I want to have you turn in your
Bibles to the book of 1 Peter and then to the book of Ruth
in the Old Testament. The book of 1 Peter in chapter
1, we're going to read from verse 18 through 25 again. So we anchor
ourselves there and then we're going to go to the book of Ruth.
1 Peter chapter 1, verse 18. The people to which Peter wrote,
were strangers. They were believers in the Lord
Jesus Christ, but they had been in the land of the Jews as their
nation where they lived with their people, but now they were
scattered. They were believers in strange
lands, and so Peter addresses them as strangers scattered throughout
these different regions. But not only were they strangers
in those lands because they were Jews displaced from their own
homeland, But they were strangers in this world because they were
believers and they believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. They were
strangers by nature to the kingdom of God, but God gave them that
grace to make them his people. And they were strange to this
world because their boast was only in Jesus Christ and him
crucified. And so as Peter writes to them
as strangers, he says this to them, In verse 17, if you call
on the Father who, without respect of persons, judges according
to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here
in fear. So it's clear he's talking about
strangers who are not here permanently, not here permanently. Everybody
in the world dies. And so you could say, well, yeah,
everybody's sojourning in their life, but that's not what he's
talking about. He's talking about those who have, who are sojourning
as strangers in the world because they live upon faith, they are
citizens of the kingdom of heaven. and they are not citizens of
this world. The citizens of this world obey
the ruler of this world. They trust the God of this world.
But the citizens of heaven obey the ruler of heaven and trust
the God of heaven. And so he says here in verse
18, considering the fact that you were strangers, he says,
for as much as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible
things as silver and gold from your vain or foolish and empty,
useless lifestyle, your vain conversation received by tradition
from your fathers. But here's how you were redeemed,
with the precious blood of Christ. Amen. As of a lamb, without blemish
and without spot, who verily, truly, truly, he was ordained,
foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest
in these last times for you, for you strangers, you sojourners,
you who believe on the Son of God. Verse 21, who by him, by
Christ, do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead and
gave him glory that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing
you have purified your souls and obeying the truth through
the spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that you
love one another with a pure heart fervently being born again,
not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word
of God, which liveth and abideth forever. For all flesh is as
grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass
withers, and the flower thereof falleth away. But the word of
the Lord endureth forever, and this is the word which by the
gospel is preached to you. All right, so God's word endures
forever. You can turn to Ruth now. God's
word endures forever. The message of that word, the
way we understand it, the way that God brings it to us is through
the preaching of the gospel of Christ. That word endures, but
we are going to fail. The best things in life about
us, whether it be our strength, our beauty, our intelligence,
our families, our homes, our job, or our accomplishments in
this world, they're all going to fade like the grass of the
field. And you can look at the grass,
there's poppies, there's all sorts of wild flowers. The flowers
of the grass, also their glory, their most prominent, attractive
part is going to fall away. Just like that, we also will
fall and fade. The best that we have will fall
and fade, but God's word endures forever. And that word is preached
to us by the gospel. What a blessed thing that is.
Now, that gospel is contained throughout scripture, but I want
to look at this book of Ruth with you. And we're going to
go through this book of Ruth, but not all today. I want to
focus on just the first chapter today and give you an overview,
as I began to do last week. And we'll get into this. I want
to read through chapter one, and then we will begin from there.
We'll take it from chapter one. He says in the book of Ruth,
chapter one and verse one, this has to do with our redemption.
That's the reason we're looking at the book of Ruth. So try to
see in this study of the book of Ruth, What God has written
here is about our redemption. We were not redeemed with corruptible
things like silver and gold. We don't think of gold as corruptible,
do we? Give me a chunk of gold, it'll last forever. That's what
man thinks. I'll put it in a safe place and when the money supply
runs out, I'll have something worth something. That's gold. That's good as gold. It's not
going to change. It's just one pure element untainted by all
the other rust and other things. But God says it's corruptible.
