Sometimes our woes are partly our fault too, let’s be honest.
What about Elimelech and Naomi, who we read about in Ruth 1? Was it just “bad luck”? Or had they made their own exit from God’s plan for their lives, only to reap the consequences afterwards?
Chapter 1, verse 1: there’s a famine. What do they do? They leave home and travel to another country.
Instead of
· hanging in there,
· living by faith,
· seeking God’s face,
· crying out to him for his solution,
they try to manage by working it out themselves.
We understand that. It’s human. Who hasn’t gone down that road before? But it’s a dead-end. Elimelech and Naomi were looking for a human answer to their difficulties.
Trust in the Lord, says Proverbs 3.6, with your whole heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. Acknowledge him in all your ways, and he will your paths straight.
But I think Elimelech and Naomi, lean a little too much on their own understanding.
Impatiently, they try and straighten out their path a little too much by themselves.
Both Israelites, they emigrate with their two young boys to Moab, a hot, dry, poor and pagan country, with false gods, situated south east of the Dead Sea. It was to prove a catastrophic decision.
They left God’s people and deserted the land of milk and honey that God had promised them, hoping to do better elsewhere.
But it’s not by leaving God’s people and abandoning the arena of his blessing that problems go away.
I have known many Christians, who have gone though a tough time, which has shaken their faith down to the bare essentials. Some stay on track. They look for opportunities to pray with others, they don’t quit God’s house, they make sure they enjoy quality time with other believers. Others let go and drift. Like Elimelech and Naomi, they try and manage on their own, far away from God’s presence and cut off from the community of his people.
Let me tell you about an evangelist who was disillusioned, tired and burned out, who walked into a church about 15 years ago. He didn’t really want to be here, not caring too much to get involved in a church like that one, but he felt instinctively that it was not good to get into a habit of missing church so he turned up. The service did him a power of good, good preaching (also from Ruth incidentally) and well led. He had wanted to be anonymous, but he felt he should thank the service leader and preacher for their ministry on the way out. Well, the leader managed to get him talking for a few minutes, and the conversation finished like this; “You know, we’re looking to hire a guy like you for a post that’s coming up in about three weeks, why don’t you send us your CV?” That church was St Michael’s Paris, the man was me and needless to say, I got the job!
And I learned something that day. When all is going against you, put yourself in the place where God is most susceptible to bless you, in a church, in his presence and among his people.
Back to the Bible; one day, bad news arrives. Elimelech is dead. His sons get married and slip into the pagan culture around them. They let go of their God, who had delivered their ancestors from slavery in Egypt, to embrace the idols of Moab.
Then one day, more bad news. In fact, it’s rock bottom (verse 5). The two sons die too. And the Bible says this; Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
You can’t imagine the scale of this catastrophe for Naomi. Her husband was her breadwinner and he’s dead. Her sons would have assumed the role of providing for her instead. They’re dead too.
She’s now too old to have more children who could, one day, look after her, her parents are probably dead as well, either from old age or in the famine. There’s no social provision for childless widows - at all. She has no savings, no income, and no pension. Apart from that, everything is great.
So Naomi prepares to go back home to Israel. Orpah and Ruth, her daughters-in-law, widows too, beg her to stay but Naomi’s mind is made up. Orpah stays in Moab, but Ruth leaves with her old foreign mother-in-law Naomi, refusing to entertain the idea of her leaving alone.
Naomi hears that there’s bread again in her native land. Verse 6 says Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them. Between v8 and v14 Naomi begs these women to stay in Moab, not two or three times, but five times.
Verse 8; Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show kindness to you.
Verse 9; May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.
Verse 11; Go home my daughters. Why would you come with me?
Verse 12; Return home my daughters!
Verse 13; No, my daughters!
Do you get the impression that Naomi is trying to tell them something?
Orpah gets the hint. She goes back to her home. Listen; that’s the last time her name is mentioned in the Bible. From that minute onwards, she left the sphere of God’s blessing and God’s purposes - never to return.
But Ruth made the right decision of binding herself to God’s people, to make her own all the promises of the covenant. She would become a forbear of King David and her name will appear in the genealogy of Jesus Christ himself!
Humanly speaking, Orpah makes the right choice. But never trust in human wisdom. Despite all appearances to the contrary, it’s Ruth who is the wiser.
So Naomi says, “Go back to your home.”
Ruth replies, “No, I want to back to your home.”
V9 - Naomi says, “Go back home, otherwise you’ll never be secure, you’ll always have to live off charity.”
Ruth replies, “Well, I don’t care about that, I’m sticking with you anyway.”
V15 - Naomi says, “Go back home. Go back to your gods.”
And Ruth says, “Look! I don’t want my gods anymore. I want your God. Wherever you go, that’s where I’ll go. Wherever you stay, that’s where I’m staying. Your people are going to be mine, and your God is now my God. I’m not going away. Get used to it.”
What is it that makes Ruth say that? What clinches it for her?
