TRUE LOVE IS LOYAL LOVE (1 OF 4)
INTRODUCTION: An 80-year-old woman was arrested for shop lifting. When she went before the judge he asked her, "What did you steal?" She replied: a can of peaches. The judge asked her why she had stolen them and she replied that she was hungry. The judge then asked her how many peaches were in the can. She replied “six”. The judge then said, "I will give you six days in jail." Before the judge could actually pronounce the punishment the woman's husband spoke up and asked the judge if he could say something. He said, "What is it?” The husband said “She also stole a can of peas."
All great love stories contain an element called LOYALTY. Without loyalty, it’s not TRUE love.
This sermon is the first of four parts from the book of Ruth. Ruth has four chapters and we will consider one sermon from each chapter. The book of Ruth is a great love story and each chapter reveals a different aspect of the kind of love that God approves and desires. It's as if God looked down upon the drama of Ruth's life and the quality of her love and said, "That's too beautiful to let pass, write it in the Book for all to see." Ruth is a story that reveals what TRUE LOVE is all about.
Today we will study Ruth chapter one which reveals that true love is a loyal love. Let’s consider three qualities of loyal love.
I. LOYAL LOVE IS TOUGH – RUTH 1:15-18
"Look," said Naomi, "your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her." But Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
This chapter is a study in understatement. In twenty-two brief verses the writer paints a picture of tragedy, death and heartache. A famine struck the land of Israel. Because of the famine, an Israelite man, Elimelech, took his wife Naomi and two sons and moved to a foreign country called Moab. Then Elimelech died and Naomi was left a widow with her two sons. They married Moabite women named Orpah and Ruth. Then the two sons died.
So Naomi the mother was left a foreigner in Moab with no blood relatives. She was an old, widowed woman, alone, in a culture that was not easy on women. Naomi decided to go home to the land of Israel. She turned to her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, and told them to return to their father's homes in Moab. Orpah did just that. But the reaction of Ruth, recorded in verses 15-18, is one of the most touching scenes in the Old Testament (Read). These words are often used in wedding ceremonies as marriage vows but they are all the more impressive when we consider that they're made by a woman to her mother-in-law, not a wife to her husband. Ruth was loyal in her love for Naomi. And that loyal love was tough.
In spite of all the terrible circumstances that Ruth has endured as a member of Naomi's extended family, she remains loyal to Naomi, Naomi's people and Naomi's God. Why?
ILLUSTRATION: An elderly man was on his deathbed and his wife was there. The man said "Maevis, you've always been there. You were there through my bankruptcy in '42. You were there through my car accident in '53. You were there through that earthquake in '64. You were there through my heart-attack in '75. And now you're here as I lay dying. Maevis...you've been a curse to me all of my life!"
Isn't that what a lot of people would think in Ruth's sandals? Here she has a mother-in-law who, within the span of a few short years, left her hometown because of famine and lost her husband and both her sons to sudden death. Wouldn't a lot of us say "What is with that woman? Is she jinxed? Is she cursed? Keep me as far away from her as possible!"
That was Naomi's own conclusion about herself. She said "The Lord's hand has gone out against me...the Lord has made my life bitter...the Lord has afflicted me, the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me."
But Ruth said "I'm staying with you." Why? She stayed because of love; loyal love. Loyal love is tough. It remains true in the midst of difficult of circumstances. The measure of a person's love is not where they stand in times of comfort and convenience, but where they stand in times of challenge and adversity. In fact, it's the problems, heartaches and set-backs that we endure together in life that deepen our love and strengthen our bonds.
QUOTE: In his book The Road Less Traveled, Scott Peck wrote: "It is in the whole process of solving problems that life has meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and wisdom; indeed they create our courage and wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn; As Benjamin Franklin said 'These things that hurt, instruct.'
Fearing the pain involved almost all of us attempt to avoid problems. We procrastinate, forget them, pretend they do not exist. We even take drugs to assist us in ignoring them so that by deadening ourselves to the pain we can forget the problems that cause the pain. This tendency to avoid problems and emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness."
