Can Anything Good Come Out of Moab?

Ruth 1:1-18

The prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 25:6-8) foretells of a time when the Lord Almighty will spread a wonderful feast in his kingdom.  There will be a lavish banquet; a feast of aged, refined wine, choice food.  There will be a feast because God removes the cloud of gloom, the shadow of death that hangs over the earth.  He will wipe away every tear and swallow up death for all time.   

We worship the Lord of the feast, but today there is famine.  There is famine in our world and there was famine in the world of Naomi.  Today’s meteorologist would say that famine in Bethlehem during the times when the judges ruled occurred because the rains so critical for the growing season had failed to fall, perhaps for many years.   But a religious Israelite would have seen it through different eyes.  They would have considered the famine an act of divine discipline. 

The time of the judges was a time of moral chaos.  The refrains running throughout the book of Judges characterizing the period are:  “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”   “. . . the sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and forgot the Lord their God.”  The period of the judges was an evil, violent period.   The book of Ruth, set during this time, demonstrates how God works in the lives of faithful people, regardless of who they are, to bring about his will even during the darkest of times.  It is during this time of spiritual distress and physical depravation that Naomi’s husband takes his family away from their homeland and they become refuges in the land of Moab.

There were a lot of good reasons not to go to Moab.  The Moabites were disdained by the Israelites because of their incestuous origin between Lot and his daughter (Gen 19:30-38).  After the exodus, when the Israelites wanted to pass through Moab, the Moabite king hired Balaam, an internationally renowned diviner to curse them (Nu 22-24).  Then there was the recent oppression of Israelites by Eglon, king of Moab (Jd 3:15-30).  And worst of all was the always-present danger of assimilating into the Moabite culture, turning away from the God of their forefathers and worshipping the Moabite gods.  The Moabite gods were rather grisly.  Chemosh, the primary god’s name means “the destroyer.”  During times of crisis, Chemosh required human sacrifice to gain his favor.  The sacrifice of children was a central part of their worship.  Because of their despicable practices, Deuteronomy 23 (v. 3) specifically forbids any Moabite to “enter the assembly of the Lord.”  The Moabites and Israelites had a history that invoked hostility between the two nations.  There were good reasons not to go to Moab, but rain fell there and desperate hunger drove Naomi’s family into this hostile land.

While they do find food in Moab, Naomi experiences famine of a different kind.  While in that foreign, hostile land, her husband dies, leaving her stranded far from home with her two sons.  Her sons marry Moabite women, Ruth and Orpah.  This would have been a disappointment to any faithful Israelite.  The marriages were barren and after ten years of childless marriage, Naomi’s sons die.  She is a woman bereft, without husband or sons, without heirs, protection, a future, or material means and far from home.  She is a woman alone at a time when that implied death.  It is no wonder that after living through famine and three deaths, Naomi says, “the hand of the Lord is against me.” In spite of the hardship of her life, Naomi remained faithful to God.  She did not turn away from God and seek help from the Moabite gods.  No doubt she cried out to him, pleaded with him, but like Job, she consistently looks to God for help, even when she feels that he is against her.  So strong is her faith that when she has lost everything, Naomi decides to return home to Bethlehem.  Her daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth accompany Naomi to the border between Judah and Moab.  Having grown close in their combined grief, they stand weeping together at the border between the two lands.  Naomi encourages her two daughters-in-law to return to their parents’ home.  There is no hope for them in Bethlehem.  In those dark days of the Judges a woman needs a place, protection.  No self-respecting Israelite would ever marry a Moabite. 

Orpah sees the reasonableness of Naomi’s argument and returns to the home of her parents.  But Ruth refuses, in spite of Naomi’s bitter tirade, saying that she will remain with Naomi.  Ruth chooses to leave everything she knows, her family, her people, her home, to go to a foreign land that had every potential to be hostile to her.  Ruth says, “your people will be my people and your God my God.”  When Ruth makes the faith commitment to the God of Israel and to his purposes, she gives up her Moabite citizenship and becomes a citizen of the kingdom of God.

