Tuesday 4 November 2014

Your People will be My People and Your God my God

Your people will be my people and your God my God.

“But Ruth replied,“don’t urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.
Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.
May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely if anything but death separates you and me.”
                                                                                                                               Ruth 1:16,17 (NIV)
The rest of the story goes this way God brings a series of circumstances together and blesses Ruth, a Moabite woman and her mother-in-law Naomi an Israelite.  She meets and marries Boaz and they have a son named Obed.
The last verses of the book of Ruth read:
"Salmon the father of Boaz, Boaz, the father of Obed, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David."
                 Ruth 4:21, 22 (NIV)
Matthew chapter one verse five reminds us that Boaz’s mother was Rahab.
That same chapter shows us all the line of Jesus.  Starting from Abraham going through Rahab and Ruth to Jesus, himself.
Can you say what Ruth said? Are you truly followers of the one true and living God. Or, are you a follower of a particular pastor, preacher or evangelist?
I’ve heard many people over the years say they follow the teachings of various preachers many to their detriment.
A few years ago in our city a minister of a fair sized church sinned and fell from grace. Quite a few of those who had been following him fell away from church. They were following the man not God.
Paul had the same problem to address in Corinth. Writing 1Corinthians he states
“For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men? 
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task.  
I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.  
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.  
The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor.  
For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. 
By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds.  
For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 
1 Corinthians 3:4-11.
Jesus must be the foundation on which our faith is built.
We can listen and learn from good evangelist and pastors but our foundation must be on the one foundation that cannot be shaken, that of Jesus Christ.
Think about it.

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