Our God Of The Ordinary

This morning we begin a short series in the book of Ruth, a short series because Ruth is a rather short book, four chapters, we'll go through a chapter a week, we'll this morning we'll stop at about chapter, or verse 18, and the first chapter, the last part of that chapter we'll pick up next week, but Ruth is our text for this morning,

Ruth chapter one, by way of announcement, by way of introduction to it, before I read the verses we will attend to,

I just want to point out to you that the book of Ruth is thought by many fine scholars to be the finest piece of literature in the entire

Bible, if not the finest piece of literature in all literature, it has this beautiful symmetry to it, it has four chapters which correlate roughly to four acts, if you will, and each of those four chapters or acts is divided into three fairly symmetrical scenes, it is a historical record, it is not a story, it is a historical record, and it has such a beauty, it has such a depth of expression that you can hardly help but become emotionally engaged with the characters that we're going to meet here pretty soon, and they are common people, like us, who we're going to meet,

Ruth, Naomi, Elimelech, and so forth, and all the rest of them, we've all done like, we've seen, we're going to see early in this where we've lungered into things, into catastrophe, as did this man

Elimelech we'll meet, we're going to see Naomi, who most of you are familiar with that name, Naomi lost, her losses are our losses, this is a story that we can all engage in, we'll meet

Boaz in the next chapter, next week, God willing, and when we meet him, we're going to meet this model of godly and noble kindness, all mixed together in this almost perfect blend of civic and moral excellence.

Ruth's love and devotion to Naomi is going to show us how God by His Spirit works in the spirits of the unlikeliest of people,

Ruth being from the race of Moabites, Moabites cursed by God and disallowed from entering the assembly of God.

Also by way of introduction for what we're going to read in a few moments, if you think all the way back to Genesis chapter 49 and verse 10, where Jacob prophesies of Judah that the scepter shall not part from Judah, Judah, that tribe is going to bring forth a king, and so 700 years later, in the book of Ruth, of all places, this unlikeliest of heroes, in the book of Ruth, we find how

God put that in motion to bring forth a king from Judah, from whom the scepter shall never part.

So the book of Ruth was written so the original hearers would know where this one who holds that scepter came from, and who is he but David, and who is

David but the great -grandson of Ruth, and who is David but the one from whom our

Lord Jesus Christ takes his royal lineage, and one of his favorite titles, Son of David, come and help me.

Son of David, save me. Where does David come from? We're going to find out in the book of Ruth as the original hearers and readers of this did.

Ruth does fill in the gaps for us. Ruth is a gap filler, if you will. The gaps between the depressing end of judges and the hope of the kings, and this is of course its main purpose, to bridge that gap between judges and 1

Samuel, which is the book that starts to talk about how this king came about. That's the main purpose.

There's another gap that Ruth is going to fill for us, another gap that this book is going to fill, and that's the gap between God's sovereignty and human responsibility.

That God is sovereign in all things, and we are not just balls on a pinball machine getting bounced around at random.

If you're in Jesus Christ, you're within God's plan, and you're encountering events just as the people we're going to meet in the book of Ruth encountered events, and dealt with them, and God working his plan through them.

There's just a gap between that sovereignty of God and our responsibility to honor

God as we encounter the things that God sends our way. Ruth is a book of hope for you who believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ. It's a book of hope as we await the ultimate King from David's loins to return and to bring us out of this sin -darkened world, just as it was a book of hope to the first readers for between that time of judges, that dark spiritual period, and the beginning of the royalty of David.

In Ruth, we'll find no miracles. The sun never stands still, nor does the sundial ever go backwards.

We don't find 175 ,000 enemies of God killed by an angel in one night, or anything like that.

Just everyday people like you and me, finding their way in bewildering times, following God as God brings these times that would seem to go over us.

The title of this message is, Our God of the Ordinary. Our God of the Ordinary. Ruth is about many things.

