Running To Win

Dave McAllister: Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Looking to Jesus, the founder and proctor of our faith. The media is always saying that having more is what life is all about, but having less can be a greater blessing. Having less means reaching out to those around you because you have to. As you face your tough times, take some lessons from the life of a woman in the Old Testament. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is running to win with Dr. Irwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line.

Pastor Lutzer, can we be certain that God will care for us when we hit bottom like Ruth did?

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: You know, Dave, I'm sure that I'm speaking to many people who have had the same experience that I have. We give our burdens to the Lord and then we take them back. I give something to God, but then I discover even moments later that it's back on my shoulders. Now, of course, the saints in the Old Testament didn't have the promises of the New Testament. In the New Testament, we read casting all your care upon him, for he cares for you. But the reason that we look at the stories of the Old Testament is these dear people experienced everything that you and I have ever experienced, and God did show himself faithful.

And we have to understand that God has been faithful throughout the centuries. Now, at the end of this message, I'm going to be giving you some contact info because I've written a book entitled Famines, Deserts, and Other Hard Places. Remember, we here at Running to Win are deeply committed to helping you in your Christian walk, bringing others to faith in Jesus Christ and believing deeply that God enables us through you to bless others. But for now, I want you to listen. But one of the things that God does during hard times is to expose our consumerism and our need to live large, and he brings us down to a level of commitment and valuing those around us.

Did you know that 28% of all college students now live with their parents because of our economic challenges here in America? People have to rediscover family. If you have a family, you are full even if you're going through a hard time. There's another lesson that we must learn, and that is we discover the value of community, the value of community. Now, I'm summarizing here, but Naomi and Ruth, they come back to the land. Naomi somewhere finds a place to live, I'm sure, and Ruth goes out in the fields. She's willing to do anything. She goes out to the fields and she in the field is gathering grains that have been left over from the reapers.

And now develops a romance because a man by the name of Boaz, who is of the family of Elimelech, uh he notices her and he says some very beautiful things. He finds out who she is. And um verse 8 of chapter 2, Boaz said to Ruth, now listen, my daughter, don't go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping and go after them. Have not I charged the young men not to touch you? And when you're thirsty, go and drink, etc.

And he says in verse 12, the Lord repay you for what you've done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. What a beautiful phrase. And then he instructs the young men in verse 15. He says deliberately leave some grain for this young woman to pick up. You know, don't take it all. Let her get some. And as a result of that, Naomi and Ruth are able to live. In fact, she takes the grain home and when you have grain, you have bread.

And you know, when times are tough, what you need is other people to help you. You need you need the encouragement of those who really even don't fit. I haven't made much of it, but Ruth after all was a Moabitess. Strictly speaking, there were some things that were said in the Old Testament about Moabites not being able to enter into the sanctuary, etc. The question is whether or not the sons of Naomi should have even married these um their wives, Ruth and Oprah, Orpah, I should say. You knew I was going to do that, didn't you?

And um and so what Boaz does, and I know there's romance involved here is he helps them. Could I throw out a challenge to you today? Could you find somebody to help? And when I say somebody, let that be somebody who's poor, somebody who may be of another race, somebody who's been rejected, marginalized, who feels as if they don't belong, who aren't going to necessarily be sending out signals and saying, here I am, please help me. Would you reach out and help those who cannot help themselves? Would the community of God rise up when things are difficult?

And while I'm at it, we here at the Moody Church have a fellowship fund. And um that is because the fellowship committee gives out money to people who are in financial need, and I'll just simply lay it on the line and tell you that it is essentially empty. And the reason is we have more people making more requests, and this fund is investigated. That is to say the committee investigates the need so that they're not giving out money frivolously. So the point is this, that what we need in hard times is community. If you're going through a hard time, don't don't isolate yourself.

Don't say to yourself, I'm into a difficult period of time, and so what I need to do is to simply live alone and spend all of my time thinking about my fate. You need the body of Christ in a moment of need. That's the way God arranged it. There's something else that I find interesting in the text, and that is that um we discover the opportunity to witness and evangelism. This is a beautiful story. Ruth is converted to the God of Israel. She said that when she was asked to leave Naomi, your God shall be my God.

