Meanwhile In Bethlehem...

Lead Vocalist (Joel)

Welcome & Announcements (Jason)

Good morning family!

Ask guests to fill out connect card

3 announcements:

1) Fellowship Groups begin next week

Today is the FINAL day to register!

2) Members’ Meeting next week (8/25)

Potluck at 5 (we’ll eat what you bring)

Meeting at 6 (packets are available at the exits when you leave)

3) SS Kickoff (9/1)

This is a great week to get back in SS—we have classes for all ages!

Depending on ages, many of our kids will be moving up to their new classes

Now please take a moment of silence to prepare your heart for worship.

Call to Worship (Lamentations 3:24-26)

Prayer of Praise (Addi Figgers)

Blessed Be Your Name

He Calls Me Friend

Prayer of Confession (Chad Jackson), Doubting God's goodness

Assurance of Pardon (Proverbs 28:13)

Lord From Sorrows Deep I Call

Sovereign Over Us

Scripture Reading (Ruth 1:1-18)

You can find it on page 262 in the black Bibles

Pastoral Prayer (Jason)

Prayer for PBC—Safety Team

Prayer for kingdom partner—PCC (Garrett Spitz)

Prayer for US—Against materialism

Prayer for the world—Slovakia

Pray for the sermon

SERMON

START TIMER!!!

At 4:00 PM on September 7, 1940, chaos was unleashed on London.

SHOW LONDON BOMBING PICTURE

For two hours, 348 Nazi bombers and 617 fighters targeted the city, dropping high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices.

When darkness fell, the raging fires caused by the first attack lit the way for a second group of bombers to unleash another assault that lasted until 4:30 the following morning.

On that day, known as Black Saturday, 430 people were killed and 1,600 were badly injured.

It’s hard to imagine living through a day like Black Saturday. But what’s even more staggering is the fact that London was bombed for 57 consecutive nights.

Throughout the country, the attacks continued for eight consecutive months.

43,000 British civilians were killed, and over a million houses and flats were damaged or destroyed.

Try to imagine what it was like to live through such tragedy, to wonder night after night if this would be your last.

And yet, despite the chaos unfolding around them, the British people survived.

Hitler’s plan was to break the morale of the British people so they would pressure their government to surrender.

But the bombings had the opposite effect.

The phrase “Business as usual,” written in chalk on boarded-up shop windows, exemplified the British determination to “keep calm and carry on” as best they could.

People still fell in love. Couples still got married. Children were born. Life continued, even in a city surrounded by death. [1]

The survival of the British people during the Blitz changed the course of history.

And it illustrates the hope-filled truth, that sometimes beauty comes from ashes.

That's the message we're gong to learn from the book of Ruth.

This beautiful little story reminds us that even when the world seems to be falling apart, God is bringing beauty from ashes for the good of His people.

Turn in your Bibles to Ruth 1.

You’ll find this little book right after the book of Judges in your Bibles.

Unlike the book of Judges, the book of Ruth is a story about one family.

And like many good stories, this story begins with a series of choices that put our characters on a road none of them could have ever imagined.

The Big Idea I hope to communicate this morning is that God uses great tragedy to set the stage for great triumph.

We’ll see this as we study Three Scenes from the opening verses of this beautiful story:

In scene one, we’ll see the CHOICES made by one family from Bethlehem,

In scene two, we’ll watch as those choices lead to COMPROMISE,

Then in scene three, we’ll rejoice as we see Naomi COMING HOME.

Let’s begin with...

Scene 1: CHOICES

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

If you were with us as we studied the book of Judges together, you know this was a dark time in Israel’s history.

Perhaps the darkest time. Idolatry was rampant, the law of God was ignored, violence was everywhere, women were mistreated, everybody did whatever was right in their own eyes. Even their religious leaders were miserable failures.

This is a surprising setting for a beautiful love story.

I find that incredibly encouraging, don’t you? No matter how much chaos is unleashed around you, God is still working for the good of His people!

But before we see the beauty in this story, things are going to get worse. A lot worse.

Ruth 1:1—… there was a famine in the land,...

The Bible doesn’t tell us why there was a famine.

Perhaps this was the time of Gideon, when the Midianites oppressed the people like locusts and took all their food.

Or perhaps the famine was caused by a drought or some other natural disaster.

Whatever the reason, famines were deadly serious.

Most of us cannot really imagine what it would be like to experience something like this.

