Naomi: A Broken-Hearted Mother s Joy Restored:

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1 Naomi: A Broken-Hearted Mother s Joy Restored: Book of Ruth 5/8/16 AM (Mother s Day) Michael Osladil, Calvary Bible Church, Hanover, PA Life s difficult experiences can leave traces of grief or bitterness written on our faces. I saw such an example recently when I viewed the picture of an acquaintance I had not seen in many years. This woman, now in her early 50 s had decided to go her own way in her late teens. While she had professed faith in Christ as a child, she married a man who was not a believer. After numerous episodes of his unfaithfulness, along with suffering physical abuse she had divorced him several years ago. But the years of heartache and turmoil she had experienced remains etched on her face. The difficulties and trials of life can leave people who at one time carried faces full of hope and joy, now left with expressions full of sadness and despair. Their dreams and anticipation for a brighter future have gone up and disappeared into the clouds, like smoke from the fiery trials of affliction they ve encountered. Do you ever have times when you feel like all the joy of life has been taken from you? You live in a vacuum devoid of joy and happiness. You feel all alone. Is there any hope for that wife whose husband continues to go his own way, bringing heartache on her and their family? What hope does God give for those who find themselves suffering bitter disappointment? Is there any hope for that one, whose suffering may, at least in part, be due to their own disobedience? On this Mother s Day I want to take you to a story of a broken-hearted mother. If we were to see a picture of this middle-aged mother after the series of losses she experienced, we would be looking at a woman whose lips are pulled together into a slight frown. We would see bitterness written into the features of her once pleasant face. Yet as her story unfolds, we will see that ultimately this mother s story gives steadfast hope to us in the midst of our own suffering. God disciplines the righteous As the righteous respond properly to suffering God blesses them Trust God to work out His purposes for your suffering in His time The righteous remain obedient under God s discipline of the nation 1) The Book of Ruth, in terms of suffering, shows how the righteous sometimes go through discipline. God disciplines the righteous. 2) But as the righteous go through that suffering and respond properly, God blesses them. 3) We will also see that the scale of time during which God works out His purposes for us is far greater than our incessant focus on the present. So we need to trust God to work out His purposes for our suffering in His time. 4) Finally, in terms of suffering, the Book of Ruth functions to show how the righteous should act under God's discipline. The righteous remain obedient under God s discipline of the nation. 1 Now notice how the book of Ruth starts out by showing us that God is judging the people of Israel for their disobedience. Look at Ruth 1:1. Now it came to pass, in the days when the

2 2 judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land (Ruth 1:1a NKJV). What is a famine a response to for Old Testament Israel? Disobedience. If you don't obey, God warned that one of his judgments was to send a famine. For example, in Deuteronomy 28 after pronouncing the blessings Israel could expect for obedience to the Mosaic Covenant, God pronounced the curses for disobedience. God told Israel in Deuteronomy 28:15ff: However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you: 16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country The Lord will strike you... with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. 23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. 24 The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed (Deut 28:15-24 NIV). And in Leviticus 26 God warned Israel, However, if you do not listen to me or obey all these commands, 15 and if you break my covenant by rejecting my decrees, treating my regulations with contempt, and refusing to obey my commands, 16 I will punish you. I will bring sudden terrors upon you wasting diseases and burning fevers that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away And if, in spite of all this, you still disobey me, I will punish you seven times over for your sins. 19 I will break your proud spirit by making the skies as unyielding as iron and the earth as hard as bronze. 20 All your work will be for nothing, for your land will yield no crops, and your trees will bear no fruit (Leviticus 26:14-20 NLT). So as the book of Ruth opens we see that God is judging the people of Israel for their disobedience. Now when a famine comes, what should you do? Repent! God desires for us to turn in repentance when we are disciplined for our disobedience. But what does Elimelech do? Elimelech leaves. He decides to get out from underneath God's discipline. Look at Ruth 1:1 again, During the time of the judges there was a famine in the land of Judah. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah went to live as a resident foreigner in the region of Moab, along with his wife and two sons (Ruth 1:1 NKJV). Elimelech tries to get away from God s discipline. One lesson we learn from Elimelech s response to discipline is that: Sometimes God brings difficulties into our lives and we need to respond to them, not just get away from them. When you encounter difficulties, whether great or small that God allows to come into your life, rather than immediately trying to remove the difficulty, you might ask yourself, What is God trying to teach me through this difficulty? Is there sin for which I need to repent? Am I part of the problem? Our tendency can be to blame the other person for all our difficulties. But how important that we focus on what we may have done to contribute to our present difficulties. Now while it was no doubt hard for Naomi to say goodbye to her many friends, when she and her family moved to Moab, she may have kept pretty upbeat about the whole experience. After all, she had her husband and two sons.

