Now we're going to read from the scriptures. Tonight we're reading in the book of Ruth. I'm gonna read just a sampling of verses around the text that I'm focusing on. So I'm gonna start in chapter one, verses eight and nine, then 13, 19 through 22, then chapter two, 19 and 20. And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, go, return each to her mother's house. 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 in the house of her husband. So she kissed them and they lifted up their voices and wept. Turn back, my daughters, go, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, if I should have a husband tonight and should also bear sons, would you wait for them till they were grown? Would you restrain yourselves from having husbands? No, my daughters, for it grieves me very much for your sakes that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me." Now the two of them went until they came to Bethlehem. And it happened, when they had come to Bethlehem, that all the city was excited because of them. And the women said, is this Naomi? But she said to them, do not call me Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home again empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me? So Naomi returned, and Ruth, the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, with her, who returned from the country of Moab. Now, they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest. Her mother-in-law, that is Naomi, said to her, that is Ruth, where have you gleaned today, and where did you work? "'Blessed be the one who took notice of you.' So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, "'The man's name with whom I worked today is Boaz.' Then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, "'Blessed be he of the Lord.'" who has not forsaken his kindness to the living and the dead. And Naomi said to her, this man is a relation of ours, one of our close relatives. Ruth the Moabitess said, he also said to me, you shall stay close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest. This is the word of the Lord. The book of Ruth, it's named after one person, named after Ruth. But it's a book that's really about three people. It's about Ruth, but also about Naomi, and also Boaz. But Naomi, we're gonna focus on Naomi tonight. Naomi, Ruth's mother-in-law, she is something of a female counterpart to another Old Testament person, Job. Both Naomi and Job lose everything. Both of them end up financially wrecked. Both lose all of their children, tragically. Both of them become bitter against God. And both of them look at the state of their lives and they conclude, God is against me. God has done this to me. And right now, nobody envies Naomi's life. Nobody looks at Naomi and wants to be in Naomi's shoes. And as Naomi looks at her own life, Naomi becomes bitter. She says in chapter one, verse 20, she says, do not call me Naomi. call me bitter, call me Mara, for the Almighty, the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me." She's saying, God has been hard on me. God has left me in ruins. Now, Naomi has lost much, and now you're wondering if she's going to also lose her faith. Naomi is the person who looks at her life and she's deeply, deeply disappointed with God. Maybe you know someone who feels that way. Maybe you feel that way. In our text, the loving kindness of God comes to a bitterly disappointed person. And so we see three things. First of all, we see what Naomi needed. What Naomi needed. Secondly, what Naomi forgot. And then thirdly, what Naomi remembered. What she needed, what she forgot, and what she remembered. First of all, what Naomi needed. Now, Naomi, from what we can see in the text, she's beyond child-rearing age. She's a single woman. She had a family. She lost her family. She lost her husband. She lost her children. And she lost her job. She is unemployed. Naomi now inhabits that unenviable place of looking for work. She's at the bottom. And more than that, she lost her dignity. She left Israel a decade ago, and she left for financial reasons, but for a Jewish person leaving the promised land, leaving Israel, you were leaving the promise of God. You were leaving the place where God set his presence. But now Naomi hears that the economy has gotten better in Israel, and so she moves back home. She comes back to Judah, Bethlehem. And here is how Naomi lost her dignity. She has all kinds of, you could call it prodigal vibes about her. She left the land of promise. Everyone knows that she and her family left. Now she's returning, but she's coming back cursed. She's alone, she's got no husband, she has no sons anymore. Maybe they would never say this, but looking at her and just assessing her position, the kind of thinking would be this when they looked at Naomi. You kind of brought this on yourself. You kind of deserve what happened to you. But even more than that, Naomi returns with the Moabitess. That's what the text often calls her. The woman from Moab. Ruth 1.22, it sounds notes that would trigger. For the original hearers, the original Israelite hearers, it would have triggered a prejudicial disdain about the