Motherhood As Daughterhood

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Ruth 1:6-18

N:

Opening

Welcome to our Family Worship Service here at Eastern Hills. I am senior pastor Bill Connors, and I’m glad to welcome you to this time of worship, whether you are here in the building or online today. Thanks, praise band for leading us in worship this morning. Pastor Wayne is actually visiting with his mom today, as she has been having some health problems. I know that they would appreciate your prayers.

I’d like to say “Happy Mother’s Day” to all the moms, and particularly in my case, to my beautiful wife Melanie, to my own mom, Teddi, and to my mother-in-law, Linda.

I have a couple of announcements that I need to make this morning before we dive into our Mother’s Day message.

First of all, there will be a special Adults on Mission meeting tonight at 5:00 pm in the parlor, and Ashlyn Grinevich will be sharing about “Third Culture Kids,” and the issues and difficulties that kids have returning to the State after serving with their parents on the mission field overseas. Ashlyn experienced this herself, and has unique insight into her own experience, as well as that of other missionary families. If you’re available tonight, plan to be here.

Two weeks ago, I promised that I would give a final total for our Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions today. Our goal as a church was $15,000, and this year, we raised $16,794.25 for this offering! What a blessing! Thank you, church, for your faithfulness to this and all of our special missions offerings throughout the year.

I also wanted to give you a total that was raised for sending kids to summer camp by the Donna Treece & Friends benefit concert that we had a couple of weeks ago. That benefit raised $2,477.90! I know that there are kids who are going to be blessed by being able to go to camp this summer because of your generosity. Thank you for helping in that as well.

Finally, remember that today we will receive our one-day-only Mother’s Day offering to support the NM Baptist Children’s Home in Portales, New Mexico. The NM Baptist Children’s Home is such an important ministry for children and families who are struggling and in need help and care. We only take this offering up for Mother’s Day, and our goal this year is $4,500. Pray and ask the Lord to prepare your heart to give today.

For several years now, I have opened my Mother’s Day message with an acknowledgment for those who struggle with Mother’s Day. This year is not going to be any different.

Mother’s Day can be a very difficult day for many. For those of you for whom this is the case, let me just start by thanking you for braving this today. You have had every opportunity, especially given the fact that we now stream our services every week, to not come, either online or in person. You could have decided to skip today and listen to or watch a past message. But many of you are here in the room, and many more of you are here right now online, watching and desiring to worship with the body of Christ and to hear from the Word of God, and my hope and intent is to make good use of your commitment and dedication this morning.

To you ladies who want children, but for some reason cannot have them, my heart goes out to you. I know that a Mother’s Day service can be especially hard, and perhaps already has been. Please know that you are loved, and we don’t take you for granted or downplay or ignore your very real pain. And some of you are “mother’s-in-waiting,” and you intend and plan to have children at some point, but you’re just not there yet. We wait expectantly (no pun intended) with you.

This day can also be difficult for those who have lost their children tragically. You are moms. You’re moms who cannot mother your child right now. I am so sorry for your loss. You also are loved and cared for by this body, and we mourn with you this day.

Finally, this day can be frustrating for those who have no desire to have children. This is a very real thing, and you may struggle just being here this morning with so much focus on children and motherhood, which is just not something you’re concerned with, at least not at the moment. I get that it may not feel particularly useful for you. Thank you for being here anyway, and I really hope that my message this morning will be useful for you as a woman, not just for moms.

And for those who have lost their moms, especially in the past year: we mourn with you as well.

I can’t understand what these women are going through, and I want to be sensitive to and respectful of that struggle, and just not mentioning it isn’t right. So, Lord willing, it is my intent to open every Mother’s Day message with this kind of acknowledgment, and I pray that this message is useful to all who are here with us today.

With that being said, let’s stand in honor of God’s Word as we read our focal passage for this morning:

Ruth 1:6–18 CSB

6 She and her daughters-in-law set out to return from the territory of Moab, because she had heard in Moab that the Lord had paid attention to his people’s need by providing them food. 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. 10 They said to her, “We insist on returning with you to your people.” 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.” 14 Again they wept loudly, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. 15 Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Follow your sister-in-law.” 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. 18 When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped talking to her.

PRAYER

Abbie and I went shopping for a Mother’s Day card for Melanie this week, and at the Walgreens by our house, there were a LOT of them. There were these really flowery ones, pretty ones, funny ones, those fancy “raised-decoration” ones that have to be in their own plastic sleeves on the rack, and even truly three-dimensional ones that the recipient has to assemble once they open it. These cards all speak of how wonderful moms are, and they often cast a VERY favorable light on how well the card’s intended recipient has navigated motherhood. This isn’t a bad thing, and giving complimentary cards is actually kind, but I wonder if for many women, the things these cards say feel like they are a long way off from the reality of their own lives, and how they are personally managing being a mom.

