The Choice

Then they lifted up their voices and wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. And she said, "Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law." But Ruth said, "Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me." When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she stopped speaking to her.

Ruth 1:14-18

In our last study we left three ladies somewhere on the road between Moab and Bethlehem. Naomi heard in the land of Moab how God had visited his people and given them bread. The famine was over. There was now food enough and bread enough once again in the land of Judah, so Naomi went out of Moab, where she had been for at least ten years. Moab had given her a great deal of heartache and loss, and instead of finding the fortune and the fullness she had sought, she left Moab with her daughters-in-law, each of them having buried a little bit of their heart in the dust of Moab. Naomi had laid there to rest her late husband and her late sons, whom Orpah and Ruth had married. Now the three widows had set out on another journey, leaving these scenes of heartache behind.

Naomi wept over the fact that she had ever come to Moab; her tears were bringing her nearer the place of blessing, bringing her back to the place of God's grace and God's bounty. The tears of Orpah were very different. Orpah's tears were natural but they were not enough to keep her away from the gods and the people of Moab. Despite all her weeping, and despite all the emotionalism on that road and the many feelings that were stirred deep in her heart by this great parting with Naomi, Orpah was ready to return to her mother's house, back to the land of Moab.

Sometimes tears are not enough; only those who persevere unto the end that will be saved. Many an Orpah, down through the years, down through the generations, has been affected by great feelings and great waves of emotion under the Gospel. Many people in many churches shed tears under the Gospel; tears that gave promise and hope of a new direction and of a change in their lives, when in reality there was nothing new there at all. Their hearts were still in the world and still in Moab and with its pastimes, its pleasures and its people. It is all too possible to prepare for judgement on the basis of the emotions that the Gospel stirred within our hearts and minds when we heard Christ being preached. It is possible to have stirred hearts and deep thoughts, and for the things of the gospel to go no further. It is possible to part from Jesus, even after having wept beside him on the road, just as John Bunyan in Pilgrim's Progress saw a path to Hell that went by the very gates of Heaven.

What matters is not the promise of a start, and the promise of a new devotion and a new interest in Christ. It is not enough to show signs that things are improving, but to have the evidence of a saving change that will keep on keeping on until the very end of the road. It is not possible for grace to work in a man's heart or a woman's heart without stirring our affections and without touching our emotions. But it is very possible for an unconverted, unregenerate, un-born-again person to have great feelings of sympathy and great interest in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Remember that those who turned away from Christ in John 6:60 were called 'disciples'. They were possibly absorbed with some kind of intellectual fascination with the Gospel, and yet they went back, right back, to where they started from and to lose interest in the very Christ that they thought they were following.

I am not saying that it is possible to be born again and subsequently lost. But I am saying that experiences are not enough. We cannot plead our emotional upheavals, or our intellectual interest, or even our ecclesiastical usefulness as the basis of our acceptance before God. Only a true, living, saving interest in Christ can ever be a sufficient foundation for our salvation.

Ruth's Story

But there were tears in the eyes of Ruth, too, and here on the way out of Moab on the road to Bethlehem-Judah, Ruth, too, has her heart stirred within her. There is something going on deep in the soul of Ruth that not even Naomi can see. The work of God's grace in the soul is so absolutely personal and so absolutely mysterious that it is lost to human eyes. Here Naomi is persuading these two daughters-in-law to go back to the land of Moab. I suggested that she was wrong to do that. But I suggested too, that God turned this into a test for these two women. Orpah showed her true colours and went back to Moab. But the work that was going on, stirring deep in the soul and the heart of Ruth, was such a work that it could not be extinguished. Ruth had been so touched by the Word of God and by the witness of God in the life and the testimony of Naomi in Moab that when Naomi said "Go back," Ruth said, "I can't go back." When Naomi said, "Follow your sister-in-law," Ruth said, "I can't follow my sister-in-law". When Naomi said "Go back to your mother's house," Ruth said, "I can't go back to my mother's house".