3 3 But instead of life getting better life only got worse for Naomi. She struggles with Elimelech to support their family in a foreign land with foreign customs. Then tragedy strikes again as her husband dies. Now Naomi is in a foreign land, with no husband and two sons who are by this time grown. The sons marry Moabite women with Chilion marrying Orpah, and Mahlon, Ruth. Later, Nehemiah condemned the men of Israel who married women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab (Neh 13:23), so this was not a kosher act that Mahlon and Chilion did. Just as God does not want you as a Christian man or woman to marry a non-believer (cf. 1 Cor. 7, Marry in the Lord ) so God did not want the children of Israel to be joined together to the heathen women or men around them either. God appears to show his displeasure by taking the life of Naomi s two sons. Look at Ruth 1:2-5, The name of the man was Elimelech, the name of his wife was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion Ephrathites of Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to the country of Moab and remained there. 3 Then Elimelech, Naomi s husband, died; and she was left, and her two sons. 4 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 ten years. 5 Then both Mahlon and Chilion also died; so the woman survived her two sons and her husband (Ruth 1:1b-5 NKJV). Naomi lives at a time when men provided the support and ballast of life, when a single woman was in a precarious position. 2 What was Naomi going to do? Here she was in a foreign land. She has lost her husband and her two sons. Not long after this, Naomi receives some good news. God came to the aid of His people in her homeland by providing food for them. So off she set for Israel with her two daughters-in-law. Now, Naomi through all of this kept her faith in God. She lacked understanding what God was doing. But she refused to turn to the false gods of the Moabites. Her two daughters-in-law saw a love and kindness in Naomi that they did not see in their own people. This attracted them to her. So it was not surprising that they set off for Israel with her. But Naomi told them, Go back home. You will not have a good life with me. Go back to your parents home. You are young, you can get married again. Look at Ruth 1:11-18, But Naomi said, Turn back, my daughters; why will you go with me? Are there still sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands? 12 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, 13 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! 14 Then they lifted up their voices and wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. 15 And she said, Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law. 16 But Ruth said: Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God. 17 Where you die, I will die, And there will I be buried.

4 4 The Lord do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me. 18 When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she stopped speaking to her (Ruth 1:11-18 NKJV). So Naomi, and Ruth the foreigner, arrive in Israel in the springtime. (I enjoy springtime, don t you?) Spring is a time of rebirth, a time of hope and anticipation. In Israel, spring signifies hope for fruitful land, fruitful wombs, and fruitful lives. While God wanted His people to recognize their need of His provision and rely on Him for fruitfulness, Naomi felt she herself was beyond the point of receiving help from the Lord. 3 Naomi stated in Ruth 1:13, No, my daughters, you must not return with me. For my intense suffering is too much for you to bear. For the Lord is afflicting me! (Ruth 1:13 NET). Naomi not only recognizes God s hand has gone out against her, but she also recognizes her helplessness in the circumstances God has created for her. Naomi has no husband to provide for her or her daughters-in-law. Even if she did find a husband she is too old to have children for them to marry. In ancient times when a woman s husband died the next of kin male would marry her and rear up children by her so that she would have children to provide for her. Naomi was too old to provide children for Ruth and Orpah to marry. It was such a dark period in Israel s history. There were not many faithful trustworthy men who were willing to live up to their responsibility to the next of kin. These women were left in cruel desolate circumstances wondering what they should do when there was seemingly nothing else they could do. Do you ever feel like you are beyond the point of receiving help from the Lord? This story of Naomi should give us hope. Naomi situation looked hopeless from her perspective. When Naomi comes back to her ancestral home in the village of Bethlehem with her Moabite daughter-in-law, Ruth, the whole village expresses excitement about their arrival. Look at Ruth 1:19-22, 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? 20 But she said to them, Do not call me Naomi [meaning pleasant ] ; call me Mara [meaning bitter ], for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. 21 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? 22 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 (Ruth 1:19-22 NKJV). Naomi tells the ladies Don t call me Naomi, the pleasant one. Call me Mara, the bitter one. That s the way she comes back from her experience. She s lost her husband, lost her two sons. God s discipline has been upon them. And her situation seems so hopeless. Did you note the despair Naomi feels under the weight of her trials? Naomi says, GOD has caused me to suffer. CALL ME BITTER. For any of you mothers or others here today, who feel so hopeless in the situation you face, take heart from this story of Naomi. If Naomi could come to you today, she would put her

