Enduring Hope

Introduction

Please turn with me in your Bibles to Ruth. Today we are going to be limiting our study to chapter 1.

This past January, I was traveling late at night through Illinois on my way to Wisconsin; and at about 10:30PM, my car started making strange noises, and started giving off a strange smoke smell. Now, I don’t know much about cars, but I know enough to know that when my engine starts sounding like a rocket ship about to take off and starts to smell like a camp fire, something bad is happening. So here I am, it’s the middle of the night, I’m hours away from home, hours away from my destination, mechanics are closed for the evening, and I’m in the middle of nowhere Illinois.

I decide that I need to find a hotel and take my car to a mechanic in the morning. So I pick up my phone and ask Siri to take me to a hotel. And as I do, I notice that the battery on my phone is at 3%, and I forgot my car charger.

So here I am, putting along in a car I’m hoping isn’t about to explode, with a phone that’s about to die, and I get to the closest hotel, and it’s one of the sketchiest places I’ve seen in my life. Neon lights were blinking, advertising that they had rooms available. The sides of the building were either rotting or covered with graffiti. This placed looked like I’d catch a disease just by pulling into the parking lot, never mind staying in one of these rooms. If Norman Bates had been in the lobby to check me in, that would not have caught me off guard in a place like this.

I look down at my phone and it’s at 1%, my car’s at 0%, but it wasn’t worth it to me to stay at this place. It was worth it to find another hotel and risk my car dying on the way there then to stay at this place. So I ask Siri to take me to another hotel, and she found one close by. So I started putting along again…

trusting that Siri would get me there

Does my phone have enough battery left to navigate me to it?

trusting that it would be safe

Does my bank account have enough money in it to cover whatever repair is needed?

trusting my engine would make it

Where

trusting my bank account would have enough money to cover whatever needed to be fixed.

Was there enough?

In that moment, in a place I didn’t know, and with a car problem I couldn’t fix, all I had to hold on to was my trust in in these every day convinces I had grown to rely on. But what would happen with I needed them the most?

TRANSITION: I believe that our text today asks similar questions, not about cars and cell phones, but about God, God’s grace, God’s goodness, God’s compassion. When we really need God most, and all we have is trust, all we have is hope. When put up against our deepest needs and our darkest moments, when God himself seems absent or even when he seems to have set himself against us, where can we find hope? In our darkest moments, where can we find our hope?

READ: Let’s come back to that question, but before we do, let’s turn to our text together, and let’s begin by reading verses 19-21. I believe that Naomi, our main character, was asking similar questions when she said these words

19: So Ruth and Naomi went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, “Is this Naomi?”

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

21: I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the LORD has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”

hese are hard words to read. Naomi, whose name means pleasant, decides to change her name to Mara, which means bitter. Why? Because, in her words, God has dealt very bitterly with her. What life circumstances could make a person say something like this? What would have to happen in a person’s life for them to say “the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me?” Perhaps a deeper, even more relevant question is this, “is there any hope for a person like this?” Where can a person who would say these words find hope? And where can we, in our darkest moments, find hope? When placed up against our deepest sorrows, our darkest thoughts, and our greatest sufferings, is where can we find unshakable hope?

ORGANIZING SENTENCE: Before we can answer that question, we’re going to have to walk through : we’ll see Naomi’s tragedy (1-5), Naomi’s response on the road (6-18), and Naomi’s response in Bethlehem (19-21). And in each of these scenes we are going to hear another way this text asks the question, “where can we find unshakable hope?” And then we’ll conclude with God’s response to Naomi in verse 22.

SCENE 1: Naomi’s Tragedy (1-5). SP1: Loss of food (1-2). READ: Let’s read verses 1-2:

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.

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. They went into the country of Moab and remained there.

EXPLANATION — BACKGROUND: Our story begins by setting our main characters in the time of the Judges, one of the darkest times in Israelite history. Just look over at the last verse of Judges and you will see the refrain of the book, “there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” It was a time marked by both political and ethical anarchy. And to make matters worse, we find that our story is set in Bethlehem, the place where, in , a Levite was traveling from when he found his dead concubine and scattered her limbs across the Promised Land. This is not a good place to be or a good time to live.

