Ruth: You and me, me and you
May 13, 2012
Ruth 1:1-17
I started the sermon with this video which I made and can be found on youtube ~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4_cBurqeqg
Most people love a good comeback? They love when the underdog wins? In life, it does our hearts good to see someone get back up after they’ve been knocked down by life. It’s one of the things we really appreciate about some true movies. When we watch a movie like Blindside, it means more because we know it’s a true story of victory over defeat, triumph over despair.
As we move into today’s message, it’s my custom to preach about a woman from the Bible we can all learn from. Today we’re looking at a story which is about coming back from defeat. It’s a story about an underdog. It’s the story of the book of Ruth.
Let’s take a look at the story as I read from chapter 1 ~
1-2 In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and Elimelech, a man from Bethlehem, together with his wife, Naomi and two sons, Mahlon and Kilion went to live for a while in the country of Moab.
3 Now Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her 2 sons.
4 They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
6 When she heard 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 to Bethlehem.
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.
What amazing words from Ruth. There’s been a lot of trauma in Naomi’s life. The famine in Bethlehem led her and Elimelech to move to Moab. Moab is modern day Jordan, about 100 miles from Bethlehem. Then Elimelech dies, and Naomi is alone with her son’s.
They married Moabite women; and all seemed to be going well, but both of her son’s die. Now Naomi is in the worst of all situations, she’s a widow and both of her sons have died. She’s a woman without a man. She hears things are better in Bethlehem, so she and her daughters-in-law begin their journey home. But Naomi must have realized this wasn’t the best thing to do for the girls and tells them go back to their people, use your connections, get married and have families. Naomi changes her name to Mara, which means bitter, because life had become bitter.
As we look at the story from Ruth’s vantage, her husband, and a brother-in-law have died and her mother-in-law is grief stricken and depressed from what’s occurred.
Naomi takes a huge step, a risk really, to return to the people and the faith she knew. Even though life had treated her cruelly, she decides to return home, leaving new friends to return to her old friends.
The story of Ruth contains some powerful principles for us when we need to start over, even when we don’t want to ~
Firstly, find someone else who is hurting and be a friend to them.
The world is constantly telling us to take care of number 1, because if you don’t nobody else will. The problem with that philosophy is that it never provides spiritual fulfillment. It’s ironic; what your heart desires won’t come from looking only after yourself; it comes from being in a community with others. Jesus commands us to love our neighbor and to be in community with one another.
Notice that Ruth had the desire to stay with her mother-in-law. Naomi must have treated her like she was a real daughter. There must have been quite a bond of love between them for Ruth to go back with Naomi to a land she didn’t know anything about. Ruth made a commitment to Naomi. She promised to be with her from that day until the day they died. Nothing would separate them, nothing. That’s a powerful statement from Ruth. You and me; me and you!
That’s remarkable! It’s amazing! You can’t make a commitment like that thinking only about yourself. Godly commitments are made when we’re also thinking about the welfare and needs of others! That’s why I believe Ruth was motivated to go with Naomi. She knew Naomi had lost so much that she needed a friend, and Ruth needed a friend. They needed one another.
You see, we usually get a bad case of the blues when we’re focused on ourselves. Nothing and nobody else has it worse. Then we open our eyes and realize we were all wrong. When we focus on meeting the needs of others, we walk away from that experience feeling really blessed. You see, God made us with a desire to help others, but we have to get over ourselves to get there.
In fact, God wants us to be like Him — always giving, being selfless and unselfish as we minister to the needs of others. Joy comes from giving, not in receiving.
When you’re struggling, and you really don’t want to start over, get involved in something bigger than yourself. Take one step at a time, don’t race in, just walk in, or maybe even crawl in and become part of a community.
A second thing we can do is take some risks, doing it for God!
Some of us are greater risk takers than others but even a turtle has to stick its neck out in order to move. Since we’re forced to take some calculated risks (like getting in our cars and driving to church today) why not take some for the One who has done so much for us?
