Ruth and Jonah (Midweek Lenten Worship, Part 1)

[Below is video of tonight's midweek Lenten devotional worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, and the text of this evening's message.]



Ruth 1

During this Lenten season, with its call to repentance and renewal, we’re going to focus on two short Old Testament books, Ruth and Jonah. 

Now, don’t be lulled into thinking that because these two books are short, they’re unimportant. Both books present important testaments to the activities of God in our world for our good. Listening to and learning from them, as is true of all of God’s Word in the Bible, can inspire and strengthen our faith in the God we meet in Jesus Christ.

As I began preparing and praying for this series I noted that Ruth and Jonah tackle at least five questions that are important for us today. 

1. How far does the reign of God extend over our lives? 

2. Who exactly does God care about? 

3. How does God deal with believers who disobey or ignore Him? 

4. How does God deal with unbelievers who turn to Him? 

5. And most important of all, how do we see Jesus in these two books?

This last question may seem strange. After all, Ruth and Jonah are Old Testament books. Ruth recounts events that took place roughly one-thousand years before Jesus’ birth and Jonah talks about things that happened eight-hundred years before Jesus. 

But what the apostles and generations of faithful Christian teachers and believers have realized is that “the entirety of the Old Testament [is] a witness to Christ.”* This is something that Jesus Himself teaches us. When the risen Jesus revealed Himself to two of His disciples on the road to Emmaus, Luke tells us that, “...beginning with Moses and all the Prophets,...[Jesus] explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” (Luke 24:27)

Both Jonah and Ruth are excellently crafted narratives. But these two books aren’t mere stories. They tell us about what the Bible claims and, in the case of Jonah, Jesus believed, to be actual historical events, actual interventions of God in the history of the universe. 

Some people have argued, especially about Jonah, that these books couldn’t possibly record actual events because they report the occurrence of things that don’t normally happen. 

This is a silly argument. It claims that the God Who created the entire universe out of nothing is incapable of doing things we wouldn’t expect Him to do. 

Both the books of Ruth and Jonah testify that God sometimes does out-of-the-ordinary things in service to His great goal of saving you, me, and the fallen universe from sin, death, and darkness.

The story of Ruth, which we take up tonight, takes place in that period of Old Testament history in which God’s people, the Jews, occupied the land God promised them before their first king was enthroned. This was the period of the Judges. Israel at that time had no regular government. Instead, from time to time, judges would arise to mete out justice or wage war. Some of the judges were good. But the work of even the good ones bore little long-term impact on the spiritual renewal of the people; this period was marked by sin, corruption, and faithlessness toward God.

Near the end of the age of the judges, a famine hit the land. Ironically, it must have been particularly difficult on people who lived in a little town called Bethlehem, a name that literally means House of Bread, since its soil was usually good for growing barley and other crops from which bread could be made. 

Like people throughout the centuries facing famine, persecution, or violence, a man named Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their sons, Mahlon and Kilion, leave the house of bread to find a place where they can find food and live from day-to-day. 

I’m guessing that most of us here tonight haven’t had to abandon our homeland in order to find food, peace, or a place to live, as we've seen the now 1.3-million Ukrainians who've left their country in the face of the Russian invasion. We’ve been able to put down roots and call somewhere home. 

As wonderful as it is to be able to have a home, it can also be spiritually dangerous, breeding complacency, a sense of entitlement, or insensitivity to those not as fortunate as ourselves. The apostle Peter enjoins disciples of Jesus, “as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires” that this fallen universe breeds in us. (1 Peter 2:11) And Jesus said of Himself, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58) An old hymn says, “I am but a stranger here / Heaven is my home.” Refugees better understand the impermanence of this world and, because of that understood vulnerability, are more open to hearing the Word of God that tells us of our need to take refuge in God.

Elimelech, Naomi, and their sons end up in a place called Moab, whose people were descended from Abraham’s relative, Lot. While in Moab, the two boys married Moabite wives, one named Orpah, the other named Ruth. In the course of time, all three of the men die. Eventually, Naomi gets word that crops are growing back in Israel.

Under the complicated inheritance laws of those days, which only allowed the sons of a marriage to inherit their father’s property, Naomi was left with nothing. 

Had one of her sons survived their time in Moab, they would have been expected to take her in; but the boys were dead. 

Had Naomi’s parents been alive, her father would have been expected to take her in until a marriage could be arranged for her; but Naomi’s parents were apparently dead. 

Had Naomi been young enough to marry again and had her new husband and she had a son, that son would have been considered the heir of Elimelech’s property and as the next son of Elimelech, been obligated to marry one of his dead brother’s surviving wives; but the age difference between a prospective child on the one hand and Ruth and Orpah on the other would make that implausible.

Naomi makes a bold faith decision. She decides to go back to Bethlehem in the hope that a near relative will take up Elimelech’s property and make provision for her as Elimelech’s widow. She has no idea if this will work; she simply steps out in faith.

Our lesson tells us that as Naomi sets out, her two daughters-in-law start to go with her, instead of returning to their families’ homes. Naomi is able to convince Orpah that it would be better for her to opt for the security of her family home and stay in Moab. But Ruth famously tells Naomi: “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” (Ruth 1:16-17)

More than a thousand years later, Jesus, God the Son, would tell a Roman centurion, a Gentile like Ruth, “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.” (Luke 7:9) Naomi may have had similar thoughts when hearing Ruth. 

From Naomi and her family, Ruth had heard the Word of God about Israel’s God, Yahweh: the God Who created the universe; the God Who had called His people to be a Light to the nations, the people from whom the Savior would one day come; the God Who saved people, like Abraham, long ago, not by their works, but solely by grace through faith in Him. 

And so, Ruth, penniless, powerless, and with no prospects, a woman in a man’s world, who believed in Israel’s God and wanted to honor Naomi, who had become her mother in the faith, insisted she would live and die in Bethlehem, where she had never been; worship the God of Israel; and live among a people who likely would have been hostile to her. 

She did this because, just like you and me, through the hearing of God’s Word, she believed in God…and, unknown to her, also to fulfill the plan of God for our salvation. 

But more on that next week.

*Wilch, John R. Ruth {Concordia Commentary: A Theological Exposition of Sacred Scripture. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2006