Ruth: Devotions From Time Of GraceSample

A Gentile joins the ancestry of the Jewish Savior

It was God’s majestic plan to provide a Savior for a sin-cursed world by using the family of Abraham and Sarah as his platform. Their descendants, the Israelites, were tasked with preserving the faith and cultivating an attitude of readiness for the coming of the Messiah. Scripture meticulously documents with detailed genealogies how God scrupulously kept his promise. Christ was born a Jew.

But extraordinarily enough, there were several non-Israelite women who contributed their blood to the Savior’s line. In this way even in Old Testament times, God planted the seed of the idea that the Messiah was really for all people of the world. One of those chosen “outsiders” was Ruth the Moabite. She became married to Boaz, the owner of the Bethlehem fields where she had been gleaning.

Their marriage was blessed with a son:  “Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. The women living there said, ‘Naomi has a son!’ And they named him Obed [i.e., “one who serves”]. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David” (Ruth 4:16,17). What an amazing outcome to what had been a miserable story. Widow Naomi gained a wonderful son-in-law and a grandson, Ruth would no longer have to scrounge for grain scraps, Boaz gained a wife of phenomenal heart and integrity, and the future King David had a great-grandmother of whom he could be proud.

Ruth was originally a Moabite. Christ is for all.