Ruth chapter one. In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land and a man of Bethlehem and Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab. He and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was a limelight and the name of his wife, Naomi and the names of his two sons were Milan and Killian. They were Aphrodite or fight. Sorry. from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there, but Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These two Moabite wives, they took Moabite wives, and the names of one was Orpah, and the name of the other was Ruth. They lived there about 10 years, and both Milan and Kilian died, so that the women were left without her two sons and her husband. Then she arose with her daughter-in-laws to return to the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. So she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. But Naomi said to her two daughter-in-laws, go, return each of you to her mother's house. May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grants you that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband. Then she kissed them and she left them. They lifted their voices and wept. And they said to her, no, we will return with you to your people. But Naomi said, turn back, my daughters. Why will you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters. Go your way. for I am too old to have a husband. And if I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, would you therefore wait till they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me. Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. And she said, see, your sister-in-law has gone. Back to her people, to her gods. Return after your sister-in-law. But Ruth said, do not urge me to leave you. or to return from following you. For where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. When you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts us, me from you." And 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? She said to them, do not call me Naomi. Call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me, and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?" 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. Amen, that's the word of the Lord. As you can tell, tonight we are beginning a new series that will be a short one, a four-week series in this great little book in the Old Testament called Ruth. And if you have your Bible, I'd encourage you to open it with me tonight to Ruth chapter one. Ruth is right in the front of your little, in the Bible, right behind Judges. So if you see Judges anywhere and you get right to the end of Judges, Ruth is right there in the midst of that. One book that I want to recommend to you if you'd like to read beyond just what you hear on Sunday evenings or check out some things elsewhere is this book by John Piper called A Sweet and Bitter Providence, Sex, Race, and the Sovereignty of God. This is his studies on the book of Ruth, and it's just an excellent book. book that I read over the Christmas break that really helped me as I developed this series. And if you're looking for some additional reading and want to pick up a good source to go along with that, I would deeply encourage that you get that book. We'll have it on our website and our bookstore as well, and a few other books that might be of help to you if you'd just like to read and study on your own as we go through this book. Well, you heard it there tonight as it was read. This book promises us something that I like a lot and a good story. I like a little drama, a little conflict. I don't know how this is gonna turn out. Actually, I do know how this is gonna turn out. If you've read Ruth, the whole book, you know how this is gonna turn out. I don't wanna spoil it tonight, but in hearing that first chapter, there's some things sitting under the layers that we don't know how this is gonna go. I love great stories because great stories, if they're well-written, well-told, can really teach us some deep truth. It's one of the reasons I think God uses narrative or stories so much in the Bible. I mean, it would be kind of boring just to get some propositions thrown out at you about, here's life under the sun, boom, boom, boom, here's 10 bullet points for you, figure these things out, get on with them and get on with your life. Ruth, on the other hand, is seeking to immerse us in a story. God wants us to feel the tension that Naomi felt. He wants us to wrestle with what did Ruth deal with? He wants us to see, not just to get bullet points, but he wants us to struggle through how is God at work in our best days and how is God at work in our very worst days? Ruth is a book full of story that takes us from death to deliverance. We see at the beginning here of this story, as it was read, a pretty sad situation. There's death all over the pages of Ruth chapter one. It really isn't a pretty picture. As we think about looking at our world, if you study or see the media lately, you'll notice that this question often comes up in the midst of calamity and hardship. The question is, where is God? When the Twin Towers in New York City fell on September 11th, 2001, the Pentagon was hit and a plane in Pennsylvania went down as well. There was a lot, I think even a nationwide sense of that question of where was God when that happened? When that thing went down, was he out to lunch? Was he playing golf? Where was God? How could a God who's so great and powerful let something so tragic, horrific, awful, a calamity of national scale happen in our midst? Where was he? Or a few years ago at Christmas, when a massive earthquake happened just off the Indian Ocean and this huge tsunami killed thousands. Again, the question got raised by the media and the