Ruth Chapter 1

0:02 Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Today we begin the consideration of the Old Testament book of Ruth. So if you have a copy of the Old Testament with you, either in screen or in a book form, it certainly will appear in a moment on the screen behind me. The book of Ruth is widely regarded as one of the most beautifully written short stories in all of world literature. It's told with an economy of words. In fact, there are just over 2,000 words in Hebrew, which translates into about 2,500 in English, divided by the translators into 85 verses. and it's a beautifully structured story.

0:52 It is a four-act drama with a scene change for each one plus a scene-setting introduction and a short but far-reaching conclusion. It's also a story that achieves what is almost impossible in literary terms. It makes goodness attractive. friendship, loyalty, devotion, honesty, love, costly, obedience, centered on four characters, three named, one unnamed, two women, two men, but behind and above and beyond the invisible, but very real God working out his loving purposes in the details of the everyday lives of ordinary people, people just like you and me. And while we're considering it over four Sunday mornings, we're doing act one this morning, if I can call it that, can I encourage you to read the whole thing? It wasn't designed to be just done and, you know, one act and then you leave it for weeks. So just sit and read it as a book, consider it as a movie. You got to go right through it or a play.

2:10 You want to get the whole story and let the text of it, the storyline, the characters, the issues raised soak into your mind. It's just a wonderful, wonderful book. But let's dive in chapter one, verse one to begin. In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem and Judah together with his wife and two sons went to live for a while in the country of Moab. the man's name was Elimelech his wife's name was Naomi and the names of his two sons were Malon and Kilion they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem Judah and they went to Moab and lived there now Elimelech Naomi's husband died and she was left with her two sons they married Moabite women one named Orpah and the other Ruth and after they had lived there about 10 years both Malon and Kilion also died. And Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband. When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there.

3:27 And with her two daughters-in-law, she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah. 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. May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband. Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud and said to her, we will go back with you to your people. But Naomi said, return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons who could become your husbands?

4:08 Return home, my daughters. I'm too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me, even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons, would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters, it is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord's hand has turned against me. At this, they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. Luke said, Naomi, your sister-in-law is going back to your people and her gods.

4:45 Go back with her. But Ruth replied, don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people. Your God, my God. Where you die, I will die. And there I will be buried.

5:05 May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me. When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the woman exclaimed, can this be Naomi? Don't call me Naomi, she told them. Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty.

5:42 Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me. The Almighty has brought misfortune upon me. So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth, the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, and arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning. The scene is set for this drama, this story, at a time in history a thousand years before Jesus, more than, in fact, over 3,000 years ago. The time, we are told, when the judges ruled the land. So let me explain just a bit about that. Israel, the nation through which God had chosen to bring in his Messiah to bless the entire world.

6:34 They were finally in the land God had promised to them. Under Moses, God had delivered them out of their slavery in Egypt and shepherded them across the desert, teaching them all kinds of lessons along the way. And then under Joshua, he brought them into the land, defeating powerful enemies and nations who had opposed God consistently for centuries. these enemies were subdued the tribes of israel and their families had received their lot or their inheritance in the land the parcel of land if you like that the families were to live in and develop to sustain themselves but by the time now covered by this book of ruth they were not doing so well. And if you want the details, you need to read the book of Judges, which just comes before Ruth in the Old Testament. The core problem was that they had short memories and persistently ungrateful and rebellious hearts. They forgot that they owed everything to God, forgot that they owed who they were, the land they had, everything. They ceased being grateful to him.

7:59 They ceased acknowledging their dependence on God. They ceased acknowledging God's uniqueness and supremacy. And instead they started chasing after other gods. Now it didn't happen overnight. It was a slow drift, fed, influenced by the cultures of the nations around them, because the people find these other nations with their cultures endlessly fascinating and enticing. For example, their agricultural success, their sense of style and fashion, They're often exotic religions, which appealed so much to the senses and promoted that kind of liberated, sexually liberated lifestyle, essential spirituality that seemed to many really progressive and where things were at, much more fun, certainly, than sticking with the law of Moses. So they allowed themselves gradually to be seduced into adopting the morality, the values, the spirituality of the nations around them compromising with their false gods.

