Naomi and Ruth (Part C)

We trust. That's what faith is all about. Otherwise, faith is a joke. Faith is just something to get something. Faith is supposed to mean, no matter what happens, to me and my heart and my feelings are going to stick with the Lord. That's what faith is supposed to be.

You can lose some of that reality in the language of scripture because the language of scripture is so beautiful and about other people sometimes, but it is supposed to be about us. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of Ruth.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Now here's Pastor Rick with the conclusion of his study called Naomi and Ruth as he teaches in Ruth Chapter 1. But Naomi said, turn back my daughters. Will you go with me?

Are there still sons in my womb that they may be your husbands? She's approaching this logically. She's being logical here. She said, think about it. I have nothing to give you.

Your people will give you more than I can give you. She refers to them as her daughters in the text, not her daughters in law. She doesn't say, go back my daughters in law. A term of endearment and again, you see this star in Naomi rising up and you say, you know what, these two girls, they never met a person like Naomi, not a woman like Naomi before. That's what made it hard to leave her. That's why Ruth said, I'm not going because there's nobody like you that I know.

I've never met. I was born in the wrong religion. I was born in the wrong church and I found the right one.

Let's go to verse 12. She says, turn back my daughters for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, if I should have a husband tonight and should also bear sons, would you wait for them till they were grown?

Would you restrain yourselves from having husbands? No, my daughters, for it grieves me very much for your sakes that the hand of Yahweh has gone out against me. This is remarkable. She lays it out. Again, as I've been saying, I have nothing for you and I won't let you do this to yourselves. She says, it breaks my heart for your sakes that God has broken my heart. Well, she says, turn back.

We look at that from purer eyes and we say, turn back to what, apostasy? I think she's giving the opportunity to Orpah as well as to Ruth. You've met Yahweh. You know Kim Ocean.

The rest are frauds. You can come with me if you really want to. I think that is in what she is saying because Ruth picks it up. I think Orpah just said, there's a guy from high school.

Maybe he's, you know. Anyway, it's a bleak outlook, this dreadful past and she's facing the music. The facts are the facts and this is the voice of faith battered, not defeated. She's still asking blessings on them in Yahweh's name. She has not come to the place of Job yet.

Well, maybe, you know, she's certainly, she's going to get there, but she's got that struggle happening. It's not uncommon in the Old Testament to blame God for what he allows. It's not uncommon in our lives. He allows it and God in the end says, yeah, in the end it is me.

What are you going to do with that? And we trust. That's what faith is all about. Otherwise, faith is a joke. Faith is just something to get something. Faith is supposed to mean, no matter what happens to me and my heart, my feelings, I'm going to stick with the Lord. That's what faith is supposed to be.

You can lose some of that reality in the language of Scripture because the language of Scripture is so beautiful and about other people sometimes, but it is supposed to be about us. And so yes, she suffered. She has not turned her back on Yahweh. She had converted these girls to him.

Not likely the two boys would have married these women if they had retained their allegiance to their pagan gods. And I'm not ready to blame all of Naomi's troubles on moving to Moab. There were people in the Promised Land with troubles. We just finished that in the two chapters of Judges. It grieves my heart very much for your sakes, she says here in verse 13, that the hand of Yahweh has gone out against me. It is a frank and logical analysis of the situation.

There is no way that you can come along and say, oh come on, that's a bit much. No, it's really not enough to express the hurt that she had gone through and these two women went with it with her, so what did they do is they burst out into tears with her. Reminiscent of Jacob. After they had come back from Egypt, his sons not knowing that Joseph was vetting them, was filtering them. Joseph said, you guys are brutes and before I be nice to you, I need to find out if you're still the monsters that threw me in the pit. And so he runs them through this rigorous course.

And he's got the whole eye makeup on, so that's why we don't wear eye makeup because it makes you mean, men, anyway. Jacob, they come back and they say, you know, he kept Simeon. Jacob said, well I never liked, he was my least favorite son anyway.

No, he doesn't do that. What we get, Genesis 42, and Jacob their father said to them, you bereaved me. Joseph is no more. Simeon is no more.

