“NO BREAD?”
(freely adapted from Tommy Tenney, The God Chasers)
RUTH 1:1-7
OPEN
Do you like fresh baked bread? It’s one of my favorite things in the whole world. Nothing smells and tastes like fresh baked bread.
Imagine passing a bakery and thinking, “I’d love to have some fresh bread.” You walk in the door and there are people sitting at the counter. You walk up to the counter and tell the clerk that you want some fresh baked bread. Your jaw drops when the clerk says, “I’m sorry but we don’t bake bread here. In fact, we don’t bake anything. Our ovens haven’t worked in quite a long time.”
You can’t believe your ears. You look around and sure enough, the shelves are empty. You ask the clerk, “When will your ovens be fixed?” The clerk says, “I don’t know. Nobody is in a hurry to get them going.” Really perplexed now, you say to the clerk, “Then why do these people come here? It’s not a bakery anymore!”
The clerk replies, “Because they’ve come here for years and years. We used to have more people who came but since we don’t make bread or any other baked goods any more, they quit coming.”
Wouldn’t that be a ridiculous business operation? Opening the bakery when there’s no bread? But that is what is happening in a lot of churches today. People come. They talk and visit. They go through the motions but there is little or no bread of life available.
Ruth 1:1-7 – “In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem
in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man's name
was Elimelech, his wife's name Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were
Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there. Now Elimelech, Naomi's
husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the
other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left
without her two sons and her husband. When she heard in Moab that the LORD had come to the aid of his
people by providing food for them, Naomi and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. With
her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take
them back to the land of Judah.”
THE PREDICAMENT
What’s happening in this passage? Why did Naomi, her husband, and two sons leave their home in Bethlehem and move to Moab? You have to understand that they went from a country whose purpose was to praise God and bring light to the Gentiles to a country that practiced pagan idolatry.
The reason is that there was a famine in Bethlehem. In the original language of Hebrew, Bethlehem means “house of bread.” The reason they left the “house of bread” is because there was NO bread in the house.
In the culture of that day, bread was an essential part of their diet – especially for the common people. In a spiritual sense, bread represented the presence of God. In the Tabernacle, in the Holy Place was the Table of the Presence. It sat right in front of the curtain that led to the Holy of Holies. On this table made of gold sat twelve loaves of unleavened bread. It was also known as “the bread of the Presence.” In the Hebrew, it was literally “the face bread.” It symbolized the continual presence of God with his people – the nation of Israel. It also pointed to the time when God would promise his presence with the New Israel – the church.
We live in age where people have left the modern house of bread - the church – behind and are looking for the Bread of Life in other places. The world is sick of the church. They have fled to Moab. They’ve gone in search of bread to other places.
They are hungry to hear from something beyond themselves. Their hunger drives them to anywhere but the church. They search in pursuit of the flesh to try to feed the hunger that gnaws at their souls.
On the other hand, even though sick of the church, they’re hungry for God. I think that’s proven by the millions of dollars that get spent by them every year to read and listen to gurus and psychics, purchasing talismans, crystals, and amulets, buying New Age and occult books and manuals, reading horoscopes and Tarot cards, and seeking to fill their hunger with all kinds of false religions.
It should convict us and shame us to see so many hurting and searching people turn to psychics, astrology, spiritists, and gurus for guidance and hope. People are so hungry that they’re pouring millions of dollars into an industry of the occult manned by fake soothsayers. They’re so desperate for help and hope that they’ll accept a canned script from paid marketers as spiritual insight.
THE PROBLEM
What has caused this predicament? The answer is simple: they’re sick of church because the Church has been somewhat less than what the Book has advertised. Naomi and her family have something in common with the people who leave church or totally avoid church today. They left the place they were at and went somewhere else to find bread.
There’s only one reason so many people are so willing to attempt to get in touch with something from the other side, even accepting the counterfeit in place of the real – they don’t know where to find the real thing. The blame for that can only fall on one place. It’s not God’s fault. It’s ours.
People have come to the House of Bread time and time again only to find there was simply too much of humans and too little of God. The reason that people are flocking to anything but church is that they are looking for bread. They’re trying to find bread in other places because the church has failed them. They’ve looked and not found bread. Maybe their parents have looked, or their friends have looked and have reported that the cupboard is bare. There is no bread in the pantry. And the oven is cold and dusty.
When the house of bread is empty, people are forced to look elsewhere for the Bread of Life. The sad thing is that the world’s alternatives can be deadly. As Naomi would discover, Moab is a cruel place. It will separate you from your spouse. It will steal your sons from you and bury them before their time. Moab will rob the very vitality of life from you.
