Preaching the Gospel from Ruth (Part 1 of 2)

You've no doubt read through the Old Testament book of Ruth and when you do it's easy to get swept up in the emotional plot of the story. But how does that affect the way we should interpret this book?

Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg begins a new series titled Preaching the Gospel that helps us see how a right understanding of the gospel will influence the way we interpret every passage we read in scripture. And the book of Ruth is arguably one of the loveliest short stories ever written. Here in these four short chapters, not very many verses, we have literary art and theological insight at its very finest. And what makes the book of Ruth sparkle so much is the background against which it is set, in the same way that when you go to the jewelers they always bring out that dark velvet cloth as part of their shtick in order to try and make a tiny diamond look as though it's really a little better than it was. But against the background of the period of the judges, the book of Ruth shines, because the story of judges, as you will know, was at the very least a time of instability.

If there had been blogs in those days, then they would have been filled with reports of civil unrest, of a kind of moral decay, religious declension, and unchecked corruption. And that you read all the way through, and we find that as the book of Judges finishes, it says, And in those days Israel had no king, and everyone did as he saw fit. And then you turn the page and you discover in the book of Ruth that there is another side to the story, that away from all the clamor in the corridors of power, we find that God is at work in a very unusual way, in a sequence of events involving a Bethlehem farmer, a foreigner from Moab, and a lady who had faced a triple bereavement.

And the camera, as you will notice, is trained almost routinely on Naomi. It comes back to her again and again. It's almost as if God is preoccupied with this particular individual—a lonely lady living in a foreign land in her declining years, with no children to care for her and no grandchildren to cheer her spirits.

Who, then, would ever imagine that her sad predicament would, in the providence of God, lead first to the conversion of her daughter-in-law Ruth, through that, in the lineage of it, to the birth of David, the great king of Israel, and then in turn to the coming of the Messiah? Now, we shouldn't miss—and I say this parenthetically—we shouldn't miss, in studying a book like this, the opportunity that it provides in mentioning these things to make clear to the Neomes of our culture, to the Neomes who are present in our congregation, that the God of the Bible is a God who defends the cause of the widow and a God who cares about their suffering. It certainly wouldn't be the main emphasis, unless of course we were dealing with it in a very short passage at a time, but nevertheless, it bears pointing out. With all that said, we need to turn to the task at hand. The assignment that has been given to me, as with my colleagues, is to discover how we might adequately and hopefully effectively preach Christ, preach the gospel, from these chapters. Learning to do this is, I think, the journey of a lifetime. I always like it when I find a quote from James S. Stewart, the late Scottish Presbyterian from the Royal Mile, when you read, for example, in the Heralds of God, his lectures to the theological faculty and student body in Yale in the 1950s, when you come across a little sentence like this from Stewart of all people, where he says, no one knows how to preach. It's phenomenally encouraging. It's a wonderful encouragement. One of the most encouraging sentences that I've read in preparing for this.

No one knows how to preach. It is right, says Stewart, that the task should humble us. Wrong, that it should paralyze us. So it serves to humble, but not to paralyze. And in setting forth the truth of the Lord Jesus to our listeners, our listeners then ought to be able to follow the progression of thought that gives rise to our introducing them to the person and work of Jesus, especially in Old Testament narrative. That's not just as straightforward as it sounds, because some of us are adept at not allowing our congregation to follow our progression of thought. And in some cases, it's because there's not a lot of progression of thought, and there's no linear progression in what we're doing. It's full of non-sequiturs. And so when we finally bounce out with the, and you will see that Jesus is over here in verse 17, somebody four rows back wakes up and says, how in the world did he possibly get there from there?

And his wife says, I haven't a clue, but we can ask him afterwards. But you know the kind of thing I'm talking about, the way it is a sort of formulaic approach to this process, where we've been told by somebody that you have to do this, and indeed you won't get your grade if you fail to do this. And so instead of it becoming something that is instinctive as a result of our comprehensive understanding of the whole historical redemptive approach of the Bible, it becomes a sort of formulaic process, and it catches people off guard, including ourselves sometimes.

You know, for example, the story of the Baptist preacher who was totally preoccupied always with the issue of believer's baptism. And on one occasion he gave out his text as Genesis 3.9, and God said, Adam, where are you? And he said, my points will be as follows. First of all, we will examine where Adam was. Secondly, what Adam was doing.

Thirdly, why he was there. And then finally, just a few thoughts on believer's baptism. And this idea of preaching Christ out of the Old Testament has often that kind of flavor to it, if we're not careful, if it becomes formulaic for us.

And I want to try and help us with this. We come to this with certain assumptions, at least I assume we do, and I'm going to identify them for us, just so that they're on the record as it were. First of all, we assume that God has acted in human history both to reveal and to redeem. Also that God has raised up prophets and apostles to provide both the record of God's intervention by way of revelation and redemption, to provide both the record of that and the interpretation of that record in Holy Scripture itself. Thirdly, it is our assumption that the preacher's message, both in its content and in its aim, is in setting forth the Scriptures, and in setting forth the Scriptures that speak of Christ, we then in turn will set forth Christ. Fourthly, it is at least my assumption that the need for the proper Christian use of the Old Testament is an urgent need. The urgency is there because some of us have been scared away from the Old Testament by the extent of scientific and historical criticism.

