Adoption Into A New Legacy – March 2K14 WTLB

By Sister Joanne Orhue

Ruth 1:1-18

Here is something that I have observed over the years: everyone has a past. It could be your individual past or family history. And with that past comes a legacy: a trend and pattern that exists from generation to generation. Some legacies are good and some are bad. It’s important to leave a good legacy for your children and future generations. It is our privilege and duty to continue to build upon the positive inheritance which our ancestors have left us. Yet along with that, we sometimes find negative things that our ancestors left us. In this we have a choice: keep doing things the same way that led some of our ancestors down troubled paths or make a clean break and start something new in our lives.  I’m talking about dropping our past and receiving a new inheritance from the Lord. Together, it’s all about adoption: spiritual adoption into a new legacy.

I’d like to refer to the story of Ruth, specifically the part of the story in Ruth 1: 1-18.  What do we know about Ruth? She was born in the land of Moab – and her parents and grandparents were likely from Moab as well. The country of Moab lay on the east of the kingdom of Judah and the Dead Sea.  They are well known in the Bible for their worship of a god called Chemosh, and at various times they would offer human sacrifice to him.  God called their worship an abomination (1 Kings 11:7). It is safe to assume that if her family was not involved in these religious practices, at least everyone around her was.

Around this time, Judah had a famine and a man named Elimelek, his wife Naomi, and his two sons Mahlon and Kilion, moved to Moab to wait it out. When Elimelek died, his two sons married Moabite women named Orpah and Ruth. Ten years later, they died. Sometime later, in verse 6, Naomi finds out that the famine is over and she wants to return to her home town. Initially both Orpah and Ruth want to follow her back to Judah, but Orpah decides to return to Moab and her familiar surroundings. Ruth on the other hand, insists on following Naomi, acknowledging that she will never return to her old life again in Moab. She makes a clean break from her entire past. She leaves all her old friends, her old traditions – even her old clothes (because Israelis dressed differently). She leaves everything. And because she was willing to do all that, she was adopted into a new legacy. From that point, she was known in Judah as Naomi’s daughter-in-law. Eventually she married Boaz, and she became the great-grandmother of King David.

So how does this relate to you and me? Well, like Ruth, perhaps your family has a legacy that is not so great. Or maybe you have done things in our past that you’re not so proud of. In my own case, I have family members on both sides of the law, if you know what I mean. In addition, I’ve done things that I’m not so proud of!

The great news is that we have a powerful choice to make: break away from the past, or stay in the past. When we get saved, God adopts us into His family and we inherit a new legacy. It’s our greatest opportunity to wipe the slate clean. Does anyone like living in a dirty house and wearing dirty clothes? Well, clean that house and clean those clothes!   

Ruth was born a woman of Moab, but died the great-grandmother to Israeli King David. God does the same for us, BUT only when we choose to break away completely from our past. He is eager and ready to adopt us into His family. In order to be adopted, however, we have to break away from our old family or we will not get God’s great and mighty inheritance.  When we get adopted into the body of Christ, we are entitled to all the rights and privileges of being a part of this new family. But let me leave these last words with you: in order to be adopted into our new legacy, we must make a clean break so that we can inherit a new future.