Sermon Tone Analysis

*A Bitter Perspective Overcome by a Sweet Providence (Ruth 1:14-18)*

/Preached by Pastor Phil Layton at Gold Country Baptist Church on November 22, 2009 /

www.goldcountrybaptist.org 

/ /

The first few verses of Ruth have a number of tragic ironies:

-         Elimelech (“my God is King” in Hebrew) leaves the land of the Hebrews and takes his family far away from the worship of the King of Israel, outside the promised land to a place named Moab, near Sodom and Gomorrah (God’s judgment is on their land so they go to the land where God’s judgment has historically come down even worse?)

-         Bethlehem (“house of bread ~/ food”) has a shortage on bread and food due to a famine – at least this part of the Promised Land doesn’t look so promising to them

-         Elimelech and his grown sons move to Moab so they won’t die out, but all 3 of them die, while as we read later, the friends of Naomi are still alive back in Bethlehem (v.

20).

-         Naomi’s name = “pleasant,” but her life sure hasn’t been

/ /

/The Reformed Expository Commentary /had the best explanation and title for this section: “Grace at the Bottom of the Barrel.”

To set context it says that as Naomi journeys back to her Jewish homeland in v. 6-7, her words to her daughters in v. 8-13 should be read in light of the historical understanding that her son’s widows with her ‘were foreigners who would hardly be welcome in polite society in Bethlehem.

They were Moabite women who by their very presence would be a constant reminder to Naomi and all those around her of her sin in abandoning the Promised Land and marrying her sons outside the covenant people.

Every time she saw their foreign faces, she would be confronted with the heavy hand of God’s judgment upon her in the loss of her husband and her sons.

It was in some ways similar to the situation of a young woman who has lived a rebellious life away from home and has a child outside of marriage.

[Giving the child up for adoption] may be a hard choice, but if she keeps the child when she returns home, she (and everyone around her) may be constantly reminded of her sin by the child’s presence.

Unless grace is powerfully present in the situation, the child could easily be viewed as an embarrassing intruder … Orpah and Ruth, going with Naomi would be choosing the road to nowhere, embracing the path that led to emptiness … Ruth was a nobody, an outsider, a Moabite of all things.

There was nothing kosher about Ruth.

She knew she would be about as welcome in Bethlehem as a ham sandwich at a bar mitzvah.

Conventional wisdom shouted for Ruth to follow the way of Orpah, the most likely way of worldly security and significance.’[1]

/8 //And Naomi 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.

9 //“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.

10 //And they said to her, “No, but we will surely return with you to your people.”

11 //But Naomi said, “Return, my daughters.

Why should you go with me?

Have I yet sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands?

12 //“Return, my daughters!

Go, for I am too old to have a husband.

If I said I have hope, if I should even have a husband tonight and also bear sons, 13 //would you therefore wait until they were grown?

Would you therefore refrain from marrying?

No, my daughters; for it is *harder* /*[lit.

“more bitter”]* /for me than for you, for *the hand of the Lord has gone forth against me.”*//

14 //And they lifted up their voices and wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her./

 

Orpah’s kiss was a kiss goodbye as you see in the next verse, but there is tender and genuine love and affection Orpah the Moabitess has for her Jewish mother-in-law.

Verse 9 says Orpah lifted up her voice and wept with great emotion and the phrase is repeated in verse 15.

In verse 10 when Naomi first tries to persuade them to go back to their homeland where it will be better for them and where they can find a husband, Orpah /and/ her sister say no, and they are determined to stay with their mother-in-law, which goes beyond ordinary expectations to extraordinary kindness (in fact, in verse 8 Naomi uses the rich Hebrew word /kesed /for the steadfast kindness her 2 daughters-in-law had shown her).

There’s no slight implied in the text toward Orpah; she has gone above and beyond normal natural love, but with Ruth something /supernatural/ has taken place, I believe.

As Orpah is persuaded by the passionate logical plea of Naomi she kisses her goodbye and begins to turn back.

But the end of v. 14 says “/Ruth *clung to* her./”

Any Hebrew reader of the OT would immediately recognize that word from Genesis 2:24, speaking of the covenant love of marriage, where one leaves former family ties and cleaves ~/ clings to a spouse, and the two become one till death.

In the days of the Judges ~/ book of Ruth, the final Scriptures they had, used this same word “cling to ~/ cleave to” especially for clinging to Yahweh as God exclusively, above all else, and it’s commanded repeatedly in the context of love and service to the Lord in the land God gave His people, a covenant commitment to follow all one’s life, renouncing all idols and false gods or false securities, because only Yahweh is.

Deuteronomy 10 /17//“For the Lord your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who does not show partiality nor take a bribe.

18//“He executes justice for the orphan *and the widow* /[as we’ll see in Naomi]/, and shows His love for the alien /[as we’ll see in Ruth] /by giving him food and clothing.//

19//“So show your love for the alien /[as we’ll see Israel do in chapter 2 to a foreign Moabite woman]/, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.//

20//“You shall fear the Lord your God; you shall serve Him and *cling to Him*, and you shall swear by His name./

*30:17* /17//“But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, 18//I declare to you today that you shall surely perish.

You will not prolong your days in the land  …/

/19//“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.

