God has always been revealing Himself. Sometimes it’s in His Creation, or the conscience He placed inside every human, or the prophets who remind us of God’s ways. But ultimately God revealed His fullness in the Person of Jesus.
“God has always wanted His people to know Him—not in a generic or shallow way, but personally, as He truly is. So He revealed Himself in a progressive way, not only through His name, but also through His glorious presence that dwelt in the Temple, through the Law, and through His mighty deeds on behalf of His people. But these revelations all led up to a definitive revelation in the Person of Jesus.”
One of the ways the love of Jesus was revealed to us is in the story of Ruth and Boaz. This is one of my favorite Bible stories. It’s a short story, so please check it out when you have 10 minutes to read it.
Here’s the part of the story I want to share today. Ruth is…
Ruth meets a man named Boaz, who is…
Ruth, in an unexpected twist, asks Boaz to marry her!
Boaz has nothing to gain and everything to lose by agreeing to this marriage proposal, but he does it anyway!
In the language of the day, Ruth asks Boaz to “cover me with the corner of your robe.” This becomes the picture that Jesus will ultimately fulfill.
Not only does the corner of Christ’s robe heal people physically (Matthew 9:20-22; 14:34-36), but it also signifies His willingness to take in marriage anyone who is as utterly helpless as Ruth was.
Ruth had nothing but debts; we have nothing but debts. Ruth was barely surviving unless help came; we are headed for death without Jesus.
Boaz took Ruth as she was and gave her citizenship, legal standing, and riches. He covered her shame and allowed her to stand boldly in the city square.
Jesus takes us as we are and gives us citizenship in Heaven, a legal standing before Almighty God, all of His riches, and then…
Oh, how Jesus loves us!!
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.
Do You Think Life Is A Drudgery?
God made man a mixture of dust and Deity—“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). The dust of a man’s body is his glory, not his shame. …
Drudgery is the outcome of sin, but it has no right to be the rule of life. It becomes the rule of life because we ignore the fact that the dust of the earth belongs to God, and that man’s chief end is to glorify God. Unless we can maintain the presence of Divinity in our dust, life becomes a miserable drudgery. If a man lives in order to hoard up the means of living, he does not live at all, he has no time to, he is taken up with one form of drudgery or another to keep things going. …
The wisdom of today concerns itself chiefly with the origin of things and not with God, consequently neither the philosopher nor the mystic has time for actual life.
From Shade Of His Hand
God created us to enjoy life as we enjoy Him, enjoy His creation, and enjoy doing what He has created us to do.
If you find life toilsome, burdensome or a downright drudgery, can I suggest one simple question: How is your relationship with God?
If you truly ask Him, God will show you how to live a life filled with JOY!
There is so much excellent content to digest in each day’s reading from Today’s Moment Of Truth. Be sure to check out my book review by clicking here. Below are th first set of quotes I’m sharing from this book.
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” —Robert Jastsrow, founding director of NASA’s Goddard Institute For Space Studies
“As astronomers have discovered, our sun and moon are much more exceptional than once thought. Our sun is far from ordinary; it has exactly the right mass and composition and is the ideal distance from the earth to enable life on our planet. If it were much smaller, its luminosity wouldn’t allow the high-efficiency photosynthesis necessary in plants; if it were much closer, the water would boil away from the planet’s surface. Similarly, our moon is just far enough away and just the right size to stabilize the Earth’s tilt. Without the moon’s stabilizing presence, the Earth would experience wild temperature swings, with devastating consequences for life.” —Lee Strobel
“I think people who believe that life emerged naturalistically need to have a great deal more faith than people who reasonably infer that there’s an Intelligent Designer. —Walter Bradley, co-author of The Mystery Of Life’s Origin
“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.” —Francis Crick, Nobel Prize winner
“It is my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science. It was only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.” —Allan Rex Sandage, cosmologist
“The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.” —Sir Arthur Eddington
“Secular scientists often talk as though life came about through this formula: Matter + Energy + Time = Life. However, when scientists go into their labs and try to produce life, they add another ingredient—one they often don’t think about. The formula they really use is: Matter + Energy + Time + Ideas = Life.
“In other words, they’re not just throwing all of the ingredients into a blender, switching it to the highest setting, and hoping life will pop out at the end. Rather, they’re applying the best of scientific knowledge to selecting the elements necessary for living matter as well as the conditions that will be conducive for life to flourish.
“Putting it another way, they’re trying to replicate what God did. And if they finally succeed, it’ll only serve to reinforce what the Bible says—that God created life.” —Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith
“When this church service is over, I’m heading to the airport to fly back home. But it’s not enough for me to sit in the terminal and believe that airplanes fly. Just acknowledging the soundness of aviation science will never get me home. I have to go beyond mere belief that airplanes fly to a personal belief in the particular airplane that’s heading to my city—demonstrated by climbing on board. It’s that active trust that will ultimately get me where I want to go. Similarly, we all need to go beyond merely believing that Jesus is the Son of God who died on the Cross for our sins. We must take the next step and trust in Him personally, asking Him to forgive our sins and to lead our lives.” —Mark Mittelberg
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“God’s lovingkindness extends throughout the vast cosmos, reaching to and sustaining every part of it and all of it together. He never fails in His upholding and sustaining love for His creation, in maintaining all its wondrous diversity, intricate functioning, strange beauty, startling vibrancy and vitality, frightening power, mystifying complexity, and mysterious greatness.
God loves what He has made, and He is faithful in sustaining it in whole and in part. In this He reveals His righteousness, which is high above us, fearsome and foreboding, yet beautiful and beckoning. We are drawn to it in fear, and we seek to surmount it with joy and anticipation.” —T.M. Moore