God’s Providence, Our Response • 05.22.22

Nick Lees   -   May 23, 2022

God’s Providence, Our Response
Ruth 1

Hearts are revealed in their response to God’s providence

1. Rebellious hearts do what is right in their own eyes
2. A bitter heart blames God
3. A faithful heart commits to pleasing God

I am so excited to start our new series in the book of Ruth today. It has been such a refreshing read over the past week after having spent so much time in the darkness of the book of Judges. I don’t know how familiar you are with the book of Ruth, but at 4 chapters it is a short read. And rather than being chock-full of anarchy and idolatry, it is primarily a story of loyalty and redemption.

If you recall, the book of Judges ended with everyone doing what is right in their own eyes. And while we won’t fully escape that pattern in the beginning of Ruth, there is a significant transition away from it. This story becomes a breath of fresh air during a period of great trial and tragedy in Israel’s history.

To establish our setting, look with me at the very first verse of the book.

Ruth 1:1 (ESV)

1 In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.

When did this take place? In the days when the judges ruled… The events of Ruth are still right in the middle of some of Israel’s darkest days.

Now look with me at the very end of the book. Chapter 4:18-22.

Ruth 4:18–22 (ESV)

¹⁸ Now these are the generations of Perez: Perez fathered Hezron, ¹⁹ Hezron fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab, ²⁰ Amminadab fathered Nahshon, Nahshon fathered Salmon, ²¹ Salmon fathered Boaz, Boaz fathered Obed, ²² Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David.

The book ends with a genealogy, tracing the lineage of King David. King David would come years after the days of the judges. This tells us a few things. First, the book of Ruth was written after David had become king and is looking backwards in history. Second, the author of Ruth wants the readers to know that the outcome of what happens in Ruth leads to the birth of the King they’ve been waiting for. A king who becomes known as a man after God’s own heart.

The ending of Ruth reveals that God has been at work! He was at work the entire time in the lives of ordinary people who were loyal to him and one another. He was at work to facilitate the progression of his grand plan of redemption. This is a concept known as God’s providence.

Providence – God’s benevolent and wise superintendence of His creation. (HIBD)

It’s the understanding that God has a good plan that he is divinely working out in this universe. Even in the midst of the dark days of Judges, God was at work. He had not abandoned his people or his plan. The book of Ruth reveals God’s work. It is through ordinary people like Naomi and Ruth and Boaz, the main characters of this book, that God reveals his hesed.

Hesed – loyalty, steadfast love, kindness, faithfulness; The core idea of this term relates to loyalty within a relationship. (Lexham Theological Workbook)

God is a god of hesed. Perhaps the most well-known use of ḥesed is found in Psalm 136, where the term is used 26 times as part of the refrain, “for his steadfast love (ḥesed) endures forever.”

The book of Ruth is overflowing with hesed. Between the characters. Between God and his people. Loyal, steadfast love and kindness will be a refreshing change from the selfish, self-seeking, proud behavior that we witnessed in Judges 19-21.

Ruth will also give us portraits of biblical manhood and womanhood, which sets us up well for our next sermon series on that topic in 4 weeks. So, with all that in mind…

Are you ready to dive into Ruth? Let’s go!

Ruth 1:1–22 (ESV)

1 In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. ² The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. ³ But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. ⁴ These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, ⁵ and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

⁶ Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. ⁷ So she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. ⁸ But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. ⁹ The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!” Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. ¹⁰ And they said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.” ¹¹ But Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters; why will you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? ¹² Turn back, my daughters; go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, ¹³ would you therefore wait till they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.” 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, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” ¹⁶ But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. ¹⁷ Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” ¹⁸ And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.

¹⁹ So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, “Is this Naomi?” ²⁰ She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. ²¹ I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”

²² So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest.

The first chapter of this book is full of action! It starts with a famine, a cross-country migration to Moab, a death, marriages, more deaths, and another cross-country migration back to Israel at the start of the harvest season.

Now you might be thinking, “Didn’t he say this was going to be uplifting!? This seemed pretty dark and depressing! Naomi lost her husband, her sons, and now is spiraling into bitterness.” If that’s where you’re at, first, good job paying attention earlier and studying the text. Chapter 1 does record some pretty hard things, however things will get better as we progress through the book! And you must realize, even in the hard things, God is at work. That’s what I want to draw your attention to this morning. God’s providence and our response to it.

