Show Notes
Ruth 1:6-22
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Amen. Let's pray.
[00:00:11] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can look to you, that we have a hope for us that we can turn to.
[00:00:22] So often we feel distressed and we don't know where to turn or what to do.
[00:00:28] We feel like we have to have our own lives completely under control to be okay.
[00:00:35] Lord, we need other things to make that happen. But Lord, remind us that we only need you, that as you told us already, we lack no good thing when we belong to you.
[00:00:49] So often it feels like we're missing so many good things.
[00:00:52] There's so many things that we wish and we want and we feel we really, really need.
[00:00:59] Please help us to submit our hearts to you, to your work, to your plans, and ultimately toward your goodness and kindness and mercy toward us.
[00:01:14] Help us not to doubt you as the world would have us doubt you and would distract us.
[00:01:21] Help us not to believe of the accusations of the evil one.
[00:01:26] Help us not to be afraid.
[00:01:29] But today, Lord, as we think, as we hear your word and Ruth as we hear it preached, we ask that you would bless us with a greater and stronger understanding of who you are, that we might live our lives in faith.
[00:01:48] We ask that this word would go out in our own hearts and lives and more broadly as we share this word with others.
[00:01:57] We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:02:03] Let's remain standing and hear God's word now. From Ruth, chapter 1, verses 6 through 22.
[00:02:23] Ruth has written in a time before the kings of Israel, in a period, nearly the same period in which the judges of the previous book or ruling is this cycle of this time when Israel is no longer in Egypt, no longer wandering in the desert, but they're in the promised land, but continually turning away from the Lord and then experiencing his discipline, feeling the difficulties of that groaning, sometimes calling out to God, God pitying them and then raising people up to save them, ultimately prefiguring the salvation that will come in Jesus.
[00:03:10] Ruth is a story of one family during these times. Naomi, Elimelech, her husband, her two sons, who travel out of the land of Israel and go into the land of Moab during a time of famine.
[00:03:27] During this time, as we saw last time, Elimelech, Naomi's husband, he dies and so do her two sons. And now she has a household of three, herself and her two daughters in law, three widows, one older, two younger, living together, trying to figure out what to do next.
[00:03:49] And that's where we come to Ruth. 1, verse 6.
[00:03:56] The she here refers to Naomi right here at the beginning.
[00:03:59] Then she arose with her daughters in law to return from the country of Moab.
[00:04:06] For she heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and had given them food.
[00:04:13] 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.
[00:04:20] But Naomi said to her two daughters in law, go return each of you to her mother's house.
[00:04:26] May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me the Lord grant that you may find rest each of you in the house of her husband.
[00:04:38] Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. And they said to her, no, we will return with you to your people.
[00:04:46] But Naomi said, turn back, my daughters. Why will you go with me?
[00:04:51] Have I yet sons in my womb that may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters. Go your way. For I am too old to have a husband.
[00:05:00] If I should say I have hope. Even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, would you therefore wait till they were grown?
[00:05:08] Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.
[00:05:20] Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother in law.
[00:05:26] But Ruth clung to her.
[00:05:28] And she said, see, your sister in law has gone back to her people and to her gods return after your sister in law.
[00:05:37] 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 shall be my people and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord do so to me. And more also if anything but death parts me from you.
[00:06:04] And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said, no more.
[00:06:09] So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem.
[00:06:13] When they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, is this Naomi?
[00:06:19] She said to them, do not call me Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.
[00:06:27] I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty.
[00:06:31] Why call me Naomi when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?
[00:06:38] So Naomi returned, and Ruth, the Moabite, her daughter in law, with her, who returned from the country of Moab.
[00:06:46] And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
[00:06:50] You may be seated.
[00:07:21] If you've ever experienced something that you might call closeness to God.
[00:07:28] I imagine that you would say it was really, really good closeness to God.
[00:07:37] It's a hard thing to describe.
[00:07:40] We might say the feeling is a sense of his presence, his pleasure to be a preacher, not another P. We could say his protection.
[00:07:57] To feel close to God is to feel safe.
[00:08:03] It's to feel that one is in his good care, that things will work out well because of him, even when things are difficult.
[00:08:13] And now some people have never experienced this.