pundits. God, where were you? What were you doing? What happened? This last summer even, actually early spring, in a small, well, relatively small city in southern Missouri, similar in size to Santa Rosa actually, a massive tornado wiped out everything in Joplin. Just devastated it. And again, the questions got asked. God, where were you? What's going on? My guess is, that although we might not be experiencing national, huge calamity like that on a congregational level, maybe for some of you, things have hit rough times. And there is a personal sense of calamity going on in your life right now and suffering. And that very same question is just as relevant to your heart and life as it is to when a tsunami hits. the Indian Ocean, or an earthquake. You say, God, where were you? How do I take the suffering of my life, the calamity that's befallen me, and the hardship that I'm in the midst of, how do I reconcile that with the thought that you're a loving, good God? I mean, where is happiness, where is joy? All I've got is wreckage. All I've got is suffering. All I've got is hardship. God, where are you? Tonight, this chapter in Ruth, it takes us to a couple perspectives that we can have about that question and really about our sufferings and our calamities. Through the writing of this chapter, There's really a couple different layers at it. For one, the author of Ruth, probably written around David's day, this book seems to give evidence that it was written after David became king, and in a way is a book that helps identify his kingship and even his family lineage. That's just a little spoiler, you know, teaser for the end of the book. I won't get too far down it. but seemed to be written around David's day to explain and to answer the question of why do we need a king? Where did our king come from? And at the outset, the writer of this book, on one layer, he doesn't interject himself too much. He just records facts. He's like a journalist, just saying, here's what went down. Here's how things went with Naomi and Ruth, and we'll meet a guy named Boaz next week, and what happened in their life. But underneath the surface of that, there's another editor in this. It's God's word. And God is seeking to point us to himself and to answer a question that you and I have in the back of our heads. God, where are you? What are you doing in our difficult circumstances? What are you doing in the midst of our calamity? How are you answering our hardship? You notice in this book, just in the first three verses there, this chapter, you see the stage being set. In the days when the judges ruled. This is referring back to the previous book in our Bible, the book of Judges. It's setting the context for us in the midst of a time when things weren't great nationally for Israel. Moses had led them through the wilderness. God had saved and redeemed his people out of Egypt, split the Red Sea, brought them through, brought them into the wilderness, gave them his law, provided daily for them bread and meat, carried them through, even in the midst of their rebellion, brought them to the Jordan River, split that, brought them into the land, You read in the book of Joshua, they conquered the land. God was faithful at working and keeping his promises through that. And they get to a period of steady establishment. Okay, we've got the land. Things seem to be settling down for us. It's a time of, oh, there's a little prosperity and a little peace, and yeah, there's some nagging things around, but things seem to be okay externally. But morally, internally, the time of the judges was really an awful time. In fact, the last verse in the book of Judges just sets the whole course for us. In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. I mean, if you wanted to do something in the day of the judges, you did it. You were the law to yourself. There was no king, there was no law, there was God's law, but I mean, is he really our king? It doesn't matter, we're doing things our way, we're living out how we want to. It was a deeply wicked time. And the people would sin, and God would say, all right, I'm bringing judgment on you. And he'd bring in a foreign nation, the Philistines or something like that, they'd conquer. They'd make slaves of the Israelite people. The people would realize, oh, we've sinned against God. Once again, they'd go and repent. God would send a judge, somebody like Gideon or Samson. That judge would redeem them, save them, and they'd go right back to their old ways again. Hey, we have no king. We're cool with ourselves. Let the party continue, let the sin increase. Cycles of that over and over and over again. So the book of Ruth is set in a time that's really not a righteous time period. It's a bad time period. And we find at the beginning of Ruth that a famine has hit the land. This is interesting. A famine has hit the land and we read about a man of Bethlehem. Now what's interesting about that is the word Bethlehem, the name Bethlehem means house of bread. In the house of bread, there's no bread. How ironic. A famine's hit the land. Our author doesn't tell us why. We can surmise and say, well, the sin was high. God was judging again. But we don't have a why on that. And we meet this man who decides to sojourn. to the country of Moab. The word sojourn there means to take a short visit. He's just trying to get a little relief, get his family out of some hardships. He's not gonna settle there, he's not gonna live long there. He's gonna pass through. He's gonna spend a night, a month, whatever it takes for this famine to break and for him to return home. He, his wife, and his two sons. And the name of the man was Elimelech. Here's another funny irony of this book. Elimelech, the name means God is my king. Here's a man of Israel