Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: We have been looking at women who changed their world. We thought of Eve changing her world by sinning. We thought of Sarah changing her world by a meek and a quiet spirit. We thought of Miriam who changed her world by her gifts. We talked about Rahab, who exercised faith in Jehovah by hanging a scarlet thread in her life, the scarlet thread of redemption. We thought of Deborah who fought the Lord's battles and changed her world.

Today, we're thinking of Ruth, who changed her world by love. If there is anyone that exemplifies what the love of God does in a life, it's this woman, Ruth. I would like you to turn in your Bibles to the book of Ruth. I will tell the story first or remind you about the story because I think the story of Ruth is a very familiar story to all of us that know our Bibles in any form or shape at all.

I want to tell the story right through from the beginning to the end, and then I want to draw the parallels from it that we'll be applying to our lives today. One of my favorite books in the Bible, not least because my daughter and I sat down one day and wrote a book called *Space to Breathe and Room to Grow* from this scripture. It's been very difficult. Stuart said to me this morning as we were over breakfast, "Are you struggling with your talk?" I had all my notes out over the breakfast porridge. I was going through it.

I said, "Well, the funny thing is you can struggle through a talk sometimes because you don't know the text very well, and you can struggle through a talk at other times because you know it too well almost." I seem to know this text so well because Judy and I have been teaching the book of Ruth together and we also wrote a book. I want to try and come to it from another angle today. It's very hard because all these things that I know so well keep crowding in on my mind. I want to try to come to something freshly and look at it from a different angle, and that's what I want to do.

Let me tell you the story. There was a family. It was the family of Elimelech and Naomi. His name means "my God is King." Her name means "pleasure" or "pleasant." They lived in Bethlehem, which means "the house of bread." The strange thing was the house of bread was having a famine at the time that they lived there. Instead of staying where the place of blessing that God had designated Bethlehem was to be, they showed a little bit of a lack of faith, most people believe, by saying to each other, "Look, we're going to starve to death if we stay here. Why don't we go to Moab?"

Moab was a country that did not serve Jehovah, but it was a country where there was much bread. There were many fields bright with harvest there. They were not enduring a famine. So they decided to travel and live a little while in Moab, and if God blessed Bethlehem once more, then they'd come back. Together with their two children, Mahlon and Chilion, they took off to Moab.

Mahlon's name means "sickness." Chilion's name means "pining." If names mean anything, which they did in those days, it means that the kids weren't very healthy, and that's how they'd come by their names. Little sickness and little pining were in bad health, probably from infancy onwards. But anyway, off they all went to Moab and there they settled.

Elimelech died there. Maybe he should have had a name that matched his sons' names. That left Naomi a widow with two sons, who then married Moabitish women. They married out of Israel in the sense that they had been forbidden to do that through the law, but they did it anyway. God was very gracious in choosing two very wonderful heathen girls for them. We've already thought about that, haven't we?

Rahab was one of those women that God looked into her heart. She was an outside-inside person, remember. Have you got all that figured out yet? She was something different on the inside than she was on the outside. God saw her heart, brought her into blessing, and brought her into Israel. Now we have some people going from Israel to live among heathen people, and once more God saw the heart of Ruth and the heart of Orpah—two wonderful girls living in a heathen culture, perhaps not having rejected the God that Naomi knew and that Elimelech knew, perhaps never having had the chance to accept him.

God made it possible through the witness of Elimelech and Naomi to bring a new faith, a new philosophy of living, into the minds of women that had never had a chance to look at it before. They married Sickness and Pining, and of course, the result of that was very sad. Ten years later, both Sickness and Pining sickened and pined away. That was that. There were three widows together.

Now you've got an old widow, which is sad, but two young widows, which is sadder, living together and sustaining each other. Apparently, there was a home that Ruth and Orpah could have gone back to. They could have gone back to their mother's house because later in the story Naomi says you could have gone back to your mother's house. But they chose to stay with their mother-in-law. It's obvious from that choice in the culture of the day where, if you were a widow, you immediately went back to your own family to be cared for. It's obvious that there had been a bond growing—a bond of love constraining, impelling, keeping them together, wrapping them around.

