Ruth

AbuDabi doo

A few years ago,Jenn Miscarriage… It was a story of the power of comunity

This morning, we are going to step into the life of a woman named Ruth…

Over the last two weeks we have started this series I have called, Ordinary People, Extraordinary God, and we are looking at the lives of seemingly ordinary people and how their faithfulness to the calling God has placed upon their lives made a huge Kingdom impact. The first week of the series we looked at the Hebrew midwives and their defiance of Pharaoh and how it ultimately led to saving the life of Moses and the amazing things that did for the people of God, last week we look at the life of Obadiah and how he worked in the house of the King. Being first in charge of the home behind King Ahab and his wife Jezebel, he did amazing things to save the lives of the prophets of God and continued to be faithful, and eventually led Elijah back to King Ahab where they had this standoff on the top of Mt. Carmel between himself and the prophets of Baal and Ashera, proving how great and mighty God is.

As we look at the life of Ruth we will probably run lightly through the entire book, don’t worry, I won’t read the whole thing, and look at the life of a woman who defied cultural norms to embrace her faith and community.

The book of Ruth starts with the line, “in the days when the judges ruled,” and I just want to make you aware of what we know about this time period, the book of Judges 21:25 says this about that time

Judges 21:25 ESV

25 In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

I don’t know about you but I can easily see some correlation with those times and the times we are living in today. Some of the phrases we hear in media and the general public is teaching our children sound like this, “To thine own self be true,” “Find your own truth,” “follow your heart,” “do what makes you happy,” “live your best life” and we are in essence teaching people to do what they want nothing else matters, just make sure you are happy in life and everything will be perfectly fine.

I say all of this to say many commentators point out the writer of Ruth has put this so you can see the darkness of the backdrop in which the life of Ruth is about to be lived. The opening chapter of the story is a somber chapter, Noomi, I read this the way my Hebrew professor explicitly taught we have always said it the incorrect way, and her name is actually No omi. Anyhow, Naomis husband and sons both die and Naomi tells both of her daughter in laws to leave her and return to her own people but Ruth will not go, this is where the most famous line of the entirety of the Book of Ruth comes, as Ruth says Ruth 1:16-18

Ruth 1:16–18 ESV

16 But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” 18 And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.

And this is the moment everything changed for Ruth, really all the faithfulness in the small things begun with this one decision for Ruth, to leave all of her old life behind and join the community of faith with Naomi and her people. Lets not get confused, this is exactly the way that Jesus tells us we are supposed to live in our lives for him, Matthew 19:29

Matthew 19:29 ESV

29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.

Let me be clear, this isn’t saying we have to do this, we have to leave all of our family and only concentrate on Jesus, but what it is saying is we should allow Jesus to be our number one priority over everything else, that the family of God is higher and better than anything else we could imagine. This is exactly what Ruth did, she said my old life isn’t important, what is important is God and the life you are leading me to, and she invested her whole life in it.

The question, is are we living our lives this way, one of the scariest things for me as a pastor is to think there are people who sit in the pew every Sunday out of requirement but have no real relationship with Jesus because that was my story. Most of my early years I would have told you I was a Christian, we went to church a couple of times a year, I had a bunch of VBS Bible verses memorized, and I “loved” Jesus, but it wasn’t until I had a real encounter with him that I realized I could have this real relationship with the person of Jesus and that changed everything for me. And as we press into Jesus are we making his people our people/

Are we living our lives in such a way where we are investing all we have in the Kingdom of God, and the place he has given you to serve. When we come into this building do we say the same thing as Ruth, “where you go, I will go, where you lodge, I will lodge, your people will be my people, and your God will be my God,” and no, I am not telling you we should build a combine and all live together, but is this your family, are these the people that you think about, are these the people who you heart breaks for, celebrates with, and loves.

Jenn miscarriage story??

When someone in our family here gets a new job are you excited? When they lose a loved one does your heart break? I know we can view them as family and say they are that, but are our hearts really moved WITH them?

So look at what happens in the life of Ruth. The end of Chapter 1 tells us Ruth returned with Naomi to Bethlehem at the beginning of a barely harvest, this is foreshadowing at best. So Ruth goes to the field and her idea is to pickup what the reapers have left behind or dropped, she wants to take what is left to be able to take home to Naomi for them to be able to have food to eat. While she is there Boaz, who owns the land in which she is sitting sees her, and he is part of the family of Naomi’s late husband. When he sees Ruth he finds favor on her and look what he says

Ruth 2:8 ESV

8 Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Now, listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women.

