Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

Chair, Division of Biblical Studies & Theology,

Bob Jones University

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Archives for August 2023

On Short-Term Missions, Part 5: Dependence

August 31, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Everybody in the Pool | Part 2: But First … | Part 3: More than Good Intentions | Part 4: Semper Gumby

Short-term cross-cultural work is not for obsessive perfectionist control freaks.

First, you need to realize that there’s much about the target culture that you don’t know, and you’ll need to trust and depend on locals, or long-term missionaries, to correct your thinking, and you’ll need to do what they say. Further, if you believe that going is a call from God, and if you believe in providence, then you need to expect that God will do things with this experience that will surprise you and perhaps change your plans. You need to depend on him for direction and move confidently when he changes things.

Sometimes you’re going to be offensive—we’ve noted that fact repeatedly in this series—and you need to be prepared to be corrected, to take the correction gracefully, and to apologize. Once my team was going out into a neighborhood in Johannesburg to pass out fliers for a youth event that evening. I suggested that we go out in pairs, one American and one “African.” Without going into the long history of racial evil and distrust in South Africa, I’ll just say that calling these South African “Coloureds” (those of mixed race) “Africans” was highly offensive to them. I was mortified, and I apologized profusely. A deeply humbling moment.

On a more positive note, let me describe a delightful instance of a providential change of plans.

We were in Cape Town, working with an indigenous pastor, and he suggested that we go to a nearby suburb where a missionary was having a youth event at a high school. I had corresponded with this missionary during the planning stage, and I knew he had a team from a US church working with him that week, and I didn’t want to crash their party. But the pastor insisted, so off we went.

We walked into the school building and followed the sound to a chaotic, noisy group of elementary children in a courtyard, with two American teenaged girls who were clearly overwhelmed. I knew this event was supposed to be for teens, and I wondered what was going on. After a minute the missionary walked out of the gym into the courtyard, saw me, and said immediately, “Boy, am I glad to see you! We advertised a youth rally, and I’ve got 200 teens in the gym. But a hundred little children showed up too. We told them this event isn’t for them, but they won’t leave, and we’re not prepared to deal with them.”

I said, “Do you want us to take care of the children?”

“Boy, do I!”

The previous week we’d been running a children’s camp in Kenya, with teams and mascots and cheers and games and preaching. I turned to this well-experienced team and said, “OK, you two are the team leaders. Set up two teams and teach the kids some cheers. You two are in charge of games. And Jonny, you’re preaching in 45 minutes.”

We sent the greatly relieved American girls from the other team into the gym to help there, and in 5 minutes we had a smoothly running day camp. So smoothly, in fact, that I went into the gym to see if there was anything I could do there.

The preacher in the gym was the leader of the other American team. He introduced himself to me after the sermon, as if he knew me. His name was familiar, but I didn’t recognize his face at all. Turned out he had been one of my students in an online Systematic Theology course a couple of years earlier. So the name was familiar, but we’d never met in person.

What a great experience that was! What a joy to see my team providentially prepared for exactly the unexpected situation they were facing! And what an encouragement it was to both teams—and to the missionary—to see God not only meet the need but expand the ministry in ways unplanned by the organizers!

God is great, and God is good. If you’ll see all your ministry experiences, even (perhaps especially) the unexpected ones, as gracious gifts from a God who knows what he’s doing, you can find joy in intimidating circumstances.

Go.

Part 6: Closing Thoughts I | Part 7: Closing Thoughts II | Part 8: Closing Thoughts III

Photo by Jeremy Dorrough on Unsplash

Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: missions

On Short-Term Missions, Part 4: Semper Gumby

August 28, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Everybody in the Pool | Part 2: But First … | Part 3: More than Good Intentions

Missions is for people who are flexible, in several specific ways.

When you’re ministering cross-culturally, you’re dealing with people who are different from you all day long. They think differently, they do things differently; they’re offended by different things, they laugh at different things. In that kind of environment, it’s possible for you to be highly offensive, even with the best of intentions. So you need to adjust your thinking.

Pay Attention

The first thing you need to do is notice things; actively think about what you’re seeing. You can’t expect to notice things accidentally; you have to just pay attention, and do things the way the locals do.

I was sitting in front of a group of people with my legs crossed, and I noticed that everyone else in the room had both feet on the floor. So I immediately uncrossed my legs and kept them that way. Afterwards I asked someone and was told that it is the prerogative of the oldest man to decide whether crossing the legs is OK. Since I was the oldest man in the room at that time, my action was not offensive. But again, in Muslim-influenced cultures, showing someone the bottom of your foot is a sign of disrespect. So no crossing of the legs. Sometimes.

