NO HOPE
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Now that’s a happy title right?
Weird way to begin a new year, I know, I know but let me begin with a little known fact. Have you ever heard that suicides go up around Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years? Did you know its not true? People do get depressed more around the holidays of November and December but they usually wait. They usually wait until around now. Suicides increase a little in January and February.
You might be coming here today with no Hope. I want to tell you I get it. l’ve come very close in my life to being clinically diagnosed with depression. I often struggle with it. I deal with anxiety a lot. It’s getting better but just think I get up and talk to a room full of people almost every week and the attitude is that I am speaking for God. That produces a lot of anxiety!
But God delivers at the end of last year I asked Helen to speak to the church. I needed the break and I knew God would speak through the Bible as Helen shared. And God did, Wow, It was kind of simple. It was simple to me, but that’s how I perceive when God speaks to me.
See but back then I didn’t know what to share with you guys in the coming season, Which for us is today. Back then (stay with me) I prayed and search out what He wants me to learn and to share. Then Helen shared a Bible verse:
Romans 15:13 (CSB)
13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Hope, the God of Hope. Overflowing with hope. These are incredibly powerful enriching words. They slapt me.
You see it was just after Christmas and I get a little depressed. Sometimes its because the hustle and bustle is over. Did I really take the wonderful holiday all in? Did I do what God would have me? Yes, my anxiety starts to kick in and I forget what we prayed in the Bible recap this week, I forget to keep my eyes on Jesus and begin to focus a lot on my failures, not on the fact that He is perfect and knows me and loves me. Did I give to much, too little? Depression starts creeping in. I get tired. I get anxious for the new school year starting and then Helen shared this verse.
I added the emphasis to what I felt led too. God is the God of Hope. The power of the Holy Spirit can overflow us with Hope.
Because depression is a loss of hope. Despair is when a person can’t see any hope.I have been depressed and around those depressed and you can hear it and see it in in the interactions. The anger, the frustration. You hear it in comments like I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how this will change. I just keep doing the same thing, I know it won’t work but I I just, well nothing.
A Russian novelist told us what the absence of hope is”
Totally without hope one cannot live.
To live without hope is to cease to live.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)
Life requires hope. As I sat there two Sundays ago, I read what God said 2,000 years ago. I am the God of Hope. He is the God of life, He is the God of hope.
Hope is a prescription. I had a little ear infection over the break. I went to the nurse practitioner and she wrote me a prescription to remove that infection and now the infection is gone.
Hope is the prescription for depression and it is an essential element in following Jesus.
13 Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love—but the greatest of these is love.
I can also tell you something else. Telling a depressed person to hope is like telling an anxious person to calm down. Ever do that? Someone’s freaking out and you walk up and go, “Calm Down.” The situation moves from an anxious person, freaking out, to an anxious person now beating up a person who said calm down while freaking out.
Yes just like an anxious person needs to calm down, a depressed person needs to hope but they need real hope.
Ever heard the term pollyanna? This is a person who justs makes stuff up. Its when a person comes around and is like, If I can see it, I can achieve it. If I can see that my pigs will fly, my poop won’t stink, and I will have nothing bad happen to me this year, than that is what will happen. THAT isn’t hope. That’s stupidity. That’s wishing and not reality. That’s being a Pollyanna.
Hope though is, even though my pigs can’t fly, my poop will stink, bad stuff will happen, God will be there. Where He is there is Hope. God will have Glory in it all. God is working out all things to those who love him. Love will increase. Faith will increase. There will be a purpose.
Hope is that even though Jesus died on the cross, He said He is coming back. Resurrection is coming. And Jesus did, Jesus rose again.
That is hope. The difference between hope and despair is not reality. Both see and agree to the same facts. The difference is the belief of what will happen in the future.
So I knew what I should be preaching about in the coming months. God told me hope,
Romans 15:13 (CSB)
13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
So I just did a simple search for the verses where the English word “hope” appears. I was using the Bible version I like to use the Christian Standard Bible. Its not important but if anyone fact checks me on this I would like them to know how I did it. So anyway I go to my Bible software, type in hope, and a bunch of Bible verses pop up.