9:21 And as a result, instead of enjoying and developing and growing in the freedom that Moses and Joshua had brought them into, they found this basic law to be true, that there's a way that seems right to human beings, but it's a way it leads to death. When you leave God out, when you chase after views of the universe and of life, which aren't of God, then you end up inevitably causing yourself and others disaster. That's where it goes. And this is what happened. But as I say, it wasn't overnight. It was gradual. And it was only when they found themselves at rock bottom and finding this new enslavement that they had got themselves into, finding it intolerable that they would finally cry out to God. And in response, God graciously would send them a judge.

10:23 Now, you're not to think of someone in a wig sitting in the high court. It's not that kind of judge. You're thinking in terms of a deliverer, a leader who would galvanize the people under God, who would get them together, would organize them, help them to resist and fight against those who were enslaving them and restore them to their relationship to God and in the inheritance he had given them until the next time. And that was the problem. It was rinse and repeat. It wouldn't take long, sometimes only a few years before again they were enticed away and they did evil in the sight of the Lord. And they ended up finding themselves slaves to another nation with another false religion and a false set of gods. And they cried out to God again.

11:17 They sent them another deliverer And then they did the same thing again and again and again. But it wasn't just repetition. It was on a downward spiral. Each time it got worse. It's against this background that this book of Ruth is played out. So it could easily come across that it's really just a kind of a piece of beauty in the midst of ugliness. as a shining star against a dark night, a beautiful human love story with a happy ending, a kind of treasure that's rescued from the chaotic ugliness of history, until we get to the very last word of the book. Do you know what that is without looking at it?

12:04 The last word of the book is David. You see, this is not just a beautiful story. It is that. And it's certainly not random. This story lies at the heart of God's plan to bring in his king, David, and beyond David to the great descendant, son of David, King Messiah himself, Jesus, who would be born in the same small town where most of the action of this book takes place. The book is called Ruth. And yet, as we can see from the start, the focus is on Naomi. And we'll see that at the end as well, because in many ways, this is Naomi's story.

12:55 It starts, as we have read, with her emptying out, her disillusionment. Naomi is a bitter, despairing, hopeless woman who believes in God, but believes that God is against her. The book will end with her filling, with her restored life and faith and hope and future. So then why call it Ruth? Because Ruth, her faith and love and values and decisions and her relationship with Boaz that we'll come across soon is the key to Naomi's restoration and filling. As often happens, fulfillment comes not from what she could achieve for herself, but through what others achieved for her. This is a very human drama of weakness and strength, of tragedy and triumph, death and life, insurmountable seemingly obstacles and the triumph of love. But more than that, there is this higher and deeper level of God's involvement in the everyday, yet hugely significant circumstances of our lives.

14:30 So it moves from the small details to the big picture of God's purposes in history. Little did Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz know that through their decisions, they would become the ancestors of King David, Israel's greatest king. Even less did they know that through the decisions they made, God would eventually bring in his Messiah, the savior and redeemer of the world. This introduces another higher dimension to life, a dimension that sadly we often either don't see or ignore, but beyond the details in the everyday of the moment, there's a bigger story being played out. But we begin in the reality of the story they were in in Bethlehem where life was tough. There was famine. And there's a certain irony about that because the word Bethlehem means the house of bread, but there was no bread there. We're not told why, possibly what we might call natural event, but likely also the result of the people's moral and spiritual compromises.

15:58 Chasing after false religions always leaves people morally and spiritually deprived, hungry at every level. A man called Elimelech, he had land, part of his and his family's inheritance that dated back to when they had first come into the land under Joshua. But he was struggling to make a go of it. His name, again, is fascinating. Elimelech means my God is king. So his parents named him that. Did they believe it? Did he as he grew up?