It's corruptible. The very best things in this
world are corruptible at best. Don't trust them. Don't trust
them. But here's what you should trust. the redeeming blood of
Christ, right? And that's what the book of Ruth
is about. It's about redemption. It's about the redeemed and their
Redeemer. And so we're gonna pick this
up in verse 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, Malon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem,
Judah. And they came into the country
of Moab and continued there. And Elimelech, Naomi's husband,
died, and she was left and her two sons. Now she's a widow,
but she still has two sons. And they took them, these two
sons, took them wives of the women of Moab. The name of the
one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth. And they dwelled
there about 10 years. So these two sons of Elimelech
and Naomi got married in the land of Moab, and they stayed
there quite a long time, about 10 years. And then, verse 5,
and Malon and Chilion died also, both of them. just like their
father had died in the land of Moab. And the woman was left
of her two sons and her husband. Now she's not only a widow, but
she has no children. Then she arose with her daughters-in-law,
that she might return from the country of Moab. For she had
heard in the country of Moab how that the Lord had visited
his people in giving them bread. Wherefore, she went forth out
of the place where she was and her two daughters-in-law with
her, that would be Orpah and Ruth. And they went on the way
to return unto the land of Judah. And Naomi said unto her two daughters-in-law,
go. Return each to her mother's house. The Lord deal kindly with you
as you have dealt with the dead and with me." The dead would
have been their husbands who had died. They had been kind
in marrying her sons. Now her sons were dead and she
tells them, I'm going to go back. To the land of Judah, I heard
that there's bread there. You go back to the families where
you came from, the house of your mother, the house of your husbands,
the people of the land. Verse nine, the Lord grant you
that you may find rest, each of you, in the house of her husband,
meaning the household, those families. Then she kissed them,
and they lifted up their voice and wept. And they said to her,
Orpah and Ruth said to Naomi, surely we will return with thee
unto thy people. And Naomi said, as effectively,
no. Turn again, my daughters, why
will you go with me? Are there yet any more sons in
my womb, that they may be your husbands? Turn again, my daughters,
go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should
say, I have hope, if I should have a husband also tonight.
and should also bear sons, would you tarry, would you wait for
them till they were grown? Would you stay for them from
having husbands? In other words, would you not
have another husband but wait for these yet to be born sons
of mine? No, my daughters, for it grieveth
me much for your sakes that the hand of the Lord is gone out
against me." God's hand. had been, as Naomi put it, against
her because her husband and her sons had died in the strange
land. And she doesn't want the affliction
that God brought on her to continue on with her two daughters-in-law.
So she tells them, go back. Even after they said they wanted
to go with her and started to go, she tells them, go back.
Verse 14. And they lifted up their voice
and wept again. Clearly, there was a close relationship
between these women, these three widows now. They lifted up their
voice and wept, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth claved
to her. She gave her a farewell kiss.
And she said, behold, thy sister, she told Ruth, behold, thy sister-in-law
is gone back unto her people and unto her gods. Return thou
after thy sister-in-law. So now this is the third time
that Naomi told Ruth, leave, go back. But look what Ruth said. If we can even read this without
breaking down. And Ruth said to Naomi, 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 anything, or ought but death, part thee and me. And
when Naomi saw that she was steadfastly minded to go with her, then she
left speaking to Ruth. Verse 19, so they 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? She had been gone a long
time, more than ten years. And she said to them, Call me
not Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty hath dealt very
bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord
has brought me home again empty. Why then call ye me Naomi, seeing
the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted
me? So Naomi returned, and Ruth the
Moabites, her daughter-in-law with her, which returned out
of the country of Moab, and they came to Bethlehem in the beginning
of barley harvest. So what a tender passage this
is, isn't it? It's so sad that we are moved
with compassion towards Naomi and her two daughters-in-law,
the wives of her two sons who had died. Now, the brief history
given here is the personal history of Naomi's family. You can see
it. It's short, it's brief, but it's
sad. And yet this family's history,
this is a key point, this family's history was ordained by God to
bring Ruth to a new husband, to Boaz, and that Boaz would
redeem her according to God's law, and in those two, in Boaz
and Ruth, portray illustrate and set forth before us Christ's
redemption of his people. This was arranged by God. This
was recorded by God in scripture to teach every child of God,
every believing sinner, how God, in his appointed time, and by
his predetermined providence, brings us to Christ, our Redeemer. It's the story of the redeemed
and their redeemer. Now that's the summary as I see
it and as others that I read have seen it. And by God's grace,
I believe this is the very truth of scripture here in this chapter. What God is doing in the lives
of his people is set forth here in a pattern. If you wanted to
say that Ruth represents all believers, that would be a fair
statement. But she also represents each
individual believer, not just all as a congregation, but each
one in particular. And each one of us who believe
Christ can trace God's word here in his dealings with Ruth and
Naomi and see God's dealings in his hand in our own life.
