Ruth 1:1-18
Today is, of course, Palm Sunday. It is the day when we remember the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem on that incredible day. It was the first day of the week leading up to Passover, the greatest holiday on the Jewish calendar. People from all over the world had come to Jerusalem to celebrate God’s deliverance of His people from the hand of Pharaoh in the days of Moses, when the angel of death came and took the first born of all Egypt, but passed over the homes of those who had in faith sprinkled the blood of a lamb on their door posts.
Read John 12:9-19
“Look, the whole world has gone after Him…”
“The whole world has gone after Him.” As the Pharisees looked on that parade, seeing Jesus in the stretch donkey limousine, being hailed as king, they were convinced that the whole world was following Jesus. It sure seemed so. The people of Jerusalem, and all the people who had gathered from the far corners of the world for Passover were hailing this carpenter’s son as the Son of God – the Messiah – they were ready to put him on the throne of his great-great-great-great-grandfather King David. As they watched, the Pharisees saw their world coming apart at the seams.
But what a difference a week makes. Just 5 days later, by Friday of that same week, these same people would be calling for the death of Jesus, seeking instead the release of a notorious criminal so that Jesus would be crucified. Instead of shouts of, “Hosanna!” They would be screaming, “Crucify Him!” Rather than seating Him on a throne, they nailed him to a cross.
What happened? How could such a change take place in just a few days?
One day the “whole world is following Jesus,” and five days later, the whole world is murdering Him.
It is a classic case of worlds colliding.
Worlds collide when we are brought to a crisis - a point of choosing. Now I’m not talking about choosing between Subway and McDonald’s. I’m talking about choosing between cultures, between worlds.
For years Osama bin Laden was a thorn and a threat. He had two of our embassies in Africa blown apart August of 1998, and the USS Cole attacked on October 12, 2000. But it was not until September 11 that the worlds collided. A decision had to be made, a line crossed. Would we continue along, or would we make a decision, and take action?
. Worlds collided for Moses when he had to choose to identify himself with the people of God, and reject the “temporary pleasures of sin.” Remember our first week of this adventure? Worlds collided for Esther when she had to stand before the king and risk her life to save her nation. Worlds collided for Joseph when Potiphar’s wife grabbed his shirt, and said, “come, sleep with me,” and he turned and ran, leaving his shirt in her hand. Worlds collided for Daniel when he had to choose to eat the delicacies of the king’s table, or stick with his convictions and not defile himself with the world’s offerings. Worlds collided when Jerusalem had to choose to accept the Messiah, or reject Him
Worlds collide when we choose to embrace our culture or follow our convictions.
Today, we have the chance to see three individuals, one who took the easy way, one who simply survived, and a third thrived. Turn in your Bibles to the little book of Ruth. Ruth is the 8th book of the Bible, so it’s toward the front, after Joshua and Judges and before the three “First and Second” books, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. (pg 185)
We’re going to start at the first chapter, verses 1-5:
[Read Ruth 1:1-5]
It is always tough to be a widow, but in the Bible, widows
were in especially difficult circumstances.
There was no Social security, and women and children needed a man: a
father, brother, grown son, somebody else who would act as their
provider and protector. This woman Naomi not only loses her husband, but it
says clearly in verse 5 that she also loses her grown sons who might have
provided for her. So everything about the introduction in the book of Ruth
bespeaks hardship. Ruth and her two
daughters-in-law are left grieving, defenseless, and poverty stricken.
In her grief and depression, Naomi decides to head for home. Follow along as I read verses 6-10:
I want us today to contrast Naomi, Orpah and Ruth. How do
they handle deprivation, widowhood, hardship, and dislocation? How do they handle disappointment with life,
and disappointment with God? Each of
them is dealt much the same hand, but they come out as different people. God
loves them all. The opportunities are
the same for all. It's not as if one is
rejected in favor of the other. But one chooses one world, while the other two
choose differently. And even after that
choice, clearly Ruth's does more than survive, while Naomi just gets by.
One of the daughters-in-law leaves – Orpah is gone. She has made her choice. She listens to the words of her mother in
law, and she thinks, “You know, Naomi is right. There’s no reason for me to go Israel, and live as an alien, a
widow living with two other widows, with no visible means of support or hope of
a life. If I go back home, to my
family, I might just find a guy who will be willing to take in a widow as his
wife… And besides, I’m a Moabite, I
don’t begrudge the Israelites their God, but it’s not the religion that I was
raised with. Yeah, I’m going
home.” And off she goes. In making that choice, it is clear that
Orpah did more than choose to leave Naomi, her mother in law. She was choosing to leave the God of
Israel. After Orpah had left, Naomi
says to Ruth, “"Look, your sister-in-law is going back to her people and
her gods. Go back with her."
Orpah and Ruth had obviously been taught about the God of Israel by the
family into which they had married.
They knew of the nature of God.
