Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2680
“And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave you, or to return from following after you: for where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge: your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” Ruth 1:16.
THIS was a very brave, outspoken confession of faith. Please notice that it was made by a woman, a young woman, a poor woman, a widow woman and a foreigner. Remembering all that, I should think there is no condition of gentleness, or of obscurity, or of poverty, or of sorrow which should prevent anybodyfrom making an open confession of allegiance to God when faith in the Lord Jesus Christ has been exercised. If that is your experience, my dear Friend, then whoever you may be, you will find an opportunity, somewhere or other, of declaring that you are on the Lord’s side. I am glad that all candidates for membership in our Church make their confession of faith at our Church Meetings. I have been told that such an ordeal must keep a great many from joining us, yet I notice that where there is no such ordeal, they often have very few members—but here we are with 5,600 or thereabouts, in Church fellowship and, very seldom, if ever, finding anybody kept back by having to make an open confession of faith in Christ. It does the man, the woman, the boy, or the girl—whoever it is—so much good for once, at least, to say right out straight, “I am a Believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and I am not ashamed of it,” that I do not think we shall ever deviate from our custom. I have also noticed that when people have once confessed Christ before men, they are very apt to do it again somewhere else. And they thus acquire a kind of boldness and outspokenness upon religious matters—and a holy courage as followers of Christ—which more than make up for any self-denial and trembling which the effort may have cost them.
I think Naomi was quite right to drive Ruth, as it were, to take this brave stand in which it became an absolute necessity for her to speak right straight out and say, in the words of our text, “Entreat me not to leave you, or to return from following after you: for where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge: your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” What is there for any of us to be ashamed of in acknowledging that we belong to the Lord Jesus Christ? What can there be that should cause us to be ashamed of Jesus, or make us blush to acknowledge His name?—
“Ashamed of Jesus? That dear Friend On whom my hopes of Heaven depend? No, when I blush, be this my shame, That I no more revere His name.” We ought to be ashamed of being ashamed of Jesus! We ought to be afraid of being afraid to acknowledge Him! We ought to tremble at trembling to confess Him and to resolve that we will take all suitable opportunities that we can find of saying, first to relatives, and then to all others with whom we come into contact, “We serve the Lord Christ.”
I should think that Naomi was—certainly she ought to have been—greatly cheered by hearing this declaration from Ruth, especially the last part of it—“Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” Naomi had suffered great temporal loss. She had lost her husband and her two sons, but now she had found the soul of her daughter-in-law. And I believe that, according to the scales of true judgment, there ought to have been more joy in her heart at the conversion of Ruth’s soul than grief over the death of her husband and her sons. Our Lord Jesus has told us that “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents.” And I always understand, by that expression, that there is joy in the heart of God, Himself, over every sinner’s repentance! Well, then, if Naomi’s husband and sons were true Believ-Volume 46 www.spurgeongems.org 1
ers—if they had been walking aright before the Lord—as, let us hope, they had done, she need not have felt such sorrow for them as could at all compare with the joy of her daughter-in-law being saved.
Perhaps, some of you, dear Friends, have had bereavements in your homes, but if the death—the temporal death— of one should be the means of the spiritual life of another, there is a clear gain! I am sure there is and though you may have gone weeping to the grave, yet if you have evidence that, with those tears, there were also tears of repentance on the part of others of your family—and with that sad glance into the grave there was also a believing look at the dying, risen, and living Savior—you are decidedly a gainer and you need not say with Naomi, “I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home, again, empty.” Really, Naomi, with her converted daughter-in-law at her side, if she had only been able to look into the future, might have been a happier woman than when she went away with her husband and her boys, for now she had with her one who was to be in the direct line of the progenitors of Christ—a right royal woman—for I count that the line of Christ is the true imperial line and that they were the most highly honored among men and women who were in any way associated with the birth of the Savior into this world. And Ruth, though a Moabitess, was one of those who were elected to share in this high privilege. So I beg you, if you have been sorrowful because of any deaths in your family circle, pray God to outweigh that sorrow with a greater measure of joy because, by His Grace, He has brought other members of your family to trust in Jesus!