Download the powerpoint presentation from here ^[1]
New series – spread out over the summer – RUTH. A little book tucked away in the OT

• it’s a narrative
• some people think it’s a fictitious narrative – like a novel
• most experts think these people certainly existed

I’d agree because Ruth is found the the genealogy that led to Jesus

It’s a very poignant story

• there’s a family who hit hard times
• there’s a love story with kindness and gallantry
• told very skilfully – hardly a word to spare – almost every sentence is integral to the plot and worth pondering on
• a classic example of the story-teller’s art
• I recommend you read it at one sitting

It’s also a very powerful story

• behind the events – tragedy, falling in love, marriage – there are the most powerful pictures of what God is like.
• it speaks deeply to anyone who has ever failed
• it speaks directly to any of us who need recovery and restoration

We’ve been talking about revival recently in the church – you will find the basic principles here.

This story flies right in the face of some of the assumptions in our culture – especially our attitude to success. Here are some quotations:

• “There’s nothing that breeds success like success.”
• “If you work hard enough, if you’re sufficiently committed you will reach your goal – whatever that goal is”
• “Success is always there for the taking – you just have to believe in yourself “
• “When the going gets tough, the tough get going!”
• “When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

All good swashbuckling stuff!

But where do you go when you reach for your goal, you work your socks off, you commit everything you’ve got – and success doesn’t happen?

• Where do you go when life deals you a bad hand?
• Why do bad things happen to good people? And what do those good people do when the hit tragedy?

Here we’re going to see an example of a lady, Naomi, who had everything going for her, but life fell apart around her ears.

• life had not delivered all it promised
• she found herself facing the deepest disappointments known to mankind!

But it’s a message of hope and assurance

Big ideas in Ruth

There are some wonderful pictures showing us what God is like in Ruth.

Redemption

E.g. Redeeming a token.

The price is paid by someone else for me to receive the goods.

Jesus was just like that – the price paid by Him so we can be free

Returning home

The family wanders away from God’s land and it’s when they return that things start to change for the better.

How many of us have wandered away at some point? (Maybe you right now)

It was when Naomi returned home that things began to look up.

Kindness

At crunch moments in the story we’re going to find someone being kind.

Kindness is a vastly underrated quality!

Ruth is like a play in several acts

the backdrop

Ruth 1:1. In the days when the judges ruled

days marked by darkness, violence, faith heroes and failure. Cycles of faith and failure >>>

the family

A traditional family Elimelech and Naomi

probably quite a happy unit

Hebrew names have meanings – sometimes assigned later in life (We’ll see example later)

• Elimelech – God is King – a man who wanted to have God as king of his life.
• Naomi – sweet – a pleasant personality

They have two sons – that makes them very blessed indeed! “Sons are a heritage from the Lord!”

the situation

There was a famine in the land – a tragic situation

This famine gave rise to mass migration – as they do today.

• today people are fleeing Syria into Jordan, Fleeing Iraq, Fleeing Pakistan

But what we have here is not only the story of a mass movement but the struggles of just one family.

Famine in Bethlehem – significant because Bethlehem = “The house of bread”

• Fertile area
• if there was one place you’d expect to find bread, it would be Bethlehem

Spo in desperation they leave Bethlehem and go ‘for a short time’ to Moab

Moab was a particularly dangerous place for the Children of Israel.

For example – King Mesha had a stele engraved. In it he describes slaughtering 7,000 Israeli men and taking their women to ‘give to their gods’

Elimelech went ‘for a short time’ v1 to the country of Moab

• Significantly – to go to live in Moab was to leave God’s land.

• his intention was only to stay for a short time but he never returned –
• a warning to all Christians not to think “I’ll just go outside God’s plan this once …”

“I can handle a small amount of this sin – the Lord will always forgive me…”

“It will only be a sojourn – a short outing” – just a little lowering of the standards won’t hurt

Elimelech never returned.

the loss

3 Now Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons.

Tragedy! The closest, most valuable relationship Naomi had was severed by death!To cap it all the

4 They married Moabite women one named Orpah and the other Ruth.

Another tragedy – they would have been expected to marry Jewish girls.

These Moabite women would not be allowed into ‘the assembly of the Lord’ Deut 23:3. Such marriages were not forbidden, but niether there were they encouraged and this penalty for so doing is a significant one. The danger is not so much one of racial purity, but losing touch with God.

4 … After they had lived there about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Kilion also died,

Another tragedy >>>

Their names are full of meaning too. Mahlon is close to the Hebrew verb for sickness and Chilion comes from the word ‘failing’

and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband

Triple bereavement. Loss of husband, loss of sons, loss of future, loss of security >>>

• To be left a widow in your own country, too old to have children, was bad enough.
• The situation was compounded by this happening in a foreign land – her position was hopeless.

