Description
LOVE STORIES SERMON SERIES
THE BEST OF R & B
ED YOUNG
FEBRUARY 15, 1998
Valentine’s Day is the time we set aside in order to communicate to others how we feel. So we buy presents and candy and cards to show in a tangible way what love is all about. We try to get a handle on this illusive thing called love during this time of year. It is kind of difficult to do. So, today we thought we would embark on a brand new series we call LOVE STORIES in order to find what true love, true passion and true romance are all about.
Love, passion and romance go much deeper than the mindless maze of major television movies, magazine articles and romance novels. Tragically, this shallow and superficial stuff never hits the depths of where true love actually looms.
So with my apologies to Danielle Steele, Sandra Brown and a host of Harlequin novel readers, here goes. We push off on the maiden voyage of this series. This series is for everyone. I believe the truth will be timeless, the principles penetrating and the accounts life-changing. So whether you are a student just entering the dating scene or a single just considering the engagement thing or a spouse just wearing the wedding ring, this topic will mark you, impact you and can change your life.
We have over 2,000 singles who attend our four services every weekend. People tell us from across the country that we have one of the largest singles ministries in the United States of America. We thank God for what He is doing in the singles area. Singles, I have got some wonderful news for you today. Research reflects that over 90% of you will get married in the future. That’s good news, isn’t it, on a Valentine’s weekend? We have a bunch of married folks who attend Fellowship. Moms and Dads, don’t put your brains on auto-pilot during today’s message. I know you don’t want to believe it, but your little children will grow up one day to be big kids and teenagers. They will become interested in the opposite sex and you need to show them the finer art of spouse selection and how to find the ulti-mate. We are going to talk about those things today. So it doesn’t matter what situation you are involved in, you either know a single, are a single or you have children who will grow up to be singles and we are going to get God’s take on true romance, true love and true passion.
We have called today’s message “The Best of R & B.” Now all of us know what R & B means. R & B stands for a style of music known as rhythm and blues. Today let’s add to this definition. Not only does it stand for rhythm and blues, today it will stand for a man and a woman known as Ruth and Boaz. Ruth and Boaz’s love story plays out like the best of R & B. I want to give you God’s relational rhythm of this thing called spouse selection. There are five basic beats and if we miss one beat, if we get out of rhythm a little bit, it can throw the whole song off. So today, let’s just stop and do a rhythm test. Let’s see how good your rhythm is. I am going to count and as I do that, you put your hands together. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. Thank you very much. You are great.
Let’s look at the book of Ruth. Ruth is nestled in the Old Testament. Ruth is a story of love like few other accounts. When we meet Ruth, she is not into the rhythm thing, she is singing the blues. She has a bad case of the blues. Her husband of ten years has just died. She had met him when he and his family had moved from Israel to her land of Moab in order to escape the prevailing famine. They got married, led a storybook life until suddenly he died.
Amazingly, after her husband dies, Ruth does something that is a little bit different. She attaches herself to her godly mother-in-law who had just lost her husband. Her mother-in-law, Naomi, was in a difficult situation. Back then, money and property did not pass from the man to the woman, it passed from man to man to man. So if you were a widow, you were penniless, homeless and downtrodden. Naomi decided to make the trek from Moab back to her home in Bethlehem in the nation of Israel. Ruth goes along with Naomi on this journey.
So they are traveling to Israel probably on donkeys. The Bible says that about half way through this journey, they stopped off, maybe at Jack In The Box, to get something to eat. They are talking over some camelburgers, or whatever, and Naomi says something like this. “Ruth, what are you doing with me? Here you are, young, beautiful and at the zenith of your life. Go back to Moab. You were Ms. Moab in high school. You can meet a guy there. You can get married there. You can start your life afresh there. I am old. I am three times your age. I have nothing to offer, I have no money.”
Now I want to read to you one of the greatest expressions of friendship in all of the Bible. Ruth 1:16. We have Ruth’s reply to Naomi in this Jack In The Box parking lot. I am joking about the location, but this is her reply. “Don’t urge me to leave you, or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God, my God.” What was she saying here? She was saying that she was willing to leave her past, her customs and her god (little g because Moab was a very ungodly place). She was willing to go Naomi’s way and do life God’s way. She was willing to give her life to God and be under Naomi’s authority. That is what she was saying to Naomi.