Don't you love it? In other words, I'm leaving the gods of Moab, and your God is going to be mine. Just think of Ruth. She jumped through all kinds of hoops. First of all, there was the racial hoop. She was a Moabitess, not a Jewess. The religious hoop. She had to leave behind her pagan gods and accept a brand new religion, a brand new God, the true God, I might add, just like some of you. You need to leave behind possibly the religion in which you were born, and you need to jump through that hoop and accept God as he is revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

Ruth believed in the Jewish God under whose wings she had found refuge. And then culturally, you know, that you have different language barriers, you have different issues. Now, Naomi was not the best witness. Naomi was um having a pity party. She felt sorry for herself. She was angry at God. She explained that to her daughter-in-laws before they even got to Bethlehem. And yet, there was something in Naomi that attracted Ruth to Naomi's religion. I'm always gratified to know that God doesn't expect us to be perfect, that even in our imperfections and our sins and our failures, God can use us right there, and often times he does it in very hard and difficult times.

But what I'd like to do now is to give you, and by the way, evangelism always takes place in most instances on the basis of meaningful relationships. Uh you know, it's not because people listen to sermons, it's not because they come to church, though we invite people to come to church and they come to trust Christ, but in most instances it is meaningful, caring, personal relationships that lead people to saving faith in Christ. But now we come to the bottom line. We come to the real purpose of all of this. Why was this book of Ruth included in the Bible?

That's a good question. Well, you say it's an interesting romance. It's an interesting story because Ruth and Boaz end up being married, and you can read that story on your own, though you do need some help in terms of the customs of that time. But um is that why God told this story? No, there's another reason because all of the Old Testament has what we call salvation history. God is moving forward his plan of redemption. And this little jewel of a book inserted in the midst of a difficult time of Israel's history helps us to understand God's real purpose in having it included in the scriptures.

In order to understand why, we turn to the end of the book, and uh Ruth and Boaz are married. And uh verse 14 of chapter 4 says, then the women said to Naomi, Blessed be the Lord who has not left you this day without a redeemer. That's Boaz. And may his name be renowned in Israel. He shall be to you a restorer of life and nourisher of your old age for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons. That's a wonderful remark in light of the fact of the value of sons in Old Testament times has given birth to him.

That is to the child. Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became her nurse. That might mean that she formally adopted the child as her grandchild. And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name. That's also interesting. You'd think that Boaz and Ruth would have some say in it, but the women, they gave their opinion, and apparently the family voted and agreed, and they named him Obed. And then lo and behold, do you see it there? He was the father of Jesse, the father of David. Verse 22, Obed father Jesse, and Jesse father David.

Now think about this moment. Naomi gets to hold the grandchild Obed. And in holding that grandchild, she is greatly blessed. I'm sure that she got over her bitterness. She is greatly blessed. But then Naomi dies. Obed grows up, marries, and Obed has a son, and he is going to call him Jesse. Then Jesse grows up and he has a son. He marries and has a son, and lo and behold, one of his sons is called David. And because David is in the kingly line and the promises of God given to David for a kingdom and so forth, and because Jesus Christ on his human side, I know that he was virgin born, but on the human side, his genealogy, his legal genealogy goes back to David.

And and who shows up in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew chapter 1, but Ruth? Naomi dies not knowing any of this. All that she is is she is glad that she can hold the baby in her arms. And then I'm sure somewhat after that she dies. Does she see God's hidden purpose to move along redemption history? What if God in heaven were to say, Naomi, I want to tell you this, okay? And now I'm using my imagination. Naomi, do you remember how difficult it was for you when you were there in Moab? Your husband dies, two sons die.

You have of course the story of your loneliness, your despair, how bitter you were because the hand of the Almighty was against you. Do you remember all that? Do you know what I had in mind? I wanted a Moabitess in my genealogy, Jesus might say. Because I wanted to prove right from the get-go that the gospel is not just for the Jews, it's for Moabites. And it's for Ammonites. And it's for all the other people that are in the Matthew 1 genealogy. And that's why you suffered, but you didn't know that, and you became bitter because you didn't trust me to believe that I knew what I was doing.

My purposes are so much higher than yours. And I say to you today that God in heaven has multiple purposes that you and I know nothing about. We may know about those purposes someday, but we don't know about them now in this life. But if we could only see God's ultimate purpose, often times only after we die, we would say, so that's why I went through this trial. That's why I went through this difficult. Oh, so that's what God was doing. But there's no way for us to know that now. All that we see is we have bills to pay.

We have relationships that are broken. But if we trust God, we will discover in the end that even through famine and heartache, God has a purpose that he is working. And he has not left us without a witness. The other day someone sent Rebecca this quotation. It says, when you are going through a trial and you don't know where God is, always remember that a teacher is silent during an exam or a test. Of course he's there. Dozens of purposes that you and I know nothing about. If only we would trust him. Some of you need to forgive God.

