EMMAUS SCHOOL OF BIBLICAL STUDIES

The book of Ruth is so cool, because not only does it show how important it is to obey God above people and tradition, but it also shows that God will bless you for that obedience. Ruth was living in Moab, an enemy country of Israel that had descended from Lot (Genesis 19.37). The shady beginnings of this nation of Moab did nothing for their growth either, for this nation soon devoted itself to other gods, Baals, and child sacrifices that God hated. Israel and Moab were enemies from the start, which is so interesting then, how Ruth, a Moabitess, would choose to follow Yahweh, instead of her own gods.

Whatever the reason, she did choose to obey God rather than her own family traditions, and this meant that she gave up her future hope of being provided for and assured a continual lineage. She had no idea, however, that God saw her decision to obey and follow Him instead of her past Moabite gods, and that he was going to bless her tremendously for this.

As you may know, Ruth meets Boaz while gleaning in his field outside Bethlehem. Boaz blesses Ruth for her faithfulness to God in the same fields outside of Bethlehem, where one day, angels announced the birth of Jesus, Ruth’s descendant. Therefore, God chose to fulfill Boaz’s words and bless Ruth by allowing her to not only have descendants in Israel, but that those descendants would include King David of Israel, and King Jesus of the World! What an amazing story!

This just shows how God loves to bless those who obey him, and that no matter how long this blessing may take, he WILL choose to reward those who obey him. Thus, we should take this as inspiration and encouragement to follow hard after God, and choose to obey Him above people. Therefore, every decision we make should be out of obedience to God and not other people.

            Written to contrast the surrounding depraved culture of the Israelites, the book of Ruth is a refreshing glimpse into individuals who continued to follow God. This story is interesting in that it centers around a Moabite woman, a foreigner, who receives the blessing of God. To the original reader, this would have perhaps been shocking that God would bless a foreigner – yet revealing that God wants peoples’ hearts, regardless of who they are.

            In looking specifically at the character of Boaz, one is able to see his extreme generosity and integrity. The law only required that he give a little to the poor and widowed, yet he went beyond that and captured the heart of the law. He lavished Ruth with food and protection. He sacrificed financial gain to bless and take care of a woman who could give him nothing in return. He even married her to carry on the Jewish law of continuing her dead husband’s lineage – thus ensuring that he would gain nothing from his biological sons with her. His sons would be considered her deceased husband’s children. She and her children would be nothing but an extra burden to care for and protect. However, he cheerfully blessed her with abundance of food and provision.

            Boaz’s example of generosity is challenging. Often we give only when we know we will receive something in return. However, it seems as though God blesses Boaz for his sacrificial and abundant giving – he provides the lineage for King David and ultimately Jesus! I believe that this reveals God’s heart as well. We have nothing to offer God. He does not need our good works, nor our praise. Yet he chooses to lavish blessing on us and protect us. He secured our eternal security in heaven through the sacrifice of his Son. God’s generosity towards us should manifest itself in our generosity towards others. We are called to give, and give sacrificially. 

            In the time of the judges when Israel turned away from the God that brought them out of Israel, there were a few that proved obedient and dedicated to their God in heaven: Ruth, Boaz and Naomi.  Through these characters the theme of the book, “God’s faithfulness” is displayed.  Ruth is the daughter-in-law to a fellow Moabite Naomi, and at the very beginning of the book we find out that Naomi and Ruth have become widows.  God is faithful to the both of them and they choose to live together and help each other out.  God allows Ruth the opportunity to glean the fields of Boaz and earn food for her and Naomi and at the same time God sets Ruth up to find a husband-Boaz.  In the end of the book, Boaz takes Ruth as a wife and God’s faithfulness proves true once more as Ruth and Naomi are both brought out of their impoverished conditions and find security through this marriage. 

            For this book we were assigned to study a character and do a teaching on this character.  I chose to do a study on Boaz because I was curious to investigate his kindness and generosity and to hopefully learn from it.  Well, it was inevitable that I learned from Boaz, but what was even better, was that through learning about Boaz, I learned more about Christ.  It is in my opinion that Boaz is a parallel to Jesus in this story because of his selflessness, generosity & unconditional love for an unworthy candidate-doesn’t that sound familiar? 

