Episode 2 of Rescue and Rest

Welcome to our Women's Bible Study on the Book of Ruth, which we have called Rescue and Rest. This is episode three, where we get to finish the final nine verses of chapter one. It's been a slow pace through chapter one, but buckle up, because next week we'll take all of chapter two in one pace. So we know that God is in the business of transforming ashes to beauty. We see that Naomi is in this transition process, and one essential step that she took was toward repentance. Remember, we said that word basically means to reverse a previous decision, and so she turned again, once again, to the Lord. Those words that we loved from last week, she set out from the place where she was. That was her determination. And so we're going to pick up our story this week with these three ladies on the road from Moab to Bethlehem. It would have been about a week-long journey for them, up and down an elevation of about 2,000 feet, which has some exhaustion to it. Once again, crossing the Jordan River. It would have been hot, maybe dry, certainly dangerous, something that women did not normally do alone. And somewhere along the way, Naomi stops. She stops this road trip, and she looks at the girls, and she says, You need to go home. You need to go back. You need to hit the reset button on your lives and return again. And then her monologue sort of digressed, and she made it all about herself and how terrible her life was, and all that sort of thing. And so that's where we're going to pick it up, is right where we left off in the middle of verse 13, Ruth chapter 1. In the middle of verse 13, to remind us that Naomi was saying on the road, It is exceedingly bitter for me, for your sake, that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me. Verse 14. And then they lifted up their voices and wept again. This is the second time on the road trip that they just stop, and they just cry together. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law. She was convinced, and she reversed her direction, and she went back to Moab. But Ruth clung to her, and she said, this is Naomi here, Naomi said, See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Return after your sister-in-law. But Ruth said,

So we're going to pause there after reading those verses that we call the Song of Ruth. We're going to break them down further in just a minute, but I want to spend a little time on the contrast between these two girls and the choices that they made on the road. We have two daughter-in-laws with two completely different decisions. Orpah decided to return to the people, the culture, and the gods of Moab. Ruth, on the other hand, made a determination that she was going to follow after Naomi and somehow to attain to an involvement with the people and the culture and the gods of Israel. Now, remember last week I sort of speculated that these girls were following Naomi, in part at least, because there was some amount of her spiritual foundation that was shining through in her determination to go back. And remember I shared with you that it's my observation in life that when prodigals are coming back to the Lord, they often have a little tribe following them that are curious about whatever spiritual thing is going on in their life. And sometimes people who are following, sometimes they fall away quickly. Sometimes they fall away over time, but sometimes they stick with it all the way. They follow all the way to Jesus and find him themselves. And in our study guide, we talked about the fact that what we're seeing here on the road with these two different choices has some real similarities to that parable that Jesus told about the farmer casting the seed into the different sorts of soil. And so I'm going to put that passage from Mark up on the screen to remind us what we talked about. I used the passage from Mark verses 3 through 8, and it says this,

And I think that this parable that Jesus told so that the people would be informed of what the kingdom of God is like is something we see playing out with the two daughter-in-laws right here. We can put them into a bucket of which type of seed they are similar to. Orpah seemed as though she was interested in the people and the culture and the gods of Israel. She sprang up quickly and she followed, but it only took a little bit of heat of the road and a little bit of suggestion from mother-in-law to go back. And she goes, yeah, that's a good idea. I will go ahead and do that. And it reminds us of something, and this is one thing that Jesus, I think, wanted us to understand in this parable. It reminds us that the beginning of the matter does not determine the outcome. Some people spring up quickly, but they do not finish well. And, of course, we are here in a Bible study. We want to finish well. We want to bear fruit. Ruth, on the other hand, persevered through the heat of the sun, the dry conditions, the river, the climb, because she was determined to be all in. She had made a determination to be all in. Her theme song could have been, I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back. Right? So that could have been her theme, although the words, her lyrics of her song were different. She said, stop it. Do not urge me to leave you anymore. I'm not going to go back. This is of no