GODS HAND IN OUR SUFFERING
Redeeming Ruth, Part 1
Today we begin a six-week study in the Book of Ruth,
If you’ve got a Bible,
you can turn to Ruth, Chapter 1 [pew bible page 179]
Many people believe
Ruth is not only the finest short story in all of scripture,
but one of the finest stories in all of ancient literature.
So today we’re gonna do things a little bit differently…
it’ll feel a little more like storytime,
than it would normally.
It starts out:
“In the days when the Judges ruled”
This gives us our historical timeline.
The period of the Judges is roughly
1200BC to about 1020 BC,
It’s the time between the death of Joshua
to the coronation of Saul as the King in Israel.
The reason its called the period of Judges,
because there was no king or government in Israel,
instead there were a series of judges
who decided disputes between people,
and acted as the final authority.
You can read all about this period,
in the Book of Judges in the bible.
And if you do read it,
you’ll find that the time of the Judges,
is one of the most dark,
wicked, rebellious,
unfortunate periods in all of Israel’s history.
The people of Israel were surrounded
as we are today,
by many non-Christians,
And rather than becoming
a witness and example
to these other nations,
the people of Israel were constantly
turning away from God,
ignoring God,
doing their own thing,
giving in to various temptations,
especially sexual temptations.
it actually sounds very much like our society today.
It says…
“In the days when the Judges ruled, there was a famine in the land.”
It leads us to wonder if the famine was actually
God’s judgment on his people,
because almost every time
famine is mentioned in scripture,
its connected with God’s discipline…
His people refuse to obey him,
so he refuses to feed them.
Of course, nowadays we don’t have famines in the US,
because we’re wealthy,
instead we have recessions,
and high unemployment,
but we still need to recognize that
our daily bread doesn’t come from Kroger,
it ultimately comes from God,
and he can take away what he gives.
“In the days when the Judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab.”
Here’s a quiz for you bible experts.
What does Bethlehem, literally mean?
(House of Bread.)
You’re going to see several little ironies
throughout this book.
The first is is that in the House of Bread,
people are starving to death.
This is like somebody saying,
yeah, I work for WonderBread Company,
but all the employees there are hungry.
But there’s a famine in the House of Bread.
And this man is left with a decision,
“Do I stay with my family in Bethlehem,
where there is famine
Or do I move to Moab.” [map]
Moab is some 50 miles away, to the east,
and he decides,
“I’m going to Moab.”
And again it appears that this famine is discipline from God
because 50 miles away in Moab,
people seem to be just fine.
The famine seems to be local to the area around Bethlehem.
That should have made this guy think,
maybe I need to fix my spiritual problem, first,
and come to God for help.
But he doesn’t do that… instead – as many men do –
he simply looks at the economics
and job opportunity
and the upward mobility
and says, hey, lets go to Moab.
The problem is,
Moab is no place for God’s people to live.
The Moabites didn’t worship the true God,
They worshipped a false God named Chemosh,
and their worship included human sacrifice,
and their culture had a reputation
for degradation and perversion.
so God’s people weren’t to move to Moab.
But this man makes a bad decision,
as the head of his home,
and he takes his wife and sons.
moves them away from their family and friends,
away from church and fellowship,
to a place where they,
would be the only Christian family
in a place where there is no church or fellowship,
or opportunity to worship God.
And by the way, I use the term Christian in the OT,
because the followers of God back then
were looking forward to the Messiah, Christ,
even though they didn’t know him by that name yet.
The story continues, verse 2.
“The man’s name was Elimelech,”
which means “My God is King,”
That’s another subtle irony because
he doesn’t act like it, does he?
Elimelech means “my God is king.”
But he acts like,
God isn’t king, I’m king,
I run my own life,
Forget about God,
I do what I want.
“his wife’s name was Naomi,”
which means “pleasant”
or “sweet”
or “sweetheart.”
“And the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion,”
Now these are strange names for sons.
I know these names are in the Bible,
but please do not give these names to your sons.
