A. How many of you have ever had a bad day? Certainly, all of us have had bad days. Right?
1. Let’s have a little fun by starting with some “You know you’ve having a bad day when…” sayings:
a. Your horn sticks on the highway behind 32 Hell’s Angels on their motorcycles.
b. Your birthday cake collapses from the weight of the candles.
c. Your twin sister forgets your birthday.
d. Your doctor tells you that you are allergic to chocolate and potato chips.
e. Your 4-year-old tells you that it's almost impossible to flush a grapefruit down the toilet.
f. You discover that your 12-year-old's idea of humor is putting crazy glue in your Preparation H.
g. It costs more to fill up your car with gas than it did to buy it.
h. You wake up and find your waterbed has sprung a leak, and then you realize you don’t have a waterbed.
i. You realize that everyone is laughing but you.
2. Sometimes that’s the way things go and you have a bad day.
a. And sometimes it’s not just a bad day, but a series of bad days, or bad weeks, or even bad years.
3. That’s how it was for a woman named Naomi who is a central character in the book of Ruth.
B. Today, we are beginning a four week journey through the four chapter Old Testament book called Ruth.
1. The book of Ruth is a story that shows how, as the old hymn says, “God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform.”
2. It’s for people who wonder where God is when one tragedy after another attacks their faith.
3. It’s a story for people who wonder whether a life of integrity in tough times is worth it.
4. And it’s a story for people who can’t imagine that anything great could ever come of their ordinary lives of faith.
C. Ruth 1:1 tells us: During the time of the judges, there was a famine in the land.
1. This was a 400-year period after Israel entered the promised land under Joshua and before there were any kings in Israel (roughly 1500 BC to 1100 BC).
2. The book of Judges comes just before Ruth in our Bibles and you can see from the very last verse of Judges what sort of period it was.
a. Judges 21:25 says: In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did whatever seemed right to him.
b. It was a very dark time in Israel as a difficult cycle repeated itself over and over again.
c. The people would sin, God would send enemies against them, the people would cry for help, and God would mercifully raise up a judge to deliver them.
d. Again and again the people rebelled, and from all outward appearances God’s purposes for righteousness and glory in Israel were failing.
e. One of the things the book of Ruth does for us is to give us a glimpse of the hidden work of God even during the worst of times.
3. Spoiler alert: when we look at the last verse of Ruth (4:22), we learn that the child born to Ruth and Boaz is Obed, and Obed became the father of Jesse and Jesse became the father of David who led Israel to her greatest heights of glory.
a. One of the main messages of Ruth is that God is at work even in the worst of times.
b. And even when God’s people are not faithful, God is faithful and is at work carrying out His plan.
c. So, when you or I think God is far from us, or has turned against us, the truth is that he is laying a foundation for redemption, restoration and blessing in our lives.
4. Consider the verse from the hymn “God Moves in a Mysterious Way”:
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust him for his grace.
Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.
5. I think that’s the message of Ruth, and let’s see how this unknown author, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, teaches it to us.
D. The first five verses of the book of Ruth describe the great hardship and heartbreak that Naomi experienced.
1. The Bible says: 1 During the time of the judges, there was a famine in the land. A man left Bethlehem in Judah with his wife and two sons to stay in the territory of Moab for a while. 2 The man’s name was Elimelech, and his wife’s name was Naomi. The names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They entered the fields of Moab and settled there. 3 Naomi’s husband, Elimelech, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 Her sons took Moabite women as their wives: one was named Orpah and the second was named Ruth. After they lived in Moab about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and the woman was left without her two children and without her husband.
2. Those five verses cover a period of over 10 years and describe so much hardship and heartbreak.
a. First, Naomi and her family experienced a famine and decided to move to a foreign country.
b. Second, Naomi’s husband died – we’re not sure when he died after they went to Moab.
c. Third, Naomi’s sons decided to marry Moabite women.
d. Fourth, both of Naomi’s sons died without leaving any children.
e. In summary, Naomi was left without her husband, without her two sons, and without grandchildren.