So it was that with tears in her eyes Ruth makes her great pledge to Naomi: "Don't ask me to go back. Don't ask me to return." There is a fundamental objection in the soul of Ruth to being asked to return. I think that there are times when that is the sign that God is working in a human life. Not the tears, but the objection. Not the weeping, not the crying, not the deep emotions, not all this display of emotionalism, but this deep-seated, fundamental objection: when Naomi says "Go back," she says "Don't ask me to do that. Don't ask me to go back."

There is an interesting reflection of this situation in the law governing Hebrew servants in Exodus 21:1-11. In that passage, the law of Moses allowed for the release of a servant in the seventh year of his servitude. After six years of work, he was offered his freedom. Not every slave, however, wanted to take up the offer. The law allowed for the possibility that a servant may have grown to love his master. In this case, it was necessary for the slave to have a mark placed in his ear as a sign that he was in the service of his master for life (Exodus 21:6). This seems to be the background to the words of Psalm 40:6, which in turn is applied to Jesus Christ in Hebrews 10:5, where the reference to the mark in the ear is replaced with the words "a body you have prepared for me". In fulfilling the prophecy of the willing servant, Jesus took our human nature as both a sign of his determination to serve God, and as the means through which that service would be carried out.

In following the example of Jesus, we too are called to be God's servants. We are called to his service, and are made willing to do his bidding through his own work in our lives (Psalm 110:3; Philippians 2:13). And when he offers us our freedom, will we not say with the Hebrew servant, "I love my master ... I will not go out..." (Exodus 21:5)? Will we not echo the words of Ruth, whose heart had been won over to the service of Jehovah - "Entreat me not to leave ...".

We can see the same principle at work in the experience of Simon Peter when he follows the Lord Jesus. There are crowds following him. Many, many 'disciples' are absorbed in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, and all of a sudden the cutting edge of truth becomes too offensive and too difficult to bear. From that time, many of them 'walk no more with him'. Yet these were people who had made some kind of pledge and some kind of commitment to following Jesus Christ. But when the teaching became too offensive, and too unpalatable, when they could not endure sound doctrine, these people went back. It is at that point that Jesus turns to his disciples and says, "Will you also go away?"

It is then that we read of this fundamental objection to the possibility of returning; it wells up in the heart of Peter and it expresses itself in these great words: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" (John 6:68). And I think there are many people who, when they begin following Jesus Christ do not even know what is happening to them, and cannot put their finger on what is happening to them. They know that the Gospel is beginning to turn their world upside-down. They know that they are becoming absorbed in the Bible and in the Christ of the Bible more than ever they were, and yet they would not dare say that they had become Christians. But they know this: that were Jesus to offer them the freedom and the possibility of a return to Moab, they would object and say, "No. I do not know what is going on in my soul and I'm not sure what my affections and my emotions are telling me, but this one thing I do know: there's nothing for me in Moab any more."

Can you say that? This is the one, great, absolute test. Can you go back? Can you think of living without Jesus? You've been aware of him bringing you through many difficult experiences, many dark valleys, through very testing and very trying times, and you cannot go back. You would rather have him in the night than be without him in the sunshine. You'd rather have him in the storms than be without him when the winds are blowing gently. You would rather have him and know that he's yours and you are his and that bond is there, cemented in a covenant union forever, than live one moment without the Lord who has come into your soul by the power of his own grace. So will you say with Ruth, "Whatever you ask me to do, don't ask me to live without Jesus. Don't ask me to even think of giving him up and going back to the gods of Moab, or to its people and pastimes." Because, Ruth says, "I know what I want. I know where my heart is and I know that want I want is in front of me and not behind me. I want to leave what's behind me behind me, and I want to press on towards the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:14). That was Paul's motto; is it ours? If Ruth's great pledge says anything, it tells us that for her everything had become new. Nothing was at it once was.

