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The Church's Responsibility to Israel: "Your People Will Be My People" Ruth 1:1-18

by Clancy Nixon, adapted from Jack Hayford

October 6, 2007, day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem

Church of the Holy Spirit

Ashburn, Virginia

www.HolySpiritAnglican.org

The story of Ruth and Naomi is a beautiful picture of the kind of relationship that

could exist, that should exist between the Church and Israel. As we look at this story,

we'll look at why God desires that Gentile Christians that's you and me, most all of us

here - become as a Ruth to Naomi by committing ourselves to a covenant of love with the

Jews, the people of Israel. In this message, I acknowledge my debt to Jack Hayford.

Ruth's story takes place in the Middle East at the time of the Judges. The Bible

says that this was a time when "every man did that which was right in his own eyes"

(Judges 21:25). In many ways, it was a time much like our own: a time of ethnic

violence and terror; a time of widespread idolatry; and a time when disobedience and

rebellion was rewarded. You can open your bibles to the book of Ruth, after Judges, and

before First Samuel, page 258 of your blue pew Bibles.

The story begins when Elimelech and his wife Naomi and their two sons leave

Israel and move to Moab, just west of the Dead Sea, because there was a famine in Israel.

In Moab, the two sons, whose names mean "sickness" and "death," marry Moabite wives,

named Ruth and Orpah. When father and sons all die, three widows are left wondering

what to do. Widows in those days were without protection or security, and they were

typically rendered penniless. Naomi advises her daughters-in-law to return to their kin in

Moab, where they are more likely to find another husband whom they might marry.

Naomi must return to Israel, and few Israelite men would desire to marry a Moabite

widow. Orpah goes back to her family and her gods, but Ruth refuses to leave Naomi,

and instead clings to her. In Ruth chapter 1 verse 16, Ruth speaks to Naomi one of the

most beautiful statements of steadfast love in all of Scripture: "Where you go I will go,

and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God."

The love and loyalty that Ruth had for Naomi is often invoked as a picture of what our

love and loyalty should be to the Lord Jesus. And it is that. Today we're going to look at

how Nomi's love for Ruth can also be a picture of our love and loyalty to God's chosen

people, the Jews. Look at those verses that is how the Church ought to relate to the

Jews. The Apostle Paul teaches us in Romans 11 that the Gentile Church has been

grafted into the root of the vine of God's people their God has indeed become our God.

Every Christian should make the Jews a priority in our value system, because God has

made the Jews as a priority in His value system.

Throughout history since the time of Christ, the Jewish people have been in a kind

of Moabite exile, like Naomi. The land of Israel until recent decades had been a place of

famine, a place where Jews could not long survive. Like Ruth, Orpah was also a Gentile

who had married a Jew. Unlike her sister-in-law Ruth, Orpah decided to stay in her

Gentile world in Moab and abandon her Jewish mother-in-law at Naomi's time of

greatest need. Orpah is a picture, a type of the Gentile Church that has not understood

nor appreciated the inseparable bond between the Church and Israel. Instead of

identifying herself with the Jews, the Orpah Church has turned her back on Israel and

maintains a religious culture that is virtually cut off from her Hebrew roots. At first,

Orpah professed her intention to go forward with Naomi look at Ruth 1, Verse 10 on

the bottom of page 258. When the rubber has met the road in history, the Orpah Church

has decided to leave mother-in-law Naomi, to leave Israel to fend for herself. Much of the

Church, like Orpah, is more talk than walk. Although the Church owes her very salvation

to the Jews, which Jesus made clear in our gospel reading at John 4:22, all too often, the

Church has, WE HAVE, abandoned the Jews in their time of need.

At first, the Church, like well-intentioned Orpah, had a desire to stick with the

Jews. At the beginning of the Church, Gentile believers worshiped and worked alongside

Messianic Jews. They kept the Jewish feasts and had no intention of ever cutting

themselves off from the nourishing sap of the olive tree of Israel (Romans 11:17). Like

Orpah, who in the end preferred to abandon Naomi and go her own way, most of the

Gentile Church has done the same thing. Within a generation of the crucifixion of Jesus,

the Roman army had ransacked the city of Jerusalem and totally destroyed the Temple

and, eventually, much of the indigenous Jewish culture of Israel. Like Naomi in Moab,

the Jews found themselves in foreign lands. Within a few hundred years, the Church, for

the most part, came to disregard the ongoing significance of the Jewish people in God's

plan of redemption.

Why was that? Many Christian theologians saw the cooperation of the Jewish

leaders in the Roman crucifixion of Jesus and the subsequent destruction of the temple in

Jerusalem as signs that God was finished with the Jews. They believed that God had

rejected the nation of Israel once and for all, and that God had now formed a new chosen

people. In this theology, the Church became the new Israel, a spiritual Israel. I do agree

that the church is a type of Israel, and that God has indeed chosen the Church to be his

people.

