EMMAUS SCHOOL OF BIBLICAL STUDIES

Studying Boaz can show us how a gentleman should treat a lady

Boaz shows kindness, generosity, compassion and protection for Ruth when she gleans in his fields. He does none of this to win her affections. He has a heart for the poor, widows, orphans and aliens who do not have their own land to farm – when they come to his field he looks after them and knows who they are so that he can instruct his workers to leave grain for them to pick up. In the case of Ruth though he gives her even more generosity, because she is a close relative and he has seen her godly deeds and faith. She has left her home country because she loves her mother and the God of Israel. This impresses Boaz and he provides her with meals, water and extra grain. Their is no indication that he expects anything in return, in fact when Ruth proposes marriage to him (3:9) he is surprised and expected her to find a young man to marry (3:10). Boaz himself has passed his prime and may even be old enough to be her father. Boaz still has only her best interest in mind and seeks out the closest relative who has the right of “acting as next-of-kin” marrying her so that her deceased husband’s family line will continue. Boaz promises to her that he will get her what she needs whether he personally will provide for her or the other relative. The closest relative should have himself dealt with the issue and taken Ruth as his wife according to the custom, but the text is silent about him looking into this, even though Ruth and Naomi were the talk of the town. Chances are that this closer relative knew about the situation but didn’t want to marry her because it was not in his financial interest. Boaz forces the issue to come up at the town gate (public area) and it to be resolved – the closer relative does not accept the agreement. Boaz himself (an older man, past his prime) accepts the responsibility and takes Ruth as his wife. He will buy her husband’s land and then the son that he has through her will not be his but continue Ruth’s previous husband’s line. There is not financial or social benefit for Boaz in taking Ruth, in fact it causes him to be the focus of much gossip and unwanted attention. The reason that he does redeem Ruth and marry her is because he loves her and loves God. He is a protector and a redeemer – compassionate and loving, generous and strong, he is a gentleman of selfless love.

The book of Judges is a constant cycle of the Israelites falling into idolatry and sin and turning their back on God, followed by oppression because of their disobedience, crying out to God for deliverance and God raising up judges to save and deliver them.   It is the story of God’s faithfulness to an incredibly unfaithful people.

However one thing that stands out to me in the book of Judges is the story of the Levite’s concubine.  He is in a foreign town and the men gather around want to have sex with him.  It sounds like a pretty intense situation and he saves his own skin by giving them his concubine.  The men gang rape her all night and she is left dead on the door step of his guest house.

When I was reading this story I had to remind myself this was a real woman.  There are women who similar things happen to every day NOW. Women and children are often the most vulnerable members of a society.   South Africa has a horrific rate of rape.  The statistics estimate 1 out of 2 girls first sexual experience is forced.  As believers how do we respond to this?

How do we respond to women and children who have been abused, raped, beaten, violated and abandoned?

How do we deal with people who have committed these crimes?

I don’t have any good answers right now but I know God has something to say about it.  This is something I need to continue to think about and I hope that God’s answers unfold as we continue to study his word.

Psalm 103:6 – the Lord works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed

Wow.  Judges was a cool book. I’ve never read the whole thing before, and I enjoyed all the stories, and the fact that some of them I’d never heard before.

The author definitely shows the depravity of man, how they constantly turn away from God, and in comparison, how faithful God is to them. This was probably for the original reader to see how much better it is to follow God than to follow their own ways. It is clear that God’s way is the best way.

Going through the book and seeing how over and OVER the Israelites disobeyed God, turned away, abandoned him, and completely rejected him, made me get angry at the Israelites at times. Then if I truly stopped and thought about it for a minute, I realized that I am the same way. I constantly reject God’s ways for me, and instead of obeying him, and living the way he wants me to live that leads to life, I choose things that I think are easier, better, or please me more. I am just as stupid, selfish, and depraved as the Israelites. After realizing this horrible thing, and seeing myself in this way, it was encouraging to see how God dealt with the stupid Israelites. He was constantly forgiving, merciful, compassionate, gracious, and unconditionally loving them, no matter how much they hurt him. It is so good to see the faithfulness God shows to the Israelites, cause it shows me that he is going to be just as faithful to me, even when I mess up. This stirs in me such a thankfulness and love for the God that I serve. It is SO AWESOME that I get to serve a God this loving and this merciful. He is always there, and always willing to take me back. He doesn’t hate me! He actually wants the best for me. What great news this is to realize, and to keep with me for the rest of my life. It stirs in me a new appreciation and love for this God I serve, and a motivation to serve him with everything I have! He wants the best for me, and this comes from following his ways! Remember that it is the same for you reading this! Whoever you are,  God loves you, and wants good things for you too! How awesome is that?!!!

