Josh King

Definitions and Stories, Redemption and Incarnation (Ruth 4)

“What I have found over the years is that the effort to define things, at the beginning, almost always reveals that what we thought we were dealing with is merely the tip of an iceberg.” —John Piper, Living in the Light

“A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story.” —Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners

“You see, that what we are doing today as we look out upon our current religious modes of speech, is assisting at the death bed of a word. It is sad to witness the death of any worthy thing, —even of a worthy word. And worthy words do die, like any other worthy thing—if we do not take good care of them. How many worthy words have already died under our very eyes, because we did not take care of them!” —B.B. Warfield, “Redeemer” and “Redemption”

“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.” —C.S. Lewis

I believe there are two central places in the Old Testament where “redemption” isn’t simply defined, but made real. It’s the difference between reading a definition and experiencing the reality. It’s one thing to read what baklava is, another to taste it. Stories can take us higher than definitions up to the very cusp of experience. The law’s definitions of redemption are true and nourishing, but there are two narratives that make redemption walk before us. The definitions themselves are enmeshed in one of the narratives and help make sense of the other. The stories are the exodus and Ruth.

Each story has unique elements. In the exodus, God redeems His people with a mighty arm, with wonders of judgment, and with the blood of the Passover lamb. He redeems them out of slavery to the promised land. In Ruth, Boaz, acting as a kinsman redeemer, restores land, a widow, and a name. These things were precious because of God’s redemption in the exodus. Every slap of the foot on the dirt of your inheritance given you by God was a sign of the covenant. Boaz, at cost to himself, in covenant love, redeems these things that had been lost.

Some are shy to say Boaz is a type of Christ. Even if you are cautious, do you think all those laws about the kinsman redeemer were simply utilitarian? Boaz is a type of Christ for the same reason Josiah is. Josiah was a king. Boaz is a kinsman redeemer. Jesus is the King. Jesus is the kinsman redeemer.

I think this is the unique element Ruth adds to our picture of redemption. The Redeemer must be a kinsman. He must be one of us. If there is to be redemption, there must be incarnation. Jesus became the Second Adam so as to create a new humanity in Him. He is our elder Brother, who paid the redemption price to reconcile us to the Father. Jesus took on flesh so that He might have representative union with His bride. Our debts became His. His wealth became ours. He took our sins. He gave us His righteousness. But to make this payment, He must take on flesh. To make this payment, He must also be God. Exodus tells us God redeems by blood. Ruth tells us that the blood will be that of the Son made flesh.

The Exegetical Systematician: Immoral but never Amoral

The law of God extends to all relations of life. This is so because we are never removed from the obligation to love and serve God. We are never amoral. We owe devotion to God in every phase and department of life. —John Murray, The Nature of Sin

Dumb, but not THAT Dumb

Naomi’s instructions to Ruth are as dark and mysterious as the night she sends her out into. “What?” is the proper Biblical response to this plan. Previously, Naomi showed concern for Ruth’s safety during the day, and now she sends her out into the darkness. Bathed. Anointed. To lie at the feet of a man enjoying the fruits of his labor, with a heart merry with food and drink. Do you remember the backstory of the Moabites (Genesis 19:30–37)?

While our hearts should sink with disappointment and be charged with anxiety as we read this narrative, and while sin should always be recognized as nonsensical, we shouldn’t be shocked. Don’t be so naive as to think that some sins only became common following the sexual revolution of the ’60s.

Beware of the person who wants to go back to some golden age. They’re dangerous. There are two reasons we shouldn’t long for some idealist lost nostalgia. First, no such golden era ever existed. Second, the saints are a people of the future, of the age to come, and of hope. There has never been a pure age. In colonial New England, bundling was a common practice wherein the suitor of a young lady was bundled up in a bag with his head sticking out to sleep next to his potential spouse in the home of her parents. Weddings sometimes necessarily followed. Jonathan Edwards condemned and preached against the practice.