But something big surprised me. It was really not what I expected. Hope is a pretty big, important understanding of God. But what I found out is,
the Hebrew word Teek-vah is the English word of Hope
and it doesn’t appear in the first five books of the Bible. Not in Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus or Deuteronomy. It doesn’t even appear in Joshua or Judges. Now those who are reading the Bible all the way through in the Bible Recap class know that the Bible isn’t laid out in a timeline. It is laid out in collections which worked better for ancient people. However even then it was very surprising to me that the first time we encounter the word hope comes so late.
It was so surprising that I said, you got be freaking kidding me. I said freaking because I’m a Christian you know. I’m kidding. It was really surprising because it occurs first in the book of Ruth, the 8th book of the Bible. And it occurs not with a happy person or encouraging person but a person who is utterly depressed.
Ruth 1:12 (CSB)
12 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,
Talk about a verse to NOT put on your Christian Mingle page.
Naomi is the woman who said it and she has a really good reason. Let’s look, Naomi’s story begins tough but not as bad as it will get.
Ruth 1:1–2 (CSB)
1 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.
His wife, that’s Naomi. Bethlehem, same place but way, way earlier, like more than 1,000 years earlier than a story you might be thinking of when you hear that city. There was a famine, no food, people were starving and food didn’t just show up. No walmart. It was hard so people had to leave to a place where they could find food, hard but it wasn’t the end of the world. They could make a life where they were going. Her husband and her sons.
2 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.
So immigrants but they could make it work..
3 Naomi’s husband, Elimelech, died, and she was left with her two sons.
Well, yeah the story gets harder. But you know life is like that, spouses die and kids remain and life keeps going. It’s sad but also not that weird. Sadly death comes to us. People keep going and Naomi did too. Like is like that, keep going, Naomi did.
4 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,
There is a lot here but thisn’t Bible Study so I don’t got time to unpack it but I really recommend you get on a Bible study group here at New Day. Because there are many truth’s in this story. Zooming with Pastor Jerry, Bible Recap, Women’s Bible Study. And this story is famous,
say you might now a person, named after a person in this verse of the Bible.
Youtube Video https://youtube.com/shorts/MYpwDrxqnBw?si=kmiEE-HTy1U-Ndme
Youtube Video https://youtube.com/shorts/MYpwDrxqnBw?si=kmiEE-HTy1U-Ndme
That was a fun digression right?
Anyway, Naomi is having one thing after another, but she is doing like most other woman in her world she is making the most of it. Her boys are married to two girls. Life is tough but it keeps on going. She is doing the best she can.
She can now get ready to be a grandma, right?
5 both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and the woman was left without her two children and without her husband.
This is the worst thing that could have happened to anyone. Children dying is tragic but Naomi lost them all. And now Naomi had the added financial problem. She would likely be horribly poor the rest of her life. Because her children were her retirement, they were supposed to take care of her when she couldn’t take care of herself. They were supposed to provide grandchildren. She was an immigrant, in a strange land with nothing going for her.
So she got with her daughter in laws and made a huge change in her life
7 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.
8 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.
9 May the Lord grant each of you rest in the house of a new husband.” She kissed them, and they wept loudly.
Naomi didn’t have to let them go but depressed people don’t like people around them. Depressed people also do self-defeating things to further hurt themselves because they feel they aren’t worthy. Plus it was the kind thing for Naomi to do. The circumstances were bad but God is the God of hope. God had placed some amazing women in Noami’s life in Ruth and Orpah.
And they refused to leave Naomi.
Then Naomi doubled down and stated the reality of the situation. What we know and what everyone knows.
Ruth 1:11–13 (CSB)
11 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?
12 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,
13 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.”
