Episode 1 of Rescue and Rest

I want to welcome you to our spring Bible study, which is on the book of Ruth. I've titled it Rescue and Rest. This is going to be a verse-by-verse Bible study through the book of Ruth in seven weeks. You know, over the 30 years that we have pastored this church, I've taught Ruth multiple times. Years ago, we had this as our retreat theme, and so it's fascinating to me to see the different angles that the Lord puts over things. When we did it at retreat, it was under the shelter of his wings. How many of you have the red blanket still from that retreat? And then we did a verse-by-verse study of Ruth in our weekly Bible study just six years ago called Walking with My Redeemer, and I've taught it at other women's retreats, and sometimes the focus is on refuge, or sometimes the focus is on repurposing. But this time, the title that the Lord gave me was Rescue and Rest, probably because we've just come off of this study in the book of Judges, and rescue and rest are something that every one of us needs. Every one of us needs to be rescued from the sin that we are born with, and every one of us needs spiritual rest, or what we might call peace with God. We are by nature at enmity with God, and we need rest from that. So in the book of Judges, as we studied it, we longed for a more perfect rescue, and we longed for a permanent rest. God rose up men to rescue Israel, for sure, that's why we called them the Judges, but it was never permanent. The rest that Israel was given, it would say at the end of a judge's life, and Israel had rest for 40 years, and then we started all the way back into the cycle of sin again. So we longed for a permanent rest. Judges gave us 21 chapters of the bad news, didn't it? Showing us what it's like when people turn from God. It ended with death and depravity, and Ruth brings us four chapters of the good news set in the same time frame. It is the gospel in 85 verses, and it describes for us the individual possibility of hope and life. So we go from depravity and death to hope and life. So let's begin with the things that we always want to ask when we start a new book of the Bible. The first thing is, who wrote this anyway? And there are no answers in the text. The writer did not autograph this, and so we don't know who wrote it. Jewish tradition says it was Samuel, that Samuel wrote both Judges and Ruth. I think that that's plausible to me. We ask, what is the genre of this book? Because there's all different kinds of books in the canon of the Bible, of the 66 books, and this is a book of history. It is actually a narration of events that took place around 1150 BC. This isn't a fable or with a moral like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. These were real people who really lived during a particular time in history, and even though they're real individuals, the events that happen in their life provide for us types and shadows of spiritual realities. And that's what we're going to look for in this study. Just like Moses and Joshua before them, the events of their lives make the gospel easier for us to stand, understand, because it is dramatized. And so I'm looking forward to that. Our introduction this morning is only going to cover two verses, but these are very essential verses for us to pay attention to. Have you ever experienced maybe starting a family movie, and you just get it started, and you think to yourself, we need popcorn with this. And so you excuse yourself, and it takes you five minutes to make the popcorn and to come back, but the movie was rolling, and you missed some really important things. And now you're playing catch-up the rest of that time because you missed some really crucial things at the beginning. That's the way these two verses are, so no popcorn this morning. We are going to focus. We are going to stay right here. And so open up your Bibles to the book of Ruth, while I share a little story with you about a mom and a dad and two boys. Times were tough. Pandemic had affected everyone. The paychecks were now smaller. Family found themselves in difficult situation, upside down in their car payment, lost all hope of owning a home in the crazy real estate market, and they became pretty discouraged with what was going on in their life. So they said they were going to leave. So discouraged, they left. They planned, they packed, and they left to try things out in another place, but it didn't go much better in that other place. That's not exactly how the book of Ruth starts, but kind of is. So let's read it, verses one and two.