We have food in pantries, in refrigerators, and in freezers. Some of us even have extra freezers in our garage to hold even more food.

We have wallets and purses filled with unused gift cards to various restaurants.

We drive past dozens and dozens of places filled with food every single day.

Try to imagine a world without pantries, without refrigerators or freezers, without restaurants, and without grocery stores. You could only eat what you could either grow yourself or buy from another farmer.

Now imagine nothing is growing. Whatever food items you’re able to store for any length of time are slowly dwindling.

And your family is getting hungry. What do you do?

That’s the choice haunting the characters at the beginning of our story.

Ruth 1:1-2—… and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah.

There’s a great deal of irony in these verses in the original language.

First, Naomi’s name means “pleasant” or “delightful.”

And yet as the story unfolds this woman is anything but.

In fact, by the end of the chapter she’ll tell people to stop calling her Naomi, because her life isn’t pleasant anymore.

Second, Naomi’s boys names have very strange meanings.

Mahlon means “sickly” and Chilion means “perishing.”

Perhaps those were popular baby names when there’s not a lot of food to go around!

Third, Elimelech’s name means “my God is King.”

Now this is a pretty great name, especially in a time when there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

But unfortunately Elimelech doesn’t really live up to his name.

Because when he and his family are hungry, he makes a foolish choice.

Ruth 1:1—… [he] went to sojourn in the country of Moab...

To us this might not seem like a big deal.

What father and husband wouldn’t relocate his family to another country if that was the only way he could provide?

But this isn’t like moving to Arlington or Birmingham or Columbus.

This is moving to Moab!

The only place I can think of that communicates how bad Moab was is the city of Sodom.

When you hear the word Sodom, you think of a wicked people under the judgment of God.

The Moabite people were the same.

As a nation, they were actually birthed out of the rubble of Sodom.

After Lot was rescued from Sodom, his daughters got him drunk and slept with him, and one of Lot’s grandbaby/babies was named Moab.

Eventually the Moabites grew to a mighty nation that hated God’s people.

They mistreated God’s people when they were in the wilderness.

They hired professional prophets to curse God’s people.

When that failed, they sent their women into Israel to seduce God’s people.

For these reasons and more, the law of God actually forbade Moabites from entering the temple...

Deuteronomy 23:3, 6—No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the Lord forever. . . . You shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days forever.

The Moabite people were a wicked people under the judgment of God!

But even more significant than where Elimelech went is the land he left.

The text says he was living in Bethlehem.

That’s ironic because in Hebrew beth means “house of” and lehem means “bread.”

Why isn’t their any bread in the house of bread?

Under the Mosaic Covenant, God had made specific promises to His people living in the Promised Land.

Deuteronomy 11:13–17—“And if you will indeed obey My commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, He will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. And He will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and He will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you.”

Although the book of Ruth doesn’t explicitly say the famine has been caused by the sin of God’s people, if we understand this story in its context it seems likely this famine is a form of discipline.

But instead of repenting and returning to the Lord, instead of waiting and asking God to provide, Elimelech makes a different choice.

Believing the grass will be greener in the plains of Moab, he packs up his family and leaves.

What can we learn from the choices of Elimelech?

Under the New Covenant, we are not bound to a particular promised land.

We are free to live in all sorts of places. We are free to pick up and move when things get tough. We are even free to live in dark places like Moab.

After all, if Jesus will have followers from every tribe and tongue, we need to reach the darkest places for Jesus.

But we are foolish if, like Elimelech, we make these choices carelessly.

In his commentary on Ruth, Iain Duguid writes this: “We rarely think seriously about the impact our choices will have. . . . Like Elimelech, we act as the sovereign of our own lives, making the choices that seem best in our eyes, without reference to God and without serious thought about the long-term implications. Many bear the label “Christian,” yet their Christianity has no real impact on life-defining decisions, just as Elimelech bore the name “My God is king” yet lived in a way that made it evident that God wasn’t his king at all. The roads we choose for ourselves often make our deepest heart commitments plain for all to see.” [2]

What do your choices say about you?

And I don’t mean just the big choices either.

What do your choices on a Sunday morning say about you, especially after a long, hard week when you’re tired and would rather stay at home?

What do your entertainment choices say about you?

What does your internet browser say about you?

Or the choice on how to spend your time when nobody but God can see what you’re doing?

Every one of these choices affect us, sometimes in imperceptible ways.

In what areas of your life are you tempted, like Elimelech, to think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence?

