Ruth 2:2-8. Pastor Bob Petterson. November 15&16, 2014

Transcription

1 COVENANT PULPIT IRRESISTIBLE LOVE Ruth 2:2-8 Pastor Bob Petterson November 15&16, 2014 Covenant Church of Naples Ι PCA 6926 Trail Boulevard, Naples (239)

2 The Scottish farmer heard a desperate cry coming from a nearby bog. He saw a terrified boy, up to his neck in the muck, being sucked down to a slow and horrifying death. He managed to pull him out of the mire in the nick of time. The next day a carriage pulled up in front of the Scotsman s cottage. An elegantly dressed British lord stepped out, and introduced himself as the father of the rescued boy. He asked the farmer s name. The Scotsman replied, Fleming, sir. The nobleman then said, I insist on rewarding you for saving my son! Fleming waved him off. I can t accept money for saving a life. About that time, the farmer s son came out of the cottage. Is that your lad? asked the lord. Yes sir! replied the father. Mr. Fleming, he looks to be about the same age as my son. Allow me to provide your boy with the same level of education that my own will enjoy. I have no doubt that he ll grow up to make us both proud. Fleming s son received the finest education a lord s money could buy, graduated from medical school, and went on to make both his father and benefactor proud. History remembers the farmer s son as Sir Alexander Fleming, the doctor who discovered penicillin. There s a postscript to this story. Later, the British lord s son was again at death s door, stricken with pneumonia. This time he was saved by Farmer Fleming s son, who administered a timely dose of penicillin. The world should be glad. The son, saved twice by the Flemings, was Lord Randolph Churchill who afterwards lived long enough to sire his own son, Winston Churchill. Random events and people intersect and interrupt our lives. Each is a divine appointment forming a chain of events bigger than we can imagine. A lord s son is pulled out of a bog, and millions of people are saved by penicillin. A chain of events allows the birth of Winston Churchill. What if the British lord hadn t offered to educate Farmer Fleming s son? What if Farmer Fleming had been too proud to accept that gift? The whole world would have been so much the poorer. The love that we receive from the One who pulled us out of the miry clay, and set our feet on a solid rock, must also be played forward.

3 That s why Jesus said in John 13:34&35, A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. We call this love The Original L Word. Love begins with L, a letter made up of two lines: one vertical, the other horizontal. The vertical is God s love come down to us from heaven in Jesus Christ: as I have loved you The horizontal is extending Jesus love to others: so you must love one another. In this series we are looking at five descriptors of this love. Today we look at the fourth: irresistible love. Here s today s L Word principle: Christ s love irresistibly drew him to the cross to die for us. It irresistibly draws us to the cross to live for him. Our love for each other irresistibly draws the world to Christ. The Protestant Reformers coined the phrase irresistible grace. They emphasized how God irresistibly draws us to himself. But I think that God was first irresistibly drawn to us. God the Father loved us so much that he couldn t resist choosing us and then sending his Son to purchase our salvation. We were so irresistible to God the Son that he couldn t resist dying for us. We are so irresistible to God the Spirit that he searched us to apply Christ s saving work to us. The Holy Spirit finds us simply irresistible! When the Holy Spirit breathed new life into us, we came alive spiritually. Our eyes were opened for the first time to see how much Jesus loved us. Now with absolute free will, by our own unbridled choice, we ran into his arms. I John 4:19 says, We love him because he first loved us. His love for us was irresistible to us. The Spirit didn t draw us to Christ. He made us alive so that we could see the love of God. Then the irresistible, amazing love of the Holy Trinity drew us irresistibly to Christ. It is now the presence of the Risen Christ in us that gives us the desire and power to love the unlovable, forgive the unforgivable, and go the distance with folks