We shake our heads at Naomi, but we readily send our daughters out into the night, dressed alluringly, with young men of far lesser character. We send them out, not to find a single suitor, but simply to have fun with a serial number of non-committals. “Modern American dating,” writes Voddie Baucham, “is no more than glorified divorce practice. Young people are learning how to give themselves away in exclusive, romantic, highly committed (at times sexual) relationships, only to break up and do it all over again.” We treat our daughters like prostitutes and authorize our sons to pursue the woman folly. We are not teaching our sons and daughters to tell the story of Christ and His bride. We’re letting them role play Satan’s whoredom.

Targetless dating is as dangerous as targetless shooting. If two young people want to spend great amounts of time together, alone, at night, and their aim isn’t covenant, what is it? Lust! Jesus makes it clear what it is when a man looks on a woman with desire outside of covenant. Yes, Naomi’s plan is dumb, but give her this, it isn’t 20th century dumb, and it certainly isn’t 21st century dumb.

No Adam, No Christ

We need salvation. How does salvation come to bear upon our need? Racial solidarity in Adam is the pattern according to which salvation is wrought and applied. By Adam sin-condemnation-death, by Christ righteousness-justification-life. A way of thinking that makes us aloof to solidarity with Adam makes us inhabile [not fit or qualified] to the solidarity by which salvation comes. Thus the relevance of the Adamic administration to what is most basic, on the one hand, and most necessary, on the other, in our human situation. —John Murray, The Adamic Administration

Reading Providence (Ruth 2)

“So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech.” —Ruth 2:3 (ESV)

Things happen, but things never just happen. Can you picture the wry smile of the author as he pens this line? Can you see the Spirit’s joy as he moves the human author as his pen? Can you see God’s smile as he etches these events in history?

It is not as though God does the big stuff like famine and harvest and leaves the dust to settle where it will. It isn’t as though God sits in the comfort of the air conditioned cab of his tractor, mindful of acres of work but oblivious to the ant mound he just plowed over. God isn’t so big that he passes over the details. He is so big no detail is passed over.

We must look at all reality through these eyes. This was indeed a divine moment—as every moment is. We mustn’t presume, but we must believe in providence. Presumption occurs when we think we can read providence and that it is a story about us. “It was a divine moment—a God-thing. I saved thousands of dollars.” Funny how me-centered your God-thing is?

John Flavel said that “the providence of God is like Hebrew words—it can be read only backwards.” The author wrote this story from the vantage point of the Davidic covenant. We read it from the vantage point of the new covenant. Don’t presume to be able to read the events of your life with the same kind of clarity.

Nonetheless, believe that there is a God ordering all events, some more significant, others less so, but all ordered for His purpose without one ant marching out of place. Providence isn’t meant to be understood but believed. Our confidence and joy in God’s sovereign goodness flow not from our understanding the details God’s plan, but knowing a God of all understanding has a plan to exalt the King of His people.

The Exegetical Systematician: Why Science Can’t Pay the Death Debt

Death is not the debt of nature; itis hte debt of what violated man’s nature, namely, sin. —John Murray, The Nature of Man

A Beat of Hope Interrupting a Dark Rhythm (Ruth 1)

“In the days when the judges ruled…”

These were grim days. The evils of the latter kings and the exile to come were but the harvesting of idolatrous seeds sown only a generation after the death of Joshua. Here is the dark rhythm of Judges:

“And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals (Judges 2:11).”

“And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD. They forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth (Judges 3:7).”

“And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD (Judges 3:12).”

“And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD after Ehud died (Judges 4:1).”

“The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD gave them into the hand of Midian seven years (Judges 6:1).”

“The people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines. And they forsook the LORD and did not serve him (Judges 10:6).”

“And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, so the LORD gave them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years (Judges 13:1).”

As you advance through the book, the minor key persists, but a motif of hope is added:

“In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 17:6).”

“In those days there was no king in Israel (Judges 18:1).”

“In those days, when there was no king in Israel… (Judges 19:1).”

“In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25).”

The hope is a king.

Set in the midst of these local military leaders, these flawed superheroes, you have the pastoral setting of Ruth. It is a welcome reprieve from the violence and evil of Judges and a hopeful transition to the era of kings.

In the midst of such sin, we see the beauty of God’s grace. Here, God’s providence takes the ordinary stuff of life and brings extraordinary mercy to his people. God’s sovereignty works in the regular hurts and glories of all His saints towards the same end we see in Ruth—the glory of His King. The King who will turn the hearts of His people back to God.

