Ruth 1 | Loyal Love [F.O.]
Notes
Transcript
Ruth 1:1-22
Ruth 1:1-22
CAPTURE
CAPTURE
Engagement story
Stories of loyal, faithful love grip our hearts and refuse to let go.
Divine romance, where God’s love for mankind is on display. Love that is kind and loyal. It is not romantic or infatuated; rather, it is faithful
CREATION
CREATION
In the beginning, humanity dwelled in the garden. Here, they abided in God’s unbounded love and Presence.
Unhindered. Free from obstruction and corruption.
CHAOS
CHAOS
However, humanity chose to turn away from His love and Presence. This is known as sin, and sin has far-reaching consequences.
Sin. Creation museum room (chaos, violence, disorder, cacophony). Sin is catastrophic.
Setting of Ruth - during time of judges in Israel. Rule of the judges is by-and-large horrendous. Awful.
You aren’t gonna catch us teaching judges 19 anytime soon down there in kids church.
In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
During the time of the judges, there was a famine in the land. A man left Bethlehem in Judah with his wife and two sons to stay in the territory of Moab for a while. The man’s name was Elimelech, and his wife’s name was Naomi. The names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They entered the fields of Moab and settled there.
The very first thing the author sets out to establish is the famine.
A sign of the times- the house of bread has no bread
There is something about famine that brings out true character: Abraham (Gen 12), Isaac (Gen 26) [like father, like son], Joseph’s brothers (Gen 43)
At a glance, this sounds like a very pragmatic move. However, pragmatic is often very different than obedient. This Ephrathite abandons the Promised Land and his kindred folk for Moab. He willingly goes into a land of idolatry and a counterfeit god with his family, leaving behind the tribe and people of his father and father’s father.
Not only this- but they end up settling there. From “staying for a while” to “settling”
Not merely just a change in location and lifestyle. Like going from the quiet suburbs to a bustling city. Lines of nationality were crossed. Each group were considered outsiders by the others. Couldn’t go get water without getting looks for the first few months. Normal worship practices were different… sacrifices to Chamosh, people of Chamosh
Naomi’s husband, Elimelech, died, and she was left with her two sons. Her sons took Moabite women as their wives: one was named Orpah and the second was named Ruth. After they lived in Moab about ten years, both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and the woman was left without her two children and without her husband.
A decade of nightmares in three short sentences.
First, Elimelech dies. Second, the two sons take Moabite women as wives. While this marriage isn’t explicitly forbidden in the Law of Moses, Solomon (later) showcases that the temptation is great to serve the god’s of the foreign wife- and Solomon didn’t even live in the land of these foreign wives. Third, Mahlon and Chilion die, leaving Naomi without a husband or sons.
Here is a widow of Israelite descent in Moab during a famine without any male family members or any support
She and her daughters-in-law set out to return from the territory of Moab, because she had heard in Moab that the Lord had paid attention to his people’s need by providing them food. She left the place where she had been living, accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, and traveled along the road leading back to the land of Judah.
Upon hearing that the famine is ending in Bethlehem, Naomi resolves to return from where she came. When she first came to Moab, she had a husband and sons. Now, she is bereaved. Barren.
Naomi treads along with her daughters-in-law before a backdrop of poor choices, bad experiences, and deep disappointment
Dreams are decimated. Hopes lie helplessly in the dirt.
Yet, Naomi is headed home. She is returning. Returning and turning back is a key idea in the passage.
Naomi said to them, “Each of you go back to your mother’s home. May the Lord show kindness to you as you have shown to the dead and to me. May the Lord grant each of you rest in the house of a new husband.” She kissed them, and they wept loudly.
They said to her, “We insist on returning with you to your people.”
This is the very first time words are spoken in Ruth (dialogue)
Here, like being on the interstate to the airport, Naomi urges her daughters-in law to stay. Turn back to the familiar, turn back to Moab.
Yet they insist on remaining beside Naomi. Despite the great difference in their beliefs and heritage, the women must have grown close together after what they had been through
But Naomi replied, “Return home, my daughters. Why do you want to go with me? Am I able to have any more sons who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters. Go on, for I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me to have a husband tonight and to bear sons, would you be willing to wait for them to grow up? Would you restrain yourselves from remarrying? No, my daughters, my life is much too bitter for you to share, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me.”
Count the cost
“For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, after he has laid the foundation and cannot finish it, all the onlookers will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man started to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
“Or what king, going to war against another king, will not first sit down and decide if he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If not, while the other is still far off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.
Jesus tells this parable to the great crowds around Him- teaching about becoming His disciple
In our text, Naomi is telling these women to count the cost of following her, for she is returning to Israel and following YHWH
Naomi has nothing to offer Orpah or Ruth.
It could be brutal to be foreign woman in Israelite culture. Far easier to go home to your family in Moab. Easier to find a husband.
Staying with Naomi was irrational. Beyond reason.
Necessity of choice. There is a choice: everything minus YHWH in Moab or nothing plus YHWH in Bethlehem.
Will pragmatism win out once more over obedient faith and and steadfast love?
