Rev. David Holwick ZJ Women of the Incarnation, #1
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
November 17, 2013
Ruth 1:8-17
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I. We should not neglect the women.
A. My last short series focused on men.
1) At our conclusion last Sunday night, 8 men signed the
Courageous Pledge in front of their families.
2) Does that mean women are off the hook? Absolutely not.
a) However, I will deal with them in a different way.
b) Instead of broad themes, I will look at characters.
c) Specifically, women who had a significant role in the
events of Christmas.
1> Each one has something to tell us about how God
uses imperfect people to do his perfect will.
B. My first is a young girl named Ruth.
1) By rights, she should not be part of the Christmas story.
2) She was an outsider, an enemy of the people of God.
3) Yet God brought her inside and made her one of the most
beautiful examples of love and grace in the Bible.
II. Love stories have always been popular.
A. Romance novels account for 55% of all paperback books sold.
1) You have all seen the covers with the guy with flowing
dark hair holding the swooning maiden in his arms.
A survey found that 60% of women read one romance novel
every two days.
2) Benjamin Franklin used the genre as a joke.
When he was the United States Ambassador to France, he
occasionally attended the Infidels Club.
Most of them were atheists, but the group spent most of its
time reading literary masterpieces.
On one occasion Franklin read the book of Ruth to the club
but changed the names in it so it would not be
recognized as a book of the Bible.
When he finished, they were unanimous in their praise.
They said it was one of the most beautiful short stories
they had ever heard and that he should get it printed.
"It is already in print," said Franklin.
"It is a part of the Bible you ridicule."
#11095
B. The book of Ruth goes against the usual romantic formula.
1) Its heroine is a simple girl and she does find a rich guy,
but her character counts far more than her looks.
2) The book is more about faith and faithfulness than romance.
III. The romance had a shaky start.
A. A Jewish man named Mahlon sinned by marrying Ruth.
1) Moabites were not popular with Jews.
a) They were descendants of Lot's daughters.
b) They hired Balaam to curse the Jews when they were
passing through Moab to reach the Promised Land.
2) Moabites were forbidden in the Temple. Neh 13:1-3,23-27
3) Ezra ordered the divorce of foreign wives. Ezra 9:1-4; 10:1-3
B. The motive was not racial (all were Semitic), but religious.
1) The Moabites worshipped idols and the Jews were concerned
about their pure faith being corrupted.
2) Idolatry had to be stamped out even if it required harshness.
3) Christians have a similar concern.
a) The Apostle Paul warns about being unequally yoked.
1> In business and in marriage, you should only be
bound to people who share your faith.
2> Paul understood that those who were saved after
married to a non-believer should stay with them.
3> But if the spouse left or died, the Christian
should only marry another Christian.
b) When you allow yourself to be unequally yoked, you
potentially compromise your faith and the faith of
your children.
C. Yet Naomi's two sons both married these foreign women.
1) Living in alien territory had a lot to do with it.
a) Harsh circumstances (severe drought) had caused them
to leave Israel.
b) Boys being boys, they attached themselves to local
girls from pagan backgrounds.
c) That's why many Christian parents send their kids to
religious colleges - out in the world it is a lot
harder to find a mate who believes like you do.
2) The whole family may have drifted spiritually - note how
Naomi encourages the girls to return to their pagan gods
in verse 15.
D. Naomi's tragedy: her husband and sons all died. 1:5
1) Childless widows had the most insecure position in society.
a) There was no one to carry on the family name.
b) There was no one to take care of them in their old age.
2) Naomi prepares to spend her life all alone. 1:8
a) She had no expectation that her foreign daughters-in-law
would stick around.
b) Naomi had absolutely nothing to offer them.
IV. The first love is between Ruth and Naomi.
A. Both of Naomi's daughters-in-law seem like decent people.
1) Both were inclined to stay with her.
2) But one was realistic and went home.
3) Only Ruth stuck around.
a) The two widows had little to offer each other but love.
B. Ruth's commitment: 1:16-17
1) She refuses to leave.
2) She will go with Naomi anywhere, no matter what.
3) Her commitment was for a lifetime.
C. Further, she commits herself to Naomi's God. 1:16-17
1) By following Naomi, she turned her back on her past.
2) Ruth followed wholeheartedly, with no compromise.
a) In effect, she is turning her back on her own family
and pagan faith.
b) Ruth is motivated by her love for Naomi, but she moves
beyond this to a love for her God.
V. Love between Ruth and Boaz. 2:1 ff
A. Gleaning leads to a relationship.
1) Potential danger in living on the edge of society. 2:9,22
2) Boaz is a righteous and decent man.
a) He greets the harvesters with God's blessing.
b) He protects poor gleaners.
c) He cares for his relatives, even distant ones.
B. Uncommon dating practices. 3:4
1) Naomi encourages Ruth to use her sex appeal. 3:3
a) Bath, perfume, nice clothes are age-old tricks.
b) Naomi doesn't mention God at all.