5 5 reassuring arm around you, and say, Don t give up! Keep your faith in God! Our God is faithful to His promises. He will provide! Your response of faith in your difficult situation can bring blessing to those around you both now and for generations to come. See beyond your present circumstances. From the life of Naomi we will see that God can restore our joy, even though we ve experienced great tragedies in life. Now one way God provided for the poor was by allowing them to glean in the fields after those harvesting the crops. As the story unfolds we see that God brought Ruth into the field of a close relative of the family clan. In contrast to the disobedience of Elimelech, we see the obedience of this family relative named Boaz. Boaz follows the Lord. And where does he stay? He stays in the Promised Land that God has promised him. He no doubt serves the Lord. Notice how Ruth just happens to go to Elimelech s field to gather up the grain left over after the reapers had gone through the field. Look at Ruth 2:1-22, There was a relative of Naomi s husband, a man of great wealth, of the family of Elimelech. His name was Boaz. 2 So Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, Please let me go to the field, and glean heads of grain after him in whose sight I may find favor. And she said to her, Go, my daughter. 3 Then she left, and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers. And she happened to come to the part of the 4 field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech. Now behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said to the reapers, The Lord be with you! And they answered him, The Lord bless you! 5 Then Boaz said to his servant who was in charge of the reapers, Whose 6 young woman is this? So the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered and said, It is the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. 7 And she said, Please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves. So she came and has continued from morning until now, though she rested a little in the house. 8 Then Boaz said to Ruth, You will listen, my daughter, will you not? Do not go to glean in another field, nor go from here, but stay close by my young women. 9 Let your eyes be on the field which they reap, and go after them. Have I not commanded the young men not to touch you? And when 10 you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn. So she fell on her face, bowed down to the ground, and said to him, Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner? 11 And Boaz answered and said to her, It has been fully reported to me, all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you have left your father and your mother and the land of your birth, and have come to a people whom you did not know before. 12 The Lord repay your work, and a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge. 13 Then she said, Let me find favor in your sight, my lord; for you have comforted me, and have spoken kindly to your maidservant, though I am not like one of your 14 maidservants. Now Boaz said to her at mealtime, Come here, and eat of the bread, and dip your piece of bread in the vinegar. So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed parched grain to her; and she ate and was satisfied, and kept some back. 15 And when she rose up to glean, Boaz commanded his young men, saying, Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. 16 Also let grain from the bundles fall purposely for her; leave it that she may glean, and do not rebuke her. 17 So she gleaned in the field until evening, and beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. 18 Then she took it up and went into the