They had heard the stories of God’s promise to Israel, the exodus, and
the commandments. This is evidenced by
the fact that when Ruth responds to Naomi, she uses the name for Yahweh, the
Lord God of Israel. But Orpah looked at
her situation, the crisis she faced, and opted for the comfort of familiar surroundings,
and the hope of her own culture and gods
But Naomi and Ruth continue side by side.
At this first critical moment, these two choose to live as God’s people. They choose to live in His land, among his
people, under His law. They chose
wisely. But there is more to thriving
than making an initial choice to follow the Lord – notice the difference in
their lives after they returned to Bethlehem.
Naomi was apparently a very nice person. Someone you would have wanted to know. Her name, which in these times was closely connected with a person’s character, means “pleasant.” Naomi had a lot of good qualities. It is evident from the way the people respond when she returns from Moab. They are delighted to see her. The text tells us that she had been in Moab for 10 years, but on her return the people are thrilled to see her. Verse 19 says that the whole city was excited to see her return. And we can tell by the loyalty that the two daughters-in-law demonstrated to her that she was a pretty special woman. After the death of her husband and the death of her two sons, those two young ladies felt such an attachment to Naomi that they set out to go with her rather than return to their own mothers. Their first response was to stay with her, even after she asked them to leave! And we also see that she was a godly person. When encouraging them to go, she prays a blessing on them from the God of Israel, in verse 8.
There was a lot about Naomi that was good. But the circumstances had really beaten her down. After the death of her husband and sons, left alone in a foreign land, she appears to be a disappointed and depressed woman. It would be easy to feel that way given the circumstances. She expresses her emotions powerfully in her words to her daughters in law, and to the ladies of Bethlehem. Look at verses 11-13, and 20-21:
She has been deflated. Her will to go on has gone on. She has no hope. She sees no future. There is no joy. And she blames God. “The Lord has gone out against me! The Lord has brought me home empty. The Lord has testified against me, the Almighty has afflicted me.”
Is that fair? Has God really abandoned her? We’re not going to go there now, except to say two things. First, I find it easy to understand why Naomi feels the way she does. It’s not hard to see why she would feel that God had somehow turned His back on her. But secondly, let’s not forget that God has provided a companion for her in her difficulty. Is it her husband? No, he’s gone. Is it one of her sons? No, they are both dead. Is it someone who can support her and protect her in her old age? It would appear not – but appearances have a way of being deceptive.
Let’s look at how Ruth handles the collision of worlds in her life. She is a young woman – widowed, and because her husband’s brother is also dead, she has no one to take care of her for the rest of her life. She has heard the same words from Naomi to go back to her people, to her gods, and hope for the best, but she sees beyond the depression Naomi is experiencing and remembers the stories of faith her mother-in-law used to share with them in better days. Somewhere during those days of wedlock to Naomi’s son, Ruth had come to believe in the God of Abraham, Moses, Isaac and Jacob. She now feels that she can no longer return to her own people because she would be a stranger there – she would be an alien in her own land because she is now a part of God’s family. So she chooses to align herself with the people of God, to live as a physical alien among the Israelites rather than be a spiritual alien among her own people. She has her sights on spiritual realities, not temporal difficulties.
That is why she says,
[Read vs. 16-17]
These words are the words of a person who is much more than a survivor. Ruth is not only going to go with her mother-in-law to Israel, she is going trusting in the Lord. Her circumstance is no different from Orpah, but she chooses to trust the Lord. Her pain is not all that different than Naomi’s yet she is willing to walk to a foreign land trusting in God.
II Corinthians 5:7 is one of the shortest verses in the New Testament and one of the most important. It says, "We walk by faith, not by sight." We make our walk, our progress through life, based on believing things that we cannot see; we believe them because God has said them. We don't walk just by what we can see. So Ruth is filled with expectation, and love for Naomi pours out of her heart.
Very quickly, let me tell you how the rest of the story unfolds. This book is only 4 chapter, and I would encourage you to read it this afternoon during a quiet half hour with the Lord.
After returning to Bethlehem, Naomi and Ruth settle into some subsistence housing. They have no income, no support. Ruth gets up one morning, and says, “I’m going to go glean some grain. In Israel, God had commanded that farmers were to purposely leave the edge and corners of their fields un-harvested for the poor to come and gather grain, and if any dropped on the ground, the farmer was not to pick it up, but leave it for the poor. So Ruth went to gather some of the grain with the other poor folk of the town.
She went to the field of a wealthy farmer named Boaz. Boaz noticed Ruth and inquired about her. One of his field managers said, “That is Ruth, the Moabite who came back with Naomi.” Boaz had heard of her faithfulness to Naomi, and he recognized her good character, so he asked her to gather grain at no other field than his – he would make sure she was protected. He also told his hired hands to purposely drop grain in front of her so that she would have plenty.
When Ruth went home and told Naomi what had happened, Naomi couldn’t believe it. It turns out that Ruth had stumbled into the field of a relative of Naomi! It didn’t take long before a romance bloomed between Ruth and Boaz, and they were married, and Naomi and Ruth were cared for the rest of their lives. Boaz and Ruth had a family, and Naomi was filled with joy once again.
