Ruth 1:1-20New International Version (NIV)
1 In the days when the judges ruled,[a] there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. 2 The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion.They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.
3 Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons.4 They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
6 When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. 7 With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.
8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. 9 May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”
Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud 10 and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”
11 But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands?12 Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— 13 would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”
14 At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-lawgoodbye, but Ruth clung to her.
15 “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”
16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
19 So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”
20 “Don’t call me Naomi,[b]” she told them. “Call me Mara,[c] because the Almighty[d] has made my life very bitter.
Joy
is a part of the Christian life, and especially a part of worship.
Have
you ever noticed that so much of the Bible speaks of joy?
Ps
66: “Shout with joy to God, all the
earth! Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glorious!”
Ps
100 “Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.”
“Enter
his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and
praise his name.”
Or
here is my favorite one, and I suppose I overuse it sometimes -- Ps 118: “This
is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
But
have you ever noticed that sometimes life isn’t always ready for that sort of
worship?
Life
isn’t always ready for joy.
There
are those here this morning who have lost jobs, or who work at jobs that are in
jeopardy.
Retirement
income has dwindled.
There
are marriages that are hurting, and on the brink of being ripped apart.
For
many of our high school and college students, the joy of a coming graduation is
mixed with the fear of the unknown as to what happens next.
Those
of you who are on vacation for the week or the weekend, are anxious about what
is waiting for you when you return home.
Alcohol
overwhelms one person. Drugs overwhelm
another. Cancer has worked its way into
yet another.
Life
is not always upbeat and happy and joyful.
In
one of Simon and Garfunkle's songs, there are these haunting words:
I don't know a soul that's not been battered,
Don't have a friend who feels at ease,
Don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees.
I don't know a soul that's not been battered,
Don't have a friend who feels at ease,
Don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees.
Certainly,
it is sad to know that there are so many people in our world -- in our church
here at Chapel, who are hurting -- whose souls have been battered and whose
dreams have been driven to their knees.
How
can a person whose life seems to be hurting as in the Simon and Garfunkle song
find peace and joy?
How
can a life that is in a downward spiral begin to reverse that trend and begin
making positive progress?
Let's
take a look at the life of one such person in the Old Testament. If there is
one person who fits that Simon and Garfunkle song it is Ruth. Her soul has been
battered, her dreams driven to their knees. Things start out bad, and get
worse.
Ruth
is a small Old Testament book. It only has four chapters and it really takes
just a few minutes to read it.
It
starts off with chapter 1 verse 1, in which we read, "In the days when the
judges ruled."
Now
that happens to be a narrative phrase that is another way of saying, "In
the days when we had no king."
The
text continues...
"In
the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land," which is
to say, "when there was no food..."
"...A man from Bethlehem in Judah , together with his wife and two sons, went
to live for a while in the country of Moab .
"The man's name was Elimelech, his wife's name
Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion.."
Now,
if you have spent any time at all in the Old Testament, you will know right
away that it is always important to find out the meaning of the person’s name,
because the name’s meaning had great impact on the story.
Abraham
– his name means “father of many nations” and his life is about just that – how
he became a father of many nations.
Jacob
was a manipulative person, and his name fit him well, because Jacob meant
“supplanter”. But his name is changed to
Israel
when his character begins to change.
Esau
means”hairy” and when he was born he had a lot of hair.
So,
getting back to Ruth –
"...A
man from Bethlehem in Judah ,
together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of
Moab .
"The
man's name was Elimelech, his wife's name Naomi, and the names of his two sons
were Mahlon and Kilion.."
Those
are strange names, because they mean, "weakness" and
"consumption."
Now,
I know some people who have given their children some strange names, but these
take the cake. I can just see Father Elimelech taking the boys to town and
meeting some of his friends from work, saying, "Hello Bob. I don't believe
you've ever met my boys -- Weakness and Consumption.
Now,
as the text continues, Elimelech and Naomi raise these two fine boys, but
Elimelech dies.
Later,
Weakness and Consumption, get married. One of these wives is named Ruth.
Then
Naomi's husband dies, and within ten years, both of her sons, Weakness and
Consumption die. And Naomi, whose name means "joy" wants to be called
Mara, which means "bitter."
So
at the very beginning of the book of Ruth, we find no joy in the lives of these
women.
There
is no king,
there is no food,
no
family name without a husband,
and no
sons as heirs.
Now,
let me jump to the end of the book of Ruth. At the end, Ruth marries a man
named Boaz. All of a sudden, this woman who had no name, has a family again.
Boaz
and Ruth have a child.
The
Famine comes to an end.
And
the very last verses speak of how the son of Ruth was named Obed. He was the
father of Jesse, the father of David. And of course, David was the best king Israel ever
had.
