Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

So, having covered most of these verses last week as we saw cost of faithfulness as presented by Naomi, the natural reaction from Orpah and the supernatural response of faith from Ruth, this week we’ll be focussing on the last few verses as they arrive into Bethlehem, verses 19–22, and on Naomi’s attitude of bitterness described there and back in verse 13 as well.

The significance of the name change

Footnotes

Significance of names in ANE.

Biblical examples of renaming.

— Jacob to Israel, Abram (exalted father) to Abraham.

(Father of a multitude).

So then...

So, Naomi is self-confessedly bitter, an not only for the sake of her daughters in law, but for her own sake too.

And she’s blunt about the fact that God has brought her to this point.

Now, in Naomi’s attitude and behaviour there are both commendable points and aspects which are not so good.

I propose to take each in turn and then having done so we should be able to come to a verdict.

The good

It’s reasonable that she thinks her situation is pretty bad.

“Calamity” is not an over-statement.

She has lost her husband, sons, and now even one of her daughters in law whom she clearly also loved.

Having left home due to a famine, she’s now faced with the prospect of a life which for her will have a perpetual situation much like most would experience during a famine.

With no one to provide for her needs she will be reduced to scavenging, barely scraping by if that.

She has lost her husband, sons, and now even one of her daughters in law whom she clearly also loved.

Having left home due to a famine, she’s now faced with the prospect of a life which for her will have a perpetual situation much like most would experience during a famine.

With no one to provide for her needs she will be reduced to scavenging, barely scraping by if that.

It’s not an overstatement at the end of verse 21 for her to say that calamity has come upon her.

We can sometimes be tempted to talk down the sifnificance of our suffering, of the ways in which we might be struggling.

We say things like ‘there’s plenty worse off than me’ or ‘it’s not that bad really’ or ‘mustn’t grumble’.

This is not how Naomi acts, and it’s not how we should act.

Verse 20 the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.

It is not a healthy thing to diminish the significance of our suffering.

The fact that there are people in worse situations might sometimes help to give a dose of perspective, but we should not pretend that it means we aren’t genuinely suffering.

Unswerving commitment to the sovereignty of God

At no point does she come close to suggesting that anything which has happened was outside of God’s control.

v.21 is clear.

The Lord has testified against me, the almighty has brought calamity.

We can’t wriggle out of the discomfort of why God allows, why God even brings about, difficult things in our lives by suggesting that God’s powerless to do otherwise, or that other forces are at work, warring against God and he can’t fully restrain them.

Naomi is right that this has all happened to her within God’s sovereign control.

I can see why people end up arguing something like that God is doing the best he can, but is ultimately unable to fully restrain evil.

I can see why people want to let him off the hook, as it were.

The desire to so fully embrace an absolutely loving God who wouldn’t ever allow anything painful to happen is understandable, I get why you’d want that.

But here’s the problem: that kind of God offers me no real hope.

What’s the point in praying if God’s not powerful enough to bring about his purposes?

Where’s my confidence that everything works together for the good of those who love God if God’s not powerful enough to bring that about?

In a desire to magnify God’s love, people have diminished his power, and so made God toothless.

Commendably, Naomi does not fall into this trap.

Naomi knows that on some level at least it is the almighty, it is God himself, who has brought this about.

Naomi’s unswerving commitment to the sovereignty of God is commendable.

Honesty is commendable

Thirdly, let us say that there is something very commendable in her honesty.

Not for her the generic ‘fine, thank you’ when her old neighbours see her and call out in greeting.

She does not hide how she feels, not from herself and not from those around her.

She does not sweep aside her experience.

This is not stoicism and a stiff upper lip.

And despite our cultural background, there is surely something which we can learn from her in this.

God’s word does not encourage us to repress our emotions.

We have no licence to pretend to ourselves, to those around us, or to God, that we aren’t feeling the way we’re feeling.

Just like Habakkuk’s cry of dismay to God, there is something commendable in the fact that Naomi is willing to say to people ‘life sucks’.

There are cautions and caveats which we would make to this, and we’ll come on to some of that in a moment, but for now it’s helpful to stop and say that it’s OK to not be OK.

It is a very sad thing that we have, as a society, forgotten how to mourn.

Yes for the believer the sting has been taken out of death.

Yes there is sometimes a place to gently say ‘weep no more’.

But too often we try to deny the pain of parting.

We try to tell ourselves that it shouldn’t hurt and therefore it doesn’t hurt.

But it does.

The life cut tragically short should be mourned.

The pain of being parted from someone whom you have grown to love over years and years is real.

For Naomi, the pain of her husband’s death is very real.

The pain of the death of her sons is very real.

She is commendably honest with herself and with others about how she’s feeling.

BST: The impressive truthfulness of her life before God.

No hiding of the feeling, no sweeping it aside, no false affirmation that everything's "fine"!

Like Habakkuk's shout of dismay.

Many of us have forgotten how to mourn.

Sting is taken out of death.

A place for gentle words of compassion.

Do not deny the pain of parting.

The end of the beginning

Summary

Fourthly under the heading of ‘the good’, there’s a sense in which this is the end of the

So there are commendable elements in Naomi’s attitude and behaviour in that she has genuinely suffered, she is commited to Gods sovereignty and she is honest about her experience and feelings.

The bad

She perhaps makes the situation seem worse than it is

She doesn’t note any of the good things which she does have.

Whilst she does not have the ‘fulness’ with which she went away, to describe herself now as ‘empty’, v21, is not entirely accurate.

Rather she still has: Life (cf Elimelech et al), Opportunity (friends), Ruth, Yahweh himself.

Talks about God, but not to God.

The Psalms suggest that it is okay to speak the way she does, though they may also suggest that it is a shame that she is not saying all this to God and not just about God.

“Don’t complain to other people.

Be sure to complain to God.

He’s big enough; he can handle it.”

I hope I said it; it’s true.

- Goldingay

When Job is discussing his situation with his friends, whilst of course he’s talking to them, he addresses their points and answers their questions, he also shifts freely into crying out to God.

Naomi does not.

I wouldn’t necessarily want to make too big a deal of this given the brevity of the account, it’s not inconceivable that Naomi was spending hours each night crying out to God in prayer and it’s simply not recorded, but honestly I find that unlikely.

This story is too well written, too carefully crafted, for that I think.

Twice we are told of Naomi’s bitterness, as she lays the blame at God’s door for her situation.

In neither of those does she come to God to enquire of him or to make requests from him.

As we saw earlier, it’s commendable that Naomi believes God’s in control.

But she doesn’t seem to make the logical leap from his control to the value of prayer.

Prayer is the necessary outworking of the doctrine of providence.

If we worship a God who provides for his people, if God is a God who is in control, it is only logical that we come to him with our prayers.