Naomi saw her life was in ruins. She is very blunt here. But she is describing a custom that is very weird to us but was the custom of this world by the law. In order to keep the family inheritance a brother would marry his widowed sister in law. Any child born to that couple would be considered the dead brother’s child. So if the kid took a 23 and me, chromosome test, the kids father would be the brother-in-law but because of the law when the boy became a man he would inherit his deceased Uncle’s property as his own, and would call the deceased Uncle his dad.
If it’s too complicated just say, whatever Bill, ok the Ruth and Orpah were hanging out with Naomi and she couldn’t make boys fast enough to get them new husbands. Weird, different but we can accept that is how they did it. So Naomi thought that waiting for many, many years if even possible, was not right to do to the two ladies. She would release them to go back to there families and try again.
Ever been in an impossible situation? Ever seen the reality of a situation and can’t figure out how it could ever get better. That’s where Naomi was at.
So Orpah left in tears.
But Ruth does something weird.
Ruth stays. She breaks into song. Which I am going to sing for you now.
NO, I’m not. I’m kidding. I don’t know how to sing like that.
But Ruth does say the most beautiful thing to a depressed person.
16 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.
17 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.
Ruth isn’t going anywhere. Yes Naomi is looking upon bad circumstances but Ruth is not only not leaving Naomi she is committing an act of faith in obedience. Did you catch it. Naomi said God has turned against me but Ruth says your God is my God.
Naomi’s outlook on life is because she sees the circumstances, she sees what has happened to her and she can’t see how anything good will come. She doesn’t believe that God is a God of Hope but that God is a God who is against her.
Ruth makes this God her own. Even in her depression Naomi’s love still causes Ruth to commit to the one true God. Even in your depression, your love can bring someone close to God. Ruth is staying with God and staying with Naomi. Hope where there was none.
They travel back to Naomi’s hometown in Bethlehem and just in case you think Naomi’s outlook on the world changed, wait until you hear what she says upon her return.
Everybody in town was excited to see her, it had been over a decade and they were all saying could this actually be Naomi. But she answered
20 “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara,” she answered, “for the Almighty has made me very bitter.
21 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?”
Nice to see you again too. But depressed people can be very wrapped up in what is going on with them. Naomi ism Naomi means “kindness, pleasantness, sweetness” but its a shortened from a bigger name which meant “God is Kind” and Naomi can’t see kindness in her life. Her husband is dead, Her sons are dead, She is poor, but she remains alive and no chance to change that.
If you find this situation in your life today, you know someone, or you are just feeling for all of the people in LA dealing with the fires, in the Carolinas recovering from hurriances, or dealing with hardship after hardship. That is the reality.
Life feels very Mara right now. That’s what Naomi changed her name to, Mara means bitter. If your bitter, God gets it.
This sucks. This is awful. I agree. God agrees we all agree, But when Naomi sees no hope, she doesn’t know but will experience what you could know as well.
Romans 15:13 (CSB)
13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We serve a God of Hope.
See Ruth wouldn’t leave. Ruth enters town too. And then the next verse in this story gives a really, really cool page turner to the rest of the story.
22 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.
HUGE deal! Wow its like the Hallmark movie rights itself right?
OK, maybe you don’t see it but Naomi and Ruth, excuse me Mara and Ruth are dirt poor. No men. No food. But because it is harvest there is hope. See their is a law given by God that said that those who owned the fields could not pick all the food that was harvest-able. Instead the poor could come and take what was left. It was called the second harvest and you might see Christian organizations that give away food today call themselves second harvest.
Ruth started following the main harvesters and picking for her and Naomi in the second Harvest. Now taking advantage of the poor, especially poor women was just as common then as it is now, So Naomi came up with a plan that Ruth would go to the harvest but only to the harvest only at the fields of one of Naomi’s relatives. Boaz hoping he would protect her.
He did and he gave her a little something extra. Then Naomi hatched a plan, a true hallmark moment, well it was in the ancient world, and Ruth let Boaz know that she liked him. There’s a lot more to it, I have to shorten it for time sake so please get in a Bible study so you can find out way more because its cool.