Once when Joshua was by Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” He replied, “Neither; but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped, and he said to him, “What do you command your servant, my lord?” Joshua 5:13-15

This is an interesting story for the author to include. The context is of Israel when it is laying siege to Jericho. So why include this rather obscure story?

Joshua meets a man in the fields who looks like he his ready for battle and to kill someone. Joshua asks him thinking whether he is an ally or an enemy. But the man’s answer is that he is “Neither.” Why would he say neither instead of “I’m an ally”? God does not take sides. He is not partial to anyone… instead God reverses the question: “Who’s side are you one: for God or against God?”

In the following two chapters the author shows that God will judge both Jericho and Israel for their sin. The question is not will God fight for us and be on our side, BUT will we be on God’s side.

Joshua is concerned with this question and understands that this is most important:

Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, whether the gods of your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. Joshua 24:15

Joshua basically says, “As for me and my household, we will be on God’s side, regardless if God is on our side in battle.” God demands that we take sides — his side or our own.

Have you ever had that feeling that you got what God promised but it just doesn’t look like you expected??

Welcome to the book of Joshua.  God has been faithful and the people are ready to cross the Jordan and enter the promised land to take their inheritance.   Only once they get into the land despite a major military effort on the part of God and the Israelites; they realise that there are still a number of Canaanites and it is cramping their style.

Hang on a minute God you said we would inherit the land.  True but God didn’t clear out all the land in front of them so they could take it over because they weren’t enough people to full occupy it at that time.  God’s intention was for them to remove the inhabitants of the land, city by city and settle the place.  It seems to me that the Israelites were sick of fighting and wanted an easy life.    How many times do I want that?  I want God to give me stuff on a plate but it seems that there are times when we need to follow God’s instructions and step out and take hold of things for ourselves.

Is God testing them?  Maybe, it wouldn’t be the first time he has done this.  He wants them to make the land their own and to get rid of anything that is opposing them living as his people in the land.  This is how they will be a witness to all the nations around them.

So what is God wanting me to take the first step in?    What about you…..

Just in case you were wondering there is also lots of great leadership tips in this book and thoughts on the cost of sin for a whole community.  Some many thoughts so little time!!

Moses foretold that God would send a prophet to Israel after him whom they must follow:

The Lord your God will raise up for you  a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet. -Deuteronomy 18:15

This prophet is considered by many to be referring to Jesus. The phrase can also be translated as “prophets”, but regardless Moses and Jesus have many very uncanny similarities.  I took some time to try to track a some of these similarities as I noticed them here is what I found:

1. Pharaoh tried to kill baby Moses && Herod tried to kill baby Jesus  (Exodus 1:22 & Matthew 2:16)
2. No one knows where Moses or Jesus were buried (Deuteronomy 34:6 & John 20:13)
3. Moses was unequal in all the signs and wonders he performed && the crowds were amazed at the miracle of Jesus he did things that no one had done before (Deuteronomy 34:11 & John 7:31)
4. Moses’ face shone after he met with God && Jesus’ clothes shone when he was transfigured (Exodus 34:29  & Matthew 17:2 )
5. Moses said it was okay that other prophesied in the camp && Jesus said it was okay for other people to cast out demons in his name (Number 11:29 && Luke 9:49)
6. Joshua was filled with the spirit of wisdom after Moses died && the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit after Jesus died (Deut 34:9 && Acts 2:4)

Jesus did many other things like Moses such as feeding the people in the wilderness, entering the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted, and others they I have not listed. As Moses prophesied therefore Jesus needs to be “heeded”. All who do not listen and follow him will be cut off from the covenant of God.

Can you think of any other ways that Moses is a type of Jesus?

Deuteronomy is an interesting book.  It is Moses renewing the covenant that God made with the first generation of Israelites at Sinai with the second generation just before they enter the land he has promised them.

God is showing that is their God and that he cares for them and wants them to only serve him.   The agreement they make is that they will keep his laws and he will bless them.  But God also puts in places concequences if they disobey his rules.

Big question for us today is how do these laws apply to us now??

Many people hold on to the 10 commandments and ditch the rest because now we have Jesus but before we rip out those other pages of the bible I think they have some use for us.  As with anything God does we can learn about him and how he wants us to live our lives.  Sometimes a bit of historical and cultural background goes a long way to knowing why certain things where no go areas.

