The Old Testament concept of worthiness, seen in Ruth and Boaz, is updated and clarified in the New Covenant. To find God’s will, especially in relationships, requires three things. First, we must be equally yoked with fellow believers, as true worthiness is found in Christ. Second, we must offer a total commitment to the Lord, a full surrender like that of Ruth to Naomi. Finally, we must be transformed by the renewing of our minds, learning to listen to the Holy Spirit’s leading from within rather than conforming to the pressures of the world.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] One of the interesting things, being a father, comes about when your daughters have grown up a bit and there’s young men who are hovering around and sometimes there comes that time when they say to you, Jesh will remember this, Jim can I talk to you? And of course you know what that’s going to be about and you think up a few little things to make him be unsure as to the outcome if you can. But there is that sense in which when there is a young couple and proposing marriage the question that comes to a father is, is he a worthy young man? And I suppose the same is true for the families of daughters and also the families of sons who are interested in some person. The question of worthiness and we’ve been looking in the story of Ruth

[00:01:01] about how those two, although the whole storyline is not about romance in the first place, it’s about how God provides for the line of people that would come down to Jesus being born. And Ruth is going to be in that line. It’s a fantastic story. But it also carries with it, of course, a little bit of advice on the side about how to know that you’ve got the right one to marry. And in the storyline where we’ve been doing, particularly in the Sunday evenings, some of you who are only morningites may not be aware of this, but we were looking through to see how in both cases of Ruth and Boaz, each discover that the other person is worthy. And it comes out in the first instance of Boaz being recognised as a worthy man. The text tells us that. And it’s one of those things, because it is the Old Testament,

[00:02:02] original language, Hebrew, there is a Greek translation. You can look up and look at the words. But when it’s in the Old Covenant times too, it’s not the same as in the era of the church. But in the Old Covenant times, here we have set out of two people who discover each to be, and the word used in English, ESV, is worthy, both of Boaz and of Ruth. And so the advice that we’d be looking at if someone is wondering whether you’re being led to be married to a certain person is, have you been encouraged to see them as worthy? But that’s an Old Testament concept, really, because the New Testament is an increase in explanation. It’s not that God changes his mind, but there is progression in the revelation of God from the old to the new. It’s really around the New Covenants.

[00:02:58] And on a previous occasion, I’ve been showing us that the word in our Bibles, and I’ve got lots of Bibles, and I look up the beginning of the New Testament, and pretty all of them will say New Testament, but I know that the word in the original language is the same word for covenant. New Testament, New Covenant. Our law systems ourselves have got a business about being their last will and testament. And that will bit means what was written out and had with their lawyers or whatever before the person died. But testament is that they’ve signed off on where they want their properties to go or what they’re asking to happen to the estate. but the word covenant and testament in the original languages in the Bible is the one and the same word and the old testament is about the old covenant there are a number of

[00:03:57] covenants I know there is a covenant about Noah and the flood there is other covenants but by and large it is the old covenant God made with Israel that they should be his people but the new testament or the new covenant is about a new covenant that the old had prophesied, not that the old made it, but the old prophesied that it would happen, this new covenant. And that new covenant was put into effect because of how Jesus died on the cross. It needed his ministry, it needed his mission to be completed by going to the cross. And we call all that Jesus accomplished in his death and his resurrection, his return to heaven, to take the fruits of it to heaven. And all of that is a part of what Jesus did to atone for our sins. And a very special word that I’ve been trying to teach in these last month or so

[00:04:51] is about the necessity for us to recognise the sufficiency of the atonement, the completeness of how when Jesus died, he said it is finished. And when this whole business of us seeking to be worthy people, it’s not just a matter of us obeying the right rules, not just a matter about us having the right background. The atonement is God’s knowledge that we, the human race, had fallen so far away from ever being worthy that he sent his son to take on humanity, that he might represent humanity in a positive way instead of how our ancestors caused the whole of us to fall. He came with a humanity that didn’t fall, that tested out, and then went to the cross and paid totally for all of our falling and our sins. And so Jesus, in what he accomplished in the cross and in his resurrection, in his return to heaven,

