Intro

Hey, good morning, my name’s Conrad, I’m one of the pastors here at Surrey Christian Life Assembly. Thanks so much for inviting me, inviting us, into your home this morning.

You know, over the past several weeks my wife and I have been revisiting one of my favourite stories. Stephen King’s The Stand. Now, I’ve never read the book, but I loved the 1994 miniseries. I own it on both DVD and BluRay. And so, when a NEW adaptation of it was announced I couldn’t want to see what modern special effects and sensibilites would do to the story. I was excited to revisit characters I loved with a new coat of paint, and maybe a tad less cheese. Now, I don’t want this to become a TV review, but suffice it to say that the more I watched the new one, the most I loved the old one. And as I was reading through Ruth to prepare for this week’s message, this week’s passage kept reminding me of a particular scene from that old miniseries. Here’s a clip.

[[[ STAND CLIP ]]]

I’m just gonna let that thought linger while we pray.

Prayer

Breakdown

Let’s start here in verses 6 & 7:

6 Then Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had blessed his people in Judah by giving them good crops again. So Naomi and her daughters-in-law got ready to leave Moab to return to her homeland. 7 With her two daughters-in-law she set out from the place where she had been living, and they took the road that would lead them back to Judah.

The Hebrew word that is here translated as “RETURN” appears 12 times in Chapter 1 alone. This story, the story of Ruth, is a redemption story. It’s a salvation story. God is setting right what once went wrong. Here we have Naomi, at the end of her rope, looking for some way out. So far she has chosen to stay in rebellion. Outside of God’s promise. Why because she and her husband decided that they didn’t like the way God’s plan was unfolding. It wasn’t comfortable. It was hard. it was rough. They thought it should be easy. And when it wasn’t easy they stopped trusting God and started trusting themselves. It took Naomi losing everything before she finally relented and made the choice to come in out of the cold. The choice to return to the Promised Land. To return to the protection and provision of Yahweh. 

The truly amazing part of this is that Naomi’s choice to finally submit her life to the authority of the one true Lord would ultimately lead to an opportunity for each of us to also submit our lives to the one true Lord. I think George Lucas has an observation to make about this.

[[[ IT RHYMES ]]]

It rhymes with an echo of bitter satire. Here is a woman, blessed with so much. But her and he husband leave the Promised Land of God because of a famine looking for a better opportunity elsewhere. Then Naomi, this woman with much, loses everything and seeks a better opportunity where? Where she came from to begin with!

[[[ IRONING ]]]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. God’s promise is not for a comfy-cozy life aborad this terrestrial sphere. God’s promise an eternal one. For peace. For life. For healing. For wholness. Chasing greener grass is like chasing the wind. You’ll never catch it, and you’ll spend your whole life disappointed by your failure. This is why God calls us to be content in all circumstances. Now I didn’t say content WITH all circumstances, I said content IN all circumstances. Can I get an ‘amen’?

Picking up in verse 8

8 But on the way, Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back to your mothers’ homes. And may the Lord reward you for your kindness to your husbands and to me. 9 May the Lord bless you with the security of another marriage.” Then she kissed them good-bye, and they all broke down and wept.

“Go back to your mothers’ homes”. Naomi doesn’t want these women – still likely in their early 20s – to take part in this perilous journey. A journey which will put Naomi at the mercy of her old community. She will be a beggar, hoping to survivie on the charity of others. Naomi looks at these two loyal women and sees only two possiblities for them. 

1. They will need to work to provide for Naomi. They will throw away their lives in service of her. To honour the memory of her dead sons. Naomi cares about these women and wants better for them than that. They are still young and can be remarried. They shouldn’t give up their lives in service of her… or…
2. Maybe worse than that… Naomi – as the matriarch of the family – would be responsible to take care of these women. Two more mouths to feed. Two more beds to find. This could create an incredible burden for her.

That phrase stands out because in the ancient near east we would have expected Naomi to say “go back to your father’s house. But she is choosing instead to highlight the passage from her as their mother back to their birth mothers. Naomi’s time in their lives has run its course. This chapter is ready to come to a close. So Naomi bids them leave and kisses them goodbye for what she expects to be the final time. But they refuse. In verse 10 we read…

10 “No,” they said. “We want to go with you to your people.”

The loyalty on display here is inspiring. But also foolish. No matter how you slice it, there is an incredibly high risk and a vanishingly small chance of reward. Naomi cares deeply about her soon-to-be former daughters in law. Too deeply to allow them to make such a foolish decision. So Naomi makes her case. Starting in verse 11:

11 But Naomi replied, “Why should you go on with me? Can I still give birth to other sons who could grow up to be your husbands? 12 No, my daughters, return to your parents’ homes, for I am too old to marry again. And even if it were possible, and I were to get married tonight and bear sons, then what? 13 Would you wait for them to grow up and refuse to marry someone else? No, of course not, my daughters! Things are far more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord himself has raised his fist against me.”

