What woman do you know who has had a thousand men
propose to her from fisherman to millionaires; from the penniless
on the bowry to the prince of a royal European
family? And who was still getting regular proposals after
she was 70 years old? There was such a woman, and her
name was Evangeline Booth. She was the first woman to be
the general of the Salvation Army. She was a very unique
and extraordinary woman. At the age of 63 she swan
across Lake George in 4 hours. At age 70 she broke a wild
horse that the owner was afraid to ride. There is much
literature on this woman, for she was not one in a million,
but one in a billion.
When gold was discovered in Alaska before the turn of
the century, masses of men rushed to the Yukon. She knew
the Salvation Army would be needed there, and so with a
few trained nurses she was on her way. All the talk when
she arrived was about "Soopy Smith" the killer of the
Klondike. Soopy and his gang would ambush minors
coming back from the gold fields, shoot them down, and
take their gold. The U. S. government sent a posse after
him, but he shot them all and escaped. It was not a nice
place for a lady. Five men were killed the day Evangeline
arrived.
That night she held a meeting on the banks of the Yukon
River. She preached to 25 thousand men, and got them all
singing songs they had heard their mothers sing, such as,
Jesus, Lover Of My Soul, and Nearer My God To Thee.
They sang until one in the morning. When it was over, and
they sat around the camp fire to keep warm, five men with
guns approached her. One said, "I'm Soopy Smith, and I've
come to tell you how much I enjoyed your singing."
Evangeline talked with Soopy in the white light of the
midnight sun for 3 hours. He admitted he use to attend the
Salvation Army with his grandmother and sing these songs.
Evangeline finally asked him to kneel with her, and the
most notorious bandit that ever terrorized the North got
down on his knees and prayed and wept, and vowed to stop
killing, and give himself up. This kind of thing does not
happen to just ordinary women. This is rare and unique,
and way beyond the ordinary. Her life and gifts are the
kind that keep Hollywood going, and which sell books and
magazines, for her life is filled with thoughts and actions
which are spectacular and amazing.
There are only two books in the Bible named after
women. One of them is Esther, and she was in this category
of extraordinary. She was a dazzling beauty, and she
played a role in history that was public and spectacular,
and she saved the lives of thousands of people.
Hers too was a movie type life. But the other book of the
Bible named after a woman is Ruth, and what a radical
difference. Ruth was as ordinary as they come. Apart from
a few words of beautiful commitment to follow Naomi, and
a part from being a hard worker in the fields, she never did
anything, or said anything spectacular. She is not described
as being beautiful or brilliant. There is no great event of
which she was a part. There is no great influence she had
on her day that is recorded. She had no outstanding gift
that ministered to people.
Ruth was just one of the vast majority of the human race
of ordinary people. She lived in the time of the judges, but
she was not Deborah leading the people of Israel to victory
over her enemies. Boaz, the leading man in this story, was
also no Gideon or Samson, doing wonders as a military
genius or man of strength. Everybody in this book is
ordinary. Obed, the baby who gives the book a happy
ending, does not grow up to do anything of significance that
we know of. There are no great battles, no miracles, and no
profound theological statements in this book. Not one
person in this book would have ever escaped form under the
blanket of obscurity that covers over most of human history
had this book not been written. Yet these ordinary people
are the people we see in the genealogy of the Messiah. The
judges, who were very gifted people, who made the
headlines of their day, are not the people in the blood line to
the Messiah. What is God trying to tell us by this? I think
He is simply revealing-
I. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ORDINARY.
We have a tendency to think that history revolves
around great events, and that to understand history we
need to know the decisive battles of history. I think this
way myself, and love to study the great battles and learn
about the famous leaders in these events. We cannot
dismiss them as insignificant, but we can recognize that they
represent only a small part of history. It is the part that
easiest to report and make interesting. The vast majority of
history, however, is being made by ordinary people as they
struggle with problems, and either give up, or press on in
faith.
Who cares about a couple of down and out widows in an
obscure country trying to figure out how to survive, and
find love and purpose in their lives. This is not material for
the historians. They are looking at the generals and heroes,
and the people who are making the decisive decisions of the
day. This is what history is to men, but the book of Ruth
tells us what history is to God. It is also the story of
ordinary people, and He does care about this stuff that
would not even make the back page of the newspaper.
