[Machine transcription]
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.
Please be seated.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
So this morning I want to attempt what is probably a vicar mistake.
I want to touch on each of the three readings appointed for this 18th Sunday after Pentecost.
Now, in my defense, when I talked to pastors Wolf, Mueller, and LeBlanc about this plan,
they didn’t say, don’t do it.
But I did kind of see that look in their eyes of, okay, good luck with that.
So, any one of these three lessons would be a great text to preach on.
But the reason that I want to do this this morning is that there is this compelling theme
running throughout these readings, and that is this theme of suffering in faith.
And more specifically, how our suffering in faith accomplishes God’s will.
And so what I want to do is I want to work chronologically starting with the Old Testament
and back to the Epistle.
So about 20 years ago, my family and I, we were living very comfortably in a house that
we had built on a couple of acres that my parents had given to us.
I was working, I had gone on active duty in the military about a year before.
I was working in Fort Worth and it was it was kind of like a temporary thing
It’s like an internship, and I knew that I might not be there
You know any length of time that within the next year or two I could get moved
So sure enough one day. I got this official notification by email
You’re being reassigned to a unit in Marshall, Texas, so if you don’t know where Marshall, Texas is
Let’s just say it’s basically western Louisiana.
So I’ll admit, I wasn’t ready for this.
Who wants to pick up and move from somewhere close to your family where you’re content
and you’re surrounded by family and friends and move somewhere that might even be considered
a different culture?
So I think before I even told my wife, Carrie, what was going to happen, I had emailed this
mentor friend of mine and basically asked the question, okay, how do I get out of this?
And he responded back, it’s God’s will.
I didn’t like that answer, so I said back to him, I’m not so sure it’s as much God’s
will as it is Colonel Swope’s will.
So Colonel Swope was the officer who was responsible for assigning people.
Well, he responded back pretty quickly with, Whither thou goest?
That was it.
And I thought, okay, I know that’s from the Bible, but I’m not sure exactly where.
And this is before the days of Google, so I think I had to just look it up on my own.
And I finally figured out, sure enough, it’s the King James Version translation of part
of today’s reading from Ruth, where she says, where you go, I will go.
So what this mentor was trying to tell me in not so many words was, have faith.
God is doing something for a reason.
He’s doing this for a reason.
Again, these are pretty hard words to hear when you don’t want to hear them and when
you’re not ready to hear them, and you’re questioning why this is happening.
Why is God putting this on me right now?
Doesn’t He know that I’m content?
And so you likely have asked these same kinds of questions.
So this is when we want to look to things like the examples of faith that we see in
today’s lessons, so that we can be comforted with the assurance of God’s purpose when we’re
going through trials, even suffering.
So we want to start in the land of Moab, east of Judah, where this man named Elimelech,
he’s immigrated with his wife Naomi and their two sons because they’re being driven out
of Judah by this famine.
Now we might recall that the Moabites were historical enemies of the Israelites, so it’s
It’s not a small thing that this family has picked up and moved to try to go scratch out
a living in a hostile land.
Moreover, Elimelech dies and leaves Naomi as a widow with these two sons.
And then, to make matters even worse, they marry Moabite women, women named Orpah and
Ruth.
And they are pagans, and while this isn’t expressly forbidden to marry Moabite women,
it was certainly frowned upon.
So, Naomi is already enduring the shame of being an alien without a husband, and she
has these two sons who’ve married pagans, and then she’s dealt yet another blow as the
two sons die.
So ten years later, Naomi finds herself a stranger in a strange land in what is arguably
a worse position than if she had just stayed in Judah.
Maybe she would have just died there, but that would have been better.