Mahlon means “sick”
Kilion means “dying.”
Can you imagine naming your kids that?
Here’s my boys,
Walking Pneumonia
and Lung Cancer.
No. You don’t want to do that.
Do not name your kids Mahlon and Kilion.
“They were Ephrathites”
that’s the old name for Bethlehem –
“from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.”
Now, for all of us men,
Elimelech is a negative example
of the foolish decisions that we men can make,
that sometimes wreck the lives of our wives and kids.
There’s a pressure that all of us men feel.
to put food on the table,
and take care of the basic needs for our family.
This is especially timely,
with todays high unemployment.
when it’s hard to make ends meet,
But yet, even when times are tough,
we cannot make decisions
based just on money and income.
Elimelech is a tragic example
of a man who didn’t count the spiritual costs
of moving his family.
He didn’t consider, that
when a man makes decisions for his family,
he is affecting their future.
When you decide
where to take a job at,
you are also deciding
who you and your family will fellowship with,
where and if you will attend church,
And if you have children,
what examples are they going to be surrounded by,
what kind of friends will they have?
When Elimelek decided to take his family to Moab,
he also chose to leave church,
leave worship of God,
leave prayer,
fellowship,
accountability.
He left behind all their friends who loved God.
He took them to a place
where his children would almost certainly
marry unbelievers,
And he did all this, because,
like so many of us today do,
he simply counted the financial costs,
but didn’t count the spiritual cost;
Verse 3
Now Elimelek, Naomi's husband, [what?] died…
Hold on now.
Why did Elimelech move to Moab?
So that he wouldn’t die.
What did Elimelech do in Moab?
He died.
Moral of the story:
we can make all the great plans we want,
but the outcome is in God’s hands, not ours.
Now, we don’t know how he died.
Old age? We don’t know.
Heart attack? don’t know.
Got hit by a camel? We don’t know.
If you’re like me,
you read that and you go,
He died?
How did he die?
Why did he die?
Was it God’s judgment,
God’s curse?
Or just the natural course of events?
Why did he die?”
Scripture says nothing.
This is so typical of our lives…
Something happens –
we say, why God?
Silence.
God doesn’t answer.
The Bible says that
the secret things belong to the Lord,
we know in part,
we see in part.
In other words,
We know everything we need to know.
but by no means do we know
everything we want to know.
So we have to live by faith,
and trust God.
“Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died. And she was left with her two sons.”
Well, there’s still some positive in that.
because in that culture,
the sons would look after Naomi,
They didn’t have nursing homes for old people back then,
but the sons would care for her,
and feed her,
help her in her old age.
She would be okay because she had two sons.
4 They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth.
After they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Kilion [what?] also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
Hold on again.
Why did Elimelech move to Moab?
So that he and his sons would not die.
What happened?
They died.
This story is now about as bleak
and as dark
and as hopeless
as it could possibly be.
God is saying,
at the darkest time in history,
when things were already really bad,
then, the worst thing happened.
Can you think of anything worse
than burying your children?
I’m the loving father of 3 wonderful kids.
I couldn’t be prouder of them.
And I cannot think of anything more painful in this world
than burying all my children,
and my wife.
That is what happened to Naomi.
She buried both sons
before she even got grandchildren,
and she buried her husband.
Three funerals in a short period of time,
and her whole family was gone.
ended, no one left but her.
To make it worse,
she’s in Moab,
a strange country.
No relatives,
No church,
no women who love God
to pray for her
and comfort her
and encourage her.
She’s old, alone, and broke.
This is the picture of absolute devastation,
desolation,
and desperation.
Take any pain you’ve ever felt
and multiply it,
you’ve got Naomi.
How in the world, is she going to respond?
Verse 6
When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there.
So she’s going home – “to Bethlehem,
because she heard a report that
after many long years.
the famine had lifted in Bethlehem,
By the way, verse 6 here
is the first time that God is mentioned in this story,
and it says that
The Lord had visited his people.
He was blessing his people in Bethlehem.