It's about fulfillment. It's about tragedy, redemption, faith, and love, and loyalty. Any number of themes could be chosen to rightly organize us around what

God has, by his Spirit, intended for us in this short and beautiful book. What struck me, and hopefully will strike you, is how our extraordinary

God works his extraordinary purposes through ordinary people, encountering ordinary events.

You never know what God might be working through someone as ordinary as you. Look at yourself, and see how ordinary you really are, and then think of the extraordinary

God that you serve, by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and understand that you can never know what that extraordinary

God may be working in the events of your life, mundane, ordinary, everyday, boring events, as we all encounter.

So, with all that, read with me verse 1 through 7, in Ruth chapter 1.

In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.

The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were

Malon and Kilion. They were Epirotites, from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there.

But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with the two sons. These took

Moabite wives. The name of the woman was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both

Malon and Kilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

Let's stop there. Let's think about this book for a little bit, and these ordinary people encountering these ordinary events that are orchestrated by an extraordinary

God. Judges, if you look back just a page, and at the last verse of the book of Judges, it ends this way.

Remembering that Ruth is the gap -filler between Judges and 1 Samuel. It ends on this very, very dark note that comes after one of the darkest incidents in a very dark land.

It says this, at that time there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what is right, what was right in his own eyes.

And Ruth picks it up right there, in the very first verse that I read, in the days when the judges ruled.

In the days when Israel was as dark as it ever would be. In the days when

God's people worshipped idols. And if you do for homework, and read the last few chapters of Judges, you'll see just how terribly dark those times were, with everyone doing what was right in his own eyes, and how wrong what they thought was right, turned out to be.

And these are the days of Judges. Many scholars would put Ruth back with Jephthah.

You remember Jephthah, the man who saved Israel, he was one of the judges, and said, if you give me victory, whatever first comes out of my door, that I will sacrifice to you as a burnt offering.

It turned out to be his daughter. Many scholars would put Ruth in those times, others around Samson. But in any case, during the dark times, when everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

I want to take a few moments with you, and see what we can find out about this man, Elimelech.

This man, Elimelech. Now, what the scripture tells us, right on the surface is, his name, which means, my

God is king. And we're going to go through some names as we go through this. I'm going to give you the definitions of some of these names, because the ancient

Near Eastern ear would hear it that way. Names were important to them. As many of you know, names were actually prophetic.

So here's what we know of this man. He was of the tribe of, he was an Epratite, excuse me, lived in Bethlehem, married to Naomi, and he had these two sons.

So where does he go? There's a famine in the land, he goes off to Moab. He went for the land his eyes saw as a fertile land.

And many of you are thinking, and I hope you're thinking, of Genesis chapter 13.

Back with Lot, when Lot is offered by Abraham, his uncle, and said, take what land you will.

And he looks, and his eyes see a fertile land. He says, I'll take that spot. We all know how this turns out.

We're going to cover a little of that as we go. I would argue Elimelech does that. He's in the land of promise.

He, whose name is, my God is king, is going to go from the land where his God is king, well

God is king of the universe, not just that one spot on the globe, where you take my meaning, from the biblical importance of a land.

That God was king there. My God is king goes to where God is not king. My God is king leaves the land that the king gave them, and goes for where his eyes saw opportunity.

I think he did much like Lot did, looking up and taking what the flesh would say would be beneficial.

He chose the land that was founded by the son that Lot had with his own daughter.

That's in Genesis chapter 19. Again, you can read that from homework. That's where he's going with his family. The man whose name is, my

God is king, is going there. Now think about that for a moment, as we peer into the character of this man,

Elimelech. We'll get past him very shortly. We're not going to go on much longer, if you're getting impatient with this.

I just want you to know who this is. He chose to go to a people who were his own people's enemy.

He goes to a people that his God, his king said, no, these people to the tenth generation, which means for a very, very long time, not just counting ten generations, shall not enter the assembly, because they did not meet you.

Because they hired Balaam against you.

And they seduced Israel in the incident at Peor with the Moabite women and seduced them into sexual immorality before God.

