Risks of Faith

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This week we continued our journey through the story of Ruth by hearing from yet another character in it. Hear this week from Boaz as he marvels at the incredible risk of faith Ruth took and the gift of life brought about because of it. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Risks of Faith

For two weeks now we have been working our way through the story of Ruth in a teaching series I am simply calling, “A Love Story.” This hasn’t been quite our normal journey, though. Rather than merely telling you about the story as I normally would, we have been looking at the events described in the pages of Scripture through the eyes of the people who experienced them. Naomi took us through the awful events of the first part of the story. Then, last week, we heard from Ruth as she unpacked her incredible first day gleaning to provide food for Naomi and her, and how she stumbled upon the field of a distant relative named Boaz. This morning, we are going to jump forward a few weeks to the end of the barley season to hear some more of the story…

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Morning Musing: Luke 14:28-30

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“For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, after he has laid the foundation and cannot finish it, all the onlookers will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man started to build and wasn’t able to finish.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Sometimes a thought about one thing can lead to an idea with an entirely different focus, which serves to take you back to the first thing after all. It’s a nice, little circular journey. If you do it right, though, you wind up a little further down the road than you started. Let me share a quick jaunt I’ve been on recently with you this morning.

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Digging in Deeper: Amos 5:24

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“But let justice flow like water, and righteousness, like an unfailing stream.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Karl Marx is infamous (or perhaps famous depending on your perspective) for his observation that “religion is the opium of the people.” As you can perhaps guess, he wasn’t a fan of it. That disdain lives on in our culture today in a variety of places including the church on occasion. It is trendy for some churches to talk about how religion is bad, but a relationship with Jesus is good. In this passage from Amos, God seems to agree. Let’s talk about why and what’s really going on here.

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Digging in Deeper: Amos 5:20-23

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“Won’t the day of the Lord be darkness rather than light, even gloom without any brightness in it? I hate, I despise, your feasts! I can’t stand the stench of your solemn assemblies. Even if you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; I will have no regard for your fellowship offerings of fattened cattle. Take away from me the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Israel was a very religious nation. They observed any number of festivals and rituals. They offered sacrifices. They sang songs and prayed prayers. And it seemed like all of this religiosity on their part was working. After all, their economy was booming, and their military was strong. Clearly God was for them and nothing bad could happen to them. And then Amos came out of the fields from keeping his sheep and delivered this warning to them. Let’s talk today about what this meant for Israel and what it might mean for us.

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Digging in Deeper: Amos 5:14-15

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“Pursue good and not evil so that you may live, and the Lord, the God of Armies, will be with you as you have claimed. Hate evil and love good; establish justice at the city gate. Perhaps the Lord, the God of Armies, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the most dangerous things in life is to be convinced we are on the right track when we are really on the wrong one. More than once in the writings of the Hebrew prophets we find them including the response of the people to God’s declaration of judgment coming on them. And in several of these responses we find them expressing shock at the reprimand they have received. They genuinely believed they were on the right track and weren’t doing anything wrong. After all, they were practicing various aspects of the religion faithfully. Wasn’t that enough to make God happy? Yet He wanted more. Let’s talk about what more He wanted from them and what this might mean for us.

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