3. Naomi’s situation remind me so much of the situation my 31 year-old, stay-at-home mother found herself in when my father died leaving her with 4 children, no life insurance and a bleak future.
a. This picture of my family was taken on Easter Sunday 1972, just a month and a day before my father’s death from cancer.
b. I’m sure my mother herself to sleep many a night because of the heartbreak of loss and the anxiety about the future.
c. I found myself thinking about this a lot lately, because about 2 weeks ago, on May 3rd was the 50th anniversary of my father’s death.
d. Looking back now 50 years later, I can clearly see God’s faithful provisions for us, but it is so hard to hold on to hope and trust in the middle of the storm, and yet with God’s help we can and do.
E. Before we move on in the story, I want to pause and think about the choices and consequences that Naomi and her family made.
1. I don’t want to insinuate that we can draw a direct line from their disobedience to their suffering, but I do want to caution us about taking paths that are in direct disobedience to God.
2. It’s always good to have choices, but when we choose to disobey God, we don’t get to choose the consequences of our choice.
3. Elimelek made a choice that looked good on paper – He thought: “There is food in Moab, so let’s go there.”
a. It was a choice that put bread in his belly and in the bellies of his wife and two sons.
b. And for a while, it looked like the right choice but it had life-changing consequences.
c. The problem with this choice was that it violated God’s Word.
4. Elimelek and his family were Jews who lived in Bethlehem, Israel – how ironic that in Hebrew Bethlehem means “house of bread,” but he decided to leave “the house of bread” to get bread.
a. Elimelek’s name means “my God is King,” so he obviously had religious parents.
b. He should have known that God’s word prohibited Jews from having anything to do with Moabites – they weren’t supposed to be friends with them and marrying them was strictly forbidden.
c. And yet, Elimelek not only moved his family to Moab, but his sons married Moabitesses.
d. Moabitesses is a fun word, but it sounds like a disease.
5. We must realize that anytime we think that God is leading us to do something that is against scripture, it isn’t God who is leading us. (Amen? Let me say that again.)
a. If we feel led to take a job that would compromise our faith, it is not God leading us.
b. If we feel led to move in with someone before marriage, it is not God leading us.
c. If we feel led to marry someone of the same sex, it is not God leading us.
d. If we feel led to buy that lottery ticket, it is not God leading us.
e. If we feel led to take revenge in our own hands, it is not God leading us.
6. That voice we hear leading us to do what God forbids may be our own voice, or it may be Satan leading us astray, but it is definitely not God’s voice.
a. Satan is that roaring lion who is looking for someone to devour (1 Pet. 5:8).
b. Satan is known to disguise himself as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14).
c. Satan’s goal and purpose is to kill and destroy (Jn. 10:10).
d. We must not be fooled into listening to Satan’s voice and following his lead.
7. As I said, I’m not trying to draw a straight line between their sinful choices and their tragic suffering, but we must realize that there are benefits of obedience and consequences of disobedience.
F. So, let’s go back to Naomi’s place of darkness and desperation.
1. She found herself far from home, without husband, or sons, or grandchildren to support her.
a. She was about as helpless and vulnerable as anyone could be.
2. But this is where the story of God’s faithful love for her begins, and we see the faint beacon of hope in verse 6.
3. In verse 6 we learn that while in Moab, Naomi heard that the Lord had paid attention to His people’s need by providing them food.
a. Naomi hears rumours that her homeland, Israel, is doing well – God is helping his people by sustaining their harvests and blessing them with rich returns.
4. So she sets her sights on going home, tracing back the journey she travelled years ago.
a. This time, however, her journey is fraught with so much more danger.
b. When she travelled to Moab, she came as a younger woman flanked by three healthy men.
5. But for her return, she was now an older widow with only younger women to watch out for her.
a. The three women travelling alone would have been an easy target for all kinds of trouble.
b. Slave traders, robbers and worse frequented their route home, and people disappeared all the time on journeys.
c. And they were probably without horse or donkey to make the trip easier and quicker.
G. As they began their journey back Naomi decided to encourage her daughter’s-in-law to stay with their own people.
1. The Bible says: 8 Naomi said to them, “Each of you go back to your mother’s home. May the Lord show kindness to you as you have shown to the dead and to me. 9 May the Lord grant each of you rest in the house of a new husband.” She kissed them, and they wept loudly.
