Part 2.
In Ruth we get a touching picture of what a remnant should be. Her history lay in the dark day of Israel’s ruin in the time when the judges ruled; Israel had proved totally faithless to their calling; and the Philistines devastated the land of Jehovah; and every man did what seemed right in his own eyes (Judg. 21:2525In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes. (Judges 21:25)). The first associations of the poor Moabitess with Naomi were in the day of her prosperity and gladness of heart. But Naomi’s dark day came; the widow of Israel—a widow in heart and fact—Naomi (now become “Mara” — “bitterness”), set out to return to the land of Israel. Joys and relationships which once she knew had gone forever. Ruth, a widow in heart, too, as in circumstances, clave to Naomi. She had known her in her prosperous day, and in the day of her sorrow she made the widow of Israel the object of all her care. She could not restore the past to her—it was gone forever. But she devotes herself in the present to this widowed heart, and follows her, thoughtless of self, to the land of Israel.
“Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried!” But the day of reward and recognition came. To her question to Boaz,
“Why have I found grace in thine eyes that thou shouldst take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger?” The answer was,
“It hath fully been showed me all that thou halt done unto thy mother-in-law.” This was the ground of her reward.
If we have glimpsed what the Church was in the day of her Pentecostal blessedness, and discovered that the divine principles then enunciated have never changed, shall not our language be in the dark day of her shame and ruin,
“Whither Thou goest, I will go, and where Thou lodgest I will lodge: Thy people shall be my people,” etc.
If the poverty of our services are not worthy of recognition when the day of rewards shall come, we shall have the satisfaction and joy to know that we bestowed all (shall we say?) our attention and care on that for which Christ gave Himself, that He might sanctify and cleanse her, and present to Himself a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing (Eph. 5:25-2725Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:25‑27)).
I turn to a darker day of Israel’s history. The ten tribes had long since gone away captive to Assyria. Judah had filled up the measure of the long-suffering of Jehovah, and had gone captive to Babylon. Jerusalem was solitary, devastated, and in ruins, and the land was wasted and without an inhabitant. Hardly a trace that it was Jehovah’s now remained; but that it was keeping its Sabbaths—not from the faith of the people, but because upon the people had been written “Lo-ammi” (Hos. 1).
Far away in the land of the Chaldean, a faithful heart might sigh, and open his window and pray—straining his eyes towards the long-loved city; and confess as his own, the sins of his people (Dan. 6:99Wherefore king Darius signed the writing and the decree. (Daniel 6:9)). By the rivers of Babylon, too, those who could sigh and cry for the abominations which were wrought in the house of God at Jerusalem, could hang up their harps on the willows, and refuse to sing the songs of Zion in a strange land. How could He be worshiped unless in that spot where He had chosen? There was but one spot where they could strike their harps to His praise!
“By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down; yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For they that carried us away captive required of us a song: and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” (Psa. 137).
In the book of Ezra we find a remnant of the people extricating themselves from Babylon, and returning to a divine position before the Lord. Care, lest any but those whose title was distinctly of Israel, should be mixed up with the work of the Lord, marked these faithful men. They did not disown them as of Israel, but they could not recognize their claim. God might discern them as His; they could not pretend to divine discernment when they had not the Urim and the Thummim (see Ezra 2:59-6359And these were they which went up from Tel-melah, Tel-harsa, Cherub, Addan, and Immer: but they could not show their father's house, and their seed, whether they were of Israel: 60The children of Delaiah, the children of Tobiah, the children of Nekoda, six hundred fifty and two. 61And of the children of the priests: the children of Habaiah, the children of Koz, the children of Barzillai; which took a wife of the daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite, and was called after their name: 62These sought their register among those that were reckoned by genealogy, but they were not found: therefore were they, as polluted, put from the priesthood. 63And the Tirshatha said unto them, that they should not eat of the most holy things, till there stood up a priest with Urim and with Thummim. (Ezra 2:59‑63)). In this we have an instructive lesson for our own day.
When the Church was in divine order, each took his place, like the priesthood of Israel, without question as to title to be there. But meanwhile Israel had become mixed up in the corruptions of Babylon, and disorder reigned supreme. When Paul contemplates the total disorder of things in the Church which never could be remedied (2 Tim.), he instructs the remnant who had departed from iniquity, and purged themselves from the vessels of dishonor in the Babylon of the professing Church (ch. 2:19-22), to “follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” They did not deny that those who were still in the corruption were children of God, but they had not extricated themselves from the evils there; and, if knowing the corruption, they had not departed from it, the conscience was defiled and the heart impure. The remnant are careful then, only to walk with those who call on the Lord “out of a pure heart.”
The seventh month came (Ezra 3), the moment for the gathering of the people (the Feast of Trumpets). The remnant gathered themselves “as one man” in the only divine city in the world—the only platform where they could take down, so to say, those long silent, unstrung harps from the willows, and worship Israel’s God! They might pray with the window open toward Jerusalem, and confess their sins in Babylon, but they could not worship Him there.
It was impossible to reconstruct the order of things as they had been in Solomon’s day—that day had passed away forever! The ark was gone—where, none could tell. The glory had departed from Israel—and the sword was in the Gentile hand. The Urim and Thummim was among the things of the past. Yet, outside all these things, which belonged to a day of order, the Lord had not forgotten those faithful men, and His Word and Spirit remained. “They built an altar to the God of Israel” —though all Israel was not there. They did not pretend to be “Israel” —yet they could contemplate all Israel, and in Israel’s city worship Israel’s God, in the way that Israel’s God had written. As a remnant who has escaped, they occupied this divine platform, and sang the praise of Jehovah,
“O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever.”
(To Be Continued)