[00:08:18] I heard a story this week, an interview with a lady who.
[00:08:22] A fantastic travel writer, adventurist, gone all over the world seeking.
[00:08:30] She didn't put it this way, so I'm putting words in her mouth. But it seemed to me that she was seeking something of that kind of closeness with God.
[00:08:39] Some kind of experience, a sublime experience, an experience that moved beyond the normal things of this world, beyond the regular stuff.
[00:08:51] An experience of peace, of safety, of comfort.
[00:08:55] And she chased that. And all over volcanoes, waterfalls, all kinds of amazing things. And some of them were indeed awesome, terrifying, life changing.
[00:09:10] But you could hear as she talked about these experiences, some of which, probably most of which many of us will never have.
[00:09:18] The way she talked about it is that they never quite lived up to what she hoped. And they were always passing, they always went away.
[00:09:29] There was kind of. There was a little bit of a sadness in it, even as there was wonder in her and amazement and joy.
[00:09:38] There's something about God and closeness to him that only comes through closeness with Him.
[00:09:46] And it's something that I think none of us ever experience in this life in the ultimate way that we will experience it in heaven.
[00:09:55] There's a part of it that's always resisting, a part of it that's always feeling shameful, a part of it that's always running away, even in the best moments.
[00:10:07] All that to say, closeness is a very valuable thing.
[00:10:10] And it's ultimately what God provides us.
[00:10:14] Remember one of Jesus names, One of the ways in which we call him, is Emmanuel.
[00:10:19] God with us.
[00:10:22] One of the great promises or summaries of the gospel is that God says, I will be with you. I will be your God, you will be my people.
[00:10:31] Intimacy and closeness. Distance is the opposite of all of that, right? Distance from God sometimes because we've left him, because we've fallen into sin, because we don't know why, we just feel distant sometimes because we were never close to begin with.
[00:10:51] People sometimes live their whole lives just not really knowing the Lord Jesus Christ, not really knowing forgiveness, not really knowing openness, not really knowing anything. Other than hiding and fear.
[00:11:08] And there's this thing that happens with distance where the farther away you get in time from wherever you maybe felt you once were or you want to be, or morally, the further away you get, morally, the worse your life, the worse sins your life falls into, the harder your heart becomes, the more this distance feels like it's kind of a door that's shutting.
[00:11:39] It's too late. Or to use. That's a time metaphor, to use a distance metaphor, I've gone too far, right?
[00:11:47] Distance feels like it decides a thing.
[00:11:51] The longer you're out, the longer you're away, the longer it's been, the farther you are, the more settled it seems, the less hope there is.
[00:12:03] And then our sinfulness and our ignorance piled on top of these things, can make God feel impossibly far away.
[00:12:11] How could I ever feel good again? How could I ever feel close to Him? How could he ever love me?
[00:12:19] And these thoughts can make, instead of drawing us to God, can make us run even further, to rebel even harder. And so we might ask ourselves, how far does God's kindness actually go?
[00:12:38] At what point are we too far?
[00:12:42] Is there a point in which his mercy hits a limit and doesn't go any farther? How far is God willing to go after people who have left him?
[00:12:54] After people who have ignored Him? After people who never knew his love in the first place? How far does God's kindness extend?
[00:13:05] The answer is very far.
[00:13:09] Farther than any of us know or believe, Farther than any of us can imagine.
[00:13:16] In his mercy and in his loving kindness, he crosses every boundary, every border, every door, every obstacle that you could put up or could be put up in the way God can overcome it all.
[00:13:31] And there is no place which God's mercy cannot extend.
[00:13:37] And we see that here in our passage. As God moves and extends his mercy from Bethlehem all the way to Ruth, the first place we see God's mercy is its reaching his people.
[00:13:55] Bethlehem.
[00:13:56] There's a famine.
[00:13:58] The famine has come upon his people because of discipline, because of his judgment.
[00:14:05] But God, in His kindness, did not leave them in this situation forever. His kindness comes to them.
[00:14:14] In verse six, we read that the Lord Yahweh had visited his people and had given them food.