10 They said to her, “We insist on returning with you to your people.” 11 But Naomi replied, “Return home, my daughters. Why do you want to go with me? Am I able to have any more sons who could become your husbands? 12 Return home, my daughters. Go on, for I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me to have a husband tonight and to bear sons, 13 would you be willing to wait for them to grow up? Would you restrain yourselves from remarrying? No, my daughters, my life is much too bitter for you to share, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me.” 14 Again they wept loudly, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. 15 Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Follow your sister-in-law.” (Ruth 1:8-15)
2. This is a tender scene with lots of water works and rightfully so.
a. These three women were brought together through marriage and had suffered greatly together.
b. Staying together would have been hard, but parting would have been a different kind of hard.
3. Naomi gave some persuasive reasons for the women to leave her.
a. One good reason had to do with Naomi’s misery – Naomi’s life was too bitter, and she wanted something better for them.
b. Another good reason for them to leave was the fact that she had no other sons for them to marry, and they surely wouldn’t want to wait for her to birth a future husband for them.
1. The Israelites had a custom that if a brother died without children, then another brother would marry the widow and have children on behalf of his brother.
2. But Naomi had no other sons for them to marry, and probably never would.
c. Naomi thought it was hopeless for Ruth and Orpah to remain committed to the family name, but Naomi failed to remember that there were other relatives who might perform the duty of a brother, including Boaz.
4. We can learn an important lesson from Naomi - when we have decided that God is against us, we usually exaggerate our hopelessness.
a. We become so bitter we can't see the rays of light peeping out around the clouds.
b. It was God who broke the famine and opened the way home (1:6).
c. It was God who preserved a kinsman to continue Naomi's line (2:20).
d. And it was God who compels Ruth to stay with Naomi.
e. But Naomi was so embittered by God’s hard providence that she lost hope in God’s merciful work in her life.
H. Orpah decided to take Naomi up on her offer and kissed her goodbye, but Ruth clung to her and delivered one of the most amazing pledges of committed love in all of history.
1. Ruth declared: 16 Don’t plead with me to abandon you or to return and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you live, I will live; your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. 17 Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me, and do so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” (1:16-17)
2. The more we ponder these words the more amazing they become.
3. Ruth’s commitment to her destitute mother-in-law is simply astonishing.
a. First, it includes leaving her own family and homeland behind.
b. Second, it means, as far as she knows, a life of widowhood and childlessness awaits her.
c. Third, it means going to an unknown land with a new people and new customs and new language.
d. Fourth, it was a commitment to never return home, not even after Naomi dies.
e. But the most amazing commitment of all was this: “Your God will be my God” (v. 16).
1. Keep in mind that Naomi had just said in verse 13, “The Lord’s hand has turned against me.”
2. Naomi's experience of God was bitterness, but in spite of this, Ruth forsakes her religious heritage and makes the God of Israel her God.
3. Perhaps she had made that commitment years before, when her husband told her of the great love of God for Israel and his power at the Red Sea and his glorious purpose of peace and righteousness. Somehow or other Ruth had come to trust in Naomi's God in spite of Naomi's bitter experiences.
4. Here in Ruth we have an example of a godly person.
a. Someone who through faith in God sees beyond present bitter setbacks.
b. Someone who remains secure even without the securities and comforts of the world.
c. Someone who has courage to venture into the unknown and the unfamiliar.
d. Someone with a radical commitment to their God-given relationships.
e. May all of us be more like Ruth! Amen?
I. Naomi was unable to persuade Ruth to abandon her and return to her own home, so together they returned to Bethlehem.
1. The Bible says: 18 When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped talking to her. 19 The two of them traveled until they came to Bethlehem. When they entered Bethlehem, the whole town was excited about their arrival and the local women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?” 20 “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara,” she answered, “for the Almighty has made me very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has opposed me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?” 22 So Naomi came back from the territory of Moab with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabitess. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. (Ruth 1:18-22)
2. What do you make of Naomi's theology?
a. I would take Naomi’s theology any day over the sentimental views of God which dominate much of evangelical Christianity today, especially among the “name it, claim it” folks, who say that following Jesus is all about health and wealth.
