Loyalty over ancestry: What really matters to God (Ruth 1–4; Exodus 20; John 4)

Hallel Fellowship

Shavuot is an invitation to all of the nations to the mountain of God. There’s a Jewish tradition that God had called out to all the 70 nations of the world in their own language. So in talking about voices that this was a call that goes out to the entire world. So this is a celebration that is talking about many, many things layered on top of each other. Originally, we had seen it in Exodus 19, of what the original celebration was that this was the book end of Passover, that Passover freedom from slavery in Egypt.

The arrival at Mt. Sinai was a book end to the events of the Passover, after they had suffered through the plagues and their rescue through the Red Sea. He brought the descendants of Israel along with a mixed multitude to the mountain. Caleb is an example of one of these mixed multitude who had joined to the people of Israel.

There is sometimes a caricature that the mountain represents God giving the law there, and that law equals bondage. So thus, some people say that God took the people out of the house of bondage and delivered them to the mountain of bondage. But this is incorrect. Mt. Sinai is not a mountain of bondage but a mountain of freedom.

God liberated the Israelites and the mixed multitude from being forced to bond with Egypt, a nation that pushed them down, took their natural affections and conspired to disperse them, confuse them, mix them up, spread them through their country. Egypt’s oppression was a combination of ethnic cleansing and genocide and God freed them from all of that. He liberated them from being forced to swear allegiance to false pantheons of demons, whether it’s the gods of the Egyptians or the gods of the Canaanites. He showed them where to find real wisdom and moral guidance. Mt. Sinai is a mountain of freedom, of liberation from demonic lies and corruption.

Breaking down barriers: When the Messiah came to Samaria

In Acts 2, when the Apostle Peter speaks on a different mountain during Pentecost about 2000 years after the events of Mt. Sinai. Peter is giving a recounting of Israel’s history over time, how the Lord had delivered Israel over and over again, how they had turned against God’s leading over and over again. Then when they were presented with the culmination of all the hope of Israel, had rejected that hope of Israel. Peter’s talk was miraculously heard in many different languages that day.

“Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” (Acts 2:37-41 ESVi)

God’s promise to the children of Israel as well as those “who are far off” is the core of the story of Shavuot. One example of the harvest among those who were far away from God is recorded in John 4. The story of Yeshua’s encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well takes up most of the chapter.

Samaria, where the Samaritan woman lived, was originally the territory of the 10 northern tribes of Israel. Samaria was the capital of that nation. Yeshua and His disciples had left Jerusalem and were traveling towards Galilee and they were walking through Samaria, which was the territory between Judea and the Galilee. They stopped in a town called Sychar, which was outside the ancient city of Shechem. Today, this area of Sychar and Shechem are located in what is commonly called the “West Bank” referring to the west bank of the Jordan River.

The punchline of the story is in John 4:34-35, after the Samaritan woman leaves the well, the disciples speak with Yeshua and He tells them,

“Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.” (John 4:34-35 ESVi)

While Yeshua is speaking of the harvest, the Samaritan woman is in the village, telling everyone who would listen to her that she has met the Messiah. That the Messiah isn’t just for the Jews, that He is for them too.

When you read ancient Jewish writings about what they thought of the Samaritans, they did not esteem them at all. They were “half-breeds” descendant from the lower classes of Israelites who were not forced into exile and peoples who were forcibly deported there by the Assyrians from other parts of their empire and mixed up. This is attested to both in the Bible and later rabbinic Jewish sources.

The Samaritans and the Jews who returned from the Babylonian exile were mutually antagonistic towards each other. The Samaritans were known to do their own signal fires, and frustrate communications of messages such as the new moon, etc. They also interfered with the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem and of the Temple. So needless to say, Samaritans had a very checkered history with the Jewish people. But the Jews were not blameless in their interactions with the Samaritan. The Jews, after the times of the Maccabees, persecuted the Samaritans and destroyed the Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerazim.

All of this animosity even though the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Hebrew Pentateuch are nearly identical. There are some similar expectations, similar expectations of Messiah, although centering on different mountains and different temples. So when the Messiah comes through Samaria and says that He cares about them as a people and wants them to worship Him in spirit and in truth, that teaching touches the hearts of the Samaritans there.

Yeshua also told a parable about a man beaten up by bandits, left dying on the side of the road and a self-righteous priest and levite pass him by leaving him to die while a Samaritan renders aid to the man out of his own pocket and cares about his recovery. The Samaritan, who was not a part of the Jewish religious system, understood the “weightier matters of the Torah” better than the Jewish religious leaders did.

The priest and the Levite both used their positions as excuses to not perform a mitzvah. There are people in church leadership who make similar excuses saying, “Oh, well, I really can’t take the time to talk to you right now. I have to prepare my heart for my sermon…” We shouldn’t use whatever position we have in the church as an excuse not to help someone right in front of us who needs us.

Now, it doesn’t seem like a big deal to us, that a Jewish rabbi would have a conversation with a woman in public about spiritual matters but in that culture such a meeting would be completely unexpected. Men did not speak in public with women, and Jewish men certainly would not speak in public with a non-Jewish woman.

When Yeshua told the disciples that His food was to do the will of God, their response to ask if someone had already fed him. But what Yeshua was trying to emphasize is that the job of the Messiah was to be doing God’s business and it was God’s business to bring salvation, not only to the Jews, but also to the Samaritans and all the other nations of the world.

When Yeshua told them that they would reap where they did not sow, that prophesy would come to pass very shortly.

“Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me all that I ever did.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.’” (John 4:39-42 ESVi)

We just finished Galatians chapter three. And a couple of times we have seen in Galatians, chapter three, where it says the law was added because of transgression. This does not mean that the law was added as a punishment. The law is there to point out what transgression is. So what is the Samaritan woman telling everybody? “He told me all the things that I have done!” And what had she done? She had been married 5 times and the man she was currently living with wasn’t her husband. So sexual history was quite extensive, but she’s ecstatic that this traveling Jewish rabbi knew all of this about her. That’s the kind of history most people would want to keep private. Why is she so happy that he knows such embarrassing details about her life? Because the only reason this Jewish rabbi could know this about her is because He was the Messiah.

The Messiah did not consider her people half breeds, or outcasts. He cared about them, too. She was so happy that the Messiah knew the heavy burdens she carried in her heart. The Lord knew who she was and what she had done, but He would not cast her aside. She was a part of God’s harvest.

Ruth, Tamar and Rahab: Exchanging the old gods for the True God

The story of Ruth is an intriguing story that is traditionally read publicly during Shavuot and it’s not just because the main events of her story happen during harvest time. Her story stands as an explanation of two of the most salacious stories of the book of Genesis, which are the stories of Lot and his two daughters and the story of Judah and Tamar.

A story about a father in law having children with a daughter in law is bad enough, but a story about a father impregnating his two daughters is even worse. The bloodlines of both of these stories come together in the events recorded in the book of Ruth.

Ruth is a direct descendant of Lot and his son Moab, whose name literally means “of my father.” Boaz, the man Ruth meets in Bethlehem is a direct descendant of one of Judah and Tamar twin boys, Peretz. Ruth and Boaz’s great-grandson is King David, who is the direct ancestor of the Messiah Yeshua. But Tamar and Ruth are not the only gentile women in his family tree with a questionable history. He is also the descendant of Rahab, who was saved from the city of Jericho when the children of Israel conquered it as they were coming into the Promised land.

Just as Ruth had given up her false gods to worship the one true God, Rahab made the same promise, siding with the God who split the Red Sea in half and took all the slaves out of Egypt and brought Egypt to its knees through the plagues.

These genealogies are recorded for us so we can understand that God is not creating an ethnic clique. He does not say that if you are not born into a particular ethnic group that you are outside the bounds of salvation. What matters is repentance.

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. “(Galatians 3:28-29 ESVi)

Ruth was not at home in Israel because of her ethnic roots but because of her loyalty to Israel’s God.

But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” (Ruth 1:16-17 ESVi)

This is a drastic change from who Ruth was before. She is grafted in, all in with the people of Israel.

This is how the elders of Bethlehem bless her when she marries Boaz:

“Then all the people who were at the gate and the elders said, ‘We are witnesses. May the LORD make the woman, who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem, and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the LORD will give you by this young woman.’” (Ruth 4:11-12 ESVi)

As you read this on the surface level, you find yourself thinking “If you’re going to talk about any incident, you’re going to bring up that one?” And remember, they are speaking this blessing over a woman from Moab, one of the nations that God told the Israelites not to intermarry with because of their lack of hospitality as the Israelites were leaving Egypt and getting ready to return to the Promised Land. God told them not to have anything to do with the Moabites for generations on end because of how they treated the people of Israel.

But here we see this profound change where the elders of Bethlehem are blessing a Moabite woman, asking God to make her like one of Israel’s matriarchs. Ruth, who was once considered persona non grata is like one of the matriarchs, how does that happen? It happens because of that change of status.

We see from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah all the way to Messiah Yeshua, all the nations of the world are blessed and Ruth directly participates in bringing that blessing into the world. Her change of heart is what made the difference. Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth were no longer considered to be who they were before. It was who they had become that mattered. They were new creations.

None of these women made their decisions hastily. They spent years either living with the stories of God’s work through Israel or living among the people of Israel before making the conscious choice to join Israel.

“And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’” (Matthew 12:49-50 ESVi)

Tamar, Rahab and Ruth became mothers of Yeshua because of their faith in and obedience to God.

One of the great lessons of Shavout is that those who are far off are brought close to God. The Apostle Paul brings up this point succinctly.

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. (Ephesians 2:13-14 ESVi)

The Apostle Paul is writing to a Greek speaking community in Ephesus. Whatever their background was before, now that they have accepted Messiah Yeshua, they are His people. They heard the words of the Lord and responded. They were not called to include Him in the Greek pantheon. Paul was calling the Ephesians to be completely loyal to Yeshua and only to Yeshua, to give up anything that opposed Yeshua’s kingdom.

God does not accept syncretism. You can’t hold two contradictory beliefs equally. They will compete with each other and one will eventually have to win over the other. Some today believe that they can live with cognitive dissonance, where you can believe two completely different ideas as both as true at the same time, using the excuse that “there are no absolutes” but that is not true. There is such a thing as objective absolute truth and you can’t believe the truth and a lie for very long. One side has to give way to the other. Everyone has to decide if they believe “Thus says the Lord” or if they are their own Lord.

This is what circumcision of the heart is about, it’s about cutting away the lies we have held onto so we can be receptive to the truth and receive the new heart God has for us.

Ruth is a a great vision of what God is doing with the entire Earth. This is not clique about a certain ethnic group of people or a special club with the special handshake. Messiah Yeshua is looking to bring all of the nations into the kingdom of God. It’s a great message regardless of your background. God’s message is going out even for people who had done reprehensible things in the past? Although we have to face the consequence of our actions, such as King David, who faced big consequences for his dalliances and just outright terrible actions. But with repentance, the person that you were before repentance is no more. The Lord will cover over that, remove that and forget about it.

God chose Abraham before Abraham chose God and He chose us before we chose Him. Thanks be to God!

Summary: Tammy