And so Naomi decided to go home,
to go back to God
To get out of the land of Chemosh, the false god,
and go back to God’s people
back to the place where he was blessing.
She made a good, godly decision,
basically it’s a decision
to return to worshipping God,
and when she does,
at that point in the story,
everything starts to turn around.
Some of you have experienced this.
Everything in your life seemed to be going the wrong way,
you were depressed and discouraged,
but then you made a decision
to take a step toward God,
and your story started to turn around,
as soon as you took that step.
There’s a principle behind this,
and a name for how this works.
In fact, it’s really the theme,
of the whole Book of Ruth,
Bible teachers would call this,
the providence of God.
You say, Ken what is that?
What does providence mean?
Let me take a couple minutes and explain it.
This is going to be like Theology 101
for a couple minutes,
we’re going deeper today than we usually do,
if you’re not into that,
just hang a couple minutes,
and we’ll be back to the story…
Here we go.
God works through
history, scripture, and our lives,
through two hands.
One is the visible hand of miracle.
The burning bush has a conversation with Moses.
The Red Sea parts.
The virgin gives birth to a son,
who walks on water,
and raises dead people.
God’s visible hand of miracle is obvious.
But we don’t see obvious miracles that often.
Most of the time
God works through his invisible hand of providence.
Some of you may have said,
“I wish I could see God at work!”
We do --- all the time,
through his invisible hand of providence,
The definition of Providence:
the foresight and care which God manifests for you and I.
Providence means that God is continually at work,
in the everyday details of normal people,
like Naomi and Ruth and Elimelech,
and you and me.
Providence means
there’s a good plan
behind all that happens to followers of Christ,
because God is involved with it all.
So God works through both
Miracle, and Providence.
Miracle is his visible hand, we can see it,
Providence is God’s invisible hand,
we can’t see it
except with our eyes of faith.
Now, when we talk about the providence of God,
there’s two critical things included,
if you leave out either one,
you can get really confused
about what God is like.
Those 2 things are God’s sovereignty,
and God’s goodness.
God is both sovereign and good.
When the Bible says that God is sovereign,
that means that he is the highest authority;
that he rules and reigns;
He is all powerful,
There is no one beyond God;
God is over Satan, and demons,
and life,and death,
and heaven,and hell,
he rules all creation,
Proverbs says that
even when dice are rolled,
God has power over the numbers that come up,
God is involved with everything,
from the rule of furthest stars in the universe,
all the way down to whether you find a parking place
when you go to the grocery store.
All of that,
is under the sovereign hand of God.
The other truth
that has to go along with his sovereignty,
is that God is good.
God is loving, patient, merciful, compassionate, and kind.
In every way, God is good.
The question that always comes up, is,
if God is so good,
why is there so much evil in the world?
Its because,
Satan is bad.
Demons are bad.
People are bad a lot of the time.
But God is good.
And these two truths
must be held together at all times.
God is sovereign and good.
If you only believe that God is sovereign,
but God is not good,
then what happens?
You’ll notice all the evil and pain in this world,
and you’ll start to believe that God is
what I call a distant dictator,
that he’s cruel,
and unjust,
or maybe just doesn’t care about people.
Very much like the mythical gods
of Greek and Roman mythology.
A pastor I know named Mark
had a lady call him up,
and she told him she had been raped,
Then she said, “I have one question for you.”
Mark said, “What is that?”
She said, “Why would God have me raped?”
Mark told her,
God does not rape people.
God is a loving father,
God doesn’t sit in heaven
and decide someone is going to be raped,
or abused
or murdered.
God is sovereign and good.”
She said, “But if God is sovereign,
doesn’t that mean that everything that happens
is God’s Will?”
“No. Absolutely not.
There are many things that are not God’s Will.
We call them sin.”
None of the sin and evil that goes on in this world,
is God’s will.
In fact, as we read scripture,
God sees sin, and gets angry.
God weeps, and grieves, and mourns,
when he sees sin and injustice.
That is not his will.
