1.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from
God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The
message from God’s Word today is taken from Ruth 1:1-18 (READ TEXT). It’s entitled, “Love & Outreach,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
“In
those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own
eyes” (Judges 21:25). So says the last verse in the Book of
Judges, the last verse in an English Bible before our text in Ruth 1. The last few words of this verse sound as if
they could have been ripped from the headlines in yesterday’s newspaper: “everyone did what was right in his own
eyes.” To be sure, in every generation
“the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21), but
at some times in history it strikes us as really obvious that people are doing
right in their own eyes on a large scale. The period of the judges was one such
time. Ours is another. People have better technology and more sophistication in
their pursuits, today. But, a great deal of energy these days goes into
providing excuses for people to do what they jolly well please— chaos and
disorder results. We see it in our day, and we can only imagine how it might
have been during the period of the judges.
3.
Under such conditions, how was the
faith handed on? How could it be passed down to a new generation, and how were
new folks brought into the circle of God’s people? The Book of Ruth gives an
answer to these questions. We do well to examine it closely. The Christian
faith also has to be handed down today, under circumstances where lots of
people are doing what is right in their own eyes.
4.
The Book of Ruth begins with a small
Israelite family enduring troubles. They had to leave their home in Bethlehem
because of a famine. Elimelech, his wife, Naomi, and their two sons moved to
Moab in search of food. On top of the chaos that prevailed at the time of the
judges, this famine must have been terrible. It lasted ten years. While the
family resided in Moab, they sustained another blow. Elimelech, the husband and
father, died. Now Naomi was left to finish raising her two young sons in the
fear of the Lord God even though they all remained strangers in Moab. In fact, Moab was an unlikely place for any
Israelite to go and live. Years before, Moab had done more than any other
nation to try to disrupt Israel’s “final approach”
to the Promised Land of Canaan after the forty years of wandering in the
wilderness. The king of Moab, Balak, hired the sorcerer Balaam to curse Israel.
While Balaam proved unsuccessful in that attempt, he advised the Moabite women
to tempt the men of Israel sexually, and the women didn’t fail in their attempt
(Numbers 25:1–2; 31:16). As a result, the Lord insisted that no Moabite male
could “enter the assembly of the LORD,”
and this prohibition held “even to the
tenth generation” (Deuteronomy 23:3). However, a foreign woman who married
an Israelite would be seen as Israelite. (See Numbers 31:18; Deuteronomy
21:11.)
5.
When Naomi’s two boys grew to
marriageable age they married Moabite girls Orpah and Ruth. Then these two
young men died. Naomi was now left without a husband and without her sons. In
those days, before Social Security
and various forms of insurance, this was devastating news for a woman. About that time, word reached Naomi in Moab
that the famine was over. At first, both of her daughters-in-law wanted to
accompany her as she returned to Bethlehem. But, Naomi bore in mind the best
interests of these young women. She told them both that they would fare far
better if they went back to their own family homes and found new husbands.
6.
Naomi convinced Orpah, but not Ruth.
The text says that Ruth kept clinging to Naomi. She told her mother-in-law, “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” (Ruth 1:16). When
Ruth said these words, faith in the Lord had already been passed on to her.
What a confession of faith she made! The
more Ruth compared the God of Israel with the so-called Moabite gods of whom
she had heard as a girl, the more she must have seen the difference. The
worship of the chief Moabite god Chemosh commanded human sacrifice, child
sacrifice. (See 2 Kings 3:27.)
7.
By contrast, the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob was the loving God of all who would give his own Son for the
sin of the world. Even though all the details of Christ’s work were not yet
known, already at Ruth’s time it would have known that the Lord would put
himself on the line as the Seed of the woman whose heel the devil would bruise.
When the Lord stopped Abraham from killing his son Isaac, in the only instance
where the Lord had even come close to requiring human sacrifice, he had
provided a substitute in the form of a ram. At length, he provided Christ as
the Substitute for us all.
8.
Such self-sacrificing love moved
Ruth to sacrifice. She was willing to leave her homeland and go with Naomi.