Moabite woman. It says, so Naomi returned and Ruth, the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. Now there was a history between Israel and Moab. It was quite negative. The associations were very negative with Moab. The Moabite women seduced Israel at a key point in time, seduced Israel sexually and spiritually. And here comes Naomi. She's returning with a Moabitess. So this is how it would have looked as they're trying to like, so what's been going on with you? What happened to you? Oh, oh, this Moabitess that you're bringing, she, She married one of your sons? Oh, you had two different Moabite women marry your two sons? Oh, and they both died? Your sons died? They would've been thinking. I think I see a connection there. And so Ruth, I mean Naomi, comes back and she's not only lost everyone, she's also lost her dignity. You know how it is when some people, they want a dog or they want a cat, but they don't go to like a, a thoroughbred breeder, a fancy breeder. Instead, they go to a rescue shelter. And your friend maybe tells you, we're off to get a pet. We're going to do it. And they come back from the rescue shelter, and they don't come back with a poster-perfect creature. They come back with a cat. And right off the bat, in the first 30 seconds, they say, And this cat, this cat has a history. This cat was found by a landfill. This cat was feral. And so this cat is super triggered by people, very frightened of people. Or this dog that we're coming back with, this dog was rescued and, oh, the story is just, it's so, the dog was rescued from an abusive owner. And so because of that, like, sometimes this dog bites. Sometimes this dog just breaks out. It's because of how he was mistreated. And he also throws up a lot. And so you've got this dog with all of this baggage. Naomi comes back like that. Naomi comes back with little dignity. She returns with this Moabitis. And on top of that, you've got her physical appearance. The text kind of alludes to this. What we see is that age, she was in Moab for 10 years, age and death. have not been kind to Naomi. Verse 19, the people of Bethlehem, her hometown, they all start talking when they hear that she's come back. But when they see her, when they see her appearance, she has not aged well. They're saying, is this Naomi? What happened to her? And so you see that not only have Naomi's circumstances turned bitter, Naomi's outlook, has turned bitter. Ruth, chapter one, verses 20 and 21, Naomi said to them, do not call me Naomi, which actually means delightful or pleasant, do not call me that, call me Marah, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, but the Lord has brought me home again. Why do you call me Naomi since the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has afflicted me? She's saying, I went out full and the Lord has brought me home again with nothing. What's Naomi saying? What does Naomi need or what's she saying that she needs? More precisely, what are Naomi's perceived needs? What does Naomi think? she has to have in order for life to be bearable. Well, I mean, just bluntly, from what it seems to be saying here, she thinks that what she needs, she needs men and she needs money. She needs men and money. In Naomi's thinking, she needs men in her life. She left Bethlehem full. Full of what? Well, she had three males. She had a husband and two sons. She returns empty. No men in her life. In Naomi's thinking, she also needs, she needs money. She's saying, we left because we needed money. We needed some financial security because the economy was horrible here. And when we returned, we returned because we need money. The economy was horrible there in Moab and we were just wiped out. Now, reversals are hard. Economists and sociologists observe that our country, America, has always been this place of fantastic opportunity. You can come in with nothing and you really have a good chance of making something. Our structure makes it possible that if you work hard and you get a break, you can move up, both socially and financially. But in recent decades, even though upward mobility remains open. It's still there. The opportunity is still there. The upward mobility remains. Downward mobility has increased. Downward mobility is now more likely than it used to be. People can still move up. People can still move up, but people can also more easily slip down. It's more likely now. I'm not saying it's likely, but it's more likely than it used to be that you will not live at the same level that your parents gave you. It's more likely that you will live lower than you started. Now, you know what that's like at just like this narrower scale, like you got a degree maybe. You got a degree, you moved up, but then you lost your place. And now you've got to make do with less. Or you had a man, and you lost a man, or you had a wife and you lost your wife, or you want children, but you can't have children, or you have kids, but your kids walked away from the Lord, from the faith. Naomi went out full and the Lord brought her home again, empty. Now, that's what Naomi needed, or what she thought she needed. Next, what Naomi