Pursuing a Dark Providence #1

Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello, I'm Bill Wright. Thanks for joining us as we continue teaching God's people God's Word. Don begins a new message today, so without further delay, let's join him right now in the Truth Pulpit. Well, last week we met Ruth, and now we'll begin to study the contents of this book more closely. And having read the first five verses, let me just take you back to the first two verses as we begin the message, proper as it were, in order to kind of set the stage and to unpack what's going on here. Verses one and two of Ruth chapter one.

Now it came about in the days when the judges governed that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem and Judah went to Sojourn in the land of Moab with his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Malon and Killian, Ephrathites of Bethlehem and Judah.

Now they entered the land of Moab and remained there. Those verses set the stage for everything else that happens in the book of Ruth. You remember from last time that Ruth is a magnificent story of the providence of God in the lives of two women and then the man Boaz. And God working through incredible providence and incredible circumstances, working in a way to bring about the genealogical line that would bring David into the world, and through David the line which would one day bring our Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, into the world. And so it's a remarkable story.

It is historically significant. The consequences of what we read here are mammoth. They are massive biblically speaking. And yet when you step back and read the book for what it's about, you see that God is working in a way that brings about these magnificent consequences in the ordinary day-to-day activities of ordinary people. That in itself is magnificent, that God is able to do things of eternal consequence through the things that we do in ordinary day-to-day life.

And that's the way it works. God's primary means of working amongst his people is working through the ordinary details that are otherwise missed in day-to-day life. What's interesting and why I want to spend tonight just looking at these five verses is that when you peel back beyond that aspect of it and how Ruth met Boaz and all of that, when you peel back behind that, there's something even more profound about the nature of God's providence in this. In that it wasn't just through the ordinary actions of ordinary people that this happened, but that this occurred and what set the stage for this was a very dark providence. That this was a scene in these first five verses that is dripping with judgment and disobedience amongst the people who open up the stage here at the beginning of the book. And you wouldn't know that really by just reading the book standing on its own.

You wouldn't read that. In fact, when we read it in the 21st century and we read about a famine and a man taking his family off to a foreign land looking for food and then they die, we're prompted to, our initial reaction is to feel sympathy for the characters and say, oh, what a sad situation it is. Well, it's sad, but it's not for the reasons that you initially think. It's sad because there is so much sin and disobedience that is setting the whole context for this.

And that's what I want to show you tonight and we'll try to draw some lessons out of it at the end. We want to see the unfaithfulness with which this book opens and then see the grace of God against that black backdrop. Now, Elimelech is a name of the opening man and his name means God is king or perhaps my God is king, but his name sets a tone about the kingship and the lordship of God by its very meaning.

Naomi is a name that means pleasant or lovely and so we open up and we see this man and this woman and the names and what they mean. And they're from Bethlehem in Judah, a town that's about five miles southwest of Jerusalem where Jesus would be born, where David kept his sheep. And so there's a lot of biblically significant things that are going on here.

The town of Bethlehem where the Messiah would be born. God is king and there's just a lot there that is speaking to and testifying to the lordship of God over his people as you open up. But as you look a little more deeply at the context of these verses, these verses are standing as a warning about the consequences of unfaithfulness to God. And what we see from these five verses is a principle that is very vital for you to take to heart and to let it guide you and warn you away from sin and unfaithfulness to God. What you see in these five verses is the principle that a life of disobeying scripture leads to a dark providence. Unfaithfulness to God bears bitter fruit, in other words. And you will only grasp the overall message of the book of Ruth if you understand the infidelity with which it begins. And I want to just highlight four aspects of the infidelity of this family in their historical context as we begin here our study of the book of Ruth. First of all, as we said last time, and I won't spend much time here, but you see in verse one, it came about in the days when the judges governed.

That's a clue. That's setting an awfully lot of context just right there. The author is setting the historical framework for this book. You remember from last time, you remember from your Bible reading, you remember from the survey of judges that we did a few months ago, that the period of judges itself was a very dark period in the nation of Israel. It was a bad time in their history. It was a time of disobedience, of cycles of sin and judgment and oppression by foreign nations.

They would call out to God and God would raise up these administrative judges to deliver them. But it was a cycle of decline that went on for centuries. And so right from the beginning, it's as if the stage were being set and you're seeing the props that are being set up on the stage, and it's props with dark tones, with a blackness about it. Days of judges, that was not a good time in the history of Israel. And so, as we read these five verses and as we continue on, we're mindful of something that we're not, you know, we're so engrossed in our own times that we forget this principle. But men, generally speaking, are going to be a product of their times. That people are going to be colored by the spiritual atmosphere in which they live.