You want to take Benjamin. All these things are against me. Well who could blame him? Life's picking off his children.

And there he's, you know, Simeon is in jail and I could bring Benjamin back just to get bread? And so he loses his, you know, he has this moment. All these things are against me. And that's what Naomi is saying. And that's what we have said sometimes.

If you live long enough and you do something for God, you're going to have these moments. It is not the language that we want to hear, but it is the reality that she is facing. And who can criticize Jacob and who can criticize Naomi for this? She's returning to the land of God, hurt by God, still believing, still calling on his name in prayer. Otherwise, we wouldn't have this story. Verse 14, then they lifted up their voices and wept again.

There's that outburst of tears. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. See, the narrator, he says it's the mother-in-law and the daughter is in law. But when Naomi speaks, it's not daughter-in-law, as I mentioned, it's my daughters. Orpah yields. She said, I can't argue with this.

I'm going home. Which meant she's going back to her pagan gods, because in those days you just could not live in a pagan environment and last unless you were some sort of super, you know, believer. But Ruth, Ruth couldn't do it. Ruth refused to do it. And nobody's going to make Ruth. So it says, just five little words in English, but Ruth clung to her. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth wouldn't let go. And you think of Mary Magdalene, you know, at the Lord, she clung to him, he's not letting go. Orpah, she took, you know, a few steps towards Judah, towards the Promised Land, the land that led to Boaz, the Redeemer, the place amongst God's people, but she turned back.

Is there not a story in that? Do we not see that in real life? People come to church, they're hurting and they hear the message of God's love and God's mercy and they give their lives to Christ. And as the Lord said, the cares of this world or the pressures of life come upon them because they have no depth. And of course their faith wilts. And she kissed Ruth and Naomi goodbye and turned her back on Israel and that's really the end of the story, far as we know, of Orpah. Back to the demon gods, back to the gods that had no problem with child sacrifice.

Modern day, of course, they're too civil to light up an altar on them. They call it abortion and not murder, but their civility is breaking down because they're now trying to kill them outside the womb. And where does that stop? Well, up to nine you can do it.

And then where does that stop? I mean, just these monsters and we're dealing with Satan inside of human beings. Some of them are irretrievable, some are not, but we don't know who so we must engage as God gives us opportunity.

If we allow ourselves to hate our enemies, we will become like them and so we guard against that. Anyway, Orpah goes, we read of her no more, but Ruth, simply put, stayed put. That's the story with Ruth. Because again, Naomi to her represented a higher type of womanhood. I want to be that kind of a man to other men, a higher type of manhood.

With the women, I would think every Christian sister would want to be. It's not easy. You don't inherit this. You're not entitled to this.

You have to earn this kind of respect. And Naomi did. A higher God is what Ruth discovered with these people and with these Jews. She wasn't going to abandon it and that's what's the story of us in Christianity.

We've discovered Jesus Christ, a Jew like no other, and we're not going to give him up for the pressures that come our way. Verse 15, and she said, look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her God's return after your sister-in-law. Naomi's not letting up. She said, I don't want fake allegiance.

I don't want you telling me, you know, how wonderful you are today and then tomorrow you're in my back. And I don't think Naomi's thinking this. She's just being Naomi. This is just, look, go with your people.

Your sister, that's what she has done and that's what you need to do. And even though Orpah was that close to the kingdom, she made an eternal mistake, a devastating choice, Ruth is going to get the same chance. Paul says this. He says about the Lord, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Well, God wanted Orpah to be saved and to remain in the knowledge of the truth and he wanted that for Ruth and Ruth, she chose it. John Wesley, I don't quote John Wesley much.

He was a great man, saved England, great Christian man. Wesley says this about Orpah's behavior. He says, thus many have a value for Christ and yet come short of salvation by him because they cannot find in their hearts to forsake other things for him.

They love him and yet leave him because they do not love him enough but love other things better. That's the story of Demas. Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world. That's what Paul said. We need to hear these things to scare us sometimes into the obedience that we otherwise might not find. You younger Christians, I don't mind scaring you if it's true.