6 6 city, and her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. So she brought out and gave to her what she had kept back after she had been satisfied. 19 And her mother-in-law said to her, 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 20 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. 21 Ruth the Moabitess said, He also said to me, You shall stay close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest. 22 And Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, and that people do not meet you in any other field. 23 So she stayed close by the young women of Boaz, to glean until the end of barley harvest and wheat harvest; and she dwelt with her mother-in-law (Ruth 2:1-22 NKJV). By the end of the story we see Boaz fulfills his duty as a kinsman redeemer and takes Ruth as his wife. And God allows Ruth to conceive. In Ruth 4:13-16 we read Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he was intimate with her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. 14 Then the women said to Naomi, Praise the Lord, who has not left you without a family redeemer today. May his name become well known in Israel. 15 He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. Indeed, your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him. 16 Naomi took the child, placed him on her lap, and took care of him. 17 The neighbor women said, A son has been born to Naomi, and they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David (Ruth 4:13-16 HCSB). God took an empty life, and in a way that Naomi and the people of Israel would never having dreamed, He took a foreigner and brought her into His salvation program. God caused Naomi, whose life had been empty and without hope, to be filled with joy and hope. Through Naomi and Ruth s plan to redeem their land through Boaz their kinsmanredeemer, God provided the Kinsman-redeemer for which you and I await today. Through Ruth, the Moabitess, Jesus Christ, our Kinsman-Redeemer came. Do you feel empty? Does your situation seem hopeless? Are you at the point of despair? Remember the story of Naomi. One lesson we learn from Naomi is that: God alone can fill an empty heart. He wants to fill your heart with joy and hope, and He will as you contemplate the redemption Jesus Christ provides for you. Do you want to have a heart filled with joy and hope? Contemplate the redemption Jesus Christ provides for you. God alone can fill your empty heart! Keep looking to Him for the help you need. A second lesson from the story of Naomi is this: Christ s redemption of you demonstrates His great care and concern for you. Christ died on the cross to pay the price for your redemption. Christ s redemption demonstrates His great care for you. You are His child. The best is yet to come for you! As the apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 8:16-17, The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that we are God s children. 8:17 And if children, then heirs (namely, heirs of God and also fellow heirs

7 7 with Christ) if indeed we suffer with him so we may also be glorified with him (Rom 8:16-17 NET). Be hopeful, you have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. You have been given the Holy Spirit as a guarantee that God is going to complete the good work He has begun in you. Are you a Mara? Resentful over what God has done in your life? The life of Naomi teaches us that as you respond by faith to God, controlled by His Spirit, He can ultimately bring good out of your bitter experiences. The book of Ruth is a very interesting story, a love story with a happy ending, in which God is seen to be operating behind the scenes. But the writer of the book of Ruth sees more than that. The writer of the book of Ruth sees more than Naomi herself could have known. Notice the writer s comments in Ruth 4:17 Also the neighbor women gave him a name, saying, There is a son born to Naomi. And they called his name Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David! (Ruth 4:17 NKJV with additions). The writer of Ruth ends with the genealogy spelled out. They named the child, Obed, one who serves; perhaps indicating how he would serve Naomi. D. A. Carson notes, Naomi never knew she would be an ancestor of Jesus the Messiah. She could not possibly have enjoyed any prospect of being written up in the canon of Scripture that hundreds of millions of Jews and Christians alike would read for millennia. Her timescale was too small for that. 4 Now we shouldn t blame Naomi for that. There are many instances in Scripture where the timescale on which God works out His purposes is vastly greater than what we can imagine. Perhaps the way you hold up under suffering may be instrumental in the conversion of someone who in turn brings up his family in the fear of the Lord, so that his daughter s son becomes the next Whitefield or Spurgeon or William Carey or Wilberforce. God frequently utilizes and blesses small acts of faithfulness in the context of deep misery to bring forth blessing we could not possibly have asked for; but would have been happy to suffer for. The ultimate time scale, of course ends up in the new heaven and new earth. God is getting us ready for heaven. 5 Mothers, keep before you that your response of faith in the midst of the hardships of life, pleases the Lord, and serves as a powerful testimony to your children. What a legacy you pass on to your children through your response of faith in those situations that seem hopeless from a human perspective. Remember that even in suffering God is getting you ready for heaven. The more we can keep this eternal perspective in mind, the more it transforms our assessment of many things. As Christians, we, who have no answers to WHY this or that has happened can afford to take the long view. The God we know is a just God; He will ensure that justice is done, and seen to be done. That means we do not always have ready answers; we have, instead, an unshakable confidence in the One who DOES have the answers and the power to impose them. GOD WILL HAVE THE LAST WORD; WE DARE TO WAIT FOR THAT. (Perhaps this is one of the reasons the book of Ruth has a happy ending). 6

