Intro
The words of Ruth are some of the most beautiful and moving words of Scripture. Ruth cried to her mother-in-law, Naomi: “Wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.” Such loyalty is moving and inspiring. Yet, it is much more than that. Ruth shows us the loyalty that you and I are to have as God’s people.
Although she was born a Gentile, through Naomi, Ruth came to have faith in, and confess, the promised Messiah. That was what Ruth confessed. That was what she lived. Ruth’s words show us--not mere loyalty to Naomi, but an unwavering loyalty to God’s people--and an unwavering loyalty to the faith.
Main Body
Ruth could not imagine a life without the fellowship of others who also looked forward to the promised Messiah. That’s why she went with Naomi to stay, live, and delight in such a communion. Ruth couldn’t follow Orpah back to Moab. She couldn’t unite herself with others who did not believe in the one, true God.
Ruth lived during Old Testament times. She didn’t know who the Messiah would be. Yet, she knew that God had promised a Messiah--and she believed in Him! She didn’t know of the Creeds we confess, yet she believed what they affirm about the oneness of the faith, the communion of saints.
We are one in the Christian faith under God’s rule and reign. We are not alone in Christ’s Church, and our lives are to show that. This is such an embedded truth that it fully permeates what Jesus gave us to believe and confess.
Think of the Lord’s Prayer. How does it start? “Our Father”; Jesus doesn’t teach us to pray, “My Father,” as if Christians are to live lives of isolated faith. There is no me-and-Jesus attitude in Christ’s Church.
Baptism brings you into a living reality called the Church, into the community of saints. You are part of the Church--but you are not the Church! The Church is the communion of saints, one fellowship, one community, both here and in eternity.
Ruth couldn’t live without this community, this fellowship. That’s why Ruth told Naomi: “Wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.” God doesn’t call His people into singular lives of spiritual isolation. He doesn’t call us to live separate lives from others who also confess the same faith. We are to live in such communion.
The faith in someone’s heart influences how he lives his life. That means a Christian will seek out others with whom to be in fellowship, in a communion. To live and do anything else is not to be a Christian.
The person who says, “I don’t need to go the church to worship God,” is living a lie. For God is not a God of an abstract, theoretical faith that lies dormant within. How did God come to His people in the Old Testament to create and strengthen their faith? God set up His Old Testament Church to have real, physical ways of worshiping that pointed forward to their Savior, their Messiah.
God wouldn’t allow His Old Testament saints to have an abstract, theoretical God. They had a God who would have a man’s foreskin removed to bring one into the family of God. Believe me, circumcision is not abstract or theoretical if you experience it. They had a God who granted His forgiveness through real blood of real sacrificed animals. That’s how fleshy and real God was in the Old Testament. That’s how He saved His people and pointed them to the Messiah to come.
What about in the New Testament? God still is not an abstract God. He still calls his people to be circumcised, but now through the waters of baptism (Colossians 2:11-12). For baptism supersedes circumcision. Today, God still deals in blood, but now He gives us the blood of His Son in His Supper. For the Lord’s Supper supersedes the Passover meal.
That’s why Scripture says, “Do not neglect assembling with one another” (Hebrews 10:25). That’s why an Old Testament psalm says: “I am united with all who fear You, and with all who keep your decrees” (Psalm 119:63). That’s why Ruth told Naomi: “Wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.”
You don’t get baptized on the golf course. You don’t get Jesus’ body and blood thinking about Him at home. You don’t get to hear Jesus’ Word of forgiveness staying away from your brothers and sisters in Christ. God comes to you in these ways within a fellowship, within a communion.
Those who think they can have Jesus apart from His Church have neither. For Jesus founded His Church to be the place where His salvation is given out. This Ruth recognized and could not renounce!
Yet, as loyal Ruth was to fellowship, she was even more loyal to the faith. Ruth just couldn’t go back to the Moabites. How could she? She didn’t believe what the Moabites believed. She had a different faith.
That is how it is for Christians. They are no longer of the world. It’s true, Christians still live in the world, but they are not of it. As valuable as family and friends are, as valuable as fellowship is, if such ties cause you to contradict God’s truth, you have misplaced loyalties. A Christian’s loyalty is based on God’s divine truths.
Our first loyalty is to the one, true God, made known and real to us in Jesus Christ. That is our first loyalty because God has been loyal to us. God sent His Son, Jesus, to bear our sin and be our Savior. God sent us His Holy Spirit, through His Son, that we may be turned from death to life.
That’s why our first loyalty is to the one, true God. If the world renounces Him, distorts His truth to make it more to their liking, do not let that sway you! God charges us to keep the holy Gospel pure.
What is the holy Gospel? It is that God fully saves you because of Jesus Christ. Jesus heals you of your sin infection. He saves you in baptism. He saves you in the spoken and preached Word. He saves you in the healing words of Absolution. He saves you in the fleshiness and bloodiness of His Supper. Your loyalties are to lie with God and how He comes to save you.
Now let’s bring in the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League, for today is LWML Sunday. How do they fit into this? How are LWML members to be modern-day Ruths, confessing the faith and being loyal to God? It’s the same way all of us are to be, of course each in his or her God-given vocations.
Lutheran Women’s Missionary League is specifically Lutheran. It is not a generic mission society, but a Lutheran one, living out all the truths of our Confessions. That’s why our LWML is not supposed to believe or practice what is contrary to our Confessions. That would be disloyal. LWML sees Ruth as a beautiful example of loyalty and faithfulness, one which LWML members try to live out in their lives.
LWML is an association of women. They faithfully want to live out their vocations of womanhood as God has made it known. They exalt and delight in their womanhood. They want to serve, not drawing attention to themselves. To draw attention to themselves would erode their reason for existence--pointing others to Christ. They want to point to the Messiah just like Ruth did.
LWML is mission-minded. This doesn’t only mean foreign missions. Being in LWML is to confess Jesus Christ in the vocations of their daily lives. And such a confession can only take place if the confession is loyal to God. For a false confession benefits no one. It’s the true and faithful confession that points others to Jesus, just like Ruth’s confession.
LWML is a league. What’s a league? It’s an expression of unity. The name “league” in LWML recognizes the communion, the fellowship, they are to live out. That means they will not pretend to have unity if it means a false or unfaithful confession of Jesus. Yet neither will they disown being in fellowship with others because of personal reasons--if another’s confession is faithful and true.
Do you see how the LWML is all about loyalty? They exist to be loyal as Lutherans. They exist to serve as God specifically calls women to serve. They exist to have their confession of Jesus, both in word and deed, never to be far from them. And they want to live out the unity of the Church in a real way.
Conclusion
Do you see how LWML ties in with what God has given all of us to do? Now we are not all women, so we serve differently. Women serve as God gives them to serve. Men serve as God gives them to serve. And children serve as God gives them to serve. But such is the loyalty all Christians are to have.
May God’s inspired truth, shown to us by Ruth, inspire us all to live such faithful and loyal lives. For apart from Christ, nothing in life would even matter. Amen.
