The Lord's Choice

Ruth

God quietly turned the ancient world on its head while everyone was looking, and they didn't seem to notice. No ancient odds-maker could have predicted the lineage that God would use to get from Abraham to the Messiah's ancestor. To summarize:

• Generation 1: Choose second son (Isaac) over first son (Ishmael) who was born of handmaid
• Generation 2: Second son (Jacob) cheated first son (Esau) whom God hated
• Generation 3: Skipped to the fourth son (Judah)
• Generation 4: Fourth son again, but this time the son was conceived by his daughter-in-law under unusual circumstances when Judah thought Tamar was a prostitute.
• Generations 5-10 are known, but details are not available in scripture
• Generation 11: Boaz marries Ruth (a forbidden Moabitess) and Obed is born.
• Generation 12: Obed is the Father of Jesse
• Generation 13: God chooses the eighth son, David to be king and ancestor of the Messiah

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Our thoughts don't even come close. Thankfully, God is running the world.