There’s another tragedy hidden in the background. There is no talk of grand-children. Having been married fro 10 years a family would reasonably expect to have some children, but there aren’t any.

In their society this meant only one thing – God’s judgement!

Last week I spoke about some of the emotions surrounding infertility and how God intervened for Hannah.

But here he hadn’t and I can imagine all these thoughts of worthlessness and condemnation swirling round in Naomi’s mind!

But something happened

the turning point (Naomi)

6. Naomi heard in Moab that the LORD had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them,

“had come to the aid of”

• Primary meaning “to review, to take note of, to notice”.
• She heard that the Lord had taken notice . Israel was no longer abandoned!

God is at work – even through the tragedy God is restoring the fortunes of Israel.The Lord reached Naomi with a message of recovery, even when she was in the foreign land.

• He’s a gracious and compassionate God! You might be many miles from him this morning but his message is the same “there is recovery and renewal available in my house!”
• It’s there for the taking – “come home!”

6. Naomi and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there.

What a picture of revival!

Here is someone who had been outside God’s orbit for years and now hears that God is at work – and something within her dances fro joy!

I don’t know where you stand this morning. – But if you’re one of those people who has been out of the Lord’s loving orbit, I want to tell you there’s bread in his house! He longs to feed you on a rich diet!

With God’s people there is loads of spiritual grub to be had!

Her turning round and heading back home is a picture of repentance.

There was probably remorse in Naomi’s heart about leaving her land and her people, and now that she’s going home, that’s repentance. Repentance is the act of turning around!

the trek home

IN the NT there is the prodigal son – he hears about the food back in his father’s house and he heads off, regardless of what people will think of him.

Naomi is a prodigal daughter!

• taken up residence in a foreign land
• married her sons to foreign women
• invested her life in a foreign culture

This trek began in remorse for what she had done in going there.

This is significant:- Naomi could have seen the situation as all her fault

• she decided to go in the first place – leaving the protection of God’s land and God’s people
• she married off her sons to non-Israeli girls

and now she is utterly alone

It’s often characteristic of people who are going through depression and feeling despair that they crave being alone

6 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. 9 May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”

It was her own decisions that caused all this trouble – can God ever accept her back? answer ‘yes!’

Lesson

even if we divert from the Lord’s plan for us knowingly and by our own deliberate fault

• he is still able to recover, restore and renew

If the message of the book of Ruth is anything it’s all the re- words!

renewal, restoration, revival, refreshing

THAT’S WHAT IS THERE IN GOD’S HEART FOR HIS PEOPLE!

she tries to get her daughters to return to their home

14 At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.

We are meant to notice this!

The two sisters behaving completely differently!

Orpah leaves, Ruth clings

Orpah stays, Ruth goes

Orpah gives in to Ruth perseveres (sho has no idea how difficult it will be inIsrael for her)

Orpah goes for the known, the familiar, Ruth opts for the risky and the unfamiliar

BUT just see how Orpah heads off into the rest of life alone, Ruth has a companion.

the turning point (Ruth)

A poignant statement of devotion

16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.

17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.

This was going to be a lifelong commitment!

May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”

18 When Naomi realised that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

Ruth is willing to give up everything!

• – home, family religion – all the things we put our security in.
• Why? Because in spite of her current bitterness, Ruth has seen something of the LORD in her mother-in-law.
• She will go with a destitute ageing depressed widow who has nothing to offer her. This is a risk of faith!

cf wedding promises “until death parts us”

the name-change

20 “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara

Naomi = sweet, Mara = bitter.

Hebrew names attributed as a result of Character – sometimes in later life.

• Call me something different – I’ve come back a different person from the one who left.

the Lord’s hand?

because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.

A difficult subject where there are not slick answers. God’s permissive will –

• He allows certain things to happen to us that are painful at the time but ultimately for our good.
• We see success as a sign of God’s favour (which often it is) but we are too quick to jump to the conclusion that tragedy or failure are evidence of his disapproval or our disobedience.

Was she blaming God?

• I don’t think so – there’s no hint of anger, just deep disappointment. We feel empty at times like this.
• It’s not wise to ask ‘Why is God doing this to me, but rather “What is the Lord teaching from it?” After all.

nothing can separate us from his love (Romans 8:38-39)

the renewal

22 So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.

A highly significant detail

God’s solution to her predicament is on the way. food can be found here!

the message

Here’s a lady with a broken life, partly by circumstances beyond herself (the famine). Partly of her own decisions and her own making

But look what God does for her

He turns her round

>>>

gives her a companion (Ruth)

>>>

gets her home

>>>

provides for her needs when she arrives.

If you’re like Naomi the Lord will do the same for you.