He's going there, a people cursed by God, a place where God the

Lord was despised and Molech, the abominable, was worshipped. And the last thing

I want to bring out as we peer into Elimelech's character going to this land, is the names that he gave his sons, remembering that names were more important then to those people than they are to us.

And even today, one great conversation starter, which has given me many opportunities to talk about Jesus Christ, is to ask people with a name badge on, so you're in a store, we can still go into stores these days, so I'm going back a few months, asking what their names mean.

And you'll find particularly Indians and Afghans really appreciate that, and the Pakistanis, that whole area.

They like to tell you what their name is. The men are proud of their names. They're strong names. They mean something like that.

It means strength. It means warrior. And you ask the ladies, and they're also delighted. And there are many opportunities you get to speak about Jesus Christ this way.

Just an icebreaker, as they say. Their name might mean beautiful lily.

And you just see the pleasure they have in being asked and telling you what it means. My dad was always proud to tell me that my name in Hebrew was

Yeshua, Joshua, which in Greek was Jesus. He told me that and made sure

I knew that, but he didn't tell me much about Jesus, of course. Names were important. Elimelech named his two sons,

Malon and Kilion. Malon means sickly, great infirmity.

Kilion means pining and wasting away. Now, I know we don't hold names as high as some cultures even today.

Certainly not as much as they did then, but I think most of you, let's say we call our son Tim. I think you give it more thought than that.

What does Tim mean? Well, honey, it means a sickly one, a wasting away one.

Well, most of us would think of a different name. But these are the names, and this is going to tell us something about how this story is going to unfold.

It sets us up for the calamities that are going to ensue, where Naomi is going to encounter death and poverty.

This is where Elimelech leads his family as he goes into Moab. And you heard how quickly things move.

This man, Elimelech, he's from this tribe, he's from this place, this family, he goes to Moab, he dies, his son's married, they die, she's stuck.

This is just in a few verses. They stay there for 10 years. None of us choose the times we live in.

Any more than Elimelech chose to go to Moab to die, obviously, or Naomi chose to go to that place and have her whole family die around her.

We don't choose our times. It's sort of a fantasy to think that we would. The original

Star Trek series had an episode called All Our Yesterdays, where Kirk and Spock and McCoy, always the most important members of the crew, right, all the major officers, always beam into the most dangerous, leaving everybody else to run the ship.

It always bothered me. They go down to this planet named Sarpedon, and people are leaving the planet, and they're trying to warn the planet that their son's going to know them, they're all going to die.

Well, they've been leaving for a long time. They had this library, and this library, there's row upon row of disks, and each disk had a different time period in that planet's history, and they had this device where once the librarian, the librarian, helped them find a place they wanted to live out their days, they could send you to that place, so they could choose their times.

They could choose where they would live out their days. Well, we don't get that opportunity, do we? We live in the times,

Acts chapter 17, verse 28 would say, God has ordained, because God chose your times and your boundaries and your nation and your tongue and so forth.

He chose whom we would be. No one chooses their times or their events. Our times are different from theirs.

Their ancestral land is not the issue for us that it was for them, but God has placed us in the times, and he's placed us in the place that he intended.

You must be sure that it is his purpose that they're driving you, and God, my king, a limeleck,

God is my king, just seems to have gone. Perhaps he did an analysis and said, well, okay, the wheat's failing here, and they have this many bushels of wheat per day over there, and I need this much money to buy that much wheat and so forth, and he figured it all out, and off he goes.

What matters, though, it's not your times. What matters is not your times.

What matters is what we do with them. A limeleck pulled up his stakes, and he goes to sojourn in Moab.

He goes to sojourn. He goes just to visit there. His plan was to be there for a little while, and how often we do the same thing.

I'm going to step my toe into this pool. I'm just going to go for a short test of it.

I'm just going to try this out a little bit away from God, away from God's people, away from God's land for a limeleck, and slightly outside of his will for ourselves.

I'm just going to test the waters. I'm just going to sojourn for a little bit.