These laws don’t have the same curses for us (since Jesus has taken away the power of the curse) but we can learn much from them as we desire to know God and walk in his ways.  These are great for knowing what God values and how he wants us to live.  We see again and again that God values intergrity, justice, looking out for the poor and needy.

So if you want to know God take some time and read this book.

Scott started the teaching of this book with Psalms 119 because the author of that Psalm repeated his opinion of the law. The author ‘delighted in the law,’ ‘longed for the commandments’ and panted for them like a dog would. I though this was  great way to start because, I don’t know about you, but I have historically just glossed over whenever anyone talked about ‘the law’, because they seemed boring, repetitive, and not applicable to today. But after studying the pentateuch, and especially the book of Deuteronomy, I have concluded that much of the Law is applicable to todays time. Yes, there are many that I do not know where to start when attempting to apply them today, but there are equally as many that make sense in my life.

Lord, may we be excited about Your Law, and long for them because we love You. May we observe Your Law and see your heart through them and fear you as one would fear their father.

I really enjoyed reading through Deuteronomy- it was like the rest of the Pentateuch, just with a different spin on it all. The things that stuck out to me the most were:
1) God is really after the heart of His people. On the surface, it seems like there are so many laws, nit-picky that God wants them to follow exactly- which is true, but the other part is that God is pursuing the people’s hearts. He desires them to love Him with all their heart and all their soul- and I feel like that is the root to it all. If one loves God with all their heart and soul, it will be natural to meditate on God’s laws and desire to obey all His commandments.
2) The law is such a shadow of the New Testament- so many laws, I can see are set up as a foundation so God’s people will understand the new covenant! It was really fun to look at different laws and find how they transformed into the new covenant.

God rescued a people for himself out of slavery, revealed himself to them, made a way for relationship with him.  Sounds like something he did with my life when he blessed me with faith in Christ.  But, I am writing about the pentateuch book of Numbers.  The parallels of the redemption story in Israel’s history was meant by God to be strikingly similar to how he revealed Christ to people in the first century and beyond.

He pulled them out of slavery to the most powerful nation in the world at the time, Egypt.
He as delivered me from my post powerful enemy – Sin!

He gave them a means of relating to him through the law, the tabernacle, the Levitical system!
He gave us a new law, one written on our hearts, and a means of relating with him through the everlasting atoning work of Jesus and the indwelling Spirit of God.

They did not regard all the Lord had done for them as worth placing faith in him, and desired to go back to Egypt & slavery.
So often in my foolishness, I go back to slavery by choosing sin, rather than walking forward in faith.

He gave them a promise via Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob of a promised land, which was God’s means of blessing them with his rest.  But as in Numbers, this rest was only available to them if they trusted God to deliver them from the enemies in this land.
He has given to me an eternal rest (see Hebrews 3.14-4.3), which is available through trusting Christ for my salvation.  Its a belief or unbelief issue – with them and for us!

It is interesting how God parallels physical history with spiritual history in how he brought Jesus into the world and communicated him to the first century and to us!

This book could be written off as another list of rule and regulations but a closer inspections shows that actually God’s heart to have relationship with the Israelites come through strongly.

Obviously it is an understatement to say that God is not like us but his holiness is a key part of this book.  In his goodness and desire for relationship God is making a way for sinful people to have a relationship with a holy God.  He is also making sure that his people are nothing like the nations around them.

The Canaanites were the people living in the land which God promised to Israel and their lifestyle was perverted and distorted.  Their religious practices included weird stuff like drinking menstrual blood and killing their children in a fire to a god.  It is pretty clear why God didn’t want his people and worshiping him to look anything like them.

Some of the more random rules also have a great meaning and show that God cares about how we live our lives whether in how we worship him, how we treat our neighbors and how we protect those who are most vulnerable in society.

Through it all I also saw how the system God put in place for Israel point to and are fulfilled in Jesus.   Jesus is the final sacrifice for all sins!

I have to say I was surprised by how much I liked this book!

After studying the book of Leviticus (especially chapter 16), Hebrews makes so much more sense. I think my question or misunderstand is much like many Western Christians. I simply did not understand why Jesus had to die on the cross to save us. I would sing the songs (i.e. ‘what can wash away our sins, nothing but blood of Jesus’) but in reality I had never scratched the surface of understanding that concept. After hours of delving into Leviticus, I can say that the surface has been scratched but there is still much to learn. What I can say is that Leviticus is blatantly points to Jesus. Just like it says in Hebrews 8, the worship done during the old covenant was but a shadow of the new covenant…Jesus has now obtained a more excellent ministry, and…he is the mediator of a better covenant.