People rebelled against God,
and stopped doing his will, a long time ago.
No sin or evil is God’s will.
God is sovereign,
and God is good.
And what that ultimately means is that,
even though God allows evil,
he takes that evil
and turns it around in the end,
to make good come out of it.
as Romans 8:28 says,
God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God…
God doesn’t waste one tear,
not one suffering.
not one hardship,
He causes everything to work together for the good
because God is not just sovereign.
God is good.
Now, if you believe the opposite,
that God is good,
but not sovereign,
Then, you’ll end up being what we call an Open Theist,
this a somewhat popular idea nowadays,
which says that God doesn’t rule over all creation.
He doesn’t know the future.
He isn’t in control of it all.
Oh, sure,
God loves you.
God means well.
He intends well.
But God doesn’t know the future,
He was just as surprised as you were,
when you got hurt, or abused,
and he just couldn’t do anything about it.
Sorry. Wish I could help.
That is not the God we see in scripture.
Scripture says that nothing is too hard for God.
God is both good, and He’s sovereign.
Now, that’s the end of our theology lesson.
aren’t you glad.
How does it apply to this story.
Well, in some Bible stories,
you see lots of miracles,
in other words God’s visible hand.
But in Ruth you see no miracles,
instead you see God’s invisible hand of providence.
This story is a classic story of God’s providence,
that is at work is all around us.
God takes the worst,
darkest, most evil situation possible,
a lady who’s buried her husband and kids,
and has nothing left,
But… God has a plan,
and his providence goes to work,
and a horrendous painful situation
starts to get turned around,
step by step by step.
What had been a famine in Bethlehem
turns out to be a blessing,
because now food is on the table,
and crops are in the field,
and hope is in the heart,
and God is in their midst.
And the author makes sure we know,
It wasn’t luck,
or chance,
circumstance,
that brought the rain and the crops.
“It’s God.”
he says,
the Lord had come to the aid of his people
by providing food for them
It was God’s providence,
starting to turn this story around.
Verse 7.
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.
They say, “That’s it! We’re leaving Moab.
We’re gonna go where God is,
where God is blessing,
where God’s people are.”
And along the way
these three women stop to have a what?
A conversation.
They gotta talk about this.
It’s three women, right?
They gotta talk about it.
In fact, here’s a tidbit for you…
53 percent of Ruth is conversation.
Why?
Because the two main people in the book are women.
They’re gonna talk about this a lot.
Some of you men are like,
“Why does she always want to talk to me?”
It’s Biblical.
You probably need to talk to her.
Verse 8
Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go back, each of you, to your mother's home.
She says, you better go on home.
I got nothing.
I’m broke.
Got no more kids.
Got no money.
Got no future.
Go home.
I appreciate you’re willing to go with me,
but its not a good idea.
Go home.
And then she prays.
Its interesting,
There are several prayers in the Book of Ruth.
and every single prayer
is answered by the end of the book.
If you believe in a distant dictator God,
You say,
“Well, if God is sovereign, why pray?”
The answer is,
you pray because God is sovereign,
and God is good,
He wants to help, because he’s good,
and he can help, because he’s sovereign,
So talk to him, and ask.
That’s what Naomi does.
Here’s her prayer.
May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead and to me. 9 May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband."
Then she kissed them good-by and they wept aloud 10 and said to her, "We will go back with you to your people."
11 But Naomi said, "Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? 12 Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— 13 would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord's hand has turned against me!"
Notice she says,
the Lord's hand has turned against me!"
Who does Naomi hold as ultimately responsible
for the suffering
and the pain
and the devastation
that has come upon her?
God.
I don’t know about you,
I read the story,
it seems like her husband has something to do with this?
The guy who moved them to Moab,
Yet Naomi knows
even if her husband is to blame,
that God ultimately could have stopped the famine,
or stopped them from moving,
or protected them from dying.
God could have done something!
How many of you identify with Naomi?
You had some painful situation,
and you say,
“God, I know I did this, and they did that,
but you should have showed up,
you could have done something,
And you didn’t.