[00:14:23] It doesn't give us all the reasons why here. If we look at Judges, as I mentioned earlier, it's usually because he hears their groaning, he hears their crying. He hears sometimes often their calls to repentance. Even though those calls, as we, if you study them, seem half hearted, weak, faltering even in the midst of those kinds of confessions and repentance, God extends his mercy.
[00:14:51] He extends his kindness. And he does that here.
[00:14:54] Now, the thing to notice that will help us see this is Naomi is not in Bethlehem.
[00:15:02] Naomi and Ruth, the focus of our story right now, they almost have nothing to do with what's going on over here.
[00:15:08] God is reaching his people, and he's going to bring blessings to Naomi and to Ruth before they ever know it.
[00:15:16] God brings his kindness to the people of Israel.
[00:15:20] The house of bread Bethlehem Translated Bethlehem had a famine.
[00:15:26] Things were bad. But the Lord visits his people and gives them bread.
[00:15:32] This is a pattern we see from the very beginning of the Bible. Adam and Eve sinned. Adam and Eve hid. Adam and Eve were embarrassed and ashamed. And God went to them and asked, what? Where are you?
[00:15:46] Not because he didn't know where they were, but it was a question to draw them out.
[00:15:51] It was a question to mark their distance. It was a question to bring himself and bring them close to him. They were ashamed. They were exposed. They were hiding. And God says, where are you? He comes to them and he makes them proper clothes, proper clothes out of animal skins. An act appointing to the eventual shedding of the blood of Jesus, in which the Son of God would give his own blood to cover his people, to be near his people.
[00:16:23] And throughout the Bible from that point on, we see this over and over and over again. God's people sinning, and then God coming to his people.
[00:16:33] This is the very first mercy, this moment of mercy that we see in this story. It's right here.
[00:16:39] Bethlehem, where ultimately Jesus will be born. Immanuel. God with us. God who comes to his people.
[00:16:47] God comes to his people. The second person of the Trinity born, taking on human flesh to be with us, to die for us, so that we might live in him forever.
[00:17:00] This is what God does. He comes to his people there in Israel. But he doesn't stop there.
[00:17:07] He doesn't stop there. He doesn't just come to his people, Israel. He extends it out from there. Now put yourself in Naomi's shoes for a moment.
[00:17:16] Naomi's in a tough spot.
[00:17:19] Mercy has come to Bethlehem.
[00:17:21] And she's not in Bethlehem, right? She's not in the place where God has now provided food. She left.
[00:17:31] From a certain perspective, you can imagine someone saying, you made your bed.
[00:17:36] You've been in Moab for 10 years.
[00:17:39] You have roots. Now, if you go back and look at chapter one, you'll see this interesting pattern.
[00:17:48] In verse one, it says that Elimelech and his family, they went to sojourn in the land of Moab.
[00:17:56] And then in verse two, it says they remained there.
[00:18:01] And then in verse four, it says, and they lived there about 10 years.
[00:18:07] It seems almost like what started as a, well, let's go there and see if things can improve a little bit.
[00:18:13] Began a process of settling in.
[00:18:16] And it did. And ultimately they were there a long time.
[00:18:20] Another very practical problem, very practical problem is how can Naomi hear about the good news in Bethlehem?
[00:18:30] The specific good news is that there's food.
[00:18:33] But somehow, some way, Naomi, who's not there and is not seeing the plants grow up, is not seeing the harvesters getting ready. She has to hear that.
[00:18:44] She has to hear that good news.
[00:18:48] It's kind of like there's people who don't come to church here. Here at church we have the proclamation of the gospel. If they're not here when the gospel is being proclaimed, how will they hear it?
[00:19:02] This is a very practical problem.
[00:19:04] And the answer is the outreach of God, the mercy of God, the tenderness of God, extends beyond the church, extends beyond Bethlehem, to other places. And so we see the goodness and the mercy and the loving kindness of God, not only in providing for his people of Bethlehem, but in spreading that news in the gospel, in the good news of him and his provision and all these things going out and finding somehow she hears of it in the fields of Moab.
[00:19:41] It's an ironic thing. That word country that you see in verse 6 is the same word for fields. You could almost say she arose with her daughters in law to return from the fields of Moab. For she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and give them food.