Naomi paints an imporbable case here. That she would get married this very evening, consummated that marriage, become pregnant and in nine months and give birth to two babies. Then the babies grow up, likely raised by Naomi, Orpah, and Ruth together – weird – then eventually those babies turn into men and are married to the two women. Now, if we assume the girls were married between 14–19 – as was customary for the time – then lived with their husbands 10 years that would put them at 24–29 right now.

[[[ THINKING MEME ]]]

Then wait 9 months for the birth. Then another 13 years for the boys to grow to marriage age then….

[[[ STOP THINKING MEME ]]]

The two woman, now in their late–30s to early–40s would be marrying 13-year-old “men”.

This is an absurd proposition on its face. But you can practically hear the grief Naomi is experiencing in these words. “No, my daughters”. “No, my daughters”. She loves these girls deeply. They are all that remain of a once vibrant and loving family. And Naomi is turning them away. But this is not a spur-of-the-moment decision by Naomi. She takes the girls with her, and it’s not until they are – as verse 8 says – on the way that Naomi executs her plan.

I suspect she is far enough away that she feels committed, and far enough away that the true gravity of the journey is starting to settle in on Orpah and Ruth, but still close enough, that they could turn back and return home before dark. Naomi has planned to use the danger and the disttance to drive home the foolishness of the trek. She, like a great salesman, isn’t just whipping out the contract as soon as the customer comes in the door, rather, she lining up the perfect pitch. She wants to close this sale.

[[[ BUT WAIT ]]]

That’s right, she’s not done yet. She has one final trick up her sleeve to seal the deal. She says, “Things are far more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord himself has raised his fist against me.” Naomi believes that God is visiting his wrath upon her. She is proposing the idea that God is causing this misfortune to fall upon her and that any calamity that comes her way will durely also befall Orpah and Ruth is they stay in her company.

It’s not difficult to see the parallels with how Naomi sees herself and the Biblical account of Jonah. Jonah was a man who was given a directive by God to go an warn the city of Ninevah. Jonah’s response was:

[[[ I DON’T THINK SO ]]]

But God refused to take ‘no’ for an answer. A specific incident saw Jonah securing passage on a ship headed AWAY from Ninevah and suddenly the ship is surrounded by a monstrous storm. Eventually Jonah comes clean and says that the storm is God’s doing. If they toss him overboard everything will be alright.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, eventually they toss him overboard and everything is okay. Jonah even ends up being swallowed whole by a whale that spits him out up the coast from Ninevah. Anyway… suffice it to say that God did indeed bring calamity into Jonah’s life. But why?

[[[ WHY WAS THAT DONE? ]]]

To bring Jonah back into the will of God. Now we rarely see such dramatic stories of God utter refusal to allow someone to break ranks and forge ahead with their own plan. This is what we see with Ruth. She chose to forge her own plan, and God allowed that.

But Conrad, you handsome and well-read expositor, I hear you ask, how does that explain what’s happening to Naomi right now? Well, I’m glad you asked. We can see clearly that Naomi is onto something, can’t we? Since the events of Jonah have yet to happen in history, Naomi is not herself drawing a comparison, that’s just something I noticed. Nonetheless, she is onto something here. She thinks that God is pouring out his wrath on her, but she doesn’t take the time to consider why that might be.

Maybe you find yourself identifying with Naomi. Maybe you are experiencing a valley, a rut, a calamity, a misfortune, or maybe, like Naomi all of the above. There could be any number of reasons. If you listen to some people…

[[[ JOEL OSTEEN ]]]

You might think that because you haven’t grabbed a hold of the promises of God. That it’s your fauth for or lack thereof that is holding you back. That God wants you to be prosperous and happy. This is – to be perfectly blunt – a lie. But it’s so close to the truth that it’s easy to be sucked in by it. God doesn’t care if you are “prosperous”, he wants you to “fruitful”. But it is not money He is concerned with, it’s the fruit of the Spirit. Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-control. God doesn’t want you to be “happy”, He wants you to be “content”. 

I promise you, when I sat in that hospital room and watched my soon-to-be Mother-In-Law take her last breath just weeks before her daughter’s wedding and at the age of just 50. I was not happy. There was no happiness to be found on that day, or in the days that followed. But I was content. Knowing that her salvation was secure and that I would see her again. Knowing that Jesus wept with me and walked with me through it.

Maybe God is – as Naomi thought – bringing calamity into your life. Maybe he is doing that as a punishment for something you’ve done, as a way to bring correction. Maybe he’s doing that to remove something good from your life that had become an idol. Maybe he’s doing that to prepare you to receive something even better. Or maybe – as was the actual case with Naomi – He has simply withdrawl His protection at your request. Maybe you have made choices that led to the outcome you are experiencing. Let’s not forget, after all, that we are free agents who can choose for ourselves what to do with our days. 