Be Curious

Most people are happy to explain their cultural practices to you. I asked about leg-crossing, and no one was offended by my question, because I was genuinely curious and wanted to know how things were done. Your best asset in cross-cultural situations is someone who knows the culture well—preferably indigenous—and who speaks English. Ask about everything.

Be Respectful

Nothing at all wrong with asking questions, so long as there’s no tone of incredulity or snobbishness about it. People have reasons for what they do.

My favorite illustration of this concept is the question of whether you empty your plate. In our culture, we do, because emptying your plate communicates to the host that you liked what he served. In China, the same act communicates that the host didn’t give you enough—he’s stingy. So you must leave a little on your plate, or he’ll fill it again. With a smile.

Two cultures, who interpret the same act in completely opposite ways—and both of them make perfect sense.

I love that.

Similarly, Americans tend to think that chopsticks are clumsy and inefficient. But the Chinese think that butchering at the table is barbaric. When the food arrives at the table, it is consummately prepared, in bite-sized pieces, and all you need to eat it is a couple of sticks. Not clumsy; civilized.

Learn new ways of doing things, and thinking about things, and delight in the variety of ways that humans in the image of God create cultures.

Be Persistent

Working in an unfamiliar culture can be exhausting. You have to think about everything all the time, and you feel as though you’re the one making all the sacrifices and expending all the effort. (Let me assure you that you’re not; the locals are dealing with your cultural clumsiness and ineptitude all day long, and they’re being kind to you anyway.)

You have to just stick to it. If you’re there for just a few weeks, you’ll never get acclimated, and the relief at getting home will be significant. But it’s worth the effort in the meantime.

Again, an illustration of the importance of putting forth the effort. And thus another longer-than-usual post.

I was with a team at a church service in Africa. Afterwards we had a greeting line, a common practice. Everyone lines up single file, and the line doubles back on itself, so everybody shakes hands with everybody else. Often we’re all singing throughout the process.

Afterwards the pastor announced that we would now have communion.

I’m thinking, uh-oh. We’ve just shaken hands with a whole bunch of people, many of them small children, who have used the choo (latrine) outside at some point, where there’s no toilet paper. I’m all but certain that I have fecal material all over my right hand.

What do I do? I have hand sanitizer in my pocket, but everyone will be able to smell it—how would you feel if someone used hand sanitizer right after shaking hands with you? There’s no place to wash my hands. And we can’t abstain from the communion elements; that act sends a theological message that we must not send. We are one with these people.

I quietly went to each student and told them to be sure to take the bread with their left hand, for safety.

This was a Muslim area.

Very bad choice. In Muslim-influenced cultures, the left hand is the dirty hand. The entire team engaged in a very public act of disrespect toward the Lord’s Table. Even though we were in fact using the clean hand.

With the best of intentions.

What should I have done?

I should have told them to use their right hand, handle the bread as little as possible, and pray for divine protection.

Which brings me to the topic of the next post.

Part 5: Dependence | Part 6: Closing Thoughts I | Part 7: Closing Thoughts II | Part 8: Closing Thoughts III

Photo by Jeremy Dorrough on Unsplash

Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: missions

On Short-Term Missions, Part 3: More than Good Intentions

August 21, 2023 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: Everybody in the Pool | Part 2: But First …

Missions is for people who are prepared to do something that the locals cannot do for themselves.

Good intentions are not enough to justify going.

In the first place, there’s something fundamentally unbiblical about seeing a people group, one that God created and for whom his intentions have always been redemptive, as “those poor people” whom I, with my superior knowledge and cultural values, am going to go help. In many cases, that’s just plain racism, a holdover from the colonial era, where “western empires own their Lord, and savage tribes attend his word.” (Those are not the only two choices, you know.) One of the first things that students on my teams would learn is that the African Christians with whom they were working 1) were their spiritual superiors in nearly every way, and 2) were absolutely necessary to their ministry success. We weren’t there to “help the poor Africans”; we were there to labor alongside them and learn a lot in the process. In places like China and Africa, the Church has been doing just fine without our constant nursemaiding, thank you, and they frankly don’t need our help in the ways that we tend to think they do.

