Reading
SAA Notes
This chapter reveals the path that pride and arrogance lead us on, and the woe that they bring. The final verse brings just a ray of hope and light. God’s grace is the ray of light. Moab’s redemption is beyond Moab’s power to achieve – they are destroyed. It is not beyond God’s! Hallelujah!
SJA Notes
* Dear Lord God, thank You for today! Please show us what You want for us to know from Your word today.
“Moab shall be destroyed and be no longer a people, because he magnified himself against the LORD.”
This is a long and winding passage, it can be hard to read and wrap our heads around.
It is a passage telling of the terrible judgement upon the people of Moab.
The Moabites had their origins through Lot (Abraham’s nephew).
They were mostly enemies of God and His people.
We read in Deuteronomy chapter 23,
“No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD.”
The Moabites were a thorn in the side of Israel generation after generation. They were who hired Balaam the prophet to curse Israel as they travelled toward the promised land (out of Egypt).
And yet.
God’s word, as it does so often, gives us truths that often we have to hold in tension with one another, waiting for more wisdom to grow our understanding.
Ruth (the person that has the book in the Old Testament of the same name) was from Moab. Ruth, who forsook all else to bind to her mother-in-law Naomi, which included a growing faith in the God of Israel, the LORD.
And who was Ruth?
Importantly, Ruth the Moabitess, was the great-grandmother of King David!
David, who had a heart after God’s own heart, who saw angels and wrestled bears and killed a giant.
And even more foundationally important, Ruth is part of the lineage that brings forth Great King David’s GREATER SON – Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus the Christ!
This passage is judgement on Moab.
But this passage is not without hope.
The same hope we all have, throughout all of time, across all of the world – We need Jesus.
We should never forget or make light of the JUDGEMENT that our King Jesus suffered in our place, so that we could have a real and present hope in what is to come.
* Father God,
Thank You for Your mercies that come to us, even in the midst of judgement.
Thank You for Jesus, the Promised One, great David’s greater Son.
Thank You for Your JUST and HOLY character Lord, without variation or change, that we can trust in You.
Amen.