Some of us are experiencing tough times; trying times; testing times. Some of us feel like Naomi - "The Lord's hand has gone out against me." The problems and tragedies that families experience have the potential to break us, but they also have the potential to make us. The determining factor is love. How tough is our love?
II. LOYAL LOVE DENIES SELF
Ruth was not self-centered she was “other's-centered”. Notice how her words focus on Naomi: "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die." Loyal love focuses on the other person, denies self and puts others first. This was not the path of least resistance for Ruth. If she wanted to make things easy on herself, all she had to do was go home to Papa and leave the elderly Naomi to fend for herself. By staying with Naomi, Ruth was committing herself to a probable future of poverty, hard work and separation from her native land. Her love moved her to put Naomi before herself.
There has been an unfortunate shift in the pop psychology of our culture toward self-centeredness - judging all relationships by the standard of whether or not my needs are being met and if they're not - dissolving that relationship regardless of who else is affected.
I have no interest in condemning or judging anyone who has been divorced. There's not one of us who have not been touched by that tragedy in our families. So please don't get defensive. But I do have an interest in preserving, protecting and improving the current marriage of each of our church families. With that purpose in mind I affirm that personal unhappiness is not grounds for divorce. "I'm going to leave my husband, preacher, and God understands." "Oh really? Why is that?" "Because I'm not happy in the marriage and I know God wants me to be happy." Or
"Because I don't love him anymore and I know God wants me to be in love." Or, "Because she doesn't fulfill me and I know God wants me to be fulfilled."
The Bible says that what God wants for us is contentment which is born of self-denying, self-sacrificing obedience. When the New Testament was written most marriages were arranged by one's parents or a professional match-maker. Often the first time a husband and wife had ever seen each other was on their wedding night. People got married and then loved each other because they were married. It was to people in those kinds of marriages that Paul wrote "Husbands love your wives", (not "leave them.") And they were to love them as Christ loved the church. How did Christ love the church? He loved the church through self-denial. He gave up every possession, every privilege and every comfort that He had enjoyed in heaven, to come and live in poverty on Earth. Through self-sacrifice he surrendered His life to a torturous death by crucifixion that He might make up for that which was lacking in His bride the church. Men, what have we denied ourselves for our wives lately? What have we sacrificed for our families lately? True love is a choice to deny self and meet someone else's needs.
It was to people in troubled marriages that Paul wrote to stay married to an unbeliever, if they were willing, and the reason was for the sake of the children (I Corinthians 7:12-14). Today that motive is often disparaged but it shouldn't be. Loyal love denies self for the sake of another.
Parents know this kind of love. One mother wrote of her child:
You are the trip I did not take; you are the pearls I cannot buy.
You are my blue Italian lake; you are my piece of foreign sky.
You are my Honolulu moon; you are the book I did not write.
You are my heart's unuttered tune; you are a candle in my night.
You are the flower beneath the sun, in a dark sky a bit of blue;
Answering disappointment's blow with, "I am happy, I have you!"
Barbara Johnson wrote the following in her book Fresh Elastic For
Stretched Out Moms: You know you’re a Mom when:
* Your son comes home from college and has rented a U-Haul trailer to carry the dirty clothes he wants you to wash.
* You have an assortment of 17 handmade clay ashtrays and no one in your family smokes.
* Your three-year-old calls you into the bathroom to retrieve the toy out of the toilet.
* Your freezer is packed with 27 boxes of Girl Scout cookies your daughter couldn't sell to anybody else.
* You are in a clothes store and your teenage daughter keeps calling you by your first name, so nobody will suspect that she is shopping with her mother.
* You find yourself singing the theme song from "Barney"
That's loyal love. It is self-denying, self-sacrificing, and others-oriented. It is love that finds its fulfillment, joy and happiness in the service of another. Even, as in the case of Ruth, and Jesus, when that love is undeserved, unrequested, and in many cases, unrequited.
III. LOYAL LOVE ENDURES
Ruth said to Naomi "May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely if anything but death separates you and me." And when Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her to leave.
Right here Ruth made a life-time commitment to her mother-in-law. She would remain true and loyal...for life. Ruth would love Naomi "Till death do us part." Loyal love endures. That's the way God has loved us - with an enduring love.