He starts by calling her daughter, a term of endearment offering her protection, and says don’t go anywhere else, stay close to my women don’t go to some other field. And this may be harder for us to understand because for the most part when we think about farming in our culture we think about fields that are clearly marked, and have fences to show us where we can and cannot go. This is not how farming was then, people farmed right next to each other without anything clearly marking the boundaries, and Boaz is offering Ruth some identity here by sticking close to his women. She will be a part of something and he is saying they will keep her safe to follow them and they will keep her where she needs to be.

The question in our society would be why is he being so nice to her? WE see that answer in verse 11 Ruth 2:11

Ruth 2:11 ESV

11 But Boaz answered her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before.

Can I just stop here for a moment and tell you this is an amazing lesson for us on community and the way we are to build community with new people who come to us? I think so often when we have new christians or people come into the flock we can be afraid to bring them into the fold of what we have going on, because we’ve been together for so long, what happens if this new person disrupts what is going on. But Boaz here shows us the way, he is basically saying, hey you left all your people behind and you declared your allegiance to my people, and now you are one of us so I want to take care of you, I want you to feel like you are a part of what is going on, I want to offer you protection - I want you to have a better life.

I think this is how we should treat each other here, this is our objective for how to handle all of the people who have declared their allegiance to be a part of our family, we say, “hey, I am going to take care of you we have a place for you, stay close to us we won’t let you get to a place where you can get yourself in danger.” When we talk about vision is to Connect. Grow. Serve. connecting, this is part of it, we connect beside them, and then we offer to help them grow together. Its a beautiful part of community when we can walk alongside one another in this way.

Along the way through Ruth, we find her following Naomi’s instructions to pretty much entice Boaz into marrying her, but Ruth takes it a step father and gets boaz to pledge back the land to Naomi and you can see the care here between the two women.

As you follow along you will see Boaz purchasing the land of Elimelich back for Naomi and Marrying Ruth. Soon after they have a son named Obed, who is the Father of Jesse, who then begets David, and we see Ruth in the direct line of Jesus. And you think what does this have to do with me? And what we can see from all of this is Ruth left her old life behind to follow God and be a part of a deeper community and from it we see a direct lineage to Jesus through her faithfulness to the community God had given her.

You may think, that’s great pastor, what do you want me to do with this information? What is it I am supposed to learn from this, because I am sure you are not trying to tell me I am going to be faithful and be a part of the lineage of Jesus and to that you are absolutely correct. However, just think about it, what happens if we are all as faithful to our community where God has placed us as Ruth was, where we all say your people are my people and your God is my God.

What if we jumped in and took that seriously and filled in the places God wanted us to go and we didn’t see it is a burden but a blessing. Listen there are so many places in the church where we can Connect. Grow. Serve and really all of those things go together with one another and what we see happening here in this story, and the results from that could be immeasurably greater than we could ever imagine.

Here is what I know, you could be a blessing to children and connect to the church by leading childrens church a couple of Sundays a month. You get to go and teach the children about a God that loves them and what he did for them and how he could change their lives. And I know some of you will say you can’t teach because you don’t have enough knowledge to teach, but ask any of the teachers in the room, one of the greatest ways to learn is to teach, because it forces you to learn the material. And when you sign up you will have material to use to teach, but this means you have to take the material and learn it so you can teach it and not just read it and you will be blessed by it. Not only that, think about the difference it will make in our community as our kids see and know a group of people love them on Sundays and help them to learn and have fun. Imagine what they will talk about throughout the week, imagine the little disciples that you will be sending into school systems to share about what is going on here.

trunk or treat sign up tons of areas

Really we could all be like Ruth, seemingly small and not thinking we are doing anything huge but being faithful to the position and the family that God has given us and making a huge difference in the world and community around us.

As you leave this morning, let me leave you with one question:

Is this church just a place you go… or is it a community you belong to?

Are these people your people?

Is our God your God?

And when we go where He leads, will you go with us?

This morning if you say that would you be willing to come and stand at the alter together as a sign of our community against the evil powers and principalities of this world