Tuesday, June 8, 2010
God Is At Work - The Story of Ruth Part I - The Worst of Times, Part 7 of 32
TEXT: The story of Ruth
IDEA: The people in this story are different from us and yet the same as we are.
PURPOSE: To convince listeners to read the story of Ruth
What motivations do adults use to get young people to read?
What are some motivations that preachers, teachers, and people like us use to get people to read the Bible?
Guilt.
Spiritual = a chapter a day keeps the devil away.
An assignment to pass a Bible course.
We want listeners to read the story of Ruth for themselves. How can we do that?
I. The people in the story are ordinary people.
They are not "special." No one in the story is royalty, a general, very rich or very beautiful. Does that necessarily put you off from reading the story?
It doesn't take a particularly vivid imagination to imagine ourselves experiencing what the people in the story experienced.
II. The story of Ruth is a story about suffering and heartache.
We live in a fallen world that hasn't changed much in 3,000 years.
It's a story of tragedy, heartbreak, brokenness, poverty and "making the best of it."
The people in the story lived during the "best of times" and the "worst of times."
III. The story of Ruth is a story of a romance and a marriage.
Have you ever asked people how they met and married? What do you find?
Many meetings seem "accidental."
Others came as a result of working together at a job.
Others came together out of an "arranged" marriage.
In the story of Ruth the main characters seem to meet and marry "by accident" (Ruth 2:3). They meet at work. They marry because of the risky scheme of an old woman.
IV. This is a story about different kinds of people and their different kinds of faith.
It features a "risky" faith. Ruth risked everything to trust the God of her mother-in-law.
It features a "tarnished" faith: Naomi found it hard to bet everything on God.
We as readers can see God at work when the characters themselves could not see it. The people in the story lived their lives before God as we have to live life before God.