16:37 It's a funny thing naming kids. We named our firstborn Kristen. I wonder how she felt about that growing up. She's not here to defend it. But sometimes I think people who are called Christian have this kind of weight of expectation upon them. My God is king. It was an expression of the nation's faith. But did he actually believe it?

17:07 Or did it become in his mind some kind of cruel irony? If God is king, why then? this famine? Why aren't things working out for me? Why is life so hard? I suspect that some of us have asked the same question. Elimelech took matters into his own hands. He decided to move his family to nearby Moab.

17:36 No doubt he planned this to be temporary, But as often happens, the temporary turns into something longer term. They were there at least 10 years. Now, there's no comment directly made about this in the text itself. We're just given the fact. So perhaps we need to be careful not to rush the judgment of Elimelech. Abraham did a very similar thing. And indeed, perhaps we can even sympathize with him. Some of us know only too well how life's circumstances, making a living, bringing up a family, can become overwhelming.

18:18 Especially when the basic business of putting bread on the table becomes so hard. How many in history have left this island because of famine, hardship, opposition, etc. to make a life for themselves elsewhere. And every time I go to America, I meet their descendants because everybody wants to be Irish. But Limelech's decision in his context at least raises a question because others didn't leave. Others, like Boaz, decided to make a go of it. So why could he not? did they not have enough trust in God to hang on in tough times?

19:13 Because abandoning, he wasn't just leaving his home, but he was abandoning his God-given inheritance, going where the grass, no doubt, looked greener, and ended up going to Moab of all places. Now, If you don't know about Moab, this is a bit like moving from Northern Ireland to Scotland or France or somewhere, but Moab was infamous. Well, perhaps Scotland or France are infamous too, but Moab certainly was. When Israel was slogging through the desert, the king of Moab had opposed them, and when he found that he couldn't defeat them militarily with the help of a certain Balaam, he managed to attract the travel-weary Israelites into a dazzling, sensual, religious celebration and food and drinking and dancing, which eventually led to all kinds of sexual immorality and compromise with false gods and false worship and false morality. Nearly destroyed the whole venture. These Moabites had long since given themselves to the worship of false gods such as Chemosh, who was frequently worshipped with child sacrifice. And as a nation, they came to be characterized by pride, the easy life, self-indulgence, driven by the satisfaction of feelings of the now.

20:45 And it found its zenith in, if I can describe it as that, in one of its kings, King Eglon, who is described in the Bible as being enormously fat. Read his story in the book of Judges. So not the easiest place then to bring up their boys. The decisions we make, where we live, work, those we associate with, especially as adults, especially as parents. It has consequences, doesn't it, on others, especially on those closest to us. And they were hit then with a triple tragedy. Elimelech died in Moab, far from his home, away from the inheritance God had given to him. And then his two sons, who had since married Moabite girls, both died without any children.

21:45 So the whole enterprise of his life was almost wiped out. His name in danger of disappearing forever. His wife, Naomi, left empty. It's interesting the way the writer expresses it. She was left of her husband, not simply left with no husband, but left of her husband, literally. She was left of her sons. Perhaps in English, better to put it, she was bereft. The emphasis is not simply on their death or on the natural grief that accompanied it, but on her sense of abandonment, Her desolation utterly bereft.

22:35 Her life, as she herself puts it, totally emptied out. Stated in just a few short words, leaving it to our imaginations, shaped by our individual experiences to feel the reality of this, to feel the depth of it. there's no need for me to spell it out, nor will I attempt to, because I can't speak for your experience and response, and my own experience is likely outside yours. In the midst of her emptying, her desolation, perhaps it was a conversation she heard, overheard. We can hear a lot, learn a lot from listening. A random snatch of conversation seemingly. She overheard the news that there was food. Once more in Judah, the famine was over in Bethlehem, the house of food.

