Born in Bethlehem

Story endings matter. Without the ending, you loose not just a little bit, but the whole thing. Imagine some of our favourite stories without the ending.

• "A grumpy man named Ebenezer Scrooge gets visited by ghosts on Christmas Eve and sees a vision of his own gravestone."
• "Four children stumble through a wardrobe into a magical land but unfortunately one of them betrays them all."
• "Two hobbits set out to try to save their world but sadly one of them gets bit by a big spider."

Endings matter. The ending to the story of Ruth matters. Without the ending, we'd very easily miss the point of this story. Like many people do. Someone commented to me recently that they've always imagined Ruth as the biblical version of a rom-com. Just a fun romantic story about two people falling in love and getting married in ancient Israel. Kind of like a Hallmark movie without the snow.

But it's not that. At all. The ending of the book of Ruth shows us what this whole story has been driving towards all along and it's not what we think. This story isn't about Ruth or Boaz or even necessarily all about Naomi—although it is a lot more about her than we might think.

We'd barely be exaggerating to say that this story, all along, has been about a baby. A baby born in Bethlehem. A baby named Obed. Ruth's faithfulness and Boaz's generous redemption has not been about their own romantic fulfillment but about providing Naomi with this baby. A baby who points towards another baby who would be born in Bethlehem, who himself points forward to another baby after that. A baby who has rewritten the endings for all of our stories.

So let's finish this story, shall we?

A Marriage (v. 13a)

And let's do that by picking up on where we left off last week. Ruth and Naomi's redemption had been accomplished when Boaz finished his speech in Ruth 4:10. At that point, they were Boaz's responsibility, the land was his, and Ruth was as good as married to him. Redemption was accomplished.

But that redemption still needed to be applied. And the application didn't happen all at once. It would have started with a wedding. We don't know exactly what ceremonies looked like at this point in history, but we do know that, as verse 13 says, “So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife."

The word "took" here reflects the idea that it was the man's responsibility to establish and maintain a household into which he received a wife. (Young men, take note!) This idea powerfully acted out when, as a part of the marriage ritual, a man took his wife with him into his house.

What must that have been like for Ruth to move in to Boaz' property, to look around for the first time, to wake up in the home of this man she had only known in the fields, to go from bottom-rung outsider to respected wife of one of the most honoured men in the area? Incredible.

A Pregnancy (v. 13b)

What happened next is perhaps not unexpected. Ruth gets pregnant, which is what we might expect after Boaz and Ruth get married. Verse 13 uses a common Hebrew phrase that describes a man going into the chambers or tent or bedroom of a woman. It's definitely suggestive of intimacy but it politely does not describe that intimacy, despite what it might sound like in English.

What happens next is that Ruth gets pregnant. And we might think, of course she gets pregnant. That's what happens, right? Fist comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage. But don't miss that Ruth had been married before and did not have a baby. That's why the author of Ruth here is deliberate to point out that "the Lord gave her conception."

This is one of only two times in the book of Ruth where the Lord is directly described as acting. The first was in chapter 1 where the Lord visited His people and gave them food. Similarly, here He gives Ruth conception.

We know that God has been working all along, but most often behind the scenes. So when He comes to the foreground here, we know that what's happening is especially noteworthy. Like He does over and over again throughout Genesis, here He once again opens the womb of a woman who up until now had been unable to bear a child. He gives Ruth conception.

A Baby (v. 13c)

And after nine months, give or take a few days or weeks, Ruth bears a son, as verse 13 finishes up. This, again, we should not just take for granted. Childbirth was dangerous business for most of human history, and for a mother and child to survive together is not something to just assume. We also can't miss the blessing of a male son. "She bore a son." This is so vital because, like we've seen, a male heir to Elimelech is what this whole story has hinged on. And here he is.

The blessing of the townspeople is being fulfilled. God has made Ruth like Rachel and Leah, opening her barren womb and giving her a son to build up this house.

A Blessing (v. 14-15)

And what happens when babies are born? The women gather to bless the new mom. That's a cultural practice seen all over the world and all throughout time, even up to the present day.

But notice who gets blessed in verse 14. Ruth has just had the baby, and the women bless Naomi. That's because, like we saw a couple of weeks ago, Ruth and Boaz marrying was much more about providing Naomi's dead husband with an heir than it was anything else. If you need more proof of that, just look at how, from verse 14 onward, Ruth totally disappears from the story. She's has borne a son, and with that, her place in this story is done.