[00:05:59] in how the Father passed to Jesus to be the one who would have the Holy Spirit represent him on earth. Then the very next moment is the day of Pentecost where Peter preaches and calls on people to repent and the two things he says that will happen to you if you repent is that you’ll be forgiven and that you’ll receive the Holy Spirit for the Holy Spirit is the gift, the permanent gift to people who come to Christ, who’ve come via recognising the atonement is sufficient for them to get in the door. And that way we are totally in God’s good books because of what Jesus has done. Not only are we into his good books by what Jesus has done because of the completion of the atonement and the fact that we can stand on its benefit, but we get the gift of the Holy Spirit

[00:06:50] who is brought to our hearts to let Jesus rule there and to let us become the person who is worthy. And I wanted to add this morning to what we’re learning from Ruth. The two, Boaz and Ruth, are both stated, we’ve been through this, as worthy. That’s how you find the will of God and sticking to what is shown to be a worthy track and a worthy person if it’s about relationships. But then we find that the New Testament takes it to another level. It’s not changing the whole idea of the worthiness. That was sort of like a general concept. It’s now going to be advanced. And so we’ll put up on the screen, we’ll put up a passage from 2 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians tightens it. And here it is, verses 14 through to 16, I think it is. Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. And right inherent in those words

[00:07:53] is the necessity for worthiness to include a person being a Christian. This is where we teach people from the Scriptures that marriage that wants to find the will of God, and it doesn’t mean that people outside of Christianity don’t have marriages. They do. God made marriages for all mankind. But nonetheless, for we who are believers, if you want to find someone that will be worthy so that you will find the will of God in the relationship, then do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. The statement is bold and straightforward and calls for obedience. You won’t find in the Christian update of what it is to be worthy the worthy person by marrying someone who’s not. Now, obviously, people who are religious and go to church, many of them are not yet properly Christians, and they often marry each other,

[00:08:50] and they’ve married someone because they found another church person, which wasn’t a bad thing to do. They found someone who had at least similarity in common beliefs. It is an amazing thing, just as an aside, how many people are in churches unaware that they are not actually truly converted yet. Because going to church isn’t what makes you a Christian. It might give you the context of hearing the gospel. It might be the first step. In fact, the Bible says, he who comes to God must first believe that he exists. And so people who are believing in God’s existence and going to church, they’re covering that requisite already as far as believing about God. But just being a theist doesn’t make you a Christian. The actual step that brings about that being a proper believer

[00:09:41] is not only when you believe about, listen, but when you believe into Christ. And so the first writers of our gospels changed the way they wrote. You’ve heard from me this many times. They changed the way the little word believe was put down in their language in the Greek. you have a little ending. It’s called a case ending. And on that case ending, normally to believe in something puts it in one of the cases, choices, which is nearer the bottom, which is a dative case. And if you believe about Jesus, as it were, or you believe, you know, concerning Jesus. But when they want to express what it is to become a Christian, they change it from that dative case to one higher up in the list called the accusative. And the accusative case in the Greek always gives the idea of action into or movement toward.

[00:10:38] And so the Gospel tells us if you will believe toward Jesus, believe into Jesus, and that when the translators try and find a way to bring out for our English minds just what the difference is between believing about Jesus and believing into Jesus, one translation which uses a whole lot of extra words to stress it out called the Amplified Version says to believe in, to trust in, to rely on and commit yourself to. I’m not sure I’ve got the order of all those right but it gives the idea of the action of the person of commitment toward. Trust in. And all of us have heard those illustrations about what that really means, the illustration of the fellow who walked across the Niagara Falls and he had a wheelbarrow that’s a big, I guess it’s not a rope but probably a wire

[00:11:28] that he balances on and after demonstrating it to the crowds who are watching, he then says, who wants to come and get in my wheelbarrow and I’ll take you across? Talk about some of being asked to commit yourself to your trust. Apparently, I don’t know how true the story is but apparently a man volunteered and got in it and went and had a cross trip back and across. A wobbly trip probably because a part of the thing you do when you go on those tight wires is that you wobble a bit and keep on recovering your balance. One slip, of course, and both of them would have perished. But it illustrates about the difference of just being a person who believes about Jesus, a person who’s a theist because you believe in God, you just believe there is a God. Without being aware, you could be a person quite churchy