Anyway, I say all of that to say this: whatever you are or whatever you are doing, God can give you contentment, He can give you fruitfulness. On the highest peak or in the lowest valley. It’s like world-renouned theologians, the Backstreet Boys, said in 1997,

I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, what you did, as long as you love me

Which brings us back to Naomi. A broken woman. A woman who has abandoned her God, and now found herself in a pitiful situation. A woman whose love for God is no flame, but maybe a dying ember. She clearly believes he is powerful, and in control. She clearly believes he can bless – as she prayed for Orpah and Ruth – and that He can curse – as she has noted in her own life. But only now that she has been totally emptied out, her cupboards laid bare, is she finally returning to the Him.

Not wanting her daughters-in-law to make the same mistake she did, she tells them to go back to their families. To not leave their homeland. To stay with their people… AND THEIR GOD. Her advice to them is to avoid the situation she got into by abandoning Yahweh, the God of Israel and embracing the God of the Moabites by… abandoning Yahweh the God of Israel and embracing the God of the Moabites.

[[[ IRONING IS DELICIOUS (LONG) ]]]

Let’s see what they say to Naomi’s pitch. Starting in verse 14.

14 And again they wept together, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-bye. But Ruth clung tightly to Naomi. 15 “Look,” Naomi said to her, “your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. You should do the same.”

I love the inversion we see here. Naomi’s farewell kiss leads to crying. And then more crying leads to Orpah’s farewell kiss.

[[[ IT RHYMES ]]]

We look back on Orpah’s decision and shake our heads thinking about what could have been. We think it’s crazy that Ruth became an ancesor to Jesus Christ of Nazareth and Orpah became a footnote in history.

But think about how this would have appeared at the time! Her father-in-law, brother-in-law, and husband have all died. No one is available to provide for her. She has a dangerous journey to an uncertain future in front of her AND he mother-in-law is not only allowing, but ENCOURAGING her to go back. This decision is a sound, common-sense decision. It is both entirely ordinary and entirely expected. No one at the time would have faulted her for this. 

And what’s more? Naomi – an Israelite – has built her entire life in Moad on the idea that Yahweh has nothing to offer. There is nothing special in the Promised Land. There is no blessing to be had there. I know, and you know that this isn’t TRUE but it has been Naomi’s testimony for over a decade. Why would Orpah think anything different? And so orpah walks off out of the pages of history. We have no idea what ever became of her. 

But Ruth is a different story, isn’t she?

Something has compelled Ruth to stay with Naomi. Ruth clings to Naomi. This word means “hold fast”. Like one might cling to a [[[ lifeboat ]]], or a [[[ parachute ]]], or the [[[ top rope in the Royal Rumble ]]].

Ruth decision flies in the face of logic. it brings to memory the words of the apostle woudl eventually write in 1 Corinthians 1:18.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Unlike Orpah’s ordinary and expected response, Ruth’s is the opposite. It is extraordinary and unexpected! It’s like the old Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken;

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

And we shall indeed see over the coming verses how true this will end up being. Let’s wrap this up. Picking up in verse 16:

16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. 17 Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us!”

Ruth is not messing around here! She tells Naomi is no uncertain terms that she isn’t going anywhere. In fact, she goes from “wherever you go, I will go” to “wherever you die, I’ll die, and be buried!” in the span of just three sentences. Which might have you feeling like…

[[[ THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY ]]]

But here’s the thing. Ruth is overstating this in a way that makes her intentions clear. She is loyal to Naomi. This isn’t a flighty spur-of-the-moment declaration, this is an oath, swore in the name of Naomi’s God. Yahweh, by name is invited to strike her dead if she renegs on this committment. And what’s more? What she says here – YOUR PEOPLE WILL BE MY PEOPLE AND YOUR GOD WILL BE MY GOD – is evocative of the covenant God made with Abraham back in Genesis 17:7–8.

And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8 And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”

Ruth has made a lifelong committment to Naomi, to Israel, the Israelite people, to the Yahweh.

This is incredible when you think about it. Ruth has nothing more than Naomi does. Ruth has lost everything in the same way that Naomi has. But Ruth has many more years ahead of her than Naomi does. Ruth is actually giving up MORE than Naomi is by going to Canaan. Ruth is giving up her people. Her home. Her god. She is moving to a place where the people don’t like her kind. The odds are not stacked in her favour, and so she goes from “I will follow” to “God strike me dead” in this one short speech to leave no room for doubt in Naomi’s mind. Ruth understands the road ahead. She knows what’s up.

18 When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she said nothing more.

I don’t know about you, but I wish I could have that kind of certianty. Naomi could see that she had been cleaned out. Ready to be filled up with some new thing. Let’s take a look at that clip from the beginning again, but with the context of this morning’s passage in mind.

[[[ STAND CLIP ]]]