Second, sometimes “helping” is worse than not helping. This is a complex topic, one that has been developed well elsewhere; let me recommend a couple of books: Toxic Charity, by Robert Lupton, and When Helping Hurts, by Steve Corbett et al. Americans tend to react strongly against poverty when they see it, and they tend to think that throwing money at problems will solve them. Again, good intentions, but bad outcomes. A well-known case a few years ago was the generous offer by the manufacturers of Toms shoes to send a pair of shoes to Africa for every pair sold in the US. One unintended consequence was that they put a bunch of African shoemakers out of business.

That’s one reason why I always tried to have my student teams bring something to the table that their African colleagues didn’t. Why should my team build a fence or paint a church when the Africans could do that just as well as they could—and in fact probably better? What does a busload of American college students add to the work in the way of ministry effectiveness?

Perhaps an example will help illustrate. (And thus this post will be longer than usual.) Several summers we worked with West Africa Bible College in Wa, Ghana. This college, whose president is a Ghanaian former student of mine, graduates a handful of Bible students every year who then go out and plant churches in the surrounding villages. How can my students help with that? Out in the bush relatively few people speak English; what can we do that’s profitable?

Well, out there a busload of white folks will attract a crowd. We drove out to the village of Gbacha, pulled up at the football field (that’s “soccer” to you gringos) with a couple of footballs, and started kicking them around. Here came all the children in the village, and soon they’re all in the game. The younger children we organized into smaller, safer games. The parents showed up to see what all the excitement was about. Nasalas! Nasalas! (“White people! White people!”)

I walked over to speak to the adults who had gathered. One man told me, in broken English, “Thank you for doing this. The imams don’t play with our children.”

In the meantime the young people from the Wa church were translating my students’ Bible lessons into Waali so the children would understand. Equal partners, working together, doing what they were good at, to make a ministry.

Timothy, the college president, said, “Come with me.” We walked up a path to a small house with a large shade tree in front. Several men were sitting there. Timothy introduced me to the village chief. I greeted him and told him that Timothy had been my student, a good student, in university in America. The chief said simply, “You are welcome.”

I thought that was odd; I hadn’t thanked him for anything.

As we walked back to the field, Timothy said, “Let me explain what just happened. We need the chief’s permission to buy land in the village to build a church. Some in the village have been opposing that effort. Based on what happened here today, the chief has said that we are welcome here in the village.”

That was the summer of 2013, 10 years ago. This summer I was back in Wa, teaching at the college, without a team this time. Timothy and I drove out west of the town to see a new church building going up, and on the way back we drove right by Gbacha. I asked if we could stop.

We drove out to the field, and I took a picture to send to the 2013 team. Then Timothy said, “Let me show you something.” We drove a little further and pulled up at a church building. “This is the church we built here, on prime land the chief allowed us to purchase. The building is full every Sunday, and we’re planning to enlarge it; we have plenty of land to grow here. And when the enlargement is finished, we’re going to constitute this as an independent church, with their indigenous pastor.”

American teenagers, doing what they could, in partnership with their African brothers and sisters. Taking the good news to the end of the earth. With a couple of soccer balls on a weekday afternoon in the bush.

Part 4: Semper Gumby | Part 5: Dependence | Part 6: Closing Thoughts I | Part 7: Closing Thoughts II | Part 8: Closing Thoughts III

Photo by Jeremy Dorrough on Unsplash

Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: missions

On Short-Term Missions, Part 2: But First …

August 17, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Everybody in the Pool

As we noted in the previous post, missions is every believer’s business. We live out grace and peace and carry the message of good news every day, regardless of our location.

But I would suggest that the Great Commission includes taking the message to the end of the earth, and this Commission is not given to just a select few. Nothing in the text implies a limitation as to personnel or geography.

Now, of course we can’t all go to Latvia, or who would serve the rest of the planet? I would suggest that the fact that in God’s providence you were born where you were would certainly indicate that God intends you to take the message to your own people.

But still. We need to go.

It has become common these days for us to subcontract cross-cultural missions to “professionals,” who live full-time in Latvia, or wherever, and focus on taking the message to that particular culture. That’s a great idea, and it seems to work with reasonable efficiency—though I’m inclined to think that it’s better for Americans to train indigenous pastors than to try to carry the burden of church planting themselves, given the amount of resources and time required for an American to plant just one church overseas.

But I don’t think that paying someone else to go absolves us from our responsibility to go as well. Sure, it’s expensive to go, and we can stay for only so long, and we’re not as effective in an unfamiliar culture as an indigenous believer would be, but there are things we can do effectively, and there are things we can learn that will increase our effectiveness in our own day-to-day outreach at home.

