Now we're going to read from the scriptures. Tonight we're reading in the book of Ruth, chapter one, verses one through seven. Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem, Judah, went to dwell in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech, The name of his wife was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Malon and Kilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem Judah. And they went to the country of Moab and remained there. Then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died, and she was left, and her two sons. Now, they took wives of the women of Moab. The name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth, and they dwelt there about 10 years. Then both Melon and Killian also died. So the woman survived her two sons and her husband. Then she arose with her daughters-in-law that she might return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited his people by giving them bread. Therefore she went out from the place where she was and her two daughters-in-law with her, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah." This is the word of the Lord. There's a famous royal son, he's a prince, and he famously quit his position and quit his responsibilities of royalty. He and his wife left the palace, they refused to attend royal events, and they even left the royal family, left the country. And people who pay attention to this particular royal family, They hear about all the reasons for why the son of the throne left his country. Well, in this book of Ruth, we're beginning the short series on the book of Ruth. This book is set under very similar circumstances, but in the history of the people of God, Israel. So the book opens with these, this family, this Israelite couple, And they leave their family land. They leave their nation and they depart Israel for another nation, Moab. And they've got reasons. They've got reasons for why they are emigrating. And they also will have regrets over emigrating. Because they're leaving more than family. They're leaving more than citizenship. They're also leaving God's presence. And so more on that. But the implicit question is, in this passage that we're looking at tonight, the implicit question is, was it a mistake? Was it a mistake to go? Was it a mistake for this couple, Elimelech and Naomi and their two sons, was it a mistake to leave the land? There's a song that often played when I was a kid. It was called, Should I Stay or Should I Go by The Clash. And one of the parts that recurs in this is, if I go, there will be trouble. If I stay, it will be double. Because when this couple emigrates from Israel, for them, it ended in calamity. That's what we just read about. All the men, all the men, Naomi's husband dies. Naomi's two sons die. That's utter disaster. In that culture, the ancient Near East, to be a woman without a man, it meant you became poor. It meant you were forgettable. And for this woman, leaving Israel ended in calamity. And so we see three things. We're gonna look at, first of all, the causes of calamity. the causes of calamity, and then secondly, the temptations in calamity, the temptations in calamity, and then thirdly, the cure for calamity, the cure. We'll start with the causes of calamity. Let's just detail the numerous aspects of calamity for this family. First of all, the first cause for their calamity is that they were living, when they were back in Israel, they were living during national instability. depending on where you are, depending on what your situation is in this country, maybe you feel like, yeah, for the last however many years, I've been living through national instability. If not this year, go back five years, go back 10 years, go back to 2009, the huge recession. They lived during national instability. The book says, it opens in this account, it says it transpired in the days when the judges ruled. Now you may recall that in the history of Israel, the first civil rulers in the formal government, the first rulers were Moses. And then there was Joshua. And then there was this long period of the judges. The book of Judges spans about three centuries of rule by these successive judges in Israel. But then There was Moses, there was Joshua, there were the three centuries of the judges, and then what? Then the form of government transitions from rule by judges to rule by kings, the monarchies of Israel. And the time of Ruth, this book, it sits in that period where Israel is about to transition from rule by judges to the rule of kings. So they're close to the cusp of this. But what do we know about the rule of judges, this era of the judges? If you read that book, and it's the book that is right before Ruth, the book of judges. If you read that book, the nation was characterized by about 300 years of everyone doing what was right in their own eyes. You could say it was Israel's libertarian era. Over and over, this is what happened during this libertarian age in Israel. Their libertarian living turned into libertine living. Some of the most bizarre, some of the most disturbing, some of the most twisted national