Pursuing a Dark Providence #2

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

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. It is our joy to continue our commitment to teaching God's people God's Word. Today Don is continuing with the second part of a message we started last time.

So let's get right to it. Open your Bible as we join Don now in The Truth Pulpit. There's another aspect of this that helps us understand what's going on and the spiritually parched, dry condition of this family as they entered into Moab. And the fourth thing that I want you to see here is the marriage with the Moabite women. The marriage with the Moabite women. Look at verses three and four. Then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died and she was left with her two sons.

Now, just a side point there. That verse is kind of a side, kind of a subtle criticism of Elimelech because rather than Naomi being identified by her husband, her husband is being identified by the woman that he's married to. Elimelech, Naomi's husband. And so he has forfeited his position as the lead of the family and now he's identified in reference to his wife rather than vice versa. And he died and she was left with her two sons. And what did they do? Verse four, they took for themselves Moabite women as wives.

The name of one was Orpah, the name of the other was Ruth and they lived there for about ten years. What do we think about that? Well, you say, well a man's got to have a family and they're in Moab, what's the problem? Well, the problem is that they had no business marrying Moabite women.

This intermarriage was something that they should not have done. Look at Deuteronomy chapter seven, verse three. Again, we're letting scripture interpret scripture. We're letting the Bible help us understand the Bible.

That's all we're doing here this evening. Deuteronomy chapter seven, verse three. And actually we should start in verse one. When the Lord your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you. And when the Lord your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them. You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. And so there is a strict prohibition against marrying into foreign nations. This particular passage doesn't mention Moabite women by that particular ancestry, but if you read in Ezra chapter nine and Nehemiah 13, we won't take the time to turn there, there the people of Israel a thousand years later, or more accurately about 600 years later, are criticizing their fellow countrymen because they had married Moabite women, and it was viewed as something that was utterly unacceptable.

And so what do you have here? After their father dies, his carnal influence is living on in his sons, and they choose to marry Moabite women. They marry from the land in which they find themselves, rather than looking for an Israelite woman to marry. Their actions all speak to a total disregard for the authority of the word of God in their lives. They had turned their back on him, and the sad consequence of their faithfulness ultimately manifests itself.

Go back to Ruth, if you would. And having set all of this context now, we'll try to draw some principles here in just a moment that will give us some perspective on life here in the 21st century. And so look at what happens here. They lived there for about 10 years there at the end of verse 4. Then both Malon and Killian also died, and the woman was bereft of her two children and her husband. A couple of things there that are further evidence of divine displeasure upon them. Number one, they died there. They died childless there, and they left behind Naomi who had no family, no blood relatives with her any longer. Only her two daughter-in-laws were left. And so the composite picture of all of these factors, the days of the judges that set the context of the book, the time of famine, and the marriage with the Moabite women, all of this drawing a picture of a family that was not in submission to the Word of God, that was not seeking God, that was not obeying God, and certainly was not glorifying him with their life.

The composite picture is one of carnal men who were unfaithful to Yahweh, and with their disobedience they pursued a dark providence, and you know what? They found it. They died in a foreign land.

They died childless with no one to carry on their line. And in pursuing their own sense and their own rationalization, you can hear them rationalizing it, well there's no food here and we got to eat and so let's go. You can hear them rationalizing it, but every warning of the Word of God, they had to go through many barriers of the Word of God to end up in Moab. And it did not turn out well for them.

But you know what? Notice this. And as you think about, you know, how you're going to orient your own life, maybe as a young person, young adult, notice that they didn't immediately feel the consequences of their disobedience. They lived there for about 10 years, the Scripture says, and so God didn't strike them immediately with the consequences.

It went on over a period of time. Mark it that the fact that God does not judge and discipline our sin immediately is not a mark that He never will. They lived in a false sense of security, that they could get away with this disobedience, but God had the final word with it. Notice how it unfolds there in verse 1, they went to Sojourn to live for a little while there. Verse 2, they entered the land and then they remained there and then they lived there for about 10 years. You kind of get the picture that they said, well we'll do this for a little while. We'll trifle with sin, we'll trifle with this disobedience for a while just until it gets better, just until the pressure's off and then maybe we'll come back.

It doesn't work that way. Your assumption should be when you start to pursue a life of sin, a life of disregarding God's word, when you start to make decisions that you know are violating biblical principles, you should know, you should assume that you are going to taste bitter fruit as a result of those decisions eventually and not be deluded by the fact that God doesn't bring those harsh consequences to you immediately. You know, in the context speaking about marriage, a Christian person should understand and have it settled in their mind. I have no business pursuing a serious relationship with someone who is not a Christian. God will not bless that.

And don't be misled by stories, well, you know, so-and-so's mate came to Christ later on. Don't do that. Don't think that. Don't rationalize that. Don't presume on the grace of God like that. Make it your goal, make it your understanding that I'm going to honor Scripture first and foremost and that there are certain things that I will not compromise on.

Don't do that. Now, we've kind of been focusing on Elimelech and his two sons here in our time together so far. Who's left holding the bag here? It's Naomi, isn't it? Ultimately, it was Naomi paying the consequences. She found herself without a husband, without her sons.

