May the Lord bless us together
this evening. We'll turn to his word and turn
to the chapter we read, the book of Ruth, chapter 1. And we'll
read together Ruth's words in verses 16 and 17. Ruth, chapter
1, verses 16 and 17. And Ruth said, Entreat me not
to leave thee, or to return from following after
thee. For whither thou goest, I will
go. And where thou lodgest, I will
lodge. Thy people shall be my people,
and thy God, my God. Where thou diest, will I die,
and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more
also. If aught but death, part thee
and me. In this chapter we are introduced
to three women. Firstly Naomi, who went into
Moab with her husband and her two sons. And then through the
course of events we are introduced to the wives of the two sons.
both women from Moab, both with Moabitish backgrounds, religion,
families, but both brought together in this family of Elimelech and
Nehemiah, Orpah and Ruth. They had much in common, I'm
sure, as they were coming into this family of those who had
come from Judah originally. They were coming to a different
type of family from what they had known in Moab, and they were
joined together in that way in the family of Marlon and Chilian
and Elimech and Naomai. But what we are told by the end
of this chapter is that though there were similarities between
these two women, Orpah and Ruth, there were clear differences.
They were two different people and they made two different decisions. They therefore, because of those
decisions, walked two different paths in their lives and diverged
dramatically in the ways that they each went. And as a consequence,
they had two different ends and went to two different places.
So though there were similarities, there were great differences
in the end between Oprah and Ruth. To focus on Ruth, she had
known great sadness in her life. She had been married and yet
had had no children. And then she had had to live
through the death of the three males in the household. in Imelech,
Marlon and Trillium. She had been widowed and now
was being told by her mother-in-law, who she had great love and regard
for, that she was returning also back to Bethlehem. And Ruth now
really was coming to a close, it was seen, to a chapter in
her life. She had been brought into this
family, but now her husband has died and her mother-in-law is
going back. And it would seem that she would
have to return back into the old ways and the old family of
Moab. Indeed, her mother-in-law herself
is telling her to go back, is encouraging her to go back. And everyone seems to be indicating
that the right thing to do for Ruth is go back to your family,
go back to your gods, go back to your past, to your people
in Moab. And she comes to a point that
even Orpah is leaving that example. Even her sister-in-law is returning
back to her family and to her gods in Moab. And Ruth is being
encouraged from all angles to do exactly the same. leave Naomi,
go back to Moab, your family and your gods. While Ruth, despite that pressure,
refuses. She refuses resolutely to leave
Naomi. She is utterly united to her
She is with her in every sense and she is with her people and
she is united to her God. In every way, physically, bodily,
spiritually, Ruth is bound with Naomi. She says, we read, don't
we, that Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clave unto her." And
that word clave means she clung to her. She was clinging to her. She was following her so closely. They were united. She clung to
Naomi. There was no way she was going
to let her go. She clave. unto her. There's a real depth
here. It wasn't just a general indication. It wasn't just a
general desire. There was an urgency, a clinging
to Naomi. Well, what does that example
have to do with us today? Well, Ruth, you could say here,
was united or was following Naomi. And the Christian is a follower
or a disciple of one who is far greater and more worthy of our
love and obedience than Nehemiah. A Christian is a disciple of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore a Christian should
cling or cleave to Christ as Ruth clave to Naomi, should cling
to him. We read many times in the New
Testament the title or word disciple. What is, I wonder, we may think,
a disciple? What does it mean to be a disciple?