What does the scripture say? And he remained there, and 10 years later, his two sons, sickly and pining away, are dead, and now we've got three widows.

Limelick sinners are really more clear than first glances would tell us. There's no record that he stopped to pray, so I can't say he didn't pray, but it seems like he didn't.

That doesn't mean he didn't. I can't say absolutely, but there's no record of it, and he seems to have just gone.

Everything I've said, everything I've seen in the scripture, what it seems to imply would say, we just picked up and went and did the most logical thing, the quickest cure he could find.

The second thing is, while things did seem to work out for a while, why was that?

Well, by the fact that his two sons, sickly and pining away, and I have to keep using that translation of their names, what happened to them, getting married to low -abide women, would tell me that he had assimilated.

It's a great danger for all of us, is it not, to assimilate, to set aside our love for Jesus Christ, to, for that moment, when we're being challenged in a way that we just can't quite respond to, but for that instant, we're ashamed of the

Lord Jesus Christ, just to give in that bit, to step our foot into the pool, we put our toe in, check the water,

I'm just gonna sojourn, I'm just gonna get up to the knees, and then we go further and further.

I would argue that Elimelech, in giving his sons to marriage to low -abide women, had assimilated that culture.

He'd compromised everything, even if he hadn't, as I'm arguing from Judah, done so.

By the time he got to Moab, by giving his daughter, his sons away, I would say he certainly had this culture that he assimilated.

His sons married these women. What they worshipped were not told, but I would fear the worst, given that he lived when men did what was right in their own eyes.

I've already alluded to the God, the main God in Moab, and where that nation even comes from.

Well, things happen pretty fast in this story, this quick -moving, short story.

He dies, his sons marry, ten years later, there's no children, then Malan and Kilian die, leaving their mother without a husband, without sons to provide for, and their wives,

Orpah and Ruth, are also widows. This is disaster. Widows in those times were in the worst shape you can imagine.

The background commentary says, and this was written quite some time ago, and is right, that they were without political or economic status, like the homeless today.

Typically, they had no male protector, and were therefore economically dependent on society at large.

Now, did you hear who was left in this state? Did you hear what the scripture said about this person in this condition?

I just gave it away the way I said that. It doesn't say Naomi was left alone.

It says the woman, the woman. I want you to see how desperately her condition had deteriorated.

Naomi, Naomi goes. Naomi is a lone wife.

Naomi has two sons, then Naomi has two daughters -in -law, then her husband dies, then the sons die, and she becomes the woman.

She's lost her identity, at least in that culture. She has nothing, it's all been stripped away from her.

The woman is left in this state, the woman. She's like invisible now.

Is it hard for you to not notice people who are in need? Sometimes we really have to work at it.

I have to admit that I do sometimes. You're sitting at that light, you're waiting for the left turn arrow to change, and there on that cement divider between the lanes is that person with that sign, and I do this, turn my eyes just 10 or 15 degrees to the right and look another way, like, oh, look at that semi truck on that other intersection there.

I wonder if that's a Kenworth or a Peterbilt. I must look over there and check it out. You ever do anything like that?

Naomi would be so easy to ignore. In that culture, nobody would have to look away. They could have looked right at her and through her.

She was the woman. The woman, by the way, from Judah, living in Moab.

The woman left without her two sons and her husband. Naomi's name means

Pleasantness of Jehovah. What a beautiful name. I just see, going up to a clerk in a store, and she's got that name on her name badge.

I said, what does Naomi mean? She would say, Pleasantness of Jehovah. She'd be delighted to be asked, and delighted with that name.

That's Naomi's name. Pleasantness of Jehovah. Just lost my

God as king, and now her son's great infirmity and wasted warrior gone, and the names say it all.

Tell us, I think, how they died. Who is she now? It's not

Naomi. She's the woman left alone. No resource. A widow. A woman could only die a stranger in a strange land.

Invisible. Nobody had to try to ignore her. She didn't exist. If you are in Christ, I need to make a brief excursus for the church here.

