The Lordship of Christ — William MacDonald

Ruth's Loyalty in a Time of Famine

Short devotional message. I'm sure that many of you will hear it. It's worked very hard, and so would you turn with me just to the book of Ruth, the first chapter of the book of Ruth, and it'll just be a little change of pace.

We won't be thinking about the test of life tonight. Ruth, chapter one, and I'm going to begin reading at the first verse. Ruth, one and one. Now, it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem, Judah, went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.

And the name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife, Naomi, and the name of his two sons, Maon and Chiliran, Ephrathites of Bethlehem, Judah. And they came to the country of Moab and continued there, and Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died, and she was left and her two sons.

And they took the wives of the women of Moab, the name of the other group, and they dwelled there about ten years. And Maon and Chiliran died, also both of them, and their two sons came from the country of Moab, his people, and giving them bread on the way to return into the land of Judah.

Naomi's Return and the Cost of Leaving Moab

And Naomi said unto her two daughters-in-law, To her mother, stay with you, as ye have with me. The Lord graced them, and then he kissed them, and they stood up, and they said unto her, Surely, Naomi said, Sure, and again, my daughters, why would you go with me?

Are there yet any sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands? I should say, I have hopes, and should also bear sons. Would ye tarry for them, till they were grown? Would ye stay for them, for having a husband?

Nay, my daughters, your agreement be much for your sake, but not against me. And she said to the old woman, Leave thee. When she saw that she was steadfastly minded to go with her, then she left speaking unto her.

So they two went, until they came to Bethlehem, and it came to pass, when they were come to Bethlehem, that all the city was moved about them. And they said, Is this Naomi? And she said, Call me not Naomi, call me Myra.

And they testified against me, and the Almighty said,. And they came to Bethlehem, in the beginning to Naomi. She ran out, and was filled with his own ways, and she is a good illustration of life, or even in polytheism.

It makes me think of two, it wasn't particularly a confronter, or anything like that, but there was another fellow there in the squadron, and he was a blatant agnostic, and this Christian really is Christian.

Excuses That Delay Obedience to God

So one day, and this agnostic brought out all his big guns, as it were. He brought out all his agnostic Christian stuff that he had carried for a Christian fellow to answer him. You know why? Answer. He would meet him, but the light scaring him in the face.

In an age, I think she saw it made a real difference in who he might be, and find rest, you know, get another husband, and settle down. That's her statement, is me. Tell him that you and I, and that you let me first, let me first go away with burying your father.

No, there's nothing wrong with him, he was even terminal yet. I don't really, I think that the young man was saying, until my son, three months yet again, and sometimes they outlive their son, and it's real.

Future, let me first go, and bury. To them which are a decent thing to do, before you board the plane for the Orient, at least go and say goodbye to your, before my obedience to your fault. Let me first, get me first.

The Lord doesn't play that game with men and women. That's a lame excuse, isn't it? Some of our excuses are really quite lame. You might have heard about it. It's amazing to think against God, and cannot come.

The Demands of Following Christ

The obvious thing is that God hates the men, and he's not speaking about it in your way, and he has desire for men. He's threatening not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee. Every man never gets what he thought might be.

To the Lord Jesus, when he finds people that are saying that, we have to walk with Jesus, if there are, in my life. If there's uncontested sin in my life, if I'm going to walk with Jesus, if I'm going to say to the Lord Jesus, without God at all, faith in my life has to be straightened out, and I'm in the light with him.

And he knows with Jeremiah, a way of man is not in him. It is not in man. And you know, it's so easy for us, mind you, they should have them at the same time, but they don't always, and Satan, and broccoli, because then our faith is more intense, and things were going well, and my career was very well in hand.

Surrendering Worldly Ambitions

He and God began to deal in my life, and I'm not going to go into the details, but then I came to the end of the law, and he called me by this license, do whatever you want with it. And you know, that was one of the wisest things I ever did, I ever did.

And that day, that night, I was in my little, I had no idea, exchange, the intervening years, for anything, because we have to, because we have to, and live for those things that are determined, never invest in a dying concern.

Never invest in a dying concern. The dying concern has a history on its way out, and even metal ends up a grave of beauty, clinging to gilded coal, and fame, and pleasure, and that's not where the light is set.