But now there’s this faint glimmer of hope for Naomi as she hears that this famine in
has passed. So she can at least return home even if it’s in shame and
humiliation for what has happened to her. She still has faith in this God of
Israel despite the suffering that she has endured so far. And so her example of
faith has undoubtedly made an impression on the daughters-in-law as they want to
accompany her back to Bethlehem. But Naomi insists, no, no, I don’t want you to go
with me. You need to stay here because there’s probably nothing for you in
Bethlehem. Now, Naomi can’t give them other sons to marry, and what are the odds
that an Israelite man is going to want to marry these two widows who are from
Moab? But it’s here that we see this divergence of faith between the two
daughters-in-law. Naomi’s words, even though she says them in love, now cause
Orpah to draw away from her, and she will go back to her people and to her gods.
Orpah’s desire for assurance and comfort and perhaps even in her faith of her own ability
to make her way now means that she’s going to turn her back on the God of Israel.
She no longer clings to what faith she had been given.
But Ruth, on the other hand, in her confession of faith with words that we often hear and
recall and repeat, tells Naomi, 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.” Now, we shouldn’t have any
doubt that Ruth loves Naomi and stays with her partly because of this new
family tie she has, but we don’t want to lose sight of that last phrase, your God
my God, because it is Ruth’s confession of faith, and she steadfastly holds to
this faith that she’s been given, and to Naomi’s example, and she returns with
Naomi to Bethlehem.
So now, Ruth’s future in the lineage of Christ is set in motion.
Speaking of Bethlehem, let’s talk about the man from Bethlehem, Jesus, in our Luke text.
And he encounters this group of lepers on his journey to Jerusalem.
I’m not really sure that we quite get the severity of leprosy.
I mean, we know what it is, but in the Old Testament world, it was not only a physical
affliction, it was a spiritual affliction as well.
Well, the book of Leviticus contains two complete chapters dealing with leprosy, the rules for
leprosy for being clean and when you could return to worship.
So these lepers weren’t only physically afflicted, they were spiritually unclean as well.
So they cry out to Jesus, Master, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.
So like others that we hear about who have heard about Jesus’ words, faith has taken
hold and they expect that he can perform this miracle for them.
They already have faith.
But in this cry, have mercy, notice they don’t say heal us or cleanse us, they say have mercy.
They are begging for salvation.
And in hearing their plea, Jesus tells them to go to the temple so that they may be seen
by the priest, for this is in accordance with the law regarding leprosy.
And they had to have their healing validated.
But this isn’t the only reason Jesus told them to go.
He thinks that they’re going to go and show that they now have faith in Christ and that
the law is now put away, that the law for salvation is now cast aside.
Yet of course, as we hear, yet on their way, only one of the lepers returns to praise Jesus.
And oh, by the way, he was a Samaritan and is hated by most Jews.
So, he himself was once joined with these nine others, but he has now separated himself
by virtue of his faith and his thanksgiving.
These other nine were joined to him, and they have now separated themselves by unbelief
because they have forgotten the source of their healing.
So Jesus turns to his disciples and he kind of sort of rhetorically asks, where are the
other nine?
Of course, he knew they weren’t going to turn back.
So, then he praises Samaritan’s faith as the cause for him being made well, that is,
that he’s now saved.
This Samaritan, this outsider, has endured suffering for the hope of Christ’s salvation
and mercy, and now that he’s gotten it, he grabs onto it and doesn’t let go of his faith.
So this Samaritan, who was once an unlikely disciple, now follows Christ in faith.
Now, to Paul, another unlikely disciple, he was no stranger to suffering.
He had been in prison multiple times, he’d been threatened with flogging, he’d been threatened
with stoning, he’d been shipwrecked on his way to Rome, and now he was in jail there
again and had little hope for deliverance.
And his words to Timothy in today’s epistle lesson are a foretaste of what Timothy could
expect.
So already in chapter one, Paul has encouraged Timothy, and he says, he’s encouraged him
to share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God.
And Paul is not, he’s not sugarcoating anything here.
You’re going to suffer.
So now in chapter 2 he says again, share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
So the one who enlists as a soldier ought to do so with some kind of focused mindset
knowing that he ought to be ready to fight, and if required, die for the sake of others
and at the command of the one he serves.
And Paul goes on to use a couple of other vocations as examples.