Listen to me carefully now. God has never rescinded his promises to the Jewish

people, neither his promises to them for the land of Israel, nor his Covenant promises to

them to be His people. Some parts of the Old Testament, like the purity laws, the laws of

Temple sacrifice, and the kosher dietary laws, have been explicitly set aside in the New

Testament for Gentile believers. This does not mean that the whole of the Old Testament

is no longer binding on us we know from Acts 15 that the moral law, the Ten

Commandments, still apply to us today. This is an important matter of Biblical

interpretation. The Bible should always be interpreted primarily in its literal sense, and

only secondarily in its spiritual sense. A spiritual interpretation, while it may be entirely

valid, should never be permitted to overturn the literal interpretation, the plain meaning

of the text. There is little Biblical justification to say that God is finished with the Jewish

people. Unfortunately, Christian anti-Semitism throughout history has been justified

through a theology that has put spiritual readings of the Bible ahead of its plain meaning.

In the Middle Ages, the Crusaders from Europe slaughtered many of the Jewish

people living in the Holy Land, as revenge for the Jews' supposed role in the murder of

Christ. In the year 1000 A.D., when the Crusaders first arrived in the Holy Land, there

were 300,000 Jewish residents. But by the time the Crusaders left the scene less than 200

years later, only 1,000 Jewish families still remained. Anti-Semitism is evident in the

writings of the Protestant Reformers, notably Martin Luther. Luther called for the

expulsion of the Jews from Germany and the destruction of their synagogues and books.

When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Luther's name was invoked to

justify their anti-Semitic policies. As we know, the tragic result was a Holocaust in which

six million Jews were exterminated. Unfortunately, much of the Church stood idly by,

unwillingly to lend a hand to the Jewish people. Paul taught us in Romans 11:11,

"...salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious." However, the history of

persecution of the Jews by the Church means that the Jews don't envy our religion.

The Jewish people and the land of Israel are inextricably linked in the Holy

Scriptures. When we talk about Israel, we are dealing with: 1) a piece of property that

God has made pronouncements about; and 2) God's people to whom He's given the land.

It is a major issue with the Creator of all things, and it is non-negotiable. Three times in

the book of Joel, the Promised Land is referred to as belonging to the Lord. "For a nation

has come up against My land..." (1:6) "Then the Lord will be zealous for His land..."

(2:18) (see also Joel 3:2) Believing this still applies today does not mean that we have

no regard for the Christians and Muslims living in the Holy Land today, and their claims

of justice. The Palestinian question is a real issue, but it's an issue for another day.

Today we focus on the Church's relationship with the Jews and Israel. Will we be like

Orpah and turn our backs on Israel in her time of need? Or will we be like Ruth and cling

to Israel, always ready to give her support and encouragement, especially as God is

bringing her back to her homeland and, ultimately, we trust, to her God? The rising

numbers of Jewish people who have accepted Jesus as their messiah gives us hope that

the entire nation of Israel will one day receive YESHUA MASHIACH, the Jewish name for

Jesus Christ, as their own.

Now in contrast to Orpah, let's look at Ruth and discover how the Church could

become more and more like her in relationship to the Jewish people. To be a Ruth means

loving the Jewish people unconditionally. In verse 10, after the daughters-in-law first

said that they would come with Naomi, then in verse 11, we see that Naomi was not very

open to the idea of them coming with her back to Israel. But Ruth was determined to

come anyway. Ruth 1:16 begins, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you."

Ruth's love for Naomi would not be stopped by rejection. She would stick by Naomi

through thick and thin, even if she wasn't wanted. Verse 14: "Ruth clung to her

(Naomi)." When we take Israel's God for our God, we must take His people for our

people--even if they at first would rather we not cling too closely. To abandon God's

chosen people Israel is to abandon a people that He loves with an everlasting love. How

can any Christian who is called to conform to God's character ever love His people

conditionally, when He loves them unconditionally and according to an everlasting

covenant (Jeremiah 31:3)? Are we ready to hold on to Israel at Israel's moment of

greatest need? Or will we walk away when Israel is universally condemned by the

nations? Some define a true friend as the first person who comes in when the whole

world has gone out. I pray we will be that kind of friend.

To be a Ruth means being willing to stand with the Jews even if it means making a

sacrifice. Ruth 1:11-13, and 16. In verse 9 Naomi had asked that God would give each of

them a place of rest with another husband. This became a key issue in the book. Marriage

meant security for a woman. Ruth knew that by going with Naomi she was giving up

opportunities to remarry someone in Moab. How many of us would have acted like

Corrie Ten Boom's family in Holland under the Nazi occupation, risking our lives by

hiding a Jewish family? Will we really be ready to go with the Jewish people in their

greatest time of need, when the entire world appears arrayed against them? If we've got

the heart of Ruth, we will.

Any sacrifice we make on behalf of Israel is far outweighed by the blessing given

in return. Ruth sacrificed much, but she was rewarded richly for her humble service to

Naomi. (Proverbs 15:33). Through her marriage to Boaz, Ruth was given a son named

Obed. Obed was the father of Jesse and the grandfather of King David, in whose line the

Messiah, Jesus, came. The Word of God tells us that the Jewish people will one day

receive the Messiah and His forgiveness. (Romans 11:26,27) Like Ruth, we as the

Church have a central role to play in the salvation and deliverance of Naomi, who is a

type of the Jewish people. But it will require more than interfaith prayer meetings and

foreign aid to Israel; and even more than preaching the gospel, necessary though that is. It

means being willing to love the Jews unconditionally. And it will mean demonstrating a

sacrificial love.

Church, let's not be an Orpah church, but a Ruth church. Let's pray for the peace

of Jerusalem.