I can rest assured in my faith, that Jesus(the perfect Mediator and sacrifice), once and for all, shed his own blood as an atoning sacrifice for my sins so that I may obtain eternal redemption. Hallelujah and Amen.

Leviticus. I’d heard some about. Never read it. It was much more interesting to me than I expected it to be! Where to begin….

Obviously, if you’ve ever read Leviticus, you know that it is a book full of detailed and specific laws that can be overwhelming enough to make a person flip the pages until they come to the next book. I am glad, however, how Eileen helped it come alive to me, and introduced it as a book that could potentially become one of my favorites. It came alive and brought much more meaning when I looked for the character of God throughout the book. Instead of looking at the laws as just laws, we looked at what they showed about God’s character. This made it so much more exciting and interesting!

Another thing that helped make this book come alive was looking at the things that were symbolic for the New Testament; a shadow of things to come. Especially interesting was tying in verses about Jesus. One of my favorite things that I saw was the requirement for sacrifices to be perfect, and without blemish. I realized that this was the same requirement Jesus had to fulfill. Someone who was perfect, sinless, and without blemish was needed for sacrifice to make atonement for the sins of the world. A sacrifice that wasn’t perfect wouldn’t be acceptable to God. It is SO cool that Jesus was the only one who could EVER fulfill this, and he chose to do it. 1 Peter 1:19 says that Jesus’ blood was ‘like that of a lamb without defect or blemish’. God knew that he would be the only one able to be that acceptable sacrifice; he knew this, and out of his GREAT love and mercy, chose to send him, to save the world, a stubborn, sinful world, who deserved his wrath (John 3:16).

I think this message is one that I will need to keep hearing over and over again. Leviticus helps make this message come alive. It has proved to be a valuable, interesting, and even exciting book!

Reading through all the repetitive laws and gory sacrifices- I would never have expected to like the book so much- but Leviticus showed me a lot about the character of God! Going through the book showed how holy God really is, how much He deserves respect, how worthy He is of our praise, and how much He loves us! Seeing the old covenant- I am that much more thankful for Christ- the new covenant. He fulfilled every single thing in the old covenant- which was also really fun to trace through Leviticus- just how perfectly God set up the system that He knew only Jesus could ultimately fill and finally cleanse us from our sins- completely and perfectly. God is SO good- and that truth is renewed and strengthened with each book we go through.

Last semester we studied the story of the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years continuously in Luke 34-48. We are studying Leviticus now and it has struck me in a new and fresh way.

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years; and though she had spent all she had on physicians, no one could cure her. She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his clothes, and immediately her haemorrhage stopped. Then Jesus asked, ‘Who touched me?’ When all denied it, Peter said, ‘Master, the crowds surround you and press in on you.’ But Jesus said, ‘Someone touched me; for I noticed that power had gone out from me.’ When the woman saw that she could not remain hidden, she came trembling; and falling down before him, she declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.’

According to the law in Leviticus 15:25-30, this woman would be considered unclean until her blood stopped discharging. The law showed the woman what rituals would show that she was cleansed and clean, but the law is surprisingly silent about how this woman was to be healed. It just says, “If she is cleansed of her discharge…” and gives the recipe for ritual cleansing. The account in Luke tells us that this woman tried everything for 12 long years to stop her bleeding. She wanted to stop her bleeding because it was slowly killing her and keeping her from being a part of worship to God and relationship with him in the Temple. This continuous bleeding is symbolic of our sin, it is killing us – and most importantly keeping us from relationship with God. The law told this woman to wait. The law did not tell the woman how to be healed, but showed her what needed to happen in order for her to be healed. Wait… wait… wait for God to provide the sacrifice.

Jesus has the power to cleanse us – restoring us to relationship with God that was shattered in the Fall of humankind. The law could not purify us, it merely told us to wait for Jesus.

Waiting is important for believers – Abraham waited for the promised heir in Isaac, the slave nation of Israel waited for deliverance from Egypt, the Jews under the Romans waited for the Messiah, and the disciples waited for the Holy Spirit. So we should wait for the Spirit of God to set us free from sin and its bondage – wait and pray for the sanctification in our lifes that doesn’t come through programs and strategies (laws) but through the working of the Holy Spirit.

Pray for sanctification – wait for its fruit that only comes from Christ. Jesus is the purification.