Ruth 1: Clinging to God Despite the Pain

The Book of Ruth has been dubbed as one of the greatest short stories of all time by authors, by literary scholars, by artists and theologians across the centuries. Many have fallen under the spell of this masterful story. It's a story of sacrificial love. It's a story of horrendous pain and suffering. It's the story of faithfulness despite overwhelming odds.

This is the story of Ruth. And so over the next month, we'll be looking at this story chapter by chapter. And this morning, we're going to be looking at the first one, the introduction to this whole story. The story of Ruth begins with an ominous verse. It throws us into the context of Israel during the time of the judges.

It says in the days when the judges ruled. Without a doubt, the time of the judges were some of the darkest days that the nation of Israel ever experienced. Just before we get to the book of Ruth, we have the book of Judges. It's also worth to read, if you have some time to, to read the book of Judges because it gives you an idea of what was happening in Jerusalem in Israel in that time. To give you some of the context, the time of the judges was the period between the conquest of the promised land when Joshua and Israel entered the promised land and before a king was appointed, before King Saul came to power.

It was that in between period. The period lasted for about three hundred years. And the glory days of the exodus, the time when God let out His people with a mighty hand with signs and wonders were done. And the glory days of King Saul and David starting wasn't there yet. And we see at the time of the judges were times of very poor leaders, except for a handful, for perhaps the flawed hero of Samson who was a judge, or of Deborah.

Most of the rulers then didn't do a great job at all. And repeatedly, the book of Judges talks about the deplorable state of Israel's sinfulness. That they came into this new promised land but they adopted the gods of the people they had conquered. It shows how they rejected the Lord God and worshipped the idols of the surrounding nations. These were dark days. And so we find the story of Ruth wedged into this hopeless situation.

We see here that the Bible says there was a famine in the land. Now if you know your Bible, you'll remember that God promised just before Israel went into the promised land that if they were faithful to Him, He would bless them abundantly. He would make them a large nation. But if they were to disobey Him, if they were to forsake Him and follow other gods, He would bring famine upon the land. Deuteronomy 8, to be exact, says that He will bless them if they follow Him, but they will be cursed if they don't.

And so we are to understand that in the time of the judges, as a result of unfaithfulness to God, there was no food in Bethlehem. And the irony is that Bethlehem in Hebrew means the house of bread. In the house of bread, there was no bread. In the midst of this famine, a man named Elimelech and his wife Naomi decide to look for greener pastures in the land of Moab. During their time there, Elimelech dies.

We don't know how. The Bible doesn't say. It is silent. All it tells us is that he dies. For ten years, the family managed to scratch out a living.

Naomi's sons, Mahlon and Kilion, marry Moabite women. They settle down. But after ten years, both of Naomi's sons also pass away. Naomi, an old woman now, is left without her two sons and her husband. How terrible, how desperate was this situation?

You can't help but feel the enormous and immense pressure on this woman. The anguish that she would have felt. Having moved to Moab to preserve their lives, four people are reduced to one. But this was not how the story was meant to be read. This is not how God wanted the story to go.

You see, Elimelech made a poor decision. Elimelech took his family away from a place of God's blessing. Naomi herself perhaps should never have let her husband make that decision. And right at the beginning of the story, we see a problem that we as humans fall into so often. When life gets tough, who do we look to?

We'll fix the situation. There's no food? We'll go to Moab. We hear they've got good weather there. We hear that they have plenty of green pastures of grain there.

We start making our own plans. Instead of having dealt with the underlying problem, the underlying reason for the situation of famine in Bethlehem, which was unfaithfulness to God, they try to go around and solve the situation in another way. There's no crops, they say this. There's no food in Bethlehem, so let's go to Moab. It doesn't say anywhere that God's people threw themselves upon the mercy of God.

It doesn't say anywhere that they repented. No one cried out to God for provision. And so a man named Elimelech made a plan for a better life, but he died. Mahlon and Kilion should have had a better life, but they died. Naomi's life should have been full, but now it was empty.

Unbelief drove them to Moab. Unfaithfulness to God resulted in tragedy. Instead of looking to God for their salvation, they looked to themselves. Now gentlemen, there is a very important lesson here for us. As providers for our families, we often feel that responsibility that we need to make plans, that we need to sort out our situations.

But provision doesn't come from a good portfolio. Provision doesn't come from bigger paychecks. Provision comes from the provider. Don't look around for ways to take care of your family, to give a roof over their heads. Look to the one who gives and takes away.

Look to the one who is able to provide all that we need. We believe that the Lord, the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. Psalm 24. So who are we to think that we can provide without His help? Elimelech's unbelief left a heartbreaking wake of death and misfortune behind it.