Anyway, Ruth and Boaz like each other. But there was a problem. According to the custom of being able to marry the brother-in-law to keep the family line going, you know the one that Naomi said, even if I could get married, give birth, and have sons .... that custom kept going to cousins. Whoever marries Ruth gets her husbands inheritance and keeps the line going for Naomi. And there is a strict order to who gets to marry the widow.
Well Boaz isn’t next up but he wants Ruth. So he has to wait for the guy who is next in line to marry Ruth. So he plans a meeting with The guy who is next up in line to keep the family line going. This hallmark movie got weird but its happening. So they meet and this is what Boaz tells him. He tells him about the property that is in Ruth’s husband’s inheritance first.
3 He said to the redeemer, “Naomi, who has returned from the territory of Moab, is selling the portion of the field that belonged to our brother Elimelech.
Ruth 4:4–10 (CSB)
4 I thought I should inform you: Buy it back in the presence of those seated here and in the presence of the elders of my people. If you want to redeem it, do it. But if you do not want to redeem it, tell me so that I will know, because there isn’t anyone other than you to redeem it, and I am next after you.” “I want to redeem it,” he answered.
OH NO! Ruth won’t be able to get with her new guy Boaz if this guy redeems the land. The whole relationship is off. Go to commercial, what will happen when we return?
Ok back to the meeting.
5 Then Boaz said, “On the day you buy the field from Naomi, you will acquire Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the deceased man, to perpetuate the man’s name on his property.”
6 The redeemer replied, “I can’t redeem it myself, or I will ruin my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption, because I can’t redeem it.”
It’s complicated, again get in the Bible Study but can you just accept that this guy would lose a lot of money in the future if he took Ruth as a wife. Kind of like choosing the job he loves in the Big City over saving the family business.
7 At an earlier period in Israel, a man removed his sandal and gave it to the other party in order to make any matter legally binding concerning the right of redemption or the exchange of property. This was the method of legally binding a transaction in Israel.
8 So the redeemer removed his sandal and said to Boaz, “Buy back the property yourself.”
Can it get more romantic than that? Here’s my sandal take the girl!
9 Boaz said to the elders and all the people, “You are witnesses today that I am buying from Naomi everything that belonged to Elimelech, Chilion, and Mahlon. 10 I have also acquired Ruth the Moabitess, Mahlon’s widow, as my wife, to perpetuate the deceased man’s name on his property, so that his name will not disappear among his relatives or from the gate of his hometown. You are witnesses today.
That’s almost what I wrote on my wife’s valentine card last year.
Ancient customs are really really different, but the huge thing is everything just changed for Naomi. She thought her whole life was gone. There was no future. There was no hope but she didn’t know the hope that comes from God. Just because we can see the current situation doesn’t mean we know all that God is doing. Doesn’t mean we know all that could happen. We can’t. God is a good God, a God of Hope.
When Boaz marries Ruth, Noami goes from poverty to hope. And the despair is cured.
13 Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. He slept with her, and the Lord granted conception to her, and she gave birth to a son.
It got even better for Naomi. That son, is her grandson by custom and the women of the village blessed her
14 The women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you without a family redeemer today. May his name become well known in Israel.
And it got even better. Because that son’s name never has and never will be forgotten because Ruth’s son was named Obed and his son was named Jesse and Jesse’s son was David, the future King of Israel whose line will never ceases because God promised it and brought it about 1,000 years later, many generations later, there is a couple who must return to Bethlehem, yes that story, because they are in Ruth’s family line, to register for a census, Mary and Joseph go to the Bethlehem to give birth to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, God himself Jesus. Jesus is a great-great many times great grandson of Ruth and therefore Naomi and like his great-grandmother Ruth, but much better. He will not leave you. He is with you alwas.
If you are bitter today, just like Ruth, Jesus will never leave you.
Matthew 28:20b (CSB)
20 And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
You may not see it, you may not know how. But God is the God of Hope and that Hope will not disappoint us.