This brings up the first beat of God’s relational rhythm for spouse selection. Make the move. When you are dating someone you have got to ask yourself two questions. First, you have got to ask yourself if you have made the move from Moab. Have you left your past, your customs, your god (little g) and begun doing life God’s way? The second question you have to ask is whether the person you are dating has made the move from Moab. Have they left their past, their customs, their god (little g) and are they doing life God’s way? Because, if we haven’t made the move, we will never get into God’s groove. We never will. A lot of us here in this high school auditorium are mesmerized by Moab. We are still dropping the flirt and chasing the skirt in Moab. If you know anything about biblical geography, Moab was near one body of water. I swam in this body of water. It is called the Dead Sea. It is called the Dead Sea because nothing lives there. If you want to have a dead life, relationally speaking, make your bed in Moab.
You see, to make the move from Moab, you have got to do something that is tough, something that takes everything that you have got. You have to have endurance, strength, character and integrity. When you make the move from Moab and go God’s way and hit His relational rhythm of spouse selection, you are automatically wiping out 70% of the possible contenders that you could hook up with. You are saying that you are wiping out 2/3rds of the persons who could possibly be your mate. A lot of people don’t want to do that. “What me, wipe out 70%. No way.”
But the Bible says that we are to be joined together, date, and marry only those who are believers so that the Lord, Himself, can be the common denominator in the relationship. Some of us erroneously think that they will just meet the right person at church. “I will just meet her at church. If I meet her at church, I know that she has made the move from Moab.” Well I hate to rain on your party, but that is not necessarily true. A lot of people here have made the move from Moab, but a lot of people here are still mesmerized by Moab.
During my semi-annual trip to the grocery store with Lisa, I walk down the aisles looking for things. I eat a pretty healthy diet so I look for things saying “low fat”, “nutritionally balanced.” I take the product off the shelf. Now I am smart enough to know that what I see and what I hear is not always the real deal, so I turn it around and read the contents. More often than not, this nutritionally balanced, low fat product is full of calories, sugar and additives that will cause cancer and mess your body up. The stuff is trash but from an advertising and marketing perspective, it looks great. A lot of people here say, “Oh, yeah, I am a Christian. I’m a Christ-follower. I am doing spouse selection God’s way.” Well do this. Turn them around and read the contents in their lives. A lot of times, whoa, there is a lot of false advertising going on.
Have you made the move from Moab? Has the person you are dating made the move from Moab? Have they left their past, their customs, their gods to do it God’s way. Parents, you have got to monitor your children’s relationships at a very early age. You’ve got to see if the people they are dating have made the move from Moab.
If you are a student, would you life your hand. Jr. or Sr. High school student, please. I have got some news for you today. Your parents know more than you do! I will say it one more time. Your parents know more than you do. Your mom, your dad, they know more than you do. I didn’t really believe that when I was your age. You may think you are so autonomous, so big, so bad, so cool and that you know the score. You don’t know anywhere near what you think you know. Your parents have gone through life. They have experienced more things than you have experienced at your age. So take their advice. Allow them to monitor the Moab quotient in your friend’s lives. For the most part, they know what is best for you. Children are to submit themselves to their parent’s authority and follow their lead. When I look back on my teenage years, I know that many times I did not understand why my parents were saying a certain thing or doing a certain thing. But now I say, “Thank you, God.”
The question begs to be answered. How do we make the move from Moab? How do we go God’s way? First, we have got to run to a relationship with Christ. Second, we have got to run from people, places and things that keep us mesmerized, messed up and making our bed in Moab. That is the first relational beat in the rhythm of God’s spouse selection.
