"For the World" February 26 Readings: Ruth 1-4

  

Reading the Bible Chronologically in 2024

This year, instead of reading from Genesis to Revelation, we will read the Bible as the story flows, as it happened and was written. There are several plans out there and I have worked to combine them into a plan that lets the Bible tell its own story "as it happened." Remember, the Bible is inspired, but not in the order the books appear in our Bibles.  The Old Testament is approximately 3/4 of the Bible, but we will give more emphasis to the New Testament, spending half the year in the Old Testament and half in the New. 

Bible Readings: Ruth 1-4

Background:  

Ruth is one of the truly great love stories in ancient literature. No, it is not so much a story of romantic love, but the faithful love of a daughter-in-law to a mother-in-law. It tells the story of King David's great-grandmother's migration from Moab to Israel. She is also one of the four women who appear in Jesus' genealogy in the Gospels.

Daily Devotional: For the World

The fundamental failure of Israel was their failure to understand the full meaning of the blessing they'd received from God. In Genesis 12:2, God made this promise.

I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

Abraham's descendants were to be blessed and made into a great nation - God would work among them to make their name great. It was not because they were so special or because God found something meritorious in them that was not in any other nation. No, God chose Israel and blessed them to make them a blessing to the nations of the earth.

Israel generally forgot that.

They reveled in their place as God's chosen people (when they didn't ignore God in sinful rebellion) and they kept the blessing to themselves.

Books such as Ruth give hints that God's eye was on the world throughout Scripture. This purpose didn't come into clear focus until the Great Commission and the statement of Acts 1:8 that the Spirit-empowered church would witness to the ends of the earth. Revelation 7 tells us about the heavenly multitude from every tribe and language on earth.

Here, though, God showed his grace to one Moabite woman, including her in the blessings of Israel and the ancestry of the Messiah. It pulls back the curtain on God's purpose for the world - that the people of God would bless the world and bring them to worship the God of heaven.

Father, may I be an agent of your grace, leading the people of the world to proclaim your glory to the world. 

Consider God's Word:

Do you seek to share the blessings that God has so generously poured out in your life with the lost world that needs him so badly?