Ruth 1: God Provides FAITH
***A young woman graduates from college, and feels called by God to become a missionary. Despite wanting to be married, she recognizes that her career choice makes finding a husband much less likely. Still, she follows the call of God, only to contract dengue fever. After that, her allergies react to the tropical climate, requiring daily shots to survive. Her mission board sends her home before her first term is up.
Meanwhile, a young man, searching for love, is caught up in an unhealthy relationship. He only comes to his senses when his girlfriend betrays him.
The young woman and the young man hold on to their faith, with the help of a supportive group of single adults. Meanwhile, the group decides everyone should have a prayer partner. A drawing is held, and the young woman and young man draw each other’s names. Her prayers are answered, and a year later they are married. Forty years later, we still are.
Was that God’s doing? Was it providential?**
PROVIDENCE is the idea that God controls events that happen in the world. Not only does God control all that happens, but God PROVIDES for his people, as a father provides for his children.
But what if God does not PROVIDE like people think he should?
There may be some here today, seeking God to provide…
…”the one,” a soul mate, a partner
…a baby, after years of trying to conceive
…friends to relieve the loneliness
…a higher level of success, which seems so elusive and out of reach
…financial resources to get out of a hole, and move forward
…physical or emotional health, to live with vitality and strength
If God is the Provider, where is his provision?
In this series of messages on the book of Ruth, we will see how God provides for his people, not always like they expect, but in his own plan and purpose.
The Old Testament story of Ruth is known as a charming love story, but it is much more than that. It begins in desperation:
Read Ruth 1:1-5.
The story begins, “In the days when the judges ruled…” After the Israelites moved into the Promised Land, there were several hundred years when Israel had no central government. The book of Judges tells how a pattern repeated itself: The people sinned, and God allowed them to be oppressed by poverty and foreign rulers, until they repented and cried out to God. Then God raised up a judge to deliver them.
Some of the judges, like Gideon and Samson, are well-known. Others are obscure, like Ehud, who delivered the Israelites from the Moabites. This is his story:
Eglon, king of Moab, required tribute to be paid by the Israelites. Ehud went to Eglon’s palace, ostensibly to bring tribute to the king. Ehud was left-handed, and he concealed a homemade double-edged sword under his robes, on the right thigh. When he arrived, the Moabites checked him for weapons, but they didn’t check his right thigh, because a right-handed man could not easily reach that spot.
Claiming to have a private message for Eglon, Ehud found him alone on the pot, relieving himself. He pulled out his homemade sword and stuck it into Eglon’s belly, where the fat closed around it. Then he escaped by the balcony, while the Moabites stayed out because of the smell.
The Israelites and Moabites were not the best of friends.
When famine came to the land of Israel, Elimelek made a desperate move. He left Bethlehem, which ironically means “house of bread,” to move the other side of the Dead Sea, the land of Moab.
No doubt Elimelek was trying as best he could to provide for his family, but moving to Moab was risky. Even if they were welcomed there, they might become assimilated into the culture of those people, and they might lose their identity as God’s chosen people. Elimelek thought it would be only “for a while,” but it turned out to be ten years.
Elimelek probably hired himself and his two teenage sons out to Moabite farmers. Then he died, leaving his sons to provide for the family. The sons married Moabite women, and then they died. What would these 3 women do? They couldn’t go out and work at McDonalds or Starbucks. They didn’t want to turn to prostitution to survive. Perhaps they could find seasonal “women’s work” in the fields, or become a servant-slave in a wealthy household? At best, they would barely have enough to get by.
Meanwhile, Naomi remembers her homeland. Every time she meets someone who has been to Israel, she listens for news about her people.
Read Ruth 1:6-7.
Naomi and her daughters-in-law decided to “return home” to Bethlehem. Why did the younger women go along? Was it desperation? Was it their love for Naomi? Was it the nostalgic memories Naomi had for her home, and the charming way she described Bethlehem?
The three women packed up what little they had, and began the 50-mile journey to Bethlehem. Then Naomi woke up to reality:
Read Ruth 1:8-13.
Ruth and Orpah were Moabite women: immigrants, with a foreign accent, and widows besides. But it was even worse, for Israelite men were taught to avoid “those Moabite women.”
Numbers 22-24 tells the story of Balaam and his donkey. Balak, king of Moab, hired a seer named Balaam to curse the Israelites, who were camped in the fields of Moab before entering the Promised Land. It is a fascinating story, with a donkey who spoke, and a man who answered his donkey. The moral of the story is, “Who is smarter? A man who insists on doing what he knows God doesn’t want him to do, or his donkey? Obviously the donkey—or in the King James Version, something less respectful. You can read the whole story in Numbers 22-24.
Balaam finally got to Moab, where God compelled him to bless the Israelites, instead of cursing them. Yet immediately after he left, we read in Numbers 25:1-3, “While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate the sacrificial meal and bowed down before these gods. So Israel yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor. And the LORD’s anger burned against them.”
For that reason, Moses said in Deuteronomy 23:3-6, “No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, not even in the tenth generation. For…they hired Balaam son of Beor…to pronounce a curse on you…Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them as long as you live.”
Moabite women really were the ones your mother warned you about! Ruth and Naomi would not be the kind of women a young Israelite man would want to bring to a family gathering.