How difficult this is to do, to give up our identity, to move from comfort to discomfort, relying not on who we are but trusting that God is who He says He is.   We could understand if there was hope for a brighter future in Bethlehem.  How easy would it have been to follow Naomi to a land of plenty and promise, but that is not what Ruth did.  What could have caused Ruth to turn her back on all that she was comfortable with and remain faithful to this poor woman and her God?  Something had to have happened to Ruth to enable her to see hope in the midst of despair, feast in the midst of famine. 

God works with us as individuals and as part of community to bring about his perfect will.  Because he knows us so well, he is able to speak to us in just the way that we can hear.  Scripture is full of ways that God makes his will known.  We don’t know how Ruth came to know God, the text does not say.  Perhaps as she watched Naomi wrestle with the tragedy and disappointment of her life, she wondered at Naomi’s faithfulness to her unseen, silent God.  Perhaps she marveled at this God who inspired such faith.  No doubt she had heard the stories of His righteousness, His faithfulness to his people, how he had delivered them in the past.  By comparison, the gods of her people must have appeared foolish, even cruel.  Perhaps in the famine of her life, perhaps as she prayed and wept like Hannah (1 Samuel 1:10) as surely she must have done, God spoke to her and she felt his presence in a way that she just couldn’t give up. 

We are not told how Ruth developed faithfulness to such a strange God.  But we do know that Ruth saw something in the creator God of life worth risking poverty, hostility and widowhood.  She saw something that she simply could not give up to return to her family and her family’s god, Chemosh, the god of death.  We don’t know how that happened.  But we do know that as she stood on the border between Moab and Judah, Ruth had to make a choice, a choice between life and death  (Deuteronomy 30:19).  And in the midst of her personal famine, the widow, childless Ruth gives up her home, gives up any realistic chance of ever having a home and chooses the God of life.

We do know that in the midst of their famine, God gave to Ruth and Naomi a glimpse of the feast to come.  In Chapter 2 verse 20, we read that Naomi is able to see what she couldn’t see before:  God has been faithful, He has had a plan for her all along; He never did forsake her, even during the famine He was at work in her life. 

It happened that the field Ruth chose to work in belonged to Boaz, Naomi’s kinsman.  It happened that Boaz came to the field while Ruth was there.  It happened that when Boaz was told she was a Moabite, he was given the grace to see not her nationality of her birth but the nationality of her heart and he saw there a faithful, virtuous woman who served the Lord Almighty.   It happened that Ruth was acclaimed by the people and elders of Bethlehem a godly woman, likened her to Rachel and Leah, matriarchs of the faith.  It happened that the women of Bethlehem recognized her  “better than seven sons.”   It happened that Boaz and Ruth married and together had a son, Obed.  It happened that Obed was the father of Jesse who was the father of David.  When we read the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew chapter 1, it happens that Ruth is there.  None of this just happened.  God was working his plan through his faithful servants.  He  uses the most unlikely people in the most unlikely places.  Naomi, the woman of famine sees the glimmer of the feast as she holds in her arms her grandson, the hope for the future, the ancestor of our Lord Jesus the Christ.

God was in the famine of Naomi’s life and he is in yours.  You may not see him now, Naomi didn’t see him for a long time.  Jesus never promised us comfortable lives, but he does promise that He is at work in our discomfort. (Mt 5:3-12) 

We worship the Lord of the feast, but today, there is famine.  Just as there are people dying for lack of food, there are people dying for lack of hope.  They don’t know about the hope to come because no one has told them.  We are the blessed recipients of a vision of the feast to come but this is not a private party.  If we believe God is who he says he is, how can we not invite them?  Today, our Lord Jesus Christ calls us to step out of our homes, our neighborhoods, our comfort to deliver His message of the feast to strange, unlovely, perhaps even hostile places.  If we say no, He will find someone who will.  He is faithful to his promises and He has promised a great feast.  His plan for creation will be completed.  If we say yes, we will be like Naomi and Ruth finding ourselves amazed at how God works right before our very eyes.  We will receive glimpses of the feast to come and feel joyful praise of our Lord spontaneously erupt from our hearts.  (Ruth 2:20/2 Cor 12:9)    We hold invitations to the feast.  What will we do with them?