Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Ruth 1:6-18
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  September 11, 2022

It’s late at night and you’re driving on the highway, cruising at 70, when all of a sudden you hear this ungodly clunk under the hood. Just like that you’re driving a teakettle on four wheels, smoke pouring out all over the place. You pull over and you know that you need to call someone. But your family is too far away to help and it’s midnight. So you pull out your phone and you start to scroll through your contacts and you come to this one name, and you know that this friend right here, no matter how late you call, no matter how often you call, will move heaven and earth to get there and help you. And the name of that friend for you is… 

Do you know most people in America can’t name one friend for a situation like that. We are going bankrupt when it comes to the blessing of friendship. One survey said that 45% of Americans have less than 3 friends. Another survey said that 1 out of 5 of American men do not have a single close friend outside of their family and relatives. “Loneliness is the leprosy of our day.” That’s what Mother Theresa said and she lived a while ago. It’s true today. We need friends! Or rather, we need to be a friend! And if you choose not to be a friend, and it is often a choice, you not only diminish the lives of others, but you diminish yourself! God wants to pour his love, his care, and his wisdom through you into the lives of your friends. And he wants to bless you through your friends as well! You already know that though. Some of the best moments of your lives have been with friends.

In the creation account of Genesis, God calls all things into existence and there’s this little refrain that keeps popping up at the end of each day: “God saw that it was good.” After each creative act God looks at what he has made and sees that it is perfect and complete in every way and he calls it “good”. But that pattern comes to a screeching halt on day 6. God creates man and then comes the phrase, “not good”. Now this isn’t to say men aren’t any good. This isn’t saying that God messed up on Adam. No, God created him perfectly. God said “It is not good for the man to be alone.” God created us to be in social relationships, he created us with companionship and friendship in mind from the very beginning. It is not good for the man to be alone. And yes, that is first a profound statement on the institution of marriage, but all through Scripture God underscores that we thrive and flourish in friendships. For instance, in the book of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon wrote: “Two are better than one because if one falls down the other can help them up.” Together is better. This is a biblical concept! We thrive in friendships. And we wilt, we suffer when we don’t carve out time and make the choice to be a friend.

So, what I’d like to do is look at the first chapter of book of Ruth from the Bible, and apply it to cultivating God-pleasing friendships. Simply put: Be a friend. Be a friend like Jesus—who has been such a friend to you! From heaven, Jesus takes his nail-pierced hand and he holds it out to you, with his whole life, and he says in love “Let’s be friends.” What a friend we have in Jesus! (As the old hymn goes.) A friend who died for us and took our sins away. A friend who will never leave us nor forsake us. A friend who always listens, no matter how late or how often we call! That’s the friend we have in Jesus. That’s the love he demonstrates that inspires us and teaches us to pursue meaningful friendships with others on earth.  And that’s what we see a beautiful picture of in the book of Ruth.

The book of Ruth takes place at one of the darkest times in the history of God’s people, the time of the Judges. The Bible characterizes this time with a saying, “Every man did what was right in his own eyes.” Every person looked out only for themselves! And what did that lead to? Widespread pain, immorality, and idolatry. As if that weren’t bad enough, there came severe famine. The ground ached for water, the crops and animals died, and many people were forced to leave their familial land to look for food. One of those families was a woman, Naomi, and her husband named Elimelek. They were faithful to the Lord in a time when many had forgotten him and he had blessed them with two boys, Mahlon and Kilion. Because of the famine they left everything they had ever known and set off for a neighboring country called Moad to find food. Moab and Israel were warring nations, ethnic enemies, and you can only imagine how hard life must have been for them there. But somehow they found a home and their two sons grew up and married two Moabite wives. They were immigrants in a hostile foreign country, but at least they had a home and at least they had each other. But that’s when tragedy struck: Elimelek dies. Naomi watches the hope of her life fade away. Maybe it was something sudden, or maybe it was long and drawn out like watching a loved one suffer from cancer—but either way it was devastating. She was now a widow, a Jewess widow in Moab. And that’s when Naomi’s life went from tragic to monstrous, as both of her sons Mahlon and Killion also died. In a patriarchal society, there was really no standing and no future for a widow of Naomi’s age and without her sons, there was nothing but bitterness left for her in Moab. It’s pretty bleak, but that’s where our reading catches up.