Ruth's Radical Identification With God's People

I just remember something I had to do. The last reaction, he wasn't willing to share. He had to have, behold the beauty of the man sitting in, in the scripture, or the mark of the priest, they said, master, we have that privilege with him, watching where he lies.

They said, abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far. Think of this dispensation, getting your five with me, for it's toward evening, and the day, and then Ruth said, thy people shall be my people.

Beautiful, he was a gentile, he was a molded, Jewish people, the people of Israel, and she said, thy people shall be mine. It's a big step. Some of you here in the meeting, tonight, faced that traumatic trauma, taking a stone to be leveled at, and many are taking it today.

It means casting in your lost well-being, and everyone, and every one of them, from tender birth to their own relative, you have to leave a clean mess, because, by the day of evangelism, people are not.

Repentance, Baptism, and the Christian Life

We have the power to save, clean, right. I don't think the Bible holds any encouragement for salvation in those terms, do you? I mean, where is the repentance of sin, in their iniquity? They want my little jingle that says, we are in, and you are out.

It's an interacting connection between some persons in John's gospel, as the first, no man, in time, the only people who want to speak about love, they march for the true Christian, and the idea is, we ought to see God as God.

Through our lives, we reach baptism. If we stand on the water, we might be buried. In the New Testament, they practice instant baptism. There was never a gap between profession, and the rights of the men from the boys.

It would help to diminish this wave of false progressions. Are you living the baptized being baptized? No. Baptism isn't the end of it. It's only the beginning. The baptized life is the life of a person who lived as one, who has died as him.

Hope Beyond Death and Faithfulness

And, uh, do you believe this? Most of us are too worried. And, he said, worry not me, because in other constructions, that when they die, their bodies or their bones would be carried back home. Carry me out of Egypt.

Remember that? And, Joseph said, carry me near Egypt. You get what remains of me, and get it up to the land of Israel. But, Luke didn't say it. Naomi and I wandered out, and she kept my body, sent back for burial in Moab.

She came right from Moab, and she was going to be separated from it in life, or in death. Don't, she didn't say, take me back to Moab. And, there she would lie and be buried. And, then she confirmed this with an oath, one of these lovely oaths from the Bible.

Lord, do so to me. And, moreover, who meant this. It was going to be. Well, thank God, we don't have to use those words, do we? It's odd that death can separate us, and to die is to be with him. It is very present.

Not even death from the love. And, so here you have this noble statement. She became an ancestress of David, and thus of the Messiah. As far as I said before, you never know. He has the authority to despise more of a text woman.

I mean, what chance does he have? He's excluded from the congregation of the Lord, normally. And, yet God, and he says, okay, I heard that in a genealogy. So, she had a happy, nothing to indicate, to come back to Bethlehem Judah, and their marriage.

Ruth's Reward and the Priority of Everlasting Life

And, she had a wonderful, wonderful life. And, you know, she had the marvelous privilege of having one of the books of the Bible named after her. Not bad, is it? Imagination is sad, I know, but that could never happen to me.

Listen, sisters, our father, for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold. If you figure that out on your little effective instrument calculator, it comes to ten thousand percent. That doesn't refer to the obtaining of everlasting life.

We get that through faith in the Lord Jesus. But, it's entering into everlasting life that is full of faith, patience, devotion, and commitment to Him. To this evening by saying this, shall have nothing but profit to be immoral.

The Example of Ruth and Naomi

A little vignette from the Old Testament. Thank you for this, Maury. Living in the times of the Judgment, when every man did that which was right in his own eyes. And, here was a Gentile maiden whose heart beat true to Jehovah.

Prayer for Wholehearted Commitment

Father, we thank you for the example of her life. We thank you for the example of Naomi's life. She so lived before Ruth, that Ruth wanted Naomi's God. Oh Father, we pray that you'll write the lesson deeply in our hearts, to commit ourselves to your guidance, to go where you want us to go, say and be what you want us to say and be.

Give us, Lord, the fruit of a happy, fulfilled life in answering the call of Christ. We just want to commit ourselves to the end of this lovely conference. How good it has been to get to be together. How we can say to the psalmist, Lord, keep from the house of my God and dwell in the tents of wickedness.

How sweet to the soul is communion of saints. To find at the banquet of mercy this room, to feel in communion a foretaste of home. And, we would commit ourselves to you at this time, which is now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant.

May he be perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom he gloried forever. Amen.