Hope: Tragedy

Ruth 1:1-5

For him, it wasn't love at first sight.  As a matter of fact, he looked right through her the first time he saw her.  But it was different for her.  She was smitten the moment she saw him.  It didn't matter that he was a foreigner. She never thought much about racism.  She was too much of a romantic to worry about race.  His mother was wild about her - that was a big plus in her favor.  She won over both his parents before he ever really took a second look at her, but the death of his father lit a flame under him and before she knew it, she was betrothed.  Her friends weren't happy he was a Hebrew boy, but again, she didn't care.  She wanted out of her loser town in her loser country and he promised to take her to Israel as soon as the famine had passed.

But years passed and though her love for him grew, she wasn't able to give him a child.  But they were young - her mother told her worry would make it worse, so she threw herself into caring for her husband and learning about his people and his God. The more time she spent with his mother, the more excited she was go go to Israel.  She was learning the language, cooking the food and hearing the law from her mother-in-law and her husband was so proud of her.  She longed for the day she would return to his hometown, see the land he had spoken of so fondly, see the home he grew up in and watch as he would build their own home.  But most of all she wanted to meet his people.  They were her people as well now and she longed for the day when she would meet them all.

Then the unimaginable happened.  Death came to the family.  A double blow.  Her husband and his brother, gone.  When the news came from the field of the accident, she felt her knees give way and the next thing she remembered was waking up in her bed, two days later.  She floated through the funeral, as if watching a play.  It all seemed so unreal.  

What made it worse was the reality that not only was her husband gone, and her brother-in-law and of course, the father-in-law, but they never conceived the little ones that would be her future.   The men of the family were gone, and with no future progeny to care for, she was left trying to hold two other women together.  There was little time for her to grieve.  

But in the quietness of her bedroom, reality was starting to sink in.  In one afternoon, she had lost everything, and now she had overheard her mother-in-law saying that when the days of mourning were done, she was heading back to Israel. Alone.

Husband - gone.

Family - gone.

Future - gone.

Hopes and dreams - gone.

Her new God - well, some things were worth fighting for...

Cling

You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him;

 and you shall keep His commandments, 
listen to His voice, 

serve Him and CLING to Him.

Deuteronomy 13:4

What a great word:  cling.  This word defines relationship in this verse.  If we were only commanded to follow, fear, keep, listen and serve, we would conclude that our relationship to God was one of subservience, as with a slave status. But the fact that the Lord commands that we cling to Him, this reveals the heart of a father, doesn't it?

No one has to instruct a child to cling to their parent.  It is instinctual.  Safety is in the arms of the parent.  Try to pull a nine-month-old from their mother's arms at the nursery door at church.  What you get is instant clinging.

Clinging indicates safety and clinging indicates love.  In a crisis, the one you cling to is the one you love.  I heard an interview recently of one of the shooting victims from the Washington D.C. baseball practice this past June.  His name was Zach Barth and he was a staffer for Rep. Roger Williams.  When the shooting began, he was in the outfield shagging fly balls.  People were yelling, "Shooter! Run!", so he ran to a corner of the outfield but then the gunman started aiming at him. He was shot in the leg and decided he had to run back to the infield, so he limped his way back to the dugout, where he found Williams and they clung to each other until the shooting was done.  This man was not secret service - he wasn't trained to protect his boss.  But he loved his boss and found him, and they held on to each other for safety until the ordeal was over.

God wants us to cling to Him and in order to do that we have to have more than a Creator/created relationship with Him, more than a Master/slave, Employer/employee, Coach/player or King/citizen relationship with Him. We have to embrace that He is a good, good Father, our Heavenly Father, who loves us and wants what's best for us.  We have to trust Him and know that the safest place is in His arms.  We have to be close to Him, know Him, see Him and love Him, and then we'll cling to Him.

What do you cling to?  What do you hold tightly to in times of distress?  What do you hang on to as your greatest possession?  Your wealth? Your home? Your children? Your spouse? Your parents? Your education? Your job? What about your phone? Your free time? Your hobbies or your looks?  What is the greatest help in your life?  

Friend, Jesus wants you to cling to Him.  We've had a bat issue in our house lately and I've got to admit, trying to fall asleep while my ears are acutely hearing every crack or movement in the house is not much fun.  I want to cling to David at those times but there are a few problems with that - he really just wants to sleep and hanging on to him, buried under my covers, plus the occasional hot flash makes my body temp about 2,000 degrees. Not a great recipe for sleep and then both of us are cranky in the morning.  

Here's a plan:  How about I cling to the Lord?  Instead of lying in bed, waiting to hear the flutter of wings, I have gone into long conversations with the Lord each night until I fall asleep in His arms.  I have a lot to talk with Him about and knowing that He is there, that He loves me and that He isn't trying to fall asleep as well, makes the conversation much easier.  I did wake up to a bat in the room a few nights ago, but I didn't freak out and we caught the bat in the morning. Such is life - bats will come and go, but my Savior will be with me always.

By the way, we've just about got our bat problem solved, so please don't send me any bat videos or pictures.  I know what they look like and we're working with the Bat Man (seriously) and so we're just about done extracting the few hundred bats from my attic...true story.  

Serve

You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him;

 and you shall keep His commandments, 
listen to His voice, 

SERVE Him and cling to Him.

Deuteronomy 13:4

Is your service to the Lord obligatory or voluntary?

The answer to that question should be "yes."  We are obligated to serve the one who redeemed or purchased us because He is our master now.  But our service should be out of love and not out of compulsion.  That's why I love the picture above because it's volunteering hands, not hands in chains, being drug into service.