That said, it is possible to do overseas outreach very, very badly. In my experience, Americans seem to be especially clumsy working in unfamiliar cultures. The expression “the ugly American” didn’t come from nowhere, and the stories are abundant. I can recall an experience in China at a Buddhist temple where my family was observing quietly and appreciating the architecture. The priest had indicated to us “no photos,” and of course we respected his wishes. After a few minutes a couple of American twenty-something girls came in, wearing halter tops and short shorts, chewing gum and talking loudly, with no apparent awareness of the sort of place this was. “Oh, look at that! Cool! OMG!” The look of dismay on the face of the priest was hard to miss.

Sure, it’s a false religion, and he’s a false teacher, but he’s also a human being in the image of God who needs to hear the message, and this kind of thing can only make the task more difficult. I was horrified—and embarrassed for my country.

I wish that I was just cherry-picking, but this sort of thing seems to happen all the time. I suppose we could speculate on why. The USA is a big country, insulated from the rest of the world by oceans on both sides, with the result that many Americans never visit a different country their whole lives. Europeans and Africans, on the other hand, cross national borders and work in multiple languages fairly routinely. And despite all the talk of polarization and regionalism in our country, the culture is relatively homogeneous; you can travel from Atlanta to Wenatchee and still understand the regional accent, conduct business smoothly, and manage not to be offensive in daily customs such as greetings.

So yes, I would suggest that all believers need to get some experience in taking the gospel to another culture. But I would also suggest that we should take that responsibility seriously enough to prepare properly, so that we don’t make things worse by going. That means we’re going to have to learn some things about the culture—they do things differently there—so as not to fulfill the American stereotype of being offensive all day long with absolutely no awareness that we’re doing so.

We’ll get to some specifics next time.

Part 3: More than Good Intentions | Part 4: Semper Gumby | Part 5: Dependence | Part 6: Closing Thoughts I | Part 7: Closing Thoughts II | Part 8: Closing Thoughts III

Photo by Jeremy Dorrough on Unsplash

Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: missions

On Short-Term Missions, Part 1: Everybody in the Pool

August 14, 2023 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Over the years it’s been my pleasure to experience several short-term mission trips. My first was almost 30 years ago, when my wife and I joined up with another couple in our church to take a group of teens to Mexico for a couple of weeks. A few years later I was asked to teach for a month in a little Bible college near Cape Town—and quickly fell in love with the place. (It’s still my favorite city in the world.) The next year the request came from a ministry in Saipan, for another month. Then Hermosillo, Mexico; then Shanghai, China; and then St. Vincent in the Caribbean.

A couple of years after that, the faculty couple that had led a student mission team to Africa most summers asked me if I’d like to take over the operation, and with some trepidation I agreed. What followed was 10 teams in 9 summers over the span of 12 years, some of the most delightful experiences of my life. I still think of those students as special.

During those 12 years there were other overseas adventures sprinkled in: Haiti, Mexico, India. This past summer I taught in Ghana, at a school I had taken several teams to, and in Togo, a new one for me.

I love these trips, but they’re hard, for a great many reasons. I found myself committing most of the mistakes we Americans can make in cross-cultural work, and to my dismay, I often haven’t learned from those mistakes with just one boneheaded incident.

I know people who have a lot more experience than what’s listed here. One of my closest colleagues at my university oversees the missions programs there, and his wisdom—prompted, I’m sure, by the sheer number of astonishing stories he can tell—continually provokes my respect.

But I have learned a few things along the way—often by experiences that I’m ashamed of—and perhaps a few thoughts can be of service to other believers, particularly those who are planning short-term mission work in the future.

So let’s spend a few posts knocking some of these ideas around.

To start with, let me observe that

Missions Is for Everyone

As he was about to return to his Father, Christ gave his disciples an order that we have come to call “The Great Commission” (Mt 28.19-20; Mk 16.15; Lk 24.46-48; Ac 1.7-8). It’s simple enough: Go—everywhere—and make disciples. Tell the story.

Church history contains a great many inspiring stories of those who have obeyed their Master well—from the 12 disciples themselves (I’m thinking, obviously, of Matthias and Paul, not Judas Iscariot) to the many martyrs under intermittent eras of Roman persecution, and through the modern missions movement, starting with William Carey and including such lights as Adoniram Judson, John Paton, John Eliot, CT Studd, David Livingstone, Gladys Aylward, Amy Carmichael, and many, many others perhaps less famous but not at all less noteworthy.

Perhaps as a result of these stories, modern Christians have tended to think of “missions” as something that happens far away, in strange and perhaps dangerous cultures. Hence the passport photo at the top of this post.