She
went from having nothing at all, to having everything. She went from being
without joy, to having absolute joy. She went from emptiness to fullness.
Do
you see the literary movement here?
She went from no king, no food, no son,
no name, to having a name, a son, food, and a king.
The
question is, how did she do that?
That
is a question we would like answered! And it is a good time to ask it. Our whole world is in a mess. Those who live their lives in empty sorrow
thirst and hunger after the fullness of joy.
Investment
portfolios go down, down, down.
Income
from work or retirement planning gets smaller and smaller.
Jobs
are threatened.
The
only thing that is going up is the foreclosure rate.
People
are sick and struggling with health issues.
Divorces
are destroying marriages.
Hopelessness
is spreading.
How
do you go from having your life be empty to having your life filled with joy?
The
way this change comes about is in chapter three. By this time, Naomi has both
of her daughters in law to go out and find husbands on their own. Orpah does
just that, and we never hear from her again. Ruth, however, stays by her mother
in law. "Where you go, I will go," she tells her. So these two women
who have nothing, no home, family or food, go out on their own.
Ruth
starts going into the farms in the area and picks the crops the farmers have
left behind. This was a kind of welfare system. Farmers were supposed to leave
part of the crop in the field so the poor could take some. It was called
"gleaning."
Ruth
makes friends with a distant relative named Boaz, and Boaz takes Ruth under his
protection and even orders the workers to leave a lot of extra food for Ruth
and Naomi.
This
is when Naomi comes up with a plan.
Naomi
has had it with their lives going from bad to worse. Something has got to
happen to make their lives better, so in chapter 3, verse 3, Naomi tells Ruth
that Boaz is going to be working late that night on the farm, and instructs
her, "Take a nice bath. Put on some
perfume. Put on your best clothes. Then
go down to the threshing floor, but don't let him know you are there until he
has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, note the place where he is
lying. Then go and uncover his feet" -- and by the way, uncovering feet is
a rather delicate way in some Old Testament books to say, "have sex with
him."
In
other words, Naomi is telling Ruth, "We got nothing left but your good
looks and feminine charm, and you'd better use them to catch a husband so we
won't be left homeless." And her last word of instruction is, "You
uncover his --- feet, and he will tell you what to do."
Not
a very saintly attitude.
But
Ruth does this. Almost.
Ruth
goes to where Boaz is working and does everything Naomi told her to do, except
she does not wait for Boaz to tell her what to do. Instead, Ruth tells Boaz
what to do. Boaz says, "I'll do whatever you ask."
She
tells Boaz, "you are my kinsman-redeemer."
In
the culture of that day, Boaz had, as a distant relative, a covenant
responsibility to take Ruth as his wife, and to take care of her and Naomi.
Ruth
lays hold of that claim.
She
takes hold of the claim to the redeemer in her life.
She
doesn't try to redeem herself, or to take care of herself, she doesn't just
depend on her feminine charm to trap Boaz or to manipulate him.
Instead,
she looks beyond herself.
What
she does is to trust in the covenant promises. She basically tells Boaz,
"You are my redeemer. Act like it. Do your job. Be my redeemer."
That
is the turning point in the story of Ruth.
Here
is a woman who had no king, no food, no family, no name, no joy -- but whose
life was reborn so that she found joy, a name, a family, food, and ultimately
gave birth to the grandmother of the best king the nation of Israel would
ever know.
Naomi
tells Ruth to manipulate Boaz into taking care of them, but that isn't what
turns their lives around.
Our
life spins out of control, and what do we do?
We
manipulate people around us, but that does us very little good.
It
didn’t do Ruth any good.
Naomi
tells Ruth to use her own resources, her feminine charms, to turn their lives
around, but that isn't what helps.
Our
life spins out of control, and what do we do?
We
often look toward our own resources, whatever they may be, and find them
insufficient.
Ruth
looks to society for help, and gets onto the early welfare system of gleaning
the fields, but that doesn't help.
What
helps Ruth?
What
helps us?
Ruth's
life turns around when she looks beyond herself, toward her redeemer.
Our
lives can turn around when we look beyond ourselves toward a redeemer.
There
are families torn apart. There are lives in turmoil. There are people in
crisis. What hope is there?
What
can be the turning point of our life?
Our
hope is not in the stock market.
Our
hope is not in ourselves.
Our
hope beyond ourselves.
Our
hope is in Jesus Christ.
When
we look at our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, our lives get back on track.
Copyright
2015.
Dr. W.
Maynard Pittendreigh
All rights
reserved
Ministers may
feel free to use some or all of this sermon in their own ministries as long as
they do not publish in print or on the Internet without ascribing credit to the
author.