What a great Blessing this is that God would unfold to us his
secret workings in the providence of our life. And when I say providence,
I mean God's predetermined will for the details of our lives
to bring us to Christ. That's what Rommel was talking
about a bit ago, and I'm really glad he read those verses. Those
were some verses that I had in my notes to read to you. that
all things work together for the good of those who love God,
those who are the called according to His purpose. That's what we're
talking about here, God's purpose. His purpose to conform us to
the image of His dear Son. That's an eternal purpose, and
it's a purpose that will not fail. God will accomplish His
purpose. But to Naomi, To Ruth and to
these others named in this story, they were simply living out their
lives, weren't they? They were living their lives.
They weren't able to see before it happened how God's hand would
arrange things and even arrange their own lives to accomplish
His will. They couldn't see it. Elimelech. moved from the place of Bethlehem
Judah to the place of the Moabites. He took Naomi and his two sons
and Elimelech died. His two sons got married to women
in Moab. And then they died. And then
they were all, these three women were left as widows. Naomi left
childless and a widow in great, great sadness. And considering
that God had testified against her, God had testified against
her. And it was a very bitter testimony,
a bitter affliction that was given to her that she would lose
her inheritance. her husband and her sons, and
she would be left with nothing except these two strange women
from Moab. And that's a sad thing. Now, in this story, as we're
going to see, in chapter four, you'll see this. Boaz, a man
named Boaz, married Ruth. Who was Boaz? Well, Boaz was
the son of a man named Salmon who married Rahab the harlot.
Remember Rahab? She was in the town of Jericho.
She lived on the wall. She was a harlot. And the spies
that Joshua sent to Jericho came to the city and they went into
the harlot's house and she told them about what she could about
the city, and then let them escape down outside the window, which
was on the wall of the house of the city. They escaped, and
they promised her that her and all in her household would be
spared when God destroyed Jericho. And God, true to his word and
true to their word, they didn't destroy her or her family. And
Rahab married Salmon, and they had a child. His name was Boaz. And this is that Boaz right here.
Boaz, he was in the line, the lineage, he was an ancestor to
King David, and David was the one through whom Christ came.
All right. Now you can read about that in
Matthew chapter 1, verse 5 and 6. But the reason I point that
out here is not only because scripture points it out, but
also so we can see that Ruth's, because Boaz marries Ruth in
this chapter, this book, Ruth's great grandson was David. David
was the king and the Lord Jesus Christ came as the son of David. So you can see here, Boaz and
Ruth bear a child, Obed, who gave birth to Jesse, who gave
birth to David. Eventually, Christ was born through
David and was called the son of David. So what does that tell
us? Well, it tells us that the history
of Ruth is a prophecy about Christ, our Redeemer, because He came
through that marriage, and He ultimately was the one that fulfilled
that union between Boaz and Ruth as our Redeemer of his people. Now hold that thought because
this is important. Christ fulfilled the Redeemer's
part as Boaz fulfilled the part of a Redeemer to Ruth. Christ's
birth through the marriage of Ruth to Boaz fulfills the prophecy
of the book of Ruth. and also other prophecies. In
Galatians 4, as we read last week, when the fullness of the
time was come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, made
under the law to redeem them that were under the law, that
we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are
sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts,
crying, Abba, Father. There you have it, a snapshot
of the entire interpretation and fulfillment of this book
was the Lord Jesus Christ when he was born of a woman and he
was made under the law in order that he might redeem us who were
under the law so that we could receive what God had promised
to us, the adoption of sons, his spirit, the spirit of his
son given to us so that from our hearts we could cry, by faith
in Christ, God is my father. What an amazing gospel this is. Now, the Lord God, as we read
in 1 Peter, ordained that Christ would redeem His people. He ordained
this before the foundation of the world. He ordained that He
would come, Christ would come, and He would be our near kinsman,
our near relative, if you will. He ordained that he would redeem
his people by the Lord Jesus Christ by shedding his precious
blood. And as Boaz himself, we'll see
later, was a mighty man of wealth, so the Lord Jesus Christ is a
mighty God. He is rich. in everything. He's rich in creation. He created
all things, and all things were created by Him and for Him. And
He is rich in God's love and purpose to save and bless His
people. The Father has given all things
into His hand. And He is rich by His death,
because it says in Romans 14 9, He died that He might be Lord
both of the living and the dead. Everything belongs to Him as
King. as Lord over all. Think about
that. There is a king. There is a king. There is a ruler who rules over
all things. His name is Jesus Christ. He
created all things. All things were made by him and
they were made for him. And by his power and pleasure,
he sustains them. And he does this for his redeemed. And that's the message here.