living in a house of bread, Bethlehem, which has no bread, whose name means God is my king. And when famine hits, he decides God's not my king and takes his family and leaves. You see, God had told the people, this is the land I'm giving to you. I will care for you. I will provide for you. If you follow my law, if you obey me, if you trust me, it'll go good for you in the land. Things will be plentiful. It'll be all right. But if you sin and if you rebel against me, if you trample my word underfoot and my law underfoot, the opposite will happen. I'll bring some curses down upon you. Things won't go well. Famine will hit the land. Your prosperity will dry up. So a man whose name is God, my King, who lives in the house of bread that has no bread, decides God's not his King and takes his family and does what's right in his own eyes. The name of his wife, Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Malon and Chilion, and they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. That last verse there, verse three, just gives us the sense of where they live and the clan that they're a part of. And here's what they did. They went into the country of Moab, and all of a sudden it's shifted from sojourning now to remaining. The sojourn has not been so brief. They were just renting. They had a hotel room for a little while. And then they decided, you know, This extended stay place is nice, but maybe we should just hang out here a little bit longer. Let's rent a house. Let's get a place. And from verse 3 to the rest of this chapter, we see calamity hit their lives, hit Naomi's life, like never before. When the days of the judges, everyone is doing what's right in their own eyes. And Ruth chapter one has one strong message for us. When we see calamity, the message that's there for us is that the sovereign hand of God is working in our deepest sorrows for our greatest joy and his greatest glory. I want you to get that tonight from this chapter. I want you to see clearly that the sovereign hand of God is working in our deepest sorrows for our greatest joy and for his greatest glory. This tale is about to take a nosedive real quick. And the question's gonna come, why? Why did this happen? You're gonna sense Naomi asking, God, why have you done this? And on one level, from one perspective, which we'll see in just a minute, it's not gonna make any sense. But if we look through eyes of faith, we're gonna see that the sovereign hand of God is working, even in the midst of Naomi's calamity, even in the midst of our calamities, for our greatest joy and God's greatest good. You see, this chapter presents for us two perspectives on seeing calamity. The first perspective is the perspective of seeing on an earthly level. When we think about suffering and we think about calamity, hardship, we really have a choice to make. How am I gonna view this hardship in my life? How am I gonna see what has befallen me, what has happened to me? Am I gonna see it through earthly eyes or am I gonna see it through the eyes of faith? Am I gonna see it from the perspective of the ground level, Naomi's perspective, if you will, or am I gonna see this from the way God intends me to see it? Here's Naomi's perspective on this. Couple things here, this is instructive for us, this is how we see things. First of all, when calamity hits our lives and we see just through earthly eyes, we believe everything has been lost. It's the blackest day on the blackest month of the blackest year of our lives. It is the bottom of the barrel. When calamity hits our lives and we're seeing suffering through earthly eyes, it's just all bad. Look at verses three to five. Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died. Just matter of fact, that's how the author says it. He doesn't tell us why, he doesn't tell us anything, he just died. Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died and she was left with her two sons. Now that's a bad thing. This culture in this time was led by men. The men were the providers, the men were the leaders, the men were the ones to take care of their families. So much so that when a man died, if a widow didn't have sons and family to protect and care for her, it was a really dangerous situation. It was not a good deal for Naomi to lose her husband. Most women in that day were not educated. They didn't have jobs or careers outside of the home. What's she gonna do? Well, all is not lost. She still has her two boys. And verse four gives us a little hope. These, her two sons, took Moabite wives. Now again, Scripture never condemns this, but it's certainly not in favor of this for the Israelites. They weren't to take Canaanite wives, they weren't to take wives of pagan gods. Moab wasn't in the list, but the Hebrew here indicates the author is just kind of telling us that wouldn't have been his preference. Certainly not the best of situations, but her two sons take wives. The name of one is Orpah, the name of the other Ruth. And again, things have changed. They lived there 10 years. What once started as a sojourn, an extended stay, turned into renting a place, and now they've bought a place, and 10 years later, they're settled in there. They lived there 10 years. And verse five tells us both Mahalon and Chilion died. Here's where the calamity really hits. Naomi's lost her husband. 