[00:12:22] because you choose to express. I’ve been watching a lot of those, the second time I’ve watched it, called The Crown, about the English royal family. And the person who’s the king or the queen is the head of the Church of England and the reason why a monarchy is meant to be a strength is that it’s based on the belief in God who’s meant to be giving orders for the country through the crown. But the Church of England has a background of only sometimes having the gospel right. There have been lots of times in, I’m talking about Britain now, where the religion of the day, whether it be Church of England or whether it be the Catholic, has had a good trust in God’s existence, but they didn’t have an understanding of the gospel and how to actually become a Christian. And there was a fellow

[00:13:22] who was a Church of England person like that and back in the olden days, he’s actually not that far back because this fellow eventually becomes a real Christian and becomes quite an academic who has written a lot of the commentary work that when we look up what the Bible means, you get a commentary that gives a comment and this particular fella is known for his wonderful commentary he made but it was only after he got converted. But in the first instance he wasn’t. He was in the church and he became in charge of a church. But there came a new bod in a neighbouring church, maybe a smaller one, and this was a fairly new person to the whole scene. Guess who it was? It was the fella who wrote that hymn, Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound that changed. A wretch like me. Saved a wretch like me. John Newton.

[00:14:18] And when he first came to the Lord because he’d been a slave trader and he got forgiven and he found the saviour. He ended up running a church or starting to run a church but he’s in the same town as this other guy. And the other guy looks at him as not very official, just some person who’s starting some weird sort and he heard rumours of unusual things being taught by John Newton. and he’s quite critical but some crisis came in the life of this commentary writer I’m not going to give you the name this commentary writer in his life that he was in a mess and he didn’t know who to turn to but he went to John Newton and John Newton so helped him but how he helped him has helped him to come and find the saviour there came a time when John Newton moved off

[00:15:09] Now I’m not sure I’ve got all the details of this story right but that fellow that I’m talking about who’s the commentary writer became the chief preacher in the town and you know that he had a young man in his church that he taught. You might recognise the name William Carey and William Carey became what we call the father of the whole idea of modern missions. God so used him to set up a missionary movement. So here you have John Newton getting converted. Here you have him showing a more religious already person who’s a man of the cloth, the writer of the commentaries to learn what it is to actually believe into Christ. Find him as your saviour by a commitment of faith is what it is. And that commitment of faith is what the New Testament brings into sharp relief over and above the Old Testament.

[00:16:13] Had trusting God and walking with him, having his laws but not the gospel. The gospel understood in a far clearer, it’s in the Old Testament and you can find it prophesied but the gospel is what is brought out clearly in the New. And it’s called the New Testament because it could be the New Covenant. And the New Covenant is the one which was promised that there would come a day when God would have his people who would all know him because they’ve been converted. When Christ has come and been your saviour, you know him in that intimate arena of the heart. But that’s what it is to know Jesus. And so there’s an update on worthiness. And we can see it here in this passage that if you’re looking to find God’s will about relationships,

[00:17:03] you could apply this, you know, to getting involved with tight businesses. I don’t think it means that you can’t be involved in a business arrangement with someone who’s not a Christian, but I think you should be cautious as to what yoke it is or how much you’re tying up all of your decisions with another person whose mind is not really one that God has control of. It’s interesting the way that it’s worded this way. It says, it goes on to say, for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Because the difference between a Christian is that Christian has within him the Holy Spirit who’s drawing you to find the way of God’s righteousness. But a person who’s not a Christian has sinfulness uncorrected. They may have nice culture. They might be nice people. You might have met them in a church.

[00:17:59] It might be a church that honours God and sings lovely hymns. But if they haven’t come to that moment of making that commitment to Christ, then there still is some lack of reverence for the leadership of the Spirit. And if you tie yourself too tightly to someone and so the decisions they make you can’t undo, then that would be an application of this verse not to do it, even in a business arrangement. So worthiness here is deeper. What’s interesting is how the passage goes on, or what fellowship has light with darkness? It’s not only knowledge, meaning the word light in the Bible is often for metaphor, for knowledge and understanding. But it’s also a metaphor for that spiritual revelation that the presence of God’s intuition in your heart brings.