Maurice Samuel, the great Jewish author of our century,
said of this book of Ruth, "It reminds us that life went
on--the weaving of the creative side of life which lies in these
daily domestic episodes, and not in the battles and in the
ambitions of generals and princes. In the book of Ruth we
have this reminder of the continuity of normal, good, loving
people, even in the midst of very dreadful and destructive
circumstances and events."
When Samson is out bashing in the skulls of a thousand
Philistines, we think that is where the action is, and that is
what God considers to be the important event of the day,
but in reality, the real decisive event may be a weeping
widow resolving to start life anew. The evidence indicated
that Naomi's decision and Ruth's commitment to follow her
played a far greater role in God's plan than any of the great
battles that were raging all around them in the days of the
judges. It would seem that the very purpose for the book of
Ruth is to teach us the importance of the ordinary.
How sad it would be to think that only famous people
matter to God. God gave the unique gifts to the judges of
Israel, and so obviously these special people mattered, and
they were a part of God's plan. But Ruth tells us, God does
not forget the masses and focus only on the few to whom He
gives spectacular gifts. The book of Ruth is about an
ordinary family doing the common place things of life.
They were seeking to survive and get some stability. They
wanted to be loved and raise a family, and be a part of a
community. Such a story is a part of God's Word, because
God reveals in it his perspective on the importance of the
ordinary.
Why is this so important? Because the self-esteem of the
majority of God's family depends on seeing this truth. One
of the most interesting books I have read is by Gigi,
the oldest daughter of Billy and Ruth Graham. Being the
daughter of a very famous person, she always felt she could
never measure up to what God expected her to be. She
envied the godly women who seemed to be up there so far
above her, and she went through a lot of depression, and
even despair, because she was so ordinary. She writes,
"Some people just seem to have an easy time living the
Christian life. Not me! And, after leaving his calling card
of discouragement on the doorstep of my heart, Satan also
convinced me that sense I was not "perfect" I certainly had
no right to minister to others. So I pulled a shell of low
self-esteem about myself, cringing each time I was asked to
share my faith. I felt like such a spiritual failure that it
would have been hypocritical to share something I didn't
believe I possessed. I remained in this state of spiritual
insecurity for several years, always striving, yet continuing
to fail."
Then one day, as a shower of spectacular meteors filled
the sky, and the president of the United States called on
her--no, nothing like that at all. But rather, one day her
two youngest children came running into her kitchen with
their eyes bright with excitement. They had their hands
hidden behind their back, and they were giggling with
delight as they produced a large bunch of flowers they had
gathered. She expressed her surprise and joy, and gave
them each a hug, and ran to find a vase. As she tried to
arrange a bouquet, they flowers kept tumbling out, and she
then noticed the stems were all too short. The children had
picked only the blossoms. She laughed at their simplicity,
and suddenly realize how blessed she was with their gift of
love, even though it was so ordinary. It dawned on her then
that God must love us as we love our children. We don't
have to be perfect to be loved. We don't have to do the
amazing and spectacular for His approval. It changed her
life to realize God can be pleased with His ordinary children
doing ordinary things to express their love and faith. Gigi
learned the importance of the ordinary, and has used her
ordinariness for the glory of God.
God does not need a lot of superstars to achieve His
purpose in history. If He did, He would have given superpower
to more than one person at a time, but God
said, by His actions, one Gideon, one Deborah, one Samson
at a time is enough. But he needs a vast army of ordinary
people who will recognize the importance of the ordinary.
Joseph Parker, in his famous People's Bible wrote, "The
book of Ruth shows that the Bible is the Book of the people,
a family Book, a record of human life in all its moods,
circumstances, passions, and volition's. Many can follow
Ruth who cannot understand Ezekiel..... If we were to ask
what right has a story like Ruth's to be in the Bible, we
might properly reply, by the right of human nature, by the
right of kinship to the universal human heart..... We are
surprised by the little things that are in the Bible.
Wondering why they should come to fill up so much space
in a book which we think ought to have been filled with
nothing but stupendous events. This is not the way of God
in the ordering and direction of human life. All things are
little to God, and all things are equally great to Him. It is
our ignorance that calls this little, and that great, this
trivial, and that important. If not a sparrow falls to the
ground without our Father, we may be sure that He regards
all such little stories as that of Ruth and Esther as a great
consequence to the completion of the whole tale of human
history."
We have not learned one of the most important lessons of
life until we have learned the importance of the ordinary.
