Today on the Evangelist Podcast we're looking at the Book of Ruth.
SPEAKER_00The Evangelist Podcast from Revival. Find out what's new in telling people the good news about God, the world, and you with Andy Brinkley and Glenn Scribble.
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to the Evangelist Podcast. We've uh been hearing you, Glenn, speak last week from uh Brighton and CCK.
SPEAKER_02Oh yes, yes, on shining and sewing and investing. Yes. Yeah. And uh so now you're back. I am back from outer space, back from Belfast. So Emma was over in Belfast speaking at the Presbyterian Women's Convention. Now you have never had such firm handshakes in your life as from Presbyterian women in Ireland. Yeah. Hand crushes, real hand crushes. Uh and I was kind of babysitting and chauffeuring and um uh yeah, helping Emma as she spoke there, and then she spoke to some youth groups and uh yeah, to Songs of Praise.
SPEAKER_01Right, yes.
SPEAKER_02So they filmed about four and a half hours, and they're probably gonna edit it down to about four and a half minutes. So Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that's and that'll probably come out what September sort of time?
SPEAKER_02Who knows? Yeah, 2018 or something. I don't know, it'll it'll be a while. It'll be a while, but no, it'll be good and uh a great opportunity for her to tell her story and and speak of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, excellent. And uh how did Bible by the Beach go?
SPEAKER_02Bible by the Beach was sensational, it was definitely the best ever. We've had seven Bible by the Beaches now, and uh we had Richard Pratt from Third Millennium Ministries, he was the main speaker talking about the unstoppable mission of God. And then around him, in terms of the seminar speakers, um we had a brilliant assembly of um some of the greatest evangelists in in the country. So Becky Manley Pippett was there, um Andy Hawthorne was there, Roger Carswell was there, Graham Miller, who we've had on the show before. We've also had Roger Carswell on the show before, uh speaking about evangelism. Um so it was it was a brilliant, um a brilliant weekend, long weekend, uh the first bank holiday in May. Yeah. So uh block that out for next for 2016. Uh come down to the Sunshine Coast and uh Yeah, and yeah, no, it's a it's a great time.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. Um so today we're gonna look at uh the book of Ruth and uh tell us how how you sort of came to thinking about this.
SPEAKER_02I heard a sermon last Sunday in Belfast, and uh someone was speaking about Ruth, and um and as he mentioned chapter one verse sixteen, I thought this has all sorts of implications for evangelism, actually.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02Um so yeah, so one verse sixteen uh so the st I mean the story is uh Naomi and her husband have gone down to um uh Moab to Moab um because there's famine in the land. They're from Bethlehem, the house of bread, and yet famine hits and it's in the times of the judges, so perhaps we're thinking they're just doing what is right in their own eyes, kind of thing. They go down into Moab, uh Naomi's husband dies, then Naomi's two sons die, having married uh two women, having married Orpah and Ruth. And uh Naomi hears that you know there's food back in Israel, so she's gonna go back to Israel. And uh we sort of pick up the story in uh chapter one verse fifteen. Uh Naomi says uh to Ruth, who's clinging on to Naomi, and she says, See, your sister in law Orpah has gone back to her people and to her gods. Return after your sister-in-law. But Ruth said, Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you, for where you go I will go, where you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God. And I thought that's interesting, and I think it has all kinds of implications for evangelism. Right.
SPEAKER_01Jolly guess. Yeah, I mean that that uh verse there that they that featured quite a bit at our our wedding. Okay. Because um uh there's a song that goes along with it.