Because if you are in Christ, you are never the woman or the man when you're in need.

Your identity is always in Christ Jesus. Your name is written on his hand, it says in the book of Revelation.

The church is the place where the people in Christ come together, and we're never ignored here.

1 Timothy 5a says that he who does not take care of his own family is worse than an unbeliever. There is no the woman or the man in this place.

May it never be that anybody in this place would become invisible just because they're in need. Or even because they have need, therefore feel ashamed, and put themselves in the corner, and sort of go away like, what do we call it, the wallflower?

No, may it never be. Your identity is in Christ Jesus, and if your identity is in Christ Jesus, you come forward.

You don't say I am the woman, you say I am Mary, and I need help. I am Joe, and I'm on hard times.

Your hard times are your own doing, and you need to repent of your ways. The church can help you in that regard, and help you to mend things, and put it back to right.

But you're never just that person who did this thing. That person who fell on hard times is your fault.

If it was your responsibility, we help get back on track, and we help in other ways. If it was hard providences like Naomi's, we help in other ways.

But we must always remember that the identity is the same as the rest at all times. You must remember that your identity is the same, and we must remember that your identity is the same.

What is it? Are you in Christ? Identity is saint, disciple, believer, beloved of God, because He loves

His Son, and those who are in His Son, that's who you are. That sounds like a lot to make out of the fact that she goes from Naomi to the woman.

Let's take note, in those times, that's all she was, just some strange woman from a strange land.

Her husband and her sons died. You saw how fast the story moved. Every day, people die.

Every day, women become widows and men become widowers. Just ordinary events happening to ordinary people.

Every day, people find their age advanced faster than their savings, and they can't see a ray of hope. And every day, jobs are lost, and every day, yesterday's choices bring consequences we never dreamed of.

This is the story of Ruth. This is God working through these kinds of events that we've all encountered.

Bring about David. I bring about David so he brings along Jesus, or brings about Jesus. She's now in worse shape than we can imagine,

Naomi. Pleasantness of Jehovah. No safety net. Completely dependent on the open -handed goodwill of strangers, of Moabites.

You might ask, can anything good come out of Moab? Can anything good even happen in Moab? Are you in hard times?

Are you in hard circumstances? For your health, for your finances, for your job, for whatever the case may be, whatever circumstances have come upon you, whatever you are in right now, there is hope in God.

There is hope in God. And even it was you who brought the disaster down upon yourself, there is hope in God.

God has prepared the ways for you to walk in advance. That's Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 10. Let's read on in chapter 1, see verse 6.

Then she arose with her daughters -in -law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the

Lord had visited his people and given them food. So she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters -in -law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah.

A few words at the end of verse 6 are crucial to understanding this book. You recall that I said, you know, there's no big miracles.

There's no earth stopping its rotation or fire coming down from heaven.

Again, just our extraordinary God working in the lives of ordinary people, his extraordinary purposes.

The end of verse 6, it said, the Lord had visited his people and given them food. That says so much because it tells us that the famine that we began with up in verse 1 was the

Lord's doing. If they lived in the times of the judges as I explained some of the scholars believe, then it could well have been the

Midianites who brought famine to the land by their incursions. You recall Gideon, he was threshing the wheat at night in the wine press in order to hide it from the

Midianites because the Midianites would be sent by God to punish his people for their idolatry.

And when they repented, of course, he would restore them. But it was the Midianites who often came as his rod of punishment.

And they would ruin the crops and steal the produce. That's why he was doing it at night, to hide it from them.

So verse 6, the Lord had visited his people and given them food, says more than you might think at first glance.

It's putting God as the active agent throughout this book. It is God who brought the famine, it is

God who ended the famine. Perhaps the people repented. Perhaps the

Lord simply took pity on them. We don't know, but we know God has given full credit and full sovereignty.

Why does God bring such hardships? God brings hardships so his people might repent. Everyday people like you and me need to look at what

God has taken away and there find room for repentance, especially in the days that we now live.