Second we want to look at-
II. THE IMPACT OF THE ORDINARY.
The ordinary might be important to God, but does it
have any impact on history? Yes it does. Charles Fuller
called Ruth the Cinderella of the Scriptures. Cinderella
was an ordinary person who received special blessings, and
arrived at a position far above what would be expected.
Ruth was a Moabite-a Gentile. She was not a part of the
chosen people. She was widow and so poor she had to glean
in the fields for survival. Like Cinderella, she started below
ordinary, but by the providence of God she met her prince,
and she married, and was exalted to a place of honor in the
history of God's people. The impact of this ordinary
woman on history is hard to determine, but what we do
know tells us a lot.
Since the story is almost totally female oriented, in that it
deals with the problems of Naomi and Ruth, and everyone
else revolves around their problems, it has a great impact
on our view of women in God's plan. Back in 1848 the
language of the people who lived in the Sahara Desert was
reduced to writing by women missionaries. The first book
of the Bible they translated into this language was the book
of Ruth. Who would ever dream that the first part of the
Bible some people ever read was Ruth. They did this
because they wanted to make a special contact with the
women, for that was the most likely way to get the Gospel to
them. Women are a key in many cultures, and so many
women are being trained as evangelists.
The book of Ruth is a prejudice shattering revelation.
These ordinary women knock the idea to kingdom come
that you have to be great to be used of God, or that you
have to be male to be used of God, or that you have to be
Jewish to be used of God. The impact of one ordinary
female Gentile demolishes many of the prejudices that have
hinder the cause of God. Ruth was no women's libber, and
she was no fighter for Gentile rights. She was a very
submissive person with no history of protest, but her story
does more to exalt the rights and equality of the sexes and
races than any war of which I am aware. Just by being
what she was, and ordinary Gentile female, she has had an
impact on all of history, and it will not cease to influence
history until history is no more.
This has a theological impact because this is God's Word,
and if God gives this much of His Word to working through
the ordinary, then we learn from this that God is not limited
to the supernatural. We miss this when we say, God was
really there and working, and we mean by this, there was
clear manifestation of the power and presence of God.
There were miracles and wonders, and so God was there.
The book of Ruth has a more widespread message than
that. It says there was nothing but the ordinary and the
commonplace, yet God was there working out His will in
history for the salvation of the human race. Nothing
spectacular happened, and no great words were said, and
nobody was raised up on the wings of ecstasy, but God was
there, and His will was being done by ordinary people doing
ordinary things to solve ordinary problems.
The question is, which is most important, to know that
God is in the wondrous and the marvelous, or to know God
is in the commonplace and the ordinary? I think the last,
because He said, low I am with you always, and if we only
realize it when life is on a mountain top, then we miss the
presence of God in most of life, which is ordinary and
commonplace. I need to know God is with me, not just
when I worship and praise, but when I am doing the routine
duties of life, and wrestling for solutions to the everyday
problems of life. The book of Ruth is so valuable just
because it is so ordinary, and helps us recognize the impact
of the ordinary. It is about one ordinary woman, not an
amazon, not a queen, not a superstar of any kind, but just
an ordinary Gentile woman whom God used to be a link to
the Messiah.
God's love is always wider than our conception of it, and
so God has to be doing things constantly in history to
remind us of the universality of His love. This story is first
of all a story of the love of a Jewish woman and a Gentile
woman. It is their love and unity that becomes the
foundation that led to the romance of Boaz and Ruth, and
which then lead to the marriage of Jew and Gentile. This
book illustrates what God's will is for history, and that is
that Jews and Gentiles become one as the people of God.
The book does not say it in the profound theological writing
of the apostle Paul, but by the providence of God in
ordinary people's lives.
Ruth does not argue for anything. It just describes the
events in the life of one family, and yet it has a deep
theological impact on all who will think about what it means
for God to include this story in His Word. One book of the
Old Testament named after a Gentile woman, and she is an
obscure nobody of Moab. Why? Because God loves
obscure nobodies of Moab, and everywhere else in the
world, and in every age, and He wants to make them a part
of the family of God. The impact of this ordinary Gentile
woman becomes more and more impressive as we see what
her presence in Israel meant. David was her great
grandson. When David was trying to escape the wrath of
King Saul, and was on the run, he felt an obligation to
protect his parents. Where could he go to find a refuge for
them? I Sam. 22:3-4 tells us: From there David went to
Mizpah in Moab and said to the king of Moab, would you
let my father and mother stay with you until I learn what
God will do for me? So he left them with the king of
Moab."