I don't want a fake scare. You try to whip up something, you know. It was a night just like tonight and I want to just, you know, let the story tell itself because it's fact. No evidence. Here's another thing for Naomi. No evidence that she resented Orpah's choice. Yeah, fine, go.

I knew you would crack. None of that. She doesn't do, you know, just nothing like that. But it was a turn back, the turn back of apostasy and Ruth would not have it.

She'd have none of it. To turn to their people would be to return to their culture and to their gods and Ruth is not budging and that's where we get verse 16. We've been waiting for this verse.

We not have this verse 16 if it wasn't for Naomi. But Ruth said, entreat me not to leave you or to turn back from following after you. For wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge.

Your people will be my people and your God my God. I can't say it like Ruth said it with tears on her face and sniffles and a high pitch. She's there, man. She's pouring out her heart. She did not say, I'm going to write you something that's going to be beautiful. You just wait and see.

You can go down and write this down. This is just coming out from her heart. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And that's why I say Naomi is the star of the book. She's the heroine in many ways because without her we don't have verse 16. We don't have Ruth. Ruth saw the hardship and the circumstances that Naomi had gone through and how she handled it and she was not confused about it because Naomi wasn't confused. Naomi is very logical. Life has crushed me. And so as Job said, the Lord lives, the Lord takes away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. Naomi wasn't there yet. Ruth, she was there. She didn't lose as much though. And she was still younger. She had a better future as far as a promising future goes. So Ruth, she saw her father-in-law die, her brother-in-law and her husband. And she saw Naomi deal with it all and not abandon the faith, not abandon them.

She did not become mean-spirited towards them as people can do and they feel life has dealt them, you know, a wrong hand. And now that I'm justified in being snippy and criticizing every single other person. You ever come across people like that?

All they do is criticize everybody else because what they are doing is they're making everybody look like that while they look like this. I'm the smart one. I know what that guy's problem is because I got my act together and it's all a lie. And it takes a long time sometimes to see through that nonsense.

And in this case, it's not in the negative, it's in the positive. She doesn't see a person that's picking at everybody. She sees a person that's looking out for people she loves.

And so Ruth, in her quiet way, defiantly shook her fist at faithlessness and hell and declared, your God will be my God. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge. I will sleep where you sleep. If you're in a tent, I'm in a tent. If you're in a palace, I'm in a palace.

Wherever you go, I'm going to be there with you. Your people should be my God. Well, she hadn't even met them. Incidentally, when she gets to Bethlehem, the people are going to love on these two people.

And that's another beautiful part of the story. And your God, of course, your God, my God. Not because there's a shortage of gods. There was no shortage of other gods.

She knew about the man-made gods and early on she wanted no more parts, no parts of that stuff. It's like when the Lord said to the disciples, you're going to leave the church too? You go and everybody will use a hard saying, we don't like your sermon, we're leaving. And they go.

So Jesus lets them go and he turns to his disciples, you're leaving too? And Peter, where would we be without Peter? Big mouth Peter had a mouth big enough to also say some powerful things.

In fact, he says more powerful things than he doesn't. But Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And that's why we don't move from our faith.

Ruth, again, just had so much life in her for truth. This lowly Moabitess could exclaim that your God will be my God. Verse 17, now she's not finished.

The verse should not have divided it, I think. Where you die, I will die. And there I will be buried.

Yahweh do so to me and more also if anything but death parts you from me. Now who is this woman? I mean, where do you find that kind of faith? In man or woman? Well, you find it in Ruth. Turning her back on everything she was raised with because it was wrong. And she had the head sharp enough to see that.

She was eager for greater truths and she got them. David on two separate occasions had men pledge allegiance to him. And David, there were plenty of tough men in David's day. They did not pledge their allegiance to David because he was just such a great superhero. It was because of David's love for God. That's what his great attraction was. Nobody in the Old Testament had it like David.

Now let me clarify that. Daniel had it in a way that no other had it. Joseph had it.