We can look and ask ourselves these kinds of questions. Have I left the place where God would have me to stay, like Elimelech did?

Have I taken for granted all that God had before given me? Let's say taken away by COVID, the way famine took away things from people then, has

COVID destroyed the economy that supported you so well? And you look back and say, well,

I did take that for granted. Has it taken away the opportunities that you had once been looking ahead to?

And we can look and repent and say, but like it seems Elimelech did, I didn't stop and pray.

I didn't ask God which way to go. I didn't ask God what his will might be. I'm not saying there's some magic dust that's going to fall from heaven and say, take this path,

Johnny. That's not what I'm saying. Though God by his Spirit can show you in the Scripture what his will is for you.

We can look at any number of alternatives that we have and say, well, it doesn't violate the

Scripture. There's no one that says you must live in this house, in this town, in this time, in this place.

But we can look and be led by the Spirit and know that we're within his revealed will. God brings hardships like COVID, like famines, that we might take the time to repent like that.

When I had much, was God an afterthought? This needs to be considered carefully.

Too often we do as Elimelech. We see giants in the land as he saw famine in his land, and we just sort of skedaddle.

We just go quickly. We don't look with eyes of flesh like Lot did when he founded, if you will,

Moab, as I would argue Elimelech did when he looked at that same land. Well, it sounds like I'm going off into a tangent on decision -making

God's way. Well, this message is no more about decision -making God's way than the book of Jonah is about how to choose who to throw off the boat.

Elimelech's choices and their consequences to his family should give us pause to consider our own choices and the effects that they have on our families, our loved ones, our church, our friends, and so forth.

When she arose with her daughters -in -law to return from the country of Moab, Naomi is here, if you will, making right what

Elimelech had done, going back to the land that they should have stayed in, to her people, to her

God, to the land that God had given them. Unlike the first few verses, while Elimelech was still alive, unlike that,

Naomi speaks of the Lord's hand, speaks of the Lord had given them bread.

Later, she speaks of the Lord's hand be against her. So they set out to go back to Judah.

In verses 8 through 18, we have Naomi's return in this beautiful scene that's so often cited at weddings.

Several years ago, I was at a wedding where this was sung by the groom to his bride -to -be.

Verse 8, but Naomi said to her two daughters -in -law, go return each of you to her mother's house.

May the Lord deal kindly with you as you've dealt with me, excuse me, with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband.

Then she kissed them and they lifted up their voices and wept. And they said, there are no way we will return with you to your people.

But Naomi said, turn back, my daughters. Why will you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands?

Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I'm too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, would you therefore wait until they were grown?

Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter for me for your sake that the hand of the

Lord has gone out against me. Say I'm too old, I have no husband.

If I had a husband tonight, if I got pregnant tonight, in nine months I'm going to have maybe twins, one for each of you.

Eighteen years later or however long you have to wait, are you going to wait that long? No, it's impossible.

Even if it were started tonight, it wouldn't be practical. But I have no husband even started with.

Go home, go back. Verse 14, then they lifted up their voices and wept again.

And Orpah kissed her mother -in -law, but Ruth clung to her. And she says, see, your sister -in -law has gone back to her people and her gods return after your sister -in -law.

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 will be my people and your God, my

God. 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 departs me from you. And when I only saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.

Orpah, whose name could mean double -minded, she goes back.

Ruth, whose name means beautiful, worth beholding, faithful, she stays and she clings.

She doesn't turn back, cling. This is the word used of a man shall cling to his wife and a wife shall cling to her husband in Genesis chapter 2, verse 24.

A very strong word. Hold on to something, to grasp it. The opposite of what

Jesus Christ did in Philippians 2. He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, something to be clings to.

Well, Ruth sees Naomi as something to cling to. And we'll come to that because it's not

Naomi necessarily that she's clinging to. We'll come to that. Naomi has nothing to offer to Ruth but this one kindness to release them of their obligations to her.

The depth of love, the attachment are carried in these tears that we just read about. They love her so much that they start down the road to Judah with her.

