A. For the past two weeks we have been trying to develop a deeper appreciation for the faithfulness of the God we serve.
1. The Bible declares that he is characterized by faithfulness.
a. In Exodus 34:6, God says of himself, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”
2. Scripture also reveals the fact that God is faithful to his promises.
a. Joshua told the people of Israel, “You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled…” (Josh. 23:14)
3. In today’s lesson I hope that we can reinforce the lessons we have been learning over the past few weeks by looking at the story of God’s faithfulness as told in the book of Ruth.
4. The story of Ruth is told in a small, four chapter book sandwiched between Judges and 1 Samuel in the OT.
B. I want to begin by drawing our attention to a striking phrase in our Scripture reading from the book of Ruth - "The Lord came to the aid of his people" (1:6).
1. The King James Version puts it: "The Lord has visited his people."
2. I think that it is fair to say that all of us have known the problems as well as the joys of life - and they come at all stages in life’s journey.
3. During those times, have you ever been tempted to ask: "Where is God?"
4. When faced daily by more deadly news from Bagdad, or the death toll and destruction from the hurricane Katrina, we wonder – Where is God?
5. The matter becomes even more pressing when we are faced with our suffering and losses in life?
C. There’s nothing like a story to bring to life the issues of this tension between God’s way and the way of the world, of searching for the pathway of faith in times when evil seems rampant and life seems unmanageable.
1. A practical example of God in action can be of enormous benefit in sustaining the believer and enabling him or her to cope with the uncertainties and apparent meaninglessness of much of what we experience.
2. I trust that each of us will be able to identify with the Bible story of Naomi and Ruth in some personal and practical way.
3. Whatever our circumstances, I believe that all of us can benefit from their experience with a faithful God.
4. The book of Ruth has been called "the most beautiful short story in the world."
5. In many respects, it deals with ordinary people and unimportant matters.
6. Yet it deals with them in such a way as to show that God is active in the affairs of human beings.
7. God works his purposes out and blesses them that trust in him.
8. If its message had to be summarized in one word, it could be the word "faithfulness", in the sense that God is there - God cares, God rules and God provides.
9. Faith in such a God is the common factor to all the incidents in the book.
10. As we look at the experience of Naomi, we will be able to trace the work of God’s faithful care.
D. The story occurs during the time of the judges of Israel, when the cycle of disobedience, defeat, and deliverance happened over and over again.
1. God’s people happened to be in a period of defeat.
2. Verse one tells us there was a famine in the land.
3. So, Elimeleck decides to move his family from Bethlehem to Moab, east of the Dead Sea.
4. Looking back over the years, Naomi must have deeply regretted the decision that Elimeleck, her husband, made when he decided that he’d had enough of life in Bethlehem.
5. Certainly, life was not easy in Bethlehem, but it was going to get a lot worse after they left their homeland.
6. Why were things bad in Bethlehem? God had withdrawn his blessing from the land because the people of God, in their obsession for prosperity, had departed from the true religion as had been revealed to them.
7. They had begun following the ways of the corrupt Canaanite nation, embracing its degrading fertility-cult worship on their hilltop shrines.
8. No wonder that God’s blessing was withdrawn and they were left to reap the wild oats they’d sown.
9. God had promised prosperity, but it was linked to responsive obedience to his known will.
10. The lure of the other gods was too strong so, instead of plenty there was famine in the land; instead of security there was danger and devastation.
11. "Why?" they must have asked themselves.
E. The answer was obvious, but as you know, we so often miss the obvious.
1. God will not stand for his people to live in disobedience. If we live lives of disobedience, there will be consequences, not only some day, but maybe today.
2. Nevertheless, on the other hand, if we live lives of obedience and faith, there’s no promise of a trouble-free life, but there is the promise of daily bread and the assurance that there’s no need to be over-anxious about tomorrow.
3. Our faith in our faithful God does help us to cope with life’s uncertainties and challenges.
F. Elimeleck and Naomi had gotten their spiritual priorities wrong.
1. They had forsaken their homeland of Bethlehem for the heathen country of Moab.
2. This nation was certainly not the kind of company that a God-fearing Israelite should keep.
3. But Naomi, her husband and young sons emigrated to Moab and then tragedy struck - Elimeleck died.
4. The sad entanglement with Moab deepened when their two sons married local girls and it was at that stage that their troubles took a greater turn for the worse - then two sons died.
G. What a predicament for Naomi.
1. Here she was, a widow in a strange land, with the responsibility for her daughters-in-law, also widowed!
2. Just think of Naomi’s position - her family had been distressed enough by the famine to uproot itself from Bethlehem for Moab; then to the loss of material comfort and security of home is added the pain, not of one bereavement, but of three!
3. Naomi was now without home, husband, sons and fellowship.
4. I wonder what the worship of Jehovah God meant to her now?
H. The author of the book of Ruth is a great storyteller.
1. He piles up one disaster upon another in Naomi’s life, giving his readers a real sense of shock that one person should be called upon to suffer so much.
2. To many people, perhaps including Naomi, it must have seemed so undeserved, and so unexpected.
3. This indeed is the reality of our existence - some of our pains seem unbearable; some of our circumstances so unjust and some of our questions linger unanswered
4. But faith, we are to learn from Naomi, sometimes means a willingness to leave such questions to the mystery of God, in the confidence that he will show himself to have been trustworthy all along, even in the darkest hour.
