Responding to 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. Now, at this point after verse 13 and Naomi has made her third plea with her daughters-in-law, you start to see a distinction taking place.

The challenge starts to take root. Orpah goes back home. Ruth and her character starts to shine forth. Look at verse 14 after Naomi has laid it out for them and she's telling them, you know, go, it's okay, you know, I'll follow on my own. And in verse 14, they lifted up their voices and wept again. Oh, this is just pregnant with emotion.

I realize that's a kind of a funny turn of phrase when we're talking about being childless, but you know what I mean. This is pulsating with human, raw human emotion here. And they lifted up their voices and wept again. Verse 14, Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. And then Naomi said to Ruth, verse 15.

And there's something that's a little bit unstated in the narrative. Orpah decides to go back. She takes her mother-in-law, as it were, at her word and she goes back. And Orpah has exited the scene and now Naomi turns to Ruth and in a sense, I don't like the way I'm going to put this, but in a sense turns the screw one more time and challenges Ruth one more time to go back.

And she brings all of the leverage that she possibly has seeking what seemed to her at the time to be what was best for Ruth. Look at what she says in verse 15. She says, Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods. You return after your sister-in-law.

Oh, my. You know, what now? Now let's pivot a bit and step into Ruth's sandals, as it were, and look at this from Ruth's perspective. And just realize how in one sense, humanly speaking in this moment of time, how utterly alone Ruth is in what's going on here. Her mother-in-law has told her three times, going on four, you need to go back. Don't come with me. I don't want you to come and experience the isolation and the destitution that will surely be your lot if you stay with me. And then, you know, she looks back and Orpah's walking down the trail, heading back to Moab, and Naomi says, See, there goes Orpah. Don't you see the right thing to do? And so there is nothing in this circumstance to compel Ruth to stay.

There's no external inducement whatsoever. Everything was calling Ruth to leave. Her mother-in-law says, Go. Orpah's already halfway down the road.

There's nothing in the future that she could possibly know about at that point in time to make her stay. And yet, at a human level, it's going to become much deeper in just a few minutes as we see. At a human level, you see profound love and loyalty coming from this noble heart of Ruth. Verse 16.

I mean, there must have been mud around their feet for all of the tears that were being shed as this was going on. And this lifetime crisis, this crisis of a hopeless future, seemingly, comes to bear, and Ruth, God bless her, and He did, Ruth prefers the prospect of destitution to leaving her mother-in-law. So great is her love for Naomi. So selfless is Ruth in this.

And look at what she says in verse 16. But Ruth said, Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you. Mom, stop it. You're breaking my heart. I'm not going to leave you. So stop telling me to do that.

And look at these sweet words that she says, precious words often read at wedding ceremonies today, although, you know, that's not exactly the context, but that's okay. Ruth says, Don't urge me to leave you or turn back from following you. I'm not going.

So stop breaking my heart. For where you go, I will go. And where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God my God. She says, Naomi, my lot's with you.

Whatever comes of it, I prefer utter destitution with you to leaving you. Verse 17. Where you die, I will die. And there I will be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me and worse, if anything but death, parts you and me.

Some commentators suggest that maybe there was some kind of physical motion, like maybe she she goes like this. Let the Lord do this to me. If anything but death separates us. She calls a curse on her own head to settle the argument and say, Naomi, I'm going with you. And Naomi, with that response from Ruth, finally relents. And she allows Ruth to accompany her to Bethlehem.

Look at verse 18. When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her. Naomi had tested and pushed back and again and again had pushed hard. And in that refining fire of Naomi's assistance, insistence, in that refining fire of Naomi's insistence, the pure character of Ruth is on full display. So great, so magnificent, so much a part of the plan of God that here we are talking about it over 3,000 years later.

There's a character that stood the test of time. What a great story. What a great manifestation of human love. What a great display of sterling character found in both Naomi and in Ruth. This is magnificent.

You could close in prayer and we'd all go out feeling pretty good and warm and mushy and emotional about it. But what just happened here? What just happened in this story? There is much more than what meets the eye on first reading. Beloved, don't you stop content only to see Naomi's love or Ruth's loyalty in this narrative because this is much more profound than a passing human relationship.

