Ruth chapter 1, and we did the first
seven verses last week, and so let's begin
at verse 7 and just read through the
rest of the chapter.
For a few moments, let's think about the
Word of God and this character of Ruth.
Verse 7 says, Therefore she, Naomi, went out
from the place where she was, and her
two daughters-in-law with her, and they
went on the way to return to the
land of Judah.
And Naomi said to her two daughters-in
-law, Go return each to your mother's house.
The Lord deal kindly with you as you
have dealt with the dad and with me,
and the Lord grant that you may find
rest each in the house of her husband.
So she kissed them, and they lifted up
their voices and wept, and they said to
her, Surely we will return with you to
your people.
But Naomi said, Turn back, my daughters.
Why will you go with me?
Are there still sons in my womb, that
they may be your husbands?
Turn back, my daughters.
Go, for I am too old to have
a husband, and if I should say I
have hope, if I should have a husband
tonight, and should also bear sons, would you
wait for them till they are grown?
Would you restrain yourselves from having husbands?
No, my daughters, for it grieves me very
much for your sakes that the hand of
the Lord has gone out against me.
Then they lifted up their voices and wept
again, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law,
but Ruth clung to her.
And she said, Look, your sister-in-law
has gone back to her people and to
her gods.
Return after her, after your sister-in-law.
But Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave
you, or to turn back from following after
you, for wherever you go, I will go,
and wherever 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.
And the Lord do so to me, and
more also, if anything but death parts you
and me.
When she saw that she was determined to
go with her, she stopped speaking to her.
Now the two of them went until they
came to Bethlehem.
And it happened when they had come to
Bethlehem that all the city was excited because
of them.
And the women said in this, Is this
Naomi?
But she said to them, Do not call
me Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty
has dealt very bitterly with me.
I went out full, and the Lord has
brought me home again empty.
Why do you call me Naomi?
Since the Lord has testified against me, and
the Almighty has afflicted me.
So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabitess, her
daughter-in-law, with her.
She returned from the country of Moab, and
now they came to Bethlehem at the beginning
of barley harvest.
Father, as the family of God, we come
together this morning and have been blessed to
worship you and to lift up our voices
and our hearts to you.
Blessed with the freedom that allows us to
open your word and to think upon it
together.
And Lord, this morning we pray that you
would bless us as a family and draw
us close to you in the things of
Christ, taking this your very word and giving
us strength through it on this special day.
In Jesus' name we ask.
Amen.
Well, it's Mother's Day, and it's neat to
see all the things that goes on, all
the decisions that had to be made.
Who bought flowers?
I see those hands.
It's good to be an evangelist for a
moment or two.
Who bought something other than flowers?
Who did something practical?
Oh, good deal.
Yeah.
See, there's all kinds of ways that we
celebrate Mother's Day.
And here this morning we're thinking about a
mother who is now a widow, and her
daughter's in-law are with her as she
is going to return to her home.
And as we just recap a little bit
from last week, we saw that Elimelech and
the family moved to Moab, and the man
died, and so the three women are left.
And then in verse 7 it tells us
how Naomi heard that God visited his people.
And in the remainder of this chapter there
are so many beautiful things.
Have you ever read anything more gloriously beautiful
than what Ruth says to Naomi?
That is so powerful, isn't it?
You think about two people, and the words
that she's saying.
It's a beautiful thing.
And you think about the journey homeward and
so on.
There's so much in here.
But in my moments this morning, I want
us just to think about decisions.
And, you know, decisions are kind of interesting.
Some of them are not nearly as significant
as others.
And I want you to think about the
decisions that are made in the second half
of this chapter.
Darren and I happened to have some breakfast
together yesterday.
And, you know, decisions that are trivial, that's
kind of the special.
Okay, what way do you want your eggs?
Well, what are my choices?
Well, do you want bacon, sausage, or ham?
Well, sausage.
Well, do you want toast?
What kind of toast?
Boy, do we ever get this thing complicated.
There's about five decisions before you're done ordering
brekkie.
I grew up, I was lucky you could
get brekkie, let alone order those kind of
things.
But that's part of the blessing that's unseen
to us living where we live in the
many things that we have.
So let's just think about decisions here.
