Scripture: 1 Kings 17:8-16; Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
Theme: Thanksgiving
Title: Right Choices + Transformed Living = Abundant Living
INTRO:
Good morning! Grace and peace to all of you from God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit! I hope all of you are enjoying life to its fullest!
Have you ever noticed that there are some people that come into our lives that are like lynch pins?
Lynch pins? What in the world is a lynch pin?
If you remember, lynch pins are those little pins that go through the end of an axle outside the wheel that help keep the wheel from coming off. You usually see them on farm equipment like garden tillers.
If you have ever tried to use something that has a lynch pin and the lynch pin has fallen off then you know their importance.
Thankfully, there are people that come into our lives that serve as lynch pins. They help us keep everything together. You can find lynch pin people in sports, in the workplace and in families. There are certain people that have this wonderful ability to keep everything together. There are certain people who have this wonderful ability to keep things running smoothly and their mere presence doesn’t allow the wheels to fall off.
In 1 Kings 17:8-16 we find a lynch pin person by the name of Elijah. The Lord sends him to the home of the widow at Zarephath to make sure that her life and the life of her son doesn’t completely fall apart.
As we read the story it looks like her life and her son’s life is not only going to fall apart but they are going to die. They are down to their last handful of flour and just a few tablespoons of oil left in the jar. That is it. Their cupboards are completely bare. Everything and anything that could have been eaten has vanished. After this little meal of biscuits all they will be able to do is to lie down and die.
You could say she was down to only one wheel and it had a very rusty and dodgy lynch pin. Her time and her son’s time on earth were almost at an end.
It is not a happy ending to a story. It is the continuation of the story that we find at the beginning of the chapter 17, where we are told that for a period of years the land has received no rain; not even the presence of dew.
Think about that for a second. Not just any rain but no dew. No moisture whatsoever. You can imagine how devastated everything looked.
+Rivers, streams, creeks and springs are quickly drying up or have already dried up.
+No well water is left and the nearby Mediterranean Sea is full of water but it is saltwater which can’t be used for drinking water.
+All livestock have either been sold off or have already been eaten
+Most of the wild life has vacated the area and have migrated wherever they could find water and food.
This widow’s land which at one time looked like a botanical garden now looks like a desert wasteland. Her hope has turned into despair, then into depression and now into complete defeat. All that was left to do was for her and her son to do was to have a final meal and then wait for the final stages of starvation and death.
But then the Prophet Elijah arrives and as we have read the story things take a wonderful turn. Things go from being hopeless to being full of hope. Things go from being a time of despair to a time of rejoicing and celebration.
But it doesn’t happen all at once. There are some things that first have to happen. This morning it is those things that I want us to examine in more detail. And as we examine them to not only understand them but to be thankful for them in our own lives.
For the things that we find in this first story and in the second story are common to us all. They occur in each one of our lives.
Let’s share at them more in detail and you will see what I mean.
I. This morning, let’s be thankful for choices – Let’s be thankful that we have the freedom to choose today!
One of the greatest freedoms that God has given any of us is the freedom to choose. We can choose to live this way or we can choose to live that way. We can choose to say these things and we can choose not to say these things.
This woman of Zarephath had the freedom that day to make a choice. At the very minimum she was able to at least do a couple of things:
+She could have apologized to the Prophet that she could not receive his request and then send him on his way – after all, she was not of the tribe of Israel or Judah and therefore she had no proper allegiance to one of their prophets.
+She could do as the Prophet Elijah said to do; she could make a little bread for him before she made some for herself and her son.
Well, we know what she did. Something inside of her said that her best option was to go with the words of the Prophet.
I wonder what we would have done in her place.
Would we be willing to follow the advice of someone not of our tribe? Would we be willing to give our last bit of food to say to a visiting Baptist or Presbyterian or what about a visiting Catholic minister who came by like the Prophet Elijah?
Because we know how this story ends we can trick ourselves into thinking this woman really had no other choice but in reality she did. She could have chosen to say no. She could have chosen to send Elijah on his way.
However, there is one important key. You find it in verse 9. It was the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY Himself who had impressed upon the woman to receive the Prophet and to listen to him and to obey him.
All that being said, it doesn’t mean that she had to listen or had to obey. It was her choice plain and simple.
The LORD likes it that way. He created us to have a free will. He created us to have the ability to choose.
It is easy this morning to praise God when we make a good choice or when others make a good choice. However, it is not so easy to praise the LORD when we make a bad choice or when others make a bad choice. Often we find ourselves leaning towards blaming the LORD for those bad choices and bad decisions.
God should not have allowed that person to take a drink and drive. God should have intervened. God should not allow anyone to have the choice to hurt someone else. God should not allow anyone to use a bio-weapon against a group of people. God should not allow anyone to declare war on someone else.