Naomi is the one who had everything taken away from her in the first five verses of this book, and now, as the book concludes, is being filled up again, thanks to the faithful, sacrificial love of Ruth and Boaz. Which, in the end, was just an expression of the love of God for her.

And so it's no surprise that it's the Lord who the women of the town bless in verse 14. “14 Then the women said to Naomi, ‘Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! 15 He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him’” (Ruth 4:14–15).

Blessed be the Lord—He's the one who has done this. He's not left you without a redeemer, who, we see in verse 15, is not Boaz but is this baby. This baby, this heir to her husband, is the real redeemer, restoring life to her and nourishing her in your old age.

That could mean that this child is going to grow up and take care of Naomi when she's in her old age. It also could mean that, just by being born, just by holding him in her arms, Naomi is having her life given back to her and is being nourished and restored once again.

Ruth isn't ignored in any of this—she is honoured here as the one through whom the son came, and as being worth more than seven sons. But don't miss the key role of this child, this male heir, in giving Naomi her life back, restoring all that she lost in the first five verses of the book.

A (Grand)Mother (v. 16)

Next then we see Naomi step into her role as a grandmother in verse 16: "Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse."

What's being described here? Naomi is not just enjoying some cuddles with her new grandson. The word here for "nurse" has the sense of Naomi becoming his nanny, his main caregiver.

This verse is not describing normal expectations for every grandparent relationship. Not every grandmother can or will or should be her grandchild's nanny. We need to understand Naomi's actions within her specific situation. Remember, Ruth and Boaz got married in order to provide Naomi's deceased husband with an heir. And so this child is not just Naomi's grandson. Legally, in the system that they were working within, this child was like another one of Naomi's sons.

That's what the ladies of the town recognize. Look at verse 17: “And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, ‘A son has been born to Naomi.’” And Ruth would not have been offended or wigged out by that language. That's why she married Boaz: to bring forth a child who would be both her son and, in another sense, Naomi's son.

And so this language of Naomi becoming his nurse or his nanny is wonderfully respectful. She doesn't take the child away from Ruth and formally adopt him. This is still Ruth's son. But Naomi is really involved in his life, caring for him in a really hands on kind of way. It's quite a beautiful situation once we understand all of the moving parts.

And the beauty of this situation is further reflected in the name that the women of the town give to this child. By the way, this is the only time in the Bible where women, other than a mother, are involved in naming a child, and it really highlights the community's involvement in this story. And they name this child "Obed."

Obed comes from the word "to serve." We see the name "Obadiah" in the Old Testament, which means a servant of the Lord. Here, it's just Obed, which may reflect the idea that the town ladies spoke of earlier—this child is going to serve and care for Naomi in her old age. Remember once again that in this time in history, women had few options besides being cared for by their family as they grew older. Sons cared for their mothers. A part of Naomi's tragedy was that she had nobody to care for her. But now she cares for a baby who will one day assume the proper responsibility of caring for her.

A Lineage (vv. 17-22)

And with that, the story is over as far as these characters are concerned. There's a lot we're not told from this point on. We don't know how long people lived for or what happened after this point. We don't know whether they lived happily ever after or not.

Naomi's story ends here because, as a work of literature, we've come full circle. Naomi was made empty and has been made full again. Naomi left in curse and has returned in blessing. Naomi was robbed of her family and has been given a new family again.

But, but… this isn't just Naomi's story. It's also the story of Boaz, the worthy man who stepped into these women's stories to redeem their lives. And we can't forget the blessing that the people of the town gave to Boaz back in verse 12: "May your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman’” (Ruth 4:12).

There's a bigger story going on here. There's a house to build up. A family line to establish. Blessings to be realized. And we see how this bigger story is fulfilled in a way that nobody could have expected in the way that verse 17 finishes up:

"They named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David."

Ruth didn't just give Naomi an heir. Ruth made Naomi the great, great grandmother of Israel's first good king—king David. There was perhaps nothing more special or full of honour than to become a part of this family line.