We move to verse six. And in verse six, we see that Naomi and her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, find out that God had come to the aid of His people in Bethlehem. He had heard their plea and there was food again for them. The famine was over. And so they set out towards Bethlehem.

But Naomi realises along the way that it was foolish for her daughters to go along with her. She couldn't provide for them. She was a woman without a provider. She had no land to go back to to farm. She had no crops.

She had no sons to look after her in her old age, let alone her daughters. There was nothing for her, for them, in Bethlehem. She says in verse eight, go back each of you to your mother's home. May the Lord show kindness to you as you have shown to your dead and to me. May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.

Even then, after Ruth and Orpah weep and they plead and they say, we're not going to leave you. Naomi says in verse 11 again, return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons who could become your husbands? You can just imagine the sadness of this scene.

They're at a crossroads and they are having this conversation. The realisation has finally sunk in. Three women bound together in the wake of unspeakable pain. How could they be separated? They only had each other.

The situation was dire and it would get much worse even if they managed to stay together and get to Bethlehem. Why? Why would these women go with her to Bethlehem? It was not logical. But again, again, we see Naomi's wavering faith in this situation.

The situation was dire. The outlook was bleak. But Naomi didn't cry out to God for provision again. Again, she starts thinking and she starts working things out logically. She sees her earthly situation.

She sees how bleak it was but she didn't believe that God would provide. She didn't ask God that He would provide. In her lack of faith, she tells her daughters-in-law to go back, to do the logical thing, the wise thing, the thing that a doctor would say about a heart that's very, very sick. The logical thing. Go back to your family, she tells Ruth and Orpah.

Friends, it's so easy to become jaded by our own pain and suffering. In those situations where our sorrow just seems to blind us to anything good that could be in our lives. In our sorrow, we become cynical of anything that may be helpful. We doubt every good intention from others. We even doubt the existence of a good God.

But friends, God is good and God is in control. In her pain, Naomi didn't even stop to think that despite her pain, despite her unwise decision to go to Moab, God did provide. She had two beautiful daughters-in-law. Perspective. Our pain can be real.

Our pain should not be ignored. Our pain should be mourned. But our pain should never stand in the way between us and clinging to our God who is faithful, who is good. Our pain should never cause us to stop looking for the hand of God working in our lives. When we get to the point where our pain causes us to abandon God, well then, we are truly lost.

We are truly lost. So Orpah does the humanly logical thing. She kisses Naomi goodbye and she goes home. The Bible doesn't indicate that her decision to go back was necessarily sinful. It doesn't say she made a wrong choice.

Orpah did her duty. She looked after her mother-in-law until she was told to go home. But then we come to Ruth. Orpah did what most people would do. She did the wise thing.

She did the logical thing, the financially secure thing, and that was to go back to her family. But Ruth, the Bible says, clung to Naomi. And then Naomi says the unthinkable in verse 15. She tells Ruth, go back to your people. Go back to your gods.

Naomi is busy here with anti-evangelism. She is de-evangelising her daughter-in-law. It's like one of us saying to a person in grief, why not go to Allah? He might have a few answers for you. Why not worship Buddha?

He'll look after you. What was Naomi thinking? But Ruth clings, clings to Naomi and she says these famous, famous words. Don't urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay.

Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. In spite of the dire circumstance, in spite of the bleak outlook, in spite of Naomi's lack of faith, Ruth believed. Ruth believed. Naomi's unfaithfulness to God was contrasted with Ruth's faithfulness to Him. Naomi's willingness to break family ties was contrasted by Ruth's unwillingness to leave.

When Ruth was in trouble, she clung to her family. She clung to her God. That's faithfulness. Naomi and Elimelech looked to greener pastures. They looked at earthly security but Ruth placed her trust in the Lord.

Your people will be my people. Your God will be my God. The irony of this scene is that Naomi, the Jew, the person who knew God, who knew the intimate name of Yahweh, the woman who should have been an example of faith and dependence on God. This Naomi was shown by a Moabite girl, Ruth, who was brought up to worship the false god, Shamosh. This Moabite girl now pledged her undying love to Yahweh.

Despite Naomi's best attempt to turn Ruth back to de-evangelise this young woman, Ruth had given her heart to the Lord, and nothing, nothing was going to stand in her way, not even her mother-in-law. Amazing, isn't it? And God, He calls His people, friends. He calls His people.

God knows each heart. The Bible says that God draws a people to Himself. We should never be certain of who God can or cannot call. From all the people out there, from all the people, God calls Ruth, the Moabitess. From the land of Moab, that depraved, depraved and loathed bunch of ragtag neighbours, God calls Ruth. We can never ever underestimate who God calls.

That really scruffy, bearded, tattooed guy that comes into your office. God could call that one. That really obnoxious neighbour that plays his music till 3am in the morning on a Sunday morning, God could call that neighbour. That filthy, foul-mouthed worker who talks about their exploits over the weekend. They may be called by God.