Together, those three women began to somehow cope with the life that they found themselves facing. Well, news travels in those areas pretty quickly, and Bethlehem came into blessing again. The fields were ripe, the harvest was good, and the famine was over. Naomi, hearing this, decided to go home. Years and years afterwards, having gone through trial and trouble, she said to her daughters-in-law, "I'm going home." They said, "And we're going with you."

Apparently, she allowed them to start off on the journey, but her conscience got better of her. She stopped at a stopping point and she said, "Look, your sister-in-law is going back to her people and to her gods. Go back with her." She had urged them to go back. She said, "I have no more sons for you to marry. Even if I married today, are you going to wait until the sons grow up so you can marry them? I think you ought to go back and find security in your mother's house." But they didn't want to. They wanted to go with her, Orpah as well. But on Ruth's urging, Orpah, who was just wondering what she should do, turned around and went back. But Ruth clung to Naomi.

Ruth replies in verse 16, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go. 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. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. The two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them.

The women exclaimed, "Can this be Naomi?" "Don't call me Naomi," she told them. "Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi?" Remember what that meant? Pleasure. "Why call me Naomi? Call me Mara: bitterness. The Lord has afflicted me. The Almighty has brought misfortune upon me." So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.

So here we have the little family, Naomi and Ruth, for that is a family. What is a family? A family isn't necessarily, and certainly not in our day and age, a mom and a dad, three kids, and a dog. This is a family—a broken family, a fractured family, part of a family, but very much a family. Naomi and Ruth, a little family coming back to the house of bread. The whole city is stirred. They said, "Can this be this laughing, vibrant, blessed woman that we used to know? Can this be Naomi?"

She said, "Oh yes, this is me. I know you can't recognize me because I've been through real hard times." Well, in chapter 2, they settled down together, and Ruth, the young woman, says to her mother-in-law, "Let me go out and work in the hot sun. I don't think you should be doing that. You work in the house and I'll work in the field." So she goes out and she just happens to hap on this field. That's what your old King James says: she "happened to hap." I love the language.

What does it mean? It means she thought this was all a coincidence, but God knew better. You never happen to hap in life if you know Christ. There are no happenings; there are plannings. God had planned that she should just happen along that particular path that led to that particular field that belonged to a particular man called Boaz. This happened to be, in God's economy, a relative of Naomi, a man of standing in the town. Ruth comes and she starts to glean behind the girls in the field.

Boaz comes from the city and he greets the men. They say "greetings," and his eye goes over the harvest as he's looking to see what happened. His eye falls upon Ruth. In my translation, he says, "Wow, who is she?" He has an exclamation. The words apparently in the Hebrew language here: "Oh, who's this?" The men said, "Well, this is Ruth, the Moabitess, you know, the one that came back with Naomi?" He says, "Oh yes, everybody knows about her."

He goes and he greets her. He says in verse 14, "At mealtime, come over here, have some bread, dip it in the wine vinegar." You can see the way the wind is blowing. He wants to get to know her. She sits down and he offers her some roasted grain. There are some very interesting words here as Boaz realizes this is Ruth. Go back to verse 12, and he says to Ruth, "May the Lord repay you for what you have done." What has she done? She has loved her mother-in-law. "May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to trust, under whose wings you have come to take refuge."

Everybody knew all about Ruth. They knew that she had become a proselyte. She had accepted the God of the Israelites. She had said, "Your God will be my God." Everybody knew that, but everybody also knew that she loved her mother-in-law. He tells the young men not to touch her. He tells Ruth to glean by his maidens, and he cares for her. He piles up her basket high and sends her back to her mother-in-law. She comes back at the end of chapter 2 and she shows her mother-in-law what she's got. Her mother-in-law says, "Where'd you get all this from?"