So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, 20//by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and *by holding fast to Him*; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.”/

Orpah and Ruth are in the valley of decision, the crossroads of covenant commitment: old life vs.

new life, Moabite religion and people vs. Israelite religion and people, natural logic and wisdom- which-made-a-lot-of-sense-practically vs. supernatural faith that’s not by sight.

When the going gets tough will I continue with God’s people or go my own way?

Orpah asks herself: “Should I stay or should I go?” God asks: “choose you this day who you will serve.”

Those words in Deuteronomy were written to professing believers who had grown up in the faith, but God challenges them as church-going people must be challenged today: “/This day /will you choose to commit to the Lord, to cling to the Lord no matter what, never let him go, love him, serve him, obey him, follow Him wherever He leads?

I’m not just asking if you believe certain facts, are you willing to /leave /all for Him?

Is your faith your family’s or yours?”

Many writers believe both girls probably took on the same Jewish faith as their husbands, which was normal in that day.

The man is covenant head of the home, and those in his household would have the same faith typically culturally, at least by profession.

But when the authority’s no longer there, and when faith is tested, what will they choose?

Every young person from a Christian home, every churchgoer, has to make this choice at some point, as to whether they just believe because that’s what their family was raised in or because that’s what they were taught growing up or if they truly believe for themselves.

At the end of Joshua, right before the time of Judges ~/ Ruth is a text very relevant to the historical background of Naomi’s family in Moab:

 

Joshua 23 /7//so that you will not associate with these nations /[Canaanites]/, these which remain among you, or mention the name of *their gods*, or make anyone swear by them, or serve them, or bow down to them.//

8//“But you are to *cling to the Lord* your God/

/… 11//“So take diligent heed to yourselves to love the Lord your God.

12//“For *if you ever go back and cling to the rest of these nations*, these which remain among you, and *intermarry with them,* so that you associate with them and they with you … /[bad things happen if we cling to and love the wrong things]

 

So in the context Ruth, those are the final words of the two great spokesmen for Yahweh in historical context.

And Naomi is putting these girl’s faith to a test here, ancient Jewish writers said.

Rabbis taught if a Gentile wanted to convert to the Jewish faith you should do everything you could to talk them out of it.

I’m not sure if that’s what Naomi is doing here, but I do know that when most Christians today explain the gospel to a non-believer they usually try to make it as easy as possible.

If you read the gospels, though, when people asked Jesus how to get to heaven, He usually made it as hard as possible, in fact He made conversion impossible humanly speaking; only a God-regenerated heart could follow Him

 

I believe that’s also the ultimate explanation for what we read next:

/Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. 15//Then she said, “Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back *to her people and her gods*; return after your sister-in-law.”

16//But Ruth …/

 

Daniel Block writes: ‘The audience senses a decisive, dramatic turning point as attention again shifts to Ruth.

One can imagine her loosening her embrace and looking Naomi directly in the eyes.

With the ring of poetry, the now familiar words – her very first in the story – soar “on the wings of rhythm.”

They still tower as a majestic monument of faithfulness above the biblical landscape …

/16//But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; 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.

*/[in the Heb.

this phrase has much poetic emphasis, chiasm, no verbs]/ 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.”/

Ruth affirmed, “Wherever the future takes us, I will stay at your side.”

… She renounced her ethnic and religious roots and adopted the nationality and religion of Naomi.

Henceforth, her [people] would be Israelites, her [G]od Yahweh.

How surprising in view of Naomi’s bitter indictment of her God in v. 13! [But the bitter is followed by the sweet in this passage, some of the sweetest words in all of Scripture, supernaturally-produced words that are only explainable in a heart that has experienced the sweetness of sovereign kindness] … she willingly abandoned her family, her family surroundings, and her religious traditions.

She took on the uncertain future of a bitter widow in a land where she knew no one, enjoyed few legal rights, and – given the traditional Moabite-Israelite rivalry – faced possible ethnic prejudice.’’[2]

Ruth couldn’t see what the future held, but she had come to know who held the future in His hand.

It’s noteworthy that she doesn’t say “Your God /will be /my God” (future tense verb as she does with every other phrase) she says emphatically */your God my God./* God already /is/ her God, but she wants Naomi to know it, her faith is her own and it is real, and no matter what Naomi says, no matter what happens, no matter what the future holds, Ruth has decided to follow Yahweh, though no one join her still, she will follow, no turning back, no turning back.

These are words from a heart that already has true faith because it has been transformed by God.

John Piper writes: ‘The more you ponder these words the more amazing they become.

Ruth's commitment to her destitute mother-in-law is simply astonishing.

First, it means leaving her own family and land.

Second, it means, as far as she knows, a life of widowhood and childlessness, because Naomi has no man to give, and if she married a non-relative, her commitment to Naomi's family would be lost.

Third, it means going to an unknown land with a new people and new customs and new language.

Fourth, it was a commitment even more radical than marriage: "Where you die I will die and there be buried" (v.

17).

In other words, she will never return home, not even if Naomi dies [perhaps there’s even a trust that she will be with Naomi in the afterlife as well?].

But the most amazing commitment of all is this: "Your God … my God" (v.

16).

Naomi has just said in verse 13, "The hand of the Lord has gone forth against me."

Naomi's experience of God was bitterness.