Ruth Chapter 1:1-13

You see, as a believer, you have these trials, you have these things that you go through, but sometimes we waste the trial because we run from it.

It's an interesting thing. You pray, God, help me to grow. God, build my faith.

You know how God answers that prayer, right? God sends trials your way, and then what do you start to pray as soon as those trials start to happen? God, get me out of this trial.

Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. David is the senior pastor of the bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. Often, trials in our lives are meant to teach us something. The Lord desires that we walk victoriously through the trial and learn from it. Today, Pastor David teaches that we get to choose whether trials make us better or bitter as he begins in the book of Ruth chapter 1.

But before we begin today's teaching, many people think Christianity is a list of do's and don'ts, an impossible standard that beats you down and robs you of joy. But the truth is, God's Word is a lifeline of hope in troubled times. We want to help you rise above the difficulties of life by sending you a copy of Pastor David McGee's four-part teaching series, Living Life by the Book. This empowering resource shows you how to walk with God through everyday life and learn to experience joy, even in hard times. Living Life by the Book is our thanks for your generous gift today to help more people hear God's truth on this station and beyond so they can cross the bridge from death to life. Please visit crossthebridge.com today to give and get your copy of Living Life by the Book.

Now here's David McGee with his teaching, Running. Turn with me to the book of Ruth. We're actually beginning a new book, and the author's not named.

Ruth did not write this. We believe that probably Samuel actually wrote this. It's really an incredible book. You're going to see some very interesting things, especially in the second, third, and fourth chapter.

Hopefully you'll see some interesting things tonight there. And it's one of two books, of course, Ruth and the other book being Esther, that speaks of… completely revolves around the life of a woman and her story of following the Lord. So let's jump on in here. Ruth, chapter 1, verse 1. Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem, Judah, went to dwell in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. Up until this point, everything that we've done in the Hebrew Scriptures has been chronologically in sequence or in a time sequence, you know, with Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and so forth and so on. Now in this book of Ruth, this has actually taken place during the time of the judges. So it's kind of set in the midst of the past book that we just finished, the book of Judges. We believe that it was probably happening around the time of Gideon, because, well, for a lot of reasons, but a couple I'll mention here, is because if you remember during the time of Gideon, the Moabites and different people were coming in and stealing the crops, which would have caused a famine in the land.

So that's what we believe was going on. And let me remind you, because it's important to the story here, the meaning of Bethlehem and Judah. Bethlehem, anytime you see that word Beth, B-E-T-H in the Hebrew is house of.

The only thing you need to work on is what does the other word mean. In this case, Bethlehem, or Bethlehem is house of bread. Now it's interesting that Jesus was born in the house of bread and later says, I am the bread that came down from heaven. Now what does Judah mean? Judah means praise. So what a wonderful place to be coming from, house of bread and praise.

Let's read on verse two. The name of the man was Limilech, the name of his wife was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Malon and Chilean, Ephrathites of Bethlehem, Judah, and they went to the country of Moab and remained there. Now let's understand where Moab is. I think we have a map up here. To the left is Israel, then you have the salt sea or the Dead Sea in the middle, and then to the right is where the Moabites are, or the land of Moab.

So it's just over the border there. Verse three, then Limilech, Naomi's husband died, and she was left and her two sons. Verse four, now when they took wives of the women of Moab, the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth, and they dwelt there about 10 years. They left Israel because there was a famine in the land. We need to understand they didn't leave because God told them to leave. They left because, well, probably the leader of the group, Limilech, decided that since there was not bread in the land that they would go to another land.

Now, in hindsight, it was a bad decision, and we're going to see that. Limilech was not trusting the Lord. He was walking according to his sight, not according to his faith, because what he could see is that there was a lack of bread in the land. What he was forgetting is that God had promised to meet all his needs if he put him first, even as we spoke of this past Sunday.

You put the Lord first, the Lord will look after all your needs. And they took Moabite wives. Now, this was not explicitly forbidden in the Scriptures. It was to marry other people, but the Moabites are actually not expressly forbidden to marry, but there was limitations on what their offspring could do. We find in Deuteronomy 23, verse 3, an Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the Lord, even to the 10th generation, none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the Lord forever, because they did not meet you with bread and water on the road when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam, the son of Beor from Pithor of Mesopotamia, to curse you.