Well, a disciple is one who is a learner or a pupil of another. One who sits at another's feet
and wants to learn from them, as we might sit and learn from
a tutor or from a teacher. A disciple is a learner, but
they're more than just a pupil of a teacher. They're a follower
of that one. They adhere to all that they
say and all that they teach. They absorb it, they love it,
they follow it themselves, and they follow that one who they
hear. A disciple is so close and joined
together with the one who they follow. But a disciple of the
Lord Jesus Christ is more than just one who sits and listens,
or more than just one who adheres to what he says. A disciple of
Jesus Christ, the Lord himself tells us, is one who gives up
much in order to follow him. A disciple of Jesus Christ, the
Lord describes him like this, if any man come to me and hate
not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren
and sisters, yea, and his own life also, He cannot be my disciple. Whosoever doth not bear his cross
and come after me cannot be my disciple. So do you see the qualification
that the Lord puts to being his disciple? It is one who puts
Christ and his service above father, mother, wife, all relations
and our own selves. and one who puts following Christ
above even bearing a cross. We are willing to bear suffering
and shame and hardship for the sake of Christ and yield all
else to his authority. That's what a disciple is. One
who clings to him and puts him first. I want to ask this evening, are
you, am I, a disciple of Jesus Christ? Are we like Ruth? Are we his follower? And in considering
that, I want to think of Ruth under three headings in this
text. Firstly, her resolution. Secondly, her motive, and thirdly,
the blessing received. Her resolution, her motive, and
the blessing that was received. Firstly, Ruth's resolution, and
we read that of course in these texts, verses 16 and 17. This is what she was resolved
to do, and the path that she was determined to follow. And
it's wonderful to read her determination as she goes through these different
points, through these two verses. Firstly, we come that she would
not leave Naomi. She said, entreat me not to leave
thee, or to return from following after thee. She would not leave
her. She would stay by her side at
all times. Don't tell me to leave you, she
says. Don't tell me to go back to Moab. Don't tell me to go back to my
family and to my old gods. It will be no use in treating
me to leave you or from following you. Wherever you go, I will
be there by your side. And I will not take no for an
answer. She is united to Nehemiah in such a way that whatever she
says, I will be there. I will follow after you. I will be by your side. She would
not leave her. She says, for whither thou goest,
I will go. I will not leave you, wherever
you go. Whither thou goest, I will go.
Where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Wherever you go in your life,
wherever the path, wherever the journey takes you, wherever you
lodge, wherever you have to stay, wherever you set up home, I will
be there. Wherever you are, in a foreign
land, yes, I'll come with you. To a place perhaps of suffering
and of hardship, yes, I will be with you. as long as I can
be with you, she says. You see the unity, the desire
she has to stay with her. Wherever you go, wherever you
stay, I will be with you. Entreat me not to leave thee. She says, thy people shall be
my people. Thy people shall be my people.
The people you lodge with. The people of your heritage. The Israelites, the people of
God, your people, they will be my people. I am so united to
you that those that you love and those who you have a heritage
with, I will also be united to them as you are. I will adopt. I will join with
your people. And at this time, of course,
the people of Bethlehem were unknown to Ruth. She didn't know anyone back in
Bethlehem, Judah. And yet she says, I have something
in common with them. I believe I will have a unity
with your people because I have a unity with you. Thy people
shall be my people and thy God, my God, It isn't just an outward
unity. This isn't just a natural affection
or a natural joining together. This is deeper than that. Our
souls will be united. The God that you worship is the
God that I will worship. The God who you follow will be
my God. Body and soul, in every aspect, we are united. Your people and your God will
be my people and will be my God. Where thou diest, will I die
and there will I be buried. This isn't just a short term
friendship. This isn't just a short term
desire. It will endure. I will not leave
you. I will not desert you. Wherever
you die, I will stay there. I will be with you by your deathbed.
I will be with you when you come to your end. will separate us. Where thou diest will I die.
There will I be buried. I'll stay there. I will remain
amongst your people. I will remain a follower and
worshipper of your God. I'll be buried where you were
buried. And then she confirms this desire
with an oath. The Lord do so to me and more
also if aught but death part thee and me. She, in a sense, calls on God
to send his wrath and punishment upon her if she should break
this desire, if she should break this resolution. She is utterly
sincere in all that she says. So you see in what she says,
I'll never leave you, I'll be with you forever, wherever you
go I'll be there, your people will be my people, your God will
be my God and so forth. You see in this resolution that
Ruth is entirely united, physically and spiritually, forever united
to Nehemiah. This is her resolution. Is this our resolution as a disciple
of Jesus Christ? Is this our desire as a follower
of the Lord? That we will never leave him?