She said, "Well, the man..." "Which man?" "Boaz." "Boaz," says Naomi. "Why, that's my near kinsman. Look at verse 20: 'The Lord bless him!'" Now she's not saying the Lord bless him, bless Boaz here; the language in the NIV is a little different. She is blessing the Lord. She is saying, "The Lord bless him. Bless the Lord. He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead." Here she has come back a bitter woman, but now she is beginning to realize that the Lord, though she felt he'd really done hardly by her, she's realizing that God has not forgotten her and that in her bitterness she had thought he had forgotten her. She is coming back to a faith, and her heart is being softened.

In chapter 3, Naomi says to her daughter-in-law, "Shouldn't I try to find a home for you where you would be well provided for?" Here we see what love can do to a bitter person. If love lives with bitterness and loves it, as God can love a bitter person and loves it away, then you find that that bitter person like Naomi begins to show love in return. What a wonderful thing that she would be willing to lose the companionship of her daughter-in-law. Yet she was beginning to care for Ruth more than she was caring for herself.

She cooks up this little plan. She says, "Now our custom is if you want to claim someone for marriage—and anyway, he belongs to our clan anyway, he should be marrying me, not you, because I'm his near relative and that's the way we do things here—so we do have a claim on this man. I will waive my claim, I will give up my claim for you, Ruth. The way that we do this to show that we are putting forth our legal claim is that you go to the threshing floor." She gave her this little plan of going while the man was threshing wheat, waiting until he lay down, and covering his feet, which is not a sexual connotation as some have thought at all.

Actually, in this passage of scripture, Boaz says, "I know that you are a noble and virtuous woman." He says to the men, "Don't let anybody know a woman has come to this floor," in case they would put wrong connotations on it. But she lies at his feet, she uncovers his feet, and this is the way of claiming someone for marriage. So you can imagine if Boaz was asleep, he would have sat bolt upright in bed wondering who on earth was coming to claim him for marriage. What a relief it was to his heart, what a joy, when he saw it was Ruth the Moabitess.

What Ruth was saying, what Naomi was saying is, "Take your claim. This legally is what you should do: you should take Ruth or take Naomi, take the land, take everything that belongs to us because you are the next of kin, you are the near kinsman." Boaz says, "Now there's only one problem. There's another kinsman nearer than me. There's a nearer relative, so I've got to find out if he wants you first." So he goes to the elders in chapter 4 and he says that he would like to claim Ruth, Naomi, the land, the land of Elimelech, the land of Mahlon, the land of Chilion. He would like to raise up children so that their name will not be forgotten, which was very important in Israel.

But there is a nearer kinsman, and the nearer kinsman came. The nearer kinsman said, "Well, I really don't want them because if I take them, legally there's a problem and I will lose my inheritance." There was a little glitch here. "You take them, Boaz." So Boaz does. In chapter 4, we hear the wedding bells. They get married. Verse 13 of the last chapter: "He took Ruth, she became his wife. He went to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son."

It's interesting here that "he enabled her to conceive" has the idea behind it that she had not been able to conceive up to now. Remember she had been married 10 years to Mahlon. She was Mahlon's wife, the scripture tells us. So in 10 years, she had not been able to have children. It looks as though God saved this very special experience for her for her second marriage after widowhood. Here she came and she was able to conceive and gave birth to a son.

The women said to Naomi, "Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a kinsman-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel. He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age." Listen to this: "For your daughter-in-law who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons has given him birth." Then Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap, and cared for him. The women living there said, "Naomi has a son," and they named him Obed, which means "worship."

He was the father of Jesse, the father of David. I love this story if for nothing else, for all those names. Major Ian Thomas used to do a wonderful thing with this passage of scripture. He was our fellow missionary back there in England. I used to love him preaching on the book of Ruth. He used all the names. He said when "my God is King" marries "pleasure," you're in trouble. The result is "sickness" and "pining." He spiritualized it all and said that if we as Christians marry pleasure, then the result in our Christian life will be sickness and pining.

But if "godly friendship," which is what Ruth's name means, comes into our lives—which it did in the story—and she marries Boaz, which means "strength with God," and you've got godly friendship and strength with God, the result of that union was Obed, which means "worship." That's a lot better way to go in our spiritual lives. We could have spent the whole time just spiritualizing this story, but I want to be a little bit more practical as we go back now and look at it.