EXPLANATION — FAMINE: It is against this background that a famine comes upon God’s people. Why a famine? Famines and droughts in the Old Testament were often the gracious means God used to get his people’s attention: to show to them that they were sinning and to demonstrate to them their dependence upon him for everything, even something as common as food and drink. And God’s intent for this was that his people would see their sin and turn back to him in repentance.

EXPLANATION — ELIMELECH’S RESPONSE: But when our narrative lands upon our main characters, we find that they respond, not in faith and repentance, but in unfaithfulness and further sin. Elimelech chooses to move himself and his family out of the promised land, back across the Jordan river, and into the land of Moab, one of Israel’s oldest enemies.

EXPLANATION / APPLICATION: And before we rush past this seemingly small detail, it’s important to note that, for Elimelech, this is not just a geographical move, it’s a spiritual move. A move out from God’s land, and into the land of God’s enemies.

EXPLANATION / ILLUSTRATION: Unlike today, when moving from one city to another is common and often completely morally neutral, for God’s people to move out of the Promised Land was an act of defiance, an act of high treason against the King of the Universe.

EXPLANATION / RECAP: Elimelech’s choice to leave was a choice to “lean unto his own understanding,” and to “do what is right in his own eyes.”

ILLUSTRATION/TRANSITION: Just like Abraham and Isaac in Genesis, Elimelech chooses to leave the Promised Land when famine comes, and chooses to seek refuge in the land of God’s enemies. And like in Genesis, in our story, it would be Elimelech’s wife, Naomi, who would have to bare the brunt of the consequences for the sinful decision of her husband. And we’ll see that as we continue reading in verse 3.

SP2: Loss of family (3-5a). READ:

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

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,

5 and both Mahlon and Chilion died…

EXPLANATION: Ironically, Elimelech’s attempt to save his family’s lives end with his family’s destruction. After his own death, Elimelech’s sons marry outside of God’s covenant people; this foolish decision by Mahlon and Chilion’s ensured that Naomi’s grandchildren would not be allowed to be citizens of Israel, to the tenth generation (). Then, after 10 more years outside of the promised land, both of Naomi’s sons die. And in just a few short verses, Naomi is left all alone in a foreign country, without her husband, without her children, without her friends, and, seemingly, without her God.

TRANSITION: And as we continue reading verse 5, we find that Naomi, becomes nameless — referred to only as “the woman,” having lost everything.

SP3: Loss of identity (5b).

READ: “So that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.”

EXPLANATION: Naomi’s loss is total and her fate is bitter, indeed. Because of her husband’s sinful decision to leave the Promised Land, all of the relationships that once defined Naomi are gone — she was once called “wife;” she was once called “mother;” she was once called “Israelite.” No more! — all because of decisions of others, decisions thrust upon her. Naomi’s “pleasant” life had become “very bitter,” and by no choice of her own, but by the choices of her husband and sons. It was her husband who chose to lead his family away from God’s land, not her. It was her sons who chose to marry outside of the covenant people, not Naomi. As far as we can tell from the text, Naomi was completely innocent, and she suffered only because of the sinful decisions of family members.

APPLICATION:

INTERROGATIVE: Where could Namoi find hope in such a hopeless situation?

MAIN POINT 1: Is God’s grace really enough to heal a scarred past? (repeat)

ILLUSTRATION / APPLICATION: It’s easy to put ourselves into Naomi’s shoes here. When others have made sinful decisions that hurt you and seem to define you, where can you find real, meaningful, hope? Hope you can feel? Hope that provides actual, meaningful help? When the decisions of others seem to preoccupy so much of your time and so much of your thoughts? When others make sinful, selfish, thoughtless decisions, and you suffer because of them? Is there hope for Naomi? Is there hope for us?

TRANSITION / EXPLANATION: And while we may feel that we want this story to answer our questions now, right away, it doesn’t. It doesn’t answer them about Naomi, and it doesn’t answer them about us. In fact, it wants the tension to build and the weight of those questions to increase before it will release us. It forces our heads under the water longer, and forces us to hold our breaths longer. Why? Why would it do this? Why won’t it give us the answer quickly? Because the answer to these questions is not quick, and it’s not easy. It comes only through experiencing the pain and suffering as long as God wills. So let’s continue on as we shift to scene 2: we move from Naomi’s tragedy to Naomi’s response on the road.