b. Naomi was unshaken and sure about three things: God exists. God is sovereign. And God has afflicted her.
c. The problem with Naomi is that she has forgotten the story of Joseph who also went into a foreign country. He was sold as a slave. He was framed by an adulteress and put in prison. He had every reason to say, with Naomi, “The Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.”
d. But he kept his faith and God turned it all for his personal good and for Israel's national good.
e. Joseph testified to his brothers: “As for you, you meant it for evil against me, but God meant it for good.” (Gen. 50:20)
3. Naomi was right to believe in a sovereign, almighty God who governs the affairs of nations and families and gives each day its part of pain and pleasure, but she needed to open her eyes to the signs of God’s merciful purposes.
a. It was God who took away the famine and opened a way home.
b. Notice the delicate touch of hope at the end of verse 22: “They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest” - If only Naomi could have seen what that was going to mean for her and for Ruth.
c. And if only Naomi could have had her eyes open to Ruth - what a gift and blessing she was!
d. As Naomi and Ruth stood before the people of Bethlehem, Naomi declared, “The Lord has brought me back empty.” – But that was not completely true. She was not completely empty – She had Ruth – Ruth must have thought, “What am I, chopped liver?”
e. Obviously, Naomi wouldn’t have said this if she could see that in Ruth she would gain a grandson who would be the grandfather of the greatest king of Israel, and that this king of Israel would foreshadow the King of kings, Jesus Christ, the Lord of the universe?
f. If Naomi could have seen that, I think she would say in the words of the hymn:
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.
J. Next week, as we move into chapter 2, we will encounter a key verse that encapsulates the message of the whole story of Ruth.
1. Boaz said to Ruth, “May the Lord reward you for what you have done, and may you receive a full reward from the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.” (2:12)
2. This story of Naomi and Ruth starts out with deep despair as they experience a series of bad days.
3. But there is a slow opening of the curtain that brings hope as it reveals more and more of God’s plan, and ultimately ends with a very happy ending.
4. If Ruth had been brought into the family by sinful choices, it is doubly astonishing that she is made the grandmother of David and the ancestor of Jesus Christ.
a. We must never think that the sin of our past means there is no hope for our future.
5. If our future looks hopeless, then we must learn from Ruth that God is right now at work to give us a future and a hope.
a. Our job is to trust God by waiting patiently and obediently.
b. As the hymn says: “The clouds ye so much dread are big with mercy and shall break in blessing on your head.”
6. The greatest blessings of all come through Jesus, our Savior and Lord.
a. How cool is it that God brought Naomi back home to Bethlehem with Ruth in tow?
b. How wonderful that years later the young David would be shepherding the sheep in the hills around Bethlehem?
c. And how amazing that many years after that, other shepherds in those hills of Bethlehem would hear the words of angels announcing the arrival of the Messiah, the Christ, and that they would find the baby wrapped in cloths, laying in a manger, in Bethlehem.
d. That baby Jesus, grew up and eventually hung on the cross with the sins of the whole world on His shoulders.
e. What started out on that Friday as a bad day, truly the worst day ever, three days later became the best day and the symbol of hope and salvation for all time.
K. It may seem like things are in pretty bad shape for us and for our world right now.
1. Maybe you’re having a bad day, a bad week, bad month, bad year, or bad life, but don’t lose faith, there is cause for hope and His name is Jesus.
2. If we will put ourselves under Jesus Christ’s wings of refuge, then we will receive God’s full rewards and blessings.
3. Jesus said: “For God so loved the world…” (Jn. 3:16).
4. Jesus said: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mk. 16:16).
5. Peter said: “Repent and be baptized…” (Acts 2:38-39).
6. Paul wrote: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).
7. Let’s get in Christ and stay in Christ, no matter the hardships and heartbreaks we experience in this life, for abundant and eternal blessings are found in Christ alone.
Resources:
• “Doing What Needs to Be Done” Sermon by James Galbraith.
• “Meet Ruth” Sermon by Bradley Boydston
• “Ruth: Sweet and Bitter Providence” Sermon by John Piper
• “Ruth – Part 1 – Chapter 1” Sermon by Todd Blair