The second relational beat is that after we make the move, we have got to watch the work. Here is what happened. We left Ruth and Naomi in the parking lot of Jack In The Box eating camelburgers. Ruth and Naomi jump back on their donkeys and make their way up a narrow path. Israel is really hilly. I have been there a couple of times. If you just tried to walk where Jesus walked, you couldn’t do it. The best and biggest athlete here couldn’t do it. Those guys and gals were in shape back then. Anyway as they approach Bethlehem, they see the beautiful fields containing wheat and barley. They knew it was harvest time because the fields were filled with workers. Remember that Naomi was old and unable to do much work. Ruth was her only means of support.
You know what Ruth did? They hit town and Ruth said that she was going to work. She ran out to a field and began working. The Bible says that she began to pick up the excess wheat that the harvesters had dropped. She was collecting it for herself and for Naomi. This was a menial task for peasants, yet she tackled the task tenaciously. Well, guess what happens? Talk about “love is in the air.” This will make the romance novels seem bad. Big, bold, godly, wealthy Boaz shows up. He owned all the fields and was going to check out his property. He was kind of sitting back, looking, talking to some of his lieutenants and he sees this babe out there among the workers following the harvesters. He asked, “Who is that?” I want you to read what his foreman said. Ruth 2:6. “She is the Moabitess who came from Moab with Naomi. She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She went into the field and has worked steadily from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.”
Boaz saw her. He was attracted to her. Then he watched her work. How do you tackle tasks? Do you tackle tasks tenaciously? Have you ever felt too good to do certain tasks? Have you ever felt that your skills level was far above the task? Oftentimes it can be a test. God was giving Ruth a test and Ruth worked tenaciously. She tackled the task and worked hard and it rocked Boaz. Now he had seen a lot of beautiful women. Women probably threw themselves at him. But Ruth had a work ethic. He watched her work.
I would be lying to you if I told you that the first thing that attracted me to Lisa was her work ethic. But her work ethic was something that I saw and appreciated. Definitely, I saw her beauty. You have got to be attracted to the person you are dating and who you are considering marrying. Don’t ever think that you shouldn’t be. I saw Lisa take a job at a local jewelry store at the age of 15. She worked throughout high school and college. Now she is really working with four children and keeping me in line and also doing great things in this church. She is a worker. Lisa is the kind of girl who will work hard at any task that she undertakes.
If you find someone who needs to live a certain lifestyle, in a certain zip code, drive a certain car, head for the hills. Turn away from her or him. You don’t want to mess with them because they will mess you up. You have got to see the work ethic in the person you may be considering marrying. You have got to watch the work. Are you doing that? You have got to marry somebody who is going to be happy whether they are in the fields picking up excess grain or if they are in a mansion with diamonds galore. Can the person go with you no matter where you go? I know that if I walked home and told Lisa I felt led by God to move to Zimbabwe, she would do it. She really would.
And, ladies, check this out. Boaz saw Ruth on a bad hair day, to put it in 90s terminology. She had the ball cap on, grain all over her face, it was bad. But she was attractive and had work ethic. We have unrealistic expectations. The problem is that guys are looking for a girl with the body of Tyra Banks and the morals of Mother Theresa. Women are looking for a guy who looks like Leonardo as in de Caprio with the morals of Billy Graham. We have got to have the chemistry going on, but look at the work. The work matters because marriage is not really lived on some fever pitched level. Most of the time it is on 98.6. Well, what do you do when it is 98.6 and sometimes even colder? You roll up your sleeves and begin to harvest. You work. You commit. You tackle tasks tenaciously.
Let’s go to the third beat. Look for loyalty. Boaz runs up to Ruth and begins to talk to her. He reverenced her and respected her. He looked at her loyalty. Ruth 2:11. “I have been told, Ruth, all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband…” Word had gotten around! “…how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with people who you did not know before.” Maybe he was thinking to himself, “You’re my baby Ruth.” I know that is corny, but Baby Ruth is my favorite candy bar and when you leave today, you may not believe this, but we will have Baby Ruths for everybody. The next time you pass by a candy counter or eat a Baby Ruth, just think about God’s relational rhythm of spouse selection. He looked for loyalty. Naomi had nothing to offer to Ruth, yet Ruth was loyal to her, committed to her, under her authority. Naomi was her mentor. When you are dating somebody, look at their loyalty. In other words, do they have a consistent track record of relationships? Do they have friends who have been friends for a long time or do they play relational hopscotch, jumping from one relationship to another? If you marry someone like that, they will just jump on your head. You have got to look for loyalty. It is big, it is important. Loyalty, oftentimes, is not even thought about because we are so smitten that we forget about the things that matter.