But the commission was to go—surely, to the ends of the world, but starting in Jerusalem, which to the first hearers was home, the local neighborhood. Missions isn’t something we pay subcontractors to do; it’s something we all do, naturally, daily, as we live our lives. It’s living out grace and peace, and talking about it, wherever you are. Last week I had a chance to do that in the drive-through at a fast-food joint, prompted by a question the fellow in the window asked me. Just a couple of minutes, and I wish it had been more, but it’s the normal way a follower of Jesus lives.

At the same time, however, in other senses missions is most certainly not for everyone. We’ll look into that next time.

Part 2: But First … | Part 3: More than Good Intentions | Part 4: Semper Gumby | Part 5: Dependence | Part 6: Closing Thoughts I | Part 7: Closing Thoughts II | Part 8: Closing Thoughts III

Photo by Jeremy Dorrough on Unsplash

Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: missions

On Providence, Part 6: And the Seed of the Woman

August 10, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Where? | Part 2: How? | Part 3: Joseph, For Example  | Part 4: And Naomi | Part 5: And Esther

I’d like to present one more example of providence, one I think is the crowning example.

God raises up kings and sets them down again. One of those kings, Nebuchadnezzar, comes to recognize that fact when God turns him into the crazy uncle down the street, eating grass in front of the county courthouse, and then restores him again to his throne—and nobody objects (Da 4.28-37).

Just before this episode, God has revealed his plan to Nebuchadnezzar in a dream (Da 2.26-45). The prophet Daniel interprets the dream to predict that after Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian Empire will come the kingdom of the Medes and Persians, and then Greece, and then Rome.

And it all happens, just as God predicted.

Six centuries later Persia and Greece have come and gone, and Rome has conquered the Mediterranean Basin, including the little province of Judaea, the southern tip of the old land of Canaan, waaaay down at the end of the Sea.

It’s on the list of provinces, and it has a governor appointed by Rome, but it is of little if any concern back in the capital.

What is of concern, though, is the stupendous amount of money needed to run an empire, particularly one with an army large enough to keep the conquered peoples in check. Along about 750 AU (on the Roman calendar), the emperor, Caesar Augustus, decides he needs more money. He orders a census to organize the tax rolls. The order means that all the inhabitants of Roman provinces need to report to their family’s town of origin and sign up.

In the backwater village of Nazareth, in what used to be the tribal allotment of Zebulun back in the Israelite days, lives a construction worker named Joseph. We don’t know his age at this time, but we do know that he’s engaged to be married to a young woman—perhaps a teen—named Miriam. He has a lot on his mind; he’s learned that his fiancée is pregnant–without his help–and soon after, he’s learned that the child is the supernaturally conceived, promised Messiah of Israel. Miriam is now approaching full term.

Both he and Miriam are descendants of David, the great king of Israel from a millennium earlier. Everyone in Israel knows that David was from Bethlehem, in the territory of Judah. So Joseph and Miriam now have to travel overland to Judea to register for the census.

I’m sure Joseph thinks, “Look, I really don’t need this right now.” A full-term pregnant woman has no business traveling close to a hundred miles by any conveyance, let alone donkey.

But Rome.

So they go, at great inconvenience and almost certainly against their will.

When they arrive in Bethlehem, she goes into labor.

And she has a Son.

As expected.

Now, we already know that this is no ordinary son. An angelic messenger has told Joseph, “He shall save his people from their sins” (Mt 1.21). He is the promised Messiah.

Promised, indeed. There has been a flotilla of promises made over the centuries about this child, beginning in the Garden of Eden (Ge 3.15).

And one of those promises (Mic 5.2) is that he would be born in Bethlehem.

Not just any Bethlehem, either. There’s a village named Bethlehem just 6 miles northwest of Nazareth (Jos 19.15). Joseph might well have taken care of the census business there with a day trip. But the prophecy says “Bethlehem Ephrata,” which is the one down in Judah, where David was from.

So in far-off Rome, the most powerful man in the world, who doesn’t care about Judea or Jews or Messiahs or construction workers or prophecies, operating from the least religious motive imaginable, decides that the Empire will be upended and millions of people inconvenienced for his own convenience, and thus forces a full-term pregnant woman to travel a hundred miles on the back of a donkey.

And the rest is History.

God rules.

He does.