And when a spiritual atmosphere, generally speaking, is dark, you're going to see darkness coming out of a lot of the lives of the people that are involved in it, even here as we see in the book of Ruth. And so, Elimelech and his family are already starting from behind. They're already behind in the sense that they are living in a dark period of time, the days of judges. And so what happens from that?

Where do we go from there? Well, the theme of judgment and the theme of the darkness of the times that surround this book is more than just the setting of the days of the judges. It's also the time of famine. The days of judges and the time of famine.

And here's what we want to see. The spiritual troubles of that time period led to material famine in the lives of the people and in the land of Israel. Look at verse one with me again. And when you see what we're going to see in the next several minutes, you're going to see why these things all fit together so naturally. Now it came about in the days when the judges governed that there was a famine in the land. And as I said earlier, when you read that in the 21st century, we are inclined towards sympathy.

We're inclined to feel compassion upon the situation. But if we do that, we're going to misread and misinterpret the entire focus of the book if we start that way. We have to read this opening verse with biblical eyes, not with our carnal eyes, not from the perspective that, oh, I wouldn't want to go through a famine and I feel bad for those who would go through a famine.

No, we need to think about this biblically. And remember that Ruth comes in the course of biblical revelation after the first five books of Moses were established. And so God had already given a lot of revelation to his people. He had told them what to expect as his covenant people. And he had taught them and warned them and encouraged them with the sense that if you obey my laws, there will be blessing that comes to you. If you disobey my laws, there will be painful consequences as a result. And so from the beginning of the birth of Israel as a nation, God warned them about the consequences of disobedience. And in part, he told them that national sin would lead to famine in the land.

I want you to turn back to Leviticus. We want to go through a few passages here to take our time and to let this sink in and take the time and effort to set the context. Because here's the thing, if you were reading this in the days of Israel prior to the coming of Christ, all of the things that we're about to see would be presupposed. The people would understand these things. They would recognize it on the surface.

We're not in that same position. And so we need to take a little bit of time to walk through this so that we will be in greater awe of what actually happens as the book unfolds. Leviticus chapter 26 verses 18 and 20. Leviticus 26 verses 18 and 20. God in warning the people that they must obey him says, if also after these things you do not obey me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. I will also break down your pride of power.

I will also make your sky like iron and your earth like bronze. Your strength will be spent uselessly, for your land will not yield its produce and the trees of the land will not yield their fruit. Now, that's not the only time that God said something like that to them as he's giving his law through Moses. Look at Deuteronomy, a couple of books further to the right, in Deuteronomy chapter 11. And if you think about the series that we had last month about understanding Scripture, you'll understand and you'll recognize what we're doing here. We're simply letting Scripture interpret Scripture. We're looking at other passages of the Bible that would shed light on the passage that we want to study here in the book of Ruth.

And so Scripture is informing us about the significance of what we're reading in the first chapter of Ruth. Deuteronomy 11 verses 16 and 17, God warning them about idolatry says, beware that your hearts are not deceived and that you do not turn away and serve other gods and worship them or the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and he will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its fruit and you will perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you. It is a direct warning that famine will be the consequence of idolatry and turning away from the Lord. Deuteronomy 28 verses 23 and 24, if you would turn there with me, Deuteronomy 28 verses 23 and 24, re-emphasizing the point, actually look at verse 15, that kind of sets, it's kind of a capstone verse for everything that follows in the rest of 28. It says, it shall come about if you do not obey the Lord your God to observe, to do all his commandments and his statutes with which I charge you today that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. And then there's these strings of curses in what follows and we'll just pick it up at verse 23. The heaven which is over your head shall be bronze and the earth which is under you iron. The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust, from heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed. And then in verses 38 through 40, this is the last passage that we'll look at on this particular point as we consider what the famine in the book of Ruth is actually signifying. Verse 38, you shall bring out much seed to the field but you will gather in little for the locust will consume it. You shall plant and cultivate vineyards but you will neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes for the worm will devour them.