That we will always be found walking in his ways? That wherever he leads us, we
will willingly go. That wherever he puts us and
lodges us, we will willingly stay. That his people whom he
has called and united together, we will join with them. And as they worship him, we will
worship him with them. And do we desire that we might
come to the end of our days and say with the Apostle, I have
kept the faith, I've endured to the end, until our dying day. Our desire
is to walk with the Lord, to be united with Him, to be a disciple,
a learner, a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now we know we will fall and
fail, don't we? We know that we will deviate
and at times we will break our resolution. We know that we will
be tempted at times onto a wrong path and we fear the days when
we may even deny Him, pretend we don't know Him. And perhaps
we fear that we will come to the end of our life and we'll
frown to have slipped and fallen, not made shipwreck of our faith. And that is our fear. But what
is our desire? Is this our desire? Is this our prayer? And when
we do fall, when we do fail, is this in a sense our confession? and our renewed prayerful resolution. Are we a disciple of the Lord?
Is this our desire? To be completely united with
Christ? This was her resolution. Secondly,
her motive. Her motive in making this resolution. Why did Ruth cleave to Naomi? Why did she cling to her? There's
nothing outwardly naturally attractive about Naomi. She is a widow herself. She is no doubt relatively old. She has no husband herself. She
has no children herself. And as she says to them, even
if she had a husband today, surely the children she had would be
many years before they were potential husbands. There's no hope of
Naomi blessing Ruth with a husband. And Naomi is going. She is leaving
Moab and going to a foreign country, to a foreign land, to a foreign
people, to a foreign way of life, to a foreign way of worship,
as the general way was in Judah and Bethlehem. There's nothing
outwardly attractive about following that way. And Nehemiah makes
it perfectly clear to Ruth. She was under no illusions. of
what it meant to be with Naomi. That she would have to leave
the land of Moab and that she would be walking and following
with someone who was older and couldn't offer anything herself
to Ruth. So what does attract her? What
is her motive in making this resolution? Well, her motive,
surely, is love. It's love to Naomi. It's not just an outward appreciation
of something that's attractive, or an outward idea of something
that may do her good in her life. There's an in-built, a deep love
to Naomi. A love to her. We read at the come to the end
in chapter 4 in verse 15, when the people are speaking to their
Omi, after all the blessings that have happened, they said,
he shall be unto thee a restorer of life, this is the children
of Ruth, and a nourisher of thine old age, for thy daughter-in-law,
that's Ruth, which loveth thee, which is better unto thee than
seven sons, hath borne him." You see we have an idea there
of what the people witnessed of the love that Ruth had to
Naomi. She loves, she loveth thee and
is better to thee than seven sons. We see the love, the bond
that is between these two women. Not just an outward appreciation
of something that may do her good in her life. Here is unity
from the heart. Here is a togetherness in every
sense, a love to Naomi and of course therefore a love to her
God, to her faith, to her people. This is what motivates her in
her desire to stay by her side. She loves her. Do we love the Lord Jesus Christ? What is our motivation for walking
in the Christian walk? What is our motivation if we
can truly say that this is our desire to know Him and His blessing
in our lives? Do we love the Lord? Are we moved
from the heart? because of a love to Him which
springs up inside us, that we could never be parted from Him.
We could never desert. And our plea is that He would
never leave us because of the strength of love to the Lord
Jesus Christ. Is that what motivates us? If we had a change in our heart,
where we did not once think anything of Him. We certainly did not
love Him. But now we could say with Peter
when he is challenged by the Lord, Lovest thou me more than
these? Say, Lord, thou knowest all things.
Thou knowest that I love thee. Thou knowest that I love thee.
