Moving to Moab: Four Observations From Ruth

By Matt Watson

If Judges is a post-apocalyptic survival movie, Ruth is a romantic drama … set in a post-apocalyptic survival movie. Think The Book of Eli meets Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Like all good dramas, it opens up with hardship; the people of God in Bethlehem are experiencing a famine. Greta Thunberg wasn’t there to tell them it was global warming, so the author implies it’s divine judgment for Israel’s apostasy.

Elimelech, seeking fertile opportunities to provide for his family, leaves the Promised Land and moves them to Moab (Ruth 1:1-2). While on the surface it seems like a black-and-white, pragmatic decision by a man trying to find food to feed his wife and sons, in reality, it was a spiritually bankrupt decision.

First, God had called his people to the Promised Land of Israel, where they fought and died to possess it. This fulfilled his promise to them, so to leave it was akin to spitting in God’s face for his kindness. Second, Moab the person was incestuously conceived by Lot and one of Lot’s daughters after a drunken night (Gen 19), and the nation was inherently “unclean” for Israel. Last, Moab was filled with pagan worship of a demon god called Chemosh marked by human sacrifice. Scary place, but the restaurants were good. Not to oversell it, but an Israelite moving to Moab is akin to a Texan moving to California. It’s unnatural.

But what we see through the Bible is that what man intends for evil (or good), God intends for good (Gen 50:20; Prov 16:9; Rom 8:28). As the saying goes, God can draw straight lines with crooked sticks. So it was for Elimelech’s family. Elimelech sinned by moving his family away from God’s chosen people, and his sons sinned by marrying pagan Moabite women. But God worked it out, and a young woman was converted because of it and became an ancestor of Jesus.

Here are four observations from Ruth chapter 1 that warn us from being short-sighted spiritually and remind us of God’s goodness and sovereignty.

What Does God Say?

For people today, moving somewhere else is generally adiaphora, something that is neither condemned nor approved. It’s morally indifferent. One can relocate for jobs, to be closer to family, or to get away from tyrannical state and local governments. We can do that because we aren’t part of the ancient nation of Israel and we don’t live in the Promised Land. While there are exceptions to that rule, it’s generally permissible.

This is not true for ancient Israel. Taken in context with the book of Judges, the famine Elimelech’s family and others were experiencing was a chastisement from God to encourage the people to repent, not an invitation to sneak snacks from the pantry because they were sent to their room hungry. Rather than repent and reform, Elimelech chose to take his family to where God said don’t go. That this was done with good intentions doesn’t negate that our yes to things must be a yes to God, and our no to things need to be a yes to God. Your current circumstances cannot dictate your future reality.

God’s People Are Not Lone Survivors

God’s people are not doing Lone Survivor. We are meant to be in community with each other. Note how Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell became the lone survivor after everyone else was killed. He was meant to be in a squad, not to be a refugee, and I guarantee you he’d rather have every member who died in his element back than be famous for surviving.

That’s a primary way the devil gets you, by isolating and harassing you. There weren’t churches in Moab, and Elimelech wasn’t a long-term missionary planting churches with unreached people groups. His move isolated his family from God, which was dangerous and neglectful.

That’s one of the exceptions to the rule above. If you move, you better be reconnoitering and making decisions based off of where God’s people are. Does that town have any good churches? Are there faithful, Bible-believing Christians nearby? How can you follow Jesus, fight sin, and fulfill the mission there? If you aren’t thinking about these questions and only thinking about the job opportunities then that indicates who your god is.

Beware of Syncretism

What’s so bad about Moab? Demon worship and murdering children stand out. God commanded his people repeatedly to not intermarry with the pagan nations lest, “they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods” (Deut 7:1-5). Israel already showed a tendency towards syncretism, having been culpable in worshiping the false gods of Egypt while enslaved there and making a statue of a calf to represent God, just to name a few examples.

Yahweh is the one true God, not Baal, not Chemosh, not Allah, not you, not your job, not your pet, not your political ideology. The blending of religions and the godly with the demonic wasn’t just a danger for God’s people then but for God’s people now. If you start making decisions apart from the counsel of God and isolating yourself and your family, don’t be surprised when something else steps into that vacuum.

That’s the issue with secularism. A secular state has removed God from his throne by pretending he isn’t there and therefore has no higher authority than itself. Whereas, Christians know there is no higher authority than God. It’s easy to point to the syncretism of godless progressivism. Their churches wave rainbow flags and rainbow-colored communion bread. They elevate consent to be the highest form of moral law but don’t allow babies to consent before being murdered and allow for children to be groomed by sexual deviants. The list of possible examples is extensive.

But secular conservatives are just as guilty of committing syncretism. Christians have confused Christian Nationalism with civic religion. Their churches have American flags on stage and sing the national anthem during worship on the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July. Conservatism without Christ is just as broken as the left’s ideology. At the Republican National Convention, a benediction was given by a Sikh woman, praying "Dear Waheguru, our one true God.” That’s not only blasphemy, that’s demonic and ought to be rebuked by every Christian on the right. It illustrates how sin is inclusive and doesn’t discriminate based on all the things listed in Title IX.

So beware of syncretism and all its forms, which try to confuse and blur the lines between God and other things, whether that be Moab’s Chemosh, the Sikhs' Waheguru, or the State.

There is More Grace in Jesus Than Sin in Us

But at last, here is the good news. God works for good and makes his plans happen despite our stupid mistakes. There is more grace in Jesus than sin in us. Elimelech moving to Moab instead of repenting and exhorting the people to repent was sin. His sons intermarrying with pagan women who didn’t worship God was sin. But God is so good he can work through that for his glory. By bringing the family to Moab, and intermarrying, Ruth had the opportunity to reject her false god for the God of the Bible.

We should not take this to mean that since God will work it out for good we can do whatever we want.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
Romans 6:1-3 ESV

Ruth’s conversion was an act of God, not the result of Elimelech’s poor decisions. Ruth is simply participating in the greatest pagan tradition: converting to worshiping the one true God.

Ruth forsaking her false gods for the one true God is such good news for every Christian praying for their friends and family who don’t love Jesus. So many cultural and societal barriers had to be crossed or broken down for it to happen. I’m guilty of doubting it can happen until I remember it happened for me. Paul, that church-hating, Christian-murdering zealot, converted after encountering our Lord on the road to Damascus. It would be like if Osama Bin Laden had converted in his compound in Pakistan. Likewise, Ruth converting from worshiping Chemosh to worshiping Yahweh would be like if my half-brother’s ex-wife, who divorced him after mutilating her body to become a man and practices witchcraft for LGBTQ+ people, converted and started worshiping Jesus. It seems impossible, but it’s not, and I pray it happens.

These observations are summarized by these four imperatives: Make decisions based on what God says, not what pragmatism says, stay in Christian community, beware of syncretism, and pray for your pagan friends, family, and neighbors. This is one way we fulfill our chief end to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

This article was originally published by Matthew Watson with Awake! Put on strength!, and is used under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.