10 years later, She loses both her sons. So that the woman, Naomi, was left without her two sons and her husband. Imagine 15 years in a foreign land with people that don't trust you, don't like you. It wasn't like for us. moving from San Francisco to L.A., this is another city. For them to move, they became foreigners, outsiders, a different race. They were looked down upon. Things weren't gonna be easy for them, and even getting food. It's amazing that these two men were even able to marry a Moabite woman. So much so that everything, at the end of verse five, seems absolutely devastating to Naomi. In her mind, she's lost it all. Everything is gone. Her husband to provide for her, to care for her, to protect, he's gone. Her two sons, she thought maybe there's some hope there. They're gone. They married two wives that are foreign women. There's no children in the picture here. Everything is bad. Everything is not good. No kids, no posterity, no lineage, no help, no support. I'm a foreign woman in a foreign land with nobody protect or help me. Everything is black. Everything is dark. All is lost. For many of us, when calamity and suffering hits our lives, that's how we feel. I mean, when it's a bad day, it's a really bad day. Nothing is good. I mean, the sunshine couldn't be more annoying, couldn't be black enough. Most of us, when we have a bad day, it's raining, and so we just, you know, again, that's going on. How bad is this? To see things through Naomi's eyes, to see things from an earthly perspective, when all is lost, all is lost, there's no hope. It's really, really bad. When we see things on an earthly level, that's how we look at it. There is no glasses half empty, glasses half full. It's all empty, all bad, all lost. Some of you tonight might be suffering through a calamity of your heart, a calamity of your life. There are all sorts of suffering and trials that we endure, physical, emotional, economic. You might be suffering through something and you're sitting there going, God, why? All of this is black. All is lost. There is no hope. There is no goodness in this situation. There is no way out of this deal. We're done. I wanna tell you tonight, if that's your attitude and your heart, you're seeing through earthly eyes. All is bad for Naomi from that perspective. Another way that we reveal that we're seeing through earthly eyes, that our perspective is skewed, is that we distance ourselves from community. We distance ourselves from those that God has put around us to help us and support us. Look at how Naomi responds here. She's lost everything in her mind. She has nothing. And verse six says, then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab. For she had heard in the fields of Moab that God the Lord had visited his people and given them food. So Naomi gets a report. We'll come back to how she got that or where it came from. But she gets a report that hey, things back in Bethlehem aren't so bad anymore. There's food in the fields. You can go back, the house of bread is restocked. Good things are there. And so she makes a decision, I'm out of here. I can maybe hear her in her mind just calculating this. I'm out of this God-forsaken place with these God-forsaken people, and I'm just, we're getting home. I'm getting home. And so she rises up and leaves. She set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law. So it seems like Naomi has Ruth and Orpah in tow, they're ready to go with her. And they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. Now Moab, to get to Moab from Bethlehem, you've gotta do kind of a little bit of a hook geographically to get from Bethlehem up and over the Red Sea, cross the Jordan, then Moab is down on the eastern side of the Dead Sea. I should go this way with you so you can get it backwards. Moab is on the eastern side. So imagine there, there's Ruth, Naomi, Orpah, headed back up the road north, and then beginning to go west across the Jordan River. And they're having this discussion, and Naomi realizes, I've got these two young ladies with me. They're still eligible in age to be married. I'm an old woman going back to my hometown. How are we gonna provide for each other? How are we gonna care for each other? This is just a bad situation, even worse. And so Naomi turns, verse eight, and says to her two daughters-in-law, go, return each of you to her mother's house. May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you, in the house of her husband. So Naomi is gracious to her daughters-in-law. She sends them back with a blessing even. May God be gracious to you. May he take care of you and provide for you. Go back home. Go to your mother's house. Dwell there. May the Lord deal kindly with you as you've dealt with me and with your dead husbands. I mean, Naomi is full of grace here, just saying, God bless you guys, I love you, may God be with you, but go to your mother's house, go to your father's house. In fact, the very last words that she gives to them is, let the Lord grant you find rest so that you don't have to labor so hard, each of you in the house of her husband. Naomi's a little expectant here. Don't hang out with me, the old widow. Go home, get remarried, live your life. May it be blessed, may it be great. And yet what these two women want to do is astounding. Naomi kissed them and they lift up their voices and wept. They don't want to depart. They love this woman. They love what she means to them. She's a precious mother-in-law to them. And they say, they say in verse 10, no, we will return with you to your people. Faith, we're sticking with you, Naomi. Things aren't as bad as it seems in your mind. We're coming with you, we're sticking this out. Naomi is a calculating woman. She's got her logic down perfect. It's bad, okay? It's bad with me. Everything's black, all is calamity, nothing good. You guys aren't seeing the big picture here, okay? You're not thinking right. This is essentially what Naomi is saying to them. And in verse 11, she gives them three reasons why there's no way in the world they should hang out with her. There's no way in the world that they should continue associating with her. First of all, in verse 11, Naomi says, Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Have I sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? What Naomi is tipping off here is the idea of leverite marriage. In the Old Testament, there was a provision made to keep the family lineage going that if a husband died, and he had no children, no sons, and he had a brother. His brother had a responsibility to care for the family, to see the family line go on, and to take his brother's widow, and Lord willing, have a child by her. And that child would be given as the brother's son, the brother's child. It was a way of preserving the family line. And so Naomi's sitting here going, this isn't gonna work. My womb's dried up. OK, there's no more buns in the oven. We're done here. I'm too old for having kids. You can't be with me anymore. They can't become your husbands. And she redoubles it. The second reason is verse 12. Turn back, my daughters, go your way. I'm too old to have a husband. Not only am I beyond the years of being able to give birth to a child, and many scholars calculated her age at about 60 here at this point. She says, I'm too old to even get remarried. Nobody's gonna wanna marry me. I'm too old, I'm close to death myself. I'm not gonna have another husband. And she lays it further, one step deeper at the end of verse 12 and says, if I should say I have hope, now that just should tell you something right there about Naomi's heart. She has no hope, because she's hypothesizing that it would be there. If I should even tell you I have hope, which I don't, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear a son, even if I get married tonight and get pregnant tonight, Could I wait for my kids? I have sons. Would you therefore wait until they were grown? Verse 13. Are you gonna wait 20, 15, 20 years for these boys to grow up so then you can marry them? Her logic in her mind is perfect. I'm too old, I can't have any more children, and even if miracle of miracle happens, I do, you're gonna wait 20 more years to marry that guy and then have a son and keep the line going? No way. There's absolutely no way you should stay out with me, that you should continue on with me. In fact, she says, you're holding back from yourselves. Would you therefore refrain from marrying? Like, come on, ladies, you're young, you're attractive, you're still in the prime time to get married and have children. You're not gonna wait. You can't wait. You're too restless. It's okay. Know my daughters. And again, we see Naomi's heart. It is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me. Here's her attitude, I have no hope, I can't have children, I can't solve this dilemma, God is against me. And it's bitter to me. Her logic is really sound in her mind. And so what happens, verse 14, they lifted up their voices and wept again, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. Now, I don't want to disparage Orpah. She's heard the logic. I mean, it was sound, it was tight, and she's out. Okay, my mother-in-law wants the best for me, and the best for me isn't with her. I'll trust her, I love her. I kissed her and was gone. It's the last we read of her in the story. But what we see here in Naomi's response is really a response of her trying to disconnect herself from any sort of community and help. This is what seeing calamity through earthly eyes does in us. When we think that all is lost, that everything is black, when we think that God is against us, that we're so bitter, there is no hope, God is, his hand is upon me heavy, he is not letting up, it is bad and terrible, don't we wanna run from others? We don't wanna, we wanna just disconnect. In Naomi's mind, she was saying, listen, God is against me, and if you continue hanging out with me, if you continue living with me and caring with me, God's gonna be against you too. Why would you want that? Get away. Clear the zone. I mean, I'm ground zero for God's anger right now. Get out. When we see our calamity through earthly eyes, when we think like Naomi, no hope, all is bitter, all is lost, Our tendency is to disconnect from others. We cut relationships. I can't be with that person. I don't know how many times it's been in my life when I've had a bad day. And it's not just been a bad day, but it's been pretty hard on my heart, emotionally. And a good friend will want to encourage me and say something to help me and help my soul. And I'm the guy that's like, I don't wanna, no, I need to go by myself and be alone for a while. I don't wanna hear your little, God loves you and it'll be all right. Let me brood on my unhappiness and my anger and my frustration and my calamity. Let me drink my misery for a while, okay? I wanna be Eeyore. We disconnect ourselves from community. Some of you are laughing. You do the same thing, right? When it's bad, when it's a bad day, you don't wanna hear, a friend. You just wanna stew in your complaints. This is what Naomi is doing. She's just unplugging herself. Listen, I don't wanna be around anybody that reminds me of that situation. I don't wanna be around anyone that reminds me of Moab. My daughters-in-law, they're great, but come on, they can't be with me. Get out, get away, disconnect, unplug, all the way around. That's what happens when we see suffering on an earthly level. We disconnect ourselves from community. We make our perfect little list of logic. Here it is, here's why it's not good for you to hang out with me. I'm a grump, things are bad, God's probably gonna get you too. Get out. It's seeing our calamity through earthly eyes. A third way that this passage tells us that we can see calamity through earthly eyes is finally the last way that Naomi responds. Look, skip down with me to verse 19. Suffice it to say, Ruth stays with Naomi. She said, I'm in. Your logic is crazy. It's good logic, but I'm not falling for