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: providence, systematic theology, theology proper

On Providence, Part 5: And Esther

August 7, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Where? | Part 2: How? | Part 3: Joseph, For Example  | Part 4: And Naomi

No one tells the story of God’s providence better than the author of the Book of Esther. I did a fairly lengthy series of posts on that story a year or so back. You can read that series here.

Part 6: And the Seed of the Woman

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

Filed Under: Uncategorized

On Providence, Part 4: And Naomi

August 3, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Where? | Part 2: How? | Part 3: Joseph, For Example

How about another example?

Another famine. Another family that leaves Canaan (now Israel) to seek sustenance elsewhere.

This time the head of the family is Elimelech. He takes his wife, Naomi, and his two sons, and they cross the Jordan into Moab (Ru 1.1-2).

And then he dies (Ru 1.3).

The boys marry Moabite wives, named Orpah and Ruth (Ru 1.4). And then they die (Ru 1.5).

This is a disaster. A woman with no living sons is effectively unsupported. Such women often end up as beggars or prostitutes. The situation is worse for Naomi than for Orpah and Ruth, for two reasons. First, she’s an expat, a foreigner, a “stranger,” “not from around here.” And second, she’s not young enough to attract another husband. She’s bereft, horizonless, hopeless.

One of those problems she can fix. She can go home again. Which she decides to do (Ru 1.6).

Orpah opts to stay with her people (Ru 1.14). That’s clearly the wise choice. Young enough to have children, she can find a nice Moabite man and marry again.

But Ruth shocks us. She opts to go with Naomi, thereby leaving her people and all the life she has ever known (Ru 1.16-17).

There’s no rational explanation for this. She has seen no reason to follow Israel’s God, and as we shall see, Naomi doesn’t seem to either.

And so they arrive in Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem. Naomi is clearly not pleased with God. She accuses God of emptying her of all that she had (Ru 1.19-21).

And, frankly, she’s right.

Well, these unsupported women have to eat.

Israel’s law says that they can glean grain from the corners of any fields; in fact, farmers are under legal obligation not to harvest the corners (Le 19.9).

So Ruth, the young strong one, goes out looking for a field (Ru 2.2). She goes to the community field in the little town, and she starts gleaning the corners of one section of it. She doesn’t know who it belongs to, and she doesn’t care; it’s all grain to her.

A few hours later the owner shows up (Ru 2.4). He notices the foreigner and inquires of his foreman (Ru 2.5), who says she’s been working hard (Ru 2.6-7). He speaks with her and encourages her to keep gleaning in his section of the field (Ru 2.8-13) and even to eat with his workers (Ru 2.14). He tells his workers to drop grain on purpose for her to pick up (Ru 2.15-16).

Two good people.

By the end of the day she has plenty of grain (Ru 2.17).

Naomi, the empty one, is delighted by what Ruth has gathered (Ru 2.18). And she is astonished when she finds out who the man is. Of all the men in the village, he is the second closest relative, next in line under a legal obligation to restore Elimelech’s property to Naomi (Ru 2.20). She also reads the tea leaves, so to speak: sounds like the man has his eye on the young woman.

So she hatches a plot (Ru 3.1-5), and it works just as she had hoped. Ruth tells the man (whose name, by the way, is Boaz) that he has a legal obligation (Ru 3.6-9), and he demonstrates immediately that he’s willing to do it (Ru 3.10-13); he even fills her apron with seed as a sign of good faith (Ru 3.15). He lays a legal claim to redeem Naomi (Ru 4.1-4) and clears the way to marry Ruth (Ru 4.5-12).

And then, if you’ll pardon my bluntness, he fills her apron with seed a second time, and she has a son (Ru 4.13). Now there is a future for these formerly bereft women.

And what a future it is! Ruth’s son is the grandfather of a boy named David (Ru 4.21-22), Israel’s greatest king and recipient of God’s Messianic covenant (2S 7.8-16). David’s greater Son will redeem Naomi and Ruth and Boaz and you and me and anyone who believes (Ga 4.5; Ti 2.14).

And by the end of the story the baby is not in Ruth’s arms; he’s in Naomi’s (Ru 4.16). God has not emptied her after all; her temporary emptying was simply a step toward a fulfillment far beyond what she could ever have imagined. She becomes a significant part of God’s promise to crush the serpent’s head through the seed of the woman (Ge 3.15)—and an illustration of the process of redemption by which the Seed would accomplish that.

In our pain, let us not dream small dreams. Let us anticipate the kind of good that only God can do.

Part 5: And Esther | Part 6: And the Seed of the Woman

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

Filed Under: Theology Tagged With: providence, systematic theology, theology proper