Let's think about how love changed Ruth's world and, therefore, how the love of God can constrain us, can work through us, to change our world. First of all, Ruth's world was a sad world. It was a world of goodbyes. She had to say goodbye to her husband that she loved, I believe. Verse 4 of chapter 1. She was leaving home, so she had to say goodbye to her mother. Verse 8 tells us the mother's house was there. Usually in scripture, it says go back to your father's house, which gives us the idea, even though it doesn't tell us, that the father had died and Ruth's mother was a widow.

In the extended family of the days, there was security there for Ruth. She had to say goodbye to her mother. She had to make a choice between her mother and her mother-in-law, and amazement, she chose her mother-in-law instead of her mother. But that was another goodbye. She had to say goodbye to her sister-in-law, Orpah, and together they had lived together for 10 years in that extended family situation. She had a very sad world. It was just a world of goodbyes—choices to make between one and another of people that she loved.

Then she lived in a sexually perverted world, for the people in Moab had a terrible perverted religion where sexuality and sexual orgies were part of their worship with temple prostitutes. So she lived in a sad world, a sexually perverted world, a spiritually dark world. Naomi said, "Go back to your gods"—many gods: demanding gods, fearful gods, frightening gods. Naomi, thinking that even this would be better than taking her chances back in Bethlehem with her, said you'd better go back to your gods.

She lived in a spiritually dark world. I don't know about you, but I've spent a lot of my life saying goodbye to people. My world has been a world of goodbyes, and that's hard, very hard. I'm a very wet Christian, and maybe you're a very wet Christian for other reasons. But one of the reasons I hate goodbyes. I spend my life on airports, and it's always interesting to me. I get off a plane and there's joy as people greet people, but then there's another lot of people mixed around as people are grabbing each other. All the joy is there.

There is sadness because the other people waiting to get on the plane are saying goodbye. Every day of my life practically, I feel I face other people's sadness and joy, and I watch people saying goodbye. It's always sad. Doesn't matter whether there's a little child—I watched two little children, two little grandchildren, saying goodbye to their grandma the other day. I was standing behind them and they were devastated. I said to the man next to me, "Oh look at that, that's another goodbye. That's hard for those little children."

Everyone around was responding to this particular situation because we all know how hard that is. A sad world. Like Ruth, maybe we've cried a lot, and we've cried out loud. It says twice that these girls cried out loud when they were saying goodbyes: "howled." I like that. We all live in a sexually perverted and spiritually dark environment. And like Ruth, most of us would like our world to be different. But how do we change it? Maybe we're not a Sarah or a Miriam or a Deborah, but we can all be a Ruth. We can all change our world by love.

Verse 15 of chapter 4 is my key verse here: "your daughter-in-law who loves you and is better to you than seven sons." This was the testimony of people when they looked at Ruth's life. The number seven is the number of perfection in the scriptures. And what those women were saying was, "Your daughter-in-law loves you with a perfect love: better than seven sons." Of course, sons were always counted more important than daughters in that day and age. But here is this girl able to love her mother-in-law and moves the whole city.

You know, if you want to move a city, love your mother-in-law. That'll do it. People will say, "Wow, that's a relationship that really doesn't bear looking into in most of our lives." And here is a young woman who loves her mother-in-law with a love that is so incredible: it is better than perfection. Better than perfection. Now, in our day and age when we see love, which is called love, splitting families—eros love, the love that's too big for words, the feeling side of love—worshipped. When we see that sort of love worshipped, which is literally splitting families, not bringing them together, what a wonderful thing it is to see God's sort of love: agape love working out in somebody's life.

I picked up a card. I hated buying it and wasting my money, but I thought it would be a good visual aid. This is how far we've got. You can get all these little cards now if you've got a friend getting divorced and send them a card to say how glad you are about it. I picked up the one that I thought was the saddest: "I heard about your divorce, congratulations to a born-again single." You know, born-again athletes, if they're born-again people that are coming off alcoholic, we have this degeneration of the word born-again as it is. But I think that's about the rock bottom: "a born-again single" because of divorce.

