Finding God’s Hand…in our Pain & Tragedy
Let’s pray.
Have you ever had a time in your life when what you were going through felt so painful, so hard that you didn’t know when it was going to end? But not only that, you couldn’t figure out where God was?
Maybe you were hurt by a parent. Maybe a child said something to you that still stings after many years. Maybe, you are still feeling the scars of your parents divorce, or your own. Maybe right now you are in the midst of some financial strains and you don’t know which end is up and whether or not you will get out. What about a physical problem that will not go away, you hoped it would, but it is here to stay. Maybe right now, you are having trouble at work, things are stressful and you are worried about keeping your job. And to top that off, because of that, it is now even more stressful at home.
That is the world that many of us inhabit today, or a world that we have passed through recently. If you aren’t there today, it is not a question of if, but when. Maybe you are thinking, glad we came to church today, now I feel worse than when I came in.
So often though, what happens is we have those feelings and what do we do with them? Where do we go with them? We share them with friends and family, we open up ourselves, but that doesn’t always seem to help. At the end of sharing what is going on in our life, we still have this nagging question. Where is God? Where is he when all of life feels like it is crashing around me? Is he there? Is he in the shadows, does he know what is going on? Is he up in heaven taking a nap as I go through this pain?
Can I tell you something, something you won’t often hear in church, which is sad. These questions are not only real, they are okay. I have often watch sadly as friends have gone through hard times and the churches they attended almost shunned them for asking the where is God question. I read once, that if we took out the parts of the bible that asked the where is God question, the bible would be a third smaller than what it is. So obviously, throughout history people have looked up at the heavens and said are you there? Do you see what is going on?
For many Christians though, we have bought into the idea that when we became Christians, life would be easy. There are many pastors who preach this, I won’t name any because I am going to make fun of them. But they present this idea “that God doesn’t want you to suffer. God doesn’t want you to go through hard times. He want to bless you, he wants to shower you with good feelings, and warm fuzzy’s.” That is my TV preacher impersonation. But is that reality? Not only that, is that really what God wants?
If you have your bibles, you can open them to the book of Ruth. We are starting a 3 week series today and for the next 3 weeks, we are going to be walking through the book of Ruth.
The book of Ruth is a beautiful love story. It is one of only two books of the Bible named after a woman, and the only book in the Old Testament named for someone who is not racially Jewish.
This is what it says starting in verse 1: 1In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.
This is important because it gives us the context of the story. All great stories have context. The story takes place roughly around 1000BC. The days of the judges, you can flip back sometime and read through the book of Judges is one of the darkest times in Israel’s history. Judges 21:25 sums up that time: In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
This will be important as we move on. Because it says in verse 1 that there was a famine in the land. So it begs the question, was the famine punishment? Was that God’s way of judging the nation of Israel? Almost everytime that famine is mentioned in the scriptures it is related to God’s judgment against his people. Because if they refuse to obey him, then he will refuse to feed them.
Elimelech though, instead of looking at the possible sin in his life, instead looks at the economic problems and decides they will move. So often that is what we do, instead of dealing with things we need to deal with, we look around for the door.
Verse 2: 2The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem (which means house of bread) in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there.
There is so much symbolism that I don’t want us to miss, because it is so important. Elimelech’s name means My God is King. Names were very important to the Jewish people, they don’t mean much to us today, but to Jewish people your name says something about your character. So Elimelech has this reminder of his name, but when famine strikes they leave town. The two sons Mahlon and Chilion, kind of different names. Not good names to pass on as they mean sickly one and death. And Naomi means beautiful. So we have My God is King, married to beautiful and they name their kids sickly one and death. You can almost read the writing on the wall right, somebody’s gonna die.
Verse 3: 3But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, 5and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.
Why did Elimelech move to Moab? So his family wouldn’t die? What happens? They die. The story gets as bleak and as hopeless as it could possibly be. Imagine the pain that Naomi is going through. Not only has she moved away from all her friends and family to a foreign land, with different customs, different languages, different religions. She then loses her husband. Then she loses her sons.
Verse 6: 6Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the LORD had visited his people (in Bethlehem) and given them food.