            If I had to walk away from this book with one lesson learned, it’s always be kind and generous to strangers.  It sounds elementary, but I can think of several reasons why I choose not to be courteous to such people: I don’t know, especially if they appear suspicious, I’m not in a good mood, I’m in a hurry, etc.  Through looking at Boaz I have come to the conclusion that it is much more effective and impactful to love on strangers and not to dismiss them!

Sometimes we will not understand why God wants us to keep his law and his ways, but it is always for our best. The Israelites didn’t understand why worshiping idols was such a big deal. They didn’t have the foresight to see it would elad to their oppression and slavery.

For the Israelites, I don’t imagine they just woke up one morning and didn’t want to worship God. It seems it was more gradual. They probably justified small sins here and there… Compromising God’s law because they might not have seen the immediate consequences. Well surely, they knew what was best – God just got confused or didn’t really get it, so it was better for them to ttake matters into their own hands.

How often do we do this? It is easy to justify sins. Well, I know God would want me to be happy, so I’ll just date this wrong person for a little while. I’ll push the boundary in sexual intimacy – surely God wouldn’t really ask me to wait in absolute purity until marriage. I know he would want me to gain the maximum profit I can… a small lie and fudging of numbers isn’t so bad.

No. No, it’s not ok. God expects full obedience. Just because we can’t see the immediate consequences doesn’t mean they aren’t coming. Just like if you cut a flower from its root, it may remain beautiful for a while – but eventually it will die. It was created to live rooted in its source and it’s in that source that it will thrive and become even more beautiful.

God’s laws are for our best. We are incapable to have the foresight to always understand why, but he wants to us to trust that his ways are best and they will bring joy and life. We must root out these areas where we are willing to compromise obedience. If we don’t, we end up with a seared conscience and we become blind to what God wants for us and the full life he wants to give us. 

            The Israelites sinned, they Lord sent them into slavery with their oppressors, the Israelites cried out to God, God saved them from their oppressors by sending a judge and there was peace in the land.  This is the cycle that the Israelites went through over and over in the book of Judges. What is so crazy about this cycle is that even after the Lord went out of his way to be gracious and save the people, they went right back to worshipping other gods and sinning against their real God.  Only once in the entire book does a judge actually take the time to thank the Lord for his protection and for giving their enemies over to them, and that was Deborah.  What really caught me off guard about this was that for all the times God is there for Israel to save them out of their perilous circumstances, they never seem to stop and praise him for the rescue. 

When I apply it to my own life I have to admit that I am just as unfaithful in this area.  How many times in one day does the Lord do things for me, whether big or small, that I completely forget to thank him for?  Especially for the big things, the things I have prayed about and worried about for a long time, just how long do I take to thank him for solving that for me? Not long enough, that’s for sure.

If the book of Judges has taught me one things it’s that I need to appreciate all that the Lord does for me more, on a daily basis in fact.  While it delights the Lord to love on his children and provide for them, it delights him even more when they recognize what he has done and thank him for that!

Judges is a book full of the wickedness, perversion, and countless sins that the people of Israel commit against the Lord their God, because they have decided to follow the idols of the Canaanites, instead of God Himself. Therefore, as I read the awful stories of the sins of Israel, I was struck by how many times God had to deliver them from their enemies’ hand. It is amazing to me that God would still even love these people! Their sins were so perverted and dark, that it seems like he would have wanted to totally wipe them off of the face of the earth. Yet he didn’t.

Instead, whenever they cried out to Him, God showed an amazing love and forgiveness for them. Instead of remaining angry and frustrated, he was quick to forgive, and deliver them.

The amazing fact through all of this is that we too have numerous sins in our lives that we are continually battling. However, when we confess them, oftentimes it seems like God must still be angry at us, or that He must want to punish us for the sins for a little while. However, I don’t think we truly understand God’s grace! I sure didn’t. God is not like a human being, nor can he be compared to one, because he doesn’t hold grudges, and doesn’t think about forgiving people – he immediately forgives!

The implications of this are huge, because when we confess our sins, we can know that God will immediately forgive us. This is not because he is required to, but because he wants to – He wants to be close to us, and love us, but when we turn to follow sin instead of Him, that hurts Him. Therefore, the minute we are repentant, he is delighted to forgive us and show us grace and mercy.

Throughout the Old Testament I have been looking for ways of how God is similar to his Son Jesus. Well I think I just found one – it’s called they are both Forgiving.