I want you to notice how everything had become new for Ruth. Hers were tears of joy that told she had found something new and lasting, something precious and something enduring that she could never, never live without. I hope that God will deliver us from emotionalism, but I also hope he will keep us from an emotionless religion. The last thing I want is a Gospel that will not reach into the depths of my being and stir my affections and my emotions. The last thing I want is to preach the orthodoxy of the Bible in an unfeeling, a hard or cold-hearted way. The last thing I want is a Gospel that I can admire like some cold statue in a museum somewhere. I want this great Gospel to become so alive that it burns a fire in my soul and stirs these kindled emotions in the depths of my soul, so that I'll pour out my heart like Ruth, and say, "Old things have passed away, all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

I want you to note, first, that Ruth found a new path for her feet. "Don't ask me to go back, or to return from following you, for where you go, I will go." She had a new path under her feet. In the land of Moab she had wandered and strayed in paths of false religion and under the prophets of false gods. She had gone from religious experience to religious experience, from place to place, yet her life was empty. But now she knows that there is peace and blessing, contentment and joy to be found by walking God'way and by walking no other way. She testifies that she has found a way for her feet, and that she is going to walk it. It may take her to territories that are unknown or to difficulties and experiences that she has never dreamt of; it may give her hardship and heartache, but that is the road she is going to walk. It may be, in the words of the poet Robert Browning the road "less travelled by", but it makes all the difference.

The Bible tells us that there is a way that seems right to a man, but the end of it is death (Proverbs 14:12). Jesus puts it otherwise when he says that there is a broad way that leads to destruction and many, many people are walking that road (Matthew 7:13). And that broad way is so broad that it will embrace many a religion and many a religious experience. There are many people that are walking that broad road. And Jesus says its destination is Hell.

There is, however, another road which leads to eternal life. Jesus says that it is narrow, and to be entered by the 'strait gate'. Perhaps you have read Dr M. Lloyd-Jones' exposition of the Sermon on the Mount; if so, you will recall Lloyd Jones' illustration of the strait gate. He says that it is like the turnstile going into a large stadium. Perhaps you have gone to watch a game of football, or rugby, and you have had to go into a stadium, which is usually filled with hundreds of people. Lloyd Jones says, "How did they get in there?" They went in there through the turnstiles, one by one, a stream of people entering the stadium individually one at a time. So it must be with us. We must make our personal decision to leave Moab and to go to Bethlehem. No-one can make that decision for us, or enter the kingdom of God on our behalf. The decision to accept Christ is an individual one, and the decision to reject Christ is an individual one.

But there is something else. When you are going through a turnstile you can't take cases and heavy baggage with you; you've got to leave it all behind and just take the minimum in with you if you want to join the crowd. And all this is implied in what Jesus says about the strait gate which leads to the narrow way. Look into glory; look at that innumerable crowd of people who are in Heaven. John tells us that it's a multitude that no man can number; we cannot even begin to reckon the number of people that God is going to have in the glory of Heaven with Him throughout all eternity. But how did they get there? They went by the narrow way, and they went in through the strait gate, one by one by one. Every single one of them entered individually, shed their burden at that gate, every one of them died to self there, took up the cross there, washed their robes in the blood of the lamb there and went in one by one, through the gate, into the Kingdom.

Do you know what it is to walk that way? Do you know what it is for the Gospel to become so absolutely personal and so absolutely individualistic that you know God is speaking to you heart to heart? Is there baggage that you have to shed, things that are getting in the way, things that are preventing you from closing in with Jesus and finding peace with God? It's not worth taking all that baggage down that broad way; that broad way leads to Hell. But I tell you this: it is worth shedding it all to get in at the straight gate, because the narrow way leads to life. Ruth wanted to walk the way that Naomi was walking. Naomi was blazing a trail that Ruth wanted to follow. The writer to the Hebrews says much the same thing at Hebrews 6:12: "we are following those who through faith and patience inherit the promises."

Perhaps you are saying to yourself, "I would love to be a Christian. I would love to go in at that gate and walk that narrow path but I just cannot do it. What will people think about me? What will others say about me? I have too much to lose, too much to give up." Just lift up your eyes to those who've walked that way before you. Remember that many of those with whom you will be travelling have walked that road before you; perhaps they are in your home, in your community, following the Lord for many, many years. Walk after them! Walk with them! They have come to know the faithfulness of God in their own lives, they love the Saviour with hearts that have been tested through the furnace of affliction. They have been tried in God's crucible; God has brought them through testing times in their experience and they are following Jesus.