Do you think your spiritual life will drastically improve by switching churches?

Or your joy will be full by switching careers?

Do you think you will be satisfied in the embrace of another person who is not your spouse?

Brother, sister, friend, so often in life the grass isn’t greener over there. We quickly find out that whenever we get to that new place WE’RE THERE TOO!

Let us fight to believe that the grass is greenest where we water it.

Perhaps initially Elimelech was only planning for a short-term stint in Moab.

Verse 1 says they were going to “sojourn” there, a word suggesting a temporary stay.

For the Air Force folks, perhaps Elimelech intended his visit to Moab to be more like a TDY than a PCS.

But verse 2 tells us “They went into the country of Moab and remained there.”

Here we see another lesson about the choices we make: we simply cannot see far enough in the future to know all the ways our choices will change us.

And certainly Elimelech and his family had no idea what would happen next...

Ruth 1:3—But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons.

There are so many details we don’t know, like how long Elimelech lived in Moab, or how he died.

But to obsess over these details is to miss the sorrow and the tragedy Naomi has endured.

My grandfather Hopson died in 2005, after a ten-year battle with Alzheimer's disease. He’s been gone for nearly 20 years. And yet the last time I talked to my grandmother she said, “I still miss him every day.”

Do you think Naomi’s grief would be any different?

But once again this family has a choice to make: stay in Moab, or return to the land of promise?

Unfortunately things are going to get worse before they get better, beginning in...

Scene 2: COMPROMISE

Ruth 1:4—These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years

Instead of returning to the land of promise, this family engages in moral compromise.

They settle in Moab for a decade.

And some time during that decade, in what was supposed to be a brief sojourn in Moab, Naomi’s boys marry two Moabite women.

Now remember, Moabite women had a reputation.

Numbers 25:1–2—While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods.

Moabite women had once seduced God’s people into immorality and idolatry.

And now this family is uniting with Moabites in marriage!

Sometimes people accuse the Bible of being against interracial marriage, but that’s not the problem at all. The problem was inter-religious marriage. God didn’t want His people to marry people who worshipped false gods!

But Mahlon and Chilion didn’t care. They have become thoroughly assimilated into Moabite culture.

Just like everybody else in the book of Judges, they’re doing what is right in their own eyes.

What about you? What compromises have you made?

What sin have you tolerated that you once would have rejected?

Have you been in Moab so long you’re starting to look like Moab?

If you claim the name of Jesus, is there an obvious difference in your life?

In the way you handle conflict?

In the way you raise your children?

In the way you treat your spouse?

In the way you act in the workplace?

Here’s the thing about sin: you cannot manage it!

Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay!

That’s what happened with Naomi’s family...

Ruth 1:5—and both Mahlon and Chilion died,…

Once again, there are so many details we don’t know.

How did Mahlon and Chilion die? How long were they married before they died? Did they die around the same time?

We know neither son had children, since there’s no mention of any grandchildren. But we don’t know if the men died shortly after marriage, or if their wives were simply unable to conceive.

But we do know this: Naomi’s world has turned completely upside-down.

Ruth 1:5—… the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

Even the way that verse is written highlights the horrors of what has happened here.

Naomi’s name isn’t even mentioned. She was once a pleasant woman, but now she’s lost everything!

She’s not even herself anymore. She’s just “the woman.”

That’s what grief often does, doesn’t it?

In the book Seasons of Sorrow, Tim Challies writes about the grief he endured after the death of his son. He writes: “Some losses are not only losses of a person but also of an identity. We don't only grieve the person who is gone, but also the part of our identity that has departed with them.” [3]

If you lose a spouse, you’re no longer a husband or a wife. If you lose your children, you’re no longer a father or a mother. In both cases, you don’t just lose someone you love. You lose a part of you!

That’s Naomi. She’s lost everything, including herself.

I know losing a brother cannot compare to the utter devastation of burying your own child, but at age 17 I experienced a similar loss of identity after the death of my baby brother.

I had prayed in the hospital for God to spare his life.

I promised to devote my life to the Lord if God would just let him live.

But the morning came and my baby brother died.

When I went back to college a few weeks later, I returned with a different identity.

I didn’t want to be around anyone who knew what happened, so I ghosted all my friends and started hanging out with a completely different crowd.

I didn’t want to talk to anybody about it, so I ignored messages from professors who wanted to help.

I changed my major, changed my friends, changed the way I dressed, changed the way I talked, and changed the way I lived—everything about me was different.