it. I'm staying with you. And so she does, and we get to verse 19, and we see 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. Here's a woman that left. over a decade ago. And by the way, Bethlehem is not a large town, okay? Maybe a hundred people, probably less lived in Bethlehem at the time. So everybody knew everybody. Everybody knew everybody who left and who came back and who was there. And so here comes these two women. The way the story, the narrator tells it, it's kind of funny. There's a stir. You see the women around the well and they're like, Could that be? No, it's not her, come on. Yeah, no, I think it is. Yeah, it looks like her. Same pattern on the shawl. It is, it is. Hey, there's a stir. Is this Naomi? Is it really her? She's back. How would you like to be around this lady? The first word, hey, it's Naomi, she's back. Don't call me Naomi. Don't you dare call me that name. Naomi means pleasant. She's anything but. Call me Mara. Mara means bitter. Don't call me pleasant, call me bitter. Here's why, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full. I had a husband, two boys. and the Lord brought me back empty. Do you see her accusation? God brought me back with nothing. I'm bitter. Why call me Naomi when the Lord has testified against me? The Almighty brought calamity upon me. When we see through the earthly eyes, we experience everything as bitterness and God's to blame for all of it. Everything is bitter to her. Here's a town, a small village of people that have known her and her family and she's back. They went for a little while and they see her and they're ready to welcome her and all she can tell and all she can say is her anger and her bitterness. It's just like black just oozing out of her heart. Don't call me pleasant. Don't be with me. God's against me. He's testified against me. He's acted against me. He brought me back empty. He's brought calamity upon me. It's just all bitterness. Do you know that person? Do you know that person who's had a hard life and they're only seeing through earthly eyes about their trial and their suffering and they're just bound up in their bitterness? Are you that person? Maybe things didn't go according to your plan. Maybe your life hasn't been mapped out the way you thought it was. And you gotta admit, your heart's pretty bitter. I'm not happy with God. So angry at Him for that loss. It's seeing our calamity through earthly eyes. And this is the way Naomi is seeing it. God's dealt bitterly with me. He's brought me back empty. What's funny and or ironic about that statement is they left Bethlehem because there was nothing there. There was a famine. They had nothing. She's looking at it saying, I had everything before I left. And now I have nothing. God has testified against me. When we see our sufferings and see our hardship through eyes, earthly eyes, all we can see is calamity, all we can see is loss, all we can see is bitterness and anger against God and anger at each other and we just want to disconnect and be alone and stew in our misery and God says, wait. There's another perspective to see all of this through. Tonight, if you are suffering, or if you are, if that heart of Naomi, that bitter, hard, angry heart is yours, tonight I wanna help you see God's perspective. I wanna help you see through eyes of faith, because it's there. What God is doing in this passage, it's little glimpses and rays of hope and little lights that would teach us and show us Not all is lost. Not everything is bitter. In fact, there are great promises here that reveal God's kindness. and reveal His grace. I want you to see again that the sovereign hand of God is working in our deepest sorrows, in our greatest calamities for our greatest joy and His greatest glory. God is carrying out His plan in Naomi's life and He is carrying out His plan globally in Naomi's life as well. And if she would have the eyes of faith to see what God is doing, even if she can't comprehend the whole picture, even if she can just see a little ray of hope, a little glimmer which are there, I think she'd have a different attitude. Certainly God would call us and commend us to a different attitude. What's the second perspective? Seeing suffering through eyes of faith. How would we see our suffering through eyes of faith First of all, in the midst of our deepest sorrows, God stands sovereign over them. That's a tough thing maybe to say. Go with me back to the beginning of the story. Verse one and two, in the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. Where'd the famine come from? Who brought the famine? It's absolutely no hope, no hope for us to say, well, it's just random chance. It's just laws of nature, famine just appeared. It doesn't encourage anybody. It doesn't help us at all. It doesn't help strengthen our faith. But if we see God's sovereign plan and his sovereign designs behind that famine, we see a God who is active, and taking our deep sorrows and creating for us great joy and great glory to himself. The answer to the question of who brought the famine is God brought the famine. God who is the creator and maker of all things, who speaks the universe into existence, who creates at the word of his power, who tells the winds blow east and they blow east. who tells the clouds to give up their moisture and rain or snow, and they do. God's the one who brought the famine. Now time out here, okay, this is, Jeremy, you're saying tonight, God brought hardship into Naomi's life. Yeah, I am. That calamity, that hardship that you're sitting in tonight, that you're enduring in your life, Maybe not necessarily directly, God is holy and he is not the author of evil in any way. God is light and in him there is no darkness, no, no darkness at all, 1 John 1. That God is the one who has