forgot. Two things that Naomi forgot. The first thing that Naomi forgot, bitterness makes us blind. Bitterness makes us blind. When Naomi turned bitter about life, when Naomi turned bitter against God, she also went blind to God's kindness. Look at two themes that are in the story of Ruth that Naomi just cannot see up to this point. First of all, the providence of God. The providence of God is how God works all things, even the smallest of details. And also not only the providence of God, the loving kindness of God, His covenant love, His loyal grace. Both the providence of God and the loving kindness of God, they suffuse this story. But Naomi's bitterness has utterly blinded her to seeing them. The providence of God teaches that God works in ways that we can't see. God has the power, God has the competency to order every single event, even at the subatomic level, and work all of it to enact his plans. So places like Romans 8, we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. Colossians 1, Jesus Christ holds all things together. In him, all things consist. And you think, all things? All things? Even bad things? Genesis 50, 20, but as for you, this is a man, Joseph speaking, to people who have ruined his life, for decades they've ruined his life, and he says, but as for you, you meant evil against me? But God meant it for good, in order to bring it about, as it is this day, to save many people alive. But Naomi had lost sight. Naomi had lost sight of that. Naomi, who is, honestly, she's disappointed with God. She believes in the power of God, but not in the goodness of God. She believes in the power of God, but not in the goodness of God. She believes that God could have, should have made life in Moab good, but instead, God turned her time overseas against her. Now, we look at Naomi, and it's pretty easy to be hard on Naomi, especially when we're sitting comfortable. But we do well to look at ourselves. What has gone poorly this year? It could be a relationship that just died on the vine, or it could be the economy. Is the economy ruining your plans? Is the new administration wrecking what you were hoping for? My old pastor and elder, Fred Sloan, would ask this, two questions he would ask. Is God in control? And is he good? Is he in control? And is he good? Now, perhaps you've had something hard. Maybe it's not something that's outside you. Maybe it's not outside you. Maybe it's inside you. Some kind of challenge. Some kind of challenge in your wiring. It could be a cancer. It could be a mental health crisis. And people come at you. People come at you like the Pharisees came to the blind man. The man was born blind. That was his challenge, the challenge in his own wiring. And they asked Jesus, teacher, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? And how did Jesus answer? He affirmed the providential ordering of all events. He affirmed the providential ordering of all events, and he affirmed the goodness of God. Jesus answered, neither this man nor his parents sinned, but it was that the works of God should be revealed in him. But when we're bitter, when we are disappointed with God, we can't see his goodness. We can't see the goodness in his providence. In the story of Ruth, There are no coincidences, no coincidences. It's like God is this secret Santa who's always at work arranging all these details and nobody knows it. Look at just some of God's providences in Ruth's story, in Naomi's story. Naomi emigrates to Moab, but of all the women in Moab, of all the women for her son to marry, he marries Ruth. And then there's also, Naomi returns to Israel, but of all the times of the year that she could possibly have returned, she returns at the start of the harvest, which is key. And then Ruth, her Moabite daughter-in-law, she goes out to find a job, but of all the fields where she could possibly have shown up asking for work, and there would be an opening, she lands in the field of Boaz. And there's just, there's so much more. If you are a believer, which kind of believer are you? Are you the kind of person who's constantly fearing that, oh, I missed, I missed the will of God. I should have taken this job offer, not that job offer. I should have plugged in here and not there, and I didn't. And now you're plagued with these fears that I've missed God's good. You're constantly haunted by this thinking that, I think I went through the wrong door. Or are you the kind of person who looks at life with an optimistic interest? What is God up to? You're convinced. You're convinced whether there's good news or bad news, you're convinced that God is at work. God is surely at work in this. You don't pretend that tragedy is good. You don't pretend that. Tragedy is terrible. But you've got this optimistic curiosity at the same time that God is at work. You've got this optimistic confidence that God is working. Somehow, God is working good for you. I've used this before, but it speaks to this. I read about this professor at Westminster Seminary. And back when I was in software, we lightly worked with this man, this Professor Alan Groves. And in the middle of his career, He and his