SPEAKER_02Would you like to come a few words? I wasn't saying that. But uh I don't know how it goes though. Just refresh my memory. Uh YouTube. Okay, alright. We could splice something in at this point. You could claim it it's your voice, I don't know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, uh what was I saying? Um yeah, so uh there is Ruth, she's kind of um Naomi's not her blood relative. No. But uh, you know, there's obviously this really strong bond between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, massive. And and it is kind of covenant language. She wants to cleave to to Naomi and your people will be my people, your God will be my God.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um I looked up the the names just before the podcast, I looked up the the um apparently AUPA means stiff necked. Mm-hmm. Interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. The stiff-necked one just you the thing with a stiff neck is that you don't turn to the left or the right, you just keep going in the direction that you're going in, and and Orpah, she's always known her people, she's always known her gods. That's the way Orpah will go. Uh but Ruth finds salvation really by being a companion of Naomi, who belongs to the people of salvation, and then obviously the kinsman redeemer, later Boaz, will come and redeem her and and uh uh he will he will pay the price for her to to really belong to Israel. But the start of her story is that she decides that she's gonna go with Naomi's people and with Naomi's God. And I wonder if that dual focus um could really help us to think about what is conversion and to really help us with what is evangelism.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so go into that a bit deeper then what it has to do with evangelism.
SPEAKER_02Well, I think if this is what conversion is, if it's if it's saying your God will be my God and your people will be my people, then conversion means coming both to a new God and to a new people. And therefore, you know, one of the things it means is um you we need to consider what our non-Christian friends' gods already are. Uh if our non-Christian friend is currently in the position of being AUPA, then they're they're they're sort of stiff-necked, they're going in a certain direction. And it's the people that they've always known, and it's the gods that they've always known. And so what we need to do is is to to think about what what are the gods that our friends and family already have. Uh interestingly, uh the Moabite's uh chief deity was Chemosh. Um and if you look up the meaning of the word Chemosh, it means destroyer. So, you know, not a not a great god, not the friendliest god that you've ever known in your life. And yet didn't Jesus say, you know, all who have come before me are thieves, and they only come to steal and kill and destroy. But he has come to give life and life in all its fullness. But actually every God outside of Jesus really is a destroyer. Um And so that that helps us to have compassion on our non-Christian friends and family. Um and it's really interesting how the thinking of Chemosh uh kind of infects even Naomi's thinking. Because later on in chapter one, she sort of she goes back to Israel and and she says, I left Israel full and I went and I became empty, and the Lord has turned his hand against me, and he's I was full, but he has made me empty. That sounds to me a lot more like what Chemosh would do. Chemosh the destroyer takes full people and makes them empty, and you know, and and life, according to the way everybody lives it in this world, you live now, and then there's the grave. There's fullness and then there's emptiness. That's what it's like. Um but actually our Lord is very different. Actually, through emptiness he brings us fullness. And actually the whole story of Naomi, the whole story of Ruth really, is is that story of out of hunger they come to the Lord, to the kinsman redeemer, and they are fed, and from emptiness to fullness, that's the way of the Lord. But it's just worth it's worth realizing as you're talking with your non-Christian friends and family, they already have a God. They already have a people. And the people that they belong to is a a people defined by that kind of God. And so their life philosophy will be from fullness to emptiness, will be get as much out of life now because the grave awaits. Um that's their God, and unfortunately, their God is a destroyer. Um we have a new God to offer them.
SPEAKER_01What do you mean by a new God?
SPEAKER_02Well, I th I think it's it's worth knowing that everybody does have a God, and conversion is always a conversion from one God or many gods to the true God. Um and that that means we we must be presenting Jesus as a different God. He is different to the God that people had always, you know, grown up with. So often in evangelism we think that if somebody believes in some kind of gods, we think, oh brilliant, that's sort of common ground that we have between this other person. But of course, in the book of Ruth, you'd never think, oh well, Orpah's got a god, and Naomi's got a gods. They've both got gods, they've got common ground. Of course, no one in the Old Testament thinks like that. They think, well, which god? Which god are you talking about? Because Orpah's thinking about Chemosh, and Naomi's thinking about the Lord, Yahweh. Uh and so we just always need to be making that really clear distinction between God, whoever God might be, and Jesus, and the God who Jesus reveals. Um so we we need to be proclaiming this new and surprising God called Jesus to people. Um because even if they say that they believe in God, the God that they actually believe in, if it's not Jesus, the God they believe in is a destroyer, a life sucker, uh rather than the life giver. So we always need to be talking about Jesus and and we always need to be recommending our God. Um I I love that, that you know, Naomi um uh Ruth is able to say to Naomi, I want your God to be my God. There's something she's she's seen that there's something about Naomi has a God and her God is attractive. I think we might I think in evangelism we need to make that as a as a great priority that the God I'm recommending is my God and he's an attractive God, unlike your God.