Work in the Theology You Work out (Philemon 17–25)

A Biblical scholar has written, “Few ideas in New Testament studies produce higher levels of agreement than the notion that Paul’s letter to Philemon has little or no theological substance.” All that statement says is that a lot of smart people are really quite dumb.

This book may not tease out the doctrine of redemption, but I dare you to find another one that works it in so well. Only if your Christianity is all brain and no heart or limb can you say such a thing. Only if you approach the Bible with an academic processor and not an ardent heart, could you be so blind.

Theology here is worked out further than many care to go. It is worked pass the brain, into the heart, and out the hands. This is theology well digested and carried through the body. This is what it looks like when the blood of Jesus gets into our bloodstream. Here you see the doctrines of union with Christ, adoption in Christ, the family of God, redemption, and forgiveness as they take root in the heart of man and produce the fruit of the Spirit. Philemon is applied theology.

Just as the aforementioned doctrines are light in a dark world, so too, the life they produce in man is contrary to this culture. The gospel is foolishness to this world all the way down and all the way out. Thus, Philemon just might have been the most shocking little letter in the ancient world. If we too so ingrain the truth of Christ and his redemption, it is still surely so today.

The Exegetical Systematician: Fragmentation

The topic of Christian education may be approached from the angle of an evil of which I fear too few are aware, but one that is the bane of education at all levels. It is the bane of fragmentation. By fragmentation I mean that the pupil is not provided with what imparts a sense of unity, of wholeness, of correlation. This may most properly be called the need for, and aim of, integration. There is ground for suspicion that this directing principle is frequently absent and, therefore, those responsible for education at all levels need to address themselves to this question for self-assessment.

Perhaps the most germane example of the thesis that integration is a paramount concern of education is the place that education occupies in the fostering and development of character. It is not to be questioned that culture, however highly cultivated, has failed of its chief end if it contributes to the promotion of evil rather than that of good. The more highly educated the boy or girl becomes, the more dangerous the education acquired becomes if it is brought into the service of wrongdoing. It is easy to take the position that the fostering and cultivating of good character is not the concern of the school, that this is the function of the home and of the church. Admittedly, the home and the church are basically responsible, and it is also obvious that when the home and the church neglect this culture or are even remiss in imparting it, then the school is faced with a well-nigh impossible task. But it is apparent how devastating to the best influences exerted by the home and church will be the influence of the school if it pretends to be neutral on moral issues, or if the teaching of the school is alien to the ethical principles inculcated by home or church or both. And as it concerns integration, how chaotic for the pupil if opposing ethical norms are fostered in the same school. We know only too well to what depraved human nature inclines.

Underlying the plea for integration and co-ordination in education is the need for a unified world-view, a common conception of reality. If there is basic divergence in reference to world-view there cannot possibly be integration in education. —John Murray, Christian Education

An Appealing Approach (Philemon 8–16)

In the first half of this little letter, all that we explicitly know is that Paul is appealing. We are not told what Paul is appealing for, only how and for whom he is appealing. Instead of speaking as one with authority, that is, instead of speaking as an apostle of the Lord Jesus, Paul appeals as a prisoner of Christ Jesus.

In line with this, though Paul would have liked to have kept Onesimus, he is sending him back to Philemon so that Philemon can act freely. Parents should long for that time when law-like commands transition to Proverbs-like appeals. Obedience is the glory of children, but there is a kind of obedience that exasperates. “Bring me my glass son.” “Ok, which hand should I use? Where should I touch the glass? Do you want me to fill it up? How full?” When a child is older you can say “mow the lawn,” and walk away with confidence. While they’re younger, you have to stick around to direct and answer questions. Likewise, shepherds may speak more gently to mature sheep. They make appeals so that the sheep may act freely. A sheep that can be led with the slightest touch is a joy to the shepherd.

Shepherds shouldn’t coddle the sheep into immaturity. Sheep shouldn’t cultivate a Toys-R-Us attitude wherein they play the day away unless commanded to do something. Maturity in Christ means that not everything needs to be spelled out and that appeals come as powerfully as commands.