Faith to be a Risk Taker
Ruth 1:1-18
My message this morning is about a young woman that had faith to be a risk taker.
Have you moved to a new area where you didn’t really know anybody except those moving with you. Moving and making new friends and adjusting to a new area are challenging opportunities.
My first move was from Gypsum, KS to Sterling Kansas. I had lived in Gypsum for 14 years and now was moving to Sterling, KS. I was moving to a larger town. Gypsum, population 500 to Sterling, population 2,000.
My parents were separated and I was starting my first year in High School. I felt alone. I was bewildered. My mother had a second grade teaching position in Sterling. She felt she had to move out of small Gypsum and separate from my Dad because he was not being faithful to their marriage. Moving under those circumstances was not easy. My heart was heavy. We moved in August and In October of that year I yielded my life to Jesus and became a Christian. With the Lord’s help I made it through High School as a new Christian.
The story of Ruth and Naomi’s move from Moab back to Bethlehem was also a move that was filled with challenge. Ruth’s mother-in-law (Naomi) and father-in-law (Elimelech) and two sons (Mahlon and Kilion) had moved to Moab during a famine in Canaan. While living in Moab the two sons married Moabite women – Orpah and Ruth.
We aren’t told the circumstances but Naomi’s husband died, and her two sons also died leaving Naomi, Orpah and Ruth as widows.
Naomi learned that were no longer a famine in Judah so she decided to move back to her homeland. Naomi packed up her belongings and started out with her two daughter’s-in-law to travel back to Judah. Then she turned to them and said: “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show kindness to you, as you have shown to your dead (husbands) and to me. May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”
You can’t fault Naomi for wanting to move back to her homeland to be near her relatives. Many of you have experienced the loss of a loved one. It’s not easy living alone. Naomi decided to take charge and make a move. She encouraged her daughters-in-law to stay with their own people and find a husband to provide for their needs.
Naomi kissed Orpah and Ruth and said “goodbye,” and started on her journey. After some persuasion Orpah turned around but Ruth Faith to Be a Risk Taker
clung to her and did not turn around. Naomi said, “Your sister in law is going back to her people and to her gods. Go back with her.” Ruth answers in the classic verse chapter 1:16,
“Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”
From this story of Ruth we can draw several observations concerning faith.
1. Faith is a choice
2. Faith is a commitment
3. Faith is an adventure
I. Faith is a Choice
Ruth made a choice to go with Naomi to a strange land where she had never been before. She had faith to be a risk taker.
Ruth must have seen something in Naomi’s life that she did not see in other Moabite women. Naomi’s faith in her God was different from Moabite gods. Ruth liked what she saw in the life of her mother-in-law. Ruth was determined to leave the pagan gods of her people and follow the true Creator God worshipped by Naomi. Ruth saw true faith in action. She saw how Naomi responded to the death of her husband and two sons. Naomi did not harbor bitterness, but by faith trusted God for her future.
Faith is a choice. You chose to take God at His Word and act accordingly. You chose to believe on the evidence you see.
Faith is not a feeling it is a choice. You might say, “I don’t feel like getting up today. I don’t feel like going to work. I don’t feel like going to church. I don’t feel like (you fill in the blank). You often choose to act regardless of how you feel.
Jesus always gave people a choice. Jesus said, “If you will come after me…” Jesus always gives you an “If.” To follow Jesus is a choice.
Do you remember a time in your life when you experienced faith –when you made a choice to take a risk?
#My Junior year in college I made a final decision and said “Yes” to God’s call on my life and changed my major to Christian Ministry. I met Carollyn in the Fall of my Senior year and we were married the following August 22nd. A couple weeks later the first of September we moved to Wilmore, Ky pulling in a 4 X 6 traile with all our things, rented a 8’ by 24” trailer home with a 7 foot ceiling and started our married life in Wilmore, KY. Totally in love and open to following God’s Plan. We moved over 1,000 miles form family and friends. My first year in Seminary Carollyn finished her final year of college. Life wasn’t easy but we made it. We exercised faith – we made the move and trusted God to provide.
Faith is not only a choice it is also involves a commitment.
II. Faith is a Commitment
Ruth 1:16-17
Ruth not only made a choice to move with her mother; she also made a commitment. She was committing her life to a new country, a new God, a new lifestyle. She was going to become a foreigner in a strange land. Ruth surrendered her family ties and homeland to follow God and his people. She ran the risk of being rejected and misunderstood.
The commitment Ruth made to her mother-in-law is similar to the commitment made in marriage by a husband and wife. Ruth 1:17, “We will stay together until death separates us.” “Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” That is a statement of unconditional love. How often in family and marriage relationships do we see superficial commitments. Lip service is given to the marriage covenant.
#Last Tuesday I had a test done at the doctor’s office. A nurse attendant was taking information and asked me questions about my medical history. I told her I had good health. I enjoyed clean Christian living. I did not drink or smoke or run around with women. She responded: “That takes all the fun out of life doesn’t it.” I told her that for 42 years we had had the time of our lives being married. All the years have been exciting.
A pastor friend who fought in the Korean war told of the challenge he had in living the Christian life in the service. He said that his buddy’s always tried to get him to go out drinking and carousing around. One night his fellow soldiers went out on the town. He stayed in the base and enjoyed a quiet evening of reading. Later that night one of his buddies came in half drunk with blood down his face and said, “Now that’s really living. We had a lot of fun tonight.”