events occur during the period of the judges. The judges would be the most, it's just really not appropriate, you would say, for children's Bible storybooks. The stuff in there is just so disturbing, and yet it's there. People doing all kinds of crazy, off-the-rails things. Now, that period of the judges, it resulted in cycles, over and over during those 300 years, these cycles of chaos, cycles of national instability. It was not, those three centuries, they were not good times to be living in Israel. And that's what Naomi and her family were living in. Now, the second thing, not just national instability, they also lived during an economic recession. In verse one, it says, there was a famine in the land. Just a few little words, but it speaks volumes. Their economy depended on flocks and fields. Famine, that meant there must have been some kind of crop failure, some kind of crop disease, or maybe some kind of extended drought. The result was everyone is asking, everyone is asking, how am I going to feed my family? How am I going to pay the bills? What are we going to eat? We lack bread. So this intense economic pressure from the recession. Thirdly, though, there's death. they die. That's part of their calamity, not just national instability, not just this economic recession, but then there's death that visits this particular family. First of all, Naomi's husband, Elimelech, he dies. And then her sons, her adult sons, they die, both of them. And the death of all of the males of your household, that meant economic you became a widow, and then on top of that, you become a childless widow, you could only escape ruin. The only hope of escaping ruin would be to marry. But in that culture, who is going to take on the economic cost, the economic burden of marrying a woman who is too old to bear children? Because children were considered economic assets to the family in that economy. And so not only is Naomi economically ruined in that ancient economy, Naomi is on top of all that. Naomi is also an immigrant. Naomi is an immigrant woman. Moab is, this place of her calamity, Moab is not, this is not her homeland. These are not her people. She is She's a foreigner, and now on top of that, she is a needy foreigner, without husband, without sons, without family. Her prospects in Moab are zero. Now, does it surprise you then? Does it surprise you then to learn that this woman, Naomi, became bitter? she became bitter. Her name, Naomi, actually means pleasant, delightful. But later, further on in the book, she says, don't call me Naomi, call me Mara, which means bitter. And specifically, Naomi is bitter about God. Naomi is bitter about God. She's not bitter about bad luck. She's bitter about God. Verse 20, Naomi says, 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. When you experience hardship, when you experience hardship, whether it's the economy shits and you lose your income or maybe it's your health that has this huge shift and you lose all the medical security that you once had. or your family shifts and your golden child is lost to you. When you experience hardship, do you become bitter? Do you get better? Do you get bitter against God, against the Almighty? Now, bitterness, what's bitterness? Bitterness, you could say, it's an inner resentment, an inner resentment. The voice of bitterness is, I didn't get that role that I really wanted. I got turned down. I lost that relationship that I poured so much into. They took away, they took away the recognition that I deserved. He, she robbed me of my childhood. Or this political party, these politicians ruined my country. And bitterness says, and I resent my loss. I resent it deeply. Are you bitter? Are you bitter about something, about someone? Take something that you lost. Take something in life that you lost and just check inside. Check inside. Do you resent that loss? This passage invites us to look at the theological causes of Naomi's calamity. The visible external causes of her calamity, the national instability, the economic instability, the medical disasters, those are easy to see. Those are the external causes for her calamity. But at the God level, What are the theological causes for her calamity, for her suffering? Well, let me just give you two things and then we'll apply it to her. One theological cause for her calamity, it's that others cause her suffering. a suffering. That's one theological cause for suffering. We recognize it's others who've done it. Others cause us suffering. We didn't deserve, sometimes the situation, the right analysis is we did not deserve the disaster. We are just, we're just collateral damage from someone else's sin. Like for instance, the child who has an abusive parent, that child does not deserve the present suffering and the future emotional suffering. The child is collateral damage. Others cause us suffering. But then another theological interpretation and cause for calamity. Sometimes we cause. We cause our own suffering. We bring the calamity on ourselves. The calamity is perhaps correction for our own choices, our own sin. And so maybe the abusive parent gets arrested