This is where our society is because we worship eros love. But Ruth, according to 1 Corinthians 13, loved God-style: Love is very patient. Love is very kind. Love doesn't boast; love isn't proud. Love isn't selfish; love is not self-seeking. Love doesn't keep a record of wrongs. Love loves the truth. Love doesn't gossip. Love isn't puffed up; love isn't an old windbag. Love always trusts; love always hopes. Love always perseveres. Love never fails.

Now, it doesn't mean that love never fails to make the other person love you. What that means is love never fails to love whether the other person ever loves you or not. And that's very important. Love never fails to go on loving whether the other person responds or not. And that's what Ruth's sort of love had been like. And what I want to do is talk you through the story again and show you how God's sort of love—1 Corinthians 13:4-6 sort of love—is manifested practically through this woman's life.

Paul says that God's sort of love, the love that Ruth was able to show and change her world because of it, was very patient. Patience is love waiting out suffering. That's a good definition of love and patience. Patience is love waiting out a suffering situation. And if anyone had been in a suffering situation, this girl Ruth had been. A lot of people were suffering. A lot of suffering going on here. Think of all of them. Naomi was mourning over the death of her husband, Elimelech.

The two girls were suffering because their husbands were sick and pining away. The two girls were suffering because of each other's suffering. Sometimes you suffer when you watch someone suffer and then you suffer with somebody who is watching someone suffer. A lot of suffering going along here. Naomi was suffering because her two sons were dying. Naomi was suffering because she loved her daughters-in-law and was watching them suffer watching her sons die. So talk about a suffering household.

And love is very patient: patiently waiting out suffering. Now, human love will not do; it won't stretch to that sort of suffering. But the love of God will. He's used to it. He suffers like that every day. He is very longsuffering with us. He's practiced at it. And for this, we have Jesus. And if we are in a situation where there's a lot of suffering going on around us, then the love of God is sufficient. Ruth knew it. We can know it.

Love is very patient, and love, Paul says, is very kind. Kindness is the active part of patience. Patience is being good; kindness is doing good. "You have shown," says Boaz to Ruth. "You have shown." What's that? Practical love. Showing, not talking—showing. Love doesn't talk much. Love does if it's real love. It shows by action what it feels. That's kindness. Patience is being good; kindness is doing good. "You have shown," says Boaz, "by your loving, practical help to your mother-in-law, that you have come under the wings of Jehovah to trust."

If we want to show our faith to people, then like James says, we have to show it by our works. That is love showing: love peeping out of our lives. Love refusing to be confined to words. "I love you," what does that mean unless we show it? Ruth showed it. Love in the abstract is easy; love in the concrete is hard. Kindness is love in the concrete. Three times in chapter 2:11 and 3:10 and also in the verse I mentioned, Ruth's kindness is commended. Boaz says, "I heard how kind you've been to your mother-in-law."

You know what men are looking for in marriage today? They don't know they're looking for this, some of them. They're looking for a kind woman. They're looking for kindness. As I do a lot of marriage counseling, I hear men saying this to me. "If I could find a kind woman"—they don't say those words, but that's what they're looking for: a woman who would show me practical love, not just say she loves me, but do those things. And of course, we're looking for men like that too. That's the sort of love that keeps marriages together and families together.

And in a world of broken relationships, we need more kindness. Kindness can change a bitter mother-in-law, the man in your life, hostile teenagers. I remember when one of my children was being pretty hostile, just pretty normal, and I was busy having to forgive her for being 13, I think, at the time. I remember counseling with a dear lady here and saying, "What am I going to do? I've tried this, I've tried that, I've tried withdrawing privileges, I've tried doing this, I've tried locking her up in her room, I've tried letting her out of her room, I've tried doing this, I've tried forgiving her, I've tried spoiling her. What can I do?"

