RuthSample

A Moabite finds the true God

It is interesting to see how God used Naomi’s life, cratered with the disasters of losing her home, husband, and sons, as a platform for doing some wonderful new things. A famine had driven Naomi’s family to live in the nearby country of Moab. Although the Moabites had distant kinship with the Israelites, they had strayed far from Israel’s God. In their culture, Baal, the storm god, and Chemosh, whose priests encouraged child sacrifice, were the chief deities.

Naomi’s Moabite daughter-in-law Ruth had been raised in that religious culture. But Naomi had made such a powerful impact on the young woman that Ruth chose to throw in her lot with her now-widowed mother-in-law. Even though it could seriously hurt her chances of remarriage, she vowed to stay close to Naomi and, even more important, to the God whom Naomi worshiped: “Ruth replied, ‘Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God’” (Ruth 1:16).

Think how hard it must have been for Ruth to challenge all of the religious beliefs she had been taught as a child. Think how other Moabite Baal and Chemosh worshipers would have pressured her not to abandon her national faith. But she did it anyway, turning to the God of Israel, whose mercy, Word, and Spirit changed her life forever.

The Spirit is still creating new believers in unlikely places.