ordained and sovereignly orchestrated the hardship in your life. He's put it there for a reason. It's his grand design and his great plan to bring you great joy and to bring him ultimate glory. And so when we look at this famine in Ruth's life, we're saying, why is that there? God brought it. I didn't want to spoil the end, I have to at this point. Because if you look at the end of the book of Ruth, How many of you when you read a novel, by the way, you just start at the back? Anybody do that? A few of you, okay. I was reading a book about reading books over the Christmas break. I know that's weird, it's just me. And the author confessed that he read the last pages first. I never do that. But at the end of the book of Ruth, there's a little list. Now these are the generations of Perez. Perez fathered Hezron. Hezron fathered Ram. Ram fathered Aminadab. Aminadab fathered Nashon. Nashon fathered Salmon. Salmon fathered Boaz. Boaz fathered Obed. Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David. Now those names might not mean anything to you at this point, but we're gonna meet in the next chapter a guy named Boaz. Remember, Naomi has a young, eligible daughter-in-law towing along with her. I'll let you connect the dots and figure out what Boaz and Ruth have to do with each other. But there in that line is a son who's a father to another son who's a grandfather to King David. King David being the one that God makes the promise to in 2 Samuel 7 and says, from your line, from your lineage will come a king who will reign forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. God brought a famine in Naomi's life to move her, even in utter difficulty, so that she could be the grandmother, the great-grandmother, to the greatest, second greatest king of Israel, who would be the forerunner and who would be the kingly father of the Messiah, the savior of the world. God's taking this little famine and this little, in comparison, calamity in Naomi's life, and he's gonna bring her great joy, and he's gonna bring himself great glory in it. Naomi gets written into the scriptures as a character who's a recipient of God's grace, even in the midst of her bitterness and hardship. If we see our suffering and our hardship through eyes of faith, we would look and say, you know, I don't know why this is here. We don't know exactly, I mean, we have the big picture of why, but the little question of why is this happening today and now and here in Naomi's life, and we would say, why is this suffering, why is this hardship, why is this health issue, why is this bankruptcy, why is this whatever it is issue in my life here and now, why is it there? The eyes of faith say, I might not get the full answer on that, but God is sovereign in bringing and allowing that difficulty in my life. If I trust him, it's gonna bring great joy to me and great glory to himself. In the midst of our sufferings and deepest sorrows, God stands sovereign over them. God's the one directing things. He's the one who brought the famine. He's the one as well in verse six who brought the lack of famine back in Judah. God lifted his hand. And so now, Naomi has Ruth in tow to bring back, and if you go into Matthew 1, you'll find, listed in the genealogy of Jesus, in his family tree, there's a Gentile Moabite woman, Ruth, who's honored in the pages of scripture, because God brought a famine. In the midst of our deepest sorrows, God stands sovereign over them. A second way to see suffering through the eyes of faith is that God is present with us in the midst of our deepest sorrows. Now, I skipped verses 15 to 18, but there's an amazing thing here. Naomi says, hey, ladies, leave. It's all bad. Just disconnect. There's nothing good for you. And Ruth says, absolutely not. I am sticking with you. Verse 15, Naomi said, see your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods return after your sister-in-law. She's like, get out of here, it's not good for you. And Ruth says, do not urge me to leave you or return from following you. For where you go, I will go. And where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people, your God, my God, where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more, if anything but death parts us, me from you. That is absolutely amazing companionship. Naomi says absolutely, Ruth says no way. I am throwing my lot in with you. Whatever goes down with you, it's gonna happen to me. and not just that I'm gonna be with you. Your family's gonna be my family. Your people, my people. Your God, my God. Ruth is rejecting all of her past life. She's no longer a Moabite. She's no longer a worshiper of foreign gods. She's saying, Naomi, I am sticking with you. Your life, my life. Your God, my God. Your people, my people. Nothing will separate us. And if anything comes between us, Before we die, may God bring judgment on me. I am with you forever. I am sticking with you. Ruth here is a picture to Naomi of a God who never leaves. Calamity may come, hardship may come at His hand, but He never leaves. Ruth is showing Naomi a Savior. She's giving her a glimpse forward of a Savior who never leaves us. In fact, she is showing for us a picture of Christ. Ruth had every reason to leave Naomi. That's why Oprah's in this story, to show us, yeah, it was right for her to do that. There was no reason to stick around. And she stayed. Think about this, Christ has every reason to abandon us. We've rebelled against him, we've rejected him, we've hated and gone to war against him, and he stays with us. Whereas Ruth could have left the plight of this miserable Naomi, and Christ could have left us in our miserable agony and sin, what did he do? He identified with us. He became a man, not just God in heaven somewhere out there in the cosmos, but God