We ought not to be. And others of us have neglected the teaching of the Old Testament, have been inhibited by certain models of dispensationalism. Fifthly, I am assuming that we will be helped if we learn, as Alec Matias suggests, to read the Bible from back to front, that it will be a tremendous help to us if we work from the back to the front. It will be easier to find the tributaries, if you like, if we stand at the mouth of the river and then work our way back from there.

Now, this I think is fairly straightforward. It comes out in all kinds of illustrations, that the Bible is like a detective novel where all these various themes are woven together for a period of time until there is then a great denouement, which makes sense of all the interwoven pieces. Or the Bible is like a two-act drama, where if you show up for the first and leave before the second, you will be left wondering how it concludes.

If you come late and arrive in the second, you will annoy everybody around you by constantly saying, Who is this person and why are they here? B. B. Warfield used the analogy of the Old Testament as being like a richly furnished but dimly lit room. Only, he said, when the light is turned on in the person and work of Jesus, do the contents become clear. And so, for example, we need the book of Hebrews in order to deal with Leviticus. We can't make sense of the prophets without the Gospels by way of interpretation. And the message of Ruth cannot be understood apart from the coming of the Lord Jesus.

Couple more assumptions, or observations actually, not assumptions. The Old Testament Scriptures can and should mean more to us than they did to the people of the Old Testament, for we live in the light of their Christian fulfillment. And our pattern in this is clearly Christ addressing Cleopas in Luke chapter 24. And indeed, it is hard to imagine Jesus doing what he did in that incident, leaving out all that is here for us in the richness of this little book. The last thing I want to say is that the genre of the text should determine the way in which we accomplish the purpose of proclaiming Christ.

There's something gone badly wrong in our exposition if we're able to preach the exact same kind of sermon, no matter whether we're in Old Testament narrative, or in an epistle, or working through a Gospel, in the sense that it must be the genre of Scripture itself which determines for us the way in which the whole story is unfolded. So that when we come to something like the book of Ruth, we have to immerse ourselves in, if you like, the sights and the sounds and the smells and the tastes. These four chapters are sensual in a proper use of the word sensual. I don't mean that they arouse any kind of erotic notions, but they are full of the senses. And the way in which the story is crafted is so wonderful that it introduces little glimpses, little intriguing pieces here and there which give to us as the readers the sense that there's something more that is beyond this if we will just read on.

In other words, Ruth invites us to feel deeply, and it will then be our understanding of the Gospel which will prevent us from making any kind of wrong applications from the book so that we might be able to apply it properly. And indeed, the very privilege of dealing with a tiny story like this and with this narrative is something that has great appeal in our time. Stories are wonderful in every generation. And adults, I think, in many cases, have a peculiar sense of nostalgia for a phrase that the Oxford English Dictionary says has been used to introduce stories since the fourteenth century. And what is that phrase? Once upon a time. And has finished with the phrase, And they all lived happily ever after. Did you find it interesting—those of you who read the reviews and perhaps buy the books—did you find it interesting that Dreyfus and Kelly, the philosophy professors from Berkeley and from Harvard, sought to bring their philosophy down to the level of me by writing a little book called All Things Shining, where they offer to us the idea that in the little glimpses and moments of time, we may be able to find significance. And indeed, the subtitle of the book is Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age.

It's wonderful, isn't it? So you tell the people, say, I know you've been feeling very gloomy lately. I think you should go home and read Moby Dick. You will feel much better. Have a cup of coffee and read Moby Dick.

You'll be much better before you finish the evening. But to the extent that there is something in that, here, if you like, is a way for us to say to people, You don't need to read the Western Classics to find meaning in a secular age. I've got a classic for you here right in the book of Ruth. Will you read this? It's a wonderful story. I've actually done that from time to time, especially when I've been traveling and I've met somebody and they said their name is Ruth, perhaps in a restaurant or a lady that was somewhere on a plane. And I said, Do you know you have a book?

She said, No. Oh yes, it's a great book. You should read it.

It's short, but it's super. So here now, with all of that in the past, we're going to have three charcoal sketches. All right? Three charcoal sketches. In other words, I'm not up here with all of my paintings and all of my crayons to fill in all of the blanks. If you did art at school, as I did—and I mean art at school school, like where you don't know what you're doing in art. I had a—I don't mean art, art.

I mean like whatever you do when you have to paint or whatever. And my art teacher at Ilkley Grammar School was Mr. Walker, and I couldn't do anything that he asked for me to do. I was absolutely completely useless. And I used to try and plead with him, Mr. Walker, can you show me how I should approach this? And he would come and he would take his pencil and I would try and keep him there as long as I possibly could.

