,” they could say. So, in order to help them, James doesn’t need to write eleven chapters explaining the Gospel. He needs to write to them and say, “So you believe it – then are you living it?”

In my mind, that brings us to us. Many of us, like the Jews, “grew up in church.” At least as late as my generation, that was true of almost everyone in America. But, in most of the churches I’ve ever known, I would suggest they had exactly the same problem as James’ readers – they all say that’s what they believe but their lives are a complete contradiction.

So Jew or Gentile, a lot of us need to seriously consider what James is saying throughout this book. It is too typical to “say we have faith, and yet have no works.” We need, as an entire religious culture, to be turned “from the error of our way.” In my lifetime, churches have been very “busy” places. They have done a LOT. Seriously. But precious few took it seriously to actually live everyday lives, to do their work, and to treat other people like Jesus would have us do, to actually live grace. Their religion is their “church work.” Their relationship with God is nothing more than another “ministry” at church. The end result of all that (misdirected) church busy-ness has been only to watch our nation and our world drop into hell. James calls us to the kind of life that is “true religion and undefiled” and the only “religion” that the Lord will use to significantly impact our world. … if we would only listen.

My next thought is that this same culture of people (who say they believe but don’t live it) are the very ones who will jump on James 5:19,20 and then run out to be great “witnesses” for the Lord, to “win the lost,” and turn all those people from errant denominations back to the Truth. In my humble opinion, instead of taking seriously what God Himself has said, I fear much of what evangelical Christians do is driven by their traditions, not from a serious consideration of the Bible or who God is. To be challenged to “serve the Lord” better, they run back to church busy-ness and to their Arminian view of evangelism. These last two verses in James to me are case in point.

What do I mean? I have counted eighteen times in this book where James refers to his readers as “brother” or “brothers,” and three of those were “my beloved brothers.” As sharp as the book may seem, it is bathed from beginning to end with love and personal relationship. It is a fundamentalist error, in my mind, to grab these last two verses and think we are justified to go out and beat people over the head, shove tracts in their lunch boxes, “invite them to church,” and all the rest, while utterly ignoring genuine love and/or relationships.

I’ve participated in plenty of that myself. And I know how little good it does to try to get “personal” with people with whom I have no real personal relationship.

I like what it says in the Expositor’s Bible: “A holy life is the best sermon, the most effectual remonstrance, the strongest incentive, the most powerful plea. Without it words are of little avail; with it words are scarcely necessary. This is the instrument which St. James throughout this Epistle commends. Not words, but works; not professions, but deeds, not fair speeches, but kind acts. [James 1:19; James 1:22; James 1:27; James 2:1; James 2:15-16; James 2:26; James 3:13; James 4:17] Nothing that we can say will ever make such impression upon others as what we do and what we are.”

It is the privilege of a personal relationship to be granted the opportunity to actually enter into the personal recesses of a sinner’s heart and help him see where he’s wrong. Most of the time, it takes an established relationship of love and respect ... which is what I personally see as the message of the entire Bible to the church. It is not so much, “Go and tell,” as “Go and live.” Yes, there are evangelists and missionaries and pastors and teachers who are called of God to herald the Gospel to even masses of people.

But I honestly think it is the amazing genius of real Christianity that what God has done is essentially infiltrated the world with His people, set them in families, neighborhoods, workplaces, grocery stores, soccer fields, and literally everywhere else and told them to live their faith there, to live grace there, to let their light shine. In so doing, He would create a world that is hungry to hear the gospel. In so doing He would create a world where, when the pastor or missionary or evangelist speaks, people pause to listen. He Himself calls it “adorning the doctrine of God our Savior in all things” (Titus 2:10).

What we see in these two verses is exactly this kind of personal relationship. Notice it is if “one” should wander from the truth and “one” of you should turn him. Notice the singulars. Once again, there is a place for mass evangelism, for the Billy Grahams of the world. But there is also an enormously significant place for the “ones” who live and work and rub elbows all day every day with people who’ve lost touch with the Truth. It is the very “personal-ness” of our relationships that buy us the opportunity to “turn them.”

For those who would take James’ message seriously, to sincerely try to live grace every day (and not to just buy the evangelical Christian “bait-and-switch” of church busy-ness), they can expect that the personal relationships they thus engender will invariably afford them opportunities to actually help other people.

In a sense, perhaps this verse really does summarize James’ heart from the whole book – live your faith, don’t just talk about it, and everywhere you go build the kind of relationships the Lord can use to touch others.

Lord, help us be real. Help us to truly love. May the reality of Jesus in us save someone else’s soul from death and cover that multitude of sins.