wife went to the doctor, and the doctor told Alan, it's cancer, it's malignant, there are no treatments for your cancer. And because Alan Groves knew the providence of God, that it ordered all things, even cancer, and because Alan Groves knew the loving kindness of God in all things, even cancer, Alan said this in response to his diagnosis. He said, nothing has changed. I mean, they wept. They wept, and they should have wept. But he also said, nothing has changed. God is in control, and God is good on sunny days. And God is in control, and God is good when it is my unexpected final day. But bitterness makes us blind. And that's the first thing that Naomi forgot. The second thing that Naomi forgets, she forgets the difference between discipline and punishment. The difference between discipline and punishment. Now this, if you can remember this and you can understand this, this is something that can blunt bitterness. This is something that can keep the thorn of bitterness from sinking in too deep. For those who are in Christ, when hard things hit us, is it discipline or is it punishment? Okay, what are you talking about? What am I talking about? A Christian, this is one way to describe a Christian. A Christian is a person who both admits they deserve punishment because we sinned and we continue to sin. A Christian admits they deserve punishment and A Christian is someone who is certain that you've escaped punishment. The crucifixion death of Jesus was a substitute punishment. Jesus punished in my place. Jesus punished so that I will never be punished. You escaped the punishment you deserved. And that wasn't just when you were converted. That's true over the entirety of the rest of your life. Romans five, starting at verse six. When we were still without strength, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die. Yet perhaps for a good man, someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us. And that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. because of his substitute punishment, no punishment remains, Romans 8. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. That word for condemnation, katakrina, it's a legal penalty term. It says no legal penalty remains. Jesus absorbed the full legal consequences If any of you have ever been in the very unpleasant situation of having to go to court because there's a case against you, it could be a traffic ticket, it could be civil, it could be criminal, here's one thing that you know. As terrible as that thing goes, when that case is finally over, you know that you can't go back. Double jeopardy is not allowed. You can't be tried again, you can't be prosecuted again for the same thing. There are no more legal consequences in Christ. And so when your dog dies, or you get a flat tire, if you believe on Jesus, if you're in Jesus, you're not being punished. None of that is punishment. He was punished for you, no punishment remains. And this is something that you will be challenged to keep on bringing back and to work down into how you process the terrible thing that has just happened to you. But hard things do happen. Hard things do happen to followers of Jesus. And I said, it's not punishment, it's discipline. And what are we talking about? In the Bible, Hebrews 12 gives us this extended treatment, this extended explanation on the difference between punishment and discipline. Hebrews 12, verse five. you have forgotten the exhortation. He's saying, here's something that we tend to forget as Christians. You've forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as sons and daughters. My child, do not despise the chastening, the discipline of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you're rebuked by him. So he's saying, God chastens, God disciplines, God rebukes you. He's saying, Don't hate it, don't despise it, don't get discouraged when it happens. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every child whom he receives. He disciplines, but he's doing it out of love. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as children. For what child is there whom a father does not discipline? He's saying, things are hard. things are hard, but you're getting bitter. You're starting to forget this. You're starting to despise the chastening. Why? Because you're forgetting the difference. The difference between parental discipline and judicial punishment. You think God is a judge. You forget God is your Father. You think He's a judge, but He's your Father. And Every good father, and at this point, we all just kind of like do this big roll up of the carpet because if you didn't have a good father, this is not gonna be helpful. But here's what you want to think. Here is a picture of what a good father, a healthy father, a loving father will do. Every good father, every loving father will bring discipline, training to the sons and daughters he loves. When I was young and I was shoplifting, and I had stolen all this stuff, my parents had to respond to that because they loved me. And so now if my child starts lying, I must respond to that if I love them. I don't want them to continue in bad behavior. That