[00:19:59] She's there in the fields where food production is happening, and she hears about the food in Israel.
[00:20:07] This point then, about God not only bringing salvation to his people, but also seeking out the lost people.
[00:20:17] Another aspect we see in this of his mercy, how far he's willing to go.
[00:20:23] Ezekiel 34, 11:12 says this.
[00:20:26] I myself will search for my sheep, and I will seek them out.
[00:20:33] I'll read two more verses in same chapter. Ezekiel 34, verse 16 says, I will seek the lost, bring back the strayed, bind up the injured and strengthen the weak.
[00:20:47] And one more to hear the heart of our Lord, and the extent of his mercy and Grace. Luke 19:10. For the son of man came to seek and to save the lost.
[00:21:00] And this, of course, is the greatest example, the thing to which all these different moments are leading God's mercy, not just in. In this moment of food and in this meal of bread, but in the coming of the bread of heaven, the bread of life, to provide for all mankind.
[00:21:20] The problem Naomi faces, there are many, but one of them is a very practical problem. You can't believe a gospel you don't know.
[00:21:29] You can't believe a gospel you haven't heard. And so God brings his gospel to people who. Who need it, including his lost sheep, including his straying sheep.
[00:21:41] God comes to us where we are, and he does amazing things.
[00:21:47] Not only does he bring the news to us, but he makes us bearers of that news to others.
[00:21:53] And she does that in a way, when she tells her daughters in law about the bread in the house of bread in Bethlehem.
[00:22:03] So God's mercy can come to people who don't deserve it, as in the case of Bethlehem. And it doesn't stop there. It goes out even to this family that had left. A family that had left and was now living in Moab.
[00:22:17] So we've seen these two ways in which God's mercy has come, the extent of it. First, to people who don't deserve it. Then to people who have left or left the area of his work, even his family, his household in Israel.
[00:22:38] But now we see it coming to an enemy.
[00:22:42] The enemy who was never a part of anything to begin with in the first place.
[00:22:47] And I'm talking about Ruth now. It might be hard to think of Ruth as an enemy. She's so lovely.
[00:22:55] She's amazing. The first, first words and actions we see out of her mouth are awesome.
[00:23:02] Poetry, love.
[00:23:05] She is exuding kind of everything that you would want in your own life and in the life of others.
[00:23:12] But. And that's all true.
[00:23:14] But where does that come from?
[00:23:17] It doesn't come from Chemish, one of the Moabite gods.
[00:23:22] That kind of love for Yahweh, for the God of Israel and for the people of Israel, comes only from God, only from Him.
[00:23:32] Something has happened in her life. The Holy Spirit has worked in her life, has changed things so that this person who grew up in the away from Israel, never knowing it, never being a part of it, belonging to other gods, as Naomi mentions about her daughters in law going back to their land and to their gods.
[00:23:53] A person who in some ways has everything to lose, as we'll see in a little bit, by going back to Israel, at least on the surface, that's not where her heart is.
[00:24:04] Her heart is wrapped up in loving Naomi, Naomi's people, Naomi's country, and ultimately Naomi's God.
[00:24:15] Ruth is not A lapsed church member. She's not a sheep that has gone astray.
[00:24:22] She's a Moabite.
[00:24:24] Something that's emphasized over and over in this chapter. That word comes up quick aside.
[00:24:31] There are a lot of words that repeat in the book of Ruth. Look for them.
[00:24:36] Return is a big one in this chapter. Kindness is another. So as we read, you can try to look for words that are repeating that'll help you.
[00:24:46] Well, this, this road that Ruth faces, as I mentioned, is going to be a difficult one.
[00:24:56] Let's put ourselves in their shoes again and think about this for a moment.
[00:25:03] Obviously she has a good relationship with her mother in law, Orpah too. I mean, they all seem fairly happy, right?
[00:25:12] There's no indication that despite all of these sorrows that they're mad at their mother in law. They're weeping, they're crying. They don't want her to leave.
[00:25:21] But they are in an extremely precarious situation.
[00:25:26] Food wise, financial wise, legally perhaps.
[00:25:32] Remember, Naomi left her country.
[00:25:36] Imagine leaving your country because you couldn't eat.