Romans 8:38-39 “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Most of us are tempted at some time in our life to quit, give up, and throw in the towel when it comes to the people we love.
QUOTE: Susan Sussman said "You show me a woman who hasn't fantasized getting in a car and leaving home, and I'll show you a woman who doesn't drive."
But loyal love never fails - it endures as long as there is life. And as long as there is life and love, there is hope.
Billy Graham's wife, Ruth, wrote the following in her book: Sitting by My Laughing Fire:
The Prodigal
She waited for the call that never came;
Searched every mail for a letter, note, or card that bore his name;
And on her knees at night, and on her feet all day,
She stormed Heaven's Gate in his behalf;
She pled for him in Heaven's high court.
"Be still, and wait," the word He gave;
And so she knew He would do, in and for and with him;
That which she never could.
Doubts ignored, she went about her chores with joy;
Knowing, though spurned, His word was true.
The prodigal had not returned,
But God was God, and there was work to do.
CONCLUSION:
"Until Death Do Us Part" by Tom Burgess Christian Standard, July
22, 1990:
The story begins in a small church. A request came from a man for Communion to be brought to his wife. The preacher sent a young nineteen-year-old man. The house was small. The divan and hospital bed took up the entire living room. Peggy was the lady in the bed. Peggy's mom was there and said her son-in-law, John, would be home soon.
The mother showed the young man pictures and told her story. Peggy had been gorgeous, a 9.5 on a scale of 10. The first wedding anniversary found her on crutches; the second, in a hospital bed; the third, a vegetable unable to understand anything. John and Peggy were now in their sixth year of marriage. Peggy was 5'6" tall when she married, but the neuromuscular disease had reduced her to under five feet and less than eighty pounds.
When John came home he quickly stepped past the young man as though he wasn't there. He kissed Peggy and told his unresponding wife all about the day's activities. He then turned and said, "Hi, I'm John. What's your name? I want to thank you for coming. You probably think my wife doesn't understand what is happening. Well, I'm not sure. I don't believe in your church but she does. If she had been well, she would have been there today.
Since she couldn't, I wanted her to have the Lord's Supper."
John gently placed a little cracker and grape juice on Peggy's tongue. She threw up, which often happened. It was all over her face and clothes. John took four or five quick steps to the kitchen where he got a nausea pill and some warm water and a cloth. He began cleaning her while he visited with the young man as though nothing had happened.
As the months passed the young man got to know John and his mother-in-law better. Peggy's mom confessed one day, "I wouldn't blame John if he left. When he said, 'I do,' he had no idea this would happen."
The young man later mentioned this to John. "Do you realize that Peggy's mother wouldn't hold it against you if you left and found someone else?" John said he knew that. "Do you mind if I ask you why you don't?" John's answer was crisp but emotional. "Because that's not what I told her I would do. I told her I would stay by her until she died and she's not dead! If the roles were reversed, she'd be right here taking care of me."
The young man became a preacher and moved away but he kept in touch. Things didn't change and after surviving seventeen years in that condition, Peggy died. Her husband phoned the young man and told him the news.
John is still not a Christian. He didn't realize it, but he practiced everything God intended for marriage commitment. People who look each other in the eyes and say, "I love you," need to make sure they understand what they mean. If you mean you "like" the person, tell him/her that. If you mean infatuation, say infatuation.
If you don't mean Peggy and John love, do them a favor. Don't say "love" because what it means is, "I'm staying with you until you're dead or I'm dead, and there's nothing going to stop that!"
UNTIL DEATH DO US PART does not mean:
Until one of us kills the other,
Until one decides to quit,
Until we hit tough times,
Until I see someone else who is sexier,
Until I find someone who is not so bossy,
Until my wife makes more money than I do,
Until his kids and my kids start having trouble with our kids,
Until I find out my wife is a nag,
Until I find out my husband is a tightwad,
Until we become "Incompatible,"
Until I need to "find myself,"
Until I go through mid-life crises,
Until I don't feel fulfilled,
Until "We just don't love each other any more."
In all of life there are three for whom we are to maintain a fiercely loyal love - Our God, our family and our church!