As they God doesn't need forgiveness. I understand that. But you're bitter with God. You are bitter. You are angry. You are Mara because the Almighty has dealt harshly with you, brought calamity into your life. This past week on the radio, there was a testimony of a woman who who was so angry, virgin the whole time, and then angry, you know, Mr. Right is supposed to come along, he doesn't. So what does she do? She goes and lives her own way and ends up in all kinds of heartache and brokenness and trouble. But she said, I was mad at God.

Everybody else seems to be blessed. I'm left out. I am Mara. Don't call me by my name because the Almighty has done harshly with me. That was Naomi's take. God was saying, Naomi, don't you understand that your bitterness was actually to be a blessing if you had had faith to believe it and to trust me. God knows what he's doing. And in the midst of the greatest heartache, the taking away of people, the sons of Naomi, the heartache of financial stress, God says just trust me. And don't be bitter. You're meant to be a blessing.

I'm going to pray in a moment, and I'm going to ask those who have been designated as prayer partners, would you get up right now and take your places in the aisle? In a moment, we're going to be singing together. If you have a need, we have only a very brief time to pray, but you can connect. You can give to God your need and a prayer of trust in the midst of hardship. And the prayer partners will continue to pray for you all week. Let us see the glory of God even in that which we do not understand.

Let's pray together. Father, help us to understand that your purpose is so much greater than what we can see, to genuinely believe that you are here for us. For those today, Father, who need to release their feelings of pain and anxiety and perhaps even bitterness, to believe that you are in the midst of heartache, show them today your glory if only we can trust you. In Jesus' name we ask. Amen. Well, my friend today, this is Pastor Lutzer, and in a moment we are going to pray together. I'm going to be praying for you. But from my heart to yours today, I want to encourage you to help you to understand that God is indeed with us.

And even as we look at the stories of the Old Testament, they are instructive, helping us to remember that we need not understand in order to believe. But first of all, I want to emphasize that I've written a book entitled Famines, Deserts, and Other Hard Places. It can be yours for a gift of any amount. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com, or pick up the phone and call us at 1 888 218 9337. What a privilege it is for us to work together in the kingdom, encouraging people and sharing the gospel. Once again, that contact info rtwoffer.com, or call us at 1 888 218 9337.

The title of the book Famines, Deserts, and Other Hard Places. And now I want you to join your heart and your mind with me as we pray. Father, we are so needy. We sense how often we bear burdens that you never intended us to bear. We have anxieties that don't help us, but actually work against our own spiritual growth. Would you help us in this moment, Lord? And we do indeed need your help to cast all of our care upon you. And believe that no matter what happens, you are involved, and in the end you will bring glory to your name.

Show us what we must do in order to walk in obedience and to walk in faith, we pray in Jesus' blessed name. Amen.

Dave McAllister: It's time once again for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. The church is divided about how God currently treats the nation of Israel. Mitch has been looking into this and wants your take on an issue, Dr. Lutzer. He asks, do you believe in replacement theology? That is that the church replaces Israel and that God no longer has any special plans for the Jewish nation?

Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer: Mitch, the answer is no. I do not believe in replacement theology. And you're absolutely right. Replacement theology says that the church actually takes the place of Israel in God's economy, and God is totally finished with the nation Israel. But you know, when you read the Old Testament, and you might want to read, for example, Jeremiah 33 and other passages where it says so clearly that as long as sun and moon endure, the nation of Israel shall remain before me. And then think of it this way. Think of the words of the angel to Mary. He shall be great.

He shall be called the son of the highest. The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall rule over the kingdom of Judah, etc. Now, has that been fulfilled? I don't think so. And yet Jesus is going to be sitting on the throne of David. I interpret that to mean ruling from Jerusalem someday. And so I don't believe in replacement theology. There are other implications to this. I could go on a long time, but just read the prophets of the Old Testament. Read the continual repetition of God saying again and again, I will bring a remnant back into the land.

And then ask yourself, has this been fulfilled? No, because even after the captivities, after Israel has been so disciplined by God, you still have those promises. So I believe in a future fulfillment for Israel.

Dave McAllister: Thank you, Mitch, for your question, and thank you, Dr. Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer, or call us at 1 888 218 9337. That's 1 888 218 9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's road map for your race of life. It's possible to go from great blessing to times of great trial. That's what happened to Jesus, who was led by God into the wilderness.

Next time, lessons we can learn from the desert, the devil, and you. This is Dave McCallister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.