Responding to 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 as we began our study of the book of Ruth, we saw a picture in the first five verses of carnal men, unfaithful to Yahweh. Elimelech, when the chips were down and life was difficult and famine hit the land, abandoned the land that God had promised to his people, abandoned the promises of God that here is where I would bless you, abandoned the people of God for the sake of a little bit of earthly prosperity, and entered into Moab, a land where a false god who people worshiped with child sacrifice were in charge. And it's hard to imagine a man walking away from the promised land, it's hard to imagine a family abandoning the good promises of God, but that's how the book of Ruth opens. They pursued a dark providence and they ended up dying in a foreign land. And Naomi, as we saw last time as we closed, Naomi paid the price for her husband's carnality.

By the time he was dead and ten years later the sons were dead, Naomi was alone in Moab, a childless widow with two foreign daughters-in-law at her side. It could not have been a more bleak, earthly picture. And what we said last time, those of you that were with us will recall, we said that disobedience brings God's discipline, and that we need to fear God enough to be motivated to avoid sin, to avoid faithlessness, to avoid mediocrity because there are consequences to that. God is not a cosmic Santa Claus who is just indifferent to the holiness of his people.

Scripture says that he disciplines and scourges every son that he receives, and those that take Scripture lightly and are loose with their living and irrelevant in the way that they think about the serious demands of God on Christian living, they eventually pay a price for it. And you and I should avoid that error, you and I should avoid that mocking of the holiness of God and fear sin and repent and endeavor to walk in holiness and obedience to our God. That's just the way it is, and that's the way that Christians should be, you know, to love God and to honor him and to fear him enough to let it affect the way that we live. That's the only right thing to do in response to a Savior who left the glories of heaven to come to earth, to offer his life, his sinless, perfect, precious, lovely life as a sacrifice for our sins, for us to be delivered from eternal condemnation because a loving, gracious Savior intervened on our behalf. How could it be any other way than the fact that we would devote our entire lives to seeking to obey, to seeking to be like him, and not being indifferent to what Scripture says about our lives? And so that's just the way it is.

We have no time for the foolishness of those who would justify any other approach. But as we also saw as we ended it last time, we saw at the end of our message last time that God gives grace even in the midst of the disobedience of his people, and even when people are dealing with the leftover consequences of sin as Naomi was, God is gracious, God is merciful to us in that, and aren't you glad that he is? Aren't you glad that God has been merciful to you after all of your sin and indifference to him over the course of your life? Isn't it good to know that God is gracious? And isn't it good to have a book like Ruth that illustrates it in real lives in a narrative that we can all love and identify with? Praise God for his word.

Praise God for his grace. And what the rest of the book of Ruth does, now that we introduced those first five verses, is that the rest of the book of Ruth shows God's grace to Naomi, and to Ruth, and his power in redemptive history. And this evening we're going to see that unfold in just what is an astonishing display of God's power in his providence. This is one magnificent passage of Scripture, and chances are you have never seen the depth of the greatness of what's on display here. When we're used to, if we haven't studied Ruth closely, we are used to thinking about it in terms of Ruth's devotion and her love to Naomi.

And that's certainly true, and that's certainly there, and it is a most endearing aspect of this story. But what we must see and what we must understand is that far greater than the loyalty of Ruth to Naomi is a display of the power and grace of God that transcends human history. This is one magnificent passage of Scripture, and it is a great privilege for us to be blessed by God, to gather together tonight to be able to study it together, and to have the Spirit of God instruct our hearts in a way that I know is going to be edifying and encouraging to you.

And so let's get started. I'm going to structure this message around three points that just kind of help unfold the narrative at one level, and then at the end we'll draw out some practical application. That's kind of the way I'm trying to approach these Old Testament narratives as we teach them.

Kind of tell the story and then bring out a couple of points of application that are supported by other parts of Scripture so that we do our best not to read into the Scriptures something that isn't there. Well first of all, what I want you to see, and in everything that we're going to see tonight, I want you to understand this. There's just a lot in my heart that I have to say to you tonight, and so I'm going to try to keep it all coherent in the best way that I know how. What I want you to see is that the things that come out of this narrative are things that are immensely practical to your personal life. These are things that should have a defining, structuring effect in the way that you think about the totality of the rest of your life, and the way that you interpret everything that's ever happened in your past.

Whether it's good or bad, difficult or easy, joyful or sorrowful, everything can be brought under the umbrella of the principles that we see here this evening. And so that's what we're going to look at here, and for those of you maybe that are here, and I know that there's going to be a substantial number of you that fit into this category, especially those of you over the live stream, is that you're coming in here and you're mindful of the fact, as you're under the teaching of the Word of God, you're mindful of the fact that your life has strayed a bit, and that you have accommodated and compromised with sin in a way that the teaching of God's Word brings to bear a conviction upon your heart, and you say, I don't know where to go. I don't know where to go from here.