I believe Ruth saw that Naomi’s faith was real. She would have told Ruth about God and the Hebrew teaching. Ruth must have been able to sense something was different about the God the Hebrews worshiped. The heathen gods of Moab weren’t doing Ruth any good. But it was a risk based on what she had learned and experienced. Even in loss. Being involved with her husband’s family and hearing them talk about their God must have moved her heart. She wanted to know more.
Her sister-in-law was different. She went back to her old gods. Maybe she was afraid to change. We all know resistance to change holds a lot of people back in life, especially in our relationship with Christ. Some people would rather stay with what they know, even if they know in their heart and mind it’s wrong. It’s safer, there’s no risk involved.
Ruth risked following Naomi back to the land of her God and it paid great dividends!
In his book, Seizing Your Divine Moment, Erwin McManus wrote ~
“Maybe you’ve been afraid to get in the game because you’re afraid to lose. In the kingdom of God, victory comes the instant you refuse to simply watch life happen and you get in the game. For too many of us, because we fear failure, we are afraid to try. Sometimes we live vicariously through the lives of others. Instead of being life voyagers we become life voyeurs. I think it’s one of the reasons we entertain ourselves to death. We find our romance in You’ve Got Mail, and we fight our battles through William Wallace and Maximus Aurelius. And there might as well be a glass screen between real life and us because the closest we get to fulfilling our life’s dreams is watching them. We’ve accepted our place, our lot in life, as sideliners” (Seizing Your Divine Moment, 46).
True heroes of the faith take initiative and do the right thing even when it involves great risk.
And it’s the ending to the story of Ruth which brings us to our 3rd point ~ we should expect great things from God, because of the risks we take for Him!
Ruth became the great-grandmother to King David! WHAT!! She was a Moabite, not a Jew??
How did this happen? Someone in Ruth’s deceased husband’s family had to buy back or "redeem" the right to own the land in Israel that would have belonged to him. That "kinsman redeemer," as they called him, was Boaz. This wasn’t just a business deal - it’s a love story! Boaz didn’t want the land, he wanted Ruth. He had fallen in love with her as he witnessed her commitment to her mother-in-law.
So he went through the proper channels and became her husband. God blessed them with a child – named Obed, who was the father of Jesse, and Jesse was the father of David. And David became the greatest king of Israel, “a man after God’s own heart.”
All of this means that a Moabite, an outsider, a pagan woman named Ruth became a parent in the lineage of Christ. Who would ever have dreamed this could or would happen? GOD DID!
God knew you before you were born. He knows what’s going on in your life right now! You can expect great things from Him if you’ll take risks for Him like Ruth did. You can expect great things from Him.
And you know what else? He made a way to be our “kinsman redeemer!” He sent His only Son to die on the cross in our place. Jesus purchased heaven for us on that cross. We can’t make it to heaven on our own. We’re sinners. Outsiders like Ruth. But God is rich in His grace. He loves to bless people. If you’ll only give Him a chance there is no end to the great things He can do!
So, what’s it going to take to get you to take more risks for God? When was the last time you can remember stepping out on faith to do the seemingly impossible? Are you really living life to the fullest? Are you taking the difficulties in stride?
I think we do well to reflect on the response of Nadine Stair of Louisville, Kentucky, who was 85 years old when she was asked what she would do if she had her life to live over again. Listen to what she said,
“‘I’d make more mistakes next time. I’d relax. I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I’d have fewer imaginary ones.
“‘You see, I’m one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I’ve had my moments, and if I had to do it over again, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I’ve been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, and a raincoat. If I had to do it over again, I would travel lighter than I have.
“‘If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies’” (Bits & Pieces, January 5, 1995, 13-14).
Let me close with this prayer from Sir Frances Drake ~
“Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrive safely because we have sailed too close to the shore.
“Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the waters of life; having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity; and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim.
“Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love” (Sir Frances Drake Quoted in OC Missionary Prayer Letter of Jeanie Curryer, September, 1997).