SPEAKER_01Evangelism is always about recommending our God. Yeah. Isn't it?
SPEAKER_02It it certainly ought to be. It certainly ought to be. But I find that even even in my evangelism I I promote all sorts of other things not God. So I can talk for ages about a Christian worldview. I can talk for ages about certain benefits of the gospel that you get, like forgiveness and eternal life and feelings of purpose in life and all that sort of stuff. And I can I can talk about all sorts of stuff other than God in evangelism. And you know, you can even get caught up in, you know, the existence of some kind of deity or not. All sorts of things we can talk about in evangelism that aren't are not talking about here is my God. Um even you can talk about the gospel without talking about the God of the gospel. You can even talk about the substitutionary atonement and your sins are laid on Christ and his righteousness is given to you, and and that's great, and and we need to be preaching the gospel, but if we're not preaching the God of the gospel, then we're just sharing an idea, really, rather than recommending I have a God. You know, I know Jesus and He's been faithful to me throughout my life. Let me tell you about that. So that people are attracted by our gods and not not just interested by our ideas, which is so often what evangelism can be.
SPEAKER_01Making it personal and sometimes evangelism has a tendency to default down to like an argument about evidence and you know, about uh authenticity of the Bible and it all just kind of tumbles down into arguments about uh things. About ideas. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02About things. Rather than the yeah, the person who is Jesus, who I know, who is my God, and who is worth following.
SPEAKER_01And that's why testimony makes it so powerful. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know all the answers, but this is what God has done for me, you know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And it's interesting that so often testimonies are thought of as kind of less theologically sound than sharing the gospel. But in this sense, I think if a testimony, if in a testimony you're able to say, This is my Jesus who has gotten me through this and this and this in life, and he is my God, don't you want him to be your God too? Actually the testimony can be more theological than just unpacking certain elements of the gospel and saying, Do you agree with this view of the world or not? Um so yeah, I'd never I never thought about it in those terms, but I think I think sometimes testimonies um can really highlight that my God bit of it. Where actually just sharing the gospel can you can end up sharing ideas rather than my God. So yeah. And and on top of the testimony, I also recommend that you know people get used to finishing the sentence. That's what I love about Jesus. Um that's what I love about Jesus. And like if you're reading Ruth 1, what do you love about Jesus? Our God is not a destroyer who takes us from fullness to emptiness. Our God is this strange God who meets us in emptiness and takes us from emptiness to fullness. And that's not always comfortable because maybe he'll take us into situations of hunger and that kind of thing. But I love what I love about Jesus is that he meets us in that hunger, and he proves himself to be a satisfying bread of life, and his future for us is completely good. Um I I love that with Jesus there's a happy ending, and with no other God is that true. There's no other happy ending, like the happy ending that Jesus gives. That's what I love about Jesus. And like we need to be we need to be able to have those sorts of sentences on our lips so that people then say, I want your God to be my God. You seem to have a God that's worth knowing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Not just you seem to have answers to questions, but you seem to have a God that's worth knowing. I want to know your God. I think that's that's what we should be aiming for.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean Ruth says, Let your God be my God.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But she also says, Let your people be my people. Yeah. So what can we learn from that bit about evangelism?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's so key, isn't it? Um it's not just your God being my God, as as though Ruth's gonna go back into Moab and just start praying to Yahweh rather than Chemosh.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um There's gonna have to be a switch of allegiance from her old people to her new people. And in ancient times that meant uh switching nationality. Uh in New Testament times it doesn't mean switching nationality, because Christ has uh abolished the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, and there's and those national distinctives aren't important, but still there is a people that we need to belong to. And evangelism is all about not only inviting people to my God, but inviting people to my people. Um and you actually can't convert to God without converting to his people. Which is a real challenge in in evangelism because so often, you know, I I meet evangelists who don't even go to church. I meet evangelists who have nothing to do with church. I see evangelists on the street corner and and they're just by themselves. And you say, Well, you know, what do you recommend that people do if they ever you know get converted through your ministry? And and and they they don't have any idea because that's never happened to them in their life. But they've got literature for people to read and all that sort of stuff, but they don't have a people for for converts to belong to. But that's that's completely alien to the Bible. In the Bible, uh to convert to God is to convert to God's people.