Sermon Text: Ruth 3: 1-5; 4: 13-17
Ruth and Boaz at the Threshing Floor
1 One day Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi said to her, “My daughter, I must find a home for you, where you will be well provided for.
2 Now Boaz, with whose women you have worked, is a relative of ours. Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor.
3 Wash, put on perfume, and get dressed in your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking.
4 When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do.”
5 “I will do whatever you say,” Ruth answered.
Naomi Gains a Son
13 So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he made love to her, the LORD enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son.
14 The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the LORD, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel!
15 He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.”
16 Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him.
17 The women living there said, “Naomi has a son!” And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.
Morning Message:
When you prepare sermons for a long time you learn to pay attention to the sign posts that God puts in your path. I have always said that in the beginning of my call to ministry I could not imagine how I could possibly come up with a sermon every week. I have found that God will give me the words and the ideas if I pay attention. This week I found God’s inspiration in one of my devotional readings: Turning Point magazine by David Jeremiah, the reading for November 1st: “Romans 8: 3 says, ‘For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh.’ Bob Ebeling spent a third of his life consumed with guilt. He was one of the engineers connected to NASA, and he worried that cold temperatures would cause the 1986 Challenger space shuttle to explode. Ebeling was so concerned that he called his boss, and they assembled data that would demonstrate the risk. When NASA proceeded with the launch anyway, Ebeling watched in horror as the Challenger exploded. He spent nearly the rest of his life overwhelmed with guilt, thinking he could have done more to delay the launch. Shortly before his recent death at age 89, Ebeling said he had found peace. It’s terrible to live a life consumed with guilt. Few of us have to face the explosion of a spacecraft, but we all look back on our lives with our share of regrets. But God doesn’t intend for us to live any longer in the sins He has washed away by the blood of Jesus. Our Lord’s blood is an acid that eats away at the corrosive guilt that can rust out our heart. In Christ, there is no condemnation. Jesus’ death is the only real answer to our guilt.”
Guilt is simply a feeling of remorse or responsibility for something. Now guilt is not always a bad thing. We need to feel remorse when we do something wrong. As Christians, the Holy Spirit in us causes us to feel guilty and remorseful for our sins and bad actions. When we feel Holy Spirit conviction we should take responsibility for what we have done; confess it to God; and move on. You see, there is the key. We must move on. When we ask for forgiveness, God forgives. The slate is wiped clean; we no longer need to think about or dwell on our sins. Do you know how many people come to Jesus and ask for forgiveness and receive it, only to get all tangled up in guilt that no longer exists? Let me give you this assurance before we go any further. There is nothing that you have done in your past that God will not forgive and forget. I probably needed to say this last week when I was preaching the commandments. Don’t take this out of context or think that it gives you a license to sin, but when you come to Jesus earnestly and ask for forgiveness, it’s done. I always like to say, so let it be written, so let it be done. I tell you that this morning because I know that the world and sometimes even the church, can make us feel so guilty over choices which we made in our past. Regrets: I have a few; mistakes: I have made many. When God forgives it is all washed away. There is nothing that can separate us from God through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
I want you to see why it’s important for us to move past our mistakes and move forward with God’s plan for our lives. The story of Ruth: please do yourself a huge favor and read the book of Ruth, a story in four chapters. I can’t take the time to give you more than the highlights, but it is well worth your reading. Naomi, along with her husband Elimelek and their two sons Mahlon and Kilion made a huge mistake in judgment. There was a famine in the land of Judah and they decided that it would be better for them to move to Moab. Once they were there Elimelek died. Naomi’s sons marry Moabite women and after ten years both sons die leaving her with only her two daughters-in-law. We must see this for what it is in the eyes of God. This became a decade of disobedience. The family left the land that God had provided for them and settled into a new way of life, a life that did not fit with God’s people. Naomi decides to go back home because she has heard that God had come to the aid of his people by blessing them with food. By deciding to go back she is repenting of her mistake in leaving. She reversed her decision and went back where she now knew she belonged.
Ruth goes with Naomi and she makes this commitment to her mother-in-law and to God. “Your people will be my people and your God my God.” I want you to notice what God does, and what he doesn’t do. He doesn’t hold her bad decision, her sin, against Naomi. He blesses her and gives her a future. God, as only God can do, takes a disastrous situation, a terrible mistake made by this family, and turns it into a blessing. You have to read about the Moabites in order to truly understand what God does in Ruth’s life. They were a terrible sinful people, but because she accepted God and followed him through her mother-in-law, he gave her an unimaginable blessing. She would marry Boaz, their son would be Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of King David, the direct descendant of Jesus, the Savior of mankind. Why waste our time holding on to guilt when God has removed it and waits to bless our future. There is nothing that God can’t do or won’t do when we humble ourselves and give our lives to him.
In Christ’s Love and Peace
Pastor Bob
Views: 0