The reality is you can’t have it both ways. You can’t give someone the ability to choose and then not allow them to choose. And not everyone who chooses, chooses wisely.
However, today you and I do have the power to choose wisely. We do have the power to make the right choices.
For just as the LORD ALMIGHTY instructed the widow of Zarephath to help the Prophet the Holy Spirit has promised us that He would help us make wise choices.
Jesus tells us this in John 16:13
“When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.”
Jesus wants us to fully understand the power and presence of His Holy Spirit in a person’s life. He fully understood that if we allow the Holy Spirit, He (the Holy Spirit) will reveal to us the truth and He (the Holy Spirit) will lead us and guide us in ways that will end up benefiting our lives and the lives of those around us. The Holy Spirit will help us make the right choices in our lives.
However, for that to happen we must:
a. Believe in the power and presence of God’s Holy Spirit in our lives – we must believe that when we come to faith that the Holy Spirit infills us and stays with us. We must believe that when we come to faith, when we are born again we are never alone again. The Holy Spirit brings life from above (salvation) and then resides in our hearts, our minds and in our spirits teaching us, guiding us and transforming us into the Image of Christ (sanctification).
b. We must always submit and commit to being open to the Holy Spirit; opening our hearts, our minds and our spirits to His Presence and Guidance.
c. We must allow the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth and then choose to live in that truth. That is to say to follow the directions and leadings of the Holy Spirit.
The Apostle Paul understood all of this. It is why the Apostle Paul took the time to write in so many of his letters the need to receive wisdom, guidance, understanding and knowledge from God’s Holy Spirit. He did his best to get his churches praying for the power and presence of God’s Holy Spirit in their lives. The Apostle Paul knew that the only way to live an abundant life was to be dependent upon the Holy Spirit.
Paul knew that we all need help in making the right decisions. He knew that we needed help to understand what is true and what is not true. And there is no person better to do that than God’s Holy Spirit.
This morning, we need to be thankful for the ability to make choices. It is an amazing gift that God has given all of us. We also need to be dependent upon the Holy Spirit to help us make the right choices. And we need to lean into those who have been given by the Holy Spirit the gift of giving good advice.
This widow’s family was saved because she opened her heart to the LORD. She made a choice to believe in God rather than in herself or her own rational thought. She took a leap of faith. It was a leap that was being guided and directed by the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY Himself.
This morning, let’s learn from this story and do our best to be open to God’s leading and to respond by making the right choices. If we will do that, I believe we will find that we are making better decisions than ever and our lives will reflect those right decisions.
Now let’s continue by turning out attention to Ruth’s story where we find some more things to be thankful for this morning.
II. In Ruth’s story we see that we need to be thankful that we have the power to be transformed from the inside out for the better.
Remember that passage we read in the book of Ruth? Remember how through making the right choices Ruth was transformed from being a penniless Moabite widow to in the end becoming the great-grandmother of King David.
Talk about a transformation. At the time that Ruth lived a person born in the land of Moab was considered an outcast. The Moabites were considered to be a group of people that had been cursed by the Lord God Almighty Himself.
One could say at the beginning of Ruth’s story it sure did look like she under a curse. Earlier in her story we read where her husband (Mahlon - MAH-luhn) was a man from the land of Judah whose family had moved to Moab because of a famine.
It was while Mahlon was in Moab that he met Ruth and married her. Rabbi scholars tell us that she was the daughter of Moabite royalty. In other words Mahlon married a princess.
Life seemed to be going okay but the Bible tells us that Mahlon suddenly got sick and died way before his time. In fact, not only does he die before his time but his father (Elimelech) and brother (Chilion- KIHL-ee-ahn) also die before their time as well.
Ruth finds herself living in her homeland of Moab without a husband, without an income and without much of a future.
The Bible tells us that Ruth made the choice to go back with her mother-in-law to live in the land of Judah. Naomi thought it would be best for her to return home. But they did not come back to a nice little house with a white picket fence and a bank full of money. They came back as paupers; beggars. They came back having to scratch out a living and depending on the generosity of others. Not the life that a normal princess would choose to live.
As you read Ruth’s story you see that she had to make a lot of decisions during this time in her life. She made a lot of choices that determined the rest of her life.
+She chose to look after her mother-in-law even though Naomi at the time was not the best of companions. Naomi had changed her named to Mara which means – Bitter. It’s not easy to live with someone who has chosen that name/identity in life.
+She chose to give up the land of Moab for the land of Judah. Remember in Moab she is a princess while in Judah she is seen as a cursed outcast.
+She chose to depend on the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY instead of the false gods of the Moabites (Chemosh and Astarte).
+She chose to work hard in the fields instead of becoming a local Moabite prostitute which was what happened to a great many foreign widows in that day.
+She chose to be faithful to herself, to Naomi and to the Lord God Almighty.