incarnate, taking on flesh and blood, experiencing what we experience, walking in our shoes, living life on this earth, suffering trial and temptation and hardship, enduring pain, to know us, to identify with us, to be God with us. Ruth is just a foreshadowing of what Christ does for us. God never leaves us in the midst of our calamities. As he says, I will never leave you or forsake you. If we see our suffering through eyes of faith, we will see that God is there. He's with us in the midst of our hardships and our deepest sorrows. He hasn't left you. He hasn't walked off on you and said, hey, help you figure this one out. See you on the flip side. He knows your suffering. He knows your hardship. He suffered and died himself on the cross to say I know it, I'm with you in it. Trust me. Look for me. God is with us in the midst of our deepest sorrows. It might not feel like it. In fact, Naomi doesn't even recognize Ruth when she gets to Bethlehem. There's no mention of, oh yeah, here's my daughter-in-law. Everything's still bitter. But Ruth hasn't left Naomi, and Christ hasn't left us. The last thing is that in the midst of our deepest sorrows, if we're gonna see our suffering through eyes of faith, we need to look for God's rays of hope. This story is littered with little rays of hope for Naomi and for us. A famine comes. Verse six, Naomi hears, this is interesting. She had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. Now this is before the printing press, before radio, television, internet, anything like that. She can't go on Facebook and find, oh hey, there's food back in Bethlehem. Great, let's pack up. How does she know this? Somebody had to come and tell her. That tells me something. God is sending someone to Naomi to say, hey, there's hope. There's provision in Bethlehem. Go back home. Go back home. There's hope. Somebody had to come and visit her and give her a message. God has visited his people. That's the exact wording here. The Lord has visited his people and he, the one who brought the famine, is the same one who has given them food. A little ray of hope. And then Ruth, this faithful, godly woman, who says, I am staying with you no matter what. Orpah, she's gone. I'm not leaving you, I'm here with you. Another ray of hope. Is all really bad for Naomi? Is all really bitterness? Who among us wouldn't want a faithful companion like her daughter-in-law to stick with us through the trial and hardship? Who among us wouldn't want that kind of friendship, companionship, love, that kind of kindness? Another ray of hope. And then verse 22, the closing lines of this chapter. 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 barley harvest. It just so happens that they show up right at the time when God has already brought in provision and it's just ready to be pulled off. The grain is ready to be harvested. The barley is there for them to receive. Could God be using Naomi's calamity, her suffering, her hardship, her loss, to do something great, to give himself great glory, and to give Naomi great joy? Could he be? You see, if we see our suffering and our hardship, even though, and hear me clearly, it's not easy when we're in the midst of suffering to say, oh yeah, there's hope there. It's not easy when things are hard and rough to go, I see rays, I see glimmers. But stories like this remind us, they point to the fact that God gives us hope. If we look through eyes of faith, Instead of being bitter, Mara, and saying, okay God, this hurts bad. But I trust you, so show me your hope. Those rays of hope are there. His grace is there. How do we respond to suffering? William Cowper, who was a friend of John Newton, the pastor who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace, William Cowper suffered intense depression, so much so that he tried to kill himself on several occasions. He was a very good poet. And he wrote this limerick, this line that might be familiar to you, at least in the title, God Works in Mysterious Ways. I think this is so helpful for us. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, by earthly eyes, but trust him for his grace. Behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face. Sometimes we look at our calamities, we say, I have no idea what you're doing, God. I can't see. But if we look with faith, we can trust Him, that He is bringing about our greatest joy and His ultimate glory, even in our deepest sorrows. So how do we trust? How do we respond? We trust Him. Tonight I want to call you, if you're suffering, if you're enduring hardship, and your heart is leaning towards responding like Naomi with bitterness, God's against me, He hates me. He just brought heaviness to me. I wanna encourage you to look for his grace, look for those rays of hope, and to go again and trust him. Say, God, I don't know what you're doing in my life. I don't know why this is here. But I'm gonna trust what you say in places like Romans 8, 28, that you, God, work together all things for good, even this calamity. for those who love you and are called according to your purposes. Do you believe that, that God works all things together for your good? Those who love Him and are called according to His purposes, you say, I love God, I know that He's called me, then everything, even your calamity, even your hardship, is designed by God for your great joy and His ultimate glory. May we respond in faith and not with bitterness, not with earthly eyes. This message has been brought to you by the Santa Rosa Bible Church. Our purpose is to lift up the Lord by living out the word, loving one another, and leading others to Christ. Be sure to visit us on the web at www.srbible.org, or come visit us in person at 4575 Badger Road, Santa Rosa, California 95409. You can also give us a call at 707-538-2385.