The first decision that we see in this
second half of the chapter is Naomi's decision.
It's a decision to return home.
And, you know, she's been there for ten
years, and she's saying, I'm going back to
the people of God.
I'm going home.
Did you know that Mother's Day actually was
started by the church?
That might be an interesting thought.
It started its life called Mothering Sunday.
And the idea was that people would return
to their home church, the place where they
maybe were born and brought up and where
they found Christ and where they came to
faith in the Lord Jesus.
And there was that concept of going home,
just going back to that vital spot that
means so much, going home.
Now I'm an immigrant, and Sharif and Brother
Johnny here understand some of what I'm thinking
about when I say that.
When I left Northern Ireland I was very
happy to leave, and in seventeen years I
did not go back.
But when I did journey back home to
it surprised me how much emotion sort of
floats into your heart.
And you begin to think about all the
things, and Naomi must have faced this too.
She must have thought about all the things
as she grew up.
All of the things that the people of
God had blessed her with.
All of the teaching that she grew up
with about the one true and living God.
All of those things as she's journeying back
and deciding to go back must have been
coming into her heart, into her mind and
life.
And she's doing it as we said last
week, because God has visited his people.
And there's something so good about, as you
know, the presence of God.
My first journey home after seventeen years, I
got together one night with the man who
was responsible for sharing Christ with me day
after day for two years.
And we sat down in his living room,
and I had already spent some time with
my family.
It was so good to see them and
to be reunited.
But as I sat down with Tom in
his living room, now we're both somewhat older,
married with family and so on.
And we chatted for a bit, and Tom
said to me, you notice anything?
I started to look at the pictures on
the walls and so on, and I thought,
you know, maybe he wants me to see
something special that's in his house.
And I said, not especially.
What is it that you want me to
notice?
This is what he said.
We haven't seen each other in seventeen years,
and here we are sitting, talking about the
Lord, and it's as though we had never
been apart.
And I thought, that's it, isn't it?
When you are part of the family of
Christ, that is exactly it.
There is this common denominator, this thing.
And it was still in Naomi's heart after
ten years of being away in the land
of Moab.
And you begin to see a little bit
of Naomi's character here.
For instance, you can see that she has
despair both before making the decision to go
home and after she has arrived home.
And why would I say that?
Well, in verse 13, you see, she says
this, "'Know, my daughters, for it grieves me
very much for your sakes that the hand
of the Lord has gone out against me.'"
See, there's a sense of despair in her
heart.
She's going to go home, but she's saying,
oh, the Lord has been so against me.
And sometimes we feel like that, don't we?
Circumstances of life and so on cause us
to sense, oh, there's something between, something not
right.
And that's what we're seeing here as you
read these words from Naomi's lips.
A little bit ago, I had the opportunity
to sit with someone who was saying, I
need to come back to the Lord.
And when we prayed together and that person
came back to the Lord, it was kind
of like a burst of sunshine.
Everything just cleared up.
But before we prayed, all the circumstances of
life created such a burden that that person
was really saying, you know, everything's just out
of order and it's not working for me.
Naomi's saying, it grieves me.
The hand of the Lord has gone out
against me.
And when she comes home in verses 20
and 21, let's just look at them.
But she said to them, don't call me
Naomi, call me Myra.
Myra means bitter, for the Almighty has dealt
very bitterly with me.
I went out full and the Lord has
brought me home empty.
Why call me Naomi?
Because God has testified against me.
See the sense of bitterness and hurt that
is there in her heart, both before journeying
home and when she arrives as well.
But she made this decision to go home,
to go back to the people of God.
And what I want you just to see
and think about this morning is that her
reaction is understandable.
There are times when we feel, nothing ever
works out for me.
Maybe I'm the only one who feels that
way, at least from time to time.
But I suspect that many of us feel
that from time to time.
Nothing ever seems to work out for me.
But when you look at all of the
story, when Naomi makes that decision to go
back to God, it's the first step to
healing and help.
It's the first step toward a family life
which she has lost through the death of
her husband and sons.
It's the first step to really beginning to
see and understand what it is and who
it is that God is.
And it's not that He is against her
at all, but that He is working and
drawing out these circumstances.
In Genesis 42 and verse 36, Joseph says
this.