Throw on top of that the crazy world of social media: moms might feel pressure to nail that incredible craft or treat or lunch that they saw on Pinterest, or to look like they have it all together on their Insta or Facebook feed, all the while not really being honest and genuine with all of those online “friends.” They look around and compare the best of other’s lives—the stuff that everyone else is posting because of the same pressures—with the worst of their own lives, and they think they somehow come up short.

Mothering is HARD. It’s stressful. It’s full of worry and concern. It’s got pressures and issues that I can’t begin to grasp. Granted, it’s (I hear) an incredible JOY, but it’s a hard-won joy sometimes.

When we consider the greeting card platitudes and pressures of social media against the reality of motherhood, it can create a difficult tension for women to navigate. In the extreme, it might even cause some to feel discouraged, broken, or hopeless, or like they are a failure as a mother because they don’t live up to these things. This is a very real difficulty—one that it might be very hard to talk about or address, because of how you feel you might be viewed or condemned as a result.

Now, I’m not going to say that I understand all of this. Because I don’t. I’m not going to say that I empathize with you in this, because I can’t. And this is one of the fascinating things about preaching: I don’t get all of this, but the Lord does. And He addresses these things in His Word.

So how do women find direction and hope in the midst of these difficulties? I believe that they can find it through shifting their perspectives on their identity: remembering that they are not primarily defined by who they are, but instead by whose they are.

You see, throughout Scripture, we see a vast diversity of women, with different gifts and abilities, in various positions of leadership and submission, using their gifts and authority for good and for bad. And in the midst of that, we also see a variety of moms, specifically: We see moms who are exalted and praised, like Mary the mother of Jesus, and Lois and Eunice, Timothy’s mother and grandmother. We see women who had to undergo special struggles of faith and patience as they waited for years for children, such as Sarah and Elizabeth. We see women in dire situations like Moses’ mother, or having to rise up and take action at great personal risk, like Deborah or Jael.

But we also see women who face great difficulties in life, and who have to wrestle with their circumstances, their identity, and how to view their lives. In the book of Ruth, we have a contrast between two women who have to deal with this tension: Naomi and her daughter-in-law, Ruth.

We’re going to look briefly at both of these ladies this morning, and consider our identity in Christ.

For Naomi, her circumstances affected her identity.

Now, I want to be clear: this doesn’t make Naomi the bad guy of the story, or diminish her value or her struggle at all. Naomi had had a really rough time of it, and her circumstances were anything but simple, as we find in verses 1-5 of Ruth 1, which I will summarize:

Naomi was a mom during a famine in Israel. Her husband Elimelech decides to pack up her and their two boys, Mahlon and Chilion, and move off to a different land until the famine is over. They get there, they get settled, and sometime thereafter Elimelech dies, leaving Naomi to manage with her two sons. Each of the boys get married to Moabite girls: the elder Mahlon marrying Ruth, and the younger Chilion marrying a girl named Orpah. Years pass with no children born of these marriages, and then Mahlon and Chilion, whose names mean “sickly” and “wimpy,” or worse, “death,” both also die. Naomi’s circumstances are dire and painful indeed.

So what we see in our focal passage today is that Naomi hears that the famine is over in Israel, and she heads back with her two daughters-in-law in tow. But somewhere along the road Naomi realizes the struggle that waits for these younger women back in Israel: they aren’t Hebrew women, so finding a husband for them would be difficult at best, and they are three widows who will essentially be a the mercy of Elimelech’s relatives as far as keeping their family inheritance of land in the family. The outlook is grim, so Naomi tells her daughters-in-law to go back home to Moab, return to their family homes, and go on with their lives.

At first, they won’t hear anything of it, but Naomi redoubles her argument, culminating in her perspective on her identity based on her circumstances: Just read part B.

Ruth 1:13 CSB

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.”

Orpah kisses Naomi goodbye and returns to Moab. We’ll pick up Ruth’s response when we get to her. But when Naomi arrives in Bethlehem, her perspective on her circumstances is so dark that she actually, literally, changes her identity, asking everyone to stop calling her Naomi, which means “pleasant,” and to start calling her “Mara,” which means “bitter.”

Ruth 1:20–21 CSB

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?”

There’s a lot of pain here, and I can’t say that I blame her. I certainly don’t condemn her for this. She’s reached the point of having a crisis of identity because of the painful circumstances that she’s gone through. Much of what she defined herself as: a wife, a mother, even in some ways as an Israelite, have been stripped away by what has happened, and Naomi finds herself emotionally and spiritually adrift.

Have any of you ever experienced this kind of crisis? I know several who have faced this kind of thing with something approaching this level of severity. I’ve experienced something of this in my own life, but certainly not to this magnitude, so I won’t begin to compare my own experiences to yours.

