Category Archives: Bible Study

RUTH…THE STORY OF REDEMPTION – 2

Bible Study,

On their return from Moab, the two women had to eke out an existence without husbands to work their land. A law in Israel’s constitution, God’s covenant with His people, made provision for people in their situation. 

“ ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.”

‭‭Leviticus‬ ‭19‬:‭9‬-‭10‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Naomi taught Ruth this law and sent her out to gleam for grain during the harvest. Ruth decided to do as Naomi had taught her since they had no harvest of their own. 

“And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.” Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.””

‭‭Ruth‬ ‭2‬:‭2‬ ‭NIV‬‬

The story now begins to move from circumstance to a divine plan. Was the Lord orchestrating something before the Elimelek family went Moab? Even the weather and its consequences are under His control. 

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.”

‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭55‬:‭8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

So, where did Ruth glean?

“Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelek, whose name was Boaz…

So she (Ruth) went out, entered a field and began to glean behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelek.”

‭‭Ruth‬ ‭2‬:‭1‬, ‭3‬ ‭NIV‬‬

When Boaz learned of the gleaning and that Ruth,his relative’s daughter-in-law, he ordered his servants to be extra kind to her…

“So Boaz said to Ruth, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with the women who work for me. Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.” …As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, “Let her gather among the sheaves and don’t reprimand her. Even pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don’t rebuke her.”

‭‭Ruth‬ ‭2‬:‭8‬-‭9‬, ‭15‬-‭16‬ ‭NIV‬‬

So, Ruth took home much more grain than a normal day’s gleaning would yield. When Naomi learned that Ruth had gleaned in Boaz’ fields, she pricked up her ears, connected the dots, and wisely fell in with God’s plan.  

““The Lord bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our guardian-redeemers.””

‭‭Ruth‬ ‭2‬:‭20‬ ‭NIV‬‬

“Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, “It will be good for you, my daughter, to go with the women who work for him, because in someone else’s field you might be harmed.” So Ruth stayed close to the women of Boaz to glean until the barley and wheat harvests were finished. And she lived with her mother-in-law.”

‭‭Ruth‬ ‭2‬:‭22‬-‭23‬ ‭NIV‬‬

To be continued…

RUTH…THE STORY OF REDEMPTION – 1

Bible Study, ,

Tucked away in the folds of Israel’s early history is a love story simply entitled “Ruth”. It’s a beautiful cameo but packed with hidden meaning and, like much of the Old Testament narrative, filled with imagery about Jesus. 

The story begins with a famine in Israel. After the conquest under Joshua’s leadership, the land was apportioned among the Israelites, according to tribes, clans and families. Each family received a portion of land that remained an inheritance for that family. 

However, for a little family in Judah, disaster struck. The famine destroyed their livelihood. They had no option but to relocate to a foreign country for a season leaving their inheritance to lie fallow until they returned. 

“In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.”

‭‭Ruth‬ ‭1‬:‭1‬-‭2‬ NIV

Elimelek took his family to Moab to wait out the famine. During that time, Elimelek died and later, his sons married Moabite women and and also eventually died in Moab, leaving three widows to eke out an existence as best they could. 

For ten years they struggled together. Finally, they got a break. 

“When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there.”

‭‭Ruth‬ ‭1‬:‭6‬ ‭NIV‬‬

The three widows left for Israel but, on the way, Naomi tried to persuade her daughters-in-law to return to their homeland. She had no more sons for them to marry and to produce offspring to inherit the land. Orpah finally decided to go back but Ruth stubbornly refused to return home. In a fiery response, she declared…

“Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”

‭‭Ruth‬ ‭1‬:‭14‬-‭17‬ ‭NIV‬‬

It seems that the two women had formed a bond so strong in their widowhood and suffering that Ruth’s future lay, not in Moab but with Naomi in a new homeland. She made a commitment to Naomi, to Naomi’s people, and to Naomi’s God that would not only change her life forever but would also bring her bloodline into the bloodline of David and, eventually, the human lineage of the Messiah. 

To be continued…

JOHN’S GOSPEL…THE ECHO – 28

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“Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way: Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?” “No,” they answered. He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.”

‭‭John‬ ‭21‬:‭1‬-‭6‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Jesus had already appeared to His disciples after the resurrection, twice, in a startlingly convincing way. He appeared through a locked door. Only ghosts could do that! Was He a ghost? No! He ate fish. Ghosts don’t eat! He showed them the signs of His recent crucifixion. Again, ghosts don’t have physical bodies with the visible scars of their humanity. 