[00:18:54] And when you want to be tied with another person who’s going to make joint decisions, it really works well when you both have the capacity to sense the spiritual and to know what God wants. It says, what fellowship has light got with darkness? It goes on, verse 15, what accord has Christ with Belial? I’ve read this with lots of times and never, I knew Belial was something like the devil, but I never quite knew in what way it was referring to devilish things. So I’ve been looking it up. It has the idea of not only the devil, but also darkness and also wretched deceit has the idea of the deceits. And you can interpret this to be that if you get into a relationship with someone who doesn’t really know Christ, then there’s going to come a moment when you find them out

[00:19:56] not to be the person that you thought they were. The word Belial can actually mean the devil himself or a person through whom devilish temptations are coming. And if you look at a situation where you may be tempted to, you may be looking at, should I get into this or not? Be aware that if the person doesn’t really represent Christ, that the being behind the whole arena may be a temptation that’s a deceitful thing to deceive you of the right way. It’s a difficult thing as a Christian to find the will of God, but you have to pray over it and ask him to show you whether what is before you is indeed from him. It’s light. Or whether maybe it’s just an expression of some deceitfulness to take you away from the light. What a cause has Christ with Belial?

[00:20:48] Or what portion does the believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement is the temple of God with idols? And what often happens in cases of people who marry but not marry a Christian, sometimes it happens when they didn’t really know. They just thought they were a nice church person. But eventually it comes to the light that their values as to whether you’ll obey God or not suddenly finds a resurfacing on some issue. And here the Bible warns us that we need to be careful as to with whom we tie ourselves. The same happens in terms of any arrangement as you may be called to do. There may be a group of friends and they all look very capable people and friendly and they can tell jokes with you. But is it that they really need you to be a fellow compromiser like they are?

[00:21:41] And there are even churches that I’d put in such an arrangement where the arrangement you have in that church is to downplay what the Bible teaches for Christian behaviour. And if you join that sort of fellowship, you’re not doing what this says. You’re being unaware of not to be unequally yoked with those who represent what is a temptation away from the true way. What portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God? And remember our bodies are the temple of God. We corporately are the temple of God as a church. For we are the temple of the living God. And it goes on and speaks about that in Corinthians. So we’re taking a step forward from the storyline of Ruth and Boaz. I’ve really been enjoying the story and especially the bit that we found out

[00:22:35] that in both cases they saw the other person as proven as worthy. In different ways, of course. Boaz, it was because of his leadership in the town and because of his polite way he handled his servants. It was because of his willingness to take care of Naomi, the mother-in-law of Ruth. And then we saw in Ruth the fact that she was willing to be obedient to her mother-in-law. That she was willing to be a person who would be led to take a risk in going along to the threshing floor. And that’s where we’re up to in the storyline of Ruth because what happens is that we left last time I was on the topic that she was there doing the catching of the fallen pieces of crop and they call that a matter of going behind the reapers and it’s called gleaning. So she was a gleaner but she’d been told by Naomi

[00:23:36] to try and stick to the part of the property that there’s a combined action going by the townspeople but a part of one would be on the property of Boaz which she does. and then her mother gives her some things to do and it’s a very cheeky thing which I was referring to as a woman proposing to a man, it was to go along and see where he was going to sleep for the night on the threshing floor and when he had a good meal and drunk well and was relaxed and went to sleep and once he’s properly asleep is what the mother-in-law is teaching her to do, go along and spread a blanket across his feet and get under the blanket there at the bottom of his feet. It was actually a ritual that meant something back then, so it wasn’t a crazy thing for a person to do, but she went and did what actually meant

[00:24:25] that she was offering to be his bride. And the only way that that could be made, a legality was by this kinsman redeemer thing that he would then have to take up to look after Naomi. And on Naomi’s behalf, he would then be looking after the daughter-in-law of Naomi by marrying her. And what would happen then is that the child would then be coming through Boaz as well as the Moabitess genes, and that coming from Boaz would put the child that they were going to have into the very line that eventually ends up bringing about David and eventually Jesus. And so God’s sovereignty is involved in all of this, and their finding a worthy person is what causes them to be included by the sovereignty of God and his will. The will of God I’ve been trying to explain is not necessarily God tells you exactly,