4 who drive us nuts. It s this ability to love each other that is irresistible to the watching world. Jesus said, By this will everyone know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:35). Jesus promised, If I be lifted up I will draw all people to myself. (John 12:32) We lift him up when we love one another. If millions of young people are walking away from church in America today, and if they are resisting our gospel, it is because they don t see us irresistibly love each other. Let s see how this irresistible love works out in the story of Ruth and Boaz: 1. Irresistible love overcomes the laws of expectation, performance, and exclusion. This is a story of people whose performances fell woefully short of expectations. Ruth 1:1&2 introduces us to four of the sorriest folks. They hail from Bethlehem. The father s name is Elimelek which means My God is King. God is hardly his king. A famine strikes, so he leads his family across the Dead Sea to a forbidden zone called Moab. The Moabites are the descendants of Abraham s nephew Lot. Maybe you remember the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and how Lot s daughters thought the world had been destroyed. So they got dad drunk and committed incest. Lot fathered his own grandchildren. One of them was Moab. He married a Canaanite woman. His four sons took after their Canaanite mother and worshipped Chemosh. Imagine worshipping a god whose name literally means the destroyer of people. They and their Moabite descendants sacrificed children to this fire god, and engaged in every kind of perversion. When the Jews first came to the Promised Land, the Moabites paid the false prophet Balaam to curse the Jews and incite them up to idolatry and debauchery. Moses was outraged. In Deuteronomy 23 he declared God s judgment: Jews were never to live with or marry Moabites. No Moabite could enter Israel. Children born of intermarriage with Moabites had to be excluded too. In violation of God s law, Elimelek takes his family to Moab. Maybe his name should be changed to God used to be my King. He has two puny sons: Malon means the sickly one and Chilion means wasting away. But it is dad who dies first. In desperation, Sickly and Wasting

5 Away marry Moabite girls, hoping to cash in on their families help. But these wimpy guys soon die, leaving behind two Moabite widows, one named Ruth. Mom and two daughters-in-law are left to fend for themselves. The Far Country of sin always brings desperation and ruin. Elimelek s widow is now a bitter old woman. Her name Naomi literally means my lot falls in pleasant places. But she says, Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. (Ruth 1:20) She decides to go home alone to Bethlehem. So she tells her Moabite daughters-in-law to go back to their families. But Ruth speaks the language of irresistible love: Where you go I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. (Ruth 1:16&17) Together they trudge back to Bethlehem, a bitter old woman and an unwelcome intruder. This is where the story gets dicey. God s Law is crystal clear. Ruth the Moabite shouldn t be in Bethlehem. The Jew Boaz can t marry her. Any children who come from such a marriage will be impure. But you know the rest of the story. They will get married. King David will be their great-grandson. And Jesus Christ will be their great descendant. And the Bible will celebrate this fact. So theologians scratch their heads. How can this be? The answer to this conundrum is irresistible love. Why is Ruth excluded by the Law? First of all, I want you to grasp that the Law is good. It s good because it s God s Law. Later, in chapter two, these two starving widows go out to the rich man Boaz s fields at harvest time. God has established gleaning laws. When farmers harvest, they must leave large swaths of fallen stalks at the edges of their fields for the poor, orphan, widow, and aliens to pick up. God s law is compassionate. It tells us that we must care for the poor, oppressed, and least able to fend for themselves. That too is at the heart of irresistible love. The Law of God is also hard. It demands perfection we can t manage. Romans 3:23 says, For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. No one can measure up to God s expectations not Moabites, not Ruth, not Elimelek, and certainly not Sickly, Wasting Away, or a bitter old

6 woman formerly known as Pleasant. So the law excludes Moabites like Ruth from God s family. Worse, it excludes us all: For the wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23) But then Boaz comes. He finds Ruth, and she is irresistible to him. Though he is the lord of the harvest, he sees an illegal immigrant and loves her. He whispers to the harvesters to leave extra grain behind for her to pick up. He speaks kindly to her, offers her water, and then warns her to beware of hired men who might take advantage of her. Do you see Jesus, the lord of the harvest, who saw us, the excluded Moabite, and loved us? Do you see in Boaz, the true and better One, Jesus Christ, who was willing to make defiled people like us his bride? Ruth 2:10 says, At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She asked him, Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me a foreigner? That Hebrew word for favor could be translated grace. Indeed we wonder why Jesus favors sinners like us. As I have loved you, so you should love one another. How often do we lay down the law to others, expecting them to perform to our expectations? But no one can measure up not to God or us. We expect so much, and get so disappointed when others fail us. So we turn our back and walk away. In short, they become our Moabites. We become Moabites to others who say, I don t want you in my life, my marriage, my family, my circle of friends, or even my church. If measured by performance, we all deserve to be excluded. The Law of God (and the law that we lay down to others) demands, expects, criticizes, condemns, and excludes. Mostly, it resists grace. But love finds sinners irresistible. Boaz can t take his eyes off Ruth. Jesus can t get enough of us. Love steps out of heaven and identifies with the prostitute and tax collector. It is willing to break down walls of separation, and die in the sinner s place. And we say to Jesus, Why have I found such favor in your eyes? (Ruth 2:10) 2. Irresistible love overcomes the fear of commitment and aversion to perseverance. If Jesus finds us irresistible, why do we resist committing to Jesus love? Maybe it s fear. Perhaps we are averse to persevering in a long-term relationship with