Think about it. If this was only about a human love story, if this was only about one woman's devotion to her mother-in-law, this story would have perished long ago and no one would even care about it. Why is it somehow that this story is still with us 3,000 years later? Well, to answer that question you have to see God in it. You have to see God in this story.

And that brings us to our third point for this evening. We've seen the circle. They went from Bethlehem to Moab and back to Bethlehem again. We've seen the story unfold as Naomi heads back to Moab and interacts with her daughter, says, go back, go back, and Ruth says, I ain't going back.

That's the story. How are we to interpret it? How are we to understand it? Well, this is like one of the greatest passages in all of the Bible. It brings us to point number three, the salvation. The salvation. And you know, if you're like me, if your Christian background is like mine is, and you came to Christ maybe in your adult years without much of a spiritual history behind it, then you should especially love this story about Ruth. If you're a first generation Christian who never had a godly influence on your life, you didn't have parents that sat you down and taught you the Bible, and somehow you came to Christ anyway, God worked in your life and brought you, and you say, there's nothing in my background to lead to this realm of blessing that I enjoy, then, beloved, you ought to love this story of Ruth.

I'm telling you. Notice here the word return that is used so frequently in this passage. Those of you who stood outside the camp looking into the realm of the redeemed and knowing that you were outside of it and wondering if there could ever be anything for you and the promises of God, maybe you're like that tonight. You know you're not a Christian. And you long for the blessings of God, the blessings of forgiveness, the blessing of a cleansed conscience. You long to belong to Christ and you wonder if it could really be true for you too. Listen, this story about Ruth is the certain guarantee that God offers his grace to you if you would only receive Christ.

I love this story. We may be here all night. Notice the word return used so frequently here in verses 6, 7 and 8, for example.

I want you to make an observation, then I'll help you see the significance of it. Over and over again, the same Hebrew word for return is used. Verse 6, Naomi arose with her daughters-in-law that she might return from the land of Moab. Verse 7, they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. Verse 8, Naomi says to her daughters-in-law, Go, return each of you to her mother's house. Here's what you're supposed to be doing when you read that in the narrative. When you see that repeated word over and over again, we talked about this a little bit in our series on understanding Scripture and interpreting Scripture.

When you start to see the same word repeated multiple times in the context, zero in and focus on that because something's going on. Something significant is going on by the theme of this word return. Verse 10, they said back to her, No, but we will surely return with you to your people. Naomi said, Return, my daughters. Verse 11, verse 12, Return, my daughters. Over and over again, this word for returns.

What is going on here? Well, in the verses that we've seen so far, return is obviously simply just making in one sense, simply, describing the idea of a geographic relocation from Moab back to Bethlehem. But beloved, that same Hebrew word is also used repeatedly in Scripture to express the idea of repentance, of turning from sin toward God, from turning away from false religion to the true God.

English functions the same way, doesn't it? We say that we're going to, you know, we're driving in car, and we say we're going to turn right at the next light. We're going to turn. Well, we also, if we're preaching a biblical gospel, we also call on people to turn from sin and to receive Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. And so one word both expressing a turning can have a geographic reference and also have a spiritual significance depending on the context in which it is used. And so return, return, return, return, Naomi says, one Hebrew lexical source says this, and I quote, says this term expresses the turning away from evil in the sense of renouncing and disowning sin. There are two sides in understanding conversion, the free sovereign act of God's mercy and man's going beyond contrition and sorrow to a conscious decision of turning to God. The latter includes repudiation of all sin and an affirmation of God's total will for one's life, end quote.

I know, long quotation from a technical source, so let me say it again because I don't want you to miss this. What's this word return mean in a spiritual significance? And those of you that aren't Christians here tonight, you need to really take this to heart because this is precisely the command of God on your life. If you're not a Christian, this is precisely the one thing that God is calling on you to do tonight in order to find the forgiveness of your sins. And if you reject this, you cannot go to heaven.