will only hurt them, it will only hurt others. And so when my children do bad, I have to respond, but not with punishment. not making them get pain for pain, as if somehow it could make up, it could pay for the lie. I have to respond with discipline, with painful, appropriate correction that's designed to change behavior. Discipline is painful, but it's also constructive and it's loving. It's not punitive. Punishment says, you are going to pay for that temper tantrum. Discipline says, This will be painful, but I love you too much to let you continue in this behavior. Punishment says, God is against me. Discipline says, God is for me. So places like Lamentations 3, he does not willingly afflict the children of men. That is what Naomi forgot. Naomi lost sight of her own sinful behavior, Like she's saying, I don't know why, I went out full, but then he took away my job, my husband, my kids, he left me empty. To her it wasn't discipline, it was just punishment. That's what Naomi forgot, that bitterness makes us blind to God's goodness, that God disciplines his children in love. Now lastly, let's look at what Naomi remembered. What Naomi remembered. When you get to Ruth 2 verse 20, there's this remarkable shift in how Naomi sees things. There's this shift in Naomi's bitter feelings toward God. She goes from saying things like, God is using his power against me. God's hand is against me. God has made my life very bitter. And then she just shifts. Verse 20, then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, blessed be he, she's talking about Boaz, blessed be he of the Lord, the Lord who has not forsaken his kindness to the living and to the dead. And Naomi said to her, this man is a relation of ours, one of our close relatives. Now, why the change? Why the shift in how she sees things? What's going on? Well, her daughter-in-law, Ruth, On her first day on the job, she comes home with 30 or 50 pounds of food. Instead of a day's worth of food, like maybe two or three pounds, she returns with weeks of food. What's happened is Ruth has gone out empty, and she's come back full. And so when Naomi asks, where did you get this? Who hired you? Ruth says, a man named Boaz. And just with that encouragement, Naomi remembers two things here, two things in the text. First of all, Naomi remembers God's loving kindness, his hesed. Naomi wakes up to God and recalls a number of things that are all jammed together in this word. chesed, loving kindness. She remembers that God is love, she remembers that God is loyal, that God is gracious and he's full of mercy. She remembers that God will not forsake his love, his chesed to his people. And this is something that's a theme not only in Ruth, but throughout the entire Old and New Testament. You see it in places like Psalm 23, the Shepherd Psalm. It ends with this absolutely delightful image, the end of Psalm 23. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life." He's saying, as part of the people of God, it's saying, I'm like a sheep following my shepherd, but there's something following me. The loving kindness of God is going to run after me as I run after him. For Naomi, seeing Ruth come back with this one just armful of groceries, it touched. Naomi, and she tasted God's loving kindness in her life. The first thing that Naomi remembers is God's loving kindness. The second thing that Naomi remembers is she remembers the Redeemer relative. Verse 20, when she says, this man Boaz is a relative of ours, one of our close relatives. The word there for close relative, gaal, It's a special word, and really there is no English equivalent to this word, ga'al, the redeemer relative. Let me just try to give you a little bit of the flavor of what the ga'al was. The ga'al was more than someone who was related to you by blood or by marriage. The ga'al was the person, when you filled out your form, and it asked, you know how it always asks for the emergency contact? And you would put down The one person that would come to mind would be the ga'al. But more than that, if someone hurt or maybe killed one of your loved ones, and you needed justice and you needed a police response, you would contact the ga'al, your ga'al, and even more if you had financial troubles. Maybe you couldn't make payments on the house, and you're like, what am I gonna do? We're gonna get kicked out. And the bank was coming to foreclose on the property, you would call the ga'al, this close relative. The expanded translation for ga'al is kinsman redeemer, the kinsman redeemer, a kinsman. This person was your kin, your relative, but also a redeemer, someone who would get you out of the worst kind of trouble that you had gotten into and you were just helpless, a rescuer from life's disasters. Naomi says, you got a job with Boaz? He is ga'al to us. He's kinsman redeemer to us. And so Naomi sees this amazing, this secret God thing that's happening in their lives. God is somehow steering Ruth into the field of Boaz and making the connection for them. And so in verses 22 to 23, Naomi orders Ruth, stay, stay in Boaz's field. Stay for the entire harvest. Don't go anywhere else. This, this is