and loses custody and now regrets harming the child. But it's the parent who caused, the parent caused their loss of custody. The parent brought the suffering on themselves. Now, in the case of Naomi, both of those factors, both of those theological interpretations are in play. At one level, at one level, others caused her suffering. The nation of Israel was one of the causes for her suffering, what they did, what the rest of the people did. The nation of Israel was a geopolitical entity, but more than that, the nation of Israel was a covenant entity. Israel was this one nation, this only nation that had special commitments from God and special obligations to God. The theme of the book of Judges tells us over and over how Israel continually, the nation of Israel continually turned from God, resented God, resisted her commitments, threw off her obligations with God. And every time when the nation did that, it brought trouble to everyone who lived there. Deuteronomy 28, 15 describes some of the covenant consequences which will fall on the people when the nation, when the nation turns away from God. For instance, but it shall come to pass if you, speaking to the nation, God says, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all his commandments and his statutes, which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. Your heavens, which are over your head, shall be bronze, and the earth, which is under you, shall be iron. The Lord will change the rain of your land to powder and dust. From the heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed. You cannot bring this interpretation to every nation that has drought or famine or economic recession, but the cause of this national famine in this time, the cause of the national famine that hurt Naomi and her family, It was a nationwide dislike of God. They didn't want God, and so economic recession, famine, came on all the people. So calamity, through one of the theological lenses, calamity came to Naomi's family because of other people. Because of other people, they suffered. But Naomi's family also, to some degree, brought calamity on themselves. Verse one, we learn why Naomi and her husband emigrated from Israel, the place where God's covenant commitment was set. They wanted bread, it says. They wanted bread. They wanted work. In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. That is why Naomi and her husband took their sons out of the place of God's promises. And it was there in Noah while they were looking for bread, while they were working for bread, looking for job security, looking for financial security, they left spiritual security. And what did they get? What did they get looking for financial security, looking for job security? They got spiritual insecurity because they were out of the promised land and they got, they ended up with financial insecurity. insecurity and familial insecurity. All the males, all the males of the family died. And so in a real sense, Naomi and her husband brought this calamity on themselves. In a real sense, Naomi and her husband brought this calamity upon themselves. Now, for all of us here, we we will come under pressures and we will end up at these places where we've got to make big life decisions. Decisions about, do I need to make a change right now? Do I need to move? Is it time for me to marry or is it time for me to say no to this marriage opportunity? Should I take a job here? Should I take a job there? Can I offer this to you? Don't make any big decision. Don't make a career decision based primarily on the salary or on social comfort. Don't make big relationship decisions based solely on, primarily on personal gratification. Don't make a choice Big choice or a small choice? Don't make a choice if you know that choice will take you farther from God, not closer to God. Don't make a choice if you know that it goes against the priorities and the revealed will of God. The primary factor must always be the spiritual consideration. What is the will of God? What is God's will? What will glorify God? Jesus said, don't worry about bread. Don't worry about what you'll eat, what you'll wear. Don't worry about how you are going to pay the bills. Instead, Jesus said, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And then all that stuff will be added to you. All that stuff will be taken care of. There's just a lot more we could say about this general topic. I'd love to talk more about it if you have questions, but we've just got to move on. We've looked at causes of calamity for Naomi. Next, let's look at the temptations, the temptations in calamity. When everything is going wrong, one of the temptations is bitterness, bitterness against the people who caused the calamity, bitterness against God who ordains whatsoever comes to pass. But there's another temptation. Another temptation is fear and doubt. The temptation to fear and to doubt. Naomi and her husband, before they emigrated to Moab, they were suffering from this recession. And for an Israelite, what's always playing in their mind is, we are here in the land of promise. We are here in the