[00:25:23] do this and go there, write this letter or do something. God does sometimes have people he tells directly things to do. It’s fairly rare, I might say, but for most of us what it is is that we do the things that he’s told us are the worthy things to do. We do the obedient things, and if we follow that we’ll find that God and his sovereignty will bring about his purpose through us. You discover that you’ve done the will of God because you follow those hints. And so this morning I want to leave us with the fact that there are three steps, I was talking in previous times about two, but three steps that you can be sure that you are going to find the will of God and the first one is the worth in one which comes to the New Testament as sticking with someone who really loves Christ someone who’s a real believer

[00:26:10] the second one is what we discover also in the scriptures and the second one is that there’s something that Ruth has done that represents a necessity if you really want to find the will of God it is the way that she gets totally committed and it comes out in actually the language of how Ruth talks in that first chapter 1 of Ruth in the language that she talks and she uses a system of setting out ideas which is called a parallelism in the ancient Hebrew and even sometimes in the Greek you can have this parallelism where you put a number of statements together where there’s a certain parallelism between one statement and the next And it’s in this part, which is down in chapter 1, back in chapter 1 and verses 16 to 17. So if we can get up, if you can, chapter 1 of Ruth, verses 16 and 17.

[00:27:09] And look how Ruth says these things. Now, I’m speaking now about the second. I’ve got three qualifications for you to find the will of God. One was the worthiness, which comes across the New Testament, like I’ve been talking about. And I find the will of God. And the first one is the worthiness, which comes to the New Testament as sticking with someone who really loves Christ, someone who’s a real believer. The second one is what we discover also in the scriptures. And the second one is that there’s something that Ruth has done that represents a necessity. If you really want to find the will of God, it is the way that she gets totally committed. And it comes out in actually the language of how Ruth talks in that first chapter 1 of Ruth, in the language that she talks.

[00:27:58] And she uses a system of setting out ideas, which is called a parallelism in the ancient Hebrew and even sometimes in the Greek. You can have this parallelism where you put a number of statements together where there’s a certain parallelism between one statement and the next. And it’s in this part, which is down in chapter 1 and back in chapter 1 and verses 16 to 17. So if we can get up, if you can, chapter 1 of Ruth, verses 16 and 17. And look how Ruth says these things. Now, I’m speaking now about the second. I’ve got three qualifications for you to find the will of God. One was the worthiness, which comes across the New Testament, like I’ve been talking about, making tight commitments with Christians.

[00:28:46] The second one here is how Ruth speaks when the opportunity comes for her to go back to Moab and find a husband from there. But she says in verse 16, Ruth said, Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following 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. Where you die, I will die. There will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also, if anything but death parts me from you. What do you think that’s the statement of? It’s the fiercest, most beautiful statement of commitment that a person could have articulated. Now, in their language, the way they produce it is they put the part about the leaving. Do not urge me to leave you. In the actual original language, it says,

[00:29:49] To leave you, from following you, the next part is, to lock, I better read it from my notes. To leave you, and retreat from that, from following you, or to turn back. For wherever you go, I will go, your people that you lodge with, I will lodge, and your God and your people shall be my people. Your God will be my God. And she puts the positive thing first. And it’s a way of speaking to say, I’m not giving you any choice about this. Ruth is saying, to leave you, not going to do. So stop following you, and turn back, no, no. From wherever you go, nothing can happen, but I will go too. Your people will be my people. Your God, my God. And so she words it in a way that is absolutely not giving Ruth any choice about the matter. I’m coming, whether you like it or not.

[00:31:07] Now that is, as you listen to it, a person who’s totally committed. And I want to tell you, to find the will of God, not only is it a good thing to stick with connecting yourself with Christians, who will help lead you the right way, but you need to have a commitment to Christ. I call it full surrender. Coming to a place of saying, Lord, you’ve got the lot, and it doesn’t matter what happens. You’ve still got me. Bad luck, Lord. Even if I’m a failure. Sorry, I’m yours anyway. It’s your saying to Jesus, Lord, I will do your will, even if it looks hard for me. It’s saying to him, I commit myself to be obedient no matter what. Well, I’ve told my story before about being a teenager at a camp, a church in Unley Park, Adelaide, ran a camp for youth. And they had a speaker who came from Victoria.