God led the Israelites from the wilderness into the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua. He wanted them to remember his faithfulness and not be disobedient to his covenant. He wants to bless them. Throughout the book, we see the Israelites taking over the land and annihilating their enemies. We see God’s faithfulness to give them victory when they obey him. However, not seeking his guidance leads them to a place of hurting for almost 500 years. They suffer the consequences for not asking him direction.

I believe this has strong implications for us today. God wants us to seek his direction in everything – no decision is too small. He wants the best for us. We need to cultivate the habit of turning to God in everything we do. He is not so mysterious or manipulative that he hides his plans for us from us. Therefore, it is wise of us to seek him and ask him direction. His answer may not be loud or explicit, but I don’t want to miss the opportunity of following him when I could have just asked for it. His plans for us really are good.

               The book of Joshua is a clear picture of God’s power over all enemies and an even clearer picture of how helpless we are without him.  The theme of the book is that Joshua brings the Israelites into the promise land and the Lord gives them the victory over all of their opponents so that he is glorified. It is not just the victory the Israelites are given but the way the victory is achieved; with Jericho the people march around a city for a week and then shout and the wall falls flat, with the Amorites, the Lord drops hailstones from the sky on them, it is achieved with great ease on the Israelites’ part!  It says in Joshua 10:11 that more people were killed from hailstones than with the Israelite’s swords, which goes to prove that the Israelites did not have enough of a defense to win the battle without God’s supernatural intervention. 

            What really stands out to me from this idea of God giving victory to his people, is how this is applicable in every aspect of our daily live.  We as Christians are constantly in battle against the flesh and against Satan, we probably aren’t even aware of how much the Lord is saving us from each day. There is a limit to our power, but there is no limit to God’s power and I think that is something that we don’t really take into consideration enough.  It doesn’t take much to know what our lives would be like without God’s protective hand keeping us safe; we can just look next door, down the street, in other countries, or even in our own families! Because of this we need to remember to thank him for all the victories he gives us in our daily lives, all the battles he fights for us to give us respite from our constant opposition, for He is more than worthy!

Joshua is a book that is so full of God’s faithfulness and justice to his people, that it is a little overwhelming. The miracles that God displays on the Israelites’ behalf show just how much he loved them, and how insistent he was on keeping the promise he made to Abraham, to bring them into the Promised Land. Throughout the book I was struck by the commitment God had to his people, even when they made mistakes. He never gave up on them, even when they messed up the law that he had given them, literally a few days earlier! This kind of faithfulness is so amazing to me! I truly don’t understand it, because it is unlike human faithfulness.

Another thing that stood out to me through the book of Joshua was the importance of giving up any gods, in order to singly serve the Lord God. This may seem to be quite obvious to most people, but when I examined what the different gods of the Canaanites resembled, I saw how similar they can be to things that people love today. Things like money, power, fame, success, food, lust, etc. All these things can become gods to people, just as they were for the Canaanites. Therefore, we need to make sure that we are not trying to serve them simultaneously, along with God.

All this goes to say that the book of Joshua taught me the importance of loving God as God alone, and being willing to give up my own gods and serve God alone. This may not be easy, but then again, when I look at the faithfulness of God to his people in the past, and into the present, I cannot help but love Him back and choose to be faithful to Him alone.

            The book of Deuteronomy is largely a book of laws that God commands the Israelites to obey. The heart of these laws is to make them healthy and a distinct people from the surrounding cultures. He consistently tells them to remember his faithfulness to them – and in this remembrance, obedience is compelled. They cannot come face to face with God’s character and not want to obey him.

            However, we see throughout the Israelites’ journeys in the wilderness that they do not obey God. They make and worship idols and are constantly complaining to their leader Moses. Something interesting struck me at the end of the book. After reading five books of the Israelites’ complaining and disobedience, we see God call Moses to bless those same people who rebelled against him, slandered him, and who had been nothing but a headache to him the last forty years. They were disrespectful and did not regard his law. He poured out his life to serve them, giving up the majesty of Egypt, and they hated him (sidenote – this is just like Jesus! He gave up everything and served his life for us. We did nothing but reject and murder him. The prophecy of the messiah was right: he would be like Moses.)

            God was not only concerned with the blessing of the people (revealing his incredible patience and love towards them), but he was also concerned with Moses’ heart. He wanted Moses to love the people of God and serve them, not just tolerate them.