If God was going to ignore my prayers, then I was going to ignore God.

So I ran from Him, as fast as I could.

But in time, I would learn a beautiful lesson about grace: God runs faster than we can.

In the midst of the ashes of my ruined life, God was working behind the scenes to draw me back home to Himself.

He was using great tragedy to set the stage for great triumph.

And He did the same thing for Naomi, beginning in...

Scene 3: COMING HOME

Ruth 1:6—Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food.

One day Naomi is in the fields of Moab, when she hears someone talking about the Promised Land.

What she hears is undoubtedly GOOD NEWS: “the Lord had visited his people and given them food.”

The house of bread has been restocked! [4]

Now once again, Naomi has to make a choice.

But this time the choice is entirely hers to make, with no men in the picture.

Will she remain in the fields of Moab, or will she go home?

SHOW RUTH MAP

Depending on where they lived in Moab, the journey home to Bethlehem could’ve taken weeks.

But the text tells us Naomi got up, packed her things, and started the long journey home.

We’ll learn more about this journey home next week, but right now I want you to think about the similarities between you and Naomi.

Like Naomi, some of you have made choices and compromises leading you far away from God.

You’ve found yourself in a far country, in a place you never could have imagined.

Maybe you look at the person you’ve become and you’re unrecognizable from the person you once were.

And to make matters worse, you’re so ashamed. You can’t believe you’ve wandered this far. You’re not sure you even know the way back anymore.

Maybe you’re in the fields of Moab, this morning.

If so, I’ve got GOOD NEWS for you.

Just like in the days of Naomi, “the Lord has visited His people.”

And just like in the days of Naomi, He visited His people in the little town of Bethlehem.

But He gave His people something much better than earthly bread. He gave them the Bread of Life.

Naomi will eventually have a grandson. And that little boy will be the great-great-great-great-great-great grandpa of another baby born in Bethlehem, Jesus Christ.

Elimelech left the place of famine to seek a false blessing in Moab, but Jesus left the place of riches in heaven to bring us a true blessing on earth.

Jesus lived a life without sin—never wandering, never compromising—yet died a sinner’s death on the cross so that wanderers like you and me could be saved.

When Naomi heard the good news in her day, she made a decision to go home.

You’ve heard even BETTER news today, friend. Will you follow in Naomi’s footsteps?

I think there’s three groups of people hearing my voice...

Some of you are Christians who haven’t been wandering.

Not that you’re sinless, but you’re confessing your sin as the Lord reveals it to you.

As you prepare to take communion, praise God for the grace that sustains you!

Also, I have a challenge for you: pray that God would use you to pursue the Elimelechs in your life.

ENCOURAGE THEM TO INVITE PEOPLE NEXT SUNDAY

Some of you are Christians who have been wandering.

But you’ve been wandering so long and so far you don’t even know who you are anymore.

Here’s the good news, Christian: no matter how many steps you’ve wandered from God, it’s always only one step back.

As we prepare to take communion, confess your sin to Him and commit to follow Him again.

If you’re a baptized believer, this communion meal symbolize your first step as a renewed follower of Jesus!

Some of you aren’t Christians. You’ve been wandering from God your entire life.

You’ve heard the truth about God at various points in your life along the way, but you’ve never truly trusted in Him.

If that’s you, I invite you to repent of your sins and trust in Jesus today.

When we take communion, I’m going to ask you NOT to take communion, but to receive Jesus!!!

Talk to one of our pastors after the service about how you can get baptized, which is the first step of obedience for a follower of Jesus. Then the next time we take communion you can celebrate with us as a part of the family of God!

If you’re wandering, let’s learn one more thing from Naomi before we conclude:

Don’t return home alone.

If you’ve wandered from God, and you’re coming home today, tell someone.

There’s something about going public with our confession that keeps us from staying trapped by our sin.

So if you’ve been wandering, find someone you can trust to be open about what God’s doing in your life today.

In just a moment we’re going to sing a song, and then we’re going to take the Lord’s Supper together.

If you will not be taking communion with us this morning, here’s what you can do:

You can come to the table and simply leave your hands by your side when the plate is passed.

You can remain in your seat when people come to the table.

Or you can quietly dismiss yourself when we stand to sing while all the parents are collecting their children from nursery.

If you will be taking communion with us, please begin preparing your heart as we pray then sing.

Prayer of Thanksgiving

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

LORD’S SUPPER

Doxology

Benediction (Romans 11:33-36)