Favour follows | Ruth 2:8-16

How is the condition of your life? Are you progressing in God’s path every day or is your life stagnant? Is our cup overflowing or are you here with lost dreams, no hope, and somehow surviving in life?

Title: Favour Follows

God has called us to bless and prosper us. However, it is very important to position or choose the path of God’s favour. Psalmist David said: Psalm 23:1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He ends Psalm 23:6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. We have a God who wants to bless us and release seasons of refreshing upon us.

How do we find favour with God?

1. Come to Jesus Christ. Make God your shepherd. If you have never accepted the Lord Jesus Christ accept him as your savior. John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

If you are in sin ask God to cleanse you. 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

2. Walk faithfully with God. Genesis 6:8-9 ⁸But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. ⁹This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. Trust, seek, worship, obey, serve God.

3. Feed on God’s word. Proverbs 3:1-4 ¹My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, ²for they will prolong your life many years and bring you peace and prosperity. ³Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. ⁴Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man.

4. A pure heart. Proverbs 12:2 Good people obtain favor from the Lord, but he condemns those who devise wicked schemes.

5. Ask for God’s Favour.

Psalm 119:58 I have sought your face with all my heart; be gracious to me according to your promise.

Job 33:26 ..then that person can pray to God and find favor with him, they will see God’s face and shout for joy; he will restore them to full well-being.

Come with me to Isaiah. Writings of Isaiah is comfort and hope for God’s chosen people in Babylonian captivity. Isaiah comes with a message of restoration and God’s favour.

Isaiah 60:1 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. Glory in the original language implies God’s favour is heavy upon you. You come down to Isaiah 60:10 Foreigners will rebuild your walls, and their kings will serve you. Though in anger I struck you, in favor I will show you compassion.

Isaiah says God is going to show his favour and compassion. Maybe today you are here with worry, discouragement, weighed down with problems, disappointments, sickness, and lack. You need to get ready. This is your due season. Instead of being heavy with burden you are going to be filled with God’s favour.

Isaiah 61 proceeds to give us a picture of what God’s favour does in our life. Isaiah 61:2 …proclaim the year of the LORD’s favour. God is proclaiming a new season of his favour upon us.

What does God’s favour do in us?

1. God will use you.

Isaiah 61:1a The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. God is going to use you for his ministry. God will use everyone here to preach the good news to the people. God will use you in the area of your talent for his glory.

2. Release your captivity.

Isaiah 61:1c to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Many who are captive by the devil will be freed. The Holy Spirit is going to set the captives free. There will be deliverance for people with satanic forces, curses, bondages etc. God’s favour will cast out the bondage off the people. The people of God are going to experience deliverance. Sinners who are in captivity are going to be freed from their sin.

3. Bind Broken Hearts.

Isaiah 61:1b He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. If you are sitting with a broken heart, today God is going to heal you.

If you feel you have: Not achieved anything. No peace in family. No job. No finances. Death of the loved ones. Depressed and lonely. You feel your life is a failure. God is going to bind your broken heart. He will restore what is lost.

4. CHANGE.

Isaiah 61:3 ..and provide for those who grieve in Zion to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

When the Holy Spirit comes, when favour comes change happens. It will make things new. You will never be the same. See CHANGE promised by GOD.

1. ‘Beauty for Ashes’ In Bible time people in the time of mourning and difficulty lay in ashes. You become dirty. There is nothing beautiful about ashes. God will take your difficult, disgusting, depressed, and horrible situations and give you His beauty. The Holy Spirit is going to take out the ash out of you and make something beautiful out of you.

1. ‘Joy for Mourning’ It says oil of joy for mourning. In Bible times when a person is mourning he never puts oil/cream in his face. The face looks disfigured and rough. But when a person is happy he puts oil in his face and it shines. God is telling this year He is going to give you joy. You are going to receive your joy back.