She's alone with her two daughters-in-law. She's a Jew in a foreign land. At that time, widows were vulnerable.

And so, she's in a horrible mess of a situation. I want to say a word to the men here tonight to be mindful of. The men who most need to hear it, I suppose, I guess, are not here in the room with us, but this needs to be said anyway.

This is often how it happens. Spiritually weak men, whether through their indifference or their arrogance, or just their spiritually indifferent approach to life, separate themselves from the people of God. And what so often happens, I've seen it so many times in ministry, it's the women who suffer as a result. The unfaithfulness of the head of the household and the consequences fall on the woman to bear. Men, we shouldn't be that way. We need to lead in a way that will lead those who are under our care into the blessing of God to the best of our ability.

We should lead in a way that manifests trust in God, even in hard times, that stays the course of spiritual obedience and fidelity to Christ, no matter what the consequences are, rather than setting a pattern, setting a course, setting a trajectory that takes our families away from Scripture, away from the people of God, away from the realm of blessing that God has appointed. Is Gilem Alek planning to do that? Is that what his intention was? Did he intend to isolate and cause his wife to suffer? No, he was going there looking for food. But his carnal desire to fill their bellies before he was concerned about being obedient to the law of God positioned them for ultimate calamity.

He put them in the position. He ensured for them a dark providence by turning his back on the law of God. And so, with all that we've seen here from the books of Moses, the book of Moses, singular, is now when you read these five verses and you read those, especially the opening first two verses, from the context of Moab and famine and the days of Judges, as you're reading this from a biblical perspective, you immediately start to recognize this can't turn out well at all.

In famine, going to Moab, this has disaster written all over it. And the truth of the matter is that for Gilem Alek, he should have known that that had disaster written all over it because God had made it known to his people in advance. What can we glean from all of this? What can you and I glean from these five verses and to think about that would give us something to grow from, to think on? It's very simple, really, because I want you to see that we're talking about something more than, something bigger than just what happened in the life of one family 3,000 years ago.

It's not my primary desire to stand up here and throw darts at Alem Alek 3,000 years after the fact, but rather to say some things and to give you some perspective that would build you up and further your own sanctification and your own convictions. We need to have our convictions formed by Scripture. First of all, I would say this, is that what we see from these opening verses of Ruth is that disobedience brings discipline. God is a God to be feared. God is a God to be respected. And what he says in his word, we must take seriously and not treat lightly. He warns us, he warns us as New Testament believers in Galatians chapter 6, he says, Do not be deceived.

God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own from the flesh, reap corruption. That's Galatians 6 verses 7 and 8 for those of you that are taking notes.

I like seeing people take notes, that's cool. God tells us that there is a cause and effect that operates and that those who disobey him will feel the effects of it. And that you and I, here in this room, those of you listening on the live stream, you and I should have it settled in our mind. Our first thought about disobedience should be connected with the fact that if I walk away from God, I'm going to feel the consequences of that and they are going to be sure and they are going to be painful. That's the way that we should think about it. So that a man has no business taking the first step toward any kind of emotional relationship with a woman that's not his wife. Don't even go in that first step.

Don't say like a limelik, you know, I'll just go and I'll sojourn there for a little while and then I'll come back. Your working assumption is that sin is going to work in your life like a powerful vacuum and suck you in far more than you ever expected. And once it's done that, that you are going to feel the consequences of things that you never dreamt before and that they are going to be painful. That's the way that you should frame your thinking about life and your obedience to God.

Ruth reminds us that disobedience brings discipline. And we need to fear God enough to say, look Lord, I respect you. I respect the fact that your hand is in providential control of my life and that I as a professing believer in Christ, if I drift into sin, if I turn my back on your word, if I turn my back on your people, I am going to feel the consequences of that and they are going to be painful. And let that motivate you to holiness. We should fear sin and repent while there's still time.

You know, I often think about that. I've often prayed over the years saying, God, if I start to drift into sin, if my life, if I start to pursue a point of pursuing that which would disqualify me from ministry, which would dishonor Christ, which would bring harm to the people of God, kill me first. I would rather die than do that. And I would rather die than do that for all of those consequences.

I would rather die than feel the inevitable consequences that it would surely bring upon my own head. We fear God. We respect his holiness. We're grateful for Christ, but we don't presume upon the goodness and the holiness of God.

We operate from a principle that says disobedience brings discipline, painful discipline, and I just don't want to feel the pain. And so it shapes and channels your life in the right direction. Secondly, what can we say about this in light of the rest of the book of Ruth now? Those first five verses are pretty dark, but we read those first five verses in the context of the rest of the entire book of Ruth, and we know how it turns out because we surveyed it last week. We know where this book is ultimately going, and here's what I want to say to you.

Secondly is that God gives grace, that God gives grace. You know, the book of Ruth is like a meteor that shoots across a moonless night sky. There's nothing but darkness in the backdrop here, and yet as a meteor shoots across and shows that there's more to the darkness, even though it just appears for a moment and then it's gone, you say there's much more here. There's much more in the heavens on this night than just the darkness because I just saw that meteor flash its light across the sky.

