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“Ruth said, ‘Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following
you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge.
Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I
will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the LORD do to me, and
worse, if anything but death parts you and me’” --
(Ruth 1:16-17).
As a Gentile believer, Ruth typifies the calling that God has for all
the Gentile believers in regards to the Jewish people. “But by their
transgressions salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel
jealous” (Romans 11:11). Ruth was a sacred reminder that though
Naomi had forsaken the Lord, the Lord had not forsaken Naomi. Ruth saw
that the God of Israel had called her to minister to His people. Naomi,
despite her spiritual condition, was still one of His people.
During Yeshua’s earthly ministry He and His followers were committed to
the lost sheep of the house of Israel, as is beautifully pictured in
Ruth (Matthew 10:5). God has called all believers not to forsake His
people, and faith in God is seen in faithfulness to His calling. This
applies to every area of your life.
Ruth had already identified with the people of God and the God of
Israel. This identification is seen in four areas of commitment:
personal, national, spiritual, and mortal.
Ruth’s Personal
Commitment
Ruth declared, “Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will
lodge.” For all intents and purposes Ruth was saying, “My life will
be intertwined with yours, both where you go and where you lodge. Where
you go, though you leave the land of my birth, Moab, and where you lodge
or settle, even in the land of Israel.” Ruth would rather follow a
bitter believer like Naomi to the right destination, than to follow
Orpah, a sweet non-believer, to the wrong destination.
Ruth’s National Commitment
Then she continued, “Your people shall be my people.” God’s
blessing for the world is through the seed of Abraham, the Jewish people
(Gen. 12:3). Identifying with God’s blessing means identifying with
Israel. Although the Gentile believers are part of the commonwealth of
Israel (Eph. 2:12), unfortunately there has been a cultural disconnect
on the part of many believers in Messiah since the second century AD. By
the seventh century, faith in Yeshua had lost all relevance to biblical
Jewish culture and became unrecognizable to the “lost sheep of the
House of Israel” (Matthew 10:5). For some Gentile believers, it
seems strange to identify with the Jewish people. In the first century,
though, when the apostles lived, Gentile believers easily ministered
within the Jewish communities.
Paul uses the illustration of the Olive Tree in Romans 11:17-24 as a
reminder for Gentile believers to show the kindness of the Lord as it
was shown to them. The Olive Tree pictured the ministerial life of
Israel and the priestly service; the roots are the promises made to the
fathers.
These promises are to be ministered through Israel to the nations (Gen.
12:3, 22:18; Romans 15:8-12; Eph. 2:11-22). Unbelief broke the natural
branches off from this service. By faith in Messiah, Gentile believers
are grafted into the Olive Tree along side Jewish believers in order to
minister the very same mercy they received to the Jewish people (Romans
11:30-31).
Therefore, all the first century believer’s yearly calendar revolved
around the feasts of Israel (1 Cor. 16:8). They all understood and kept
the Passover to honor Messiah Yeshua (1 Cor. 5:7-8). They used the
Tanakh as the basis for their faith and practice (1 Tim. 3:16; Romans
1:17), because the New Covenant had yet to be written (2 Peter 3:15-16).
Like Ruth, let us not only love Jewish people, but also be willing to
identify with them for God’s sake.
Ruth’s Spiritual
Commitment
“Your God will be my God,” Ruth implied, “I will identify with
that which is unfamiliar but true, rather than that which is familiar,
but untrue.” When Ruth declared, “your God will be my God” it made no
sense to Naomi, because in her heart she believed that God was the cause
of her problems (Ruth 1:13). Ruth’s declaration is similar to Rahab’s
conversion and confession in Joshua 2:11, “for the LORD your God, He is
God in heaven above and on earth beneath.’’ Another example of a Gentile
believer who had great faith in the one true God and identified with His
people is the account of a Roman centurion found in Luke 7:2-9.
Ruth’s Mortal Commitment
Further she stated, “Where you die, I will die, and there I will be
buried.” This commitment was an addition to that made in Ruth 1:16
and went beyond anything Naomi was thinking. Ruth was willing to give up
her Moabite life rather than be disloyal to Naomi. Did she have a fear
of death? No. Faith can do that for you. Not that faith allows anyone to
be cavalier about death, but the truth of eternal life overshadows the
terrors of death. Therefore, all those of faith can say, “To live is
Messiah, to die is gain” (Phip.1:20). In Messiah “the fear of
death is removed” (Hebrews 2:14), for He is “the resurrection and
the life” (John 11:25). In the Tanakh, this same faith in the God of
Israel, under whose wings Ruth rested, gave her the same confidence that
all those of faith enjoy today (Romans 8:35-39).
Ruth then concludes her extraordinary response to Naomi’s counsel with
the most eternal commitment: “Thus may the LORD do to me, and worse,
if anything but death parts you and me” (Ruth 1:17). This language
was a vow, a blood oath. But notice the language Ruth used: “May the
LORD do to me!” She vowed in the sacred and covenant name of the God of
Israel. She confessed the LORD as her Lord.
Ruth submitted to the Lord and His covenant relationship. She was
saying, “My life is in His hands for death or for life – I trust Him!”
Ruth “believed that He is; and that He is the rewarder of those that
diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). We enter into covenant
relationship with God by the same faith as Ruth. If we confess Yeshua as
Lord because we believe in Him in our hearts, we, too, will be saved
(Romans 10:9).
Although our faith is continually tested, it is a biblical norm and is
spiritually good for us (Deut. 8:16; James 1:2-4). We are to resist the
temptation to forsake the Lord through obedience and trust in God’s
goodness and purposes, and we are to resist by the power of the Holy
Spirit (Romans 8:4-16). Those who pass the “test” using faith are also
faithfully rewarded (James 1:12; 1 Cor. 3:11-15). God is revealed in the
midst of the test. Testing produces testimony. Ruth’s faith was tested;
Ruth triumphed by faith and the God of Israel was glorified in her.
Y
(Excerpted from Sam Nadler’s book
Messianic Life Lessons from the Book
of Ruth). |
Ruth's Triumphant Faith