land of abundance, the land that is flowing with milk and honey. And for an Israelite, you knew that this is the place of God's special presence and God's particular promise. But when the famine came, And it's been a long time since we've seen any of that milk or honey. And when the culture is just going down the tubes all around you with their twisted behavior, Naomi and Elimelech made the decision to leave, to leave the place where they were close to God's presence. And maybe they were understandably thinking, how are we going to feed our kids? And this is no place to raise kids. Maybe they were afraid of going hungry. Maybe they just doubted that God would be merciful, and so they departed. They moved to Moab, and maybe in their thinking, there's a clue to this in the text. Maybe they said, this is just temporary. We're just gonna move for one harvest season, just to make a little bit more, and then we'll come back. But in verse four, we see that they were there for a decade, 10 years. When the pressure is on you, When you are rattled, do you fear? Do you doubt? When we doubt, when we fear, it can come out in all kinds of ways. Let me just give you one way that is linked to work and to money and just feeling safe and secure. Here's one way that it comes out. The fourth commandment. The fourth commandment says in Deuteronomy 5, Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy. As the Lord your God commanded you, six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor the immigrant who is in your gates, nor any of your animals, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. The commandment says work six days, rest one day. The commandment says don't work on the Sabbath. Don't cause others to work on the Sabbath. Keep the day set apart for God, to God. But we fear. We fear. We fear that we won't make enough. We fear that we won't score high enough. And so we work and we spend ourselves just to get bread. And maybe we cause others to work and to spend themselves. And not only do we fear, we doubt. We doubt that we'll have enough if we don't work on the day of rest. And what the Lord is inviting us to remember He's inviting us to remember that bread that came down from heaven. They were needing bread. He says, remember the bread that came down from heaven, the manna that God sent from the sky. Remember how he directed them to collect bread, food for every day, except on the seventh. On that day they were to rest. They were not to collect bread. They were not to go out trying to get food. God would provide enough bread to feed them on the day of rest. Nothing has changed. God will supply if you rest. Now it's so ironic, under that food calamity, they left the land of promise to search for bread. And the irony is that in Moab, they got worse than they feared. In Moab, they got bread, but they found death. So there's this temptation to fear, this temptation to doubt. There's another temptation in calamity. Another temptation in calamity is to compromise. When the pressure is on, isn't it the case that compromise seems very reasonable, very entirely excusable? Look at how this family responded and compromised when they were in calamity. There's the famine, the food pressure. And then in Moab, verse three, the patriarch, Naomi's husband, dies. So all this kind of pressure. But look at what we learn about the sons, Malon and Kilion. The very next verse, they marry outside of the covenant restrictions. That's their compromise. Verse four, Now they took wives of the women of Moab. The name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. That phrase, they took wives of the women of Moab, that had clear prohibited assessment to any Israelite who was hearing this narrative. Moab was an enemy people. Moab were people who were against God. Moab were the people who had lured Israel to sin against God in the Balaam curse. And then in Deuteronomy 7, in Deuteronomy 23, it warned them not to marry outside the Jewish faith. These sons could have found wives back in Judah. They were really not that far away from the land of Judah. And they had these examples of Isaac, examples of Jacob, going to the homeland to find a wife. But for them, this family, they give in to the temptation and they compromise their principles. They sin in marrying outside of the faith. Now, this might sound odd. But it's very clear. The Bible supports interracial marriage, interethnic marriage. The Bible supports interracial marriage, but it prohibits interfaith marriage, believers marrying unbelievers. It's not only in the Old Testament. You can read about it also in 1 Corinthians 7, the New Testament. But think of the situation that Naomi and her sons are in. They're immigrants. They're financially shaky, and so they compromised and married Moabites who worshipped other gods. When you're vulnerable, and they were vulnerable, they were vulnerable. when you're vulnerable, it is easy. It seems so reasonable to compromise, to compromise your morals, to compromise walking blamelessly with your money, how you handle your money, to compromise with your intimacy, to shade the truth