And in two short verses, we learn quite a bit about this one woman, Naomi, and her family. And you're asking, well, why do you focus on the woman? Well, it's because as soon as you start your Bible study next week, you're going to find out that the man is, as we call in the movies, Mr. Disposable. He's going to exit the show here right away. He is Mr. I-have-a-better-contract-with-another-studio, and so we are going to keep our focus on Naomi. And so what are they like? They're Ephrathites, which means from Ephrath, from Bethlehem in Judah. They belonged to God. They were descendants of Abraham, of all the people on the earth. They belonged to the nation that was chosen to represent God to the peoples of the earth. To them were given the promises of God. To them was given the land of God, and to them would be given the Messiah of God. We might say in New Testament terms they were Christians, they belonged to God, but of course here they belonged to Abraham. So Elimelech's name means God is king. You might remember Gideon's son Abimelech, and his name meant my dad is the king, my father is king. Elimelech means God is king. Naomi's name means pleasant. The place that they live, the city they're connected to, Bethlehem, means house of bread, and the tribal area that they live in, Judah, means praise. Judah is the fourth son of Jacob, born from Leah, and she named him Praise, or Judah. And so think about that for a minute. Here is husband and wife, Mr. God is king, Mrs. Pleasant, they live in the house of bread, in the land of praise. What could go wrong? Everything is perfect. Do we not look at someone else's life sometimes and say certainly you could never have problems in life? You are set up, everything is perfect. Well, Naomi and Elimelech did have problems, and the problem, the difficulty that they faced was centered on this famine. This famine had gotten under their skin, and it caused them to become dissatisfied with what God had given them, with where God had placed them. So they planned, and they packed, and they left Bethlehem, they left Judah, they left their family, and the way I see it, they left God behind to go try it in a better place. But of course, as is the case in life, troubles seem to follow, don't they? One thing that they apparently didn't do was ask God to rescue them out of their current difficulty. They were facing a legitimate difficulty in life, but we don't see them crying out to God and asking for rescue from that. God used difficulties like famines to get His kids' attention so that maybe they would turn to Him, face Him. Maybe they had forgotten Him, but God wanted them to cry out to rescue, and God was using this famine to help Israel notice their need for Him. How can I say that that's true? How do I know that that's true, that God was using this famine to get their attention? Because He promised Moses that is what He would do. He told Moses when the people come into the land, You know, if they turn away from me, I will bring things. Well, let's just go look at it. Deuteronomy 28, you're going to face this in your study guide next week, on your first week. I'll put it up on the screen for you. This is what God said.

Why? To bum them out and give them a bad day? No, so that they would turn to him and ask for his special favor to help them so that they would return their attention. And you know what? God still uses famines and difficulties in our lives for that same purpose, so that we will remember we're not all as independent and self-sufficient as we think we are, so that we will turn our attention to him. Now, we have to be a little bit careful with this, because if you got in a car accident yesterday and then you say to me, what is God trying to tell me in this, he might be telling you, don't let your insurance lapse. So the point is that not everything that happens to us is God attempting to get our attention so that we will return to him. But in everything that happens to us, God wants to show himself faithful. God desires to show himself faithful to each one of us. When I have some difficulty in my life, God wants to show himself faithful. When I have had some trauma in my life that causes grief, God wants to show himself faithful to me. When my choices seem thin, I just don't have very many directions to turn, God wants to show himself faithful. And when I've come to the end of my own resources, that's when God wants to show himself faithful. God always desires for us to press in to his faithfulness, to persevere in faith. This is the life of one of God's kids. But this family did not persevere in faith. They did not want to consider God's faithfulness, and instead, they packed and they left, and instead of pressing in, they created distance from God. They walked the other way. And distance can have a sad, or I should say, distance is a sad byproduct of difficulty, can be a sad byproduct of difficulty. This is not what God wants for his kids. So I've chosen a New Testament verse to be a theme verse for this Bible study. I printed it on the card that you found at your table. And it is Jesus's words from Matthew 11, 28, when he said, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. Rest for your soul. So do you see the link there? Rather than creating distance from God when we're facing a difficulty, when we are weary, when we labor, Jesus says, no, don't make distance. Come, come to me. I will give you rest. So we'll probably reference that verse often. Okay, what we're gonna do is take these two verses from the start to finish. We're gonna break them down and ask the investigative W words, when, where, why, and all that sort of thing. So back up to the top, the first phrase is, in the days when the judges ruled. And so this explains when this happened. This is in the same timeframe as the judges. So as a reminder, when we started the book of Joshua, it began with the words, after the death of Moses. And then we went into the book of