He's a mighty man of wealth, or the mighty God and a mighty
man. rich in these things. And yet
though he is the king of glory, and he possesses all things according
to the father's good pleasure and will, he who is God, who
is the king of glory, became poor that through his poverty
we might be made rich. And that in scripture is called
grace. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now the book of Ruth is about
a woman from the country of Moab. She was a woman born in the country. She was a descendant of Moab.
Moab was the son born to Lot out of a relationship he had
with his daughter. It was an unlawful relationship. And it was his eldest daughter
who bore the child named Moab. And this people who were descendants
of Lot through his daughter in this relationship that was unlawful,
they were the people of Moab. They were strangers to Israel.
They were not part of the people of Israel. They were outside
of the covenant God made with Abraham. Lot himself was a believer. But in the relation he had with
his daughter, it was his daughter's doing, but in doing this, that
relationship, which was an unlawful one, produced people who were
not the people of God. And this portrays what the unlawful
relationship that people try to form to produce children of
God in the religious, in the spiritual way. People use, they
claim that by the outward association they have with a particular religion,
maybe through baptism or through church membership or through
whatever, through their own parents, because their parents are part
of a church, therefore they somehow have an inside track with God. And what they do is they gather
together with other people that are like-minded, and they try
to produce what only God can produce, that's children to God.
And so they produce this offspring that's unlawfully produced, and
they are not part of God's kingdom. Because children are only born
by the will of God, not the will of man. So we see that this unlawful
relationship of Lot with his daughter produced these people
of Moab. Let me take you to a few scriptures
now because these scriptures will help to anchor us on what
we see in the Book of Ruth. In Deuteronomy, which is the
last of the five books written by Moses, Deuteronomy, it says
this in Chapter 23. You might want to turn to Deuteronomy.
We're going to look at a couple of verses there. Deuteronomy
chapter 23, notice what God says here. He says, an Ammonite, Ammon
was the other son of Lot by his other daughter, an Ammonite or
Moabite, the two sons of Lot, shall not enter into the congregation
of the Lord, even to their tenth generation shall they not enter
into the congregation of the Lord forever. This is bad. This is a bad pronouncement.
They're strangers, and God has explicitly said, Lot's boys and
their descendants shall not enter into the congregation of the
Lord to the tenth generation forever. What a pronouncement
that is. And here, where was Ruth from? She was from those people, the
people of Moab. So she was a stranger to the
promises, wasn't she? She was a stranger to the covenants.
She was not part of the congregation. But in God's providence, by the
eternal will of God, he had arranged it so that in his grace, Elimelech
and Naomi and her two boys would move to Moab. One of them, Malon,
would marry Ruth. Malon would die, and then Ruth
would be brought back by Naomi into the land of Bethlehem, where
Christ was born, and she would become the mother of, eventually,
the Lord Jesus Christ in his human nature. What grace that
is. It shows the relationship that
God ordained, that even though she was an outcast with the people
that were cursed of God and separated in every way, yet God had identified
her and named her as one of His before the foundation of the
world, as we read in 1 Peter 1.20. And so they were strangers. These Moabites were strangers.
They were also idolaters. They did not know the God of
Israel. It says in Ruth chapter 1 and
verse 15 that Naomi told Orpah, go back to your own people. And
then in verse 15, she told Ruth, your sister-in-law, referring
to Orpah, is gone back to her people and to her gods, her idols. And what is an idol? Well, an
idol is something that men create. It's a false god. It's the work
of men's hands. So an idol is whatever a man
can do to try to obtain blessing from God. And we can't do anything. We're sinful. And so anything
that we trust in that would gain us favor with God or blessing
from God or life or deliverance from sin and salvation, anything
like that, that we do is a false god. It is an idol. And this
is what men do. They create these works of their
own hands in order to obtain salvation or blessings or favor
from God. Trying to make ourselves acceptable
to God is an idolatry. And so Ruth was from the people
who were idolaters. Everyone who is not a believer
is ultimately an idolater. Okay, so here she is, a woman
who is of a people who were told, God said, you're not to come
into the congregation of the Lord. She was an idolater, she
was a stranger to Israel. And yet, notice how God arranged
it in this book to not only bring her to the people of God, but
to change her heart and to make her one of God's people by her
marriage to Boaz. Naomi's family came to Moab because
God sent a famine in the land of Bethlehem, Judah, where Naomi
and her husband and her sons lived. Shortly after they came
there, her husband died. Naomi was left with her two sons.