[00:32:05] He was an ex-football player, which made me respect him, an AFL player, and they’re usually more intelligent. But this particular guy came along and he spoke, and we played with him kicking the footy around in between times. But he gave an illustration, and he preached on the fact that to find God’s working with you, you need to face the question that’s found in Romans 12 and verse 1. If we put Romans 12 verse 1, it’s a straightforward one, I’m sure many of you know it. But there it says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice. Holy, acceptable to God. It’s what you need to do spiritually to worship. It’s your spiritual worship. It’s what is required. And so what’s also a help is not only your being a person that really knows the Lord

[00:33:01] and you’ve found Jesus as Saviour, you’ve been converted, which is what the worthiness in the New Testament is, but also having found Christ as Saviour, that you tell him you can have you, holus, bolus, no buts, or whatever, you’ll obey wherever he leads, no matter what. And I think it’s a crisis because it’s in the Bible. I know it is not something just we preachers make up to get a decision or something, but I think it is a crisis. The scriptures teach that having become a Christian, having been blessed of God and know you’re under the benefit of the atonement, that your sins are forgiven. If you do commit a sin, you can confess it and God will forgive it because the atonement has already been had it paid for. Well, not only you’re becoming a Christian,

[00:33:50] but you’re giving to God to be totally in control and you hand over to him even your new Christian life with all of its opportunities and you say to Jesus, it’s yours and the fellow who came from Victoria, he came. That was a bad point. Playing football was a good point, but coming from Victoria, I was in South Australia, remember. And anyway, he had an illustration that was really telling. He says, like God has got a great big computer. This was in an area where computers were all pretty big. And he says, in this computer there’s lots of little special parts, but there’s also a piece of, what’s that cardboard you call, you know, at the back. There’s a great big stuff there. Now, if you just don’t give yourself totally to God, if you want to somehow reserve that you make the decisions

[00:34:45] and you’ve got your ideas and you keep some reservation place about where you’ll go and what you do, you don’t come to this call of surrendering your body as a living sacrifice, then God with his great will of God, which is like a computer, the best he can do with you is make you the Masonite at the back. But if you surrender and give a, come to a place of full commitment, he’ll take the time to fashion you for a very special part on the internal workings of his machine, of his will. And this passage is talking, I know the illustration is one from more modern days than Paul, and this illustration is about a computer, but the illustration is that depending on whether you come to a place of presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice, whether or not you follow the example of Ruth and say,

[00:35:43] no matter what you argue, I’m coming anyway. Your God will be my God. And if I die from anything else, I won’t. I’m going to die from following you. There’ll be no chance I’m not going to stick with you, she says to Naomi. It’s that sort of commitment to Jesus that makes a person eligible for God steps in to make you find his will. Even when you make a mistake, he just overrules it. He just steps in. When you’ve given yourself to him, he picks up that responsibility and he becomes responsible for getting you to be where his will is. So fantastic. Now you know the Romans passage goes on, it says in the verses that follow, that, thank you, do not be conformed to this world. And this is my third thing. I’ve got three points to find the will of God. One’s the worthiness, which means sticking with a Christian.

[00:36:43] Two is the part that says that you surrender, come to a place of full surrender. But three is what you do at the end. Four, do not be conformed to this world. And one of the reasons why some people miss the will of God is because being too immature as a Christian, you’ve been fed by the world and its media and the groups of people with whom you work or have your leisure. They and their ideas, the culture of your generation, they’re what dictated how you acted and decided. But what we’re to do is to let Jesus, he’s come to rule in our hearts, we’re to let the Lord and his leadership, when we’ve surrendered to him, to have the right to do whatever he chooses of us, to then work out a will that he has. Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed. And that’s my point number three.

