October 29, 2000

Ruth 1-4

Ruth: How God Uses the Unlikely

  1. Introduction
    1. Illustration – Play I’ll Go the Distance from the Promise Keepers 2000 CD.
    2. We tend to be pretty inconsistent in following through on our commitments, and this includes our commitments to God. Today we’re going to take a look at how an unlikely person, Ruth, kept her commitments to God and to her mother-in-law at great personal risk. And how keeping those commitments had a significant impact on human history.
  1. Scripture Passage
    1. Let’s read together Ruth 1, beginning in verse 6 - When she heard in Moab that the LORD had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, Naomi and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. 7 With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah. 8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the LORD show kindness to you, as you have shown to your dead and to me. 9 May the LORD grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband." Then she kissed them and they wept aloud 10 and said to her, "We will go back with you to your people." 11 But Naomi said, "Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? 12 Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— 13 would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the LORD’s hand has gone out against me!" 14 At this they wept again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-by, but Ruth clung to her. 15 "Look," said Naomi, "your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her." 16 But Ruth replied, "Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
    2. Naomi was determined to spend the rest of her life in her own little pity party. God had another plan, and that plan involved bringing the heart of a foreigner to Himself and using that heart for His glory.
    3. Illustration
  1. The Risks
    1. The risks Ruth took in going with Naomi were significant. First of all, by leaving her home country and traveling to a strange land, she was leaving all of her family, all that was comfortable to her, for an uncertain future.
    2. Second, Ruth was in effect giving up any idea of future marriage. The Jews were a relatively ethnically pure culture – they rarely married women from other countries. So Ruth was giving up hope of future marriage to take care of fellow widow Naomi.
    3. Third, Ruth was giving up her native religion for a foreign God. Israel was the only country in the area to have only one God. The main god of Moab was Chemosh, whom the Lord called detestable. Why was Chemosh detestable? In places where he was worshipped, there was a statue of him with his arms held in front of him. A fire was built down in the statue. People would take their babies and set them on the cradling arms of the Chemosh statue. The living babies would then roll down the arms into the fire, becoming human sacrifices. So while Ruth’s national deity was no prize, she was still embracing a God she only knew through her husband and mother-in-law.
    4. Finally, Ruth took the risks associated with a long and dangerous journey. The trip required climbing down from the mountains to the east of the Dead Sea (from about 3500 feet in elevation) to the Dead Sea (to about 800 feet below sea level). Then, after crossing the Jordan River, they had to climb up into the Judean Hills (about 2000 feet in elevation) to Bethlehem. And, because Naomi and Ruth had very little money, it would be safe to assume that they probably walked the whole way. Only about fifty miles as the crow flies, but given the amount of climbing, in reality it was a whole lot more.
    5. All the risks Ruth took – leaving her comfort zone, giving up the chance of future marriage, abandoning the religion of her childhood, and taking a very dangerous journey – she took for the sake of Naomi. She was a model of selflessness. And God rewarded her for it.
    6. Illustration - Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton headed an Antarctic expedition attempting to reach the South Pole in 1908. They came closer than any before but, 97 miles short of the pole, had to turn back. In his diary Shackleton told of the time when their food supplies were exhausted save for one last ration of hardtack, a dried sort of biscuit, that was distributed to each man. Some of the men took snow, melted it, and made tea while consuming their biscuit. Others, however, stowed the hardtack in their food sacks, saving it for a last moment of hungry desperation. The fire was built up, and weary, exhausted men climbed into their sleeping bags to face a restless sleep, tossing and turning. Shackleton said that he was almost asleep when out of the corner of his eye, he noticed one of his most trusted men sitting up in his bag and looking about to see if anyone was watching. Shackleton’s heart sank within him as this man began to reach toward the food sack of the man next to him. Shackleton watched as the man opened the food sack and took his own hardtack and put it into the other man’s sack. Ruth knew what sacrificial giving truly is, and she put it into practice. But there must have been something within her that both caused her and enabled her to give the way she did.
  1. Character counts!
    1. Let’s look for a minute at chapter two. Ruth has been gleaning in the fields behind the harvesters. The fields happened to belong to Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s deceased husband. Boaz goes out to the field and sees Ruth, finds out who she is, and shows her kindness. We pick up the story in verse ten - At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She exclaimed, "Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?" 11 Boaz replied, "I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. 12 May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge." Ruth had acted honorably and sacrificially, and Boaz had heard about it.
    2. Let’s look at little further, in Ruth 3:11. Boaz tells her, All my fellow townsmen know that you are a woman of noble character. Because Ruth had sacrificed for her mother-in-law, and because Ruth had acted honorably, and because Ruth had obeyed her mother-in-law in all she told her to do, Ruth’s character was known to be above reproach.
    3. So what kind of character qualities does Ruth show us? Persistence, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, love, goodness, kindness, peace. Sounds a lot like the list of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23. But how could an Old Testament woman from Moab exhibit this kind of fruit? Let’s read again what she told Naomi in chapter 1 verse 16 – Your people will be my people and your God my God. Ruth was totally committed to God. She cultivated that relationship. Her life showed the effects of that relationship.
    4. Helen Keller once said, Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved. A U.S. Army captain once wrote, Integrity is like virginity – once you lose it, it’s gone for good. So what hope is there for us?
    5. That army captain failed to consider one important truth: the power of God through the sacrifice of His Son and the infilling of the Holy Spirit. Now granted, Jesus had not come during the time of Ruth. But the Spirit of God was a known entity Who had chosen to work in the lives of many godly men and women. Why? Because they followed God wholeheartedly and sought to do His will and not their own. That is the beginning of godly character – when God runs out lives and we don’t. When we filter our decisions through the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. When we choose to let God be God.
    6. Is it a stretch to say this about Ruth? I don’t think so. The evidence is all there in Ruth’s life. No selfishness. No pride. No ego. Just a sincere desire to follow God and to obey both Him and the other authority figures in her life.
    7. Where did character get Ruth? She wound up getting married to an honorable and very godly older man, having a baby, and enabling Naomi to go from calling herself "bitter" to calling herself "pleasant", which is what Naomi means. Oh, and one more thing: that baby was in the lineage of both David, the man after God’s own heart who we will learn about next week, and Jesus, the Savior of the world. Obedience to God can have lasting significance for generations to come!
  1. Conclusion
    1. Once again, we come to a moment of decision. We can either leave unchanged by the Word of God, or we can tell God that we, like Ruth, want to follow Him no matter where He leads. It’s up to each one of us how we will respond. We’re going to take a few minutes of quiet now to allow the Holy Spirit to continue speaking to each one of us and tell us what He wants us to do. And to decide if we are going to follow Him.
    2. With every head bowed and every eye closed, if God has been telling you that you need to make a change for His sake, please come forward and kneel and pray. After a time, I’ll close us in prayer, but please don’t let this opportunity to follow God more closely than you ever have to pass you by.
    3. Let’s pray.
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