[00:25:40] Naomi left her country because she was so poor she thought she could make it better in this other country.
[00:25:50] Now she's thinking about going back because there seems like there might be resources over there. There's no indication here that Naomi is this super wealthy woman who's just going to be fine on her own and that's who Ruth's attached to.
[00:26:08] Naomi also, in addition to not being wealthy, is older, is beyond childbearing years, is very unlikely to get married, and all the more in Moab.
[00:26:23] She is not financially strong. She's an old Israelite widow with two daughters in law.
[00:26:30] Probably not the first choice for many men.
[00:26:36] Not to mention Moab was a sometimes enemy of Israel.
[00:26:41] Eglon is one of the people mentioned in the book of Judges. A Moabite king who came in, took over parts of Israel. These kinds of things. It's a bad situation for Naomi. But think about it from Ruth's perspective. She's attached to this, this, this, this woman, her mother in law, and to Orpah, who is kind of in the same situation, all three of them, these widows together. And it's then that Naomi hears of God's favor to return back to Israel. And Naomi comes up with a solution.
[00:27:15] And it's smart.
[00:27:17] Naomi's going to go back to her people and she says it's because of this barley harvest. She also knows. We don't know how much she told Ruth and Orpah, but she knows she has a piece of land back there. That they left that she could sell. We'll find out about that later on.
[00:27:35] She knows that there are potential people to buy that land. And like anywhere else, she knows people, right? When she comes back into the town, the women are like, is that Naomi? She has some shame she's afraid of. But at the same time, she has a network, right? She has people that she knows. She has a piece of land, she has some resources.
[00:27:57] And on top of all that, perhaps she remembers all of the instructions to Israel from Israel's God to take care of the widow, of. Of the sojourner, of the orphan, over and over and over again commands a requiring this of people. And she's in one of those categories.
[00:28:18] And so she can go back knowing that the God who rules over this people cares for her. Perhaps this is in her mind. There's a lot of reasons why it makes sense to go back.
[00:28:31] Ruth and Orpah, the case seems weaker.
[00:28:36] They don't have the network.
[00:28:38] And maybe in some ways they'll be a burden.
[00:28:41] This is where their home is. Who's going to marry a Moabitess, Moabite woman who.
[00:28:49] And there's other issues around that, as we'll see. Ruth does have a hard time getting married. One person rejects her because of some of these issues. We'll see later on.
[00:28:59] And unlike her, this is where their home is. You can see her making sense of these things. This is where her home is. This is where they'll find husbands. This is where they'll have protection. This is where their families are. And so she, I think in love, releases them and says, I love you, but go home.
[00:29:22] You don't need to worry about me.
[00:29:25] I'll go back.
[00:29:26] You find yourselves husband. And she blesses them in the name of the Lord. The Lord, verse 9 grant that you may find rest each of you in the house of her husband.
[00:29:39] She says, before that may Yahweh. May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with me and then dealt with the dead and with me.
[00:29:50] The law says in Israel that if your husband dies, your brother in law is supposed to marry you and then continue the line of your husband.
[00:30:03] Naomi looks at him and is like, I don't have any more sons.
[00:30:07] And if I was to have a husband even tonight, are you going to wait until they, you know, she's like, this doesn't make any sense. Just go home.
[00:30:16] So she releases them in love. And that's Ruth's situation.
[00:30:21] It makes a lot of sense for her to stay.
[00:30:24] It makes a lot of her sense to, with tears, let Naomi go.
[00:30:30] But she won't.
[00:30:33] She won't.
[00:30:36] She doesn't just kiss Naomi. She clings to her.
[00:30:41] The Holy Spirit has given her faith in him and new priorities that make her willing to sacrifice even her life.
[00:30:52] She mentions that. She says, I'm even calling about her death. Where you die, I will die.
[00:30:59] May the Lord do so to me. And also, if anything but death parts me from you, she's willing to sacrifice out of a deep, deep love for Naomi. And. And Naomi is God.
[00:31:13] She's clearly tied to Naomi. Her concern for her is demonstrated not only here in this amazing.
