Even in Setbacks, God Is Lacing Your Life into an Infinite Storyline
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00:00:05.000 | Podcast listener Hannah wrote in to tell us this, quote, "I love Pastor John's 1984
00:00:11.520 | sermon series on the Book of Ruth. I have listened to it many times since I found
00:00:15.480 | it in 2005. In 2012 I listened to it with tears streaming down my face as I held
00:00:21.880 | my husband's hand and as we drove to our first military duty station as newlyweds.
00:00:27.320 | I especially remember this section." End quote. And here's the sermon excerpt from
00:00:33.280 | his sermon way back on July 22nd, 1984. It's titled, "Ruth, the best is yet to come."
00:00:40.720 | Here's what John Piper said.
00:00:43.320 | In 1912 John Henry Jowett gave a series of lectures in, at Yale called the Yale Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching.
00:00:52.320 | I've been reading those and in it he describes great preaching and he does it in such a way that I see Ruth,
00:00:59.320 | that is the book, and what the author of this book did is what he thinks great preachers are supposed to do.
00:01:06.320 | Let me read this paragraph for you. He said, "A great preacher seems to look at the horizon rather than at an enclosed field or local landscape.
00:01:17.320 | He has a marvelous way of connecting every subject with eternity past and with eternity to come.
00:01:24.320 | It is as though you were looking at a bit of carved wood in a Swiss village window and you lifted your eyes and saw the forest where the wood was nourished and higher still to the everlasting snows.
00:01:37.320 | Yes, that was Benny's way and Dale's way and the way of Bushnell and Newman and Spurgeon. They are always willing to stop at the village window,
00:01:47.320 | but they always link the streets with the heights and they send your souls a roaming over the eternal hills of God."
00:02:00.320 | Now, if all we had in the book of Ruth was a quaint story about how a destitute grandmother finally gets a grandson from a daughter-in-law,
00:02:16.320 | I wouldn't use the word glory. That's where the story ended and it was just sort of a sentimental, encouraging little thing.
00:02:24.320 | I wouldn't, but that's not where the story ends. This writer lifts his eyes to the forests and the mountain snows of redemptive history.
00:02:35.320 | In verse 17, he very simply and auspiciously says, "The child's name was Obed. He was the father of Jesse. Jesse was the father of David."
00:02:48.320 | And all of a sudden we realize there has been something vast and expansive at stake here.
00:02:57.320 | Something far more has been going on in Moab and Bethlehem and in the lives of these seemingly insignificant people than just the contentment of a grandmother.
00:03:08.320 | These people are being put in touch with the vast scope of redemptive history.
00:03:15.320 | The name of David. For us Christians and for those Jews reading this book, we know what that name calls up.
00:03:22.320 | David, son of David, Messiah, greatest king that was ever in Israel. And his son someday is going to be king.
00:03:33.320 | New age, peace, righteousness, freedom from pain and crying and grief and guilt.
00:03:38.320 | This simple little story of Ruth opens out like a stream into a great river of hope that includes the whole world.
00:03:46.320 | And so is not the message, don't ever think that what you do in obedience to God in the midst of your setbacks is insignificant.
00:03:59.320 | Isn't it true that one of the great diseases of our day is triviality?
00:04:05.320 | The things which most people spend most of their time with are trivial.
00:04:12.320 | And what makes this a disease is that we were created to be consumed with magnificent causes, not trifles.
00:04:22.320 | Our souls will not be content with trifles. We are enslaved to trivialities.
00:04:31.320 | We live in the Swiss village workshop and walk around and look and ooh and ah at these little figurines and never lift our eyes to the forests or to the everlasting snows beyond.
00:04:47.320 | So our souls shrivel up and our lives are trivial and our capacity for great worship is dead.
00:04:57.320 | Now the book of Ruth is written to teach us that God's purpose for your life is bigger than that.
00:05:05.320 | God's purpose is to connect his people with something infinite, something great, something magnificent.
00:05:13.320 | For the Christian there's always a connection between the ordinary, gleaning in a field, having a baby, coming back from a foreign land.
00:05:25.320 | Are they just ordinary things? Never!
00:05:28.320 | For the people of God there is nothing ordinary done in obedience to Jesus Christ.
00:05:34.320 | It is all cosmic. It is magnificent.
00:05:38.320 | God is preparing a demonstration to the principalities in the heavenly places of his own wisdom and he's doing it in your daily lives if you had eyes to see.
00:05:47.320 | So the word glory isn't too big, my friends. It is not too big. It's too little. It's weak. It's lame.
00:05:54.320 | I wish I had words bigger and better than the word glory to describe what our destiny is and what the meaning of your Monday is tomorrow
00:06:02.320 | when it's connected to the King of Kings and the destiny that he has for the world.
00:06:08.320 | Amen. Hannah, thank you for sending us this clip.
00:06:11.320 | And if you have a meaningful sermon excerpt from a John Piper sermon of your own, please send it in to us and share it.
00:06:17.320 | Send me the sermon title along with the timestamp of when and where the audio occurs in the audio recording.
00:06:22.320 | Email me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:06:26.320 | And you can find this entire sermon from July 22nd, 1984. It's titled again, "Ruth, the best is yet to come."
00:06:34.320 | Well, when should non-quitters quit?
00:06:37.320 | It's an important question and John Piper will join us tomorrow to explain.
00:06:41.320 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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