So let me say it again, pretty important. This turning, the human side of it is this. It's man's going beyond contrition and sorrow. I feel bad about my sins. Well, that's not repentance. Repentance goes further. It's going beyond contrition and sorrow to a conscious decision of turning to God. This turning includes a repudiation of all sin and an affirmation of God's total will for one's life.

So watch this. The idea of repentance, we're going to see this from New Testament passages too in just a moment. This idea of repentance means there is a total repudiation of your sin. There is a complete abandonment of your prior way of life in order to embrace Christ, in order to submit to Him and to give yourself over completely, wholly, unreservedly, and without qualification to Him, that is repentance.

And without it, no one comes to Christ truly. This goes to the most profound inner part of your heart and completely reorients your reason for existence. Well, with that in mind, knowing that this word is used in this way and seeing the theme of return again and again, now all of a sudden when you read what Ruth says in Ruth chapter 1 verses 15 and 16, all of a sudden there are fireworks going on of the spiritual significance of what's taking place. They're turning away from Moab to go back to Bethlehem. Notice what's going on in Ruth's tender heart in her own life with these things in mind, let's read Ruth's words with a fresh understanding. Naomi says, your sister's gone back, you go back to return after your sister-in-law. And look at what Ruth says, don't do this to me. Don't urge me to leave you, return back from following you.

There's not that kind of turning in my heart, there's a different turning in my heart, Naomi. Where you go, I'll go. Where you lodge, I'll lodge. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die, that's where I'll be buried.

Thus may the Lord do to me and worse if anything but death parts you and me. What has she done there? She has done exactly what this word expresses in its theological, not its geographic significance. She has just repudiated her entire past. She's repudiated her homeland. She has repudiated her people. She has repudiated her false gods.

And she has thrown herself in at one level with Naomi, at another level with Naomi's people. But don't miss the Godward focus of what she says. She says, your God will be my God. And she expresses it, she clenches it by using the covenant name of God which is reserved for his people and is an expression of his covenant loyalty to the people of Israel. Look at verse 17. She says, thus may the Lord do to me and worse if anything but death parts you and me.

You see, beloved, what's going on here. Ruth is not simply identifying with Naomi. She's not simply displaying human love and loyalty. Ruth had turned from the only gods and the people, the only people that she had known in order to follow the one true God. We are witnessing in this text the true spiritual conversion, the true salvation of a foreign woman to the God of the Bible. This is nothing less than a Moabite woman from a dark idolatrous background turning to saving faith in the God of Israel. Beloved, this is Old Testament example of repentance. Saving faith displayed in showing its fruit by the repudiation of her past in order to be with the people of God. Incredible. We're not done.

We're not done. Let's understand this from the perspective of progressive revelation and what others in the New Testament said. Let's look at Jesus' words and see if what Ruth manifested and expressed here isn't perfectly consistent with what Jesus said. Let's look at Mark chapter 8. Mark chapter 8. Oh, and we're going to get to apply this too. It's not just about Ruth. It's about you and me.

This can't get any better, can it? I don't think so. Mark chapter 8 verses 34 and 35. What did Jesus say? He said, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. What did Ruth do? She laid aside her life. She lost her entire life. Everything in her past that had brought her to this point, she turned her back on it in order to receive Naomi's God, who, of course, is our God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. She repudiated everything in order to come to Christ.

No conditions. And, beloved, don't miss this. No idea of how this is going to come out. Some of us can remember this point in our own conversions, where you're giving your life to Christ, and you realize you have no idea what all of the implications of that are. All you know is that you're not putting any conditions on your future allegiance to Christ.

There is a total handing over of your entire self to him, and let him do with it what he may. That is repentance. That's what Jesus called for. That's what Ruth did without the benefit of New Testament revelation.

Let's remember Paul's words. 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. 1 Thessalonians being found in your Bible or on your iPad just prior to 2 Thessalonians.

That's okay, we can smile a little bit too. 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 verses 9 and 10. Paul, in commending the faith of those at Thessalonica, said, They themselves report about us what kind of reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead.