She said, "Try kindness." And I said, "She doesn't deserve it." She said, "Right. Kindness does love when the person doesn't deserve it." And against all my better judgment, I tried kindness and it worked. And that little girl of mine that was really kicking up her heels at the age of 13 called me from a babysitting job in tears. And I said, "What's the matter? Is there something wrong with the baby?" She said, "No, nothing, mom. The baby's sleeping." And she said, "I've just had time to think, and I want to say I'm sorry."

And I said, "But why now? What are you thinking about?" She said, "You've been so kind to me, mom. You've been so kind to me." And I thought, oh God, thank you because it took everything I had to be kind to a hostile teenager. So who is it that we need to be kind to? And that's not a feeling thing I'm talking about. I mean, my feelings were telling me to take that kid and shake her. Shake her till she rattled. That's what my eros, my feelings, was telling me to do with her.

But kindness is being kind. It's picking up her room when she refuses to do it. And you've threatened and you've cajoled and you've bribed, and nothing works. Those were the things I was doing. And then seeing her come in and never say anything about it, but notice it. And in the end, it was those things that were killing me to do that broke her down. And Boaz said to Ruth, "I've seen, I've heard the kind things you've done for your mother-in-law." That won his heart. He thought, there's a woman. Yeah, she's gorgeous to look at, but she's gorgeous inside as well.

Love is very patient, love is very kind. Love doesn't envy. Love doesn't envy, Paul says. When they came home and Ruth saw the relatives of Naomi—Boaz, who was in a good standing, and a nearer kinsman, who was in better standing than Boaz—because these two men were able, they had enough money in the bank to buy up all the land that belonged to Elimelech, all the land that belonged to Mahlon, all the land that belonged to Chilion, and to purchase a bride and his family, which happened to be Naomi. Look after them and care for them. How much money did those guys have?

And what happened to Ruth and Naomi when they came home? Well, they lived near poverty. She worked like a slave. And those relatives weren't sharing much of it. Oh, they were amazed. They said, "This is wonderful, now you've got a daughter-in-law to look after you," but they didn't help. And it would have been very easy for Ruth as a young believer to say, "I want what they've got." That's what envy is: saying "I want what someone else has got." Coveting: wanting it for yourself. It would have been very easy for her to do that, but she didn't. She didn't envy; she just stuck to and got on with where she was.

Because love isn't proud, you see. She was willing to glean in the fields even behind his maidservants. In fact, she says to Boaz, "Why have you taken notice of me? Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me, a foreigner?" And then in another place, she says to him, "You have spoken kindly to your servant even though I do not even have the standing of your servant girls."

So here we have a beautiful humility in this woman. She is not saying, "Listen, through marriage, I have now become one of the family. What am I doing slaving away behind your servant girls? I deserve better than this." She wasn't puffed up. She wasn't a windbag. She wasn't blowing off her mouth about this because love isn't proud; love is humble.

Also, love doesn't have to talk about oneself. She could have said to Boaz, "Hi Boaz, here I am!" when she saw him coming into the field. "I'm that wonderful woman that loves my mother-in-law!" or something like that. Or she could have just let him know who she was, and she could have used her own lips to praise herself. But you know what the Bible says? The Bible says let another praise you and not your own lips. Let another praise you and not your own lips.

And love isn't proud, and it doesn't boast because love isn't selfish; it's not self-centered. It is thinking primarily of the other's well-being irrespective of the cost to itself. And love isn't easily angered. She could have been mad at everyone. She could have been mad at Boaz because he hadn't done anything about their problems, and that would have spoiled her relationship with him right bang off. She could have been mad at the women who were saying all these things all the way through the story.

You can go back and read the book of Ruth and see that the women are there in the story—the way the story is told in a beautiful way. But the women say this and the women say that, and when they come back to Bethlehem, the women say, "Is this Naomi?" And at the end of the story, the women are there saying, "This is what's happening and this is what's happening," and the baby's born and the women say this and the women say that. And it's a way of telling a story in the Hebrew storytelling fashion.

