Picture of Redemption

Some people like to read six- or seven-hundred-page novels. I write novels that are two hundred to three hundred pages. My beloved wife memorized the book of Deuteronomy. I am working on memorizing Ruth. One chapter in Deuteronomy is longer than the whole book of Ruth. I don’t usually cry when I read the Bible, but I cry every time I read Ruth. It is the Gospel in four chapters. It is the picture of the condemned and the picture of salvation and a warm welcome into the family of God. It is the pure picture of grace. It is the picture of Advent.

We are born sinners. That means we are born condemned to die and perish. God sent His Son into this world to change that. Ruth is the perfect illustration. She was born a Moabite. They were a pagan people under God’s pronounced destruction. A man from Israel took his wife and two sons to go to Moab.

The two sons married women who were condemned by God and then the sons and their father died. The mother wants to go back home. Her two daughters want to go with her. She presents the challenges they will meet if they do. One girl says, “Okay. I’ll stay here.” The other girl says, “I will go where you go. Your people shall be my people and your God my God.”

So, the woman and her daughter-in-law, Ruth, go back to Bethlehem, city of the bread of God, where the woman had come from. Ruth goes out and works on her hands and knees in the fields trying to get enough grain to have another meal. Boaz, the owner of the field watches her and sees her humility and devotion to her mother-in-law. He knows that she was once a pagan. He knows she has chosen the true God over idols. At lunch time he invites her to sit with his workers and he gives her bread to eat, the sacrament of the body of Christ. He gives her wine to dip her bread into. The sacrament of the blood of Christ. Then he marries her, and she, along with Rahab are listed in the genealogy of Christ. She is the picture of redemption. The picture of the Advent of our God.

Prepare the Royal Highway
Mikael Franzen, 1820

Prepare the royal highway, the King of kings is near
Let every hill and valley a level road appear!
Then bring the King of glory, Fore-told in sacred story
Hosanna to the Lord, For he fulfills God’s Word.