Seeking God's Blessings God's Way Series

A number of years ago I was in a barber shop and a highway patrolman was also there. He told an amusing story. It was about a highway patrolman in another state who had stopped a drunk driver. But while he was preparing to cite the drunk driver, a car accident occurred within walking distance. Feeling compelled to assist, he told the drunk drive to stay put while he attended to business.

The drunk driver decided this was his chance to make a clean get-away. And so he did. When he got home, he told his story to his wife. The he told her to lie if the police showed up, to say he had been home all night, and then went to bed.

Well, sure enough, the police did show up. His wife did as he instructed. Then the police asked to see the man’s car in his garage. When the garage door was opened, lo and behold, there was the patrolman’s car with the lights the still flashing.

I mention the story because it emphasizes what can happen when we make life decisions and fail to consider all the pertinent factors. The drunk obviously missed a few vital details that led to his arrest. And sometimes we miss some vital details with regard to what leads to success or failure in our own lives.

And the vital detail we often fail to take into account is the God factor. The Bible reveals that there is a God who loves us and wants to bless us. In Isaiah 30:18 God says to Israel, “Behold, I long to be gracious to you.” He longs to be gracious to us. But obviously, there are times that something holds Him back. And the reason for that, the Bible reveals, is that we fail to cooperate with His good plan for our lives.

This morning we’ve read the beginning of a wonderful little book in the Bible called the Book of Ruth. The book of Ruth in the first chapter introduces us to six different people who were seeking what we all seek—a better life, even the best life possible. From the outset, it’s obvious that three of these folks didn’t find the better life. Their lives ended tragically, before their time. The outcome of the life of a fourth, Orpah, isn’t revealed. But ultimately, the story has a very happy ending for the lives of the two women named Naomi and Ruth. Though there’s a tragic beginning, there will be a blessed ending. And what we’ll learn from this chapter, and this book is to Seek God’s Blessings God’s Way to Experience a Better life. Seek God’s Blessings God’s way to experience a better life.

As we’ve read from verse one, we’re told that the story takes place in the days when the judges ruled in Israel. It was the time immediately following Israel’s inheritance of the Promised Land and their conquest of the nations who had lived there previously. During that time there was no king in the land. Various political and spiritual leaders called judges ruled over the Land of Israel. And the time of the judges, detailed in the Book of Judges, was not Israel’s most glorious moment. In fact, the truth is, it was far from it. The statement made repeatedly through the Book of Judges and that concludes Judges is found at the end of that book, just across the page from Ruth 1, in Judges 21:25: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

Now the significance of that statement is this: Everyone did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord, but rather they did what they thought was right in their own eyes. And the result was there were repeated cycles of famine and oppression by the enemies of Israel—every 30 or 40 years, just about every generation, was characterized by people who departed from the Lord’s ways and did what was right in their own eyes—they did their own thing, rather than the Lord’s thing.

And it was apparently during one of these times of the Lord’s discipline on Israel, when there was a famine in the land, that Elimilech and his family decided to make a move to Moab. A famine in the land back then in an agrarian economy is the equivalent of a recession in America today. The whole society was not doing well economically. And Elimelech was simply looking to improve his lot in life. He looked around and considered his options. He saw that the economy was bad in all of Israel. But just over the border, fifty or sixty miles to the east, in Moab, the economy was fine. And He concluded, based only on what was visible and horizontal, that the change that was required was simply a matter of a geographical move. If he moved from Israel where there was a famine, to Moab, where the economy was fine, he would improve both he and his family’s lot in life.