23:44 But that isn't how the story is told. That's the modern humanistic historian version. The Bible's version says this, when she heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them. That's a very different take on history. In other words, the restoration of food wasn't simply the result of some historical chain of cause and effect. God had intervened. The Lord had come to the aid of his people. The Lord had provided.

24:23 and that raises a set of complicated questions. Questions we all have to face if we believe in God as Naomi did. She wasn't an atheist nor even an agnostic. She believed in God. She believed in God's involvement in history. She believed in what theologians will call God's providence. God has put his finger into human history. His hand, she believed, was behind the provision of food.

24:55 But now comes the question, why had God allowed things to get so hard in the first place? Why provide food now and not then? And beyond that, why had he allowed her husband to die? and her two sons. The logical thing to do now was to go back home where she belonged, where there was food and care and family. But Naomi wasn't just driven by some survival instinct. She was a human being with many questions in her heart. On the journey back, her two daughters-in-law went with her.

25:52 And at a certain point, she turned to them and tried to persuade them not to go any further. Now, why was that? Because to remain with Naomi would be to consign themselves, most likely, to singleness. Now, just a little bit of background and you can read up about this. These are very different times from today, not just in terms of social structures, there was no social security, no state pension schemes, but also in terms of cultural expectations and traditions. So at the risk of offending anyone present, under Jewish custom, if the young woman were to remain in the family and perpetuate the name of their dead husbands, they would have to either find a relative who would marry them and agree to perpetuate the name, or else, in this case, wait till Naomi found a husband, had sons by him, and then wait until the sons were old enough to marry them and have children. And Naomi had no more sons for them to marry.

27:12 She was at least middle-aged, if not more. And even if she could find another husband that night and have sons, Ruth and Orpah might well be too old to marry them, even if they were prepared to wait. In other words, Naomi had nothing more to give them. She thought. So she urged them to go back. And as she put it, find rest in the home of another husband. The word means the rest of fulfilled ambitions as human beings. We have various longings and desires.

27:55 And unless they are fulfilled, we can be restless in life. And Naomi was saying, look, go back to your former family, find new husbands there and find rest, find fulfillment of your natural healthy desires with them. So Orpah responds first. She genuinely cared for Naomi, but in the end, it was more of a sentimental attachment because in the cold light of day, she found that she wasn't prepared to pay the price involved in staying with Naomi because if she followed Naomi, that meant leaving the culture she was used to. It would mean being with Naomi's people as an outsider. How would they receive her? it would also mean following Naomi's God. And according to Naomi herself, it wasn't likely to satisfy her maternal longings.

28:51 The likelihood would be there'd be no husband, no children. So with regret, Orpah decided to return to Moab. Ruth was facing the same decision, But for her, there was something more important than the fulfilling of natural desires for a husband and for children. It was her loyalty to Naomi, to the future, and to Naomi's God, the God that Naomi, no doubt, in her last bitter days, had talked to her about. Naomi remarkably still tried to dissuade her. Go back with your sister-in-law. but Ruth was not to be put off and we have these most famous words where you will go I will go where you stay I will stay your people will be my people your God will be my God where you will die I will die and there I will be buried remarkable and what's particularly remarkable to me is that Ruth said this despite the bitterness of the one who did believe in God, Naomi, who was trying to persuade her not to follow her and to follow her God.

30:24 She wasn't to be put off. Ruth could see a bigger picture beyond the bitterness. And she didn't let the bitterness of the older woman put her off doing what deep down she knew was the thing that she needed to do. It was a personally defining moment. A moment that is by definition rare in all of our experiences. But it's worth considering, despite evidence to the contrary, despite personal grief, despite watching the disintegration of faith in an older believer, Ruth took the step of committing her future to God. I can't help making the contrast with the would-be disciples that we read about in the Gospels who came to Jesus bringing their list of terms and conditions. I'll follow you if.