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this is his family. Yeah, yeah, his body.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And this was like this is really brought home to me um this week I had a conversation with a guy who he told me, Look, I have called out to God. Um recently, I've called out to God, um, in order to get to know him and I'm still waiting for an answer. And I suggested, you know, could it be that our conversation now, because we've been going deeply into, you know, Christianity and what's the meaning of life and all this sort of sorts of things, and and um I said, could it be that this conversation is part of the answer to that prayer? And he said, No, I don't want it to be. I don't want it to be that somebody else tells me about God. I want it I I want it to be something that I piece together myself. Unfortunately, it's the that's not the way it works. If God was just the God of the hippies and he was groovy and he was like this w wonderful vibe, then maybe getting to know this God means having a lovely vibe, you know, like having a warm, fuzzy feeling in your heart, and that's what it would mean to meet such a God. But that's not who God is. Like, what if God is a family of love and the Father sends the Son into the world to extend the family? If that's who God is, then getting to know him just irreducibly means getting to know his family, getting to know the church. Um and you just can't divide divide up God and people in that sort of way. And and and therefore it's gonna mean for this guy um humbling himself in order to submit to people and allow people to tell him the gospel, and allow people to introduce him to the life of faith. Um there's no real way away around that. Um to invite people to my God, you've also got to invite them to my people. And that's why in evangelism I also get people to think about the the the saying, that's what I love about my church. Um not just that's what I love about Jesus, but that's what I love about my church. And hopefully people have a way of finishing that sentence. Which again is not always the case, is it? Um so often in evangelism, people kind of poo-poo the church or sidestep the church, minimize the church, just end up spending their whole time apologizing for the church. Um and saying, Oh yeah, but forget about the church. Let's just talk about Jesus. Um and I can understand that, you know, like if you're talking about the crusades, you want to say, Well, look, I'm I'm not sure that everything that was done under under the banner of Christ was actually literally done in Jesus' name, and you've got to look to Jesus to figure out what is faithful following of Jesus. Don't don't always look to those who claim to be following Jesus. It's not as though they necessarily are following Jesus. You need to look to Jesus to figure out whether somebody is faithfully following Jesus. But if somebody is faithfully following Jesus, then we can't be we can't be ashamed of church. Um and it needs to be a big part of our evangelism saying that's what I love about church and you know and and it's a challenge in our evangelism to to talk up church all that we can. And but you know, I've I often share, you know, one one story about um you know when when our car broke down and and people put four hundred pounds through the through the letterbox to pay for um you know the car. I phoned up the mechanic the next day, and the mechanic said, Um, you're not gonna like this, this car's gonna cost four hundred quid to fix. And I sort of thought, well, here's here's an opportunity to witness, so I said actually anonymously we were given four hundred pounds by some member in our church. And he was not so much uh blown away by the fact that the four hundred figure mexed matched the four hundred figure. What he was most blown away by was that there's a there's a community of people that would give money like that.
SPEAKER_01Um when can I join?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, when can I join? Sign me up. Um so I'm sure there were mixed motives there, but but the miracle of a church family was even more important to him than the miracle of just the 400 match matches the 400 figure. Um and that's that's interesting, and I think we need to be talking up church so much more that we're not just inviting people to my God, we should be inviting people to my God, but we should also be inviting people to my people. Uh and when people uh are introduced to our God and to our people, that's where salvation happens. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well we'll leave it there for for this time, and uh we'll go on to something new yes next time. Yes. I've got some ideas brewing. Good. So if you have any comments about uh this episode, you can go to our new website which is speaklife.org.uk slash TEP ninety five. That will take you directly to the page for this episode. Uh on there we'll have the links for you to share it and sign up. Uh subscribe regularly, and if you'd like to give us a rating review, be very uh pleased if you could do that for us. So that's it. Thanks very much, and see you next time. Thanks so much, bye bye.