They married these two women and the name of the one was the
name of one son was Kilian and his wife was Orpah and the other
son was named Malon and his wife was Ruth. And then these sons
lived about 10 years in Moab and after that they both died
like their father and Naomi was left a widow bereft of her sons
and her husband and these three widows together Naomi, Orpah
and Ruth were very, very sad, very broken because of the loss
of their husbands. And Naomi even said, God has
afflicted me. He has testified against me.
And what can bring more sorrow to us? What can bring more sorrow
than if God afflicts us? What can bring more sorrow if
we think that God is against us? Why did she think God was
against her? because her husband died, because
her sons died, because she was now outside of the land of Israel
where the truth of God was, where the worship of God was. She was
separated from Israel. She thought, God has separated
me. God has left me with nothing. God must be against me. It's
so easy to look at our circumstances as something else that Ramel
had said earlier. We have the mountains, we have the valleys.
And when things seem to be going well, we're all happy. But when
things don't go so well in our own perception, then we think,
God is against us. Look how much better other people
have it. God must be against me. He's
targeted me. And what do we do then? Well,
we think that we look at the outward things that we have or
the ease of our life and we assume that if it's not easy and things
aren't good, then God must be against me. And this is even
more true if what we feel on the inside, our sense of God's
presence is lacking. Our sense of God's favor and
blessing upon us. And this view is common to us. This view comes to all those
the Lord works on. It comes to those the Lord doesn't
work on, but it leads to something else when the Lord does it. So
it's understandable why these women were sad. And so Naomi,
being so sad, decided to return to her own land, the land of
her husband's inheritance, to Bethlehem, Judah. And so she
set out to return. And she talked to the two women,
Orpah and Ruth, and she told them, you go back. I wonder,
why did she do that? Why did Naomi tell these two
women to leave her, to go back to your families? Go back to
your mother's house. Go to the household where your
husband came from in Moab. Go to your people, where you
grew up. Why would she tell them that?
Well, I think because she was afflicted from God's hand. Why
would I bring them along with me? I'm the target of God's affliction. Why would I bring them along?
Maybe that, but maybe also because being led by the Spirit of God
in what she said, clearly she was, it was God's word trying
Orpah and Ruth, wasn't it? And that's what we see here.
And it's interesting when you look at this, look at verse in
Ruth chapter 1, in verse 8. Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law,
go, return each to her mother's house. The Lord deal kindly with
you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant
you that you may find rest, each of you, in the house of her husband.
Then she kissed them and they lifted up their voice and wept.
They didn't wanna leave. And they said to her, surely
we will return with thee to thy people. Orpah, originally, her
first expression, because she had grown so fond of Naomi, Naomi's
name actually means pleasant. It means sweet and pleasant. So I can imagine that on a human
level, Orpah had become a dear and intimate friend to Naomi
because Naomi was so kind to her. Her name expressed the fact
that her disposition was kind and pleasant. No wonder she was
attracted to her. No wonder she hated to have her
leave. And so Orpah originally thought,
no, I'm not going to leave you. But Naomi again said, in verse
11, effectively, no, turn again, my daughters. Why will you go
with me? And she reasons with them. Look,
if I had another husband, even tonight, and I was able to bear
two sons, even tonight, to conceive two sons, and they would be born,
and they would eventually grow up, and you would wait, what
would you do? Would you wait that long? Would you really wait? It's not going to happen. I'm
too old. It's going to take too long for them to grow up. You'll
get tired of waiting. You'll go get married. And besides,
by the time they're grown up to be your husbands, you'll be
too old to have children. So she's telling them all these
things. She's convincing them, based on the circumstances of
life, that they should just go back to their people. And that's
a persuasive argument, isn't it? It's like that with us in
our lives as believers, which we'll get to when we look at
Ruth here. So notice, after she reasoned with him this way, in
verse 14, they lifted up their voice, they wept again, and Orpah,
taking her mother-in-law's advice, now she kissed her mother-in-law,
And it says later, when Naomi spoke to Ruth in verse 15, your
sister-in-law now has gone back to her people, to her gods. I mean, you would expect that
she could say, well, Naomi told me to. I just did what my mother-in-law
told me to. Then she returned. But she's a picture of those
who outwardly come to the Lord Jesus Christ through the outward
means of the gospel. And at first they seem attracted
to it, and their desire is to stay with it. It seems pleasant,
and they can meet people and become friendly. But when the
going gets tough, and when trials come to try them, the Word of
the Lord tries them, what happens then? They say, well, I guess
I'll just go back then because I actually, I think it'll be
better for me to go back than to be with you. You're obviously
the target of God's affliction, right? And I think that we experience
that in our lives as I was thinking about these things. And this
is really a picture of how God works in the lives of people,
isn't it? In their history, their personal history. but not just
in their lives in general, like getting jobs and getting married,
those kinds of things. It includes that, but it's in
the inward man that God works and how he works in us. And so
we see here, we see basically God opening up to us
his own secret dealings in the lives of people and these personalities
here. And we can find ourselves here.