But I think for many moms, for many women even, this is a place that struggle can come from. You might see yourself as a particular kind of person, and then you have a child, and the whole perspective that you had viewed yourself from is radically altered: you’re a mom now, and you struggle to find your identity in this new chapter of life. Or you can’t have children, and you might start to define yourself by that one issue in your life. Maybe your child goes astray, even with your best efforts to train them up in the way that they should go, and you begin to question where you went wrong, or to see yourself as a failure. Or you lose a child, like Naomi, and suddenly you’re not sure who you are anymore—one of the vital places from which you drew your identity is gone. I couldn’t really do justice to every possibility, but you get the picture.

This is super real, and I know that there are those in this congregation who care for you and who are praying for you, even right now as I preach. While we may not fully understand your pain, we understand that your pain is very real. The issue for you is the same as the issue was with Naomi. These circumstances that rock the foundations of your life also tend to rock the foundations of your faith. You’re in good company. Consider what David wrote in Psalm 13:

Psalm 13:1–3 CSB

1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind every day? How long will my enemy dominate me? 3 Consider me and answer, Lord my God. Restore brightness to my eyes; otherwise, I will sleep in death.

Please hear me this morning that having your circumstances rock your identity in God and crying out to Him is not wrong or sinful. God isn’t scared of our pain. He’s not intimidated by our difficult questions. He’s not surprised when our faith is shaken. He knows who we are even more than we do, and He is compassionate to us:

Psalm 103:13–14 CSB

13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. 14 For he knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust.

But for each of us, when our faith is shaken, we must be willing to be reminded and to trust that God is still all that He says He is, that He loves us just like He says He does, and that even though things are happening that are too big for us to comprehend, they aren’t too big for God to understand—and He’s got us in His hands. There is hope, and we can respond as David did at the end of Psalm 13:

Psalm 13:5–6 CSB

5 But I have trusted in your faithful love; my heart will rejoice in your deliverance. 6 I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously.

And when we do this, our identity will begin to affect our circumstances.

For Ruth, her identity affected her circumstances.

It’s easy for us to kind of focus on the character of Ruth as this heroic daughter-in-law of Naomi, remembering all that Naomi has been through and the kindness of Ruth to step in and care for her aging mother-in-law. But before we go too far with this, we need to remember a couple of things about Ruth:

First, Ruth was a widow. A young widow. We would ordinarily look at Ruth as a tragic figure just because of this. But that’s not all.

Second, Ruth was a childless widow… not just a young widow, but one who had been married perhaps as long as ten years (depending on how you interpret verse 5), and who hadn’t been able to conceive in all of that time. This was considered a curse from the Lord for these people.

Third, Ruth was choosing to become a foreigner in a strange land when she followed Naomi. She was leaving her country and her family to follow Naomi back to Bethlehem.

And finally, Ruth’s outlook was perhaps even more grim than Naomi’s. Naomi was older—nearing the end of her life—so the length of her struggle would probably be substantially shorter than Ruth’s, and add to that the fact that at least Naomi would be among her own people at the time, and you see that Ruth’s prospects were dim at best from a human perspective. That’s why Naomi had tried to send her away, and why Orpah actually left.

In short, Ruth had her own stack of pain to deal with, and it was serious pain: the pain of losing a husband, having never had a child, and then making the choice to leave behind all that she had ever known apart from her mother-in-law, even though she likely knew what a long and arduous road she would travel as a result. She could have decided to change her name as well, and we wouldn’t blame her for it.

But at some point during Ruth’s marriage to Mahlon or during her time with just Naomi, Ruth had discovered the truth of the Lord Almighty, and because of Him, her identity had been redefined, and now that identity began to have an affect on her circumstances. In one of the most beautiful passages in all of Scripture, Ruth makes a commitment to Naomi based on what her identity had become, and what it would continue to be, regardless of her circumstances:

Ruth 1:16–17 CSB

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 says that it doesn’t matter what would come their way: she was going to honor Naomi and honor God. And that’s exactly what she does—working to provide for herself and for Naomi. And that fact is noticed by Boaz:

Ruth 2:11–12 CSB

11 Boaz answered her, “Everything you have done for your mother-in-law since your husband’s death has been fully reported to me: how you left your father and mother and your native land, and how you came to a people you didn’t previously know. 12 May the Lord reward you for what you have done, and may you receive a full reward from the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.”

Ruth wasn’t defined by her loss, even though it was true. She wasn’t defined by her pain, even though it was real. She wasn’t defined by her past, even though it was difficult. Instead, she her identity was now found in the Lord, and that identity gave her a firm foundation from which to affect her circumstances. And when it all comes down to it, ultimately Ruth’s faithfulness to Naomi and to God changes even Naomi’s bitter circumstances, and Naomi ends the book of Ruth celebrating the birth of her grandson Obed, who fathered Jesse, who was the father of King David.