And then he would get wise to me, and he would always say the same thing to me. I'll get you started, beg, but I'm not going to do it for you. And what I want to suggest here is that I'm going to get you started, but I'm not going to do it for you. And these are fairly arbitrarily picked as sketches, but they at least send us in the right direction. My first sketch has a title, and the title is Three Women on the Road to Somewhere. Three Women on the Road to Somewhere. And, of course, we read of this point on the road.

It's described there in verse 7 with them setting out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah. It is quite a picture. If you were to draw it, if you were to paint it, it's full of all kinds of terms of endearment. It's not so much a Kodak moment as it is a Kleenex moment. You've got these three ladies just bawling their eyes out in the middle of the road, attempted to say dreadful chauvinist things about that, but I won't, because I can cry as good as any lady in a circumstance like this. But the backdrop, the backdrop to the scene on the road is a backdrop of poor choices and sad experiences and deep disappointments. It's all wrapped up in the interweaving of these women's lives. We need to backfill that and be brought to a certain level of understanding. God had warned his people that if they were unfaithful to his covenant promises, the consequences would be dire. We read of their experience of that in the book that precedes this. Famine now has come as a result of the rebellion of the people of God. But because of his loving kindness, because of his hesed love, he has held out to his people the promise of forgiveness and the promise of grace if they would return to him in repentance and faith.

And this huge drama is played out here in a microcosm as the camera zooms in on the family of Elimelech. Elimelech, his name means the Lord is King. Ironically, he obviously didn't feel him to be king over the circumstances of the famine, otherwise he would have stayed put in Bethlehem. He leaves Bethlehem, the house of bread, ironically, facing famine.

And off he goes to sojourn in Moab. In a sense, if you like, pragmatism wins out over obedient faith. And Naomi, by the time you get to verse 13, is able to explain exactly what has really been going on. The Lord's hand, she says, has gone out against me.

I can't explain my life apart from the intervening work of God. We made certain decisions, and in light of that, we found ourselves in this place. But of course, his kindness, the indication of God's mercy in providing food for his people—and the word that reaches Naomi there in Moab in verse 6, she heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, and as a result of his kindness, she now has determined that she will return to the place of her beginnings. I think if we'd asked her to give her testimony, she would have been happy to quote George Herbert, or if I stray, he doth convert and bring my mind in frame, and all this not for my desert, but for his holy name. And now she stands in between Moab and Bethlehem, urging her two daughters-in-law to go back to the place where they would find security. And essentially, what she is doing is urging these girls to count the cost—a cost which Sinclair Ferguson puts as, they had to choose between Yahweh plus nothing in Bethlehem or everything minus Yahweh in Moab. And with that choice set before them, Orpah, as we know, goes back, but Ruth refuses to go back. No, don't urge me to leave you.

I'm going to go where you go. Your God is my God. And she's just employing the language that presumably she had learned in the course of time. And one of the things that we have the opportunity to do in this section—and I want to take the opportunity just now—is to make sure that we recognize how clear is the call of God to respond to his unerring loving kindness and grace, and to urge upon people the necessity of their coming to do as Ruth has done, and to trust in this God. Some of us here have a hard time with this.

Pressing upon people the necessity of a decision, the necessity of a choice. God does not believe for us. We believe, and Ruth believed.

Do you? Are you a believer? Have you turned your back on the substitute gods of the world in which you live by nature?

Have you been embraced by the loving kindness of God as it has been manifest to you in so many different ways? Alistair Begg is asking some important questions, and we'll come back to those again tomorrow as we continue seeing how the message of the gospel is wrapped up in the story of Ruth. We'll hear part two of Alistair's message tomorrow on Truth for Life. As Alistair just mentioned, God doesn't believe for us.

Placing our trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior is a decision each of us has to come to on our own. When we make that decision, we quickly realize we have joined in a battle against a formidable enemy. That's why we've been recommending a book titled Our Ancient Foe—Satan's History, Activity, and Ultimate Demise. This book explains that each of us is in a relentless battle against our own flesh, the world around us, and evil cosmic forces that have had thousands of years of experience destroying God's people.

We don't stand a chance in this battle on our own. That's why we need to know how to stand in Christ's power with the armor that God supplies. When you read the book Our Ancient Foe, you'll begin to grasp the fierceness of the attacks from Satan.

More importantly, you'll learn how you can stand confidently on God's promises and in His strength to protect yourself against the devil. We invite you to request your copy of the book Our Ancient Foe when you donate today. Your giving directly supports the distribution of this daily Bible teaching program. You can give through our mobile app or by visiting truthforlife.org slash donate, or you can call 888-588-7884. I'm Bob Lapine. We hope you benefited from today's message. We hope you can join us again tomorrow as we learn what a kinsman-redeemer is and we see how one man rekindled hope in the life of a bitter widow named Naomi. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.