instead of risking your reputation. When you're stressed, isn't it tempting to be careless. Isn't it tempting when you're stressed to give yourself a pass for how you rest, how you engage in recreation? For instance, isn't it tempting to be careless with what you put in front of your eyes? Isn't it tempting to be careless with what you watch? You're thinking, I need, I'm under a lot of stress. I'm under a lot of pressure. I need rest. I need some kind of distraction. We're tempted. Aren't we tempted to compromise what we watch? For me, here's one thing I know I cannot compromise. I cannot compromise seeing nudity. As a follower of Jesus, I know that he would not have me set before my eyes any unclean thing. Psalm 101. And then you've got that righteous man, Job, who said, I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman. So whatever the matter is, whatever it is, don't compromise. Don't let the line erode. Don't rationalize under pressure. And if you've let the line erode, if you've compromised, just pull back. Reset the line. Just push out the compromise. We've looked at the causes of calamity. We've looked at temptations and calamity. Finally, let's look at the cure for calamity. After 10 years outside of the land of God's promise, what happens? Naomi decides to go back. Verse six, Naomi arose with her daughters-in-law that she might return from the country of Moab. Now, This is a setup for what we'll look at in some of the coming weeks. Here is Naomi, an immigrant in Moab, but she's gonna go back and she's going to take with her her daughter's-in-law, who will then become immigrants into Israel. So Naomi says, I'm going to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard that the Lord had visited his people in Israel by giving them bread. This whole time it was all about where are we gonna find bread. She heard, back in my homeland, the Lord has come back and given food. Naomi says, I left the land of God's presence. I lost my family. There is nothing left here for me. I will return. And so for Naomi, going back means tacitly admitting I was wrong. I am returning now with less than when I left. I lost it all in Moab. I regret it. I regret leaving." It's like the familiar story that Jesus told about the younger brother in a wealthy household who, he was wealthy, he left home rich, and after he left, he wasted his wealth. He wasted his assets on women, on wild living, and then he returns back home poor. This is a picture inviting all of us to return to God, whatever you've done. However you may have compromised your principles, no matter how many years you stayed away, you can turn around. You can turn to God. You can return to him. She knows that. It's like it's embedded in her Israelite DNA. She knows she can come back to God. is this God like? If you come back to him after all that, 10 years, and you come back with not just immigrants, you come back with unclean women, part of the baggage that you now have with you, these Moabitesses, what is God like when you come back? Psalm 103, the Lord forgives all your iniquities. heals all your diseases, redeems your life from destruction. He crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies. He satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. The Lord is merciful. The Lord is gracious, slow to anger, abounding in mercy. He will not always strive with us, nor will he keep his anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins. He has not punished us according to our iniquities. And maybe you think, but I can't, I can't go back to him. Isn't he the one, isn't that what Naomi says? Isn't he the one who brought the calamity? Isn't he the one that brought the hardship and brought the correction to his people when they turned from him? If I return and I come back to his door and I knock on that door, when he opens that door to my face, what's the face that I'm going to see? Will I be greeted with the face of anger and resentment for my sins? There was this time when one of my best friends lived next door to me. And I was a kid. I think I was in middle school. So everything significant happened in middle school. And we were just goofing off with each other. And my friends were at home. And I wanted them to come out to goof off, to play. And so I rang their doorbell. And I rang the doorbell, and rang it, rang it, rang it. And they couldn't come out. They weren't supposed to come out. But I just thought, oh, we're just friends. And I just rang the doorbell. And you can really push the doorbell very rapidly. It's kind of interesting to see how many times you can do it. And so it was just great fun. And I thought, oh, here's something that will top this. This will be even more funny. You know how when you ring the doorbell, it goes ding? And when you release it, it says dong. And if you push it and it says ding, you can even hear the electrical hum when the electromagnetic current is applied, and it's just holding back, and then if you release it, it will go dong. Well, I thought, wouldn't it be so funny if I just got some clay, the soil where we lived was mostly clay, and I just