So Naomi says
the Lord's hand has turned against me!"
Right now, she’s not seeing God as a friend,
She’s seeing the distant dictator.
God has turned against me.
He hasn’t been good,
not to me.
He’s made my life hard.”
There’s an old term
that actually goes back to Puritan times.
The term is
Sanctified affliction.
The word sanctified is a hard one,
but its easy to remember the meaning
through a play on words.
When you hear sanctified,
think of “saint” ified.
A saint is a holy person right?
and when you’re sanctified,
it means God is making you more holy,
more spiritual,
more like Jesus.
And the idea behind sanctified affliction is,
if you are a Christian,
if you are a follower of God,
then even though you and I
might have a lot of affliction,
we might have a lot of problems in our lives,
its all sanctified affliction,
in other words it has a purpose,
its being used for good by God,
to make us more holy.
Now that does not mean
that the problems come from God,
but it does mean
he uses the problems to bring good.
And what that means practically
for you and I
is that whatever the affliction is,
#1, we know there is some purpose behind it,
and #2, we know that the purpose
is entirely different
then the same exact suffering and affliction
in the life of someone who doesn’t know God.
In other words,
if you know God
and the person next to you doesn’t,
you might both suffer the same affliction,
poverty,
hardship,
betrayal,
sickness,
whatever it might be.
And for that non-Christian,
it might simply be
random chance,
or your reap what you sow.
or it might be judgment from God...
But for the person who knows God,
its different,
In your case,
it is a sanctified affliction.
God will use it to sanctify you,
to make you more holy,
to make you more like Jesus Christ.
to make you to love him more wholeheartedly,
and obey him more completely.
So, for you and I,
that means that,
when we arrive at places
like where Naomi finds herself,
where life is hard,
and it feels like God is a dictator and not a friend,
The one question that God wants us to ask is,
“God, how is this being used by you to sanctify me?”
Now we can still pray for God to change it,
and pray for him to take our suffering away,
and do a miracle,
we still use our faith,
But we also,
No matter what the problem or suffering is,
we also should ask,
“God, how is this being used by you to sanctify me?”
Because for a child of God,
there is no suffering,
no affliction,
no shedding of tears,
there is nothing bad that happens to us,
that is without purpose,
or without value.
Now why is this so important?
Because it’ll change our whole attitude,
toward suffering.
It’ll cause suffering
to draw us toward God,
rather than hardening our hearts toward God.
Listen to this, this is important.
Your life is just like Naomi and Ruth’s.
God is working in your life right now,
through his hand of providence,
and one of the tools he’s using right now on you,
is sanctified affliction.
Now, we don’t always see this.
At this point in the story,
Naomi doesn’t see this,
she doesn’t understand sanctified affliction,
she’s got an image of distant dictator God,
and she’s mad at God.
But as we keep reading the story,
in the coming weeks,
we’re going to watch
as her affliction becomes sanctified,
and her life changes.
Lets go on to Verse 14.
At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-by
Orpah is doing the sensible, ordinary thing.
She goes home.
Ruth is gonna do what’s extraordinary,
and refuse to go home.
Orpah goes home because
she looked like a Christian
but was faking it, she was really a pagan girl,
Maybe instead, we should call her Oprah.
Verse 14 continues,
but Ruth clung to her. "Look," said Naomi, "your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods [back to Chemosh]. Go back with her."
Then Ruth speaks for the first time in the story,
and says some of the most famous words in the bible,
some of you used them in your wedding vows.
16 But Ruth replied, "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. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me."
Notice she says,
your God will be my God.
May the Lord,
And here she uses his Hebrew name Yahweh,
which only worshippers knew,
May Yahweh deal with me, if I don’t do this.
Apparently at some point before her husband died,
Ruth had started worshipping the true God,
instead of Chemosh,
So she says,
“I’m not goin’ home.
There’s no Christians there.
There’s no church.
You’re the only Christian I know,
And you’re leaving, so I’m leaving.
