What We Deserve, What He Deserves

Ruth 2:10--"Why have I found favor in your sight that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?" The beautiful story of Ruth illustrates the fact that salvation is, and always was, extended in offer to the gentile nations of the world. Ruth, a Moabitess, finds favor in the eyes of the righteous Jew Boaz who marries her and redeems her from a life of unproductive widowhood. She gains a new name, a new love and a new life. At their first meeting Ruth asks Boaz the above quoted question. "Why have I found favor in your sight that you should take notice of me?" We are sinful, wrecked people who, apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, will inevitably choose sin always over obedience to God. The Bible is clear that we deserve nothing short of hell, yet, as the lyrics of an Andrew Peterson song I recently heard says, "I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God." As I was translating this chapter for my Hebrew class, an idea came to me that I've never thought before. It's one thing to consider what we deserve in light of who God is, but it is another thing to consider what God deserves in light of who we are. Words would be insufficint to say what all God deserves. My point isn't to list all of that. My point only is to say that God gives us blessing and righteousness when we deserve death, and far too often in exchange we give God sin which is deserving of death. God gives us what we don't deserve, and in return we give him the same actions which made us undeserving in the first place. The most powerful sermon ever preached is the one we preach with our life, and in a culture where experience is ultimate, unbelievers today need more than anything to see Christians living as if what we say with our mouths was really true, that God has given us everything we do not deserve, and taken upon Himself the one thing we do deserve, death. This week I'm challenged to consider what I give God in response to what He gives me, and as I consider this I feel wrecked to the inside in realization of the truth. God took my death, I should give Him my life, but I usually just give him more death.