What do I do? How do I get back to where I was? Well, this is a passage that's going to help us see that, and the first little point that I want to give to you is we want to look at the circle. The circle that is involved in this biblical narrative. The first thing that I want you to see tonight is how this passage that I just read, Ruth 1, 6 through 18, brings us full circle.

It brings us back to where the story first began. You'll recall how Elimelech took his family from Bethlehem to Moab. They were established in the land of God.

They were married. They had two adult sons, and they were in Bethlehem. Look at verse 1. 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 in Judah. Stop right there.

Right there. This story starts out geographically in Bethlehem of Judah, in the city where our Savior was ultimately born. It starts there, and yet there was a departure. As you finish the sentence, a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the land of Moab with his wife and his two sons. Now we explained the significance of that last time.

We won't repeat it here. Only to say that this was not a good move on Elimelech's part. This was the mark of an untrusting carnal man who abandoned the promises of God and abandoned the people of God for heaven's sakes. He left behind the covenant people of God, and whatever encouragement and whatever leadership and whatever blessing that he could have been to the people of God, he left them behind in order to seek out his own earthly appetites. This is not an honorable man at all in what happens here. Now, we said all that last time, and you can rehearse that by going to our website and downloading the prior message.

All I want you to see here for tonight is this. When you go back to verse 19, is that to see how it's come full circle. So they both, meaning Naomi and Ruth, went until they came to Bethlehem.

Notice the circle here. Elimelech takes his family out of Bethlehem. Actually, I need to do it the other direction. If you're watching at home, I need to start at the top and go down because that's what Elimelech did spiritually. He went down.

We're not going to give him the benefit of going up with my circle. All of this geometry, for those of you that study at home, this is geometry 101. Elimelech started in Bethlehem in the land of promise and went down, went out, and came to Moab. And so they had left, and then that's where the story is unfolding now, is in the land of Moab. Notice in the narrative that when all of this is over, said, and done, in the passage that I read, Naomi and Ruth have gone back to Bethlehem.

And so geographically they have come full circle. There is a divine symmetry that is present in this passage. And beloved, here's what that means for you here tonight. And that's all that I want you to see out of that little bit of, that little excerpt here, is just to see the symmetry, because I understand that when you're reading a narrative sometimes it's easy to overlook those kinds of clues those kinds of, those kinds of tokens in the text.

But listen to me. This is instructive for you, those of you that are here and you've drifted into patterns of sin, and you're, you find that you're discouraged spiritually and you don't know how you ever got off track. Even this little geographic circle is instructive for you, because here's what you do. This is the way that you should think about your spiritual life. If you have strayed from faithful Christian living, what you need to do is you need to go back to the point of your departure from obedience and pick up right back there again. You go back and you think through life, and rather than just saying, okay, I'm going to try harder this time, no, don't, don't do that. Show a little bit of, show a little bit of insight to your spiritual life. Give some serious thought to what the work of God is and what he's doing in your life, and say, how did I ever get back here in the first place? And you go back and say, well, I remember I stopped reading my Bible because I got interested in something else or I started cultivating other patterns and I just got away from reading my Bible. I left off in the book of 2 Kings, chapter 18, reading about Elijah.

Well, you know what? Go back to 2 Kings 18 and pick it up right there. Go back to where you departed from and pick it up there. You know, if there was a point in your life and in your marriage, maybe, where you can look back and say, I remember where our marriage went south. It was when I spoke really sharp words to my wife and then I shut down communication. I didn't want to talk to her anymore.

And it's been going on like that for weeks now. Well, you go back to your spouse. Maybe it's the other way, wife to the husband. You go back to your spouse and say, look, I remember this conversation. I need to repent. I need to apologize and ask you for your forgiveness.

Can we go back and start over and make things right with that aspect of our marriage? And you go back and maybe for some of you, you're going back 20 or 30 years in it. Just wherever that point of departure is, go back, make that your point of repentance and do what you can to restore it from there. Sometimes you can't fix it.

People die and you don't have money to repay what you took or whatever. But you can still go back in your mind and start to work through and say, okay, this is what I need to do to make this right. And you trust the grace of God to bring you back and you trust the forgiveness that Christ bought for you at Calvary and say, okay, this is part of the restoration.

This is part of the restitution. And now having made this right, now I'm in a position to go forward again. This is the way that you should think and not just blow off what you've done in the past. Where you departed, if you can identify that, Naomi went back to Bethlehem.