You shall have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with the oil for your olives will drop off. Now, in times past and in times future we have preached on the fear of God. God is holy and as a result of that God's holiness must be feared. He must be respected. He must be obeyed. And what God is establishing in these early books of Moses and in these chapters and in these warnings is he is warning his people to fear him and to obey him. And he tells them in advance that if you stray from this into idolatry, if you stray from me as your God and you walk in your own ways and in the ways of your own stubborn heart, understand that you are going to hunger.

You are going to suffer. There will be famine in the land and God can guarantee that famine because he is in control of all things. He is in control of the elements. He controls and gives fruit or withholds it as he sees fit. And so he's talking to his people, warning them, cajoling them, saying, follow me, be faithful to me and if you don't there will be consequences. Well, you know the story.

You know how this unfolds. The people had hearts of stone. They were not regenerate. They were not born again. They were walking according to their own stony sinful fleshly desires, fleshly hearts. And they disobeyed God and as God said would happen, famine came. And that's what we're seeing in the book of Ruth. Now here's what I want you to see. Very simple point.

That's a lot of spadework to plant one important seed here tonight. But the thing that you need to see is this. Is that the time of national famine that opens the book of Ruth is an expression that the nation was under divine discipline as this story begins. God was punishing his people for their disobedience.

And what should have happened at one sense. What should have happened is that the people would say, oh we're suffering. We need to turn away from our sins. We need to return to the Lord God and repent and come to him and ask him for grace and mercy and walk again as the people of God as he called us to be. But that's not what they did.

This famine did not provoke repentance in their hearts. Rather what we see in the family of Elimelech is something completely different. There's a third mark of unfaithfulness that is present in this text. And it is this. It is the land of Moab.

It is the land of Moab and so we're seeing three marks so far. You've got the days of judges which was a time of darkness and divine discipline. You have a time of famine which biblically understood is in itself a mark of divine discipline. And here's the question as we enter in to try to understand these characters that we're going to be following over the next few weeks.

What is it? How did Elimelech respond? How did Elimelech lead his family as a result of this famine?

What did he do? Well the text tells us that he fled the famine with his family. Look at Ruth chapter 1 verse 2 again.

The name of the man was Elimelech, Naomi, Malon, Killian and look at the end of the verse here. Now they entered the land of Moab and remained there. Have you ever looked into what Moab signifies in scripture? Have you ever followed or traced it?

It's very interesting. Moab geographically speaking was a land to the east of Israel. It was a high plateau that had fields that were suitable for farming and for agriculture and so there was often food there. And again, you and I might sympathize with a man who wants to provide for his family and takes them to another place. That sounds perfectly reasonable at one level, but it is the thinking of a carnal man. It is wrong for him to do this because Moab was a place of darkness. It was a place of sin in itself. It was a place of judgment. There was no business for a man of God, a man of the nation of Israel to be going to Moab for deliverance.

That was an expression of his own sinful heart and his lack of trust and obedience to Yahweh. Now Moab, the country, and you can trace this all the way back, Moab originated. The seminal line, the seminal start of Moab came from an act of incest between Lot and his daughter.

And I want you to see this. Look at Genesis chapter 19. Genesis 19. Again, all of this helps us understand how unthinkable to a godly man what a limalek did with his family was.

Should have been out of the question. Moab finding its root in Genesis 19 verses 35 and 37. Lot had two daughters. They had him drink so that he was intoxicated and they lay with their father. Verse 35. They made their father drink wine that night also and the younger arose and lay with him and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. Thus both the daughters of Lot were with child by their father.

This is really bad. And what for our purposes tonight, here's what we want you to see. Verse 37, the firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab. He is the father of the Moabites to this day. And so when we read about Moab, you go back and you trace it back and you say this land, this country, these people, they were messed up from the very beginning.

Their origin was despicable. And as time goes on and as history unfolds, God marked out the Moabites for judgment and for separation. Go back to Deuteronomy now in chapter 23.

I realize I'm throwing a lot at you here. Deuteronomy chapter 23 verses 3 and 4. Where God says, again, all of this should have been informing what Elimelech did with his family.

And the more that you dig into this, the more that you realize how unthinkable his actions were as the book of Ruth opens. No Ammonite or Moabite, Deuteronomy 23 verses 3 and 4. No Ammonite or Moabites shall enter the assembly of the Lord.

None of their descendants, even to the tenth generation, shall ever enter the assembly of the Lord. Because they did not meet you with food and water on the way when you came out of Egypt. And because they hired against you Balaam, the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. So the Moabites did not help Israel when they were going through their wilderness journey. When the king of Moab felt threatened by them, he tried to hire the prophet Balaam in order to curse them. They had been foes of Israel. They had opposed and hindered the development of the people of God. What is a Jew doing going to Moab for deliverance?