Again they wept loudly, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Follow your sister-in-law.”
But Ruth replied:
Don’t plead with me to abandon you
or to return and not follow you.
For wherever you go, I will go,
and wherever you live, I will live;
your people will be my people,
and your God will be my God.
Where you die, I will die,
and there I will be buried.
May the Lord punish me,
and do so severely,
if anything but death separates you and me.
When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped talking to her.
Here we have two women who are feeling the same feelings yet choose different things. Orpah bids Naomi goodbye and chooses to stay in Moab. She returns to the normal.
Ruth, however, clings to Naomi. She does not turn back.
While Orpah pursues the natural course, Ruth is determined to swim upstream and shows loyalty to Naomi
Naomi insists one more time that Ruth stay back. Some argue Naomi was simply on her way to Bethlehem to die, and she preferred to do it alone. What was there for her? She could glean fields in arduous labor as a poor person, yet she was advanced in age. She could enter into prostitution, yet perhaps she had too much conviction to do such. Or alas, she could return as a lonely widow and pray for death to come quickly, for the pain was palpable and persistent
Little does Naomi recognize, she is inserting herself as an obstacle to Ruth coming to faith at this point in their lives
She didn’t know to get out of the way, so God could get in the way, so that Ruth would know He is the Way.
Nonetheless, nothing is going to stop God.
Coffee mug verse
Wedding Scripture. But get this- Ruth is telling this to her mother-in-law
Conversion. Allegiance. Forsaking god of Moab to worship YHWH.
“I can’t go back. I’m no longer who I once was.”
By not turning back, Ruth is actually repenting. She has turned away from false gods to the Living God.
Alistair Begg: Girl from Asia
It was not the Ephrathite (Israelite) elderly woman of shone faith in this dark tragedy. Rather, it was the young Moabitess woman who had grown up in a land of a false god. God doesn’t discriminate. He welcomes all who come to Him in surrendered faith.
Another observation: when the world watches you suffer, do they see the supernatural? It’s visible in Ruth.
The two of them traveled until they came to Bethlehem. When they entered Bethlehem, the whole town was excited about their arrival and the local women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”
“Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara,” she answered, “for the Almighty has made me very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has opposed me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?”
the whole town was excited | stirred, disturbed
Dad’s HS reunion: where you’ve been? who is this with you? have God made you prosperous and successful?
Naomi isn’t passing the test at the reunion thus far
Naomi is perhaps the only person in the Bible to change her own name
The dominant mood here is despair and death. Loss and lament.
CHRIST
CHRIST
So Naomi came back from the territory of Moab with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabitess. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
And so this first scene of Ruth closes with a mood of bitterness and despair.
Harvest is normally a time of hope
Despite the fields blazon with golden harvest and the pasturelands springing to life with lush green grass and blooming flowers, Naomi’s spirit was cold and dead like the middle of a northern winter
Where is the hope? What gives?
The fields are ripe. The time is coming. The whole scene leans forward in uncontainable anticipation for what comes next.
Bread is coming back to Bethlehem
Loyal love remained resilient through the famine and the tragedies. Hope is the last note played in this chapter. Harvest is coming.
The LORD’s Providential Provision is postmarked and on the way. We’ll see this next week as the book of Ruth continues to unfold. But I want to turn our eyes beyond the story of Ruth.
Completion of intro story. We had this lonely woman in a car, holding onto the hope of loyal love. And behold, someone enters into the story. A husband arrives and takes her under his wing. Wedding, 60 years of doing life together.
The story of Ruth points to One who would enter into the cosmic scene as loyal love. Jesus is Loyal Love who enters into our story of humankind. He is the Bread of Life born in Bethlehem. The Word wrapped in flesh. If you don’t have Jesus, you don’t have true, loyal love. If you don’t have Jesus, you don’t have the Bread of Life. If you don’t have Jesus, you don’t have life.
CALL
CALL
Where does this cosmic reality find you today at a personal level?
Suffering might be surrounding you on all sides, but God specializes in bringing good out of bad.
Maybe your life seems to be a canvas of poor choices, bad experiences, and deep disappointment. Look to the One who turns canvases with dark shades of gray and grief into beautiful masterpieces.
God heals. God redeems. You aren’t the sum product of your wounds. You aren’t defined by your scars. In Christ, you are defined by His scars. Others might be watching you suffer, but are they seeing the supernatural through your suffering?
Perhaps you are here and you seeming pursued after “everything” yet have paid no mind to God. And now, you are left empty. Perhaps you have turned towards the wrong things because you haven’t turned to God.
Where you go, I will go. Where you live, I will live - tabernacle
All people are invited in to be His people- whosoever
Christ took up a cross and died.
Place your trust in Jesus. Admit your breadlessness, your brokenness, your sinfulness. Believe upon His Name, Jesus, who is the Bread of Life and Loyal Love. Confess that He is LORD, surrendering yourself to Him.
Loyal love begets loyal love. This isn’t something you produce and give out, this is something you receive and pour out.
Loyal Love has a name, and He is beckoning you in. Harvest is here, and hope has come. Respond to Jesus this morning.