The fourth beat is protect the purity. It will get real quiet in here now. A lot of couples are starting to shift in their seats. The guys are starting to look at their watches. I know. It is a struggle. Let’s go back to the story. Ruth and Boaz were in love. They had the chemistry thing going on. Everything was working for them. Ruth gathers up all the grain and runs home to Naomi. She said, “Girlfriend, I met the man today who is godly and wealthy.” Naomi asked for his name and when Ruth said it, Naomi almost fainted. Naomi told Ruth that Boaz was a relative of her deceased husband. Then she began to explain to Ruth something called the Leverite law. Stay with me. Back in that time, in Israel, the Leverite law meant that if a husband died, his next of kin had the option to marry his widow to further the family name and also to redeem all of the dead husbands holdings. Man, if that were true today, we would really think about who our brothers are dating, wouldn’t we? “Don’t date her. No way.” Wow, the stakes would go way up, wouldn’t they?
Naomi told her that it looked like Boaz was the next of kin and that he therefore would be the one to redeem her. She needed to give him the option to marry her. So here is what happened. It seems kind of strange, but it wasn’t back in that day. Naomi told Ruth to dress up in her best attire, put her Tommy Girl cologne on and find Boaz while he was sleeping on the threshing floor. You see, the men slept on the threshing floor during harvest so they could take turns threshing the wheat. She told her that when she found him she was to lie at his feet. That would symbolize that she want him to redeem her and marry her and buy all of her dead husband’s estate.
Now the men all used their cloaks as blankets. So can’t you just imagine Ruth, dressed in her best, creeping around a bunch of sleeping men? When Ruth finally found Boaz, she lay at his feet. Maybe it was her perfume that awoke him. Immediately Boaz knew that his prayers were answered, that she wanted him to redeem her, to marry her.
Let’s stop right here because Boaz protected the purity of the relationship. He could have easily had sex with her. He was a wealthy man with many homes. No problem. No big deal. But he didn’t. He loved her enough to protect her sexual purity. He waited until marriage to have sexual intercourse with his bride. If you are involved in sexual intercourse outside of marriage, you are going to experience problems.
Let me tell you why. I call this the car approach. If you have relations outside the marriage bed, it is like a car running over you. You will be confused in your judgment. The reason many people are hooking up with the wrong persons in record numbers is because of the power of sex. Sex confuses our power to reason. We can’t get a good read if the person is right or wrong for us. First, it abuses a gift bestowed to us from God, Himself. It is a beautiful gift, a lovely gift, an exhilarating gift that words truly can’t describe. And we are to practice it in the context of one man, one woman committed before God in marriage. So if you want to be abused, confused and refused, go ahead and have sex outside of marriage.
It is kind of like this. What is your name? Vince. Will you please let me have your set of car keys? What kind of a car do you drive? A Chevy truck. He’s a truck man. I drive a truck, too, man, a Ford F150. OK. Let’s say that I could change these car keys into a set of keys for a $225,000 Lamborghini Countach. Now I know, because we called this week to find out how expensive these cars are. A Lamborghini Countach is an incredible car. I have never seen one, but I hear they are. Now what if I said, Vince, I am feeling generous today. Here, I want to give you this Lamborghini Countach. He would probably give me a hug and tell me that he enjoyed the message then say, “See ya.”
Now Vince is going to take care of that car, isn’t he? He is going to wash the car, put the proper fuel in the car. He wouldn’t even think about taking that car and messing it up and going off-road like he probably does in his truck. He wouldn’t do that. We are talking about a Lamborghini Countach. It is not made for that. It will mess it up.
We take the gift of sex, which makes the Lamborghini Countach seem pathetic and we say that we won’t do it God’s way because we want to do it our way. We take it off-road and it causes frustration, guilt, annihilation. God is saying to take the gift and put it on the freeway, that sex is to be driven within the confines of the racetrack called marriage. Protect the purity of your relationship.