He says, Joseph is not, and now you
want to take Benjamin away from me?
All these things are against me.
That's kind of how Naomi feels.
All this is against me.
But that's not the end of the story
for Jacob either, is it?
Because the very one that he thinks is
dead is the one that God is bringing
him to.
And the very issue that he is struggling
with is the thing that God is seeking
to address and to pull together and to
give such a life and a strength and
a hope to.
And you know, you see it many times
in Scripture.
In 1 Samuel 27 verse 1, David says,
you know, I'm going to be killed.
Saul and his followers, they're going to kill
me.
Life is just at the end.
But that's not the end of the story.
So the first decision that we see here
in Ruth chapter 1 and the second half
of it is Naomi's decision.
I'm going back to God.
I'm going back to the people of God.
I'm going back to the way of God.
I'm going to do some business with God,
and He is going to do something in
me and through me.
And although she has some perspective that God
is trying to punish her, actually the Lord
is just drawing her along to the place.
We're not so far down the road.
She's going to have a little Ander bouncing
on her knee.
His name's not Ander, but we'll discover when
we get to chapter 4 that he's the
grandfather of King David.
And it was Naomi who is used in
this so wonderfully.
It appeared to be a bitter stroke, but
God had life and purpose for her.
When you see the rest of the story,
now I don't know about you, but I
am famous for ending the story before it's
done.
And I think I'm not the only one.
What do you mean by that, Pastor John?
This is what I mean.
There are times when things look difficult and
black, and I just kind of throw my
hands up and stick them eventually into my
pockets and say, I quit.
And in one sense it's good because when
I quit, the Lord can start.
And in another sense, you'd think the guy
would learn to quit soon enough and just
let the Lord work out the details.
Am I speaking to somebody this morning and
life's not perfect?
You know what?
God isn't finished yet.
But there's a decision that you can make.
That's a decision that Naomi made that says,
I'm going back to the people of God.
It doesn't say anything about the first time
that Naomi would have been with the people
of God in a service.
But my Irish imagination runs riot with this
thought, because on that first trip that I
made home to Northern Ireland, I went to
the local Baptist Church where my friend Tom
McLaughlin had become the pastor.
And I sat there with my relatives and
was enjoying the service.
And you know, he did something.
He said, this man's home from Canada, and
we're just going to sing a song because
I know he likes it.
And he interrupted the whole service, and we
sang the tune is Danny Boy, the Londonderry
Air.
But the words say, I cannot tell.
You see, it still breaks me up.
They sang that song, and I sat, and
I didn't just cry.
I wept.
Man.
And at the end of that hymn, my
friend Tom, friend in parentheses, said, Pastor John,
come and lead us in prayer.
You know why I was weeping?
Because with the people of God, there's something
so special.
Naomi's decision took her back into the family
of God.
And I did manage to squeak out a
prayer.
Sniveling as I was.
Secondly, there's Orpah's decision in this passage of
Scripture.
And let me just take a moment to
think about that.
She is saying, I'll return to Bethlehem with
you, Naomi.
But her decision did not stand.
And you know, when you think about Orpah
and Ruth, we have a perfect picture of
what is true conversion and what is false.
And sometimes this is well worth just thinking
about.
So for a few moments, let's look at
Orpah's decision.
She professed the same desire as Ruth did.
I'm going to go back to Bethlehem with
you.
She started out to go on the way,
and her motives were tested in verse 11
by Naomi.
And as there is that test, she knew
the way to Bethlehem, but it was Moab
that was in her heart.
And she never really let go of that.
And as you look at Orpah and the
decision that she makes, she's gone back to
her people, back to the other way of
life.
You see, it was just a profession, not
a conversion.
There's no mention in here about what God
is saying in the life of Orpah.
And when we come to Ruth, you'll see
it's exactly opposite.
Scripture is talking about what is happening in
her heart and in her life.
Orpah has made that decision.
It looks good on the surface, but it
doesn't stand.
Essentially, she faced the test of truth.
Can you truly abandon everything back there to
embrace all that God has out here?
Isn't that still the question today?
Can we truly abandon all of that and
just to walk with Jesus?
So Orpah has made a decision.