Let's make sure that we never de-evangelise anyone we meet. Make it your highest priority to show everyone to Jesus. But even then, despite our best attempts or even our worst mistakes, despite even Naomi's de-evangelising, God is the one who calls. God is the one who redeems. He is in control.

And so Naomi, seeing that Ruth is determined to go with her, gives a long sigh and makes her way to Bethlehem. Upon arrival in Bethlehem, the whole town is astir. Is this Naomi? They ask. She has grown really old.

Look at those grey hairs. Look at those wrinkles. Age hasn't been kind to Naomi. And Naomi replies, don't call me Naomi anymore. Call me Mara.

Naomi in Hebrew means sweet, sweetheart. She says I'm not sweet anymore. I'm bitter. The Lord has made my life bitter, she said.

It was Naomi's opinion that God was the one who had brought this grief upon them. It was God's fault, and again, we see just the struggling of her faith in this moment of grief. In a sense, God did allow for this pain to happen. She wasn't spared of it. Nothing, we believe, is outside of God's control.

But to say that the Lord had afflicted her was not correct. We see the same unfaithfulness here that caused her and Elimelech to pack up and to leave, to go to greener pastures. Naomi, you see, didn't understand God's character. She didn't understand those promises that God had made. Be faithful to Me and I will bless you.

The truth is that it was God's sovereign will that allowed Elimelech, Mahlon, and Kilion to die. God is sovereign. He is in control. But it was God's sovereign will that also gave Ruth to Naomi despite her unfaithfulness. God's plan and desire was for the Israelites to remain in the promised land.

God's will was that Israel, the people of God, should remain faithful to Him, but they didn't. And the land was cursed. God's plan and desire was for Naomi and Elimelech to remain in the land of Judah where He could bless their faithfulness despite the famine. But instead, they went to Moab to bless themselves. But despite that, God still worked around it.

And if you know the story of Ruth, you see how He did it amazingly. What we need to realise is that there are two important truths about God which we need to keep in tension. It's a tension. The one is that God is sovereign, which means that He's in complete control of everything, that nothing happens without His say-so, that He is completely powerful, that He is the king of everything. And the second thing is that God is inherently good.

If you hold to one and not the other, you have a flawed understanding of God. Naomi held that God was sovereign, that He was almighty, that He had everything planned out and in and He was in control. But she didn't realise that God is also good. He had killed her husband and her sons. He had made her life bitter.

But friends, that is not who God is. I heard a story of a woman who called her pastor after she had been raped. And she said to him, God has done this to me to teach me a lesson. God doesn't rape people. Sin does that.

God doesn't murder people. Sin murders people. What I do love about Naomi is her honesty. Sometimes we might think like her. We might think it was God who has done this to me.

It was God who caused me to lose a child. It was God who caused my marriage to break down. It was God who made me or who gave me this addiction. But you know that in the whole book of Ruth, there are 23 instances where the name of God is mentioned. From these 23, there are only two occurrences where God is shown to have had a direct hand in what happened in the story.

So the other 21 times, God is spoken of. Only two is mentioned where God actually was directly involved. God's hand is mentioned not in the death of Elimelech and his two sons. God's not mentioned there. The two occurrences that happened in the book of Ruth is in chapter 1, which we read, verse 6. Have a look.

When she heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of His people by providing food for them, Naomi left. The Lord took pity on Bethlehem and provided for them. The other time which we see right at the end of the story, and I don't want to spoil it but it is a bit of a spoiler alert here anyway, is in chapter 4, verse 13. The second time, the only other time where God is directly seen as having a hand in the story. Verse 13.

So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. Then he went to her and the Lord enabled her to conceive. God is shown to provide food. God is shown to provide pregnancy. Naomi blamed God for being spiteful, but the story shows that God had mercy on His people by giving them food when they needed it.

Naomi blamed God for making her empty and bitter but the story shows that God provided her daughter-in-law with a husband and a child. Despite Naomi's sin and her poor judgement, God redeemed her situation. That, my friends, is goodness. That is grace. How's your perception of God this morning?

Is God fickle? Do you experience Him as spiteful? Is He vengeful? Friends, God is a God of goodness and grace. In verse 22, we come to the close of this introductory chapter that sets the scene.

And it sums up in verse 22 the summary statement. It says, Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning. Bethlehem. There's a name loaded with meaning. Bethlehem.

The house of bread. The place where one day, a baby would be born who would call Himself the living bread. Our Lord Jesus. Naomi arrived at the beginning, it says, of the barley harvest. My friends, that means hope.

Naomi and Ruth, despite the pain, had returned to hope. We're going to be looking at that next week.