Why would she change a more secure future, where she has every possibility of rebuilding her life, for uncertainty in a strange country, where, because she is a stranger, a foreigner, she will most likely be disadvantaged until she dies? Why?
The answer lies in what Naomi says to her beforehand. She sends her daughters-in-law home. Why? Because she loves them.
Despite her dead-end decisions, her poor choices and her unwise running away, the God of Israel is still Naomi’s God. Naomi doesn’t believe in their idols, these Moabite gods. She says so in v8. “May the Lord show kindness to you” and in v9; “May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest.”
Naomi doesn’t think, “Oh well, all religions lead to God, it doesn’t really matter really.” She tells them that if they’re going to be blessed, the blessing is going to have to come from the Lord.
And yet she sends them back anyway. Why? Because she is more concerned for Orpah and Ruth than for herself. She’s got nothing. She’s desperate. But she is so full of love and compassion for her daughters-in-law that she is ready to reduce her own chances of survival for their good.
That’s why Ruth says, “I’m going with you!” She is saying, in effect, “If your God can give you a love so strong, so selfless, so sacrificial, so rich when you’re in desperate straits yourself, then I want your God to be my God too.”
Listen to these fantastic words from Ruth: v16-18. “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. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”
When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. And we can understand why; it was Mission-Impossible!
So they make their way to Bethlehem, Naomi’s home town, it’s a journey of about 50 miles.
At the end of chapter 1 Naomi is bitter, disappointed, poor, homeless and sad. Ruth is there, by her side, and it’s harvest time.
23 verses later, it’s harvest time still, but Naomi is full of hope, she’s got food on her plate, and she’s got a roof over her head.
Chapter 2 describes one day in the life of one obscure and young economic migrant, in one field outside one town about 1,200 years before Christ. But this one day changed the world!
Do you ever say to yourself that God never does anything much in your life? Or that things never work out like you hoped? Or that you never see miracles in your life, only hear about them in other people’s?
Look at Ruth, then. God is at work in her life but it’s through humdrum events and everyday happenings. You have to squint and look hard to discern the thread of God at work, sometimes.
The hand of God is almost imperceptible. At first sight, we see a young widow gathering corn at the edge of a field. Nothing special.
But God is actually blessing that young foreigner and her mother-in-law beyond their wildest dreams.
By the end of chapter 3, Ruth’s problems are all but resolved. As Ruth was faithful in the little details of her life, God was at work in the big picture.
Some people here tonight need to take a bit of a step back to get a proper perspective and see that God is at work in the boring, mundane rhythms of your life, when it is consecrated, committed to him.
You can’t always see it at first; it’s a bit like one of those magic pictures with a 3-D image. You have to look at it a certain way, you have to wait a bit, but it’s there - if you’ve got eyes to see it.
If I were to ask you the question, “Who are you?” how would you reply?
“Hi, I’m so-and-so, I come from such and such a town, I’m 25 or 75 years old, I’m a student, or a nurse, or I work with computers. You’d probably give me a kind of impromptu CV, if you like. That’s why employers ask for a CV when they want to hire someone; a summary of that person’s personal details, education, previous experience and interests. That’s how we say who we are in our culture.
But in biblical times, you didn’t give a CV to say who you are; you gave your family tree. I, in biblical terms, am John, son of Michael, son of Richard, son of Richard, son of Count Charles de Lambert de Versailles, inventor of the hydrofoil. That’s who I am! By the way, he died cold and poor, before his invention was appreciated, having blown all his fortune on research.
Every culture has a way of saying who you are, who are the winners and who are the losers. It’s bizarre that western culture says you’re a loser if you’re ugly, bald or overweight. Homer Simpson is the champion of all losers! Our self-esteem is informed by our appearance.
Didn’t bother Naomi! Because her culture had another way of saying you’re a nobody. She didn’t need a perfect figure or an impressive CV. That didn’t matter in the least to her. She didn’t need looks, she needed a name. A name you can perpetuate through your children and that’s precisely what Naomi didn’t have…
…Until chapter 4.13, where in her terms, she wins the mother of all lotteries.
In verse 15 they say to Naomi, “your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given birth,” (has given you a name, has made you a somebody from a nobody).
In a world which says, even in our day, in places like China and Pakistan and North Africa, that boys are worth more than girls, God’s word says that Ruth is more valuable than the perfect number of sons. Beautiful friendship is crowned with honour and esteem.
This young woman, who had nothing, became by her faithfulness and her faith, the great-grandmother of King David. This laughing stock, this family tragedy who had no name, became, through her true friendship, the ancestor of he whose name is above every name. At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow.
You look at Ruth, and:
· You see someone who left the comfort of her father’s house to live in a strange place.
· You see someone who stuck close to the disadvantaged.
· You see someone who became poor,
· You see someone who gave herself for one without hope, and became her salvation.
Remind you of anyone? When you look at Ruth, you see her greatest descendant, the Lord Jesus, who they called a friend of sinners and our great redeemer.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 17th July 2011
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