We have promised that there is bread in our house but when the hungry come, all they can do is scrounge around through the carpet for a few crumbs of yesteryear’s revivals. What happened to the bread? The sign’s still up. It says the bakery is still in operation. We still take people into our churches and show them the ovens where we used to bake bread. Everything’s in place. All the ingredients are there but all they can find are crumbs from the former waves of revival.
Oh, we sit around and reminisce about where God has been and what God has done but there is very little we can say about what he is doing today. Now, we’ve had some victories over the last several weeks and that’s great. But I hear about how many people used to come to church here and how many youth we used to have and what things we used to do. I am convinced that God has done some great things through First Christian Church in the past. But I’m also convinced that right now we’re so used to cruising in comfort that we’ve forgotten just how exciting it is when God is moving and working through his people.
I have to confess to you that I have to take some responsibility for the situation. Obviously I haven’t been doing enough of what needs to be done for this congregation to be all that God wants us to be. But I also have to tell you that you have to take some responsibility, too. Obviously, you haven’t been doing enough of what needs to be done for this congregation to be all that God wants us to be. I don’t know about you, but every empty seat I see this morning screams out to me, “I could be filled with some former citizen of Moab! Can’t you put a body in this seat?”
THE PREFERENCE
Brother Lawrence in The Practice of the Presence of God: “The most holy practice, the nearest to daily life, and the most essential for the spiritual life, is the practice of the presence of God, that is to find joy in his divine company and to make it a habit of life, speaking humbly and conversing lovingly with him at all times, every moment, without rule or restriction, above all at times of temptation, distress, dryness, and revulsion, and even of faithlessness and sin.”
As we said earlier, Moab is a very harsh place. It will take all that we have and still ask for more. In the end, all that Naomi had left were two daughters-in-law whom she had known only ten years. However she shared with them that she’d heard a rumor – there was bread back in the House of Bread.
What happens when we have the presence and power of God in our midst? When the Bread of Life is present in our company? The answer is found in Ruth 1:8-16.
Naomi has begun the journey back to Bethlehem. She doesn’t go very far until she turns to her daughters-in-law and encourages them to return to their homes. She has no more sons and will produce no more sons. They should go back to their homeland and live out their lives.
Orpah does turn around and go back. Note that Bethlehem’s reputation was so bad that she didn’t go. How many people in our community are like Orpah and don’t go to the house of bread (the church) because there is a history of hype but no real bread?
Ruth, however gives a response of those who truly hunger for the Bread of Life. Ruth 1:16 – (Ruth said) “Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”
Two things happen when the bread of God’s presence is restored in the church. First, the prodigals will come walking back in Bethlehem from Moab once they know there is bread in the house. Naomi was a prodigal who left the house of bread when that table became bare. Yet, once she heard that God had restored bread to Bethlehem, she quickly returned.
Second, the prodigals won’t come back alone. Naomi came back to the house of bread accompanied by Ruth, who had never been there before. As a result, Ruth became a part of the lineage of Jesus when she married Boaz and they had a son named Obed, who was the father of Jesse, the father of David. Who knows what awaits our actions?
THE PRESENCE
Let me explain what I mean by the presence of God. First, there is the omnipresence of God. The Bible teaches us that God is everywhere. Because God is Spirit and is above all and Creator of all, he operates outside of our physical limitations. As David reminds us in Psalm 139, there is no place where we can go in the world to get away from God. No matter how high or low we go, no matter how hard we try, no matter where we try to hide, God is there.
But second, and important to the message today, is the manifest presence of God. Even though God is everywhere all the time, there are also times when he concentrates the very essence of his being. When this happens, it becomes very evident that God himself has “entered the room.” The Bible is full of accounts of just such happenings.
A fellow was traveling in his car to visit some friends who lived several hundred miles away. He got hungry and decided that a good meal in a good restaurant was a great idea. He checked his GPS system and found a nice restaurant along the route he was travelling.
He got out of the car dressed in khakis and a polo shirt. As he went to enter the restaurant, he was met by the maître d who told him that restaurant policy required all men to wear a tie. He stormed back to his car thinking that he would just find somewhere else to eat. But the more he thought about it, it looked like a good restaurant and he really didn’t have time to find another one like it.
He opened the trunk and began to dig through his suitcase. Maybe he had packed a tie. He looked and looked but there was no tie. He stood there frustrated. He looked down and saw his battery jumper cables.
He was mad at the restaurant and the maître d and grabbed those jumper cables and tied them around his neck. He went back to the door and was met by the maître d. The maître d looked him over very closely and told him, “All right. You can come in. But don’t start anything.”
What we have tended to do in the church is to tell God that we will only allow his presence in certain ways during our scheduled services together. We want him to stay quiet, don’t interrupt anything, let us have a good time, and let us go home. We have put too much emphasis on programs, procedures, and personnel. We’ve told God, “You can come in. But don’t start anything!”
