Word of Salvation – Vol.40 No.06 – February 1995

 

God At Work

 

Sermon by Rev. J. A. Haverland on the Book of Ruth

Scripture Readings: Ruth 1 and Ruth 4:13-22

 

Congregation.

Just about everyone loves a good story.  It may be a good novel, or a short story in a magazine, or a movie on TV.  Whether we see it or hear it, we all enjoy hearing about the lives of other people.

Children also love stories.  You can’t do better for them than to sit down on the couch with them and read some of their favourite stories.

This is one of the reasons the Bible is such a popular book – it is full of stories – stories of people’s lives, of love, of war, of happy times, sad times.

One of the most beautiful of these stories is that of Ruth.  It is especially beautiful when you consider that it was set in the time of the Judges.

Before his death Joshua had called Israel to follow the Lord, but they didn’t.  As the years went by, they forgot about the Lord.  The book of Judges records this sad period of their history.

This was a wild and turbulent time.  There was no unity among the tribes.  They were often fighting each other as well as the nations around them.  The land was full of evil and lawlessness.  The book of Judges closes with the words: “In those days Israel had no king everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”  It was a terrible time of anarchy and confusion.

Ruth and Naomi lived in these times.  So this book is well placed in our Bible following immediately after the book of Judges.  But their lives were in strong contrast to the evil that was going on in the rest of the nation.  Someone has said that the book of Ruth is like “a summer’s morning after a night of wild tempest.”

But what makes this book so precious to us is not just that it is a lovely quiet story which ends happily, but that is shows us how God is at work in people’s lives.  It illustrates the workings of God’s providence.

God’s providence describes the way God rules and governs all things in this world.  according to His will so that nothing happens without His appointment.  The doctrine of God’s providence in the Bible assures us that nothing happens to us by chance, but that everything is guided by the almighty and yet gracious hand of our heavenly Father.

The story of Ruth and Naomi highlights three important truths about God’s providence.

1.  First of all it shows us that God is at work in the lives of ordinary believers.

You could be excused for some doubt about this in your reading of the Bible.  So many of the men and women of the Bible seemed such heroes of the faith: Abraham, Joseph, Deborah, Moses, Joshua, David, Esther, James and John, the Apostle Paul.

These are the leading actors of the Biblical story, and sometimes it can be a bit intimidating to compare ourselves with them.  We think, “Yes, I can see that God was at work in their lives, but what about in my life.  I’m just an ordinary person.  Is God active in my life too?”

The answer to that question is a resounding, “Yes!”  God is at work in the life of every believer.  Take Ruth, for example.  Here was a quiet, unassuming young woman, a widow, a Moabitess, not even part of the nation of Israel.  But God was at work in her life.  Nothing that happened to her happened by chance.  God was guiding everything, directing all that happened, governing each event:

– that she married Naomi’s son;

– that her husband died;

– that she worked in the fields of Boaz;

– that he was her kinsman/redeemer.

All of this was directed by God.

This is true of us as well.  We may think of world history as a vast story which God is writing, a huge narrative that covers all the centuries, but which also includes us, each one of us.  We should see our lives as chapters, or at least as paragraphs, in God’s great story.

This isn’t always easy to believe, especially because of the general environment around us.  Few others believe this.  People might have a vague belief in “a god” but for all practical purposes most are atheists.  They certainly don’t think of God as guiding everything in life.  God is regarded as irrelevant to daily living.

Even if those around us did believe, we have the other difficulty that this is something we must hold on to in faith.  We must believe that God is at work in our lives, even though we don’t always see it.

You could compare this to reading a novel.  You don’t understand the full story until you have read the whole of it.  In the same way we will not completely understand our part in God’s story until God draws it to a conclusion at the end of time.  So we live by faith.  We believe that God has started this, that He has included us in it, and that He will finish it, He will see it through.

Naomi is an example of this.  At first she was angry at God for making her life bitter.  “I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty.  Why call me Naomi?  The Lord has afflicted me; the almighty has brought misfortune on me.” (1:21) But later on she could begin to see God’s hand at work in all that had happened.  “The Lord bless him,” she said.  “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” (2:20)

Naomi didn’t have answers to all her questions.  She didn’t understand why things had gone the way they had.  But she believed that God was at work.  She believed that God was showing His kindness and blessing.