use. You cannot convince me to go back. She said, where you go, of course, she's talking to Naomi, where you go, that's where I'm going to go. I'm choosing a completely new path in life. Where you lodge, that's where I'm going to lodge. I understand I'm going to have an entirely new existence. Your people are going to be my people. I'm going to have, as we say, new peeps in my life, and I'm good with that. I'm making this choice. This is my determination. She said, and your God will be my God. I'm following you. I like you a lot. You're great. But I'm following you because I want your God to be my God. And where you die, that's where I'm going to die. If it's on this road, we're going to die and be buried on this road. If it's back in the land of Judah, that is where I'm going to be buried. And then as a finale, in verse 17, she dared to speak the proper name of Jehovah that Naomi had spoken to the girls earlier. And she says, It is a beautiful song. We find no bitterness here. We find no victimhood, only a determination on her part for the new direction of her life. She doesn't have all the information, and she knows it. She isn't applying her emotions, although they might be talking to her. She is not applying them right now. And she might not have understood at that point all of the theology of this God that she was going after. But there's one thing that we see. song that was Ruth's determination and what she was saying is, I am dead to Moab and the gods of Moab. There is nothing for me in Moab anymore. So that's why she said to Naomi, so just stop it. Just stop telling me to go back. There is nothing for me there anymore. Now as Luke recorded this same parable of the farmer of the sower, he added a different emphasis at the end that I want to show you, Luke 8, 15. And Jesus summarized and he says, as for that, he's talking about the seed, as for the seed in the good soil, they are those who hearing the word hold fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience. Really we want to be like Ruth in this way. We want to be in the good soil. We want to have, we want to hold fast with a good heart and bear fruit with patient endurance. So in verse 18, back to Ruth again, Ruth chapter 1 verse 18, when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more. So the two of them 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? Of course, the women had known her from a decade previous. She was likely quite altered. First of all, 10 years, plus that changes a person. But it was the, that what had happened in her life probably took a toll on her face, probably took a toll on her whole body. And they were asking, is this Naomi? I was thinking, I want to tell you a funny story. So last year, Paul and I took our trailer and we went to visit our parents and we were near my mother and we camped in this beautiful little city campground in Mountain Lake, Minnesota, only about eight miles then to visit my mom. It's a great place. There's a lake, there was a playground, it's a park. It was just what a bargain, $20 a night, fantastic. And so I'm out taking a walk and of course it was in the middle of COVID and people, you know, last July, we weren't sure if we were supposed to talk to each other or, you know, what are you supposed to do? And so I'm in the park and kind of taking some pictures and these city workers are there emptying the garbage cans, doing something. And when I'm in the Midwest, I channel Midwest, like I start small talk. And so I'm, you know, I'm just talking to him, I'm like, my grandkids would love this park and I'm just, you know, whatever. And this guy stops and he starts talking to me and we have this great conversation. And then all of a sudden, we kind of look at each other and we go, we realized we sang in choir together 40 years ago. And he's like, he's like, are you Sue? I'm like, are you Calvin? It was embarrassing for both of us because, but I thought of that when they go, are you Naomi? Well, that happens. Anyway, in contrast to Ruth's healthy attitude here and determination, Naomi begins to just tell everyone how hard her life has been. Look at verse 20. She says to them, no, no, no, no, no, do not call me pleasant. Don't call me Naomi. I am nothing but pleasant. Call me Mara, which means bitter. For the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full and the Lord brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty brought calamity upon me. All right. So we need to look at this because this is a temptation. Look at her words. God has dealt bitterly with me. God has emptied me when I was full. God has brought calamity upon me. Okay. So she is placing the blame for her circumstances squarely on the Lord while he, on the other hand, is busy using her circumstances to rescue her, which of course she can't see in the moment. And that isn't that very often in our lives that we cannot see through our circumstances what the Lord is intending to do. And so we can get a temptation like this to a bad attitude, what we call bitterness here. And you know, life, we don't have to be like Naomi. We don't have to be a prodigal. We don't have to distance ourselves from the Lord. We can stay really close to the Lord and the trials and the tragedies and the trouble of life will come upon us anyway. Okay. And