Lessons To Remember Series

Presenting messages on the Book of Ruth has been such an encouraging exercise, and such a short one, it has been hard to leave it behind.

So, I’ve decided not to, at least just yet. We’ve covered the text of Ruth in four messages, and this morning we will take a fifth to review this subject of Finding God’s Blessings.

If I were to pick an overall lesson from the Book of Ruth it would be this: Choose God’s gracious ways for your life, because it is a choice for life. It’s a choice for life for both you and those you care about.

And under this I want to develop five major themes for us to consider from this great little book.

First, be hopeful. God’s grace is available to any and all who turn to Him. Doesn’t matter how young you are, or how old, how long you have been away from Him or how short, how great your sins are or how few. Or where you come from, or who you are. God is willing to be gracious to you, He even longs to be gracious to you, and He will be gracious to you the moment you truly turn to Him.

Now this wonderful little story is found right smack dab in the middle of the Old Testament. And when we think of the Old Testament, we think of the Law and judgment. The New Testament even encourages some of these thoughts, as John 1:17 tells us “The Law came through Moses, but grace and truth come through Jesus Christ.”

And yet God has always been a gracious God, even in the Old Testament, willing and eager to forgive and to give. And the story of the Book of Ruth is a proof of that. It’s the story, at least at the outset, of two women who had experienced great tragedy in this world of sin. One had wandered away from the Lord and His ways. Her name was Naomi. She had wandered away by following her husband and sons to Moab, a land of idolatry and immorality, for more than 10 years. And the other was Ruth, a Moabites, brought up in a land of idolatry and immorality, among a people who had been so committed to idolatry that they had successfully tempted the nation of Israel into both of them in the Book of Numbers. And the judgment against them is found in Deuteronomy 23:3 that no Moabite to the tenth generation was to enter the assembly of the Lord. Yet, this Moabite found mercy, and ultimately entered the holy of holies in another way—she became an ancestor of the Messiah through turning to the Lord.

To be sure, their turn to the Lord was a dramatic turn. It’s summed up in a favorite Bible word called repentance. It was a change of mind. A change of min that resulted in a change of action. They no longer followed what they thought best. They decided to do what the Lord said was best in His Word. They returned from a land of idolatry and immorality to seek God’s mercy in this Land of blessing, among His people, according to His Word and His Will. For Ruth, it required leaving behind her mother and her family and the country and culture of her birth. But her decision was total and final. Your people shall be my people and your God my God, and where you are buried I will be buried, she says to Naomi, and God upon hearing that, immediately sought to bless both Ruth and Naomi. Immediately. The day after they arrived in Bethlehem, it appears, Ruth just happens to find herself gleaning in the field of the one godly man who would be able and willing to redeem her, to marry and provide for her and Naomi, as the Law required. “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” James 4:8 encourages. And it appears in Ruth and Naomi’s case, God didn’t just gradually draw near. It’s much like the story of the Prodigal Son. The Prodigal’s Father sees his long lost son approaching from a great distance away, and He jumps from his chair and runs to His repentant Son and covers Him with kisses and blessings, overwhelming His son, who did not expect such a welcome after he had been so callous and thankless in his departure.

The Old Testament tells us this is the kind of God we worship. As God reveals Himself to Moses as Moses is in the cleft of the rock, this is what He says there, in the midst of the Law: ““The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and [d]truth; 7 who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin.” This is the gracious side of God that Ruth and Naomi experienced, gracious and compassionate, abounding in lovingkindness and truth, because God is willing to forgive all kinds of iniquity, transgression and sin. And all of that is available to all of us, and anyone we know, at any time we are willing to turn or return to Him. After all, isn’t that why Christ came, to die for our sins, to show how eager He is to be compassionate and forgiving to us.