Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2004 : October 24, 2004
Our God is Faithful to His Promises
Pentecost 21
Recently Walt Disney released a movie based on a well-known story that originated from the Middle East -- Aladdin and his magic lamp. The original story surrounds the adventures of a young man named Aladdin after he finds a magic lamp. After rubbing the lamp, lo and behold, a genie pops out and grants Aladdin three wishes. What would you wish for if you were Aladdin? When I was younger, I thought I figured it all out because my first wish would be to have an unlimited amount of wishes. Just imagine if you had all the wishes in the world and you could have everything you ever wanted -- all you would have to do would be to wish for it -- and they would all come true. What would you wish for? Enough money so that you wouldn't have to worry about money ever again? A log cabin in the mountains or on a beautiful lake? A perfect family that never has any problems or worries about anything in life and everyone always gets along perfectly with everyone else? Unfortunately, those kinds of wishes are really wishful thinking, and have no part of reality.
In our text for this morning, Naomi could have used a number of wishes to make her life better. But she had something that was very real in her life, and it's much better than any wish. I'm talking about God's promises, which apply to us as well. No, God never promised to give us all the money in the world or a cabin in the mountains or on a lake or a perfect, care-free family, but God has made a number of other, more important promises to his believers. We are going to look at two of those promises today that deal with tragedy in our lives. God has promised to care for us during the tragedies of life and he’s promised to take care of what would be the tragedy of our eternal death. Our God has kept those promises because Our God is Faithful to His Promises.
The first verse of our text and of the book of Ruth takes us to the time of the judges in Israel. That is significant because it should bring to our minds what the times of the judges was like. The time of the judges followed the time of Joshua during which all Israel followed the Lord. But after Joshua and the elders under him died, the people of Israel forsook the Lord. So the Lord would send a nation to subdue Israel. Eventually things got so bad that the Israelites would repent and cry out to God for deliverance. God would hear their cry and send a deliverer, or a judge, who would break the yoke of Israel's oppressors and give peace to the land for a number of years. But eventually the people would forsake the Lord again and then the cycle would begin again. Finally, things got so bad in Israel that the period of the judges could be summed up with these ominous words that close the book of Judges: "Everyone did as he saw fit." Most of the chosen people of God had forsaken God and were not faithful to him. But throughout that time, God remained faithful.
That faithfulness of God is shown in the story of Naomi and Ruth. We pick up Naomi's difficulties in the town of Bethlehem. There was a famine, and Naomi's husband Elimelech decided to leave Bethlehem and find food in Moab, which was the Israelites' neighbor to the southeast. The famine must have been severe for Elimelech to take his family away from the town of Bethlehem, away from any contact with fellow believers, and go to a nation who was a bitter enemy of Israel and followed detestable practices in worshipping false gods. But even if this wasn't the best judgment on Elimelech's part, God was using even this for the family's good.
This is where the focus of the account switches to Elimelech's wife, Naomi, who, on top of having to get used to a new place to live in a land not friendly with Israel, had to deal with other problems. In fact, it must have seemed like her whole life was crumbling around her. We read: "Now Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband." Obviously if Naomi could have wished for anything in the world, she would not have wished all this misfortune on herself. What suffering she was enduring! Yet she knew that God had not forgotten her. She clung not to any wishful thinking, but to God's sure promises. And God did prove faithful to his promise of caring for her even in all of her earthly tragedy. Eventually, the famine in Israel was over, and Naomi realized that it was time to go back to Bethlehem in Judah. She began the trip back to Bethlehem with her two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, all three of them widows. But before they had gone too far, Naomi told Orpah and Ruth to go back to their own people. Remember, they were Moabites. They had no ties to Bethlehem or Judah or Israel at all now that their husbands had died. Orpah eventually went back to Moab, but Ruth did not, and her words are a beautiful confession of her faith. She said, "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." What a beautiful confession in the midst of all the godlessness in Israel in which "everyone did as he saw fit!" Yet this Moabitess, a foreigner, not only showed her love to her mother-in-law by helping her to begin a new life, but she also showed love to her God, the true God.