Have you ever, maybe you've decided, I want to follow the Lord, and
you get yourself into a position where there's a church maybe,
or there's people you've grown fond of. You've had fellowship
with them. They've been kind to you. And
now something happens. The church disappears. The people
go their way. Maybe some of them go back to
the world. And you thought, well, if anyone
was a believer, I thought they were a believer, and yet now
they're living as if they were unbelievers. And everything that
you had attached to has been shaken, and you're left like,
Well, now what? I'm out here in the wilderness,
as it were. There's no gospel here. There's
no people. What should I do? Well, I'm going
to attach myself to the religion of this world then, because it
seems like everybody in the world can't be wrong. All these other
people are preaching something. They can't all believe the false,
what's false, can they? And so you find by going, if
you were like Orpah here, you'd go associate, you would start
attending a place where they're not preaching the true gospel.
And you would be satisfied. I'm actually more comfortable
here. These people are blessed. They all got good jobs, and families,
and cars, and all these things. And they seem happy. They're
friendly. But there's something lacking.
The God. the God of Scripture, and the
Lord Jesus Christ, and his salvation. And so this is what Orpah pictures
here, is the disciple who comes to follow Jesus, and yet when
the word of the Lord comes and the circumstances in God's providence
tries them, he reveals that the root that's in them is not true
saving grace, okay? And we might think, well, OK,
now what am I going to do since God is the one who has to save?
Am I going to wait for Him to work this work of salvation?
Am I going to cry to Him? And that's why we need to keep
listening here to what God did with Ruth, all right? Because
that's exactly what God is teaching us here. God's work in the life
of Ruth is the work of His grace in the life of a believer. And
look at what she says here. Naomi told her in verse 15, why
don't you go back? Your sister-in-law did. And Ruth
said, no, no. Don't ask me to leave you. Don't tell me to return from
following after you. Wherever you go, that's where
I will go. Wherever you live and stay, that's
where I want to live and be. I want to dwell. I want to live
with you. Your people will be my people. You're God, my God, and where
you die, I will die. See, Ruth wasn't, there's something
that people do when they invest their money. It's called diversifying. Well, this investment might fail
or it might go down, so I'll put some in this one and that
one and the other one too. Ruth wasn't diversified. She
only invested in one thing. She put all of her eggs in one
basket. If her investment in the God
of Israel failed, she would fail. She said, I'm going to live where
you live, die where you die, and be buried where you're buried.
Your people are my people. Your God is my God, and I want
to be with you. She had nowhere else to go, and
she had resolved not to go anywhere else. This is the work of God. When, in that former example
that I gave here, you find yourself in a place where the preaching
of the gospel seems to have vanished, and the people who believe the
gospel seem to have gone another way, what are you going to do?
If the Lord is the one who put the root of his gospel in you,
what will you say? Lord Jesus, where else will I
go? You will not go to other gods.
You will not go to the people who follow other gods. And this
is exactly what happened in the New Testament. Look at John chapter
six. In John chapter six, the disciples
were following Jesus. Some were just following him.
They were outwardly happy. They were being blessed. Whenever
he taught, he also fed them with bread and fish, and they were
able to understand things. So they were getting the inside
scoop from the Lord of glory, and they were happy. Then he
said, here's the way it really is. I'm the bread of heaven. I'm the bread. And the only way
you can live is if you eat my flesh and drink my blood." They
didn't understand he meant to believe on him. Maybe they did.