Many things I have to mourn about my life You say many things,
I have to confess, but one thing I know to be sure, though everything
else is uncertain, there's something inside my heart which goes out
in love to the Lord Jesus Christ. He means something to you. Is that true? Is that true? Perhaps you look on all the hardships
of a Christian life, what may seem to be hardships, Look at
the cross we have to carry. Look perhaps at the mockery,
the laughter of other people. We look at the difficulties we
may have to face as a professing Christian. And we hear the words
of the Apostle that we must crucify our flesh. And we know that's
hard and we know that's painful. And we think Could all the hardships
of the Christian life, is it worth? Is it my desire to cling
to the Lord with these hardships in front of me? There's a story that goes about
David Livingstone, the missionary to Africa. He received a letter
from a missionary society and they said to him, Can you tell
us, is there now a good road to where you are? Is there now
a good road to the village you're preaching in? Because if there
is, we want to know if we can send some missionaries to help
you. And his response is, if they
will only come if there's a good road, I don't want them to come. They're coming for the wrong
reasons. They're coming with wrong motives.
I want them to come because they have a desire for the work, a
love for the work, a love to the Lord Jesus Christ, and that
love should make them willing to walk through the bush if necessary.
Do we look on the hardships, the difficulty, the crossfaring,
and think that that's too hard? Or do we say, this is my desire,
because of the love I have to the Lord, that though it may
be a hard, difficult path, I will not deviate. I long to be by His side. I long to follow the Lord. And you may look around the world
and see what they think of Jesus. See what they think of this Lord,
Him who is despised Him who was rejected. Him who was crucified. Him who the world think they
have no need of whatsoever. And you say, look at all these
people. Look what they think of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
yet I'm going to be walking a different path. I'm going to be walking
a counter-cultural path. Walking in a way that my friends
and colleagues will think is strange, will think is a bizarre
decision. A strange way to go. And yet,
you say, but in my heart, there's a love. Entreat me not to leave
thee or return for following after thee. This is my longing. This is my desire. I can't be like Orpah. Ruth couldn't
be like Orpah. Her being, everything within
her was crying out not to be like Orpah. Her very soul refused
to be like Orpah. She could not go back because
she longed to stay with Naomi. And there's something within
you that if someone said, you must stop being a Christian,
you must stop worshipping the Lord, you must stop trusting
in the Lord Jesus Christ, you'd say, it's something I cannot
do. There's a life, there's a love
within my heart Look, I cannot just turn off and take away.
It's there. I long to be with him. I long
to love him more. Why is that love in your heart?
Why is that desire, that resolution in your heart? Isn't it because
you've seen something of his love? Something of his desire? that he would have you in his
family. Because he's brought you to see
what his suffering on that cross means. Because he's brought you
to see that he was full of love as he laid himself on the cross
to die. As he's brought you to see that
he's risen victorious and that through his death and resurrection
there's life for sinners like you and like me. Is it because
he's brought you to realise that by grace he's come to your life,
he's come to your heart and he's worked in a way that you couldn't
do and no one else could do either. He's come and brought you to
life within. And when you were dead, and when
you were walking in rebellion, and when you were disobeying
God, yet He came. And He brought you up. And He
opened your eyes. And He worked in your heart.