[00:31:22] I don't even know what to call it statement that's boring. You get the idea. This confession of love, profession of love. Right in this amazing profession of love. But later on, as we go in, we're gonna see Ruth doing all kinds of things, in large part for Naomi. To care for this woman in some ways, to do the very thing that God calls his people to do. To care for the widow and the orphan and the sojourner.
[00:31:52] This is all the more amazing because Ruth is a widow and a sojourner. We don't hear anything about her parents, but she is the one in need of help.
[00:32:05] She is the one who's desperate. And yet she's got her eyes on Naomi and saying, what can I do?
[00:32:11] How can I be with her? How can I help?
[00:32:14] This is love.
[00:32:18] What an amazing thing. This comes for her. And Ruth, it turns out, is not wrong. Out of her poverty, out of her widowness, out of her foreignness, out of the precariousness of her situation, God will use her to provide not only for but herself, but for Naomi, her family, the community, the nation, and eventually the whole world through the birth of her son.
[00:32:46] In Naomi's weakness, in Ruth's weakness, God will work wonders.
[00:32:53] And her love for Naomi is grounded in her love for Naomi's God.
[00:32:58] The people and the land that she mentioned. These are not just accessories to life with Naomi. The. These are covenantal realities that she must understand at some level.
[00:33:09] God has put his blessings and his promises on Israel.
[00:33:13] He's also promised curses like this famine. He's promised to be with them. He's promised to forgive their sins. He's promised to bring a messiah, a king, all of these things. He is Israel's covenant God.
[00:33:27] And at this point in time, it's marked very much by a particular people and. And a particular place. And Ruth understands that, and she says, that's all going to be mine.
[00:33:38] That's where I live, that's where I die.
[00:33:42] And she swears an oath to God on the basis of all of these things.
[00:33:48] It's not just a profession of love to Naomi. It's a profession of faith in God, in her words and in her actions. And boy, is Ruth right to do this?
[00:33:59] Think about it. First of all, she's putting her faith in God, who is the Creator of all things, the Creator of the barley that springs up in the ground and the one that makes that happen. He's the Creator and sustainer of all things. Bread, life, children, all from Him.
[00:34:17] She's right to put her faith in him and not in the false idols of this world, like the idols of Moab and the false gods of Moab.
[00:34:27] On top of being creator and sustainer, we see that God is very kind and merciful.
[00:34:33] He's very kind and merciful, and he comes to his people when they return to Him. Even before they return to him, she sees that God is a good and protector, a good God and a protector of his people.
[00:34:47] He redeems us and he rescues us from tragedies in his goodness and his mercy. He enters into our situations willingly, suffering even the loss of his son, eventually the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, in order to bring us to him, to sacrifice him so that we might have fellowship and union with him, so that we might be made part of his family.
[00:35:14] On top of all this, as we've seen, God not only comes to people who don't deserve it, he goes out to the far places and reaches people who are lost enemies that were never with him in the first place.
[00:35:27] And how would Ruth know any of this? As we mentioned earlier, unless God had revealed it to her.
[00:35:34] Chemist is not going to tell her this because he can't.
[00:35:38] And because the demons behind idolatry, the Satan who gives us the lies and would seek to distract us and lead us into false worship, he doesn't want Ruth believing and trusting in the Gospel.
[00:35:55] So where did she learn all this?
[00:35:58] Well, from God, probably using the means of grace of Naomi and Elimelech and perhaps their sons, which is kind of an amazing thing to think about.
[00:36:10] We don't know how long Naomi and Ruth had known each other up to this point, even if it had been for a few months.
[00:36:17] But my guess is that Naomi talked about home.
[00:36:20] This is speculation, but thinking about her connections with the people, her connection with the land, her eventual actions, and the fact that they didn't sell their land in Israel, as I mentioned earlier, we'll see later that they had A piece of land there that they didn't sell. It starts out that they sojourned there. They probably always intended to go back.
[00:36:42] Always intended it and saw it as home in some sense, perhaps. She talked about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the promises to the clan of Judah, hope in the Messiah, the land back home, the God of Israel. And if Naomi didn't do it, somebody did it, probably Naomi and Elimelech.
[00:37:08] And so Naomi, having heard the good news from these people who are kind of disobeying it, her heart has changed.
[00:37:18] God works.