What we’re going to see in Ruth 1 is that…

Hearts are revealed in their response to God’s providence

Everyone responds to the circumstances that God allows in their lives. And your response reveals the desires and beliefs that drive your life. In Ruth 1 we have witnessed a variety of responses to the good hand of God. Let’s see what we can learn from it.

It starts with verses 1-2, where we heard the setup of the entire book. There was a famine in the land of Israel, so Elimelech took his family to Moab to make a living there. We’re told their names, their tribe, and that they come from Bethlehem, which literally means “house of bread”. But they left the “house of bread” because there was no food to be found.

What is the significance of this family’s migration to Moab? The answer is our first revealing of hearts…

1. Rebellious hearts do what is right in their own eyes

This is another example of a man failing to trust God, just like we’ve heard about in the book of Judges. He is taking things into his own hands and leaving the Promised Land in search of food. Who is the Lord of all the earth?! Yahweh is. Who provides food and drink for his people? Yahweh does. Where were Elimelech and his family living? In Yahweh’s Promised Land. And yet, Elimelech is willing to disregard all of that to do what he thinks is best.

Now what went wrong? Why is there a famine in God’s Promised Land? Put simply, the people disobeyed God. This is exactly what God had warned would happen many years earlier! There were blessings for obedience, and curses for disobedience. The nation of Israel had forsaken God (we spent the last 18 weeks hearing about that in Judges). Listen to what God had told them before they entered the Promised Land:

Deuteronomy 28:15–24 (ESV)

¹⁵ “But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. ¹⁶ Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. ¹⁷ Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.

¹⁸ Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. ¹⁹ Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.

²⁰ “The Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me.

²¹ The Lord will make the pestilence stick to you until he has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of it. ²² The Lord will strike you with wasting disease and with fever, inflammation and fiery heat, and with drought and with blight and with mildew.

They shall pursue you until you perish. ²³ And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron. ²⁴ The Lord will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed.

Famine was the result of disobedience. God’s providence is at work, even in the hard times. He is allowing his people to experience the pain of forsaking him. How should have Elimelech responded? By crying out to the Lord in authentic repentance. This is exactly what we talked about throughout Judges, so I won’t rehash it at length here.

What happens in verses 1-5 is directly connected to the sin of the nation at that time. And, unfortunately, Elimelech does not lead his family well, but takes them away from the Promised Land, where God had called them to be, to a foreign land where he thought he could make a better living. The cost of this choice is high… First, Elimelech dies. Naomi is without her husband and provider. Then, her sons intermarry with Moabite women. While not expressly prohibited by God, since they were not Canaanite women, these marriages still end after 10 years with the death of the sons and no offspring. Now Naomi is left completely bereft of the men of her family. She is a widow without provision in a foreign land. It’s a very hard situation. This is setting up the emphasis of the rest of the book – Naomi is brought from emptiness to fullness – through the providence and hesed of God and other faithful people. (Repeat)

The lessons of verses 1-5 are hard ones. It is foolish to respond to God’s providence with rebellion. If he has allowed hard circumstances into your life, do not use that as an excuse to do what is right in your own eyes! It will not go well for you.

It is incredibly tempting, when things are hard, to turn to all kinds of things other than God for comfort or escape or pleasure, isn’t it? We’re so prone to look for the easy way out! Or at least what appears to be easy.

“Life is hard right now. I know what I’ll do…”

• I’ll escape into entertainment… and you binge watch TV or movies or video games. Anything to get away from the pain of reality.
• I’ll comfort myself with my favorite foods… and suddenly that bag of chocolate has become your counselor.
• I’ll medicate my pain away… and you crack open a can of beer, a bottle of whiskey, a bottle of pills, or perhaps you mindlessly waste time on your phone… you name the escape mechanism…

Maybe none of those resonate with you. Maybe they do… Either way, if you take time to slow down and consider, there are many ways our hearts can respond rebelliously to the circumstances God allows into our lives. All of them end poorly. We put ourselves in opposition to our Creator and we try to find our help outside of Him. This is a recipe for disaster.