Nevertheless, the Lord your God would not lessen the Balaam, but the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you. And in verse 6, you shall not seek their peace nor their prosperity all your days forever. Now, let me point out again, this is in the book of Deuteronomy. They had these writings. Elimelech would have had at least some remote knowledge of these writings, and yet what did he do? Well, he sought out the peace and the prosperity of these Moabites, and he had been forbidden to do that. And so, you know, a lot of times we see things in the word, and people have actually painted God as some kind of big party pooper that just wants to give us a rule, you know, a rule book, a bunch of do's and don'ts.

God wants to make sure that we live blessed lives, and in order to do that, he instructs us in some of these things. And so, as Elimelech walked away out of the land of promise, out of Israel into Moab, well, he was walking into trouble. And we see that trouble included his death, and then in verse 5, then both Malon and Chilian also died, so the woman survived her two sons and her husband.

Man. So, he dies, and within 10 years or at about 10 years, the sons died. And so, it looks from the outside that Elimelech traded a famine for three funerals because he bolted, because he blasted, because he didn't want to stand up to the difficult situation that was going on. Now, let's remember who the Moabites were and where they came from. You probably remember the story of Lot and his wife and Sodom, and then, you know, Lot got out with his two daughters, and Lot's wife, you know, turned around and turned into a pillar of salt, and then Lot went into a cave with his two daughters, and at that point, they thought that they might be the only people that still existed in the whole world. So, his daughters, kind of showing that Sodom and Gomorrah had a play on their morals, then actually went to have children with their father, an ancestral relationship.

Genesis 19 verse 36 says, thus both the daughters of Lot were with child by their father. The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab. He is the father of the Moabites to this day, and the younger, she also bore a son and called his name Ben-amin.

He is the father of the people of Ammon to this day. So, we see that through those relations, the Moabites and the Ammonites came to be. Even though the Moabites were distantly then related to the Jewish people, they were engaged in all sorts of stuff. They were engaged into idolatry. We know through archaeological digs that they were also involved in children, sacrificing of children.

So, obviously not, you know, somebody you want to be hanging out with. Now, when Elimelech left the land of promise, he went to this place and fellowshiped with these people that he really had no business fellowshiping with. And see, he ran from his problems. Now, God didn't tell him to run. God did not say to him, hey, you know what? This is just a really hassle, a real hassle here, and there's big famine.

Why don't you go over the Moab and they've got some land and they've got some food over there. He didn't ask the Lord, Lord, what do you want me to do? He took it on his own to run from his problems. Now, since that has no present day personal application, we shall move on quickly. No, you know, we need to remember this because often, if you think back on your life, I know I can think back on mine and think of times when I went to, you know, leave one bad situation.

And when I left that one bad situation, man, you know, out of the frying pan into the fire. So, you need to be careful because we have this thing where we want to run. It's one of our defense mechanisms, if you will. See, horses have this defense mechanism where their defense is to run. If they're not sure of something, they run. So, if they see something that they're unsure of, their defense is to flee. Now, it's kind of interesting if you're riding a horse, you need to know that because things that, you know, that don't usually scare you will scare a horse.

They can see, you know, a mud puddle and think, you know, I saw something one time come up out of the water and something could come up out of that mud puddle, so let's run. As believers, that shouldn't be a defense mechanism we have, but it is a defense mechanism we try to use sometimes, isn't it? We get in trouble, we hit some resistance, and our first inclination is I'm going to leave. Some of us tragically spend a lot of time in our church life doing that. We get confronted with a situation of the Lord saying, you know, you really need to deal with a situation where I'm out of here. I'm going to change churches.

And then like a year, two years, three years later, guess what? You're dealing with the same situation. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't ever leave a church. I think there's a really good reason to leave a church if you're not being fed there and they're not teaching the Bible.

But I think a lot of times people leave churches, and we've certainly seen it here, for the wrong reasons. Why? Because of that, you know, I'm going to bolt, I'm going to flee, I'm going to run because I'm not sure what's going on.

Be careful with that. This is the first life lesson. If you run from trials, they will chase you. If you simply endure your trials and you have paid dearly and gained nothing, if you walk victoriously through your trials, then you have learned from them, risen above them, and nothing has been wasted. Trials will either make you better or bitter. You choose. They'll either make you better or bitter. You see, as a believer, you have these trials, you have these things that you go through, but sometimes we waste the trial because we run from it.

It's an interesting thing. You know, you pray, God, help me to grow. God, build my faith. You know how God answers that prayer, right? God gives you trials. God sends trials your way, and then what do you start to pray as soon as those trials start to happen? God, get me out of this trial.