Together they would travel to a place where Ruth had never been before. The
only person she would know there was Naomi. She had no particular reason to
expect that anyone else would receive her with open arms. Yet Ruth “got” something that I wish a lot of
people would “get” today when they
are so easily deterred from coming to church. Ruth understood that being a
believer in the Lord is not a solo act. If Naomi had left Ruth behind in Moab,
who would tell Ruth about the Lord? With whom could Ruth discuss God’s Word or
pray? Ruth was willing to take the risk of leaving her homeland because she
wanted to continue receiving life from the only true God. This meant that she
had to be where God’s Word was, and she would go there.
9.
Yes, Ruth already had faith. It had
already been passed on to her, even as a Moabite. How did she get it? She got
it through Naomi. Before her late husband and brother-in-law died, she got it
through them. No prophet or priest appears in the Book of Ruth, not even a
Levite. Instead, the faith was passed on when humble believers spoke about the
Lord, in this case with in their family circle. Through Moses, the Lord had
said: “These words that I command you
today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children,
and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the
way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:6–7). Still today,
when Christians read even the summary of God’s Word contained in the catechism,
talk about it and meditate on it, remarkable things happen. The Holy Spirit is present
to give light, the devil is put to flight, and the sinful flesh and evil
thoughts are subdued.
10.
Even if all around us everyone is
doing what is right in their own eyes, we have the opportunity to do what is
right in God’s eyes. These words fit Naomi like a glove. For while Naomi
certainly talked with Ruth about the Lord, she did far more than only talk.
Ruth not only heard from Naomi the words of the Lord, but she also saw in Naomi
the works of the Lord. Poor Naomi had endured famine, dislocation, and multiple
deaths in the family. She lost those nearest and dearest to her in death. Yet she
bore up under it all in faith and love.
11.
This love reached its high point as
she urged her daughters-in-law to part with her when she started on her return
trip to Bethlehem. Deprived as Naomi had been of the love and care she might
receive from her husband and sons, it would have been very tempting for her to
keep the two younger women around her. They would have provided her at least a
little measure of security. As big a risk as the young woman Ruth was willing
to take in going with Naomi, Naomi the older woman had been ready to make an
even bigger sacrifice in cutting loose her two daughters-in-law and sending
them back to their family homes. Here was the self-giving, self-sacrificing
love of the Lord God as it came out in the life of his humble servant Naomi.
Ruth saw it, and she did not want to leave it.
12.
A study of formerly unchurched
people in our times reports that sometimes people are brought to faith and into
the church without any significant human relationship to a church member. This
fact comes as no surprise, since God’s Word is powerful in itself. It needs no
“boost” from human relationships. At
the same time, when formerly unchurched people report that they did have a
relationship with a church member, it turns out to be a family member in many
more cases than it was a neighbor, co-worker, or business contact. (A third of these family relationships were
those of Christian wives with unchurched husbands who became “churched.”)
13.
We Christians are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood.” Therefore
believers in Christ “proclaim the
excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light,”
as the Bible says (1 Peter 2:9). It can help to recall that priests “offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God
through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). In fact, we offer ourselves as living
sacrifices (Romans 12:1). That is what Naomi did. When we do the same sort of
thing, people will notice. They will ask why we do what we do. The Bible
therefore exhorts us always to be ready “to
make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you”
(1 Peter 3:15).
14.
Love and outreach go together. The
second-century AD Church Father Tertullian wrote, “It is our care for the helpless, our practice of lovingkindness, that
brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. ‘Look,’ they say, ‘How they
love one another!’ ” This is nothing
new. It wasn’t even new at Tertullian’s time. It went back to Naomi and Ruth
during the terrible time of the judges, and back even further still. After all,
our Lord Jesus Christ is “the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8 KJV). In him, the great
love of God has been for us from the beginning, and we love the One who first
loved us. The self-giving and self-sacrificing love of God is shared by
believers in Christ not only with our lips but also in our lives. Then love and
outreach really do go together.
Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts
and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting. Amen.
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