1. Garment of Praise. Garment is what covers people. What are you covered with emotionally today? Many of you are clothed with disappointment, heaviness in your heart. God is telling you He will take out that garment and fill you with a new one, garment of Praise. Garment changes your looks. Your outlook is going to change.

God is promising you that he will fill you with beauty instead of ashes, joy for mourning, and cover you with a garment of praise.

5. Double Blessings. Isaiah 61:7 Instead of their shame my people will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace they will rejoice in their inheritance; and so they will inherit a double portion in their land, and everlasting joy will be theirs.

When the Holy Spirit favour comes upon a person he receives blessings. God is promising that you will experience a double portion of blessings for the struggles you went through. Tell it, “I am going to be blessed.” Yes the Holy Spirit is going to bless each and every one of you.

Example of God’s favour – Ruth

Ruth 1 started out with bitterness for Naomi and Ruth. Naomi went away from God. They lost everything and were living in utter pain. Later in Chapter 1 of Ruth, both Ruth and Naomi made the right choice. They moved from the sinful land of Moab to Bethlehem. What they were doing is they were positioning themselves for God’s favour.

1. They returned to Bethlehem. The moment we make a decision to come to the presence of God, we are on the path of the favour of God. I do not know if you are sitting here backslidden. You have gone away from the promise, you are in utter failure. God is calling you back to surround you with his favour.

In Chapter 2 the mercy of God breaks through bright enough for both Ruth and Naomi to see it. We meet Boaz, a man of wealth, a man of God, and a relative of Naomi’s husband. Ruth was led by God in a foreign land and being led mercifully by God to the field of Boaz to glean.

Now, Boaz represents Christ and Ruth is the type of the church. Like Ruth, a Moabite was redeemed by Boaz, we the gentiles are redeemed into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. So when you look at Ruth, you are looking at a pattern and of the church. Over the next some moments I want to show you the favour that happened to Ruth because of Boaz that can happen to you through Jesus Christ.

1. Boaz beckoned for Ruth. Ruth 2:8 Then said Boaz unto Ruth, Hearest thou not, my daughter? Go not to glean in another field, neither go from hence, but abide here fast by my maidens: She started off at the far end of the field and Boaz beckoned for her. With the beckoning of Boaz, she comes from the background to the forefront and comes into a place of blessing. She becomes more prominent.

And we see Naomi recover from her long night of despondency as she exults in God. Ruth 2:20 He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.

When God beckons for you, and you decide to follow him, he brings you from obscurity to notoriety and you become more prominent because the hand of the Lord is on your life. God begins to bless you in a significant way. All of a sudden she comes into this blessing.

1. Ruth found favour. Now look at what Boaz says to his reapers as Ruth comes forward: Ruth 2:15-16 ¹⁵As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, “Let her gather among the sheaves and don’t reprimand her. ¹⁶Even pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don’t rebuke her.”

Boaz said, “When Ruth gets there, don’t say anything to her, just leave some handfuls, drop some blessings, just leave them on purpose.” You see, he spoke about her, not to her. She never even heard what he said but she became a recipient of what he said that she did not even hear.

You don’t know the word that God has spoken over your life. God has spoken some things that you did not even hear and all of a sudden things change and you don’t know how they change, all you know is that you have come to the background and from the background to the forefront and you find yourself gleaning yourself.

Can you imagine yourself Ruth going behind the reapers and saying, “Oh my God, my God, look at all this. I don’t even have to reap it, it is laying all out for me. Somebody has already reaped it, I just have a free provision.”

This is what God says: Joshua 24:13 So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.’

You are surrounded by favour. Things just fell on you. Things just happened for you. You can sing naturally, you can play the guitar, you got that promotion, you got that house, God just dropped it for you. Others are working hard a lifetime to get what you got, but you just got it. You are recipient of God’s blessings that just dropped on you. God has opened doors of favour for your life. He did me a favour. God just dropped things on me.