I. And so, life has to go on, and even in the hard times, faith will sometimes mean leaving unanswered difficulties in the hands of God.
1. But while we do so, faith is ever looking for and expecting God to work his purposes out in his own providential and faithful way.
2. Naomi had the good spiritual sense to realize that when help came it would be more likely to come from the land of Judah than Moab.
3. Although Naomi was physically in Moab, her heart remained in Judah, and she hadn’t allowed herself to forget God.
4. She was alert to receive news from travelers that God had not abandoned his people.
5. "The famine is over" they said, "the Lord has visited his people and given them food."
J. “The Lord had come to the aid of his people.” What a wonderful gift from a loving and faithful God.
1. The author of this little book is trying to tell us something important.
2. To the person of faith there are primary causes in events, which are of far greater importance than the secondary causes of the actual circumstances.
3. To the believer, God is the primary cause.
4. It is his hand at work or his hand being restrained to which may be traced the direction of one’s circumstances.
5. The writer might just as accurately have said "the rains had come" or "there has been an upturn in the economy" or "the threat of invasion has gone."
6. All these could have been part of a chain of causes in the recovery of Bethlehem from the famine.
7. And unbelievers attribute everything to these kind of secondary causes.
8. But believers come to a different conclusion. They report things in terms of the Lord’s actions.
K. "The Lord had visited his people." To Naomi it was a sure sign to move to where the blessing was.
1. No doubt her feelings of hurt were still very raw.
2. Maybe she still couldn’t understand why God had taken her husband and sons from her.
3. But Naomi trusted that God was a faithful God; that God is there and God cares, and with such faith and confidence in God she could manage her difficult circumstances.
4. In that frame of mind she sets off with her daughters-in-law to journey home.
5. Along the way, Naomi tried to convince her daughters-in-law to return to their people and after a little resistance, one of them reluctantly did so.
6. Ruth, however, would not abandon Naomi, and she declared those famous words, “Where you go I will go, where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.
7. Ruth, herself, is a pretty good study in faithfulness. She sticks to Naomi like a piece of gum to a shoe.
L. Surely it must have been a very emotional moment for Naomi as she re-entered Bethlehem.
1. Her friends were so happy to see her return, but Naomi immediately clarified her predicament.
2. "Don’t call me Naomi," she said to her women friends.
3. "Naomi means “Pleasant,” so call me Mara, meaning “Bitter."
4. Was she wrong in saying these hard words? No. We need to be truthful with God and others.
5. She explained, “I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty…The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.” (Vs. 21)
6. That was the bad news. The good news was that the barley harvest was beginning, and God was about to bless her life in ways she could not have imagined.
M. From here the rest of the story comes in rapid succession.
1. Ruth goes out to glean the grain overlooked by the harvesters.
2. When harvesting in those days it was impossible to get it all on the first pass.
3. But God’s law forbade a harvester to go back and pick up what was left behind. It had to be left for the poor.
4. And where did Ruth just happen to be gleaning? In the field of Boaz, who happened to be a man of standing and a relative of Naomi.
5. Boaz just happens to take notice of Ruth, and has heard about Ruth’s faithfulness to Naomi, and so he shows her special treatment and invites her to glean only in his fields, under his protection.
6. When Ruth shares with Naomi how well things went that day, Naomi declares, “God has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” (2:20)
7. Naomi then explained to Ruth that Boaz was one of their kinsman-redeemers.
8. According to God’s law, if a man died without descendents, then the closest relative was supposed to take the widow as a wife and have children for the man who had died.
9. After it was obvious that Boaz was interested in Ruth, Naomi instructed Ruth to go and sleep at the feet of Boaz as he slept on the threshing floor.
10. This was their way of requesting Boaz to accept his responsibility as kinsman-redeemer.
11. Boaz declared that he is willing, but that there is another kinsman-redeemer who is closer and must be given the first opportunity to marry Ruth.
N. So, the next day, Boaz met with the town officials and the other kinsman-redeemer, and was given permission to marry Ruth and have offspring for the family of Elimelech.
1. The town elders said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah (Jacob’s wives), who together built up the house of Israel.” (4:11)
2. Look at verse 13 and following: So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. Then he went to her, and the LORD enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. The women said to Naomi: "Praise be to the LORD, who this day has not left you without a kinsman-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth." Then Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap and cared for him. The women living there said, "Naomi has a son." And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.” (King of Israel) And who descended from David? Jesus!
O. God’s ways are beyond us. He moves in mysterious ways!
1. But, what we see through his gracious dealings with his people in Scripture is the principle that he is a faithful God.
2. It’s all too apparent that we, God’s people are often unfaithful. We make wrong decisions, and even act foolishly and sinfully, often with disastrous consequences.
3. But thank God, his gracious faithfulness is not bound by our sinfulness and foolishness.
4. And if we place ourselves in his hands, our God, the Almighty will yet prove himself as our faithful provider and protector.
5. Will we trust him, as did Naomi? She discovered that he is the God who is there with you, even in suffering. He is the God who faithfully cares, the God who visits his people.