Judges, and that began with the words, after the death of Joshua. And then we get into this book, and it's not a continuation. It says, in the days when the judges ruled. So this is set in the same timeframe. How do we characterize those days? What were they like? Well, we recently just went through it. But the very last verse of Judges gives us a great summary. It says this, in those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did as he saw right in his own eyes. When it says there was no king in Israel, it doesn't mean they hadn't thought of having a king yet, although they hadn't had a physical king yet. But remember, no king in Israel meant that God had brought his people that he had chosen out of Egypt, and he brought them into the land of, or well, first he brought them to Mount Sinai to declare who he was and to say, this is who I am, and this is how you are going to be able to flourish in life, flourish in the land that I give you. This is a theocracy. I am to be your king, and you are to follow my way. But by the time we got to Judges, they would have none of it. There was no king. They were not following the king. And so there was no king in Israel. People had turned from God. They had turned to idols. They had turned to pride. They had lost perspective. They had lost connection with God. There was no shortage of religion or superstition, but it had no impact on the people. What there was a shortage of was faith. There was a shortage of faith. In general, the responses of people during that time were to live as they please, work as they please, go as they please, marry as they please. Everyone did what he saw was right in his own eyes. So how does that line up with our culture? Well, our culture has turned from God, turned to idols, turned to pride, lost perspective. We too have no shortage of religion or spirituality, but we have lost connection with God. And so in general, in our culture, people live as they please, they work as they please, they go where they please, they marry whom they please, or they don't marry at all. And everyone does as he sees fit. And so it's very relatable. The next phrase tells us there was a famine in the land, and that answers our question, what? What was happening? Famine in the land, essential to our setting. Now we might think of a famine as just a sort of a natural occurrence. There's been a drought. Like we have natural Western wildfires or a freak winter storm in Texas. That's how we think of a famine. But for God's people, in the land of promise, a famine had much less to do with climate change and it had more to do with the need for a heart change. God had told them to expect this. God said that they should expect a physical famine when there was a spiritual famine in their lives, that they should expect physical climate change when he desired for them to have a spiritual heart change. But he promised them during these times of difficulty, if they would turn to him, humble themselves, and ask for his help, he would indeed rescue them. So the goal of the difficulty was to get them to turn to the Lord. And a thoughtful Israelite in that time might have said to himself, hmm, I'm facing a difficulty. There's a famine. This means God wants my attention. So I should process my life and ask the questions, have I been honoring God with my life? Is there anything I need to repent of? Do I need to humble myself? Certainly I need to cry out to the Lord. All right, the next question that we might ask is, where is this located? So the next phrase tells us that a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab. So we have two where's, two geographical locations to look at. Now, as we ended the book of Judges, and I just wanna tell you, if you didn't do Judges with us, you are gonna be just fine. Although, you might wanna consider picking it up and doing it after you're done with the study because it will add some real interest when we're finished. But as we did the book of Judges, and we got to that last week, and we looked at that five-chapter epilogue that is at the end of Judges, we realized the focus had narrowed geographically to Bethlehem in Judah and the hill country of Ephraim. Do you know that the geographical focus of the Bible now remains in this place until we get Samuel and Saul and David? It's going to remain in this area. We had two stories in our, what I called the Bethlehem Trilogy. At the end of Judges, there was these two stories that were just filled with depravity and death. Unsatisfying stories. We hated ending that way. But now we get to the third story. The third story of the Bethlehem trilogy. And it is completely different. It brings us hope. And so I'm really excited to get into this. Also it is the fitting way to end three stories from Bethlehem, the house of bread, from whence our Savior Jesus Christ was born, the bread of life. We want a positive ending in this location. So this is the focus. Focus is on Bethlehem. But the other place, the other where, is where did they go? They went to sojourn in Moab. And this is noteworthy for a few reasons. I want to run through why this is something we should take note of. Number one, you have a map on page seven that shows you the movement of Israel in the first place as God brought them into the land of promise. And so there's some arrows that show you they basically came up through Moab and they crossed the Jordan River and entered into. And so now this family, Naomi and her family, is doing the exact opposite route. It's what we call going backwards in life. They are doing the exact opposite thing. That's not what God intended was for them to retrace their steps. Another reason that going to Moab is noteworthy is when we did our Bible study in Numbers called the Wilderness Way, we met some information about a place called the Beal of Peor where Israel was on their way into this promised land. And the king of Moab, Balak, did not like what he saw. He was afraid of