Think too of all those Christians that God ever sent your way who are now no longer in this world. Think of those believers that God brought into your life,with whom you spoke and conversed and walked along life's way. They've been taken out of this world into a better one. They are now at their destination, at the haven they desired to see. A point came when God said about them, "I want to take them home with myself" and God took them away, and you are left with their memory. Covet the way that they walked! Seek the Christ that they found along that way, and take up the cross and you follow the same Saviour, so that you will find the same peace and blessing for your own soul.

Secondly, Ruth had found a new place in which to dwell. "Where you lodge, I will lodge." She wanted, you see, to share a home with Naomi, to be where Naomi was, to waken where Naomi wakened and she wanted to put down her head where Naomi put

There is a saying that home is where the heart is, and Ruth's heart was with Naomi's, seeking God's blessing on her life. That's why she wanted to be in Naomi's home, because she knew that she would find the Lord in Naomi's company. It is a clear biblical doctrine that God dwells with his people; and if we want to find him, and dwell with him, it is to the gathering of his people that we ought to go. We will find Jehovah in the company of his own. Ruth knew that she would find the Saviour in the presence of his own church, and she knew that wherever one believer is, there is the church.

If there has been an interest kindled in our heart for the things of God, we will find God in the company of his people. That's why the church in the Song of Solomon cried out, "Tell me, O my love, where are you leading your flock today?" (Song 1:7, NLT). You see, the young woman of the song is looking for her lover, the shepherd-king. It is reasonable for her to imagine that she will find the shepherd in the company of the sheep. The woman of the Song is in the same position as Ruth in this little book of the Old Testament: she wants the God of the covenant, and she will find him with his covenant people. It is in the company of the sheep that she will find the shepherd. In the home of Naomi, Ruth would find the blessing of God, because the blessing of God is on the habitation of the righteous (Proverbs 3:33).

I think that this is a fundamental principle, which is undervalued today. Too many Christians have neglected the church and its ordinances. Perhaps they feel that they have good reason too. Many denominations have failed God's people, by becoming so sidetracked from the Gospel that what they offer is little more than sentiment and tradition. Yet I think it is important to emphasise the biblical nature of the church; the church is where God's people are. And where God's people are is where God himself is. That was, after all, at the heart of the covenant (cf. 1 Kings 6:13, 2 Corinthians 6:16). In our search after God, and in our walk with God, we must join ourselves with God's people, and dwell with them. We shall discover God in their fellowship, in their worship and in their company. It is a sin to 'forsake the assembly' (Hebrews 10:25), and, equally, a blessing to make use of it.

Many of you will be able to testify to this very truth. In your search for God, perhaps there were certain homes and churches which you knew to be blessed of God. We need many homes and churches like that, where the grace of God is at work, where the word of God is foundational, where the glory of God is sought, where parents and children and families worship God together and where the presence of the Lord is. And, just as in the days of the early New Testament church, it would turn our world upside down (Acts 17:6) to have such places as these in our communities.

Thirdly, Ruth had a new people to love. "Your people shall be my people." She said that from the depths of her heart, even though she didn't even know these people of whom she spoke! She didn't even know then, but she loved them. Her heart went out to the people of God, the people of the covenant. She was a stranger to them, and at this point they were strangers to them. She was literally 'alienated from the commonwealth of Israel' (Ephesians 2:12). Yet her heart went out to the people of God.

John, that great apostle of love, tells us that we know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren (1 John 3:14). He describes the change that grace has wrought in the hearts and lives of God's people as a resurrection, a passing from death to life. But it is a resurrection which bears the fruit of love. So the order of experience is new birth first, then love for the brothers and sisters. But John is using the order of reason; we find that we love the people of God and we reason from that fact to the fact of the new birth. Such a love is not found, John implies, among those who are still spiritually dead.