All of those choices were made out of love. And all of those choices transformed Ruth. With each step towards the land of Judah she changed. With each day she took care of her mother-in-law she changed. With each day of gleaning the wheat by hand she changed.
She changed not for the worst but for the better. She went from being a penniless widow to becoming one of the richest women in the land of Judah. She went from having to glean the fields to owning those very fields.
We don’t know exactly how long Ruth was in those fields day after day before Boaz first saw her slaving away. We don’t how long it took for him to fall in love with Ruth. We don’t know how many days, weeks and/or months she had to come home bone tired and dusty only to then have to start grinding the grain into flour and then baking the bread for the next day or two so that she and Naomi could live.
What we do know is she became a product of her choices and those choices turned her into one of the greatest women of the Old Testament. What we do know is that her choices enable her to be transformed from an outcast to one of the women who were blessed in bringing the Messiah; the Christ child into the world.
You and I can allow our choices to give us the power to be transformed for the better. We can allow the Holy Spirit to assist us into becoming a person of integrity, a person whom the LORD can use and a person who can live life to its fullest.
This is the beauty of what we find in the Bible. We find story after story of people who allowed the LORD to help them make the right choices in life and then were ever so gradually transformed into people of righteousness and holiness.
This is the Apostle Paul’s prayer was for his church in Philippi. Listen to his words as he prays for them to make wise choices
“I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding.
For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return.
May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation – the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ – for this will bring much glory and praise to God.” – Philippians 1:9-11
The Apostle Paul understood that if his congregations could make the right choices, being led by the Holy Spirit they would also be transformed into people of righteousness and holiness. Not a bad ending for a congregation of people who had started off following pagan gods and living lives of immorality and sensuality.
III. Final thoughts – Right Choices +Holy Spirit Transformations = Abundant Living
So, as we look at these two stories they share with us two great things that we can be thankful for – the ability to make choices and the ability to be transformed for the better by the circumstances that we find ourselves in any season of our lives.
All of us here today have to make choices. It is just a part of human life. We have to decide small things and large things every day.
The choices that we make will determine where we go, what we will do and how we will act.
Let me ask ourselves some questions:
Who helps us make our choices?
Whose advice do we seek when we make our decisions?
Let me challenge you today that there is someone who is far wiser than you could ever imagine. That person desires with all their heart to help you make great decisions. That person of course is the Holy Spirit.
Remember what Jesus said about the Holy Spirit:
“When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.” – John 16:13
Let me challenge you today to be open to the leading, direction and guidance of the Holy Spirit. After all, who else can lead us better into understanding what we should do each and every day of our lives?
Secondly, seek to allow the circumstances you are in right now to help transform you into an even better person. Whatever season of life you are going through can help you become an even better person.
Like the widow of Zarephath things in our lives may be tough. We may feel like we are down to our last jar of oil and bit of flour physically, emotionally and even spiritually. We may feel like the only good thing left in life to do is to lie down and die.
But please understand, the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY is with all of us. He will help all of us.
And for those who say – Well, that is not where I am today. In fact, things could not be better. Then give God the glory and see what you can do for the widows of Zarephath in your world. Be an Elijah to them and help bring about a miracle in their life.
Some of you this morning may find yourself like Ruth. You may find yourself having to start over or doing things that are very tedious and painful. You may find yourself as the sole provider and as the sole caretaker of a loved one.
Life can be hard; just ask Ruth.
We can even let those seasons of our lives cause us to become bitter, discouraged and at times even depressed.
Or we can lean on the LORD, we can do our best and then watch as the LORD helps us become all that we can become.
We can square our shoulders back and do what Ruth did. We can live one day at a time. We can do all we can do today. We can then get up the next day and do it all over again. We can realize that the LORD can use our hard times to help us become a better person.
This morning, we are all faced with choices and transformations.
The question is: Are we open for new jars of oil, new bread, new families and new futures.
Is it really that simple?
Yes, it is when we allow the Holy Spirit to help us make our choices and when we allow the Holy Spirit to use our circumstances to help us become a more mature person, a more fulfilled person and a person who reflects more of God’s glory and honor.
Is it easy?
No, just ask the widow of Zarephath and Ruth.
They would tell you that some days are almost impossible.
But they would also tell you that God will be there with you. The Holy Spirit will guide you and lead you. The Holy Spirit will lead you to become an even better person that you are right now; today.
As we close let us pray for the widows of Zarephath that we find in our lives today. Let us pray for the Ruth’s that we find in our lives today. Let us do our best to be an Elijah in their lives or even a Boaz. That is to say; a person that does all they can to help them and to support them and to provide for them emotionally, socially, physically, spiritually and financially.
Let us be determined that this week and the week after that and the week after that we will seek the help of the Holy Spirit. That we will allow the Holy Spirit to help us transform into even being a better person, richer in wisdom, in love, peace and joy.
Closing prayer/invitation/blessing