We do not have to be defined only by our struggles. Those struggles are certainly real and painful, but if we belong to God through faith in Jesus Christ, we have been given a new identity to work from. Ladies (all of us, in fact): there are declarations that the Scriptures make about our identities that are based on on who we are but on whose we are. Over and over again in the pages of the Bible we see these things as statements of fact because of our relationship to God through Christ. I’ll just bring out a couple of them here this morning:

We are children of God and co-heirs with Christ:

Romans 8:16–17 CSB

16 The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, 17 and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

We are freed from the power of sin and have been declared righteous in Christ:

2 Corinthians 5:21 CSB

21 He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

We are chosen by God for a special purpose, and we have received His mercy:

1 Peter 2:9–10 CSB

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

These things aren’t given to us because we are good enough to deserve them, but because God has declared who we are because of whose we are, if we belong to Him through faith in what Christ has done.

This is the hope of the Gospel: we could NEVER have been good enough to merit God’s favor because of our sin, but simply because God loves us, He gave His Son Jesus to die on the cross in our place so that we could be forgiven and have hope. And if we will surrender our lives to His lordship, trusting only in Him to save us, then we are forgiven of our sin and made right before God. And then Jesus defeated death and rose from the grave, so that those who are made right through faith in Him will also receive eternal life because of what He has done as well. Our identity is radically changed because of the encounter that we have had with God when we give up trying to save ourselves and trust in Jesus alone for our salvation. We no longer have to wonder who we are because we know whose we are—and He is the one who defines our identity.

Closing

Ladies, your identity isn’t defined by the greeting cards in the Mother’s Day section at Walgreens. It’s defined by the God who designed you and called you and saved you and loves you. He’s the One who gets to tell you who you are. And He’s already said so much of it in His Word.

But one last thing that we need to keep in mind about Naomi and Ruth as we close: They were both used of God to bring refreshment and strength to each other. Ruth blessed Naomi through her service and faithfulness. Naomi blessed Ruth through her wisdom and advice. Both were used by God to meet a need in the other’s life. We should be doing that for one another, but especially you ladies out there. I can’t speak for ALL men, but sometimes I’m completely clueless when it comes to the best way to encourage my wife when she’s having a difficult time. Husbands, we need to step up in this regard. However, I think that most women would say that they feel most understood by other women. Ladies, you need each other. Speak life into each other’s hearts as you care for each other in the Body of Christ.

I know that this message has been just about completely about mothers, but the basis for the confidence that we can have in whose we are comes only from the Gospel, and this hope is for everyone. Trust in the finished work of Jesus for your salvation today. And if that’s you, we want to help you on this spiritual journey. If you’re in the room, just stay in your seat and after everyone has gone, I’ll come and find you so that we can set up a time to talk. If you’re online, you can send me an email at [e-mail], so we can connect that way. If you’ve got questions about Jesus and about the Gospel, use those resources as well.

Maybe today, you believe that God would have you be a part of this church family through formal church membership, so that you can more fully participate in the life of this body of believers. Same thing: stay in your seats, or send an email to bill @ehbc.org.

Finally, maybe you are struggling this morning with your identity in Christ. Please reach out to us so that we can pray for you and work to help you as you wrestle through this time of crisis in your faith. Maybe you honestly need to consider that seeking biblical counseling for this struggle. We’d be happy to help you find the help you need.

Offering and Reflection.

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

Our beloved brother Walter Hyde went home to be with the Lord during the pandemic, and his family has been waiting for the right time to have a time of remembrance for Walter, and allow his wonderful wife Linnie Belle to come and enjoy some fellowship with us again. That fellowship and remembrance time will be on May 28, at 12:45 pm in Miller Hall here in the building, if you’d like to attend. Their daughter has asked that you RSVP to her by email no later than May 24 if you are planning on being here for that time together. Her email is on the screen.

We are partnering with Family Life Radio to bless our local CareNet Pregnancy Centers through their “Ultimate Baby Shower.” You can drop off new, unwrapped baby items here at the church, either in the box in the office or the marked pull out-bin in the “Get Connected” table in the foyer. The items they are asking for are things like diapers, baby clothes (0-24 months), baby toiletries, wipes, bottles, pacifiers, baby toys, washcloths, towels, etc. The “Ultimate Baby Shower” is going until May 23, when all of the items collected will be delivered.

Bible reading: Finishing Acts today, then reading the first 30 Psalms.

Instructions: All ladies receive a flower on the way out this morning.

Benediction:

2 Corinthians 1:3–5 CSB

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. 4 He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.