What we need is God’s full presence. Not just part of God but all of God. We need to decide that whatever it takes and wherever it comes from, we must have him. The thing is that he wants to come; he wants us to share in his presence but he will only come on his terms, not ours.
There is much more of God available than we have ever known or imagined, but we’ve become so satisfied with where we are and what we have that we don’t pursue God’s best. We have become content to comb the carpet for crumbs as opposed to having the abundant loaves of hot bread that God has prepared for us in the ovens of heaven!
He’s prepared a great table of his presence and is calling to the church: “Come and eat!” But sadly, we ignore God’s call while we carefully count the stale crumbs of yesteryear’s bread. Meanwhile, thousands of people outside of our church walls are starving for the Bread of Life. They don’t want stories about him. They want him!
So what do we do? We need to understand that what we have, where we are, and what we are doing is small compared to what he wants to do among us and through us. God is just waiting for us to decide that we want him to move through s us in this community so that everyone can eat and feed at God’s table.
Our problem is that we’ve never really been hungry. We’ve allowed the things of this world to satisfy our lives and satiate our hunger. We’ve come to God week after week, year after year just to have him fill in the little empty spaces. We’ve wanted a snack and not a meal.
Here’s the key to getting to where God wants us. We have to say to ourselves, “There must be less of me and more of God.” That’s what John the Baptist said about Jesus, “He must increase and I must decrease.”
God is tired of being in second place to everything else in our lives. He’s even tired of being second to our local church programs and our local church life. We can get so caught up in being religious that we never become spiritual.
If we’re not careful, we can become so interested in developing the “cult of the comfortable” with our comfortable programs, our comfortable songs and procedures, and our comfortable circle of friends that we forget about the thousands of discontented, wounded, and dying people that live around us.
It’s time for us to quit worrying about being proper and dignified and seek the presence of God in such a way that he opens the floodgates of the Bread of Life and we can feed the spiritually hungry people in our area.
To be honest, I’m praying that God grips us and causes us to become so obsessed with the bread of his presence that we will not stop seeking him. We will want to see his face so desperately that we will not stop seeking him no matter what it costs or how uncomfortable it makes us feel. Jesus said in Mt. 5:6 – “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
Jn. 6:28-35 – “Then they asked him, ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’ Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’ So they asked him, ‘What miraculous sign then will
you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as
it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, it is not Moses
who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For
the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘from now
on give us this bread.’ Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry,
and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.’”
CLOSE
Trisha MacFarland stopped alongside the trail on a family hike across the Appalachians. She needed to go to the bathroom. She lagged behind her family and stepped off into the woods. When she emerged…she was on the wrong trail…lost and alone.
That is the setting for Stephen King’s novel, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. (I don’t normally read Stephen King but I found this passage fascinating.)
King writes: Trisha sat down, closed her eyes and tried to pray for rescue. Now, however, praying was hard. Now, she discovered herself lost and without vocabulary. She said, “Our Father,” and it came out of her mouth flat and uncomforting.
She couldn’t remember discussing spiritual matters with her mother, but she asked her father not a month ago if he believed in God.
“God,” said Larry MacFarland, “now I’ll tell you what I believe in. I believe in the Subaudible.”
“The what?”
Do you remember when we lived on Fore Street? Do you remember how the electric baseboard units would hum? Even when they weren’t heating?”
Trisha had shaken her head.
“That’s because you got use to it,” he said, “but take my word, Trisha, that sound was always there. Even in a house where there aren’t baseboard heaters, there are noises. The fridge goes on and off. The traffic goes by outside. We hear those things all the time, so most of the time we don’t hear then at all. They become…”
“Subaudible,” she said.
Pree-cisely. I don’t believe in any thinking God that marks the fall of every bird, a God that records all our sins in a big golden book and then judges us when we die. But I believe there has to be something. Some sort of insensate force for the good.”
“The Subaudible,” she said.
“You got it.”
So, here’s this girl, in the woods, lost and sensing that there must be something more. And then she remembers her baseball hero, the great closer of the Boston Red Sox, Tom “Flash” Gordon. He pulls out miraculous saves for the Bosox and when he wins, he points his finger to the sky giving credit to a personal God who has revealed himself to the world in Jesus Christ.
Well into a nine-day trial of being bug-bitten, scared, cut, sick from drinking bad water and eating poisonous berries, she pleads to a personal God to bring her out of the woods. “Please God, help me find the path,” she thought and closed her eyes. It was the God of Tom Gordon that she prayed to, not her father’s Subaudible. She needed a God that was really there, one you could point to when and if you got the save. “Please, God, please help me…”
She needed a God that was really there. And so do we. Do you know God in a personal way? Have you understood that he has revealed himself to the world in Jesus Christ? Do you know this Jesus as your Lord and Savior?