And she could have been mad at the women—all talk and no practical stuff at all. They didn't get a Thanksgiving basket ready for her at barley harvest and send it to the door. She could have been mad at Naomi for not going with her to glean as well. And she could certainly have been mad at God for her present poverty and position, which was very vulnerable indeed. But getting mad doesn't solve anything, does it? I mean, we do it, but getting mad doesn't solve anything.

In fact, the word that Paul uses—"love isn't easily angered"—is a very warlike word. It doesn't call forth people to conflict. It doesn't say "come on, let's have a fight." Refuses to do that. She wasn't; she didn't want to fight. My sister is a wonderful, wonderful person—wonderful person—and she has taught me so many things. And years and years ago, and she's not had easy relationships in her life, years ago I said to her, "How are you coping with all of this?"

And she said, "Well, I just decided, Jill, that life is too short to fall out with people and I refuse to do it. People are far more important than my little things, and I refuse to do it. Life is too short." And I remember that. This was well before I became a Christian. I remember her telling me that, and I've watched her put into practice all through her wonderful life, wonderful marriage. She's a wonderful mom raising her three gorgeous boys. I have watched her refuse to call forth to conflict. She has not been easily angered, and it's been a real inspiration to me.

Love doesn't do that. Love keeps no record of wrongs. That means it doesn't harbor a grudge. Love forgives freely, fully as God has forgiven you. What's more, love doesn't gossip. Now, in chapter 3:14, Boaz said, "Don't let anybody talk about this. Ruth, do you hear?" "Yes, I hear, Boaz." "Men, do you hear? Don't let anybody tell anybody a woman came to this floor. Let's get everything done decently and in order. Don't let's let the cat out of the bag that perhaps there might be a wedding." "Okay."

Oh, what a temptation that must have been—to gossip a little bit about that. Can you imagine how hard it must have been? But love doesn't gossip. Love is able to keep its mouth shut. She was able to keep her mouth shut. Love loves the truth. Ruth had lived in error for 10 years, but when she heard about Jehovah, she came under his wings to trust. It's one of the most beautiful, beautiful phrases in the Bible because when you become a Christian, you come under his wings to trust.

And the picture is of the hen and the chickens, gathering its chickens. Remember Jesus said as he looked over Jerusalem, "Oh how often would I have gathered you like a hen gathers its chickens under its wings, but you would not." But Ruth would, and she ran under the wings of Jehovah and she rested there. She loved the truth, and love loves the truth. And it shows. And she said to Jehovah: for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health, till death us do part.

And because she'd said that to God, she was able to say it to other people. And you see when you commit yourself to God like that, he pours his love by his spirit into your heart and you're able to do that for everybody else. You're able to say like she said at the beginning of this story: "Where you go, I will go. Your God will be my God. I will give myself to you. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried." Love always trusts. Love always trusts. Under his wings, you've come to trust, to rest.

And we see Ruth resting in this story. That doesn't mean she wasn't busy. It doesn't mean she was doing nothing. The rest of faith means you'll be busier than you've ever been in your whole life. Again, I will quote Major Ian Thomas. The life of Christ, the Christian life, is like being a sewing machine needle resting in the arm. And when that sewing machine, when the power is switched on, you cannot even see the needle; it's going so fast. There is so much activity, and resting doesn't mean there's no activity.

The rest of faith that Hebrews talks about for the Christian believer doesn't mean we're doing nothing. It means you're busier than you've ever been in your life, but you're resting in the power, not your own power, the power that's coming through that sewing machine. The needle rests in the arm, the power is switched on, and you go. You go faster than you've ever gone before. And Ruth knew what it was to glean—it says without taking a break for lunch. I mean, physically, worked her head off.

And yet she'd come under his wings to rest, to trust. And there is an inner rest that enables you to be outwardly very, very busy indeed and survive—not fall apart. She knew that, and that's what love does. It constrains you, it impels you, it empowers you. And yet resting in faith in the God under whose wings you've come to trust, it's possible to do all these things and still have the power and the strength and the ability to go on and do them more.