True commitment in marriage says, “By the grace of God we will work out our differences. With God’s help I will not nurture self-pity or refuse to compromise. I don’t always need my way. It doesn’t have to be my way or the highway.”
The commitment Ruth made is also similar to the commitment a person makes to become a Christian.
When you become a Christian –
· You make a decision in the face of natural opposition
· You make a decision based on conviction not emotion
· You make a surrender to he Lord by faith
· You make a decision with no loopholes to turn back.
Hebrews 11:1 describes faith: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”
#Christian Faith is taking God at His Word. Do you remember the scene in the Raiders of the Lost Ark? Indiana Jones is trying to get across valley. Three is no visible way to get across. He remembers something about an invisible path. He closes his eyes and steps out into space and a solid path appears and he walks across the canyon.
#On one occasion the disciples were in a boat at night and Jesus came walking to them on the water. Peter said, Jesus can I come to you. Jesus said, “Get out of the boat and come.” Faith is getting out of the boat. If you want to walk on water you have to get out of the boat.” Jesus is not in the boat. Jesus is in the water.
Jesus is looking for people who will get out of the boat. Remember the water may be dark and dangerous, but Jesus is not in the boat. Often God’s method of growing a deep adventuresome faith in you happens when he asks you to get out of the safe and secure boat. Maybe you have been huddling in the bottom of the boat for many years --- Fearful of taking that first step. Take that small step of faith. Jesus is waiting there to take your hand.
I like the definition someone gave to faith as an acrostic spelling FAITH.
FORSAKING
ALL
I
TRUST
HIM.
Jesus is always near. Jesus is always available. You can be sure that when you feel like your life has been one disappointment or disaster after another, Jesus has not given up on you. He says, come to me and I’ll come to you. Even when you lack faith and start to sink, Jesus comes to you and gives you a hand and lifts you up and walks with you through the rough waves of life.
#John G. Paton and his family landed on Tanna, an Island in the New Hebrides in the Pacific in 1858. When he began to translate the Gospel of John into the local language, he ran into difficulty over the expression “to believe in.” The Islanders were cannibals; trust was rare. Their language had no word for faith or trust. As John Paton worked at his desk, he asked a native to describe to him what he was doing, and he got he answer; “You’re sitting at your desk.” Lifting both his feet from the floor and leading back in his chair, he asked the same question, and in reply the native said, “You are leaning your whole weight upon your chair.” This is the expression John Paton used throughout John’s Gospel for the English words, “to believe in.” John 3:16, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotton Son that whosoever leans his whole weight upon Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
Faith is more than an intellectual credence. It is surrendering your whole life to the person of Jesus. It is putting all your weight on Jesus.
Faith is a choice. Faith is a commitment. Third:
III. Faith is an Exciting Adventure
Ruth made a choice and commitment to travel with her mother-in-law to Bethlehem. Her faith took her on an exciting adventure. In Judah God guided and provided for her and Naomi. It wasn’t an easy life. Ruth worked as one of the Slave girls even though she was not a hired servant. God provided food, and a husband in the person of Boaz. Ruth and Boaz were privileged to be in the line of David and personal relatives of Jesus. In the genealogy of Jesus, Matthew 1:5-6 we read: “Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, And Jesse the father of King David.”
Do you want to enjoy a life of adventure? Trust Jesus as your Savior and Lord.
How much faith does it take to move the hand of God and experience the blessings of God? Jesus said, it only takes mustard seed faith to move the hand of god. Jesus said in Matthew 17:21b “If you have faith as small as a mustard seek, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
With just a little faith God says to you. Like a small mustard seed you have lots of potential. Jesus says to you. “Don’t despair because of your smallness, many great things have a small beginning. Many things happen in this life that we don’t understand. For every situation and circumstance we simple trust Jesus.
“Simply trusting every day, trusting through a stormy way. Even when my faith is small, trusting Jesus, that is all. Brightly does His Spirit shine into this poor heart of mine; while He leads I cannot fall. Trusting Jesus that is all.”
#Adoniram Judson was one of America’s first Missionaries. He was a living example of someone who made a commitment to live by faith and risk all in serving the risen Lord Jesus. He fell in love with the daughter of a wealthy aristocrat. He approached Nancy Hazeltine’s father seeking to ask his permission to marry her. He asked, Mr. Hazeltine if he was prepared to never see his daughter again because of the risks associated with missionary service abroad. Hazeltine appreciated the candor of Judson, but said the decision was entirely up to his daughter.
Nancy Hazeltine responded to her family: “I have made my decision to walk away from all the comforts of family and friends to go to a land I have never been and where I may never return…to die there alone and maybe lose all. I have made my decision. As God is my witness, I will not decline the offer and privilege to give my life to rescue the perishing.”
Nancy Hazeltine Judson never did see her father again. She died on the mission field a young wife and mother with no regrets. She was willing to risk all for the sake of the Kingdom of God. And because she did history records that many people came to Faith in the Lord.
God may not call you to go to a far away mission field, but God wants everyone of us to be willing to be available to serve Him.
Faith is a choice.
Faith is a commitment.
Faith is an exciting adventure in serving the Lord.
This morning are you willing to made the same commitment of Ruth and say “the Lord God of Heaven and earth will be my God. I will never leave or forsake the Lord.”
As you take communion this morning say “yes” in your heart to lean your total weight on the Lord, surrender your life anew to Jesus.