made this big blob of clay, and I pushed the doorbell so it goes ding, and I just pasted it down with clay. And so the doorbell, like for, a long time doesn't finish. And I thought it was great, and I did that, and then I just ran away, and it was great fun. Well, it wasn't so funny because they opened the door, and they looked at the clay blob, they took it off, and the doorbell would not release. I broke the doorbell. And they called me and said, hey, did you do that? Did you realize you broke the doorbell? And I just thought, oh no, what have I done? That was so stupid. And I was like, okay, I have to go back and tell them, yeah, I did it. I'm sorry. How can I pay for this? So I go back and maybe I was like in seventh grade, like, let's just hope I wasn't in high school. There's a possibility I was actually in high school. But, you know, I go back and I ring the doorbell, and the adult answers the doorbell, and I mean, she's frustrated. And there I am, and I'm just, I actually was crying. I said, I'm so sorry. That was really stupid. I'll pay for it. I'm really sorry. That was so dumb. And her face just melted. And she just said, don't cry. Please don't cry. It's okay. We can deal with this. Please don't cry. It's okay. I'm not mad at you. When you come back to God, when you come back to him, no matter what you've done, no matter how long you were away, no matter what baggage and what kind of Moabitess you come back with, and you face God, will it be the face of anger towards you? I want you to know this. In the gospel, Jesus Christ left the land. He left the land of the Father in heaven and he came to the cursed land, he came to the fallen land, and in that land, the worst calamity fell on Jesus. He became poor, he owned no land at the end of his life, and in that foreign land, Jesus found death. He died, he's the man who died in the foreign land. The cross was Jesus becoming the curse for our sin. And Naomi and her husband, they left the presence of God in order to avoid judgment. Jesus stayed in the land under judgment until the whole fullness of wrath came all on him. And he did that so that we can return to the land of God's blessing. Jesus left heaven and got calamity. Now we can return home and find life. And there is no other way. There is no other way to return to God and to get the face of welcome instead of the face of anger or the face of disapproval. Can you believe that? Can you believe that if you repent and if you admit to God all that you've done and you ask for forgiveness in Jesus' name, he won't be bitter for all your crimes for all of the outlandish things that you did, He will say, I forgive you. In Christ, I forgive you, and I am just as pleased with you as if you were the one who never compromised. When you turn to him in Christ, you will not meet a face of bitterness. You will meet a face of welcome and wild embrace and kisses on your neck. That is what is at the core of what we teach and what we believe. One final thing, if you can soak in this and you can apply this to all the stress and the pressure that's on you, Instead of being so stressed, you find that, instead of being so stressed, you find that maybe at the same time, you find that you're more satisfied. That even in calamity, you find that in spite of the calamity and everything that's burning down all around you, even deeper inside, you find that you're satisfied with Jesus. You don't need You don't need to go back to Moab to get bread that will not satisfy. You've got the bread which has come down from heaven which satisfies. In this life, we've got many regrets. We've got all kinds of things that we look back on with regret or with self-doubt. Should I have stayed? Should I have moved? How would things have turned out if I had taken the other path? I've got my own list of regrets and uncertainties, but there's one thing that I do not regret. Leaving everything behind in this life and following Jesus. And there's one thing that Jesus does not regret. He doesn't regret calling you. He does not regret becoming the bread from heaven, the bread of life for you. that will satisfy you. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we come to you and for those of us who come to you and these are days of calamity and everything is shaking and we're so scared. We're wondering if you're real. We wonder if you can do anything. We pray, Lord, give grace that we would not compromise, that we would not leave your promise, that we would not turn away from your commitment and our obligations to you. But we also come as those who are so desperate, and our only hope is Jesus. We come convinced that no wrath remains, but the approval, the abundant approval that you have for us in Jesus It's there, and so, Lord, would you take us as sons and daughters of the King, royalty, and would you establish us in righteousness and goodness? And would you, Lord, bring in those who are in calamity? Would you give us hearts to bring Christ to those who are in calamity? Would you appear in the midst of us and bring glory to yourself? We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.