The darkness is so real that you can almost touch it, but the light streaking across the sky says there's more to it than you would otherwise suspect. The rest of this book, chapter 1, verse 6 through chapter 4, verse 22, tells us more to the story. It tells us, as you know, that God exercised his providence to provide grace and favor to Naomi that you never would have predicted if you had simply stopped at the first five verses. And for those of you that are suffering the consequences of past sin, for those of you that perhaps are in the midst of a dark providence, maybe it's not even due to sin, just life has dealt you a difficult set of circumstances and painful at that that you have to respond to. Here is really the ultimate message for tonight and for the book of Ruth. Verse 5 verses, dark judgment disobedience, difficult to contemplate. The providence was dark and foreboding and Elimelech brought it on himself and on his own family, right?

But here's the thing, for those of you that are struggling to keep your nose above water, as it were, who are gasping for air under the suffocating nature of circumstances right now, here's the real thing to take away as you, with your tender heart, try step by step and day by day to just cling and to hang on, still looking to Christ as you go. Here's what I want you to take away from that tonight is that as you look at the book of Ruth, we know from how the book unfolds that the Lord was working even in the midst of that dark providence. He was orchestrating, he was turning what men meant for evil and the disobedience that they had pursued, what they meant for evil, God intended for good. And in your dark providence tonight, in the clouds that are pressing in upon you, understand and rest in this, not in your feelings, not in any sense of what might happen in the future, bank your whole confidence in this, that even in the dark providence, our sovereign God is at work motivating, moving forward his purposes. And even in your dark providence, he's doing that in your life as well. One writer said this, he said, the rest of the book of Ruth amply demonstrates that God's gracious providence is not bound by man's foolishness. It is evidence of his love that such benefits were reaped as a result of such foolish conduct, God's providence covers even our mistakes.

Listen, that's really important. We don't know, Scripture doesn't tell us what Naomi thought as they were moving into Moab. Was she a participant in the decision that affirmed it or did she realize that this wasn't going to turn out well but she just followed her husband in submission anyway? We don't know. We don't know.

All we know is that at the end of ten years she found herself isolated in a foreign land with her men gone and buried. But God's providence met her at that most desperate point and led her into blessing that she never could have calculated beforehand. Brothers and sisters in Christ, I want you to understand something. If you're feeling the consequences of your own past sin and your sin has put you into life circumstances that you can't get out of and you're just feeling the weight of your own foolishness and your own disobedience, broken relationships maybe, and you can't undo it. What I want you to do is to come back to the book of Ruth, see how God ultimately dealt with Naomi and realize that you can trust him for his providence. The consequences that you feel are not a forfeiture of his love and grace and his future mercy in your life. And so if this message comes to you in hard times, take heart because God is at work even in your dark providence, even in your difficult circumstances. Suffering Christian, know for certain that God will lead you out of that in time. The desolation of the present is not the premise of the future because God is able to do that. It wasn't the end for Naomi.

It won't be the end for you either. Turn to your God now for favor and give him time to work it out. Let's bow together in prayer. Father, when we realize that these circumstances that Naomi found herself in ultimately led to the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are amazed at what you are able to do. We thank you for the knowledge that what you took and met Naomi in this time of isolation, of seeming utter abandonment, and brought untold blessing out of her circumstances. We rejoice in that.

We trust in that. We're encouraged by it, Father. And for those that are with us tonight and the darkness is pressing upon them, Father, may the certainty of the love of Christ and the favorable providence of God give them hope to move forward.

Father, a light to look to, a rope to grab hold of, to give them hope in the midst of their difficulties. For the rest of us, Father, help us to see what happened to Elimelech and fear, Father. Teach us to respect your holiness to the extent that we are afraid to disobey, in part because we don't want to harm our relationship with you. We don't want to dishonor you.

We prefer to honor and glorify you with our lives. Help us to that end, but Father, also seal it on the back end with the sense that we just don't want to feel the pain of divine discipline. Rather, Father, we desire to live in your favor and the way that you bless those who are faithful to Christ.

So help us to that end. Make us a church like that. And Father, for those here that don't know Christ, we ask you to lead them to that wonderful atoning blood of Jesus shed on the cross for the remission of sins. Father, may they turn to Christ and find salvation and the forgiveness of sins in Him. We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen. Well, my friend, just before we close today's broadcast, I just wanted to give a special word of greeting and thanks to the many people that listen to our podcast internationally. It's remarkable to me. The last report that I saw listed 83 different countries that in one way or another are listening to us. And I just want to send a special word of greeting to those of you that are in lands that are distant from my own home here in the United States. You know, we've seen people from every continent except maybe Antarctica and people from countries like Ireland and Australia and Singapore, Canada, the UK, India.

I have friends in all of those countries. And whether you've met me face to face or whether you only know me as a voice through your favorite device, I just want to say God bless you. Thank you for your interest in the word of God. And may the Spirit of God work deeply in your heart as you continue to study God's word. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for your prayers. God bless you. My prayers and love are with you as well. And we'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit. 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.