The athlete cannot win the competition if he doesn’t dedicate himself to winning by
the rules.
The industrious farmer deserves the first fruits of his hard work.
So Timothy, Paul says, must have a singular focus in his calling as a disciple and an
apostle.
And so, to encourage Timothy in this task, Paul commends him to Christ.
Be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
Remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead.
Timothy is to proclaim the word with the certainty that it will accomplish the work of the gospel.
Paul says to him, the word of God is not bound.
It does not return empty.
And when suffering comes, as it will, Timothy must not despair and think that his work will
be in vain.”
Paul himself no doubt experienced this, these moments of uncertainty and faltering faith.
So he reminds Timothy that Christ remains faithful even when our faith dims if we only
cling to the promise of salvation in Him alone.
So, in each of these lessons, God is using faith, especially suffering in faith, to accomplish
His will.
Now, we have the joy of looking at these texts today and seeing that even though it may not
be obvious at first, it’s there.
Where you go, I will go.
Your God, my God.
These are the words that Ruth spoke to Naomi as her confession of faith in the God of Israel.
God used Naomi’s example of love and her enduring faith through all these hardships she experienced
to bring Ruth to faith with a willingness to trust in God to the point of leaving everything
behind and going to an unfamiliar land.
And how could Ruth have known that in enduring the shame of being a Moabite woman in the
land of Judah, she would one day be redeemed in marriage and be a forerunner or have a
son as the forerunner of Christ. Rise, go your way, your faith has made you well.”
These are the words that Jesus spoke to the Samaritan leper whose faith had
healed him, indeed it had saved him. So Jesus used this outsider, an anathema to
the Jews, to show how true abiding faith is one of thankfulness and how the
kingdom of God is now for all people. This was actually for the benefit of the
disciples as much as anyone, and they were seeing before their eyes this
fulfillment of Luke chapter 8. The Samaritan man was the example of the
seed in the good soil. He had heard the word, he held fast to it, and he bore
fruit. The nine Jewish lepers were the seeds in the rock.
They believed for a while, but fell away when they were tested. Share in
suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. The words that St. Paul wrote to
Timothy to temper him for the hardships that were no doubt to come. The life of
an apostle would not be a cakewalk, and Paul wrote this, he didn’t write it as a
warning, but as encouragement. The strength to withstand suffering for the
gospel would come only through the certainty of grace in Christ Jesus, and
that God is going to use Timothy in his suffering to spread his word. So kind of
going back to the story I told at the beginning about our move, I think it’s
pretty ridiculous now that I thought I was somehow being made to suffer. It was
only a little uncomfortable. It turned out good, right Carrie? I’m looking for
Carrie to nod. What my friend was trying to get at is that something was being
done for God’s purposes, and it was all his will. Moreover, his response to me when
he said, wither thou goest, it made me think of this example of Ruth today, her
loyalty to her family, to faith, and the trust that she placed in the Lord.
So we won’t always, if we ever do, understand why things happen to us the way they do, especially
our suffering and what God is seeking to accomplish by it.
So we’re going to too often focus inward, blow our own discomfort and trials out of
proportion, and then we fail to look to the left and right to our neighbor where we might
see true suffering.
We’ll be afraid, our faith will be tested, we will falter, we will forget to be thankful
for the blessings we have.
But as Paul says, God is faithful even when we are not.
He promises never to leave or forsake us.
Luther wrote, without trials a person can know neither scripture nor faith, nor can
he fear and love God.
If he has never suffered, he cannot understand what hope is.
So suffering directs our thoughts away from ourselves and they point instead to the cross.
The cross where Jesus Christ suffered and died to fulfill the will of the Father.
So we know that we have a God who did suffer and does suffer with us and does so to draw
us closer to him.
So in the end, the will of God that is accomplished by our suffering is that we
put our hope and our trust solely in Him as our Savior. And after you have
suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal
glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
Amen. Now the peace of God which surpasses all
understanding guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