Ruth received freely what other woman had to work for. That is the favour of God in your life.

1 Corinthians 2:9 What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived— the things God has prepared for those who love him.

All you have to do is to respond to the beckoning of the Holy Spirit, come in the direction of the Holy Spirit and start picking. God says if you seek to obey me, you are going to find yourself coming in the blessing and favour of God that you don’t even understand, because I have left some things behind just for you. Now listen what God has left for you, nobody can glean it but you. Tell somebody – I have my portion. Your portion is coming.

1. There are levels of favour.

There are levels of blessing. Favour is like steps. All are steps but they are on different levels. There are levels of favour. Levels of ministry, levels of anointing, victory, peace, joy, some peace passes all understanding. In God there are always levels. There are levels of provision.

If you are not having a house and staying in a rented house, that house is still the provision of God. It is not a full level of favour but it is still the favour of God. If you are not having a job and God has sustained you, your sustenance until now is another level of God’s favour. It may not be in the level that you wanted to be but it is still a favour of God. Remember there are levels of favor and God is leading someone to the higher level of favour today.

In the third chapter is a transitional chapter where Ruth is transitioning from living from a handfuls to living in plenty. She transitions from being a refugee migrant to be the owner of the land. That is the level God wants to lift us up.

Do not stay in that level. Move on to the fullness of God’s favour. God does not want us to live in a level where somebody always drops something for me. Now I want to rise to the level where I am full of favour where I will start being a blessing to others. I want my own blessings.

Some of you are waiting in that one level for the past 5-10 years. No, God has got something better for you. Here is where people get stuck, get stuck in one level of God’s favour.

1. Ruth was mentored by Naomi to receive the favour. Thank God for Naomi who mentored Ruth to the next level of her favour. Child of God don’t get stuck in what God has blessed you with. If you can go through some mentoring, serious discipleship, come under the lordship of the Lord Jesus Christ, if you can come to that intimacy with God, God is going to bring you to the next level of your favour.

Ruth you are gleaning behind the reapers in a field that God wants you to own. Many of you are still behind, no God wants you to own certain things. The whole field is yours. Don’t be satisfied with a handful, when it is God’s will for you to get a whole field. In chapter 3 Ruth transformed from stewardship to ownership, she possessed the field. She was married, blessed with a child and Naomi cared for the child.

1. Get off your past and look to your future.

Some of you are not able to ask God for big because of your past experiences. You are thanking God for the handful, for hand to mouth sustenance because looking at your past that is a great change in you. But do not be satisfied, God wants to give you abundant favour.

Look at Ruth’s past: She is a Moabite. Moabites are the result of incest. After the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19, Lot was left with his 2 daughters. The two woman having no man to maintain their family line got the father drunk and had sexual relations with him. Both got pregnant and was born Moab and Be-Ammi. The family tree of Moab went on to be the Moabites.

When Ruth looks back there is nothing great about her family, it is a family of shame and incest. Everything she ever touched went wrong, famine everywhere, destruction and peril, she lost her husband, she had been through death and destruction.

Such an idolatrous woman from a cursed family, presently in the distress of death and rejection, came to Bethlehem, married one of the richest men in Bethlehem. She ended up owing the field that she was gleaning? She ends up giving instructions to the woman that were with her, to the men that were giving handfuls to her.

When Ruth following the path of righteousness not only was she blessed in the temporary, that was a decision for her decedents to be blessed. God so blessed Ruth that through this Moabite woman came Obed, from Obed came Jesse, out of Jesse came David, and out of David came Jesus Christ.

Conclusion: Can you see the favour of God? Now favour is just following her. Her past was all curse and failure but her present and further became bright. Anytime you have a ridiculous past, with all kind of wrong things, and went through a tough time, God has a favour for the pain. The depth of the past is the indication of the high of your future. If you have gone through the toughness of life, the more pain the more the glory. The greater the pain the greater your blessing.