2) The customs sound weird to us, but were proper back then.
a) Ruth asks Boaz to put his cloak over her feet.
1> This was not suggestive in a carnal way.
A> Her character was above reproach. 3:11
2> It is an image being protected by him, just as
God spreads his wings over his people.
3> In other places in the Bible, the phrase is a
description of marriage.
b) Ruth asks for it not because she is pretty, but because
Boaz is a kinsman-redeemer.
1> The principle was in God's law and had the purpose
of keeping inherited land within a family.
2> Ruth wants God's purpose, not her beauty, to be
the basis of their relationship.
3> It worked out better than she could have hoped.
A> Ruth became Boaz's wife.
B> She became the great-grandmother of King David.
C> And so she is an ancestor of Jesus himself. Matt 1:5
VI. Outsiders can become insiders.
A. Jews were chosen by God to be a light, not a monopoly.
1) God wants everyone to be saved.
2) "Dirty pagans" can become cleansed believers.
3) In effect, that is what we all start out as.
B. It is a principle that is not limited to ancient times.
Rosaria Champagne was a college professor of English and women's
studies.
She was a liberal, a feminist - and a lesbian.
She had no respect for Christians, especially after Pat Robertson
quipped at the 1992 Republican National Convention,
"Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their
children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become
lesbians."
After that, Rosaria made it her personal quest to challenge the
Religious Right.
In 1997 she wrote an article in a local newspaper critical of the
Promise Keepers.
The article generated a lot of response so she put a Xerox box on
each side of her desk: one for hate mail, one for fan mail.
But one letter she received defied her filing system.
It was from Ken Smith, the pastor of the Syracuse Reformed
Presbyterian Church.
It was a kind and inquiring letter.
Ken Smith encouraged her with questions like: How did you arrive
at your interpretations?
How do you know you are right?
Do you believe in God?
Ken didn't argue with her article; rather, he asked her to defend
the presuppositions that undergirded it.
She didn't know how to respond to it, so she threw it away.
Later that night, she fished it out of the recycling bin and put
it back on her desk.
With the letter, Ken initiated two years of bringing Christ to a
heathen.
So when he invited her to get together for dinner, she accepted.
Her motives at the time were straightforward: Surely this will be
good for her research.
Something else happened.
Ken and his wife, Floy, became her friends.
When they ate together, Ken prayed in a way she had never heard
before.
His prayers were intimate.
Ken's God was holy and firm, yet full of mercy.
Rosaria started reading the Bible.
She read it many times that first year in multiple translations.
Her friends began to notice.
A transgendered friend named "J" cornered her in the kitchen.
She warned her, "This Bible reading is changing you, Rosaria."
With tremors, Rosaria whispered, "J, what if it is true?
What if Jesus is a real and risen Lord?
What if we are all in trouble?"
"Rosaria," she said, "I was a Presbyterian minister for 15 years.
I prayed that God would heal me, but he didn't."
Rosaria continued reading the Bible, all the while fighting the
idea that it was inspired.
Then, one Sunday morning, she rose from the bed of her lesbian
lover, drove an hour and sat in a pew at the Syracuse Reformed
Presbyterian Church.
She was conspicuous with her butch haircut, but reminded herself
that she came to meet God, not fit in.
She continued to attend the church, continued to question.
One Sunday, Ken preached on John 7:17: "If anyone chooses to do
God's will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from
God or whether I speak on my own."
This verse exposed the quicksand in which Rosaria's feet were
stuck.
She was a thinker.
She expected that in all areas of life, understanding came
before obedience.
And she wanted God to show her, on her terms, why homosexuality
was a sin.
She wanted to be the judge, not one being judged.
But the verse promised understanding after obedience.
She prayed that night that God would give her the willingness to
obey before she understood.
She prayed a long time.
In the morning, when she looked in the mirror, she looked the
same.
But when she looked into her heart through the lens of the Bible,
she wondered, Am I a lesbian, or has this all been a case of
mistaken identity?
Who am I? Who will God have me to be?
She describes her conversion as a train wreck.
She did not want to lose everything that she loved.
But she weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he
could make her world right.
Today, Rosaria lives in Durham, North Carolina, and is married
to a Presbyterian minister. #64296
Christians shouldn't build walls to keep people out.
We should let God break down those walls so they can come in.
He did it with Rosaria.
He did it with Ruth.
He can do it with you.
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
#11095 “They Liked Ruth,” Fredericksburg Bible Illustrator Supplements;
original source is the book “All the Women of the Bible."
#64296 “A Lesbian's ‘Train Wreck Conversion’," Rosaria Champagne
Butterfield, Christianity Today magazine, February 7, 2013;
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/january-february/my-train-wreck-conversion.html?paging=off
These and 35,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
downloaded, absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
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