What is the point of that? And later on in the course of the unfolding of biblical history, Moab was an instrument of judgment against the nation in their time of sin. Go to Judges chapter 3. We're going to pull all of this together here in just a moment.

So thank you for staying with me here. Judges chapter 3 verses 12 to 14. Now the sons of Israel.

Judges 3 verse 12. Now the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord. So the Lord strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord. And he gathered to himself the sons of Ammon and Amalek. And he went and defeated Israel and they possessed the city of the palm trees. And the sons of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab for 18 years. One of the things that was especially despicable about the Moabites was that they worshipped a false god called Chemosh with child sacrifices. So they would offer their children as sacrifices to their false god.

Now let's step back and kind of pull all of this together and get it all into one place. You have the days of Judges being a time of darkness and spiritual disobedience. You have as you continue on there's a time of famine going on which scripture explicitly says in multiple places is a time of divine discipline upon the people of Israel. You read further and you see that Elimelech is going to the land of Moab for deliverance. A land that God has said shall have no part with the people of God that was a place of judgment traced back to a most sinful union all the way back to their foremost forefather. And it was a place of judgment.

They were consistently opposed to the people of God. What on earth is a Jewish man doing leading his family into that country? Why is that family going to Moab for relief? We'll turn back to Ruth now and there's an odd verb, odd in English that gives us a sense of what his purpose was when he went. A certain man of Bethlehem and Judah, verse 1, went to sojourn in the land of Moab. Now that's a word that maybe we use, maybe we don't, but it has a little more precise meaning than what the English word suggests. The idea of sojourning in the Hebrew word means to live for a while. It means that Elimelech intended to go there and to be there for a while, maybe just until the famine passed. One resource says this and listen to what this signifies. Listen to what this verb signifies about the actions and the intent of the one who does it. And I quote, the sojourner has settled in the land for some time and is recognized as having a special status. As individuals or a group, they have abandoned their homeland for political or economic reasons and sought refuge in another community.

Wow. What that verb is saying is that Elimelech had turned his back on the promised land, he had abandoned it, and had gone to Moab in order to live there and to seek to provide for his family. That puts a whole different spin on the way that you read it, doesn't it?

That changes your whole perspective on it. Rather than seeing in this a man who was a poor victim of his circumstances and was just doing his best to scrape by with his family, you see a man who biblically interpreted was turning his back on the very God that his name says was his king. Matthew Henry says that Elimelech's care for his family was in one sense commendable, he wants to provide for them, but he goes on with a perspective that I share in evaluating Elimelech. Matthew Henry says, and I quote, I do not see how his removal into the country of Moab on this occasion could be justified. The seed of Israel ought not to remove into the territories of the heathen. If he could not live in hope that there would come years of plenty again in due time, or could not with patience wait for those years, it was his fault, and by it he dishonored God and the good land he had given them. He also weakened the hands of his brethren with whom he should have been willing to take his lot.

He set an ill example to others. Now, Elimelech set out on a course of disobedience, and what happens when a man does that? What happens when a man sets his life and turns his back on the revelation of God, the provision and gifts of God, and goes his own way? He doesn't see it this way at the time, but what he is doing is he is pursuing a dark providence. To walk away from the provision and the appointed means of God is to walk away from his blessing and enter into the realm of divine discipline and suffering and sorrow. And that is exactly what happened to Elimelech, and it is still the same today for us.

Elimelech was a carnal man leading a carnal family into a land that was devoid of the presence of God. Well, my friend, there is no substitute for reading the Word of God for yourself and spending the time day by day going through the Bible in a systematic way so that you have a full exposure to everything that the Word of God says. It's remarkable the way the Spirit of God works through the Word to minister to our hearts in that way. And to help you do that, we have a couple of different Bible reading plans available on our website, thetruthpulpit.com. If you would go to thetruthpulpit.com, click on the link that says About, you'll find a sublink there that takes you to two different Bible reading plans that you can choose from. It's free, it's there available to help you in your reading of God's Word, and I know that the Spirit of God will use that in your life if you're not used to reading God's Word on a regular, systematic basis. Make this the day that you start something new and move in that direction, and join us again next time here on The Truth Pulpit as we continue teaching God's people God's Word. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.