Ruth Part 2 - Unconditional Friendship

About a week and a half ago I posted God Sent Ruth - Friendship, which is a great message from my old pastor, Mark, from 1997. He continued on with Ruth the following week. You may think that studying an Old Testament character such as Ruth might be dull or boring, but it's amazing how much grace can be found here!

Among other things in this message, Mark talks about friendship - friendship between Christians (which of course should be rich and unconditional, but is often full of conditions and judgmentalism), and friendship between Christians and non-Christians - which Christians often sadly stay away from, or at least only view from an evangelistic standpoint. He sidetracks off of Ruth's story with his own touching story of a decision he made to relate to a certain coworker not in a "Christian" or "religious" context, and not for the purpose of evangelizing him, but rather from the perspective of unconditional friendship. The coworker knew he was a pastor and kept expecting Mark to preach at him about Christ, and in fact he even kept bringing up Christian stuff himself, but Mark simply related to him as a friend who loved him unconditionally. It's amazing what can happen if we just love people.

Mark also reiterates what he had said the previous week about God having made a LAW that said no Moabite shall be a part of the congregation of Israel, but yet here was Ruth, the Moabitess, coming into it with Naomi. The New Testament would later say that if a person broke any single law, he was guilty of all and was under the curse... and yet so many blessings would come out of this act of Ruth being a true friend - forsaking her own people and way of life - and clinging to Naomi and becoming a part of her own people. Did you know that Jesus descended from Ruth, the Moabitess?!

There's so much more here. This is the kind of stuff I was weaned on in my early days of having begun to shed legalism and embrace grace. I can't say enough how I highly recommend giving this a listen!

God sent Ruth - Friendship

I was folding laundry tonight (YES, I'm the laundry person in our house!), and while doing that I began listening to another excellent message from my old pastor, Pastor Mark, from 1997. I became so excited to share it that I stopped what I was doing and went to the computer to begin uploading it, so I could post it here when I was done. Well, I'm done, and here it is. :)

This is a great message. Of course, I'm biased, but I really do think you'll get a wonderful perspective of God by listening to this! I really don't want to give anything away, because Mark really does a wonderful job of laying the foundation and making so many wonderful points along the way. I'll just say that the name Ruth means friendship, and Ruth the Moabitess ended up becoming a part of Israel. What's, um, interesting, is that God's commandment had forbidden Moatibes to ever enter into God's household, but yet here we have Ruth - friendship - coming into this fellowship.

Like I said, there are so many wonderful little tidbits throughout this message. I encourage you to give this a listen and let me know what you think.