This one of 2 times that God is mentioned in the book of Ruth. In chapter 1 and at the end of chapter 4. Both times it is around the same topic, and that is the lens we should look at the book of Ruth. In verse 6, we find the theme of the book of Ruth and that is the providence of God.
Here is what I mean by the providence of God. This is so important for us to get. What I am saying is that God works through history, scripture, and our lives. God’s hand of providence means that God is at work. Not just in big things or famous people, but in everyday things of normal people. Like Naomi and Ruth.
You and I are normal people. These are very normal, average people. God is at work in the little things, in the details of their lives and ours.
When I talk about the providence of God, we need to keep in mind that there are two beliefs, two doctrines that often get separated, but need to be together. That God is both sovereign and good. So many times in the Bible God is mentioned as being good and being sovereign.
Let me explain this, this is huge as we talk about pain and tragedy. In my mind, this is the ball game as we talk about this topic. When the Bible says that God is sovereign, it means that he is the highest authority. That he rules and reigns, that there is no one beyond God. That God is over Satan, and demons, and life and death and heaven and hell. He is over everything, everything we can see and everything we can’t. God is over the big details and the little ones.
Then we have the goodness of God. God is loving, God is patient, God is merciful, God is compassionate, God is kind. Throughout the scriptures we read about the goodness of God, about the love of God.
But we think, that is great, but there is so much evil in the world. The answer is yes, Satan is bad, demons are bad, we are bad, but God is good.
We have to hold on to these two truths at all times. If you have one without the other, you have a very dangerous view of God. If you believe that God is sovereign but not good. Then you will know that God is in control, but you will think that he is cruel, and mean, and unjust. That is not the God of the Bible.
If this is our view of God, there is no way for us to handle when bad things happen to us and those we love. If we only see God as being in control, but not good how can you reconcile the pain in the world. How do you reconcile when innocent people are hurt? When Naomi looks at her world, if she only thinks God is in control but not good, how does she reconcile what has happened?
Here is how this gets distorted, when we think of sovereignty and we see bad things happen we ask the question, if God is sovereign doesn’t that mean that everything bad that happens in the world is
God’s will? The answer is no. There are many things that are not God’s will, we call them sin. If we don’t believe that, then we send the message that God wanted sin, which is not the case at all.
As you read through the Bible you see God weeping, getting angry, mourning, having pain over the sin of his people. Jesus Christ before he dies sheds tears, that means, everything in the world is not in obedience to God. There is rebellion and sin and evil, and that is not what God wanted.
God is sovereign, but God is good. Evil does not proceed from the character of God. God is sovereign, but he is also good. He loves us, he cares for us, he blesses us, he walks with us, he is patient with us, he is good to us.
If we just believe in the goodness of God and not the sovereignty of God we start to see God as one of us. Someone in heaven who doesn’t know what is going on. That when something horrible happens in the world God is sitting in heaven just as surprised as you are because he didn’t see it coming.
Do you see that? Are we tracking? These beliefs have to go hand in hand, they have to work together. We must feel the tension that comes with holding these two doctrines closely. I’ll be honest, it isn’t easy and there are a lot of questions that come with it, but we have to hold them together and not opposites as so many Christians do.
So back in Ruth, verse 7: 7So she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah.
They say, that’s it. We are leaving, we’ve had enough. We are going back home, back to where God is blessing. And along the way these 3 women stop to have a what, a conversation. They gotta talk about this, it’s 3 women. More than 50% of the book is dialogue. Of the 85 verses, 55 of them are conversations. Why? The two main people in the book are women. They’re going to talk about this a lot. For you men who are always thinking, why does she want to talk to me? It’s biblical, talk to her.
8But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. May the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. 9The LORD grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!" (which is important to point out that this is a prayer. An interesting thing about the prayers in the book of Ruth. They are always for other people, and God answers them by the end of the book).
In this prayer Naomi introduces a small word in Hebrew that is exceedingly important in the book of Ruth. The word is Hesed. This is another way of listing all the wonderful attributes of God. God is merciful, compassionate, loving, kind.
Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. 10And they said to her, "No, we will return with you to your people." 11But Naomi said, "Turn back, my daughters; why will you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? 12Turn back, my daughters; go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, 13would you therefore wait till they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the LORD has gone out against me."