Remember how having offspring to carry on your name after you was such a big deal to these people at this time? Being a part of an established, enduring family line was everything to them. If that's true, how much more wonderful would it have been to be a contributing part of the royal family line—to have offspring go on to share the throne? It's hard to imagine the great honour that this would have brought to the names of Naomi and Ruth and Boaz.

This also says something important about David. By connecting David's story to this story, the author of Ruth wants us to see king David as a member of a line of redeemers. He is the son of Boaz and Obed, men of Bethlehem, redeemers of the helpless and providers for the needy.

Perhaps that's the thread being picked up in Psalm 72, which says of the ideal king that “he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy” (Psalm 72:12–13). Boaz set the standard on that kind of character.

And cementing the connection between David and Boaz and the people of God, the book of Ruth ends with a genealogy—a list of generations that goes back to Perez, Judah's son, and ends with David the king.

“18 Now these are the generations of Perez: Perez fathered Hezron, 19 Hezron fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab, 20 Amminadab fathered Nahshon, Nahshon fathered Salmon, 21 Salmon fathered Boaz" (Ruth 4:18–21)

Let's just pause there for a minute. Salmon fathered Boaz. This list here just gives us father's names, like most genealogies in the Old Testament. But do you remember Matthew's genealogy? We don't know what additional records or God-given insight he was given access to, but here's how Matthew records this part:

“and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab” (Matthew 1:5).

Rahab. Rahab, the prostitute. Rahab who lived and worked in Jericho, a military installation. A dirty woman whose job was keeping the rowdy soldiers entertained. And not just any soldiers, but warriors of a moon-worshipping pagan society so vile that God had decreed their total destruction. We can't—and shouldn't try to—imagine the wickedness that this woman swam in for years.

But among the people of Israel there was a man named Salmon who, as best as we can know, didn't see that. Maybe it was because he knew his past so well, and the messy story with Tamar and Judah. When he saw Rahab, her past didn't define her in his eyes. He saw a woman who had come to believe that Israel's God was the one true God. He saw a woman seeking refuge under the wings of Yahweh. He saw a lost woman whose entire civilization had been destroyed, living in a land both familiar yet totally strange, who needed a safe place to land, and he became the hands and feet of God—covering this woman with his wings, making her his wife, loving her as she had never before been loved, enveloping her into the people of Israel, and giving her a son.

A son named Boaz.

A son who had been trained through life to see people for who they are and not just who they were. A son who, no doubt, had loved his mother and cared for her when that responsibility fell to him. A son who, like his father, set his eyes a foreign woman with a messy past and became the very means of God enveloping her into His people.

And from them came the king. "Boaz fathered Obed, 22 Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David” (Ruth 4:21–22).

Ruth Shows Us:

And so we come to the end of this wonderful little story, and as we do that I want to step back and consider what the book of Ruth has shown us in these last weeks. This is not going to include everything we've seen together, but some of the biggest and most significant truths that this book displays, and then we want to ask what these truths and lessons mean for us today.

How the Biblical covenants work

First, Ruth helps us understand how the Biblical covenants work. We know that God had made a covenant with Abraham in which he promised that all of the nations would be blessed. We know that He made a covenant with Israel, Abraham's offspring, in which He deliberately made them a unique nation that stood apart from all of the other nations. And He promised to bless them above all of the other nations if they obeyed Him.

And one question we can have is, how do these two covenants work together? And Ruth shows us. God blessed his people so that people like Ruth would come and see and join in and experience these blessings for themselves.

Now for us to make sense of this story as we ask what it means for us, it's important for us to remember that we are not living in that same covenant that God made with Israel. We live under the New Covenant, established by Jesus. There are some major differences from Ruth's setting to ours.

One has to do with the central place of marriage and childbirth in the people of God. We have to understand that in this New Covenant, God is not primarily growing His people through physical birth but by spiritual birth. Which is to say, you don't become a part of the people of God just by being born into a family, but by being spiritually reborn through faith in Jesus.

And that means that while marriage and childbirth are good gifts to some of God's children, they are not everything. They are not the end-all-and-be-all. And that difference shows up in some pretty drastic ways. For Ruth and Naomi, their only real hope was to find a man to marry one of them. A thousand years later, living in a different cultural setting but more importantly on the other side of the death and resurrection of Jesus, Paul would write, “39 A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. 40 Yet in my judgment she is happier if she remains as she is. And I think that I too have the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 7:39–40).

So some pretty big changes there.