Each one. David had something very special about him. I'm trying to put him higher than anybody else except in the category that he excelled in when it came to his faith. The first one is in 1 Chronicles. And here they're coming to pledge their allegiance to him as king. And these are men from Judah and Benjamin. Now the Benjamites were from Saul's tribe. And you would think that they would say, no way are we going to line up with David.

But no. Then the Spirit came upon Amasai, chief of the captains. And he said, we are yours, oh David. We are on your side, oh son of Jesse. Peace, peace to you and peace to your helpers. For your God helps you. So David received them and made them captains of the troop. You see, your God helps you.

That was the driving force. It's something very beautiful. I mean, imagine someone comes up to lead us in worship and they're bored. Blessed be the name of the Lord. But when they're into God, their way, not like they saw somebody else do it. It's contagious.

It picks you up. Imagine if you came here, I know this is hard. You probably can't do it. In fact, it's impossible. But imagine if you came here and you were bored by a sermon. All right, I just love getting those things in for me. They're self-merchals.

Because they're so absurd. You just have to suffer it. 2 Samuel, if I read this one often, Ittai, he was probably not even a Jew. And he probably died in battle after this. But Ittai answered the king, this is when David said, this is not your fight, go home.

Ittai answered the king and said, as the Lord lives, and as my Lord the king lives, surely in whatever place my Lord the king shall live, whether in death or life, even there also your servant will be. See, those pledges of allegiance that are based on something, they're not blind. They're like, well, you know, we've been friends since high school, and even though you're out, you know, doing awful things, I'm going to be loyal. They're based on something righteous. Is it not terrible when someone vilifies the righteous for whatever purposes? No proof, no facts, they just said it.

So you're supposed to believe it. We see this in churches. We see people go to churches and they love the church, they love the pastor, they love the sermon, and some little traveler comes up and whispers in their ear, but they have decaf here. And then it sours everything.

May we be on guard against these things. Verse 18, when she saw that she was determined to go with her, she stopped speaking. So Ruth convinced her, and Naomi yielded. She was not, I'm going to have my way. I'm sorry, it's my way or nobody's way.

This is just beautiful. She stopped. Verse 19, now the two of them went until they came to Bethlehem, and it happened when they had come to Bethlehem, that all the city was excited because of them, and the women said, is this Naomi? I mean, first off, you see them going down the road together, they got all that out of them, they're half exhausted from all the crying, weeping bitterly, and yet there's just this love, these two women going down, you know, and the roads were probably, you know, somewhat well populated, so they weren't in too much danger evidently, because that would have come up in the story.

How are we going to get there? Anyhow, in verse 19, this is the homecoming after at least 10 years, and the people missed her, and they're excited to see her. Is it Naomi?

How are you doing? Well, Naomi stumbles a little bit. Who can blame her? These are now her people, she's home, she's comfortable with them, and she said to them, do not call me pleasant, call me bitter, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. And see, I used to pounce on her for this. Oh, what a drama queen. I've taken some hits. That's the kind of stuff that slaps this stuff out of you.

And you get more patient with others, to a point, don't push it. And so here she comes back, and she's just kind of opening up to them. What are they to say when she tells them, my husband's dead, my sons are dead, this is my daughter-in-law, she's a Moabite, she's not a Jew. How did that go over? Evidently it went over very well, because we never read about Ruth really being trashed by any of the people. An ample opportunity. Verse 22, so Naomi returned, and Ruth, the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, with her, who returned from the country of Moab, now they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest.

And so it's in April now that they arrive here. The barley, of course, they made bread out of barley, and not the best, the wheat harvest would come later, and that would be the better grain. But there's only one way to fight, that's what we learned from Naomi. There's only one way to survive. Jesus said it this way, but he who endures to the end shall be saved. Thanks for tuning in to Cross-Reference Radio for this study in the book of Ruth. Cross-Reference is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. There you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick, and we encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross-Reference Radio. You can search for Cross-Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app, or just follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. That's all the time we have for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as we continue to learn more from the book of Ruth, right here on Cross-Reference Radio.