Now I know that many of you here are involved in sex outside of marriage. If you make the decision today to tell God that you want to go His way, He will give you the strength, the endurance to abstain until marriage. It is not easy. Lisa and I remained pure until we got married. I had to fight her off me for seven years. You know that’s not true but, if we can make it, so can you. The great news is that we serve a God of a second and third chance. I don’t care what you have done in this area, if you tell God that you want to go His way today, He will do wonderful things in your life.
A close friend of mine was involved with a lot of different ladies sexually before he got married. He met a girl after he became a Christian. They had both made the move from Moab and they dated for a year and remained pure. On the wedding night they gave each other one of the greatest gifts you can give, sexual purity.
Let me add one caveat. Make sure when you are dating someone that you do the NFL film thing. Go slow. You don’t want to go fast. Go slow and get in God’s flow and His rhythm and everything will be OK. Every time I preach on premarital sex it goes the same way. I am out there shaking hands and 10 to 1 women will thank me for the message. The guys don’t. It is hilarious.
The next beat is consider the counsel. Ruth and Boaz have not slept together. Boaz wants to redeem Ruth and you think that now everything is just going to run smoothly but we have a case of the blues coming. That’s right. Boaz sings the blues. He reports to Naomi and Ruth that he hates to tell them, but he is not the closest relative. There is someone else closer. But Boaz loved Ruth so much that he tracked down that relative and began to wheel and deal and negotiate. He was willing to buy and redeem Ruth’s dead husband’s estate, Naomi’s dead husband’s estate. He was willing to pay for the whole deal. He offered the check, the earnest money. This relative responded that he couldn’t even hang with that. So we have Boaz and Ruth getting married. It is a beautiful, beautiful love story. The Bible calls Boaz, Ruth’s kinsmen redeemer.
Let me tell you how beautiful this story is from an even different perspective. Ruth and Boaz died but before they died they had a child. This child became the grandfather of David. Here is Ruth and Boaz looking down from heaven. The great thing about heaven is that we will discover that insignificant decisions have significant implications. Ruth and Boaz meeting did not just happen. It was orchestrated by God, Himself. They see from heaven that their son is the grandfather of David and that years and years later, Jesus Christ, comes from the lineage of David. Unbelievable. So I truly believe that the decisions that we make that we think are no big deal, may have significant implications. I believe God can use our decision to make the move, watch the work, look for loyalty, protect the purity and consider the counsel for something unbelievable.
The fifth beat I said was to consider the counsel. Ruth considered Naomi’s counsel. She listened to Naomi. What if Ruth had said that she didn’t want to listen to her, that she didn’t want to pay any attention to the Leverite law? She would have missed everything. She would have missed Boaz. She would have missed being in the lineage of Christ. But she listened. She paid attention to Naomi. When you are dating someone, make sure that you run the dating relationship by a number of people who have a good read on your life. Run it by people who are older than you and more mature. They will be willing to speak the truth in love to you. Most of us don’t want to do that. We want to run the relationship by people who will tell us how great the situation is. Many people won’t want to ruffle our feathers or rock the boat. But if you are considering marriage, you want people who are not afraid to rock the boat because you are considering something that will last until the day you die. Are you doing that in your dating relationships? Students, are you listening to your parents? Are you considering their counsel? If you don’t, one day you will look back and see that you are messed up and mesmerized in Moab. Time is so short. Take advantage of it.
Let me add something else to this story. This story is also a reflection of what Christ did for us. Remember that the Bible calls Boaz the kinsmen redeemer? Jesus Christ is our redeemer. Boaz redeemed Ruth and Christ has redeemed you and me by spilling His blood on the cross for all of our sins. So Jesus is our redeemer.
One more time let’s put our hands together. One, two, three, four, five. That is God’s relational rhythm of spouse selection. Get in on it. Follow it. Pick up on every beat. Your life and your relational world will never, ever be the same. That’s right. You can have and experience the best of R & B.