8 8 So the Book of Ruth in terms of suffering shows how the righteous sometimes go through discipline. But as they go through that, respond properly, God blesses them. The scale of time during which God works out His purposes for us is far greater than our incessant focus on the present. SO DON T GIVE UP! Some of you are facing waves of suffering regularly crashing over you. You feel like you can t go on. You are tempted to despair. These waves of suffering may be beating you down in a marriage that turned south years ago. Or perhaps the waves of suffering come from a wayward child that has broken your heart so many times that you ve become numb to the pain. Whatever situation of suffering you find yourself in let me encourage you to keep your hope in God. Keep seeking to please the Lord in your response to whatever situation of difficulty threatening you. The impossible situation provides an opportunity for our God who can do the impossible to show Himself strong on your behalf. [ILL] I think of the words of wisdom a mother offered her son. This mother, who was named mother of the year in the state in which she lived, had known much hardship. Her own mother had died when she was but five years old. She was then raised by her mother s parents for the next twelve years. 7 Yet through the hardships she endured and the wisdom she gained, she imparted this wisdom recounted by her son. Her son, was asked when he was President. Mr. President, you have known every great man of our time. Who is the greatest man you ever met? Without an instant s hesitation Dwight D. Eisenhower said, The greatest person I ever met wasn t a man. It was a woman. It was my mother. She never had much schooling but she was wise in God s wisdom. She went to school to the greatest of all books, the Bible. And she acquired real wisdom. He said, Once when I was a boy, my brothers and I were playing a game with my mother. The game was with cards not regular playing cards because she was too straight-laced for that but a hand of cards was dealt and I remember this night Mother dealt me an utterly impossible hand. And I began TO COMPLAIN about it. She said, Boys, put your cards down. I want to tell you something, especially you, Dwight. You are playing a game in your home with your mother under loving circumstances. We all love each other here and I have dealt you a bad hand. Now, she said, when you get out in life where they don t love you so much, YOU ARE GOING TO BE DEALT MANY A BAD HAND. What are you to do? You are to PRAY TO GOD. You are to TRUST GOD and LIKE A MAN YOU ARE TO PLAY OUT THE HAND THAT IS DEALT YOU. And, said Dwight Eisenhower, that is one of the wisest things I learned in my youth. 8 Mothers, by God s grace in your difficulties, pray to God. Trust God to bring ultimate good out of your difficulties. HE WILL PROVIDE! Keep responding by faith to Him.

9 9 1 Cf. Stephen Bramer, Dallas Theological Seminary class BE547 - A Biblical Theology of Suffering, Disability, and the Church, Unit 3. Biblical Suffering in the Pentateuch and the Prophets, Video 6: Suffering in the Former Prophets Part 1. 2 D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord!: Reflections on Suffering and Evil, 2 nd ed., Spring in Israel also suggests hope through the feasts celebrated during that time of year. In the Passover Israel acknowledged their need of a redeemer and their fidelity to the LORD. The Passover celebrates the Lord s redemption and the faithfulness of God in bringing Israel to the land He had promised to Abraham. Ruth, of course had come from a foreign land to the land of promise. The feast of unleavened bread also celebrated in the spring focused on Israel s willingness to cut herself off from her old life in Egypt. What a coincidence: Ruth, also broke with her past life in Moab when she decided to accompany Naomi into whatever situation lay before them. Then the wave offering at the Feast of Firstfruits signified Israel s recognition of her need of divine provision. It was a wave offering of a sheaf of raw barley (Lev 23:11). As Ruth was gleaning among the sheaves of barley, in the midst of her need for divine provision (cf. Ruth 1:8-9), the nation of Israel was celebrating a feast that focused on Israel s need of divine provision. Now Leviticus 23 enjoins an attitude of acknowledged dependence coupled with faith that the Lord will provide, that He will remain faithful to His covenant promises by giving His people a full harvest. Naomi recognized her need for divine assistance and recognized that the assistance was available for Ruth and Orpah (Ruth 1:8 9), but felt she herself was beyond the point of receiving help from the Lord (v. 13). 4 Ibid, Carson. 5 Ibid Ibid Cf. Ida Stover Eisenhower in Wikipedia. Cf. accessed 5/6/16. 8 Dr. Norman Vincent Peale