Learn from the negative example of Elimelech. Don’t respond to God this way! I’ll show you a better way soon, but first we have a second negative heart response to learn from…

2. A bitter heart blames God

This is the response of Naomi, as we see in verses 6-15 and 19-21. And to be fair, Naomi has been dealt a hard hand! She has lost her husband and both her sons. She deserves our compassion. We certainly don’t want to minimize what she’s going through. She’s a broken woman walking through deep waters. To be an older widow in a foreign land would most certainly have been a hard life.

But that still cannot be an excuse to turn against God. As we progressed through the narrative in chapter 1, we heard the hopeful news that the Lord had provided food to Israel again. Naomi’s response is to return from Moab back to her homeland. God has provided and she is moving towards it. This is a reason to be thankful, but, as we have seen, Naomi chooses bitterness.

We are told that her Moabite daughters-in-law begin to make the journey with her (remember they are also widows!). This is again a reason to be thankful, she is not alone, but Naomi does all that she can to convince them to return to their parents. She points out that she will not be able to provide for them, nor can she produce husbands for them to marry. She interprets everything through the lens of her bitterness. She says that her life is far too bitter because God’s hand is against her. (Hint: She’s wrong! We’ll see later that God is doing a great thing that she doesn’t yet understand.) For now, she says they could not possibly bear to endure this with her. If they go with her, they will be as hopeless as she is. But, perhaps, if they return to their homes and their gods, they will find a future.

This counsel is shocking. It is not loyal to Yahweh. Naomi counsels these young women to return to the people of Moab and the false gods they worshiped! Perhaps she is trying to be logical about their prospects if they stick with her, but her bitterness also prevents her from trusting God with the future!

Naomi is trusting her own logic rather than God. Which is ironic, given how she spoke about Yahweh in verses 8-9. She had pronounced a blessing over these ladies, praying that God would show his hesed to them as they had shown hesed to their husbands and to her. She prays that God would grant them rest in the house of a new husband! Her actions do not mesh with her prayer. There is some functional unbelief here. “May God be faithful to you on your journey, but don’t come with me because God has not been faithful to me!”

Her logic works with Orpah, who says her goodbyes and returns to her home and to her gods. But Ruth clings to her. She will not leave. In fact, she offers an incredible commitment in verses 16-17, which we’ll come back to in just a moment. Ruth will be our positive response to look to today. But first, look again at verses 19-21.

Ruth 1:19–21 (ESV)

¹⁹ So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, “Is this Naomi?” ²⁰ She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. ²¹ I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”

Naomi bears her heart with her words. Do not call her Naomi, which meant “pleasant, beautiful, good”, call her Mara, which means “bitter”. Why? She tells us – for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. ²¹ I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”

Naomi looks at God’s providence in her life, and she is angry and resentful over it. In her eyes, God has taken everything from her. She was full, but now she is empty. *Pause* Do you remember who is standing right next to her? The one who clung to her! The one who had made a beautiful oath to stay with her until her death! RUTH!

Naomi’s bitterness leads her to self-absorption. She only sees her pain. She only sees things to be angry about. She ignores the blessing of Ruth. She ignores the provision of food from God in Israel. Now remember, Naomi has suffered greatly! She has lost her husband and two sons. She was in a precarious position as a widow with no one to care for her. Her whole life had been turned upside down by the hand of God.

But does that give her a free pass to be bitter and blame God? Does the presence of suffering in our lives permit us to sin? We must conclude, absolutely not. Bitterness is not a healthy response to suffering. It is a sinful response. It is holding on to anger and resentment towards God or others rather than addressing it in a way that brings reconciliation and healing.