By the way, did you notice the name of the town where Naomi came from? It was familiar to you wasn’t it? It was Bethlehem, the same city where Jesus was born. And do you remember why Jesus was born there? Because it was the city where King David was born, and King David was the great-great-great-great-grandfather of Jesus. Guess what – Ruth was David’s great-grandma!
Imagine that! Not only did God care for Naomi and Ruth, they were in fact part of the story and lineage of King David and Jesus Christ! It was through Ruth that God would keep his promise to the world of that Messiah who rode into Jerusalem nearly 1200 years later. All because her faith allowed her to choose to identify with God’s people and trust in Him even when the situation looked bleak.
I think that every person within the sound of my voice can find themselves portrayed in this story. Each of us faces those times when worlds collide around us. It seems as though the bottom had fallen out of our world. We are faced with incredibly difficult circumstances. We see no way out, no hope, we may even feel overwhelmed with discouragement and even be disappointed with God. We have seen today that there are at least three ways we can react. We can turn our back on God, and choose, as Orpah did, to align ourselves with the culture we are familiar with. We can decide to identify with the gods of this world – hope that someone will take us in – hope for the best. The world offers little in the way of hope, but it is familiar and comfortable. People will tell you how sorry they are, how tough it is, but they offer no real answers. They will urge you to fill the emptiness with toys, dull the pain with activity or additives. They will tell you to “look inside yourself for answers, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, stand on your own two feet.”
You can choose to go back to the familiar, if you like.
Or you can choose to identify yourself as a child of God. You can choose to live as an alien to the rest of this world. Sure, life will still have its crises. There will be still be the collision of worlds, when struggles will come and we will have to choose to walk by faith or give in to defeat. Look at Ruth and Naomi. Both chose to walk as children of God, to return to His people, to follow His laws, and live as part of His Holy Nation. But Naomi did so with a cloud of defeat over her. She was a believer, but the circumstances caused her to live in bitterness. She looked around her and saw the graves of her husband and her sons, and she decided to walk by sight, not by faith. All she could see was depressing, and she couldn’t get beyond it.
Ruth was in the same boat, but she chose to walk by faith, and not by sight. She looked at the same graves, and she grieved – of course she grieved! Her husband was gone – the love of her life! She faced poverty, and loneliness, and grief just like any of us would at the death of our spouse. She was a human being, a young woman whose hopes were crushed. But while she saw the circumstance, she looked beyond it, and walked by faith.
In the tears, she trusted God. In the grief, she had hope. When her worlds collided, she chose to walk by her faith in the God of Israel.
Did her husband come back? No. Did she ever get an explanation for his death? No. Did she know that her great grandson was the great king David, “a man after God’s own heart?” Probably not. But she didn’t have to see her great grandson, she didn’t have to know how God’s plan was going to work out. No angel came and said, “Ruth, 30 generations from now one of your descendants will give birth to the Son of God.” She trusted in the Lord even thought she couldn’t see how it was going to turn out. And that is what it takes to be more than a survivor – it’s called faith. Faith, we are told in Hebrews 11:1 is, “being sure of the things we hope for and knowing that something is real even if we do not see it.” (NCV)
Are some of your worlds colliding today? Are you in that critical moment of decision? You may be here today and it seems that your entire existence makes no sense. There is no hope, no joy, no future. You have a choice to make. Will you turn to the world around you, with its band-aids and pain-numbing drugs to get by, or will you turn to the Lord, and cling to Him in faith? Will you identify with His people, or, like Orpah, return to the world from which you come? Choose wisely. Choose life. Choose to trust in the One who sees the end and the beginning, who is sovereign over all creation, who causes all things to work together for the good for those who love Him. That doesn’t mean that all things ARE good for those who love Him, but that He causes all things to be according to His plan, even when we can’t see how, or why, or when. Trust your world into the hands of the One who put the worlds in place, and who guides their path through space.
If you have already trusted in Him, if you have already placed your faith in Jesus Christ, I call upon you to walk by that faith. The Christian church today has far too many Naomis and far too few Ruths. Today we are challenged to live lives of real faith. Look beyond the circumstance, look through the pain, and trust your daily life to the One who brings you eternal life. It may not get any easier, the illness may still be there, the marriage may not be healed, and you may never get any explanation, but you will have the assurance that your Redeemer lives, that He is in control. It is time for each of us to take these messages, these workbooks and the stories we have heard, and apply them to our lives – to not only know these truths, but to walk in them. To not simply hear the words, but live them.
This is a moment when worlds collide. You have a choice to make. Will you identify with the world, like Orpah, and turn away from God and His people? Will you be overcome by those circumstances, and live in bitterness? Or will you walk by faith, trusting in the living God, despite the circumstances?
May God grant us more Ruths, and may the Holy Spirit do His work in each of our hearts according to His will.