31:33 Ruth had no illusions, no guarantees of rest and prosperity, no terms and conditions. She would rather risk faith in Naomi's God than go back to the promise of much easier fulfillment, no doubt, in Moab, but with no future. So it sets an example against which to weigh our own decisions. What drives them? Is it economics? Is it fear? Is it unfulfilled desires? On what do we base our decisions?

32:18 You see, I cannot guarantee that if you trust in the Lord Jesus as your Lord and Savior, that all your healthy, legitimate desires will be fulfilled in this life. In fact, by following Jesus, you might be making it harder to fulfill some of them. If you follow Jesus, for example, you might never find a life partner and spouse who, like you, puts Jesus first. But Ruth wasn't looking for guarantees. She didn't bring a list of terms and conditions. She lifted her eyes beyond her natural desire to a bigger future, to getting involved in whatever God had for her, wherever he brought her. And so Naomi gave up trying to persuade her to go back. And the two returned to Bethlehem.

33:20 And with that, we come to the end of Act 1. But it's so interesting to see what happened. Because this was a small town, village. If you never lived in one, you'll not quite understand what's going on. But if you've lived in a small town or village, certainly back in the day, as they say, everybody knew everybody else. And when somebody left, that was, my word, they've gone. And then they come back over 10 years later. It's the talk of the place.

33:55 So we can understand the reaction. But the writer so brilliantly uses the reaction of the women in the town to direct our attention. And our focus back on Naomi. Life had turned sour. She was convinced that God was against her. All her unanswered questions had piled up in her mind and heart, the sheer painful, bitter experiences, her disappointments. Don't call me Naomi, she said. Is it really you, Naomi?

34:38 Don't call me that. Because Naomi means pleasant. Call me Mara, bitter. She wasn't an atheist. She was a believer struggling with God, deeply hurt by his dealings with her. Sad, disappointed, bitter, empty. And perhaps there are some, maybe many, in church who can at least identify with her.

35:21 And behind the pleasant smiles we bless each other with and the hugs and handshakes, there lies all kinds of sadness and bitterness and emptiness. This is act one. Do read the rest of the story. It is the fact in life that we often write the conclusion too soon. We see the act that we're in as the final act. There can't be any other possible answers to this. This life now, this world is all there is.

36:03 And it's a mess, it's ugly and it's pointless. Can I urge you to read the next three acts? It ends, even this act one, with a little glimmer, doesn't it? The timing of their arrival back. Again, it's just so brilliantly stated, so brilliantly suggested. It was the beginning of the harvest. I suspect there were a lot of people who didn't think there would be a harvest who'd gone through the 10 years plus of famine and hardship and difficulty and they thought this is all there is to life it's pointless she arrived at the beginning of the harvest there is hope so as we reflect and as we go to prayer We're invited by the author of this text and by God himself to use the responses of the characters in the chapter to think about our own response.

37:20 Elimelech struggling to live consistently with the name he had, finding it tough to make a go of things, making decisions based on fear, economics, and unfulfilled desire. orpah given the opportunity to know god but not prepared to pay the price and the power of the satisfaction of natural healthy desire took over and as far as we know she never found out what would have happened had she followed god ruth despite the cost even the disintegration of the faith of Naomi committing herself courageously without guarantees of any fulfillment of her natural desires, committing herself to God. And Naomi, believer in God, but he had allowed life circumstances eventually to wear her down. But she was on the way back. She arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the harvest. Let's pray. We pray, Lord, that today and over the course of these weeks, you use your word, this book,

38:54 as a mirror to our own lives to show us what's really going on in our hearts. And at the same time to use the book as a window that we can look through and see the hand of God and his provision and his purposes. These are deep things. the deepest things of life. So we pray, Father, graciously for the work of your comforter to come and point us to Jesus and to the heart of God for us and to the future he holds in his hand and to that harvest that is coming. we pray in his name Amen