[00:37:47] It’s transformation by the spirit that helps you find the will of God. But be transformed by the renewal of your mind, by the testing that you may discern what is the will of God, what is the good and the acceptable and the perfect. And what he’s talking about here, some of the older translations worded it that you might prove what is the will of God. But it wasn’t an intellectual thing that you ended up what the doctrines are and worked it out. No, proving is having happen in action, having to be the unfolding of all the events, show that you found the will of God. That’s how you prove the will of God by what actually happens when you surrender to Him. When you allow the inclinations and the pressures of the worldly pressures, those worldly things not to make your decisions

[00:38:36] but you let your mind be transformed to think how God thinks then you’ll discover the will of God is something that He proves. It comes out in the practice. And sometimes you might have had an idea, you’re going this way and God stepped in and overruled it and you went another, had to go another way and then you said, now I can see God had his way. And the people I knew of who were missionaries heading back World War II days, just before World War II, who I knew of them, I didn’t know them, but who were headed out to go to a mission field but the war started and their ship got rerouted somewhere else. They never ended. where they always thought was to be the will of God for their missionary work. But where they went proved to be what God had for them.

[00:39:28] I was happy coming up to Brisbane to work in the college, but in the politics of it all, I think I was too conservative for some people, and they found a way for having me not cost them so much money. They said, you’re busy preaching everywhere. Can’t you get your salary out of there? The college was running out of money. And I did. I’m here with you as a consequence for the last, is it 18 years or 19 years? So that the college didn’t have to pay for me. And when I realised it came to me that probably I got moved out so they could have probably a less conservative view, I’m only guessing, about the motives in their part. But when that happened, I can say, I don’t mind, because where I am is the will of God. He has had me. He can use even the people who have not best motives

[00:40:27] or the people who have other outlooks. He gets his will done. And by trusting in listening to him and letting your mind be transformed from being led by the pressures of other people’s thoughts or the pressures of worldly thoughts, you set yourself up to be able to find the will of God. Let me say the three things again. One is the New Testament equivalent of being worthy, which is being linked with a believer, not an unbeliever. Two, it is that you be a person who is totally committed, full surrender, like Ruth was. That’s how come she got to be the person who figures in the lineage of Jesus, of all things, for eternity. Is she going to be glad that she was totally committed to follow the Jewish lady, Naomi? And then the third thing is that you give time to be transformed in your mind

[00:41:30] as a spirit works in your heart, not to listen to the pressures of the world, but to be transformed. Leighton Ford had a really good illustration, which I pinched from him, ever since of when in a car, travelling along, or he was travelling along in a car with someone driving him to the next, this is in Brisbane, and they pulled up at a certain four or five ways that I know very well, you have to wait a long time for your turn. Another car pulled up alongside, and the bloke inside was looking like a wild man, and he was throwing arms around, he was a single person alone in the car, looking weird things, and Leighton Ford was probably worried, is it a fanatic, you know, getting ready to run me off the road? And then the man wound the music that ran down the window, and they all heard the music

[00:42:25] that he was making movements to. Oh, now I understand. Because he wasn’t worried about all the things around him, the man in the car, he just had the music from inside, which was putting his actions. And when you let the Holy Spirit who lives inside your heart be the one who prompts you and tells you, and you make a practice of seeking to increase your ability to hear how he leads, you become a person that the outside world won’t understand, because you’ve got the music coming from inside, and it gives you something that’s peaceful and wonderful, and the text goes on to say that’s how you prove the will of God, and that proving, as I’ve said previously, is not knowing it’s correct as much as it is, it comes about in the practice. The evidence is there in what happens, and you can prove the will of God.

[00:43:22] Do you want to know that you’re walking under the smile of God and that you’re living out what he has for you? And these three things are very important. Make sure you truly are a converted Christian. Two, be fully surrendered to the Lord. And three, don’t listen to the outside music when it’s wrong. Let the music the Lord gives you inside your heart and be the one that directs you. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for Ruth. I thank you for that beautiful passage. I’m not sure I represented it very well, but how she put the action thing first to leave you. No, I’m not going to. To stop following you, not turning back. She says, wherever you go, that’s where I’m going, your God will be my God. Where you die, I’ll die. Lord, that sort of commitment. Lord, as there’s people here who are looking to find

[00:44:24] your dealing successful in their lives, would you help them to let you have the lot? Would you lead them, like Romans 12 says, to present their bodies as a living sacrifice? Give the lot to the Lord. Let him be the one who directs the traffic. Let that be their story, we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.