Michael Daling - August 4, 2019
Disappointment
Naomi is convinced that God is determined to wipe her family out so that it will be like they never existed. She faced bitter, crushing disappointment. She is a child of Abraham…an heir of God’s promise, but her life has driven her to think that she is an orphan. Disappointment and bitterness turns us in on ourselves…it shrinks up our world until it is only this big and we can’t see beyond our circumstances. She doesn’t know the outcome of her situation, but she can no longer imagine anything good in her life. She is living out of the idea that if God is against me…who can be for me? As an orphan she has to somehow take care of herself, but she has no power to do it. She is hurt, she is angry, she is afraid. It is all so understandable. That is why it is so critical that we know and remind ourselves of how God has redeemed His people in the past. Over and again the Bible tells us to remember these things. But the reason we have to remember them is that it tells us who God is…that he holds both our present circumstances and our futures in his loving hands! Ruth the Moabite…the destitute, widowed, foreigner—is King David’s great-grandmother. In an age when everyone did what was right in their own eyes…the story is beginning of the great king who would unite the people, conquer the rest of the promised land, and devote himself to what was right in God’s eyes. This is not a story about disappointment, but redemption…and if we look well beyond even King David, we are soon going to realize that this is the story of how God would redeem you and me by bringing Jesus…the true Son of David…to pay the cost of your redemption…to free you for an eternal inheritance at the cost of his own blood! Do you think that Naomi—in her wildest dreams—could have seen that?!
Scripture References: Ruth 1:1-22
From Series: "Ruth"
Ruth is the story of redemption. Biblical redemption is the costly freedom won for the weak and powerless by one who loves them and has the power to pay the cost.
