Sunday, October 9, 2016

Ruth, Another Woman through Which God and the Holy Spirit Worked to Bring Us...

Today's sermon at Messiah, delivered by Pastor Lassman, tells a story of stalwart faith that transcends pragmatic selfishness and manifests the will of God.

After a woman, foreign to the Jews but married to a Jewish man, loses her husband, she inexplicably insists on staying with here mother-in-law (Naomi) who is trying to "help her out" by sending her home to Moab where she can have a chance to meet and marry a new husband.  Her late husband's battered family is going through hard times, unimaginable to us in modern America.

"No", says Ruth to her Jewish mother-in-law, "Where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge.  Your people shall be my people, and your God my God."

Ruth, like faithful non-Jewish followers that Jesus meets centuries later "gets" to a greater degree that even many of God's People (Jews) that there is a bigger picture in store for her and humanity.  One could call The Book of Ruth a "Paul Harvey book" of the Old Testament because there is a "rest of the story" that is HUGE. By insisting upon staying with Naomi, here mother-in-law, Ruth ends up staying in Judah with her mother-in-law and eventually marrying Boaz and having children.

By doing so, she ends up as the great grandfather of King David, who himself is the great-great-great grandfather of Jesus Christ, the Messiah Our Savior.

It was prophesied that the Messiah would be a direct descendent of King David. God worked through Ruth, by Ruth's "illogical/impractical" faith to bring about the salvation of humankind through the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

As we increasingly learn from research and emerging historical data (but Christians have known from faith),  the Holy Bible is truth and historically factual.  It is important to understand that God's plan unfolds through the means of actions of people both faithful and unfaithful to God.  Ruth's life is a quintessential example of God in the Holy Spirit working through people to execute His will.

There is much more to the story of Ruth than my tiny synopsis of our sermon today can relate, so, please...

Find the Book of Ruth here. A good Lutheran analysis of the Book of Ruth here. And, finally, a transcript and audio recording of Pastor Lassman's sermon here*.

In God's holy name we pray. Amen.

*Sermons at Messiah, Seattle's web site sometimes take a few days to post.

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