Discover The Word

Tuesday, June 15, 2010, Part 1

The story of Ruth

IDEA: God’s work in our lives is continuous but often hidden.

PURPOSE: To help listeners understand how God is at work even though we may not see His work in our experience.

Do you remember Marion Anderson singing the Spiritual, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”?

Did you respond to it?

Does God REALLY have the whole world in His hands?

Is the song a statement of fact based on experience or is it wishful thinking?

I. The story of Ruth is a story of ordinary people living ordinary lives. Could they or would they sing along with Marion Anderson?

Where did the characters in the story see God at work in their lives?

The story doesn’t have any great military victories, miracles, or other startling evidence of God at work in their lives. Have you ever experienced a miracle?

Would you say that the characters in the story would be good people to testify about God giving “health and happiness”?

Why do you think the author of Ruth presents the working of God in their lives with such conscious understatement?

The writer mentions God directly only twice and these frame the story:

Ruth 1:6—”. . . she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited his people in giving them bread.”

Ruth 4:13—”So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife, and when he went in to her, the Lord gave her conception, and she bore a son.”

He attributes Ruth’s arrival on Boaz’s field (a turning point in the story) to “chance,” not to God’s guidance.

II. God’s providence is always at work, although it is not always seen.

Does God have the whole world in His hands?