Naomi believed God would PROVIDE for her daughters-in-law, but not in Israel. She said, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the LORD show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. May the LORD grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” God would be kind, and God would provide a husband—but not in Israel.
Orpah understood. She wept with Naomi and Ruth, kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, and reluctantly went back to Moab. There seemed to be no other choice.
Ruth saw the logic of the situation as well, but she made a different choice.
Read Ruth 1:14-18.
Ruth’s words echo through the centuries, with some couples even using them in marriage vows: “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die…”
Why did Ruth say this? Was she merely following her heart? No, she was going by faith—faith in Naomi’s God, the God of Israel.
The gods of Moab were not like the God of Israel. The primary god of Moab was Chemosh, who demanded harsh offerings from his subjects. Sometimes even children were sacrificed to appease him! The Moabites also worshipped the Baal of Peor, a fertility god who gave crops and offspring as his worshippers gave him offerings and cavorted in sympathetic acts of intercourse. No wonder Ruth preferred the God of Israel!
Yet where did Ruth get her faith? She was born a Moabite, but by the providence of God, she was brought into a family who knew the true God. Their faith was far from perfect. In fact, Naomi’s faith, through solid, is bitter, as she says in verse 13, “It is more bitter for me than for you, because the LORD’s hand has turned against me!” Naomi believed in the providence of God, but it made her bitter!
Ruth, however, came to faith by the providence of God. GOD PROVIDES FAITH.
If you are a believer, God provided the gift of faith to you. Maybe your parents had a part in it, or a friend, or a strange circumstance. Maybe you can see God’s hand in bringing your ancestors to faith decades ago, or in a providential encounter with a stranger. As Ephesians 2:8 says, “By grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…”
God provided faith for Ruth, but what about Naomi? She is not doing so well!
Read Ruth 1:19-21.
As we can see in the NIV footnote, “Naomi” means “pleasant,” and “Mara” means “bitter.” What a way to introduce yourself and make friends! “Let’s hang out together; I’m a bitter person.”
Why is Naomi bitter? Her husband and sons have died. She has no grandchildren, no home, no food, no security. Yet the cause of her bitterness is her faith that God is in control! “The Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty….The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.” Twice she refers to Yahweh, the God of Israel, as “the Almighty,” an impersonal power who does whatever he pleases. She feels helpless and abandoned by God.
How many Naomi’s have you known? God has not met their expectations, let alone exceeded them. He has not provided what they think they should have. Perhaps they even deny his existence, because believing makes them bitter.
So Naomi says, “I went away full, but the Lord brought me back empty.” How true was that? Was she really “full,” as she was forced to leave her home and her friends to go to a strange land? Was she really “empty,” coming back home? After all, what is Ruth thinking when she hears Naomi say she is empty? “What am I?—chopped liver?”
Naomi’s life is not empty, because God is still there. God is there, in the faith she cannot shake, despite her bitterness. And God is there, in the most unlikely companion she could imagine: a Moabite woman, whose faith in God is unshakable.
At this point in the story, it is Ruth’s faith that saves them both.
Read Ruth 1:22-2:3.
Aaahhh! If this were the Hallmark Channel, a rom-com movie or a romance novel, we would see a setup to a story: Ruth and Boaz follow their heart and live happily ever after. There is a lot more to this story than romance, however, with unexpected twists and turns. As the story unfolds, we will see how God PROVIDES for all his people as he provides for each person in the story.
For now, GOD PROVIDES FAITH—faith for a Moabite woman who could scarcely have it unless God gave it to her. Ruth’s faith rescues Naomi from terminal bitterness and despair.
Faith keeps us going, when we can’t see our way to a happy ending.
But where do we get faith? Where do we get faith, when life beats us down, and we can’t understand why God allows bad things to happen to us or those we love? Where do we get faith, when we don’t have anyone like Ruth to carry us? Where do we get faith, when there doesn’t seem to be any way for our story to end well?
We don’t get faith from our circumstances.
We don’t get faith from seeing how our own plans might work out.
We don’t get faith by insisting that God give us what we think we should have. He might have other plans—better plans.
We get faith from knowing a GOD WHO PROVIDES for his people.
The Book of Ruth shows how God provides, through his care for the needy, through a kinsman-redeemer, and through the coming of David the king and then the Messiah, whom we know as Jesus Christ. That is the kind of God we have!
Ruth could not see all of that, but she believed, and her faith put her in a place where God could provide for her.
God provides us with a perspective Old Testament people could see only dimly:
In Romans 8:28-32, Paul says, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
We could get sidetracked in arguments about predestination and free will, but Paul’s point is much simpler: We can trust God to provide for his people, according to HIS plan and purpose.
Paul does not say everything that happens to us is good. (We don’t say, “Thank you, God, for cancer.”) Paul does not say that God always works things out the way we want them to work out. He says that God works all things out for our good. His plan and purpose—his PROVIDENCE—moves toward with the ultimate happy ending: eternity with him in glory.
Can we believe that? Where will we get the faith to believe God is committed to us?
Our faith is built on what we know of God. He provided a plan of salvation, which was demonstrated in the Old Testament, and is more clearly reveal Jesus Chriat. We can believe God is committed to our salvation, because he has demonstrated his commitment in the strongest possible way: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
GOD PROVIDES THE FAITH TO PERSEVERE.
