Chuck Larsen

Boaz goes public with his intentions regarding Ruth. In Ruth 4:10, he says, “Also Ruth the Moabite, the widow of Mahlon, I have bought to be my wife, to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place. You are witnesses on this day.” Occasionally, someone says to me, “We live with each other because we really love each other, and we’re married in God’s eyes, so what difference does the piece of paper make.” When I hear that (more often than I’d like), I always remember Glen Campbell’s song, “Gentle on My Mind.” He sings, “And it’s knowing I’m not shackled by forgotten words and bonds and the ink stains that have dried upon some line…” I might argue that those words did their part in adding to the promiscuity and emotional misery of those of us who grew up in the sixties. Boaz tells the elders and all those in the public gathering that “they are witnesses on this day” to the event in which he took Ruth as his wife.

What difference does it make? It makes all the difference!  Ogilvie says it best: “My answer is, ‘All the difference.’ It is no accident that some form of public marriage ceremony exists in almost every culture of the world. It is important socially that others know publicly that two people are committing themselves to one another in marriage. But it is also very important for each individual within the partnership. If the love commitment that a man and woman have for each other is not prepared to go public so that everyone knows they are man and wife, then I would question whether it is real love or a real commitment at all. Until it is affirmed in the presence of a witness, either partner has a right to question how deep the other’s love truly is, however passionately it may be expressed.”^[1]

Further, as Carson says, “There is a wider aspect to the public nature of marriage. It has deep theological echoes, and it ties public marriage yet more deeply into the great themes of the story of redemption. The whole business of public records, certificates, and genealogies is marginalized and minimized when there is non-marital cohabitation. The marriage certificate, the despised “piece of paper,” may speak to us theologically of the blessing of connectedness, which is underscored by the record of genealogies in the Bible. The curse of sin is that it leads to fragmentation, hostilities, and barriers between people. Salvation gathers people together, connects them to one another, and seeks the goal of a united humanity. To be married is to be tied into a web of publicly attested and recorded loyalties; to cohabit unmarried is to be a blip under the microscope of the observant social scientist.”^[2]

^[1] Jackman, David, and Lloyd J. Ogilvie. 1991. Judges, Ruth. Vol. 7. The Preacher’s Commentary Series. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.

^[2] Carson, Stafford. 2004. “Review of Marriage: Sex in the Service of God by Christopher Ash.” Westminster Theological Journal 66, no. 1: 257.

It’s interesting to me that in the middle of “everyman doing what is right in his own eyes,” which characterized the period of the Judges, we see this beautiful story in the book of Ruth, where God’s hand is at work in ordinary people. There is no King, Judge, Priest, or Prophet in this story—just ordinary people. We see God’s hand at work in the lives of ordinary people. When Naomi and Ruth leave Moab, they settle near Naomi’s hometown, Bethlehem. It wasn’t by chance that Ruth and Naomi settled in Boaz’s area. Someone wrote, “By chance,” Ruth settled in Boaz’s area. “By chance,” Boaz saw her working in the fields. “By chance,” he was gracious to her. “By chance,” they got together and had a son that they named Jesse. “By chance,” Jesse had a son named David. “By chance,” David would be the king through whom the Messiah would come and save His people from their sins and rule the nation of Israel forever. I’ve always liked the saying, “coincidence” or “chance” is God’s way of remaining anonymous. God’s providence is always at work in ordinary people’s lives. We don’t always see it, but sometimes we do. When you see it, it’s really hard to deny.

Paul Tan, in his Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations, says that on the evening of March 1, 1950, choir practice was scheduled in a local church in Beatrice, Nebraska. When the pastor and his wife and daughter were ready to leave for the 7:30 meeting, they discovered that the little girl had soiled her dress and needed to be changed. So they had to come late. A high school sophomore named Ladona had trouble with her geometry problems and stayed to finish her work even though she usually got there early. Two sisters were delayed because their car wouldn’t start. Mrs. Schuster normally arrived at 7:20, but that night, her mother needed her, so she had to stop there first. One man took a nap and overslept. And so, one after another, the members were detained for various reasons. At 7:25, due to leaking gas, the church blew up! When everyone arrived a short time later, they were amazed to see how their lives had been spared. The fact that all of them failed to come on time—something that had never happened before—had to be more than coincidence. As far as they were concerned, the Lord had been their shield and protector.

C. H. Spurgeon said, “I am glad there is no such thing as “chance,” that nothing is left to itself, but that Christ everywhere has sway.”^[1] When things happen in such a way that you can recognize some kind of order or design, it’s always possible that divine providence is at play in our lives. My old professor, Norm Geisler, says, “There may be some theoretical chance that wind and rain erosion could produce the face of four presidents on the side of a mountain, but it is still far more reasonable to assume that an intelligent sculptor created Mount Rushmore.”

^[1] Water, Mark. 2000. The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations. Alresford, Hampshire: John Hunt Publishers Ltd.

After Naomi’s husband and both of her sons die, she prepares to leave Moab and return to her home in Israel, around Bethlehem. Her son’s widows have a decision to make. Will they return with Naomi to Israel, or will they stay in Moab? One stays, and one goes. Orpah eventually makes the decision to stay in Moab. The text says Naomi advises Ruth to follow Orpah’s example. In Ruth 1:15, Naomi says to Ruth, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” It seems apparent that both of the widows had professed faith in their husband’s God. But Orpah returned to her previous god. On the other hand, Ruth, in one of the most famous verses in the Bible,  says in verse 16, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return 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.”

The two widows had both professed faith in Yahweh, but that faith had never really been tested.  God tested their faith. God tested Abraham’s faith. It can be demonstrated that God tests the faith of all those who profess their trust in Him. In Genesis 22, we read, “And it came to pass that God tested Abraham…”  In Ruth, we might read, “So it came to pass that God tested Ruth and Orpah’s faith.” Gingrich explains it well: “Now they were faced with a decision which would reveal whether their faith was spurious or genuine. Would they go back or go on? If they went back to the Moabites’ god, the Moabites’ land and the Moabitish people to receive a husband and rest for the flesh, then their faith in Jehovah was spurious. If they went on to a strange land, to a strange people, and into a future which held forth no prospects of a husband and rest for the flesh, then their faith in Jehovah was genuine.”

The point is that no faith is real until it has been tested. When the trials come, will we keep going, or will we go back? We can go back to what’s comfortable. We can go back to what’s familiar. If we keep going, we face the unknown, the uncertain, and the unfamiliar. Max Lucado says, “When a potter bakes a pot, he checks its solidity by pulling it out of the oven and thumping it. If it sings, it’s ready. If it thuds, it’s placed back in the oven. The character of a person is also checked by thumping. Been thumped lately?” Orpah went back, but Ruth remained and became a heroine in the Hall of Fame of Faith. She was a real fighter. Paul Simon wrote about the fighter, the boxer; “In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade, and he carries a reminder of every blow that laid him down or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame—‘I am leaving, I am leaving!’ but the fighter still remains.” It appears to me that Ruth was a fighter.