so we can be tempted, like we said last week, to be the girl that says, I never thought 50 was going to be like this. Or I never, I never expected to be a divorced woman. I never planned for one of my kids to have a substance abuse problem. I didn't ever think through having chronic pain. I certainly didn't think about cancer. Like all those things happen in our lives regardless, even if we're close to the Lord. Those are the circumstances that can make our life contempt us toward a bad attitude. So what I thought we should do, since this is what we see in Naomi, I thought we should make a little short list of what we can do now to prepare for that event. You've probably heard this phrase, I'll put it up on the screen for you. We may not get to choose our circumstances, but we do get to choose our attitude. And that is a truth in life. We can't always choose our circumstances, but we can always choose our attitude. So three points. The first point about our attitude is number one, it's okay to be honest. Can I clarify that? It's okay to be honest with God. Naomi was certainly honest here. She said, don't call me Naomi, call me Mara. She was taking her honesty and sort of just like splattering it all over the place. Which isn't helpful. I put in our study guide that little quote by Elizabeth Elliot, I hope you like it. She said, do not be afraid to tell God exactly how you feel. He already knows your thoughts anyway, but don't tell the whole world. God can take it when others can't. So we are reminded when we are tempted toward a bad attitude, it's okay. Tell the Lord about it. He knows anyway, but you probably should be sparing the people closest to you. Number two, be careful not to revise your history. And what I mean by that is look back and see things differently than what they truly were. Did you catch the fact that she said, I went away full? Well now, is that the way you studied this lesson? Didn't you remember that they had a need of something? They had a lack. They actually went to Moab to be full. They thought that they were empty. And now she says, I went away full, but God has brought me back empty. She revised her history and that just isn't the way things went. It reminds me of the children of Israel in the wilderness when things, they were facing some troubles and they said, you know, if we were just back in Egypt where we sat around these big pots of meat. I remember reading that and we walk back in our mind and we're like, I don't remember the pots of meat part in the story when they were in slavery in Egypt. I remember a lot of bricks without straw, but I don't remember this feasting every day. So we're tempted toward that. We go back and think it was better when we were in a hard place. And the last point for us is God will fulfill his purpose for you. God was in the business right here of fulfilling his purpose for Naomi while she was saying the Almighty has brought calamity upon me. The Almighty, God has brought calamity upon me. That word calamity means to make good for nothing, to turn into garbage. Okay. So she's saying God has made garbage out of my life. Now some of our garbage we recycle, you know about recycling and we take something that's good for nothing in our home. We send it off paper, plastics. We send it off to be recycled and it turns into something useful once again. And there are, there's a first cousin to recycling, which is redeeming. And it's the same thing. You take something that has no use and you can turn it into something that is useful. Like in Oregon, we have pop cans with a 10 cent redemption value. An empty pop can is pretty useless to you, but you can redeem it for 10 cents, which is always useful. Of course, you'd expand that a hundredfold, and then you have something that's even more useful. But God is in the business, this reminds us, of turning what is useless and turning it into something useful. He has a purpose for us of usefulness. And so I want to remind us of one of my favorite Psalms, 138, verse 8, that says, The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me. The psalmist had an assurance of this. The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me. Your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever, so do not forsake the work of your hands. Do you see the difference in attitude there? You almost get this idea that the psalmist isn't sure that's what's playing out, but he knows it up here. He says, God will fulfill his purpose. So God, would you fulfill your purpose? I love it. New Testament passage, Romans 8, 28. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. Can we say all of our circumstances are working for those who are called according to his purpose? God has a purpose, and we need to hold on to that reminder. God is doing this in Naomi's life. So we get to verse 22, and it is a summary. It says, So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab, and they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. They made it all the way back, that week-long dangerous journey, and they arrived at Bethlehem at the time of the barley harvest. And there are two important things that we should look at that timing, that specific timing. One, the first is obvious. You can't have a harvest in the midst of a famine. If there's a famine, there's no harvest. So it reminds us again that the famine is over, and now there is a harvest. God has brought bread into the house of bread. God is allowing this place to live up to its purpose. God is fulfilling the purpose for this location. Same thing is true in our lives. When the famine is over, we have an opportunity to begin to fulfill the purpose for which God has created us. Now, the second thought about the barley harvest isn't quite as obvious to us, but it's this. As we read in the Old Testament, the instructions for the different feasts and festivals that Israel was to have, we learn that Passover is at the time of the barley harvest. So they come to Jerusalem at the time of the, or Jerusalem, excuse me, Bethlehem, at the time of the barley harvest. And that means it's time for Passover. It might be for us. My sweet little daughter-in-law planted a bunch of bulbs for me last fall. So we might say, when the daffodils bloom, it's time for Resurrection Sunday. It's a sign. They go together. Daffodils and Easter go together. So now Passover meant nothing to Ruth yet, okay? But it should have meant something to Naomi. I wonder how many Passovers they may have celebrated as a family in Moab. Maybe zero. But as she's coming into Bethlehem, and it's time for Passover, God is meeting her with a reminder of his faithfulness to the nation at a different time. And what did they need to do during Passover but simply shelter and rest? When they were in great need, they just sheltered under the blood of the Lamb, and they were at rest. So God is meeting Naomi while she is still bitter in her emotions. God is meeting her with this reminder, this celebration of rest. God does that for us. He brings this. He's so patient, though. I bet she didn't get it right there. It's okay. He's going to come around again with more. So that's where we're going to leave the women for this week. Naomi was where she belonged. Here's the question. Was Ruth where she belonged? Actually, the law of God was against her at this moment. She did not belong with the people of God. Did you catch that she's described in that last verse as Ruth the Moabite? She's going to be called that a lot in this book. And it's a reminder, she's not of Israel. She doesn't belong. She has a big problem. She has a Deuteronomy chapter 23 problem that says, no Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord. That's a problem. So Ruth did not belong in the presence of the covenant people or of the covenant God. And you know what? We don't belong. We do not belong in the presence of God. She's called Ruth the Moabite. You might as well call me Sue the sinner. Okay? I clearly do not belong in the presence of God. But this is the great theme of God's unfolding story of redemption, his story of rescue, rescue for sinners. Okay? God makes a way for people like you and me who do not belong in his presence because we have this Moabite blood, this sinner DNA. He makes a way for us to become part. So we're going to finish by, I put Ephesians chapter 2 verse 12 up on the screen and it highlights just how similar we are to Ruth in our, this challenge with sin we have. So think about both us and Ruth as we read this together. Remember, Paul says, that you were at one time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But then the next verse, but now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off, who were strangers, who were alienated, who did not belong, have been brought near by what the blood of Christ. Jesus gives us what we need in order for us to belong. Ruth was alienated, stranger, without hope. She is about to be touched by God's rescue, which will lead to her rest. We are strangers, alienated, we do not belong, we're without hope. God has made a supernatural way in order for us to be redeemed and to find rest. No wonder Jesus says, come to me, I will give you rest. Come to me, I will make the way, I will give you rest. And so here we are closing this up on Good Friday today, which is such a great reminder for us of this transformation, beauty for ashes. Instead of being separated, we become united. Instead of being strangers, we become a family. And instead of having no hope, God gives us a living hope. This is what we're going to continue on in our study of Ruth. We're going to see the gospel and appreciate the gospel and celebrate the gospel as we look at how God guided this woman. Lord, I thank you today of all days, Lord God, that you, by your blood, have purchased us from sin. You have bought us, Lord, to be in your family. Lord, I have a deep sense that I naturally do not belong in your presence. Lord, we know that, we feel that, that we are naturally separated from you. But Lord, I also have a deep sense that because of what you have done, your arms are open. And now, because of the forgiveness of sins, and because we believe in you for the forgiveness, we can approach you. We can be in your family. And Lord, we thank you for this living hope that we have, Lord God. We celebrate today. We celebrate in the story. We celebrate in the Good Friday narrative, Lord. The living hope that you give us. We thank you for this time together. Pray for my sisters as they discuss this passage. And we look forward to the next passages. In Jesus' name, amen.