And many of you know the story that Orpah returns to Moab, Ruth stays with her, clinging to her.

So here's how the original audience would have heard this. Friend, so Ruth's name means.

Friend stayed with Jehovah's pleasant Naomi while double -minded followed

Bunyan's turn away and returned to Moab. So the Lord had visited his people.

Naomi wants to go back there. Friend wants to go there with her. Double -minded goes to her old and familiar gods.

And this reminds me of John chapter 6 verse 66. When the larger circle of disciples they thought were following Jesus leave him because of the harshness, the difficulty

I should say, not the harshness, the difficulty of his teaching. And many leave him then and they didn't walk with him anymore.

And Jesus turns to the others. He says, do you want to leave me also?

And Peter says to him, where will we go? You have the words of life. And so why did

Ruth go with Naomi? Have you ever asked yourself that? Will love, faithfulness, loyalty?

Sure, those are all true. This woman married to this

Israelite sickly or pining away, whichever one, we don't know who married which one. Raised with more like the abominable

God, other idols certainly. Why did she want to go with Ruth or with Naomi?

From a land of plenty, which Moab was, to a land that had just had famine and only recently recovered.

From gods she knew to a god who had dealt bitterly with this mother -in -law that she's staying with.

A god who had left her, Ruth, and her mother -in -law, Naomi, widows.

The worst state you could be in. Who's Ruth? Well, with Boaz, David's great -grandparent.

By God's will, the human ancestor of Jesus Christ. And more, in Matthew chapter 8, do you remember this?

When Jesus comes across the centurion who says, Lord, heal my servant. And Jesus starts to go with him.

He says, you don't have to go with me, because I, too, am one under authority. And I say to this one, come, and he comes. I say to this other one, go, and he goes.

I say to another, do this, and he does it. You just say the word, Jesus. And what does

Jesus say? I have not seen such faith even in Israel. Naomi is the

Roman centurion, believing in God from this pagan background.

Naomi is Naaman, the Syrian general who came to the man of God, Elisha, to be cured of his leprosy.

I said, Naomi, I meant Ruth. Ruth is Nathanael in chapter 2 of John's Gospel, chapter 1 of John's Gospel, saying, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Ruth is that witty co -worker who always has a deflating answer. Ruth is every person

God has set in your path who seems impervious to the Gospel, whose armor seems unpierceable.

Why is Ruth going with Naomi back to this land, this land with this awful

God who made widows out of them all? You know, the mighty

Bismarck was thought to be unsinkable. In the book, in the movie, Sink the Bismarck, a sailor on a small cruiser is trying to find the

Bismarck. He's talking to another sailor as they're looking through their binoculars. And he's saying, you know, if we find it, we're in a lot of trouble.

Because with our guns, we might as well be throwing cookies at her as to try and sink her. And sometimes we see people as having that kind of armor against our words of the

Gospel, against your testimony. It's like, I'll never get through to this person.

They won't believe no matter what I say. It's like the armor on that mighty battleship, 12 inches thick.

It would just bounce off as though they'd throw a cookie at it. Ruth wasn't attracted to Naomi's God by some technique borrowed by a salesman.

We're going to end this message in a few moments. And we're ending with a lesson, if you will, in evangelism.

How do we evangelize? What do we have to offer? Ruth, what was she attracted to? What brought her along with her mother -in -law,

Naomi? Again, some sales technique borrowed from corporations?

Of course not. Naomi didn't go to an evangelism course and put Jesus into three bite -sized pieces or lead

Ruth into a sinner's prayer. God was not in any way defanged and Jesus wasn't sugar -coated.

He would testify with the hymn, a wonderful Savior is Jesus my Lord, a wonderful Savior is

He. What's Naomi's testimony to Ruth? The Lord has dealt bitterly with me.

There's an evangelism technique for you. Hey, Frank, would you like me to follow?

Can I follow your God? Sure. What has He done for you lately? I bet you got lots of money, an easy life, right?

No, He's dealt bitterly with you. I lost someone close to me to the pandemic.