Do we love God's people? Ruth did. She thought of them, and wanted a place among them. I think there are times when Christians have little evidence that they are Christians except this one great distinguishing feature: they know they love the people of God. God loves his own people. He loves them with a burning affection that began when there was no beginning, before the foundation of the world. God loved them from all eternity, and he has given every single convert who came through that straight gate a love for them too.

Christ loved them with such an intense devotion and zeal that he gave his life for them. He loved his church so much that he gave himself in order to redeem that church and present it as a glorious church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. And those who love him, love them. "Your people shall be my people."

Fourthly, Ruth had a new peace in her heart. "Your God shall be my God." God cannot be ours, until we are at peace with him. The Bible tells us that without God and without grace we are wandering like sheep, we've gone astray to our own way (Isaiah 53:6). But more than that, we are at enmity against the shepherd. We hate him, and he is our enemy. But Jesus Christ, the shepherd of the sheep (Hebrews 13:20) became the substitutionary lamb, who stood as the just one in the place of the unjust (1 Peter 3:18). And the reason he did that was in order to bring together these two parties who were formerly at war with each other. That is the basis for the biblical doctrine of reconcilitation. Jesus came and He preached peace. And when he comes into the hearts and lives of those whom the Father gave him, and for whom he died, he removes the enmity, the hatred, everything that does not love God, and is anti-God, and he replaces war with peace. He removes the enmity and he gives his own peace, the peace that belongs to those who have been justified by faith, through the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1). They will have many times and experiences in their lives when there will be trouble and affliction and enmity and war, but there is no war between themselves and their God anymore. They have been reconciled by the death of God's son (Romans 5:10), they are at one with Him, they have fellowship with Him, He is their God.

The question, you see, is not whether we believe in God; it is whether we can say that 'this God is my God'. The essence of the covenant of God's grace is a person-to-person relationship: "I will be their God and they shall be my people" (Genesis 17:7; Jeremiah 31:33). It was into that covenant bond that Ruth desired to enter. And it was in the God of the covenant that she found peace. That's what gave her peace in the depths of her soul, in her heart and in her life. God was her God.

Fifthly, Ruth found a new prospect for her life. "Where you die will I die, and there will I be buried." Not even death held fear for her anymore. The prospect of dying and being buried was not a terror to her. She was more afraid of Moab than of death. She knew that when the time came for her to die, she, like Naomi, would rest her head on the pillow of all of God's covenant promises and of covenant hope.

The Bible reminds us that it is a serious thing to die, but the Bible tells us that all of God's people have a hope in their death. When Paul knew that the hour of his death was coming near, that soon he would have to close his eyes in death, he could say "I know whom I've believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have committed unto him against that day (2 Timothy 1:12)." That's the way to die! "I know that my redeemer lives," says Job, "and even after my skin is destroyed, in my flesh, I will see God" (Job 19:25). John, on the Isle of Patmos, lifted up by the Spirit on the Lord's day to see the glory of Jesus Christ, and, looking into Heaven, he saw the place that God had prepared for his people, where there was no more death and no more sorrow and no more sighing. These things had all passed away.

Have you got that prospect ? It was said of the Puritans that because they knew how to die, they knew how to live. Let's remember that; it's only those who know how to die well, that know how to live well. It's only those who have sorted out the great interests of their soul that are able to say, "Come life, come death, whatever is before me I know that I am safe in the hands of Christ."

Ruth was walking a new path, going to a new place with love for a new people, a new peace in her heart, a new prospect before her. And even were she to be separated from Naomi, nothing would change her resolve. "Even if death parts us, I'll go on." Naomi said nothing more. There is a time to speak, a time to counsel, a time to advise, a time to give a word of encouragement, a time to give a word of consolation- but there is also a time to say nothing, because the matter between a soul and the Saviour is so personal. Martin Luther once said that religion was a matter of personal pronouns. It is a matter of saying of Jesus "MY Lord and MY God" (John 20:28). Do we know the power of the Gospel captivating our hearts, thrilling our souls, and leading us heavenwards in the sure knowledge that nothing in heaven or on earth, in the past, present or future, can separate us from the love of God in Christ (Romans 8:39)?

© Iain D. Campbell 2001