That is Jesus who rescues us from the wrath to come. You turned to God from idols. What did Ruth do except that she turned from those false gods and said to Naomi, Your God will now be my God. Beloved, now we see the grace of God on display while they were in Moab. It wasn't primarily about the fact that the famine had ended and that they could go back and find food.

It wasn't primarily about the fact that they had these warm human relations. The grace of God was fully on display magnificently and powerfully and most explosively, wonderfully manifested in the conversion of Ruth on the road back to Bethlehem. Think about it.

Think about it with me. She's just like you and me, born in utter darkness, born into sin, born into a land of idolatry where there was no truth to be found, and that's all that she knew being raised up, seeing children slaughtered in a sacrifice to their God. And yet God brings Naomi, a woman of the true faith and of the true God, and they make a connection. Ruth marries into this family, and now she's exposed to the truth, and she wholeheartedly and unreservedly gives herself over to that God.

That is grace. Full undeserved, unmerited favor, lavishly bestowed on Ruth. Well, what can we take away from this? We'll settle for two takeaways from this passage.

There's certainly more that could be found, but we're already going long as it is. First of all, this is application for you and me here today. Remembering how dark the providence was and seeing what happened in the life of Ruth, here's the first thing that I want you to take away from this. Directly relevant to your life. First of all, mark it, write it down, God is good in your dark providence. God is good in your dark providence. Humanly speaking, disaster had fallen upon Naomi, but as we see the story now and God pulls back the curtain and lets us see with the benefit of hindsight what was going on, far beyond the realm of Naomi's human comprehension, God had not abandoned her. Indeed, his purpose was glorious.

And beloved, what that means for you, no matter your hardship and no matter the difficulty of your present human circumstances or your difficult human relationships, you mark this down and drive it into your soul as an unalterable stake upon which you will stake your destiny and all of your hopes, stake it on this. You cannot assess the ultimate significance of the current providence of your life. You have no idea what God's ultimate purposes are and what's happening in your life. We cannot see that.

Naomi didn't. We can't either. You and I cannot guess at the true significance of our circumstances. We simply have to humble ourselves before our good and sovereign God and trust Him to do what is right. Maybe with the passage of time, you'll see it displayed and unfold and you'll say, Oh, I don't see it all, but I can see how God brought good out of that. I can see how God has manifested Romans 8.28 to me, that He causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. I can see how in the darkest times of my life, when the despair was so black that it was almost tangible, I could almost touch it.

It weighed so heavy on my heart. Now, with the passage of time, I can look back and see what God brought out of that. I can see what He was doing all along. His purposes were good.

You give Him time. You're going to see that. Quite likely. And even if you don't see it in this life, you're going to go to heaven as a Christian and see Christ face to face. That's a pretty good outcome, isn't it? There's no reason for any of us to collapse under the spare of difficult circumstances and say there is no hope. What do you mean there's no hope? Of course there's hope. Our great good God is sovereign and working all things together for good for us. And you and I simply cannot allow ourselves to collapse into unutterable despair as if there's no light to show us the way forward.

That's not right. If nothing else, if nothing else, as we contemplate how good God is in your providence, your dark providence, if nothing else, beloved, let me give you one thing to hang onto to maybe lift you out a little bit of your selfishness that dark circumstances sometimes prompt us to go into. You can be sure. You can know for certain that one of the things that God intends to do in your suffering and the way that He intends to use that is for you to become a vessel of blessing to someone else. Look at 2 Corinthians 1 verses 3 and 4. 2 Corinthians 1 verses 3 and 4. The Apostle Paul said, 2 Corinthians 1 verses 3 and 4, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. God brings you into suffering for the purpose of bringing comfort to you to alleviate your sorrow and to let you find your hope and joy and peace in Him. And He does that not so that you would be an end in and of yourselves, but so that you would turn and say, Oh, I know that comfort for you to go out and minister it to others who are suffering in like manner. That's the purpose of God in your suffering. And so if you're suffering and you're discouraged and you're overwhelmed by what's happening, you start right here.