There's no real sense of the love of
God or understanding God in her decision.
It's a very practical kind of thing.
And there's regret in her tears, but there's
no repentance.
There's no life change.
And when we come to just think about
that a little bit, sometimes, you know, there
can be all kinds of emotion.
You watch me cry nearly every Sunday.
I'm sorry.
I just I get cranked up.
But tears don't always signify life change.
I remember working for two, maybe three years
with a man who was struggling in his
walk with the Lord and in his marriage.
And one Sunday, I was taking services in
Nippawin, and the man came all the way
from his hometown.
We had what looked like a major breakthrough
where he came to the altar and just
wept and wept and wept.
But there never was life change.
And when it comes to this thing of
conversion, Spurgeon used to be very strong.
He would just ask people, what has Jesus
done in your heart?
Because that's where the life change takes place,
isn't it?
Warpa sort of is an example of false
religion or decision-making without any discipleship.
And then as we come along in our
text this morning, we see Ruth's decision.
And she has decided to go home with
Naomi.
And her decision stands.
She is in fact mentioned in the genealogy
of Jesus in Matthew chapter 1.
Quite a difference.
Naomi decides to go back to the people
of God.
Warpa decides not to go to the people
of God.
Ruth decides, I'm going with Naomi.
I'm going to follow after her.
But as you look, you see a commitment
to God.
Look at verse 16.
In all what you see of Ruth's heart,
she's saying here, entreat me not to leave
you or turn back from following after you.
Wherever you go, I will go.
And then just look at the bottom of
that verse, and your God shall be my
God.
Now there's something deep that has changed in
the heart of this foreigner.
She didn't start out in the people of
God at all, but she's making that decision.
God is her God.
And it is not easily moved because Naomi
says to her, go ahead, your sister-in
-law's gone back, you go back to her.
You see, when God does the work, it
goes so deep, and it leads to life
change.
And it's a lifetime commitment, because she even
goes on to say, will you die?
I will die.
It wasn't like I'm going to go to
Bethlehem, investigate this, and see how it goes.
There is that sense of this is firm
and total and complete.
And that's one of the reasons why I
love the character of Ruth.
You see so many virtues in her.
And on this Mother's Day, ladies, we see
those kind of virtues in you.
You see in Ruth the virtue of how
she is so industrious.
And when Carol was reading that list of
all the things that you ladies do, I
was thinking, well, I'm not multitasking, and whoa,
that looks like a lot to me.
Well, Ruth is a very industrious person, as
we'll see as we go on through the
book.
And it is wonderful just to study how
the Lord is at work in her.
She is a person who truly loves the
Lord, and she loves her mother-in-law.
Whoa, isn't that the one that all the
jokes are made about?
Mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, all those
exchanges and difficulties and struggles that people go
through.
But look at the character of Ruth.
It's her commitment to God that makes that
commitment to Naomi what it is.
It's the work of God in Ruth's heart
that makes her able, as it were, to
go on all the way through all of
her life with Naomi and with the people
of God.
God, you see, had changed her heart, and
that's the issue, isn't it?
And when He changes our heart, there's a
new home.
Now, you heard me say I'm an immigrant.
You heard me say when I went back
to Ireland, the emotions were stirred.
But that's nothing near the stirring that's going
on in my heart and mind at the
moment, because someday, who knows when, could be
today, I'm going to immigrate again, and I'm
going home.
Yeah, I'll add to that.
Whoa!
You know, there are times in life when
we get hurt by things, but when I
go home, there's no more hurt.
There are times in life when I struggle
with things and have a hard time getting
victory, but when I go home, my real
home, it's all gone.
But we spend so much time holding on
to the things here and trying to convince
each other, be reasonable, see it my way,
when really what we need to do is
to live at that old cross and say,
Lord, let me see it your way.
I love that song that we sang this
morning, don't you?
He gives and takes away.
And when it's dark, I'll still say, blessed
be the name of the Lord.
Ruth made a decision to go to God
and the people of God.
She has a new master.
She has a new desire, a new lifestyle,
and a new love.
There's a fourth and last decision, and then
we'll wrap it up.
The people of God make a decision here
in Ruth chapter 1 as well.
And, you know, you don't see a lot
of the flesh in their decision.
