Discerning God's Will Series

How many of you are familiar with the children’s game, “Red Light, Green Light!”

How many of you played it as a child?

As I was considering our passage for this morning, Ruth 3, for the first time in many years my memory of having played this game as a young child came to mind.

If you’re not familiar with it, it consists of one person, whom we will call “it,” shouting out commands to other children who are have all stationed on a common starting line. The person who is it will shout out either “Green Light!” or “Red Light” while facing away from the competitors As “Green Light” is shouted out, everyone runs forward as far as he or she can until “Red Light” is shouted out. As the person shouts out “Red Light” he turned around, and if he catches anyone still moving, that person is required to go back to the starting line. The goal, of course, is to reach a predetermined destination, or to tag the person shouting it, and whoever gets there first, wins.

Of course, the trick is to make as much progress on a green light without violating a red light because of your extreme momentum. My problem was that I would always tend to be too aggressive, so that at a red light, I couldn’t quite stop in time not to be detected. So there was a wisdom in moderation—not going too fast on green lights so you could stop on a dime when a red light was shouted out.

I was reminded of the game because of the red lights and green lights that we encounter in life as we are attempting to discover God’s will. And discovering and doing God’s will, as we are learning from the great story of the Book of Ruth is the key to experiencing God’s blessings. As we have found so far in the Book of Ruth, those who have ignored the red lights associated with discovering God’s will have suffered great tragedy. But those who have had regard for those red light and have moved only when there’s a green light regarding God’s will, well, it has been a completely different story. They have been blessed.

The message then this morning will be this: Know the red and green lights concerning God’s will to find God’s blessing. Stop at the red lights. Go only on the green lights. And as this has been evident throughout the Book of Ruth, we will see that it is especially so in the Book of Ruth. And we’re going to consider setting forth at least six different factors that ought to be considered as we attempt to find God’s will as we make choices in our lives.

If you’ve been with us, you know that the story began with the poor decisions of Elimelech and his two sons. Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and his two sons Mahlon and Chilion migrate from Israel to Moab in a time of famine. They’ve ignored God’s Word, God’s promises and God’s warnings in doing so, putting their family’s financial welfare way above it’s spiritual welfare, and tragedy results. Elimelech dies soon after moving to Moab. His two sons follow in his footsteps, marrying Moabite women and then choose to remain in Moab. After about 10 years, both of them also die in the prime of life, and both do so without having borne children. Three destitute widows remain, and two of them choose to return to the Land of Israel and seek the Lord’s blessings there. And as Ruth and Naomi seek God’s blessings God’s way, both begin to immediately experience His blessing. Ruth as she goes out to glean in the fields as the poor of the land do during harvest time, just happens to find herself in the field of godly and kind kinsman redeemer by the name of Boaz who richly supplies her with all the grain she and her mother-in-law, being mindful of Ruth’s faithfulness to her mother-in-law Naomi.

However, as it turns out, this is just the beginning of the blessing that God intends to pour out on these women as they have sought refuge from their tragedies under His wings in Israel. A much bigger blessing, and a much more significant and eternal blessing is intended and will be fulfilled.

I believe this story illustrates six principles about how to discover God’s will, and thus His blessing. Factors to be considered include our commitment to God’s will, providential circumstances, our motives, the Scriptures, the character of the people we are associated with, and finally, the ability to simply put some matters in the hands of the Lord and wait on Him for his answers.

The first issue is our commitment to the Lord and His will. The question to be asked is whether we are committed fully to Him and His will.