She did the right thing. After her husband had taken her out, she goes back to Bethlehem and the story starts over again from there in a way that we'll see next time. So there's this divine circle and this symmetry that takes place. And let me just say something encouraging to you here. To do that is one of the most refreshing things that you could do in your spiritual life. If you can identify points like that and go back and make what you can right, there's something very refreshing that says, okay, I realize where I went wrong. I'm repenting here. I'm trusting Christ to work this out. And just the activity and the effort and the intention to do what is right in the sight of God and to go back and straighten that out is immensely refreshing. And so don't be afraid to do that. Don't be afraid to have the hard conversations.

It's the right thing for you to do. Now, we've seen the circle then. Let's go to the second point here this evening. And let's just take a look at the story. A look at the story that unfolds in verses 6 through 18.

We're only going to touch lightly on the story tonight. It's such a wonderful story, but we're just going to kind of walk through it fairly quickly, recognizing that time is short. But we want to see how the story unfolds because the biblical writer here is instructing us through a narrative, and he's instructing us even through the dialogue that takes place between Naomi and her daughters-in-law.

There's just so much that's rich here. And so as we pick it up in verse 6, we see that Naomi in Moab somehow heard that the famine had broken. The famine that caused them to depart was now over, and the Lord had visited His people with food, meaning that God had brought prosperity back to the land and the people were finding their way again.

Look at verse 6 with me. Then she, meaning Naomi, arose with her daughters-in-law that she might return from the land of Moab, going back. Why would she go back? They had left. Why would they go back?

What's the point of that? Well, she had heard in the land of Moab that the Lord had visited His people in giving them food. Somebody came from Israel and brought a report to Moab and said, there's food in Israel again.

Maybe it's a traveling merchant. It doesn't tell us how she heard this. But whilst her feet were on the soil of Moab, somebody comes from outside of Moab and brings news that God had returned to His people and there was now food in place of the famine that had existed, which caused them to leave at the beginning. And so, Naomi, it's easy to kind of retrace her mental steps.

She was a Jew. She belonged there in the first place. But to go back to her people, go back to the land where she came from was a far better option for her than being a destitute widow in a foreign land. And so if there's food in the land, the reason for their departure was now gone and Naomi says, I'm going back. And so this was the prompting that moved Naomi to enter back into the land. And so she set out with her daughters-in-law.

Look at verse 7. And so she departed from the place where she was and her two daughters-in-law with her and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. Now, some men have estimated that to go in those days from Moab where they probably were in the plains to Bethlehem would have been a seven to ten day journey. Going down from the plateau of Moab maybe 4,000, 4,500 feet and then going back up the hills of Judah. A 75 mile journey is what they estimate. And so this was a rigorous trip for them on foot in order to get themselves back to Bethlehem.

And you get the idea as you read the narrative that they had gone part of the way. They were somewhere down the road toward their destination when Naomi turns to her daughters-in-law and tries to convince them to go back. Look at verses 8 and 9. Naomi said, verse 8, she said to her two daughters-in-law, Go, return each of you to her mother's house.

May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. May the Lord grant that you may find rest each in the house of her husband. Then she kissed them and they lifted up their voices and wept.

This was, you get a window into the character of Naomi here that is just precious. You see her expressing her concern for the well-being of her daughters-in-law. She was willing to depart and to go back alone because as she expresses it to them, there's a better life for them in Moab as Moabite women.

Go back to your people, go back to the people that have known you, go back and they will take care of you. She is seeking their earthly welfare of these younger women by pointing them to their own people so that they can find a husband. They're still young enough to marry and Ruth realizes that if they come as Moabite women to Israel, where's the hope for them to ever have a husband?

You know in those days women, the career path for women was to be a wife and a widow was destitute and there wasn't any future in that. And so Naomi knowing that it meant that she was trying to send away her own family for their own good at one level puts their interests ahead of her own and says, as you guys go back I'll go on by myself, it's okay, I'll be alright and may God bless you, may Yahweh care for you as you go back from me. Well at first both Orpah and Ruth refused this overture from their mother-in-law.

Their love is evident as they weep and refuse at first to depart. Look at verse 10, they both said to her in verse 10, no but we will surely return with you to your people. They said, we're not having any of this Naomi, we love you, you're our mother-in-law, you're like a mother to us and we see the destitute situation, we're not going to abandon you in the midst of this, that's unthinkable, no way. And the magnitude of earthly circumstances coming to the surface here, they've buried their three men and they've been in this together and there are no good options in this display of divine providence that's in front of them at the time, there's no good options but at this first overture the women, the daughters-in-law say, no, no we're staying with you and the tension continues to develop as the story unfolds. Look at verse 11, this I told you this is a masterful piece of literature but Naomi said, Naomi wasn't going to have any of that, she wasn't going to have them making a decision based on pure sentimentality, she's being very practical here and she said return my daughters, this is the second time she's tried to send them away, she says return my daughters, why should you go with me?