David had a friendly relationship with the Moabites
because he was part Moabite himself through his great
grandmother Ruth. David had a great love for, and many
relationships to, the Gentiles all around Israel. Many of his
best soldiers and advisers were Gentiles. Even some of his
personal body guards were Gentiles. When Absolom,
David's son, stirred up a rebellion, and David had to flee, it
was his Gentile friends that were loyal to him when the men
of Israel turned on him. David said to Ittai the Gittite in
II Sam. 15:19, "Why should you come along with us? Go
back and stay with king Absolom. You are a
foreigner.....Go back and take your countrymen." ButIttai,
in words that sound so much like the words of Ruth to
Naomi, responded, as surely as the Lord lives, and as my
Lord the king lives, wherever my Lord the king may be,
whether it means life or death, there will your servant be.
David could not turn back this loyal Gentile friend, and so
all 600 Gittites marched into exile with David.
Why is David the only king of Israel who has so many
Gentile friends. There is no record of any king like David
who inspired the loyalty of so many Gentiles. Why is there
so much in the Psalms of David about God being the God of
the Gentiles, and the Lord of all nations? Would you
believe it is because of ordinary great grandma Ruth? We
do not have the time to trace the impact of this one ordinary
woman and her influence on the whole history of Jew and
Gentile relations, but let me share one more genealogical
gem that reveals why David was a Gentile lover, and why
the Messiah has a Gentile and Jewish blood line.
In Matt. 1:5 we are let in on the startling revelation that
the mother of Boaz was none other than Rahab the harlot,
who was a Canaanites. This means Boaz was already half
Gentile, and was very open to the possibility of marrying a
Gentile like Ruth. Together they were more Gentile than
Jewish, and this means that David's great grandparents
were three quarters Gentile. This helps us see why David
had a unique love for the Gentiles, and why he lead so many
of them to be loyal, not only to him, but to the God of Israel.
In the city of Bethlehem, where Ruth and Boaz had their
baby Obed, 1186 years later, Joseph and Mary had their
baby Jesus. It was no coincidence that He became a king
over a kingdom of both Jews and Gentiles, for this was
God's plan all along, and those with eyes to see could have
seen it all along in the ordinary life of Ruth the Moabitess.
Third we see-
III. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE ORDINARY.
The importance and the impact of the ordinary does not
end with time. The book of Ruth does have very specific
time limits. It starts in the first verse with the time of the
judges, and it ends with king David. But the lessons of Ruth
about the ordinary are timeless, and there significance will
carry right over into eternity. In eternity the ordinary will
gain equality with the prominent, as the redeemed come
from East, West, North, and South, to set at the table with
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The chorus of praise to God
will not be of the select singers of the world, but will be a
chorus of the redeemed out of every tribe and tongue and
nation. Ordinary people of both sexes, of all races and
colors, as one great family of God. The one common bond,
not being their fame, their status, their gifts, their
accomplishments, but, their faith in the God of all people.
From an earthly point of view this book of Ruth is
lacking in events that are exciting. There is a hint of scandal
as Ruth spends the night with Boaz, but without a great
deal of blowing this out of proportion, there is little to
recommend it for a TV mini-series. There are no bad guys,
and no great conflicts with violence. The story just would
not sell. Yet, it made it into the Bible, the Word of God.
You can either conclude that the Word is boring, or that its
excitement lies deeper. What can be more exciting than the
revelation that God loves and uses ordinary people, and
that His plan take into consideration the importance of the
ordinary. This is exciting because the majority of the
human race, and the majority of the people of God are like
the characters in this book-they are ordinary.
The implications of this truth are very paradoxical. If
you believe in the importance of, and the impact of, and the
immorality of, ordinary people, then you must conclude
that there are no ordinary people. C.S. Lewis in his book
The Weight Of Glory put it this way, "It is a serious thing
to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses to
remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person
you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it
now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.....There
are no ordinary people. This is one of the messages of Ruth,
and seeing this message should have a impact on how we see
others, and our own self-esteem. All that we have and all
that we are can be used for the glory of God, for God does
wondrous things, not only through His gifted people, but
also through the majority, who are ordinary people.