the place for you. And given how Ruth's story, given how it develops, it's very reasonable to say that there is something in Naomi's mind that finally clicked at this point. Because she knew the Ga'al system. She knew the kinsmen redeemer system. What was one of the other things that Naomi was certain that she needed? Naomi needed a man. in this family. She needed food, she needed her name and her dignity restored, and she needed a man, and the gaal was the person who would do it. Here's another delightful providence of God. Naomi knows that she's too old to have children. But in God's working, Naomi's daughter is not too old to have children. And this was another way that the gaal, the kinsman redeemer, would come to the rescue. Because the gaal could marry you. the Gaal could be the man in your life if your husband died and your sons were dead, and the kinsman redeemer could be your husband and father to your children. Naomi had to sense this is our redeemer who can make everything right. So Naomi comes alive because she realizes I made bad decisions. I got us into this mess. I never should have left. We wouldn't have ended up poor. And my children, who left the Lord, who married outside the faith, I lost all of them. I've returned here empty and bitter. And all my mistakes, and all my problems and sins, and all of my losses, all of those looked like this huge mountain of obstacles for me to ever connect again to the loving kindness of God. But in this moment, it all looks so different. God is gracious, God will not deviate from his loving, loyal kindness, and suddenly for her, all of these obstacles They're not obstacles anymore. They're now instruments. The thing that's switched is that when she understands God and his providence and his loving kindness, all these obstacles become instruments. All my sin, all my misfortunes, they're not barriers to God. They're the vehicles that God will use to bring his loving kindness to me. Naomi learns that God's hand is for her. not against her, in spite of her sin, in spite of her son's sins, in spite of her bitterness and her hard thoughts towards God. Naomi learns that her days of poverty and her days of loss and her days of wandering away from the people of God, those are the very things that are instrumental and key to bringing the Redeemer to her. It was through her wandering to Moab, through the shame of having a Moabitess daughter, through her poverty, that God guided her to this ga'al, this kinsman Redeemer, and most significantly, in the greater story, not just of Naomi, not just of Ruth, in the greater story of the entire Bible, this bitter woman, Naomi, becomes an essential person in the Redeemer's bloodline. Naomi is great-grandmother to David, who would become king and deliver the nation. And David would become the great father of Jesus. who would become king and redeemer for all who believe. God would use all things, even seemingly random events, even the sins of people, for the good of Naomi, for the good of the entire world. What does that mean for you? It means that your challenges your financial challenges, your struggles, all the difficulties for you that come with maybe you're attached with some Moabitess, someone from another place with some kind of record, all the difficulties that come with being attached to a person who comes from a totally different world, like Ruth. All the heartaches of having a child who leaves the Lord It means all the losses that you have racked up in this life, none of them. None of them are obstacles to the goodness of God, but they may be instrumental in bringing you into the fullness of the goodness of God. That flips the entire script. Now, you might think, okay, that's great. This seems like an exercise theological and literary analysis, but how about for me? How can I tell that God is for me? How can you tell that God is for you? Over and over, Naomi said, God is against me. I lost my son. If God was for me, he wouldn't have let my son die. He would have spared my son. The gospel tells you that God is for you. He did not spare his own son for you so that you will not die. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? That is how you can tell that God is for you. Let's pray. Lord, we confess that there's this constant pressure that is always shrinking your goodness to us in our perception. It just is always looking smaller. What have you done for us? It just seems smaller and smaller. And then bitterness easily takes root in us. We confess this, Lord, but we come back to what you tell us. Your loving kindness to us is forever. You're loyal to us even though we're disloyal to you. Your loving kindness endures forever. And we see the proof of this, the certainty of it in Jesus, our Redeemer, our kinsman Redeemer. And so would you just blow down the walls in our mind, everything that we've built up, everything that we've considered to be a case against your kindness for us. Would you show us that you are surely at work even if we will never understand how until we get to the end. Would you make great and expand to us your loving kindness to us in Jesus. We ask in his name, amen.