And the Lord's like, I'm still busy answering the first prayer, and now you're praying the second prayer, and I'm not sure. I mean, do you want me to take you out of the oven half-baked or what? See, because, you know, when you take a pot, you understand if you half-bake a clay vase, you understand what has to happen.

Then you got to take that vase and you got to re-wet it, and you got to break it down, and you got to crush it, and then you got to reform it, and you got to put it back in the oven. I know at times I've learned the same lesson like 97 different times. And if only I could have learned it the first time, I wouldn't have had to repeat the trial. And if you simply are just hanging on, you're not learning from the trial, I'm just hanging in there. You know, I'm just waiting until the Lord comes, holding on by the skin of my teeth. Is that what the Lord really had in mind when He said, I want to give you life and that more abundantly? I don't think so. You're listening to Pastor David McKee on Cross the Bridge.

He'll be back with more in just a moment. But first, there's so much waiting for you at crossthebridge.com. If you haven't visited crossthebridge.com yet, come by today and check it out. While you're there, you can sign up for Pastor David's free daily devotional. Listen to more teachings from Pastor David and read about what God's doing through your support to proclaim His Word through radio, internet, and mobile technologies. Also, you can give online to help encourage more people in their faith on this radio station and beyond. And when you do, please request your copy of Pastor David's four-part teaching series, Living Life by the Book, as our thanks for your generosity.

Visit crossthebridge.com today. Now back to today's teaching. Every trial that you will ever go through will end.

Every one of them. Sometimes people come up to me and they say, hey, will you pray for God to heal this or heal that? And one of the things I pray frequently, I say, yeah, I'd love to pray for you. And a lot of times when I'm praying, I say, God, I know you're going to heal them.

I'm not sure when. I'm not sure if you're going to heal them right now in response to my prayer or sometime over the next days or weeks. But God, I know they're not going to take this illness, this sickness into heaven.

So the question is when you're going to heal them. See, every sickness you ever have, you'll be healed of. Every trial that you endure, you will be brought onto the other side. I love the biblical phrase, and it came to pass. You know what that means?

It didn't come this day. It came to pass. And yet when we're in the midst of that trial, it seems like it's never going to end, doesn't it?

It seems like we're always going to be stuck right there, right, that that's it. Nothing could be further from the truth. And I think that that's the mentality that they thought here. Well, you know, but look what he did.

He left the place of the house of bread and prays to go to this land of Moab. And I think he made an emotional decision. And that's sometimes a danger. Sometimes it's a deadly thing to do. And God doesn't bless it.

And look what happens. You know, when somebody dies, that's kind of final, isn't it? I mean, not in the sense that when you die, that's it.

But you are forever changed. What about the famine? Death is a permanent situation. Was the famine a permanent situation?

Well, verse six. Then arose with her daughter-in-law that she might return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited his people by giving them bread. Famine was over. Had they stuck it out through that trial, the family would, I think, we don't know how they died or they died of something or fighting or we don't know. But I would suspect, had they sat right where they were, they would have been okay.

It's not what happened. God knew all along. And God's not in some sort of plan B.

But a lot of times we run from trials that are temporary to place ourselves in situations that aren't. Be careful, guys. At verse seven, therefore, she went out from the place where she was and her two daughter-in-laws with her. And they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, go return each to her mother's house.

The Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. And verse nine, the Lord grant that you may find rest each in the house of her husband. So she kissed them and they lifted up their voices and wept. So they get to this place and, you know, Naomi, the mother is saying to Orpah and Ruth, go back to your family. We need to understand culturally that in the Middle East, when the woman was wed to the husband, she would basically leave her family. And she would then join her husband's family.

A lot of times they lived in the same place, often on the same property. And so at this point, Naomi is now responsible for them. And they're looking to Naomi for her leadership. And Naomi says, you know what?

Go back home. And she's telling them to go find a husband. Now, in the King James and this version and most other versions, she's saying, you know, may you find rest, may you find security with your new husband. Now, we need to understand Naomi is in a difficult place. Naomi is a widow. And, you know, since she had, you know, sons that were of an age to be married, she was probably an older widow, which left her very vulnerable.