This is interesting. How many times have we done things that cause other things in our lives to fall apart, and when those things fall apart, who do we blame? God. But who did it? We did. Did God move to Moab? No. How many of us can relate to Naomi? We have those questions. We look at our lives and say, “God I know I did this and they did that, but you should have showed up and done something. You didn’t.”
14Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
You can just feel the anguish and the pain that Naomi is feeling, what Naomi has gone through. They love each other. They have been through the highs and lows of life together. They have stood with each other at the graves of husbands and sons. Can you feel the emotion?
Orpah is doing what many would do and she leaves. Ruth does the opposite and stays. Orpah turns her back on God and leaves.
Verse 15: 15And she said, "See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law."
Orpah goes home because she was faking it and not really following God, because of that we are going to call her Oprah. (that was a good line right there. I don’t care what you say, I’m funny)
Verse 16: 16But Ruth said, "Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 17Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you." 18And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.
What we need to realize here is the faith that Ruth had. By going back to Israel, not only was she leaving the world she knew. She was going to a place where she would be hated and looked down upon. This would be like a Jew saying, I hear there is a good synagogue in Germany in the 40’s, I think I’ll move there.
19So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, "Is this Naomi?" 20She said to them, "Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara,
which means bitter. Call me bitter old hag. Have you ever met a bitter old hag? Maybe you are sitting next to one. No don’t raise your hand. Aren’t bitter old women fun? Aren’t they great? No. they are not, they are no fun at all. How many of you young women would choose to give your life to a bitter old woman? Your thinking, I don’t need a Christian friend that bad.
Verse 20: 20She said to them, "Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. (God has ruined my life). 21I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the LORD has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?"
Most of the commentators and theologians say this about this story. They say that Naomi was wrong because she got bitter. I will confess, I love Naomi. Because I am just like her. That’s why I think she is so cool. And if you are honest, you will confess that it doesn’t matter how much you love God because at some point you are not going to be happy with him because he doesn’t do what he is told and he never calls for help.
He does what he wants and it is not what we wanted. How many of you right now and don’t raise your hands, how many of you are bitter with God? You are angry, you are frustrated, you are furious. But, unlike Naomi, you are a liar.
You break one of the 10 commandments. On the way in, somebody said, how are you? “I’m fine.” “Really?” “No, not really.” Not really, I hate God. I’m not an atheist. I know he is real, I just don’t like him.
This is what Christians do, we lie, we fake it. “How are you?” “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m really fine.” “really?” “The pills they help. And I have an accountability group with Jose Cuervo, Jim Beam and Johnny Walker. And together, the 4 of us, we’re fine.”
I love this about Naomi. You ask her, how are you doing? It’s horrible. My life sucks. And God is not helping like he should be. Notice where she says this, she says this in front of the whole town in the town square. She lays it all on the line.
Verse 22: 22So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest.
Let me wrap this up as the band comes back up and we head into communion.
The puritan writer Flavel says that there is such a thing for the child of God as sanctified affliction. This is what that means. If you are a Christian, if you are a follower of Jesus, that for you and I, we have much affliction. What this means, while everything doesn’t come from the hand of God, everything must pass through the hand of God. And as the sovereign, he can act or not act. He can intervene or not intervene. He can allow blessing or hardship to come upon us. He is the sovereign, he gets to do as he pleases.
What that means practically for you and I, is that whatever the affliction is. It is serving a purpose that is entirely different than the exact same pain or tragedy in the life of someone who does not know God.
Meaning that if you know God and someone doesn’t and you both suffer the same tragedy: poverty, betrayal, death, sickness. For the non-Christian it may be cause and effect, consequences, reaping what you sow. For you and I that know God it is a sanctified affliction. It is serving a higher purpose. It is a pain or tragedy that God will use to make us more like him. Because there is no pain or tragedy for the child of God that is pointless, by accident or without purpose. Let me say that again, there is no pain or tragedy for the child of God that is pointless, by accident or without purpose.
We are going to spend the next few minutes taking communion. This is a time for you to get honest and real with God. Communion reminds us that God is there, that God is real and he cares and he is in control. Use this time however you need to. Feel free to come up and take communion whenever you are ready.