So, the disciples, even Thomas the skeptic, were convinced that the Jesus who appeared to them in the upper room was really their Jesus, but in a form they found difficult to understand.

It happened this way. 

He told them to meet Him in Galilee. Why?

Apparently, the disciples forgot His instruction. They went back to the lake to fish, the old occupation that had provided for them before they met Jesus. Did they think that He was finished with them? He still came and went in a mysterious way but He was no longer permanently with them, leading and teaching them as He had done before his death. 

What were they supposed to do? They couldn’t just sit around aimlessly waiting for something to happen. They had no permanent home or occupation in Jerusalem. It made sense to them to go back to Galilee to pick up the threads of their lives. 

And so, they were in the right place at the right time when it happened all over again! They had fished all night! They caught nothing! Morning came and they were empty-handed.  

Tired and disappointed, they were about to pack up and go home when they saw a figure on the beach. They couldn’t make out who it was in the early morning mist. Who would be out so early in the morning…standing on the beach…watching them bring in the empty boat? 

As the boat neared the shore, a strangely familiar voice called out, “Caught anything?”

“No,” they replied, in unison. 

“Try the right side of the boat,” called the stranger. Tired and disillusioned as they were, there was an authority in the voice that they chose to obey. When they did, the result was outrageous. So many fish in the net that the boat began to sink as they hauled in the catch!

Recognition dawned. Memories came flooding back. Of course, it must be Jesus. Hadn’t the same thing happened on the fateful day when He had called some of them  from fishing for fish to fishing for people? 

Everything began to fall into place. He hadn’t abandoned them. Didn’t this gesture mean that His call was still real to them? After all, there was nothing in their failure to disqualify them from a lifelong call to follow Him. They had not renounced their faith in Him.

He had promised them, only hours before His death, that He would send His Spirit to be with them forever. He was leaving in body but would still be with them in the Spirit, accompanying and guiding them throughout their lifetime of following Him. 

How joyfully they welcomed Him, ate breakfast with Him as His gesture of forgiveness, reconciliation, and oneness with Him. Best of all, they heard His loving words to Peter, the ringleader in their failure, restoring the fellowship of love and trust, the bond that would see him through many trials until he suffered the same fate as his beloved Master. 

What better way to cement the union of these weathered disciples with Jesus than to trigger the memories of their first encounter and the call that bound them to Him forever! He had displayed His sovereignty in the miraculous catch of fish…then and now…to convince them that He was still Jesus, the son of God, who had called them then and still called them now.  

So, John concludes his story…with Jesus’ characteristic refusal to allow human failure to derail His plan. He had worked with these men for years. He would not allow their lapse to throw him off course. They were His choice. He had entrusted to them His mission on His return to glory. The Holy Spirit in them was His legacy and His guarantee that they would not fail.

They were the bridge between Him and every future generation to record His story and to pass it on intact. All who believe in Him through their witness, in person and on record, would receive their testimony and the gift of eternal life provided by the One who gave His life for us. 

“Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

‭‭John‬ ‭20‬:‭30‬-‭31‬ ‭NIV‬‬

JOHN’S GOSPEL…HE BELIEVED – 27

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“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.”

‭‭John‬ ‭20‬:‭1‬-‭10‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Woven into John’s story of Jesus, not only fact but interpretation, since John’s gospel became known as “the spiritual gospel”, is John’s own journey to faith. After all, if he were to convince his readers that Jesus is the Son of God and that salvation lies in believing in His name, then his story must bear witness to his own faith. 

John did not easily identify his role in the story by name. He liked to call himself ”the disciple whom Jesus loved”. John was ever conscious of the dramatic change in him through his association with Jesus. 

He began his career as a disciple as a young Jewish hothead, together with his brother, James. Jesus nicknamed them “Boanerges” 

“Boanerges means “sons of thunder” and was a surname Jesus gave to the apostles James and John, the sons of Zebedee. This nickname was likely given due to their passionate and fiery temperaments, and it is recorded in the New Testament gospels of Mark and Matthew.” (Source: Google)

Perhaps Jesus saw in John a potentially good quality, passion, but that needed taming and refining. John’s zeal needed a worthy and divinely-directed purpose only possible through the power of a love greater than any earthly-initiated energy. 

Slowly, as days turned into months and then years, John’s association with Jesus bore fruit. This young hothead eventually morphed into a mature disciple who became known as “the apostle of love.”

John wrote more about love than any of the other New Testament writers, linking God’s love for us to our love for Him in a symphony expressing our union with Him. His writings are an expansion of that union expressed by Jesus in His Upper Room discourse before the cross (John 14-16). 

“Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

‭‭John‬ ‭14‬:‭21‬ ‭NIV‬‬

“John was originally known as one of the “Sons of Thunder,” a name suggesting an impetuous and fiery nature. A key example of this is when he and his brother wanted to call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan village that rejected Jesus. His eventual transformation into a compassionate, loving leader shows a profound change, moving from harsh zeal to a balanced, mature faith guided by Christ’s example.” (Source: Google)

What transformed John from “a son of thunder” to “the apostle of love”? Perhaps, in that riveting moment, when John saw the grave clothes, and especially the head cloth on the stone shelf as though the body had simple vanished, leaving the form of Jesus vaguely outlined in the burial cloths, everything fell into place. 

Jesus’ words, His miracles, His actions, His prophecies, His very presence, all came alive in that “lightbulb” moment. John believed!

Apart from Paul, the apostles did not record their own conversion experience. Only John knew the exact second when his heart caved in to the truth he had lived with from the instant when Jesus called him, “Follow me!” By faith through the Holy Spirit, he came alive by the truth. The final impact awaited Pentecost, when the full force of the Holy Spirit’s coming cemented his transformation. 

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

‭‭1 John‬ ‭4‬:‭10‬ ‭NIV‬‬

The power of this love, a force so great that it changed John’s nature forever, became the motivation and the energy of his life. 

“We love because he first loved us.”

‭‭1 John‬ ‭4‬:‭19‬ ‭NIV‬‬

“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

‭‭1 John‬ ‭4‬:‭11‬-‭12‬ ‭NIV‬‬

So perfect is this love to which he responded that there was nothing left inside of him but to reciprocate with a love that reflected Jesus’ own love for him. Not to love like this would be  evidence that no transaction had ever taken place in his spirit that replaced his natural fire with holy fire. 

John concludes…

“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.”

‭‭1 John‬ ‭4‬:‭20‬-‭21‬ ‭NIV‬‬

So it all came together when John saw…the empty tomb… the empty stone shelf… and the empty grave cloths!

“He (Peter) saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, (John), who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.”

To be concluded…

JOHN’S GOSPEL…THE FINAL VERDICT – 25b

Bible Study, ,

“From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.””

‭‭John‬ ‭19‬:‭12‬ NIV

The wrangle between Pilate and the Jewish leaders continued. Pilate, the one who had the final say in the matters of justice and execution, tried to win the argument over the guilt or innocence of Jesus. Of one thing he was sure. Jesus was innocent of the charge of treason. So, why should he sentence an innocent man to death?

The Jews would have none of it. In their book, Jesus was guilty…but guilty of what? Definitely not treason! Back went Pilate to continue the argument. He had to have a legitimate reason for inflicting the death sentence on this man. Questioning Jesus got him nowhere. 

“Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.

‭‭John‬ ‭19‬:‭16‬NIV‬‬

Why did Pilate lose in this battle of wills? Was he finally convinced of Jesus’ guilt according to their charge? No! His heart told him that Jesus was innocent but his mind told him that to refuse their demand was to put him on dangerous ground. Did Pilate eventually cave in, still protesting that Jesus was innocent, because he was afraid of an uprising? 

Pilate, as governor of Judea, was responsible to keep these unruly Jews in check. 

This was Passover, a most significant Jewish festival, when Jerusalem was flooded with expats from all over the Roman Empire. Passover was a celebration of God’s intervention that delivered the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. 

The Jews were once again under foreign oppression. They would do anything to throw off the Roman yoke. The city of Jerusalem was electric with an undercurrent of hope…was this an opportunity to riot and drive the Romans out of Israel? 

Pilate was loathe to light the fuse because he would have to answer to Rome. Better to sacrifice one man to save his skin than to stand up for justice and lose his own life….which could well be his fate if the situation got out of hand. 

Try as he might, Pilate could not shake off responsibility for the final decision. He even tried to shrug off his own guilt by a symbolic gesture. 

“When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭27‬:‭24‬ ‭NIV‬‬

So, the Jews got their way. Jesus was crucified by order of Pilate and in keeping with Roman method of execution. 

Pilate, however, in a strange twist of events, had the last word. 

“Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.” Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

John 10:19-22 NIV

Does this final, desperate measure to justify Jesus give us a final glimmer of hope for Pilate? Is it possible that Pilate had a tiny seed of faith planted and growing in his heart. Whatever his fate, no one can encounter Jesus and come away unchanged. 

To be continued…