[00:37:21] And so we see, going back to our question at the beginning, how far is God willing to go? How far does his mercy extend? It extends not only to disobedient people, not only to people who have wandered away, but. But to people like Ruth who never knew him in the first place.
[00:37:37] And many of you here are like that.
[00:37:40] People who didn't grow up in Christian homes, people who grew up believing and trusting in the gods of their own imaginations or false idols, various things. But now trust the Lord, because the Lord revealed Himself to you, opened your heart and is working in your life.
[00:37:59] These things are amazing to remember and praise God for. And if you have not experienced them, I hope you will soon to know. The closeness of God is an amazing thing. And what I'm trying to tell you this morning is that happens because his mercy, his goodness is that great.
[00:38:19] There are a lot of times we think about God's mercy and his kindness towards us in terms of where we are, and we doubt God will be willing to extend his love to us because we're too far gone.
[00:38:35] We're too far away, too embarrassed, too ashamed, too guilty, too deep in our own mess. And so we're constantly doing this calculation in our head. We're going, have I gone too far? And if I have, how can I get a little closer so that God will be merciful to me?
[00:38:53] What things do I need to do, obedient things to do? How can I be a better person to close that gap so that God will then love me, so that God will then be merciful to me?
[00:39:09] But it's really got it backwards, because what the Bible proclaims is that God's mercy and his goodness extends past wherever you are, past wherever you stop, past whatever limit you are placing on the Lord.
[00:39:26] Let me finish by reading three verses, and then I'll just say one thing. Three verses. First, Psalm 136, a verse, a line that appears at the end of every verse in the Psalm. Every verse ends with these words. His Steadfast love endures.
[00:39:46] Do you know what it is?
[00:39:48] Yeah, that's pretty long.
[00:39:51] That's pretty far.
[00:39:53] His steadfast love endures.
[00:39:56] Well, it endured until I committed the last sin. No, his steadfast love endures.
[00:40:03] Well, When? It'll start going When I get my act together. No, his steadfast love endures forever in all situations, in all times.
[00:40:13] Psalm 36. 5, you, steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens. Your faithfulness to the clouds.
[00:40:22] Ephesians 3, 17, 19. Paul prays that you, the readers and us, that you may have the strength to comprehend.
[00:40:32] Here's the line. What is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. It goes beyond what is even possible to know.
[00:40:50] That's what his faithfulness is. That's what his love is.
[00:40:54] So stop calculating your distance from God before you return to him.
[00:41:04] In the book of Ruth, God planted the seeds and raised the harvest that Naomi would come back to before she ever heard a word about it.
[00:41:17] The harvest was already ready.
[00:41:21] The place and her home and the Redeemer and everything that's going to come was already set up by the Lord before she ever took the first step. She was right to return.
[00:41:34] She was right to go back.
[00:41:37] And Ruth was right to put her trust in Naomi's God.
[00:41:43] And in the hope of Naomi, may we do the same.
[00:41:50] Let's pray.
[00:41:52] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ and his coming to us for his sacrifice for sins and his work for us in the forgiveness of those sins.
[00:42:03] Lord, we stray so far every day.
[00:42:07] We don't love you like we ought. We don't follow you. Our hearts, our minds are not consumed by you. We get so worried and distracted. We do so much hiding.
[00:42:18] Lord, please place your hand upon us, calm our hearts, and help us to hear your words.
[00:42:31] To hear your words, even from the passage that we've read today, words about your return to your people and their return to you.
[00:42:43] Your words which remind us of your great providence and the miracles that you do to save our lives, not only in this life, but as Jesus tells us in the life to come.
[00:42:57] We ask, Lord, that you would help us to have an even grander view of the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.
[00:43:09] How far you have come to come to us.
[00:43:13] And, Lord, you have given yourself up.
[00:43:20] Through the sacrifice of the Son of God, through the humiliation he endured through the blood that he shed through the sins and the consequences of the sins that he took on himself. All so that we might have life before we ever loved you.
[00:43:36] You first loved us.
[00:43:38] Lord, put our confidence in this love so that we might not just return to you, but so that we might cling to you.
[00:43:47] We pray this in Jesus name, amen.