And she lays out for them in a very practical way how useless it is for them to follow her back to her own country. She lays out for them the fact that there is no future for them and so she says there in verse 11, why would you go with me? Do I have yet sons in my womb that they may be your husbands? She's not pregnant, it's not like she's going to bear sons that would raise up and become husbands for these young women of marriageable age. She goes on in verse 12, she says return my daughters, go back! I'm no good for you, I'm too old to have a husband, not only am I not pregnant now, I'm too old to have a husband, I can't possibly bear sons that would prove to be a husband for you and even if I did, verse 12, even if I said I have hope, if somehow my body, my barren womb could produce sons and a husband tonight and bore sons, what good is that going to be?

Are you going to wait until they grow up and are of marriageable age? Would you refrain from marrying based on that remote hope? Look at verse 13, she says, no my daughters, for it is harder for me than for you for the hand of the Lord has gone forth against me. A couple of things that she's saying here, number one, she's recognizing, she's acknowledging that her circumstances come from the hand of God. She has not lost her theology here and it's a very hard life that she has and she recognizes that her circumstances come from the Lord and the hand of Lord has gone against her in a way that is not the usual form of blessing that he gives to women like her. She says, you know what, there's nothing I can do for you.

I'm no good for you. And it's just such a totally selfless approach to her relationship with them. You got to love Naomi in this. And as she's talking about to our ears here in the 21st century in Western culture, it sounds a little bit odd for her to be talking about having sons and, you know, having other sons that they could marry when, you know, why is she talking that way? Well, we'll look at this more closely when we get to a discussion about Boaz later on in the book, but just briefly for now, Naomi is referring to the custom of what's called levirate marriage.

And the idea is that when a man, a married man dies childless, his brother would marry the widow in order to preserve the family line so that there would be a son to carry on the name of the deceased. And this was provided for in Scripture. Look back at Deuteronomy chapter 25, if you would. Deuteronomy chapter 25.

We're just touching on this briefly this evening, saving a fuller discussion for when we get to Boaz. But I just want you to have a little bit of insight into the seemingly odd emphasis that Naomi is putting on her own ability to bear children. Deuteronomy chapter 25, verses 5 and 6. When brothers live together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a strange man. Her husband's brother shall go into her and take her to himself as wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. It shall be that the firstborn whom she bears shall assume the name of his dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.

This was a provision made for in Scripture to perpetuate the line of a man in exactly these kinds of situations that we find Naomi and Orpah and Ruth in as we're reading chapter 1. There's only one problem. There aren't any sons left. There's no one to get married to. This is utter desolation for Naomi and for her daughters-in-law. There was no firstborn child to carry on the line of the deceased so his name would not be lost. And Naomi says there's never going to be. Not only is there not one now, there never will be. And even if there could be, even if I got married tonight and got pregnant tonight, that's not going to do you any good.

Are you going to wait 20, 25 years for a man? And so she's just laying out for them the practical consequences and how unfitting it is for them to follow her. And she selflessly is willing to be alone, completely alone for the well-being of Orpah and Ruth. A future with Naomi was destined, destined by everything that she knew at that time to be one of isolation and hardship.

And so she tells them again and again and a third time, go back, don't come with me, I'm no good for you. Well, the selflessness of that really moves your emotions, doesn't it? It really grips you to see that kind of nobility of character on display, that self-sacrifice that is increasingly a lost virtue in this wicked society in which we live. But you know, as long as Scripture exists, that kind of nobility will not die.

God won't let it die. There will always be people like you gathered in this room who aspire after the noble character that Scripture lies out and won't buy into the lies and the deception and the selfishness of our wicked society. There will be people just like you who rise up and aspire to this kind of noble life, to lay down your life for someone else in the same way that Christ laid down His life for you. My friend, I want to let you know of a special ministry that we have at thetruthpulpit.com that's very near to my heart. We have a ministry to those who are in prison.

And in the nature of life, sometimes we have loved ones that go astray and find themselves behind bars and spending significant time in incarceration. Well, we have a ministry to them. We send them transcripts of messages that I've preached from the Pulpit of Truth Community Church. We do it on a weekly basis.

They get mail every week. If you have a loved one in prison that you would like to have us reach out to in that way, do me a favor. Go to our website, thetruthpulpit.com. That's thetruthpulpit.com. Click on the link that says About, and you'll see a dropdown menu that will take you to our prison ministry. You can fill out the form, and we'll be happy to respond and then join in with you in ministering to that one who is outside the normal course of society. So that's thetruthpulpit.com, the About link for our prison ministry.

That will do it for today. 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.