I mean it. You start right here. You start by asking God to use that suffering in your life so that you would become an effective comfort to others. It doesn't happen overnight. You say, God, you shape the direction of my life from this dark providence that I have and display your goodness to me so that I can one day go out and declare it to others who are in the dark circumstances of their own. Naomi's sorrow led to blessing for others, and ultimately God comforted her as well. Think about this. Naomi's in this dark providence and in the crucible of that refining fire, her life became the vessel through which God reached and saved Ruth. You think that's not important?

You bet it is. So beloved, in your sorrow and in your difficulty, take heart. There is more to your difficult life than you see. And if we saw it, we would rejoice. God withholds the sight so that we would walk by faith. And He is worthy of that, isn't He? After Christ laid His life down, hasn't He displayed and settled for all time that He's worthy for us to trust Him with whatever He does in our lives? Isn't He worthy of that, beloved? I ask you, look beyond your sorrow and your broken heart and see the undeniable goodness of God and know that His intention is to bring you through this eventually so that His glory and goodness are on display. He hasn't abandoned you.

He would never do that. Secondly, we've said that God is good in your dark providence. Finally, for tonight, we see that God is great in His divine purpose. God is great in His divine purpose.

This deserves a six-month series. I'm going to give it maybe 60 seconds and ask God for mercy as I do. As we said, Ruth grew up in the darkness of idolatry. She had no claim on God's covenant promises.

In fact, she belonged to a people that God said should not enter the assembly of Israel. And yet, what did God do? Even in Elimelech's disobedience, God worked through his disobedience to accomplish something.

Quick tangent here. This is exactly what God did at the cross as well. Godless men, culpable for their own actions, crucified Christ. And the Bible says that they did it according to the preordained plan of God in order to bring about a greater result. They were just being sinful. God, great in His divine purpose, used their sinfulness to accomplish redemption at the cross.

Let's take that and apply it to Ruth. What did God do? Ruth in all of her darkness, not even knowing the name of Yahweh as she was growing up. And yet, God brought His people in the form of one family into Moab and somehow connected them to Ruth.

And then what happened? Why did He do that? God brought His people to Ruth for the greater purpose of bringing His grace to her. For the greater purpose of bringing David into the world. For the greater purpose of bringing Christ into the world. For the greater purpose of bringing salvation to sinners. For the greater purpose of bringing a bride to his son. for the greater purpose of showing his glory for all eternity.

That's what God was doing 3,000 years ago in the life of Ruth. Beloved, never. Never. Twice isn't enough. Never underestimate the goodness and the greatness of God.

Don't ever do that. And understand that he often is carrying out the highest most refined elements of his purpose in dark circumstances that seem hopeless by human evaluation and yet his goodness and his purposes are sure. 3,000 years ago on the road to Bethlehem a great episode in the advance of redemptive history was taking place.

Naomi and Ruth knew nothing about that. And yet the purpose of God was great, it was good, and it was sure. What should you and I say in response to these things? Oh the depth, Romans 11 33, oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord or who became his counselor or who has first given to him that it might be paid back to him again. For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen. Bow with me. Yes our Father, from you and through you and to you are all things. We as your people say to you be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Well my friend thank you for joining us here on today's broadcast of the Truth Pulpit where we love to be teaching God's people God's Word.

And I just want to send a special invitation to you. If you're ever in the Midwest area come to see us at Truth Community Church. We're on the east side of Cincinnati, Ohio. We're easy to find, easy to get to. We have services at 9 a.m. on Sunday and 7 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday evening for our midweek study. You can also find us on our live stream at thetruthpulpit.com.

That's thetruthpulpit.com. But we would love to see you and if you do happen to be able to visit us in person do this if you would. Come and introduce yourself to me personally. Fight your way through the people and tell me that you listen on the Truth Pulpit and that you're here visiting. I would love to give you a word of personal greeting. So hopefully we'll see you one day in person at Truth Community Church.

You can find our location and service times at thetruthpulpit.com. 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.