Let's review our progression:

• Follow - upon salvation, we surrender our life, our will, to the Lord and He becomes the leader
• Fear - a proper awe and respect due to the magnitude of God's power and might - we must never forget Who He is and who we are
• Keep - now that He's in charge, we must obey His commands, knowing that they are in our best interest and that in the middle of His will is the safest place to be - plus, obedience shows the Lord we love Him
• Listen - we must fine tune our ears to hear Him amongst the competing voices in our head and the only way to do that is to know His Word - then we have a standard to compare all voices to

And now, serve.  Follow, fear and listen are instructions for our heart. Keep is an instruction for our actions.  Serve is an instruction for our attitude.  If our attitude is in the right place, it means we have the proper understanding of why we were created and why we were saved.  

Too many of us want to be the star of our show.  We want the spotlight.  We want people to think highly of us, praise us, like us, need us.  But we are believing a lie when we put ourselves in the center of the stage.  Our purpose for being here is to glorify the One Who made us.  He is the star of the show because He is God.  Period.  When I walk in a room and God walks in a room, He gets the attention. Every time. 

Now here's the awesome thing:  God has set His affection upon me.  Through His Spirit, He got my attention and through His Son, He paid the price for my redemption.  Not only has He purchased me, but He's made me His child - I am a fellow heir with His Son, Jesus. I am no longer dead or a slave to sin, but I am alive.  My eternity is one without sorrow, pain, suffering, fear or sin.  I am never alone.  I don't have to make decisions in a vacuum.  I can have deep joy and peace in the midst of the brokenness of this life because God has set His affection on me.

So when He tells me to do something, what should my attitude be?  Reluctant obedience so that everyone knows I am unhappy? Resentment for being bossed around? Willful disobedience because I know what's better for my life? Or burdened sorrow because what God wants of me is so hard?  

I think not.

We need to stop acting like a teenager who was just told to take out the garbage and serve the Lord with gladness. Our response to His affections should be joyful, immediate, and humble service.  We serve a good King.  We serve a loving Father.  We serve a gracious Master.  Our service is a delight and a joy because everything we do is to make more of Him.  When the Lord says, "Who will go?", our hands shoot shoot up as we cry, "Lord, send me!"  What a privilege to serve the Almighty God of the universe.  The fact that He has set His affection upon us is completely undeserved and simply unbelievable.  

Let's have an attitude check today.  Do you view your obedience to the Lord as an obligation or as service to One who loves you beyond words?  Do you see how your attitude can make a world of difference?

Listen

You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him;

 and you shall keep His commandments, 
LISTEN to His voice, 

serve Him and cling to Him.

Deuteronomy 13:4

There are a lot of voices in your head.  It sounds like just one, but the truth is there are a lot of competing influences that ring in your mind and it's hard to determine which ones are good and which ones are bad. The world is pretty loud and our flesh is pretty strong, so how do we know if the voice we are listening to is God's?

Let me start out by pointing out that God's initial command here is to FOLLOW, then FEAR and KEEP.  After these things, He says to LISTEN.  Unfortunately we tend to do these things in the wrong order.  We want to hear the voice of the Lord and then we'll decide whether or not we want to follow Him.  But it doesn't work that way.  The choice to follow must come first; a strong walk in surrender to His will, built on a healthy foundation of awe and respect for His character - these things must be in place in order for you to hear the voice of the Lord.

I had a woman once approach me after a Worship on the Waterfront concert I had been involved in.  I was directing a children's choir and our concert included a live band and adult praise team, plus 70 children.  This woman praised my efforts and told me that God had told her that because men were not stepping up and leading the way God had called them to, God was done with male leadership in the church and He was now going to raise up strong women to fill the void.  She had heard His voice and was His messenger.  The problem was that her message was contrary to God's Word.  If I didn't know the Word and understood God's design for church leadership, my flesh might have embraced this woman's message.  But I knew the Word and knew the voice she heard was not from God. As politely as I could I explained that to her and she didn't take it well.

We must know the Word, we must be actively walking closely to the Lord before we trust the voices in our head to be from God.  And even then, we must learn to listen and compare, before we act.

I know a gal who was very close to the Lord.  She walked with Him daily.  She relied on Him for her every need.  Her marriage was built on Him and I really don't know any other woman who lived in God's presence the way that she did.  Then one day she met someone...well, actually it was a talking snake...who told her that God was keeping something from her.  Then she assessed the information for herself and decided that he was right, and she broke her relationship with the Lord.  As a matter of fact, her actions along with her husband brought great destruction into the world.  

How did this happen to Eve?  She was in full fellowship with the Lord and didn't even have a sin nature to distort things!  The problem was that the voice in her head was not the Lord's and instead of comparing what God said to what the voice said, she acted on the voice.

When we listen to the voice of God, we must know His Word so that we know it is from Him.  All too often I hear people explain that they are hearing from the Lord and what they are hearing is contrary to His Word.  This is why FOLLOWING, FEARING and KEEPING must come first.  Then hearing will be a natural response to what we know about Him.

The flip side is this:  we just spent 8 months watching videos at church of people who listened to the voice of the Lord and had gospel moves all over the place!  The Lord would lay on their hearts to pray for hurting people around them, or to ask forgiveness when they were difficult at work, or to stand up for God's truth in a class, despite the negative response.  These are true examples of listening to the voice of God and acting on it.  By faith, they knew who God is and what His Word teaches, they knew the Gospel and what it means in life, and when the Lord nudged them to act, they obeyed.  What a wonderful example of LISTENING for all of us!  (to see the videos:  click here)

So what voice do you hear in your head and what is your process to determine if it is from the Lord or not?  We are commanded by God to listen to His voice, therefore we must commit to knowing His Word and surround ourselves with godly influences to determine if the nudging is from the Lord or from another source...