And He revealed to you that He was a loving, glorious Saviour. You say, I've seen something
of His love to me. though I didn't deserve any of
it and we don't deserve any of that love. And yet He comes to
His people. And if He's come to you and to
me, we say, who else can we go to? Who else
claims my heart and my affections? To whom else can we go? Thou
hast the words of eternal life and that's what I need. He alone can give us what we
need. Is that our motivation? Love to the Lord Jesus Christ. A resolution, a motivation and
finally the blessing received. The blessing received. clung to Naomi. Ruth stayed with her. She took
the long journey from Moab to Bethlehem. She went across the
deserts. She went to settle there in Bethlehem. And what did she find? What was
her experience when she came there? She was directed by God's
providence to Boaz's field. She was received and Boaz was
so kind, allowing her to take of the water, allowing her to
be amongst the gleaners, showing her the kindness of Boaz unto
her. And then she is received not
just as a gleaner, but she's received by a loving heart. She's redeemed, she's bought,
as it were, by Boaz who buys the rights from the near kinsman
in order to marry Ruth. She's loved. She's married. She's blessed with children and
Ruth is brought with one of the few Gentiles into the direct
line of Christ. You think of the blessing for
Ruth from a widow in Moab following an older widow back into a foreign
land and yet she is not long after found united with Boaz
and bearing children who were in the direct line of Christ. What a blessing for Ruth. And it's interesting to see,
she then is found clinging or cleaving to Boaz as well as to
Naomi. In verse 8 in chapter 2, we read
that Boaz Then said Boaz unto Ruth, Here is thou not, my daughter,
go not to glean in another field, neither go from hence, but abide
here fast by my maidens. Those words, abide here fast,
are actually the same words which are here translated Ruth cleave
unto her. Ruth is brought to cleave to
Boaz. as much as she claimed to Naomi. What a blessing received as she
followed her resolution and stayed close to Naomi's side. A true
disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ is blessed as they walk with
his strength and help, as they walk with Him. As we walk through
our lives, as we learn from Him, as we prove Him every day, as
we prove His goodness, as we prove His faithfulness, as we're
brought to appreciate more and more His grace towards us, as
He leads us into more knowledge of our failure, more knowledge
of our sin, He leads His people to see more of His grace and
more of His mercy and more of the wonder of salvation. As we walk with Him, we see more
of His love. We see more of His mercy towards
us. As we walk with Him, we wonder
at the gospel of grace. You see the blessing received
as we desire and pray that we might be helped to cling to Christ. We know his blessing and his
help in our lives. But more than that, the blessing
of God to his people is not for a life, for a time, But Ruth
would stay with Naomi until the end and would stay then where
Naomi had died until her end. It was a lasting union. The Lord Jesus Christ is with
his people throughout their life but comes finally to the greatest
blessing received. They are blessed as they are
brought to an eternity with Christ. To be finally, perfectly, literally
united, to be with Him where He is, to receive the wonderful
blessing of worship from an unsinning heart and to be lost in wonder,
love, and praise. This is the blessing reserved
for a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. Are we this evening like Ruth
or like Orpah? Are we a disciple, a follower,
clinging to the Lord? Or does he mean nothing to us?
Are we a Christian in our head or in our heart? What is our
resolution? What is our prayer and desire?
What is our motivation? What is our love to the Lord?
And when we consider that, then we can consider that the blessing
reserved for his people. Do we cling, do we cleave to
the Lord like Ruth cleaved to Naomi? And do we cling to him
because of what he's done for us and because of what he means
to us and because of the life he has given to us? Is that why
we love him? Or do we turn away when the way
seems too hard, when the path seems too uncertain, because
our heart isn't in it. Because we're following at an
easy time. We're following, as it were,
at a time of blessing. When the path is easy. Like Orpah,
who stuck with Naomi, stuck with her way, stuck with her religion,
when the way was easy, when the family was together, when the
husbands were alive, and then left. Her heart wasn't with her. She didn't cleave to her. Are
we like that? The path is easy. There's no
opposition. There's no difficulty. It's easy
being an outward Christian and therefore I will stay being an
outward Christian. But when it becomes hard, when
there's opposition, when there's persecution, when there's questions,
my heart's not in it. Who are we like? Orpah or Ruth? Are we a true disciple of the
Lord Jesus Christ? Ruth said, may this prove to
be our prayer every day. Entreat me not to leave thee,
or to return from following after thee. For whither thou goest,
I will go. Where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people should
be my people, thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I die,
and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more
also. Before but death, part thee and
me. May the Lord have his blessing
tonight. Amen.