The downturn in the economy came just at the wrong time, so I lost my job, my savings.

Wonderful Savior is Jesus my Lord, but what are you talking about? No, don't you want to have me say, dear

Lord, I have sinned and please bring me to Jesus Christ. Don't you want me to repeat that? No, no, no, no. I want you to know a wonderful Savior is

Jesus my Lord, while I've lost all these things. Well, I have nothing to offer you except for the

Lord has dealt cruelly with me. The hand of the Lord, said Naomi, has gone out against me.

In verse 21, which we'll cover next week when she comes back to Judah, I went away full and the Lord has brought me back empty.

There's evangelism for you. Why call me Naomi when the Lord has testified against me? Brothers and sisters, our evangelism has to give

Jesus to people as the Bible gives the life that we have in Jesus.

The here and now life, as we encounter these hardships and these hard times, it's not all the primrose path, is it?

We all know that. Jesus himself said, count the cost. The gospel of salvation entails a cross, a cross which you must bear daily.

Let's never become those who smooth out the edges of faith, because it doesn't depend upon you who converts.

God, by his Spirit, what is your task? Tell the truth.

What has God done for you lately? He's blessed me with peace and security, with a certain retirement that looks like it's just going to be comfortable.

Is that the truth? Tell it. More often, what we shy away from are the hard things, the difficulties.

Wonderful Savior is Jesus my Lord. What has he done? He took from me my husband. He took from me both my sons.

He left me a widow. I'm just the woman now, and when I get back home, I'm going to change my name to bitter.

I'm bitterness because of what the Lord has done for me. And what does Ruth do? She leaves it all behind.

Follows Naomi, for whom the Lord has given only hardship and only bitterness.

My message this morning is not for you to bear up under hardship and bitterness. We've covered that in so many places as we went through the book of Philippians.

My message this morning is for you to tell the truth about Jesus. You don't have to be clever.

You don't have to be able to cite all systematic theologies. You don't even have to know your whole Bible from start to finish.

You need to know who Jesus is. You need to have repented of your sins and come to him in faith and trusted him for everything.

People ask you about Jesus. What's he done for you lately? Brethren, tell the truth.

Naomi told the truth, and God by his Spirit attached

Ruth to her. God in his plan will bring these two home to Judah.

Next week we'll start to cover what happens there. It's a beautiful story. You don't have to try to make

Jesus look beautiful. He already is beautiful. Nothing is more beautiful than your Savior.

Even if your life right now doesn't look beautiful, you serve a beautiful Savior. You don't have to sugarcoat him.

You don't have to round off the sharp edges. You do have to tell the truth.

Tell the truth. Trust God by his Spirit to bring sinners to repentance. Ruth followed bitter.

Call me bitter. Call me mora. Call me bitter. And she followed her because of what the Lord had done.

Trust God's sovereign design. He brought the famine. He brought the hardships, and he meant it all for good.

That's how he brought Ruth to Bethlehem, where she would soon meet Boaz and become David's great grandmother.

Don't concern yourself being able to present Jesus in some beautiful package. You don't have to tie up all the loose ends.

God does that. God has made his Son beautiful. You need only tell the truth.

Too often we hear, be like a roof. I say be like a Naomi. Tell the truth. We'll pick up verses 19 through 22, and we're willing to get through chapter 2 next week.

Whatever circumstance you're in, this is the takeaway for today, other than telling the truth. Whatever circumstance you're in, if you're in Christ, then

God needs it for your good. To grow you in your faith. To bring you to repentance.

Or to give you a testimony of his grace that can melt the heart of stone and bring the Ruth in your life to faith and to repentance.

Amen? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are grateful once again to be in your presence, to come to you in spirit and truth, and to be able to consider this book which culminates in the birth of none other than David, the king who received the promises that issued forth into Jesus Christ our

Savior. May we ever tell the truth about him. May we ever bear up in the circumstances you've given us, and all this for your glory, for the good of the gospel that you've given us.