If somebody went away from us for 10
years and kind of snubbed us and had
nothing to do with us, wouldn't talk to
us, didn't write to us, didn't care about
us, what would we do when they showed
up on the doorstep destitute?
That's what we need to do, still love
them.
There's nothing in the people of God that
says, oh, look what the cat dragged in.
Or as one lady said to her sister
-in-law in a revival meeting a few
years ago, when the sister-in-law apologized
to her, she said, well, it's about time!
There's nothing of that in the decision that
the people of God make.
They say, is this Naomi?
And you see, there's a welcome there.
And there's nobody who says, who's this?
Oh, your name's Ruth.
Where do you come from?
You're sure different.
There's a welcome there.
And when they come, they come at the
beginning of barley harvest.
I love the sovereignty of God.
I could preach my whole life every Sunday
on the fact that He is so sovereign.
Look at the positioning of this.
Starving people come home, but they don't come
home when there's no crops, and they don't
come home where there's no provision.
And next week, we look into how God
provided for every need that they had.
So the people of God made a decision,
and there's no hesitation in receiving Naomi home,
and there's no hesitation in receiving Ruth.
And if you're here this morning, and you
know the Spirit of God is saying to
you, it's time to go home to the
people of God, and the place of God,
and the way of God, there's no hesitation
in saying there's a welcome at the throne
of grace.
And if you're here this morning, and you've
no relationship with Jesus, nor with His people,
there's no hesitation in saying there's a welcome.
Forty years plus, it'll be forty-one this
August, have I walked with Jesus, and I've
never yet seen one person go to Him
and say, Lord save me.
And He said, can't do it.
Won't do it.
Not interested in you.
No.
There's a welcome there.
And when we just draw near to Him,
it's so wonderful to see the way that
He works things out in all of those
difficulties, and divisions, and hardships.
Oh, what a thing to go home to
Him and say, Lord, need your touch.
So, let me summarize.
Decisions are vital, aren't they?
Even more so than what kind of bacon
and eggs you have.
There needs to be a decision where you'll
spend eternity.
Need to make a decision that He will
be my God.
I hope this morning you can say, I've
done that.
I know that.
Some of us today maybe need to go
to the Lord and say, Lord, I'm returning
to you because I need victory.
I need victory over sin and self.
I need victory over the things that are
tearing me apart and pulling me down.
I need victory over this old flesh that
wants its own way.
I need, Lord, even more of you.
And for some, maybe you're wrestling with this
thing of baptism.
It's good just to take that obedient step
and say, yes, Lord.
For 41 years, I've been trying to learn
the difference between the sheep and the goats.
The sheep just say, yes, Lord.
The goats, of which sometimes I feel my
foot over there, say, yes, Lord.
But it needs to be just, yes, Lord.
One chose to return to God.
One chose to trust God.
One chose to go back.
The people of God chose to receive them,
to love them, and to cherish them.
See what a wonderful little book this is.
It has so very much in it.
Let's just pause and pray.
My time is gone, and I don't want
to ruin anybody's Mother's Day lunch because the
pastor is kind of cold-tongued and hard
-shouldered on those kind of circumstances.
So, let's pray.
Father, as we look in your Word this
morning, we see these various decisions.
And you're talking to us this morning about
decisions.
And Lord, we can choose to be offended.
We can choose to fight for our rights.
Or we can choose to trust you to
work out all the details of our whole
life for time and eternity.
This morning, as we are bowed before you,
I just would encourage you from your heart,
what is it that you would ask God
for this morning?
What decision is it that you would make
today to draw near to Him?
And He will draw near to you.
And just as we are at the place
of prayer, I'm just going to close and
pray for us as a people.
Father, we love you, and you first loved
us.
And we're grateful for the moving and working
of your Spirit, for the quiet and gentle
touch of your hand this morning in this
worship service.
Grateful for the goodness of a Savior, your
Son, Jesus Christ.
Grateful for the opportunity to be able to
decide today just to take all the issues
of life to Jesus and ask you, Lord,
have your way.
Be real in our hearts, in our lives,
in our homes.
Minister your grace to us and through us
and enable us to walk with you.
Amen.
In Jesus' name, we pray.
Amen.