Israel. And so he went and reached out to this prophet Balaam and hired him to curse Israel. And you might remember Balaam tried to curse Israel and he'd go up to different places and every time he opened his mouth only blessings came out four times. And Balak was mad. The king of Moab was mad and he goes, I hired you. I paid you money to curse these people and all you do is bless them. And Balaam says, it's not my fault. I opened my mouth and blessings come out. But I'll tell you how you can get after them. I see your pretty girls. I see that they worship Baal. You just go parade them in front of the Israelite men and in no time at all they too will be worshiping your God. And you know what? That's just how it happened. And it was a it was a dark time. It got resolved. It was difficult. But that's where they're going is where that took place. Lastly, do you remember the judge Ehud? Ehud is how it's pronounced. He rescued Israel when the king of Moab, Egalon, that very fat man, had set up residence in Jericho. So we have this fussing with Moab left and right and that's where the people are going. That's where our family's going. I'm sure they comforted themselves by saying, oh we're just going to sojourn there and don't we comfort ourselves often if we think we get a sense in our heart it's like this isn't what God wants me. It's just a little while. It's just a little bit. It won't harm. So this word sojourn, it means to stay somewhere you don't necessarily belong for an extended time. This isn't a vacation or a business trip. This is sort of temporarily permanent. You know we're called sojourners on this earth. Peter calls us that we are as Christians sojourning here. We don't belong here. We're sort of temporarily permanent here. There's nowhere else to go until we go to heaven. But that's what sojourn means. Still it was outside of God's provision for them. And one last thing as long as we're talking about what names mean, in Psalm chapter 60 we find that God calls the country of Moab his wash pot. The wash basin. The dishwater. Funny thing that happened to me this morning. We're getting ready in the bathroom and Paul is always playing either music or a scripture of some kind and he plays Psalm 60 and you know it was just so apropos to what we're talking about today. It just really blessed me. So one last time that our family is going from the house of bread, retracing the steps, going backwards in life to go live in what God calls the wash pot. All right the question who? The next phrase is, the name of the man was Elimelech, the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Malon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. And so as an opening scene of our drama, our movie, we can imagine the drone shots kind of focusing in now on this family. It's no longer a certain man but they have proper names and so we see them. We can see their faces in our drone shot and as a reminder Elimelech's name meant God is King. His name testified that there was a king in Israel and it was God. Even though everyone had acted as if there was no king. And remember Naomi meant pleasant. And we bring brings us to the last phrase that says they went into the country of Moab and remained there. And so this is an opportunity to ask why? And that's a good question. Why did Mr. God is King and Mrs. Pleasant do this at this time? Why did they respond to the famine the way they did? They had obviously stopped trusting in the faithfulness of God in order to do this. And I wonder in that moment if anyone could have like run in front of them and gotten their face and said to them, do you even know who you are right now? As evidenced by the fact of what your names mean. Do you remember that what you have, what you have been given, that God has given you this land that you're leaving? Do you remember right now the blessings that God has given you? And I am sure in this moment they could not think back on their heritage of how God had led Moses and helped Moses bring their nation to this place. How God had helped Joshua bring them in. And I thought of something else speaking of Joshua. You know you don't just cross the Jordan River at any old place to get to Moab. There are certain places, every river has certain places that are easier and more difficult to cross. Certainly this had to be a season when it was not at flood stage like it had been when Israel came over in the first place so that they were able to cross. So I pictured this. I pictured them leaving Bethlehem, traveling sort of northeast-ish to get to the region of Gilgal and the crossing where Israel had come over in the first place. And if they did that they would have had to stare down something. They would have had to stare down a monument that had been put in place when Joshua brought the whole nation over the Jordan in the first place. Remember the priests were standing in the middle of the river and God said you go get one man from every tribe, pick up a boulder and put it in the place where you stay tonight near Gilgal, make this monument. And what was the purpose of the monument? I'll show you. Joshua 4, let's remind ourselves,

