Are you a Naomi or Ruth?

Introduction

So over the course of the next weeks, we will be looking at the book of Ruth

Brief overview of the book of Ruth

The intersting bit on the book of Ruth is that theres no prophet being sent to them, theres no dreams, theres no visions (basically most of the Old testmament books have at least one of these). It’s actually very similar to the life we live alot of the time where its just God acting where alot of the time we can’t see it. And so the book of Ruth is one of those books that allow us as readers to relate thinking “I could have lived that life. I can do the things that Ruth did”. Its a book for people who wonder where God is when there’s nothing special like the prophets preaching, crazy stuff happening.

Specifically its a book about a suffering woman who “coincidentally” meets a loving woman who then “coincidentally” makes the suffering woman’s life great again.

Context wise, we are in the book of judges and how we know that is that it says in the opening lines of the book. Now it is important to know that it is in the time of Judges because this was a time when “there was no king” and the Israelites were going crazy and not obeying God but doing random stuff that disobeyed God.

Chapter 1 (this week) - Naomi has a family with 2 sons and they go out of Israel to Moab because theres a famine in Israel. When they get there, the sons marry women in Moab - Orpah and Ruth. All the boys die and its just left with Naomi, Ruth and Orpah. The famine in Israel is finished and so Ruth and Naomi return, with Orpah going back to her Moabite family

Chapter 2: To care for Naomi because shes old, Ruth goes out to glean (basically picking up scraps left by harvests) and coincidentally bumps into a guy named Boaz who is kind and protective towards her

Chapter 3: Naomi knows that Boaz is a relative of Naomi who could be entitled to marry Ruth and make the family strong through Boaz’s family. Naomi tells Ruther to go to Boaz at night and invite him to marry her

Chatper 4: Boaz marries her and they give birth to a son.

General story of Chapter 1

Ruth isnt in the story yet - but the family tree looks like this (show powerpoint on screen to show family tree - without Ruth)

Elimelech - man of Bethlehem

Naomi - Elimelech’s wife

Mahlon and Chilion - Sons

Now there is a famine in Bethlehem and so the family decide to go to Moab. The son’s then married 2 moabite women - Orpah and Ruth. Elimelech, Mahlon and Chilion die and now remains Naomi, Ruth and Orpah.

Naomi then tells Ruth and Orpah to go back to their families and basically find new husbands to find a new family because their husbands (Mahlon and Chilion) died. Orpha decides to go home but Ruth is adamant about staying and wants to be with Naomi and she ends up going back to Bethlehem with Naomi

Naomi

The character we will be focusing on here is Naomi who suffered 3 things:

There was a famine in Judah (where she lived) - why?

Important to know the context of the book - she lived during the time of Judges where Israel was so corrupt and continuously sinned. Judges was where the Israelites continued to sin and God continued to give them judges like Sampson but once each one of them died, Israelites continued to sin, so God had to continuously punish.

How do we know that the famine was God’s punishment? - Because Moses said before that famine was one of the punishments given by God and the Israelites were basically sinning again and again in the time of Judges where what they did was marry with people who worshipped idols and essentially made the Israelites worship idols as well. Punishment was Deuteronomy 32:24 “they shall be wasted with hunger, and devoured by plague and poisonous pestilence; I will send the teeth of beasts against them, with the venom of things that crawl in the dust.”

Because of this famine, they decided to go to Moab because there was food there. Moabites (people who lived in Moab) - God specifically told the Israelites to separate themselves from Moab and not marry - because they worshipped idols - these guys specifically worshipped an idol that had child sacrifices

Deuteronomy 23:3 ““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,”

2. Elimilech (the father) dies

a. In verse 1 it says Ruth 1:1 “In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.” implying that he was the one who wanted to go and probably to provide for his family

b. Now why did he die, because he didn’t trust God but decided to do things his own way. Interestingly his name means “God is King”, but he did not act as if God was King because if he did he would have repented and asked God for forgiveness. Another interseting thing is that Judah means “house of bread” so ironically Elimilech left the house of bread to find bread.