Do you believe that?  Do you believe that God is at work in your life?  That He is in control?  That He is guiding things?  And that somehow all that happens will serve His purposes?  That’s what Romans 8 assures us of: “That in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who are called according to His purpose.” (8:28)

That brings us to the second thing we should notice in this story: Not only is God is at work in the lives of ordinary believers, but…

2.  God is at work achieving His purposes

You see that clearly in the life of Ruth.  The closing verses of the book show us the real scope of what God was doing here.  Boaz was the father of Obed, and Obed was the father of Jesse, and Jesse was the father of David.

God used Ruth, a Moabitess, to be the great-grandmother of the great king David, who was one of the forefathers of the greater King who would follow, the Lord Jesus.  Ruth was used by God in the great story that would climax in the coming of the Messiah King, the Lord Jesus.  God used her in the unfolding of His great plan of salvation.  Her story was a significant part of His story.

The other great example of that is Esther, the only other woman whose name is used for a book of the Bible.  She too had a significant part to play in God’s purposes.  Mordecai pointed that out to her when he said: “Who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this.” (4:14)

This has much to say to us, for each one of us is part of the grand purpose of God.  Each one of us has a significant role to play.  Everyone is important.  Each one of us has a task to fulfil.  No one and nothing is irrelevant to the working out of God’s purpose.  Somehow or other every one of us fits into the story of God’s salvation and work.

We must see this as a challenge for our lives.  You have a part to play in God’s plan.  What you do can be significant for Him and for the development of His kingdom.  You may not realise the full implications of what you are doing but you have a task to do, a place to occupy, a calling to fulfil.

The New Testament also assures us of that: “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.” (1Cor.15:58)

That brings us to the third thing we should notice.  We have seen that God is at work in our lives, for his purposes.  But that calls us to be responsible.  God is at work and…

3.  We must be at work

Again you can see this illustrated in this story.  Noami, Ruth and Boaz didn’t sit idly by waiting for God to act.  They weren’t passive.  No, they were active participants.  Naomi could see the potential for a marriage for her daughter-in-law and told her to go and meet Boaz at the threshing floor.  Ruth obeyed her mother-in-law and took a further initiative in asking Boaz to marry her.  And Boaz decided that he would take up new responsibilities and marry Ruth.

The fact that God is sovereign and that He guides all things in His providence does not diminish our freedom to act.  We must make decisions.  We must act responsibly.  We must decide certain things, take some initiative.  This is a subject all on its own, but let’s notice two brief points:

The first is that we must be obedient to the things that God has revealed.

God has told us how to act in certain situations.  In the Bible He has given us boundaries for our behaviour; He has given us instructions about what we may and may not do.  We must live in the light of what God has said, what He has revealed.

The second point to note is that we must be wise about the things God has not revealed.

Obviously there are many things God has not told us.  He has told us to use our talents but he hasn’t told us whether to do that looking after sheep in the pasture or sheep in the church; whether to do that extracting potatoes from the ground or teeth from people’s gums.  He tells us to marry a Christian but He doesn’t tell us which one.  He tells us to be useful in the world but He doesn’t tell us which university to go to, which trade to enter, which polytech to attend.

So, we have the freedom to make those decisions ourselves.  But we need to do that wisely.  We must do things that are consistent with the life of discipleship that will help us follow Christ more closely.  We must make decisions in the light of the broad purposes of Christ’s kingdom, doing things that will advance His work.  We must decide how we can most effectively serve our neighbour and do good in the world around us.  All these decisions are part of living in the unfolding of God’s story.

We began by talking about stories.  Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end.  The story of our lives begins in God, it is written out in God’s providence, and it come to a conclusion in our final salvation.

Let’s remember and believe that God is at work in our lives, however ordinary they may seem to us.  Let’s keep in mind that everything that we do can be a significant part of His purposes.  And let us be sure we use our freedom in a responsible and wise way for the coming of Christ’s kingdom and for the glory of His Name.

Amen.