A Faith for the Future

Reading: Ruth 3.6-12; 4.1-12

Most people these days seem to live for themselves and the short-term present. With all the changes we have had, we have trouble conceiving the future.

Today it is the environmentalists who strive to prick our collective conscience about the long-term impact of our way of living and about the need to protect and preserve the flora, fauna and features about us.

A few days ago I noticed a car with a whole collection of stickers. One said we need "Wilderness not Woodchipping". Another called on us (or the government?) to "Reclaim the Future. Stop Uranium Mining." Such stickers make their point, though the issues are rather more complex than we are able to consider this morning. It is difficult for any of us to be consistent all the time and the car itself didn't seem to be very "environmentally friendly"!

But I reflected on that appeal - "reclaim the future". Yes, we do have to live responsibly or we may well destroy the heritage we pass on to future generations. God has made us stewards of the world and we are accountable to him for our use and abuse of it. Yet the future is not just determined by human forces and choices.

A few years ago now, a student in a Religious Education class (probably around year 6) spoke out his concerns. He had been reading that the earth is moving slightly further from the Sun each year. The time would come when it would stop moving out and start moving closer until - possibly some half-a-million years' time - it would all burn up. "And I'm scared!"

Now there was someone with a concern reaching beyond himself and the short-term present!

God's Future

As we hear and think about this kind of speculation, we do well to remember that there is a God, the Creator by whose will it all began and in whose time it will all come to an end, the loving Father who cares for this world and its inhabitants.

The Psalmist could write, "You, Lord, are all I have, and you give me all I need; my future is in your hands" (16.5).

We hear the Lord's word through Jeremiah in a time of despair - "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (29.11 NIV).

That promised future is based on more than what human wisdom or folly may do. It is God's promise and God's future - often in spite of us!

By contrast to our "short-term present" approach to life, we reflect on the heroes of the faith celebrated in Hebrews 11. Listen to this - "It was in faith that all these persons died. They did not receive the things God had promised, but from a long way off they saw them and welcomed them, and admitted openly that they were foreigners and refugees on earth… What a record all of these have won by their faith! Yet they did not receive what God had promised, because God had decided on an even better plan for us. His purpose was that only in company with us would they be made perfect" (vv. 13,39-40).

These people all had faith in God, but it wasn't just a faith for the here and now - it was a faith for the future. They kept believing, even though the promise didn't come during their life-time. The God who cares for us now in the daily details of our lives is the Lord of the universe, the Lord of history.

The Kinsman-Redeemer

In today's reading Ruth and Boaz were people who had a faith in God for the future, not just for the present. We see this in the urgency of the request for marriage, in the very "proper" way in which Boaz treated this young woman who lay at his feet, in Boaz's care to fulfil all the correct legal requirements and in the record of the closing verses of the book - "Obed became the father of Jesse, who was the father of David. This is the family line from Perez to David: Perez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David" (4.17b-22). Yes indeed - the whole book is about people living with a faith in God and his purposes for the future.

To understand what was going on in today's reading, we need to consider the provisions in the law for the go'el - the kinsman-redeemer. There was direct care and responsibility taken for widows and action to ensure that the rich did not amass more and more of the land. The Hebrew verb ga'al means "to act as a relative or kinsman" and takes on the meaning "to redeem". It is used of God redeeming his people.

In Deuteronomy 25.5-10 we read, "If two brothers live on the same property and one of them dies, leaving no son, then his widow is not to be married to someone outside the family; it is the duty of the dead man's brother to marry her. The first son that they have will be considered the son of the dead man, so that his family line will continue in Israel. But if the dead man's brother does not want to marry her, she is to go before the town leaders and say, 'My husband's brother will not do his duty; he refuses to give his brother a descendant among the people of Israel.' Then the town leaders are to summon him and speak to him. If he still refuses to marry her, his brother's widow is to go up to him in the presence of the town leaders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face, and say, 'This is what happens to the man who refuses to give his brother a descendant.' His family will be known in Israel as 'the family of the man who had his sandal pulled off'."

No one was supposed to live for himself. He/she was to live for the Lord and to act in trusting dependence on his promises. That attitude is rather foreign to the current way of thinking - to a point where the story raises all sorts of questions to modern ears. Just what was Naomi setting up - sending Ruth along to Boaz, perfumed and dressed in her best, to slip in under cover of dark, lift the covers and lie down at his feet (3.3-4)? Could Boaz really have resisted all the temptations this suggests? What went on that night, really?

We find it hard to imagine the moral and personal integrity which the story implies. And yet it was so. Perhaps for Naomi there was the very real urgency of the situation. Ruth had set aside the possibility of remarriage in order to care for the aging Naomi. Then who would care for Ruth? Marriage and a family provided security for the future.

But there was more to it than that - there was trust in God and his future. Ruth was seeking marriage with an older tried and dependable man. And Boaz was not about to rush in and take advantage of this delightful delicacy that seemed to be offered to him. "The Lord bless you," he said. "You are showing even greater family loyalty in what you are doing now than in what you did for your mother-in-law. You might have gone looking for a young man, either rich or poor, but you didn't" (v. 10). The village gossips might not believe the moral integrity of what went on, so she had better leave before daybreak. But Boaz was fully ready to fulfil the role of kinsman-redeemer - if the nearer relative was unwilling to do so.

Following the fascinating interchange between Boaz and the "nearer relative", Ruth and Boaz were married and the story moves on to the birth of their first son, Obed. In spite of all the provisions of the law he is known as the son of Boaz, rather than of Mahlon.

The women say to Naomi, "Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a kinsman-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth" (4.14-15 NIV).

They are referring to Boaz rather than to this new grandson, as the Good News Bible assumes. Naomi is now lifted out of her depressive belief that God is against her. She also has a faith in God for the future.

Looking Forward

For the Jewish race this was a significant story, since Ruth was the great-grandmother of King David.

For us this is a significant story too. The genealogy of Jesus Christ includes these people, "Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David" (Matt. 1.5-6 NIV).

Here is the line of grace, the line of promise. And it leads forward to Jesus himself - the Son of Man who "did not come to be served" but "to serve and to give his life to redeem many people" (Mk 10.45). He is the ultimate Kinsman-Redeemer. He is not simply the hope of the future, but the fulfilment of the future.

And here we are in 1999AD - so long since his coming. We face our own despair and depression - at a personal level and as a human race. Never before have we had such potential for progress and such symptoms of self-destruction.

We need a faith in God for the future - not just hoping for the best, for it will be his future, not ours. We look forward to the coming again of our Kinsman-Redeemer. We are not promised that this world-system will go on forever. We are called to live with confident trust in God.

We read in Hebrews 12, "As for us, we have this large crowd of witnesses round us. So then, let us rid ourselves of everything that gets in the way, and of the sin which holds on to us so tightly, and let us run with determination the race that lies before us Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from beginning to end. He did not give up because of the cross! On the contrary, because of the joy that was waiting for him, he thought nothing of the disgrace of dying on the cross, and he is now seated at the right-hand side of God's throne" (Heb. 12.1-2).

Ruth and Boaz have completed the race - they are already in the heavenly crowd of witnesses. So is David. So are Peter and Paul. So are Luther and Calvin and Wesley and countless others throughout the history of the Church - people who didn't live for themselves, but put their faith in God for the future.

We are tempted to live for ourselves. We want God to do something for us here and now. But he is the Lord of all history and calls us forward. Let us put our trust, our confidence in him!


© Peter J. Blackburn, Buderim Uniting Church, 28 February 1999
Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Good News Bible, © American Bible Society, 1992.

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