            I am really convicted by this. Am I seeking ways to bless other believers that annoy or frustrate me? Or is my reaction to get frustrated, avoid the person, and slyly gossip about them? For the sake of unity and training our hearts to love and be humble, I believe God wants us to proactively seek ways to bless and serve others – not just tolerate them. The habitual practice of serving others will in turn produce love in our hearts for those individuals.

            Again, we find the people of God wandering around in the wilderness as the book of Deuteronomy opens up. Just like Exodus and Numbers, the book consists of Moses reiterating laws to his people, but this time he is doing so for a very specific purpose, the people are about to enter into the land the Lord has given them and they are going to do so without Moses.  There is much repetition of the law in this book, in fact, the theme of the book is the repetition of the law, because the Lord wants to really place this law on their hearts to prevent them from disobeying it when they leave the wilderness “you shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead” (11:18).

 What I found to be the most interesting, impactful part of this book was that God revealed his purpose for bringing his people first into the wilderness before they entered the promised land, and that was to humble them before Him so they would always know he was the provider of their every need.  This just struck a chord in my heart because I can think of so many times in my life where I have thought myself to be quite self-sufficient and when I finally get knocked down hard enough I realize that I needed God all along.  God knew that his people were going to enter the land and disobey every law he was setting up for them but he wanted them to understand that no matter what they did, he was always going to be the one they could lean on for their every need.  What a blessing it is to be a Christian and to know that in our darkest moments, when we are in doubt and when feel things could not be any worse for us, the Lord will be there to remind us that he is still in control and he has and always will be looking out for us!

In Deuteronomy, the thing that kept coming up for me was that God expects unconditional obedience from his people – both the Israelites of long ago, and believers today. The anticipation God has of this obedience, is not because God is a power-hungry God, but rather, simply because he is the King of the world who has saved our lives from death, and given us truth, mercy, love, grace, and the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth and keep us in a personal relationship with him!

Therefore, a God such as this should naturally receive obedience. In other words, it is because of his goodness to us, that God expects obedience, and not because he just wants it. As a result of this realization we, as believers, should be obedient to God in everything we do.

As I studied through the book of Deuteronomy though, I realized that obedience to God is not just for His benefit. Rather, there are huge blessings for us, when we obey God! These blessings are greater responsibilities from God, a better understanding of his character, more solid faith, trust, confidence, etc. The list goes on and on!

God established these blessings because ultimately, he just wants a personal relationship with mankind. And when we obey God, we are able to experience all the BEST that He has for us, and move on into better and better things and an even deeper relationship with Him. This shows us that greater obedience results in greater blessings.

Thus, our obedience to God should not be viewed as a mundane and frustrating task, but rather an exciting relationship to the King of the world, who delights to know and bless us with wonderful things in the spiritual realm! Consequently, our obedience to God should become easier and easier as we realize the reason for it, and all the blessings that result from it.

Our purpose in life is to know God and obey him. Out of this obedience we can truly experience life, satisfaction, and all the blessings that come from a deeper walk with God by knowing him more. Then, as we know him more, we will want to obey him more, and the cycle continues on and on, getting better and better.

The book of Leviticus is like a handbook for priests. It explains how they are to execute various sacrifices and offerings in the temple. The sin offering was an offering the people would have to bring to the priest when they sinned. They would bring a specific kind of animal, according to what they could afford. The priest would then sacrifice the spotless, innocent animal while the sinner’s hand was on its head. Symbolically, the innocence of the animal transferred to the person and the animal took the punishment the guilty person deserved. Because of the death of the animal, the person could be forgiven.

The New Testament declares Jesus to be this perfect sacrifice, the sin offering. We no longer have to continually sacrifice animals for our sin. Jesus, the one who lived a perfect life, took our guilt when he died on the cross, and his righteousness, his purity, and his perfection were transferred to us at his death. Praise God! We no longer have to worry about trying to please him or stress out if we forgot to repent of a sin. Because Jesus died, if we believe it, we are forever covered by his blood and forever forgiven. Now, we are able to rest in God’s love, confident that he will never again pour out his just wrath on us.