Because love always hopes, always perseveres. She was steadfastly determined to go with her mother-in-law. And love is like that. Love is steadfast and love is determined. I remember when my mother-in-law was coming to stay years and years ago. I came to this verse of scripture and I said, "Oh God make me a Ruth. I've been an Orpah all my life." I have been like Orpah. Nothing wrong between my mother-in-law and me. I've kissed my mother-in-law and gone my own way just like Orpah did.

But now my mother-in-law is coming to stay for three months. Little did I know my mother-in-law was coming to stay for 18 months because it was here that she discovered yet one more of the 25 or 30 cancer deals that she had before she went to heaven. And for 18 months, I learned to be a Ruth. I was not a Ruth all the time. I'd love to stand here and tell you I was a Ruth. God made me a Ruth—well, he made me a Ruth when it mattered. That was a miracle in itself.

And he showed me how to stop being an Orpah—just kissing her and going my own way—and identify with her. Where she went, I would go. I would try and understand. And where she died, I would die, and there would I be buried. And my mother-in-law taught me how to die. Did she ever! She told me that I taught her how to live. And God did a miracle in our life. He gave me the love of God when I needed it. He gave her the love of God when she needed it because mother was often a Naomi because of the hard things the Almighty had allowed to happen in her life. She was many times a bitter woman.

And in reality, I had to come back to this book over and over and over again for strength and instruction and challenge to be a Ruth. And God helped me to be a Ruth when it mattered. And he certainly helped her to be a Naomi to me when I needed that. And of course the end of the story is so special. The little baby is put in Naomi's arms. He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. And I've never seen those verses before, even though I know this book inside out and I love this book. But I've never seen this verse before: "he will renew your life and sustain you in your old age."

And I said to Stuart coming in this morning as I always borrow his ear to go over my talk, and I got to this point and I said, "You know, I never saw that and I think about the time we had with our grandchildren yesterday." And isn't this true? They renew our life and sustain us in our old age. That's what grandchildren do. And I remember my mother having lost my dad just before my sister's third child was born. That third child, Christopher, is very, very special to my mom. Why? Because he came after death. He was the next thing that could renew her life.

He was the new hope. He was the new reason for going on, for living. She believed that life just could never ever be the same again when my dad died. But then along came Christopher. And I think of Mom Briscoe who lost her husband one month before David, our eldest child, was born. We had a funeral a month before that baby was born. And I remember David's birth and mother-in-law coming to stay with me for 10 days.

In fact, we talked about this in the car today—a lot of remembrances. And I said, "Stuart, don't you remember?" He said, "When did we take mother back home?" And I said, "Well, we had the baby in Liverpool and she came to stay overnight. And don't you remember getting in our little tiny Austin car, and we got mum in the back, and I put my baby in her arms, just like verse 16 says: 'Naomi took the child and laid him in her lap and cared for him.'"

And that little boy, David, became the renewal of her life and the sustainer of her old age. God is such a God of love and blessing. And if Ruth had not learned the principles of allowing the God of love to be her God and then letting him loose through her life in practical loving action, this would never have happened. Naomi would never have had a grandchild who would renew her life and sustain her in her old age. Because love never fails to love and sometimes love comes back to you. Sometimes. And it certainly did in this story.

So let me ask you: Do you need to change your world? Is it a sad world? Is it a wet world? Is it a world of bitterness? Is it a world of difficulty? Is it a world of people that need patience and love and kindness and humility? Then in God you have all that it needs to love like Ruth loved. Do you know him? Is he in your heart? Is he living with you day by day? Have you opened up your life and said, "Oh God of love, how much I need you, how much my family needs you"? Then if you do, you will come under his wings to trust and you will have an experience in measure as Ruth had. And you will change your world.

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word, thank you for the reality of it, the beauty of it. Thank you for our families: the bitter people that belong to them, the loving people that belong to them, the kind people, the hostile people. Teach us to change our world by being like Ruth: by trusting you, by knowing you, by practically caring in agape love for those around us so that they will never be the same again. Lord, bring the love and laughter back into our lives as you brought the love and laughter back into the lives of Ruth and Naomi, we pray for Christ's sake. Amen.