Now look at your situation. Do you have a picture-perfect life, or are there a number of things that you would change at the drop of a hat? What happens when the Lord sends a famine into your life? Maybe you don't have a shortage of food, but you have a shortage of money and you don't know where the next payment for the bills is going to come from. Maybe you have to face something new like Naomi did -- a new place to live, a new job, a new school to go to. Like Naomi, have you lost a loved one recently or seen them in the hospital struggling with a disease? Maybe it seems like God has turned his hand against you, as Naomi thought. But he hasn't. He is working behind the scenes in your life and working it for your good. How can I say that? Because he promises it. He says in Deuteronomy, "The LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you." (Deuteronomy 31:6) In the New Testament he says in Romans that he is working all things for your good, even though it might seem like everything is bad and nothing good can come of it. Yet God is in charge. He is working in your life and being faithful to his promises.
Tragedy is common to man. It's a part of life in this sinful world. That's why the Greek playwrights wrote tragedies as part of their normal fare. Shakespeare picked up on it. His most famous tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, tells of "star-crossed lovers" whose only crime was that they were from different families involved in a deadly feud. Even their love for each other couldn't overcome their family names, as Juliet took a sleeping potion to get out of a marriage to another person, but is thought to be dead. So she's put in the family crypt, where Romeo finds her and, overcome by her death, commits suicide by drinking poison. Juliet then stirs from her deep sleep and, seeing Romeo dead beside her, stabs herself in the heart and dies. But, amazingly, their deaths cause the two feuding families to end their hostility. It was a high price to pay to bring two families together. If you were watching the play, it would be nice leave the theater knowing that at least your life wasn't so tragic.
But, in all reality, it was. As Paul says, "You were dead in your sins." (Ephesians 2:1) You were dead because you inherited your sin from your sinful parents. You have shown your sin in your life in all kinds of ways. One way is by not trusting God during the times when our lives take a tragic turn. It's easy for us to say we trust God when things are like smooth sailing, but what happens when the waters of life rise up against you, and you are buffeted by wave after wave of tragedy and trial and temptation to look to someone or something other than God? There have been times in all our lives when we haven't completely trusted in God and his power. We have proven faithless. How tragic -- when all our God has ever been is faithful to us!
God was faithful to his promise of taking care of Naomi during the tragedies that came into her life, but we see from the rest of the account that he was being faithful not only to Naomi, but to the entire human race of sinners because in everything that happened, he was also being faithful to his promise of taking care of what would be an eternal tragedy for us because of our sin -- he was quietly working his plan of salvation through the lives of these two women.
Now the account's focus changes again, this time from Naomi to her daughter-in-law Ruth. Just look at the progression: Ruth didn't know about the true God or the coming Christ probably until she heard it from her husband's family. If Elimelech had never come to Moab, she may never have come to faith. But she did come to faith. In fact, it was such a strong faith that she decided to leave Moab, and probably any chance of getting another husband to care for her, and she followed her mother-in-law back to Bethlehem. Eventually in Bethlehem, she actually caught the eye of a wealthy land owner named Boaz, who eventually did marry her. They had a son named Obed, who had a son named Jesse, who had a son named David, who would eventually be the greatest king in Israel. But more importantly, he was an ancestor of the coming Christ. How amazing! This was one chapter in the ancestral line of the Savior of sinners. He would come from the town of David, called Bethlehem, just as the prophet Micah would later foretell. So we can see that in Naomi and Ruth's life, God was working behind the scenes to bring about his work of salvation. The famine, the move to Moab, marrying non-Israelites -- everything was part of God's plan according to his promise to send a Savior from sin.
God put an end to our feud with him by sending his own Son to pay for our sins, as Isaiah said, "He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah 53:5-6) As this passage and the story of Ruth show us, God's salvation was not just meant for the Jews, but for all people, including Ruth and including you and me. God's faithfulness to his promise punished Jesus for our sins -- what a tragedy! But that was the only way our would-be tragedy of going to hell forever as the result of our sins could be changed. As Paul said, "Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David." (2 Timothy 2:8) Jesus did die for all of our unfaithfulness and the world's unfaithfulness, but he rose again in victory, which is ours through faith. Think about Ruth -- God made her an ancestor of Christ and blessed the world through her. Now think about us -- God made us heirs of eternal life, as Paul says, "according to the promise."
What is your idea of the perfect life? Do you often wish that you had more things than you have? Well you don't have to wish any longer, because the reality is found in Christ. And now as you leave this house of God and go into your everyday life, remember what you heard here today -- you have everything, even more than you could even wish for, eternal salvation as a gift through Christ, all because our God is faithful to his promises. Amen.