Interestingly, there are a few other offerings mentioned in this book. While Jesus brought forgiveness to us through his blood, I was struck by the idea of the well-being offering. While it is not physically possible to go to the tabernacle (the temporary temple) or the actual temple in Jerusalem and offer a sacrifice, we can still participate in the heart behind the sacrifice. The well-being offering was an offering that people gave to God just because they wanted to worship him. It would not make him love them any more – but it was something given out of response for what he has done for them.

In thinking about this in today’s context, I am really challenged. Our lives are to be a living sacrifice to the Lord – meaning, how we live should be in response to what he has done for us. Godliness and holiness, living lives pleasing to God, should be our natural response to the love God has shown us. That is huge. I believe this manifests itself in various ways, and specifically, I also think the Lord wants us to be willing to physically offer him things.  Jesus said, “Whatever you give to the least of these, you give to me”. So, offerings to him now can be in the form of generosity to others. An offering in light of Leviticus seems to be something that cost the person. A sacrifice is inherently that, a sacrifice. While I do not have to earn God’s love, I should be willing to give up anything for him, realizing that everything I have is his in the first place. King David’s response to offerings was that he would “not offer to the Lord that which cost him nothing”. In asking myself what would be hardest for me to let go of, my hesitation to let go made me realize my own immaturity in my understanding of grace. If we really understood that God gave up everything, his very own Son, so that we could know him, we wouldn’t hesitate to give him anything.

What areas in our lives are we clinging to, not willing to surrender to the Lord? We are called to be living sacrifices. Not only should we be willing to let go of our possessions and give to others but also our holy living should be the response to God’s grace towards us.

I was amazed by all the things I got out of the book of Leviticus. The first time I read it, it honestly seemed like such a bore. Then, as I looked closer at what each law, festival, rule, custom, etc. meant to the OR, then it made so much more sense, why God desired them to follow it! The important thing I got out of this book was that I truly saw God’s heart behind these laws: he didn’t want to create a frustrating and impossible thing for the Israelites to keep. Instead, he had a specific purpose and reason for installing each one.

For example, I had no idea that so many rules, festivals, laws of cleanliness, etc. in the book actually pointed to Jesus, and were not just meaningless rules or festivals that God installed for the Israelites; they each had an intention – to point to the coming Messiah, so that the Jews would clearly be able to recognize Him and see that he was the Fulfiller of all the OT laws and regulations.

This alone showed me how divine the plan was that God had thought of, in that he already knew how he was going to fulfill the laws, even as he was making them. How amazing that we can know such a God as this! He is so organized and will never make a rule that is just a rule; he always has a specific purpose behind it. That is one of the most important things I saw in Leviticus: the heart of God behind his laws. And it just made me realize even more, how kind, compassionate, and loving God the Father really is, and that he is not just the angry Old Testament God, that so many people think He is.

            If you are like me, Leviticus is one of those books that never crosses your mind to do a study on, or even read for that matter, but now that I have done both, I can honestly say the book is quite powerful. While the majority of the book consists of laws and instructions for tabernacle activity, priestly tasks, and festivals it is the minute details within these orders that cultivate an even deeper understanding of the power of the gospel for the readers today.  The theme of the book was that God gave a fix for the problem of sin and that is seen in each chapter as God reveals how to live and how to atone for sin. For me, reading over the passages that make the Old Testament such a turnoff to most readers, such as how a priest is to prepare a sin offering, and finding that these passages are meant to be a parallel to the life of believers in all generations is dumbfounding. Here’s an example…

            When a person sinned, they were to bring either a bull, goat or sheep as the sin offering because committing the sin had to cost them something. These animals were innocent and devoid of any iniquity-they had to be perfect because only something pure like that could be offered to God and be worthy of replacing the sin. Then they would bring it to the tent of meeting and the priest would cut it up on the altar and offer it to the Lord.  This of course was not a clean task but rather a dirty, revolting one, and that is how God sees sin.  So now enter Jesus into the equation, he came and lived a perfect life and became the innocent sacrifice, dying a messy, gruesome death that cost God everything so that we may be cleaned and able to live for eternity in God’s presence as was first intended. All that was just in one small chapter of the book, doesn’t it make you thirsty for more?

            With all that said I would have to say that the main application point I got out of this book was just the price my sin costs God and how indebted I am to him.  The more I understand the cost of sin, the more I understand the cost of God’s sacrifice.  The more I understand the cost of that sacrifice, the more I understand God’s love for me.  The more I understand God’s love for me, the more I need to live in response to that in all areas of my life!