Whatever it was, he says this. I'm going to read it from verse
54. Actually, verse 53, Jesus said
to them, verily, verily, I say to you, except you eat the flesh
of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you,
unless you believe Christ and Him crucified. As all of your
life, you have no life in you. And the believer says, yes. Yes,
that's exactly what I believe. Christ alone, Christ all-sufficient,
and Him crucified is all of my salvation. And verse 54, whoso
eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood has eternal life, and
I will raise him up at the last day. Now if Christ said that
to us, and we face the sawing asunder, or the lion's den, what
matter does it matter to us? We have eternal life. He's going
to raise us up the last day. Verse 55, for my flesh is meat
indeed, and my blood drink indeed, because it gives eternal life.
He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me and I dwell
in him. There's a union between us and
is evidenced by his believing and resting upon and hanging
his eternal soul in total reliance on him and him alone. He has
no other investments, no other basket to put his egg. Verse
57, as the living father has sent me and I live by the father,
so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. And you can
only eat Christ if you are a believer. This is that bread which came
down from heaven, not as your fathers did eat manna and are
dead. He that eat of this bread shall
live forever. And these things said he in the
synagogue as he taught in Capernaum. Many therefore, notice these
are the orpas, Many, therefore, of his disciples, when they had
heard this, said, This is a hard saying. Who can hear it? And
when Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it,
he said to them, Does this offend you? What if you shall see the
Son of Man ascend up where he was before, the Lord of glory? It's the spirit that quickens,
gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you,
they are spirit and they are life. But there are some of you
that believe not for Jesus knew from the beginning who they were
that believed not and who should betray him. And he said, therefore
said I unto you that no man can come to me except it were given
unto him of my father. What does it mean to come to
the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, like we saw at the Bible
study on Thursday night, he has obligated himself to fulfill
his word in the salvation of sinners. Coming to Christ is
laying in trust upon what he has promised. It's entrusting
him, rolling yourself upon him to save you because he said he
would. and because he's able and because
his merits are all sufficient to save to the uttermost. He
says, he that no one can come to me except it were given unto
him. You can't trust Christ this way
like Ruth did unless you're given this from God. Verse 66, from
that time many of his disciples went back and walked no more
with him. That's Orpah. And Jesus said to the twelve,
Will you also go away? Simon Peter, like Ruth, said,
Lord, To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal
life. He wasn't worried about worldly things, was he? He hit
the nail right on the head. You have the words of eternal
life, the truth of God. You are the truth. And we believe
and we are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living
God. You see it? So you can see here
that Ruth is the believer. God has put it in her heart like
Barnabas exhorted those believers in Antioch and other regions,
he said, cleave unto the Lord with purpose of heart. with your purpose of heart, cleave
unto the Lord Jesus Christ." That's the response. It's as
if God is telling us to do what He has already worked in us that
we can't not do. I have to have Him. And wherever His gospel is preached,
I'm gonna go there, and I'm gonna listen to it, because that's
where the bread is. Wherever His people are, that's
where He is. He said He would be in the midst
of His people. I want to be there. The God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ is my God
and I'll follow Him wherever He goes, even unto death. My life is so bound up with Him
that where He dies, that's where I want to die. Where He's buried,
that's where I want to be buried. His life is my life. everything
about him. So that's what Ruth is confessing
here. And so Naomi said, the test is over. She stopped speaking
to him. God had put it in Ruth's heart.
And so they went back to Bethlehem, the house of bread. And it came
to pass when they were come, that's when the people greeted
her. And she said, don't call me Naomi. God has dealt very
bitterly with me. But Ruth the Moabites, brought
back by the grace of God with Naomi, to be married to Boaz,
to conceive by the power of God. in order that Christ might be
born. What an amazing grace this is.
Let's pray. Father, thank you for your mercy
in Christ. We pray, Lord, that you would
so knit our hearts to you, open our hearts and put your life
there, that we would believe on the Lord Jesus Christ with
his full purpose of heart. We would not leave him. And though
heaven and earth pass away, we would find our refuge in Christ
alone. This is a great trial for us
to be able to do this, and we can't pass this test unless you,
by your grace, uphold us and give us that faith to look to
Him at all times. Troubles come and our lives are
shaken. We are afraid and we tremble.
But you remind us, you daily come to us and give us your grace
that we might be reminded over and over again, Christ is all
and he's all sufficient too. And we don't want another. We
don't want another. He's enough. And help us, Lord,
to live and die. Help us to live and die with
him. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.