3. Sons took Moabite wives (Ruth and Orpah) and they died

a. Remember how God instructed them to literally not marry Moabite people because it would lead them to idol worship? Well guess what they did, and so what did they get, dead.

b. And in Naomi’s perspective, it would be very hard for Ruth and Orpah to return to Judah because they were Moabites and they were basically enemies. Its like if a North Korean woman went into South Korea (maybe not now but back in the day).

So you can imagine how much pain Naomi is going through - she must have felt as though life is the worst and felt as though God didn’t love her to the point where she tries to change her name from Naomi which means “pleasant” to Mara which means “bitter” and complains to the Lord. But we know that the Lord always loves us and we will see this soon but before that.

Share about a time in your life where you have found it hard to trust that God loves you ?

Interestingly what we see here is that Naomi was complaining to God, not to anything else or to anyone else, not saying that God didn’t exist, but complaining about what was going on in her life to him. It’s just the fact that she didn’t know why. But Ruth complained to God and not nothing else

Ruth 1:20 “She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.”

But, God promised that he will have compassion on his people and forgive, and we see this promise to Naomi through Ruth (the main character !)

The hidden love of God

Now in between the family being punished and all the men dying and Naomi returning from Moab after the famine is done, Ruth is actually introduced where what happens is that because all of Naomi’s family has died where Ruth and Orpah do not have other people to make a family with, Naomi instructs them to go back to their families and seek other husbands.

Initially they both stay with Naomi once, but the second time Orpah goes back to her family, but Ruth stays because she loved Naomi that much.

From Naomi’s perspective, she feels as though its hard for her to accept the love from Ruth because she has nothing to give. She has no son to give to her, she has no money to give, she has no protection on her (because she is a Moabite, an enemy of Israel and so when Naomi returned to Jerusalem it would kinda feel the same as if Ruth was a North Korean going into South Korea - maybe not now where people are more accepting, but back in the day).

Yet Ruth insisted on staying with her and Naomi accepted

Does this kind of love sound familiar to you guys ? - This is very similar to the love that Jesus Christ gives us

Maybe we find ourselves thinking if Jesus really loves us, where we sometimes think that maybe we just aren’t good enough to be loved by Jesus.

Naomi has nothing to give her, yet Ruth still loves her - We have nothing to give Jesus, yet Jesus still loves us - UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, Ruth didn’t need anything from Naomi, nor does Jesus need anything from us. But what did they do? Love.

Ruth was an enemy to Israel but insisted on going back with her to Jersualem because of how much she loved Naomi - Jesus was an enemy to Israel but insisted on continuing the plan of God to sacrifice himself on the cross for us because of how much he loved us

From the perspective of Naomi, she doesn’t know that this is all God’s doing, all God’s work because then why is she complaining when she returns back to Jerusalem, but we know as readers that it is God who placed Ruth into Naomi’s life when Ruth proclaims to Naomi that “Your God shall be my God”, meaning she has left her Moabite Gods and pledged allegiance to Naomi’s God - the one true God.

Ruth also doesn’t know that it is God working in her life to help Naomi.

God is very efficient

But I think this in fact brings up an important point that there are many times in our life where we feel as though God is not working in our lives, that God kind of puts us on hold to help other people. But God is not like that, he is next to all of us every single moment, all the time and he never leaves us. It’s the fact that we just don’t notice that it is him working through our lives and we mistakenly attribute it to something else.

This comes from the fact that we have our own definition of love and what it means. We complain about why God doesnt love us when things go bad in our life, and the sole reason for that is because we are trying to fit our own definition of love into Jesus’ love but it should be the other way round. What we should be doing is scrapping our own view of what love should be and replacing it with Jesus’ love which is unconditional - not expecting anything back:

This is where you can truly feel his love and understand what it means to be loved by him.

God is always working in our lives to be more like Jesus, and he will put us in situations that help us to do that.

Maybe you can be the Ruth to a struggling Naomi that you know so that God may be glorified, or maybe you are a struggling Naomi and theres a Ruth around you which you just don’t know yet but God has a plan for.

Share a time where you have felt like a Ruth / Naomi in your life.