V. Our resolutions to cleave to and follow those that are turning to God, and joining themselves to his people, ought to be fixed and strong, because of the great difficulty of it. If we will cleave to them and have their God for our God, and their people for our people, we must mortify and deny all our lusts, cross every evil appetite and inclination, and forever part with all sin. But our lusts are many and violent. Sin is naturally exceeding dear to us; to part with it is compared to plucking out our right eyes. Men may refrain from wonted ways of sin for a little while, and may deny their lusts in a partial degree, with less difficulty; but ’tis heart-rending work, finally to part with all sin, and to give our dearest lusts a bill of divorce, utterly to send them away. But this we must do if we would follow those that are truly turning to God. Yea, we must not only forsake sin but must, in a sense, forsake all the world: Luke xiv. 33, “Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh, not all he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” That is, he must forsake all in his heart, and must come to a thorough disposition and readiness actually to quit all for God and the glorious spiritual privileges of his people, whenever the case may require it; and that without any prospect of anything of the like nature, or any worldly thing whatsoever, to make amends for it; and all to go into a strange country, a land that has hitherto been unseen; like Abraham, who is called of God, “went out of his own country, and from his kindred, and from his father’s house, for a land that God should show him, not knowing whither he went.”
Thus it was a hard thing for Ruth to forsake her native country and her father and mother, her kindred and acquaintance, and all the pleasant things she had in the land of Moab, to dwell in the land of Israel, where she never had been. Naomi told her of the difficulties once again. They were too hard for her sister Orpah; their consideration of them turned her back after she was set out. Her resolution was not firm enough to overcome them. But so firmly resolved was Ruth, that she broke through all; she was steadfast in it, that, let the difficulty be what it would, she would not leave her mother-in-law. So people need to be very firm in their resolution to conquer the difficulties that are in the way of cleaving to those who are indeed turning from sin to God.
Our cleaving to them and having their God for our God and their people for our people depends on our resolution and choice, and that is in two respects.
1. The firmness of resolution in using means in order to it, is the way to have means effectual. There are means appointed in order to our becoming some of the true Israel and having their God for our God, and the thorough use of these means is the way to have success; but not slack or slight use of them. And that we may be thorough, there is need of the strength of resolution, a firm and inflexible disposition and bent of mind to be universal in the use of means, and to do what we do with our might, and to persevere in it. Matt. xi. 12, “The kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.”
2. A choosing of their God and their people, with full determination and with the whole soul, is the condition of a union with them. God gives every man his choice in this matter: as Orpah and Ruth had their choice, whether they would go with Naomi into the land of Israel or stay in the land of Moab. A natural man may choose deliverance from hell; but no man doth ever heartily choose God and Christ, and the spiritual benefits that Christ has purchased, and the happiness of God’s people, till he is converted. On the contrary, he is averse to them; he has no relish in them; and is wholly ignorant of their inestimable worth and value of them.
Many carnal men do seem to choose these things but do it
not really: as Orpah seemed at first to choose to forsake Moab to go into the
land of Israel. But when Naomi came to set before her the difficulty of it, she
went back; and thereby showed that she was not fully determined in her choice and that her whole soul was not in it as Ruth’s was.