Naomi hears that the famine has ended in Israel, and she decides to go back to her home there. She knows she has no future in Moab. But as she begins to travel, her daughter-in-laws, Ruth and Orpah (not Oprah), try to come with her. And this is what she says: “Go back. Both of you return to your mother’s house. May the Lord show you kindness as you have shown kindness to the dead and to me. May the Lord grant that each of you finds security in the house of a husband.” Then she kissed them, and they wept loudly. (Ruth 1:9-10) Naomi knows that these two women should stay and find new husbands and raise families in Moab. She has no future here, but they do! This is kind of them to even try to come, but let’s be reasonable here. A widow from Moab would not make a desirable match for any self-respecting Jewish man. There wasn’t any reasonable redemption if they went with her back to Israel! So naturally, Orpah decides to stay and kisses Naomi goodbye, but Ruth refuses to leave her! And she says so with such force that Naomi realizes that she shouldn’t try and dissuade her. Ruth makes an oath of binding love and friendship in the name of the LORD. Listen to what she says: “Do not urge me to abandon you or to turn back from following you. Because wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you make your home, I will make my home. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely and double it if anything but death[i] separates me from you.” Just imagine this! Ruth is, for all practical purposes, choosing to remain a widow for the rest of her life in order to be a friend to Naomi. She throws away pragmatic thinking, and makes a radical choice to be a friend. And what a profound picture of friendship we see in two women walking side-by-side on that 50 mile road from Moab to Israel. 

This is what it means to be a friend. You make a radical, kamikazee commitment to accompany another person in life. You make a choice to be a forever friend, to have their back no matter what. To be there in the good times and in the bad, when it’s convenient and when it’s costly. But it has to be a conscious commitment because, let’s be honest, if we do not make a choice to draw the circle wider, outside of our own loved ones, it will not happen. I’m as busy as you are, it takes effort! Friendship doesn’t happen by accident! Friends don’t fall out of the sky. Especially not in a sinful world. That’s why this can go so wrong. Maybe you’ve lost a friend. Maybe they passed away… maybe they betrayed you…  maybe they were just too busy…

You know recently, I had a chance to be a friend to someone and I let them down. I let all sorts of little urgent things take up my time. And sadly, it was only when I realized that I had failed to be a friend—when I saw how it hurt them—only then did it become immediately clear what should have been most important. You’ll always have more work to do, you’ll always have personal pursuits, you’ll always have stuff to catch up on. But you don’t always get another chance to be a friend. Being willing to come over when someone needs you, being willing to share your life, taking the time to make a phone call, or maybe even summoning the courage to introduce yourself to someone for the first time—these moments are some of the most important opportunities that God gives us in life. Again, according to the Bible, this is how we flourish, this is how we seek and win an opportunity to live the Gospel: when we choose to be a friend! 

In the book of Ruth, there’s no miracles that God performs. There is nothing that happens important politically or from any worldly standpoint. It’s just the story of a nobody who became a somebody by being a friend, “Ruth, the Moabitess”, that’s how she’s described 7 times in the text to let you know that she comes from a despised people group. She was lower than a nobody but she became a heroic somebody by being a friend to Naomi. Ruth chose to be a friend and God poured out his blessings on her. 

You see, her decision to be a friend is really the turning point of the book of Ruth. All is bitterness until Ruth accompanies Naomi back to Israel. Even though she was a Moabitess, Ruth’s loyalty and faithfulness caught the eye of a godly man named Boaz. Naomi then went to work as a matchmaker and Ruth and Boaz fell in love. He disregarded the stigma of her being a Moabite and even bought back the ancestral land of Elimelek, so that Naomi’s family line and inheritance would not be lost. And many years later, God would bring a son from Ruth’s lineage named David who would become King of all Israel and a thousand years after David, there would be another king born from Ruth’s line, our Savior Jesus Christ.  Ultimately, the account of Ruth is about friendship and redemption that points ahead to Christ, who bought us back from sin and death with his very life. He is the Redeemer who calls himself the Friend of Sinners. He made a commitment to us and saw it through to the cross. He brought us back to God and he brings us near to each other. No matter what your life looks like, you have a forever friend in Jesus. And blessing upon blessing, Jesus, your friend, empowers you to be a friend.

I’m guessing you probably have at least one person in mind right now who you’d like to befriend, or somebody you’d like to recommit to being friends with. I pray you make the choice to accompany them. Be a friend! Reflect the committed love of Christ. Be sticky like Ruth and don’t let go. And if you are already so blessed, give thanks for those friends you have right now who aren’t easy to get rid of! Be a friend and watch how God blesses you. Amen.