Now, more so than even today. See, because in this society, in this culture, a woman really, she didn't usually work. Wasn't really allowed to go into the workplace. She did things. She did work. She worked around the house. She did lots of stuff. I don't mean she didn't work, but she didn't work outside the home. She stayed very busy in the home and producing things from the home that could be taken to the marketplace, but she couldn't take them to the marketplace. So left her in a place, and there was no real public assistance. So left her in a very vulnerable place. And at this time, she has these two daughter-in-laws. So it was a very unselfish thing that she was saying, you know what?

Go back to your home. Verse 10, and they said to her, surely we will return with you to your people. So there's a recognition with them that they were now part of Naomi's family and would go with Naomi back to her people. Verse 11, but Naomi said, turn back, my daughters.

Why would you go with me? Are there still sons in my womb that they may be your husbands? Now, she wasn't being hard.

She wasn't being callous. There was what was called a levirate marriage. And what that was is that any male children that Naomi would have would care for these widows, actually marry these widows and have children with them. Deuteronomy 25, 5 says, if brothers dwell together and one of them dies and has no son, the widow of the dead man shall not be married to a stranger outside the family. Her husband's brother shall go into her, take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. So what Naomi is saying, I don't have any other sons.

I don't have any other sons that they could fulfill this obligation. And this was a way, not only that widows were cared for, but it was also how if a mother was in this situation where she lost her children, that she would also be cared for because the people would stay at one house. Now, Naomi was given up that right.

I think Naomi also understood something. There was no explicit do not marry a Moabitess, a woman of Moab. But if you look at just the recent history of that time, the Moabites had called upon Balaam to curse the children of Israel. Then they came up with a plan to seduce the men of Israel. They wouldn't let them pass through their lands when they were coming into the Promised Land.

So there was a lot of bad blood there. So Naomi is about to take these ladies back into the land of Israel. And the chances of them being married once they were back were kind of slim. In a land where there was other Israelite women for Israelite men to marry, well, it just probably wouldn't have happened.

So again, I think she's thinking very unselfishly about these women. And she continues, verse 12, turn back, my daughters, go. For I am too old to have a husband. And 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 sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me. Well, this is the first thing that Naomi has said that we have to kind of take her to task for.

Because she says, it grieves me very much for your sakes that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me. Now, the saying is hindsight's 20-20. It's a very accurate saying. What that means is once you get past the situation and you're looking back on it, you can often see it more clearly.

And certainly we can look at this situation probably more clearly than Naomi was at that point. But I look at this situation and go, you know what? Why did you leave? I mean, being hungry is not good. I don't know how many of us have actually been hungry in here.

I've been hungry and it's not a good thing. But Diane's worse. And so they should have never left. But they did leave. And in part because they did leave, these things occurred. Now, God is going to turn the whole thing around in an incredible way.

We're going to see that over the next few weeks. But to say that the Lord has now against her, well, why is she saying that? She's saying that because she's going through some trials. She's saying that because she emotionally has been hurt. Is she right or is she wrong? Is she right or is she wrong? Oh, loved when she couldn't be further from the truth. Even at this moment, God is executing a plan that is going to bless her beyond her wildest imagination. And yet what is she saying? Well, the Lord's against me. How many of us might feel like that tonight? I did that one thing or I did those couple of things and he used to love me, but he had to quit loving me because I did those things.

That's a lie. See, the love of God never ceases. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short, simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking Him to help you to live for Him. Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me, that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead, that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned.

And I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. So congratulations, friend.

You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If you prayed that prayer with David for the first time, we'd love to hear from you. You can call us toll free at 877-458-5508 to receive our first steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ. Do you ever feel beaten down or even crushed by the difficulties of life? We all do sometimes, but Jesus offers a life of hope, and we want to help you embrace it. Discover how Christ empowers you to rise above life circumstances with Pastor David's four-part teaching series, Living Life by the Book. This uplifting resource takes you through the Book of Ruth to reveal how the simplicity of living for Jesus can bring you joy even in the darkest times. Living Life by the Book is our thanks for your generous gift today to help more people hear God's truth on this station and beyond so they can cross the bridge from death to life. Please visit crossthebridge.com today to give and get your copy of Living Life by the Book. You know each day comes with its share of stresses, so what better way to wake up than with an encouraging word from the Lord? Visit crossthebridge.com and sign up now for David McKee's email devotionals. Each devotion includes a scripture and a message from the heart of David McKee. It's easy and it's free. Sign up today at crossthebridge.com. Thanks again for listening. Join us next time as we continue in the Book of Ruth.