But what has not changed is that God is still growing His people. Yes, one of the ways He may do that is by giving children to believing parents who raise them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. But, unlike Israel, God has not told us to stick in our comfortable little bubbles with our cozy families and wait for people to come and notice us.

He's told us to go and make disciples of all nations. To get out of our comfort zones and go rub shoulders with the messy and the broken people of our world to bring the hope of Jesus to them.

What Love Looks Like

And as we do that, Ruth helps us understand how messy and costly this can be. Because that's been one of the major themes in Ruth, hasn't it been? Rut shows us what love looks like, particularly in Ruth's faithful, loyal, laying-down-her-life love for Naomi, and in Boaz' generous, redeeming, taking-responsibility-for-other's-problems love for the two of them.

Ruth helps free us from some cultural ideas about loving other people that tend to have such a strong grip on us, even after years of reading God's word.

This book has shown us that love is so much more than a feeling. It's not that we should imagine Ruth and Boaz as unfeeling robots. We're free to imagine, "what must this have felt like for them?" But the way that the story is written shows us that their feelings weren't the most important part of the story and thus are not the most important part of love. As Paul Miller wrote, "The question is not 'how do I feel about this relationship?' but 'have I been faithful to my word, to the covenants I am in?'" (A Loving Life, p. 62)

Our feelings are so fickle, rising and falling like the tides on the ocean. Ruth helps us build a tough, resilient, loyal love that keeps on loving even when all the feels have drained out of us.

Now that's a great idea and one that's easy to nod along to here. But there's a good chance that before this day is out you'll have an opportunity to love someone, to help pick up their burden, when you won't feel like it. How will you respond?

One of the other ideas that Ruth frees us from is that other people's problems are other people's problems. This idea infects us at every level. We see needy people and assume they must have done something wrong to be in that spot, and it's too bad for them. We see messy people and don't want their reputation to stick to us so we either keep our distance from them, or we make knowing comments to other people about their tragic back stories, making sure that people keep thinking well of us and know that their problems are their problems and not ours.

And friends, just think what would have happened if the people in this story had acted this way. We wouldn't have this story. And we wouldn't be here today.

Love gets its hands dirty and says "your problems are now my problems."

And lest we think I might be making just a bit too much out of Ruth, listen to how Jesus defined what it means to love your neighbour as yourself:

“30 Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him," thought "well, that guy should have been more careful. Too bad for him." No! "he had compassion. 34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37 He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You go, and do likewise’” (Luke 10:30–37).

The Samaritan had places to go like everybody else on that road. But he stopped his plans. He got that man's blood on him as he cleaned him up. He gave up his resources. He made that man's problems his own problems.

Now that story is really helpful because I know that some of us, when we ask these questions, start to wonder, how in the world can I make everybody else's problems my problems? There's so much need in this world which modern media overwhelms us with 24/7.

Jesus didn't tell a story about a Samaritan who went looking for robbery victims. He loved his neighbour as himself, and when his path came across that man, that was his neighbour, and he loved him.

So with Boaz. He loved Ruth and Naomi because Ruth showed up in his field.

So who is your neighbour? Who are the broken people on your path? Who are the people in your field in need of love?

Jesus

And finally, saving the best for last, Ruth shows us Jesus. Ruth shows us Jesus by people who look like Him and show us what He's like.

We see Jesus in Ruth, leaving a homeland out of steadfast love for the ungrateful. We see Jesus in Boaz, the kind and generous redeemer who redeems us by making us His own and uniting us to Himself.

But of course this story shows us Jesus in a very direct way, because Jesus is the true son of David, the redeemer-king from the line of Obed who was very literally born in Bethlehem to redeem us and make us His own at the price of His own life.

And friends, you will not be able to love like Ruth and Boaz until you know, really know, how well you've been loved by the heir of Ruth and Boaz' great-grandson David.

Jesus' love can't be something we know on paper. Something we check off in our heads. Do you know that you've been loved by Jesus, a real man who saw everything disgusting you've ever thought and done and picked it up and let it all crush him on the cross so that you could walk free in this life and sit with him at a real table drinking real wine at a real celebration in a real world made new?

As we stand together at the dawn of a New Year, this is my prayer for myself. It's my prayer for us as a church, which means it's my prayer for each one of you:

“that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:14–19).