7 anyone, let alone Jesus who asks for our total love. But, as the love story continues in the 2 nd chapter of Ruth, Boaz invites the Moabite widow to his table. What a picture of the Lord s Table. Those watching must be scandalized. He has again broken the Torah Law. Sinners can t eat at the table of the righteous. How many times did Jesus hear from the Torah boys that he shouldn t be sitting down at table with those excluded from synagogue because of their sins in short, the Moabites of his day? So Naomi hatches a matchmaker plot in chapter three. There is another compassionate biblical law that, if a man dies leaving a widow without children, his nearest unmarried kin must wed her and give her children. He is called the kinsman-redeemer (Ruth 4:8) Naomi dares believe that Boaz, the nephew of Elimelek, loves Ruth enough to be that man. There is a certain amount of manipulation in all of this. She gussies Ruth up, dabs on the perfume, and tells her to sneak into the threshing room after Boaz has drunk his wine. She is to lie down at his feet, under his blanket. Then let nature take its course. Ruth is willing to sleep with him to get him to marry her. It s so hard for Naomi, Ruth, or any of us, to believe that someone could purely love us without us having to earn it by giving them favors. We even find it hard to believe that Jesus could love us unconditionally. Ruth snuggles up to Boaz, and he awakens. But, he is the perfect gentlemen, refusing to take advantage of her weakness. He loves her too much to do that, just as Jesus loves us too much to ever harm us. Instead he protects her through the night, and then gives her a year s worth of barley to take home. Again, Boaz is a picture of the true and better One. Even when, like Ruth, we think we need to manipulate Jesus to meet our needs, he protects us and gives us more than we could ever ask or imagine without us earning his favor! Boaz tells her that as much as he wants to be her guardian-redeemer there is one closer to her who has first rights. But when he figures out that he will lose his own property by taking on Ruth and her dead husband s paltry estate, he cuts and runs. This too is a picture of the world. People will love us as long as something is in it for them, but cut and run when it costs too much. So Boaz steps in and marries Ruth. Understand what this means. Boaz

8 owns the biggest estate in Judea. To marry Ruth, he must give it up and settle on Elimelek s little plot of land. Another picture of the true and better Boaz, Jesus: he gives up heaven to pay for our redemption. No wonder Ruth runs into his arms. This amazing love is irresistible to Ruth. And Jesus love is even more irresistible to us. 3. Love for others irresistibly draws the watching world and changes generations to come. When Boaz makes his commitment to marry Ruth at the city gates, the elders and all the people cry out, We are witnesses (Ruth 4:11) People are watching our relationship with Jesus at the city gates. They are watching to see if it s made tangible in our relationships, as it is with Ruth and Boaz. But what is so amazing to the folks in Bethlehem is that Boaz would love an outcaste, that he would be irresistibly drawn to someone who didn t measure up to that day s standards of performance and evaluation. Unconditional love that defies fears and prejudices is always amazing to the watching world. Earlier, in their first meeting, when Ruth asked Boaz why she had found favor in his eyes, he replied, I ve been told about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband (Ruth 2:11) Then he adds, May the Lord repay you for what you ve done. (Ruth 2:12) Not only are people watching, so is the Lord. Going against the grain of a world that loves based on performance or status will also have an effect on future generations. At the end of Ruth 4, there is a genealogy of those born of Ruth and Boaz s love. It ends with King David. But the story doesn t end there. If you turn to Matthew 1 you will see that their genealogy ends with Jesus Christ. But it doesn t end there. If you turn to the book of Revelation, you will see that it ends with you and me, and a multitude that no one can number from every tribe, tongue, and nation. That is the power of irresistible love. A man pulls a boy out of a Scottish bog, and it begins a chain that changes the world. Another dies on a cross, and it changes the universe. What will you change by irresistibly loving others, the way Jesus has loved you? Copyright November 15&16, 2014 by Covenant Church of Naples /PCA