I’m going to Bethlehem.”
Now, this is a bold move for her.
Do you think the people of Israel liked Moabites back then?
No.
They were the enemy.
And she’s going to this foreign country,
with no husband,
no home,
no friends,
no family,
no job,
no food.
This is a bold move, Ruth has some faith.
verse 18
When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. 19 So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, "Can this be Naomi?" 20 "Don't call me Naomi," [which means Sweet, or Pleasant]
she told them. "Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.
Mara means bitter,
She’s saying, God has ruined my life.
Verse 21
I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me."
Let’s talk about this.
Honestly, what is your first reaction to Naomi?
A lot of bible teachers read this and say,
“You’re not supposed to get bitter!”
Ephesians says don’t get bitter.
Hebrews says don’t get bitter!
Bitter’s bad.
Naomi got bitter.
Bad Naomi.
Don’t be like Naomi.
I have to confess that
I really like Naomi
because Naomi is real,
and the truth is,
most people are just like her,
whether they admit it or not.
If we were all really honest this morning,
almost all of us would have to confess,
that no matter how much you love God,
there are some times when you’ve been bitter,
you haven’t been very happy with God.
I know I’ve been there.
Maybe its because God didn’t answer one of our prayers,
or he didn’t meet a need,
or heal someone,
or help you the way you wanted.
And even if you weren’t bitter at God directly,
I know there’s times
you’ve been bitter at his people,
at his church.
Don’t raise your hand,
but let me ask,
How many of you would say that –
today you’re little bitter with God?
You’re just not really happy
with the hand he’s dealt you
right now.
But, for most of us,
we don’t act like Naomi,
Why?
Because we lie about it.
In fact,
Some of you broke one of the Ten Commandments,
in our lobby before the service started.
Somebody asked,
“How are you?”
And you’re like, “Oh, I’m fine.”
But you weren’t fine at all.
Inside you’re going,
My life stinks,
and I am not happy with God.
I don’t know if he really is a good God,
right now he feels more like a distant dictator to me.
I love Naomi’s honesty.
They ask her, “How ya doin’?”
and she’s honest.
“My life is horrible! My life stinks.
And its God’s fault,
He is not helping like he should be.”
She may not have had a lot of faith,
but I love her honesty.
Verse 22
So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.
Yes this is the same Bethlehem
where Jesus will be born
about 1200 years later.
And they return, when?
At the beginning of barley harvest,
What is that?
That’s talking about new hope.
The famine is finally over,
the harvest has begun,
God’s providential blessing has arrived.
It’s a whole new season in Israel.
and a whole new season in the life of Naomi and Ruth.
The harvest has begun.
Some of you are in that place right now.
You’ve turned back to God,
and after a famine time,
after a dry time,
the harvest is beginning,
it’s a new season for you,
God’s providential blessing is waiting for you,
if you’ll follow him.
Others of you are not feeling that,
you don’t see that happening in your life,
but you want it,
you want to see that harvest come,
you want to see that blessing come…
you can do the same thing Naomi and Ruth did.
They do 2 things when life stinks,
They run to God,
and they run to God’s people.
That’s what they do,
they go to God and his church,
and then their harvest begins.
We’re going to close now,
but starting right now,
starting today,
I challenge you to do the same thing Naomi and Ruth did,
take a step toward God,
and toward his people.
Maybe for you that means
getting into a small group,
or coming forward for prayer,
or getting into a ministry where you can serve others,
or committing yourself to a daily time with God,
I don’t know what it looks like for you,
but I challenge you,
take a step toward God
and toward his people,
then ask God to let the harvest come.
Lets stand for prayer.
Lord God, Thank you that you are loving and gracious and merciful and compassionate and kind. You’re a God who can sympathize with us because you have suffered as well.
Thank you that we can trust you no matter what we go through. That even when we’re frustrated and bitter, you work out all things for good. And when we have tough times Lord, help us run to you and your people, in faith that our afflictions will be sanctified, that we’ll become what you want us to be.
Amen.