Later in the Bible, in the New Testament, Paul would counsel the Christians in Ephesus to handle bitterness in this way:

Ephesians 4:31–32 (ESV)

³¹ Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. ³² Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

For New Testament Christians, our calling is to put all forms of sinful anger away, including bitterness, and to replace it with kindness, compassion, and forgiveness. The reason we can do this is because God has forgiven us through Christ. This is also the way that we replace sinful anger with kindness – we recall and meditate on God’s forgiveness towards us and then we follow that example with others! The grace and mercies of God, especially his forgiveness of our sins, far outweigh the reasons for our bitterness. Allow God to replace your bitterness with kindness and forgiveness. *Pause*

If you are holding on to bitterness, you are likely minimizing or forgetting the forgiveness of Christ. You are so focused on the reasons you are mad, that you have forgotten the even greater mercies of God that he has shown you. Certainly, that is the case with Naomi. She is angry with God for taking her husband and children from her. That is the lens through which she views life at this point. She only sees and feels the pain of her loss. And in so doing, she has forgotten all the other goodness and kindnesses of the Lord to her, including her loyal daughter-in-law, Ruth.

If you’re here today and you’re struggling with bitterness, please realize you are not seeing things clearly. You need God’s Word to confront and lovingly rebuke you. This often comes through a faithful brother or sister in Christ who can help you process through your struggles in a way that helps you see God and your circumstances accurately. Who might that brother or sister be for you? Reach out to them today and ask for help in overcoming bitterness! *Pause*

Graciously, God responds to Naomi’s bitterness with hesed. It is first experienced through Ruth, but it will also be shown through a man by the name of Boaz later in the book. And by the end of the book, even the women of Bethlehem will acknowledge that God has shown her his loyal love and redemption. This is a book with a hard beginning and happy ending!

Let’s end our study of Ruth 1 with the final heart response to God’s providence, this one is worth emulating.

3. A faithful heart commits to pleasing God

Shockingly, this is the response of Ruth the Moabite. The foreigner! The one you’d least expect to please God is the one who does. Let’s read her response again in verses 16-17:

Ruth 1:16–17 (ESV)

¹⁶ But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. ¹⁷ Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”

Ruth swears a beautiful oath before Yahweh. An oath of loyalty to Naomi, to the Israelites, and to Yahweh. She will leave her people and heritage behind to become an Israelite. She will forsake her gods and Yahweh will be her god! She will stick by Naomi’s side from now until the day of their death. Absolutely incredible.

Ruth, who had also lost her husband of 10 years, responds to the providence of God in her life not by turning away from him in bitterness, but by committing wholeheartedly to him! Clearly God was at work in her life to lead her to make such a commitment in the midst of such suffering. It is a reminder that God is at work, even in the hardest of situations. Even in the darkest suffering, God has not abandoned you and it is possible to respond in a way that pleases him.

Ruth demonstrates the beginnings of incredible hesed to Naomi. She will steadfastly love her in the chapters to come. She is faithfully by her side, working hard to provide for the two of them. And God will bless Ruth’s hesed with hesed of his own. He will provide and care for these women through some amazing “coincidences”. (Hint: not coincidence, but his providence!)

The book of Ruth will reveal to us the incredible power and beauty of loyal love amongst ordinary people. By functioning the way God intended them to with steadfast love to one another, these two women and the man Boaz will be used by God in a way that impacts the course of human history. You see, Ruth’s oath becomes even more incredible when you realize the outcome of her faithfulness is not only the lineage of King David, but even more importantly, Jesus Christ! God works through the loyal love of ordinary people to accomplish his grand redemptive plan.

A repeated lesson we will take from this book is that how you respond to suffering and trials matters. Today, we have seen that responding with hesed (loyal, faithful, steadfast love) is a God-honoring response that may echo for generations to come. Do not underestimate the ways God will work through your faithfulness to others. In a day and age that is obsessed with superheroes and superpowers, perhaps it is helpful to be reminded of the power of hesed – loyal, steadfast, faithful love. When you treat others this way, you will leave a lasting impact on their life and hopefully influence them to treat others in the same way. By God’s grace, this cycle of hesed will be what we pass down to the next generation, rather than the cycle of sin that we saw in Judges.

And I would be remiss if I did not point out that this is only possible when God is working in and through your life. Which means, you must have faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, and then you must be putting off bitterness and selfish “do what’s right in my own eyes” rebellion. You won’t want to please God and live a life defined by hesed if you are still dead in your sin. So, if there has never been a point in your life where you’ve admitted your sin and confessed your need for a Savior, I would invite you to wrestle with that decision today. I’d love to talk more about that with you after the service.

Let’s pray.

Pray