I just wonder if they had to go to the place where they saw the stones which were a monument to the faithfulness of God. The faithfulness of God to bring them into the land, to give them this great land. And if they walked by that and said no we're gonna keep going, once they got in the middle of the river if it was low enough for them to cross they may have had to face another monument. Remember Joshua himself took 12 stones and made his monument in the middle of the Jordan River. But they passed by that as well and they kept going. It's a real sad thing. Why did they leave now? Why did they leave at this point? Quite simply, Moab had something to offer them that Judah did not have. Bread. It was the one thing that Naomi and or Elimelech could not live without. They may have been able to fight off enemies, they may have been able to do all kinds of things, but to them this was the one thing that they couldn't live without. Have you ever face down, one thing that caused you to be very dissatisfied with your life. One thing that you felt like you could not live without. One thing that may have tempted you to create distance from God. One thing that may have tempted you to go to Moab, may have tempted you to leave all kinds of things behind. I think we can all relate to that, either right now or at some point in our life. And when we become dissatisfied with our life and that one thing gets so big, can anybody get in our face and say, what, look at what you've been given. Look at the blessings that you do have. Look at your heritage. Go back and think about what God has done for you. That's tough for somebody to tell us that because we've gotten pretty focused, haven't we? We get focused on that one thing. So this lesson helps us really kind of look at the woman in the mirror and ask the question, is there one thing that has caused me to become so dissatisfied? Well, Elimelech chose to leave like everyone else in his culture. And you know what? It worked. There was bread in Moab when he got there. His belly was full, but do you know what he didn't have? He found no permanent rest. He did not have rest. He solved that one thing, but there was no rest. So as you begin your study this week, you're gonna find their trouble really has no boundaries. You know, one thing about Ruth, I hear women say a lot, oh, I love the book of Ruth. Do you remember we have to trudge through a few weeks of some really yucky stuff to get to the good stuff? So hang in there, it's coming. But it's not gonna get any better next week either. We've really gotta make our way through the bad news before we get to the good news. Your Bible study is a four-day-a-week Bible study. You can do it in four days. Some of you are a little overachievers, and you just spend Saturday afternoon, you go through the whole thing, and that's okay. There's no right, there's no wrong. Then there's also a page every week of questions for thought and discussion, and your small group leader will probably focus on those a little bit in your group. You're gonna discover that we're gonna write out the whole book of Ruth every day. You will have assignments to write it out. We've done this often. It really helps us to slow down, to write every single word, to process it. So if you wanna get a pretty journal or just use a plain old notebook, you're gonna want to have that. And as we finish up, I just wanna say two things. Just wanna draw our attention to two things, and one is this aspect that we've been talking about. To ask the question, have I experienced a famine in my life, a lack of something, or a need for something, a great difficulty. I like the word difficulty rather. I mean, I like the word famine, it gives us a picture, but I like the word difficulty. Have I experienced a great difficulty that is threatening to drive a wedge between me and the Lord? Because that's what's happening in this story, a wedge which has created distance from this family and their God. Our choices that we make in our famines, our choices that we make in our difficulties affect more than just us. We can draw other people close to the Lord by the choices that we make as they notice us persevering in faith, wanting to see God's faithfulness in our life. Or people can become distanced from the Lord as they see us accept that wedge and distance ourselves from God out of our disappointment for what has happened in our life. And I don't say that to put a heavy pressure on us, like, oh, people are watching. But you know, it's just life, it is. In the same way that people would say to Elimelech, hello, Mr. God is king, everybody knew that he belonged to the Lord by greeting him. People know you belong to the Lord. They don't say, hello, Mrs. Christian, how are you today? But they do. They know what you confess with your lips. And so it's an important thing to ask once in a while, does what I do match up with what I say? And so I wanna inspire us. Yes, we want to come to the Lord. We want to press in to see his faithfulness in the times of difficulty. Yes, we need a little bit of help. We need a little bit of prayer. We need a little bit of support. Look around, we've got all that we need, right? Last thing that I wanna share is, like I said, this story doesn't sound very romantic yet, but when it does get to turn to romance here in a few more weeks, what is it that's gonna give us the right to take this sweet little story and claim that it means anything more than Lord of the Rings or Cinderella? It is because the Bible is the unfolding story of God's redemption. And everything is given to us to help us understand that. And this story, like I said, we will find ways through the lives of these real people to help us celebrate the gospel, understand the gospel, connect with the gospel, because it's dramatic. And so I'm looking forward to that. I am looking forward to seeing Jesus reaching out to me and me responding through the pages that we're going to study. Our greatest need is to live in the gospel, isn't it? Father, thank you for this book. We look forward to this. Lord, this first issue that we have uncovered is relatable to all of us, what we do when we face difficulties. And so, Lord, I ask that you would help us to be women who would press into you, who would seek out God's faithfulness in our famines, Lord, that we would not be women who would turn the other direction, who would create distance from you. Lord, you know that we're weak, so I ask for your help for everyone in this room, everyone who is listening. Would you help us in this, Lord? Give us the spiritual energy that we need to hold fast and to trust and know that in all the things that happen to us, Lord God, you want to show yourself faithful. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.