I invite you to turn with me to the book of Ruth in the Old Testament. If you are not sure where it is, the order is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth. There it is, tucked away at the end of the book of Judges for a reason. And the reason the book is positioned at the end of the book of Judges is that the first verse of Ruth tells us that it takes place during the time of the judges, hence the position in the Bible.

In fact, it might help, before I read part of it, for you to notice the last verse of the book of Judges, which is the next verse before the first verse of Ruth. Do you see that? The last verse in the book of Judges is this:

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25).

That’s a summary of the book of Judges and a summary of the time of the judges — namely, it was a very dark time. It was a time of moral collapse. It was a time of human autonomy with everybody deciding for themselves what they would do, with no king to draw them into line. And it was one of the darkest seasons in the history of Israel. That is the setting for this beautiful book of Ruth.

Bitter Providence and Barley Harvest

So let’s read the first chapter of the Book of Ruth. I’d love to read it all, but that would take too much of our time. This is Ruth 1:1–22:

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. 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. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

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. 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. 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. 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.

And they said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.” 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? 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, 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.” Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.

And she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” 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. 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.” And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.

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?” She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. 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?”

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.

Sorrow and Holy Anger

Before I pray and ask for the Lord’s help in applying this text to your situation, let me first thank the elders for trusting me with this raw and vulnerable moment in the life of your church. And then, let me tell you in what capacity I feel that I am here. I think I’m here in three capacities.

First, I am a herald of the word of God. He is a God of great holiness, not to be trifled with. He is a God of great mercy and a God of sovereign power, that I believe most of us share and love.

Second, I’m here because I love Bob and Gail and their family, and there rises up in me great sorrow and anger at Bob. And I’ll pause over that word anger for just a moment because it’s a dangerous word. The Bible says, “The anger of man does not work the righteousness of God” (James 1:20).

I’m suspicious of my anger. I have a lot of it, which is one of my problems. I’m suspicious of my anger. But when all of taking the log out of your eye is over, and submission to the sovereignty of God is over, there remains a holy anger that is both right and necessary.

Do not let the sun go down on your anger (Ephesians 4:26).

So I come in the second capacity as one who loves this family, loves Bob, and was incensed at what he did.

Third, I come to you as one who has walked through this 20 years ago with you, with one of the staff members at our church. The memories are fresh and horrible. We were, in those days, a cauldron of conflicting emotions. There was sadness, disillusionment, confusion, anger, devastation, fear, and numbness. We lost 230 people from Bethlehem from the 1,200 or so who were attending in those days. We did not see any growth in our church for three years as we bowed under the heavy hand of God’s discipline. The elders were doing what they believed to be right, and they were loved for it, admired for it, and hated for it. The sword that cut through our church wounded and destroyed and healed and saved.

A Sword of Separation, a Healing Balm

I’ll give you a picture of that. One Sunday, I finished ministering the Word in the midst of the horrible situation that you’re in now, and a woman walked straight down the front aisle. I was standing there, and she stood in front of me — a long time member of the church — put her finger in my face, and said, “You are the most arrogant man I have ever known.” Then there was a single mom who was there on the night when we, as elders, lined up and presented our disciplinary plan for the pastor. There was ice in the air. You could have cut it. The people were not on the same page with regard to what should be done. There was this single mom who was visiting the church for the first time. She had no idea what she was walking into.

She had a 13-year-old daughter with her (she told me this later), and later she said to me, “My daughter was sitting there trembling through the whole service. She’d never seen anything like this.” And she said to her mom when she got home, “I want to go back there. That was real.” The sword was cutting in two directions.

Helping Children Through Crisis

Let me add a parenthesis here about children. Her daughter was 13. Most 13-year-olds can get these things. But what about the five-year-olds? What about the seven-year-olds, the eight-year-olds? How are you doing this in your family? I want to encourage you to do something. Don’t miss this opportunity. It is not what you wanted. It is horrible. This is not the way kids should experience things. But they have, and they do. Now what are you going to do?

Now, I want to encourage you to get down to their level, look them right in the eye at home, and teach them massively important things they’ll never forget because of this moment. Teach them. Teach them the power of sin like they’ve never tasted it. Teach them the sacredness of marriage with illustrations. Teach them the gift and effort of self-control, and how they relate. Teach them the qualifications of eldership and why consequences follow. And teach them, perhaps most complex of all, the difference between forgiveness and trust and the necessity at times of looking into a man’s face and saying, “I forgive you, and I do not trust you.”

Forgiveness is free and granted for the one who repents and asks. Trust is built and earned and takes a long time when it’s destroyed. Let’s say you have a babysitter, and suddenly you find out the babysitter has been stealing, or worse, abusing your kids, and the babysitter collapses in a pool of penitent tears and says, “Sorry, please forgive me.” You must, but you don’t have to hire her again and you shouldn’t. This is hard. The kids have to begin to grasp this. The 13-year-old girls said, “I want to go back there. It was real.” It was real. It was horrible and real.

The Setting of the Book of Ruth

The story of Ruth is taking place in a horrible time. Everyone is doing what is right in his own eyes. I want us to get the big picture before we look at these amazing details.

So to get the big picture in Ruth, let’s look at the last verse of the book. Ruth 4:22 goes like this at the end:

Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David.

That’s the end of the book. What’s that about? Well, Obed is the son of Ruth who was not going to have any children. She had been childless for 10 years of marriage. She didn’t know that a Boaz kinsman redeemer existed. She’s just heading into black darkness of the future with Naomi.

And then there was a Boaz, and then there was an open womb, and then there was a child named Obed, and then there was a son named Jesse, and then there was a son named David who named the lineage into which the son of David lands — the Messiah, King Jesus, God of all. That’s what’s happening in chapter one. That’s what’s happening in this horrible time in chapter one. All that was being prepared.

That’s the big picture of the book of Ruth. It’s the big picture of the Bible. That’s the story of the Bible over and over again. It’s horrible darkness with no way out, and God is preparing for King Jesus. So there’s the big picture and we will see especially the darkness of chapter one, but we will also see the rays of light shining at the end of it.

The Present Relevance of Ruth

You are living in chapter one of Ruth. That’s why I chose the book. And chapter four is coming. Indeed, Matthew 1 is coming because Ruth is named in Matthew 1:5 as one of the ancestors of Jesus. A Moabite, foreign woman who couldn’t have any children is one of the great, great, great, great grandmothers of Jesus.

I hope that the effect of this message will be that God will raise up from among you ordinary members, Boaz-like men and Ruth-like women. You haven’t met Boaz yet. And we haven’t seen Ruth in her greatness yet. But they are both great. They are great. And this is a time for great women. It’s the women, perhaps, who feel the most violated, the most vulnerable. This is a time for great women, great strong women like Ruth. You’ll see her in just a minute.

And men, Boaz dealt with her so carefully, so gently, so discreetly, so uprightly. He did. This is a great book with a great woman and a great man leading to a great future. So that’s what I’d like to see happen: women and men raised up like that.

Naomi’s Misery

Ruth 1:1–5 is all about the misery of Naomi. There’s a famine. That’s where it starts, a famine. So the first thing is that she and her family, Elimelech and the boys, don’t have enough food and they solve that problem by moving away. Now, Naomi knows beyond a shadow of a doubt where famines come from. They come from God. Psalm 105:16 says:

[God] summoned a famine on the land
     and broke all supply of bread . . .

That’s what God does. God sends rain. God causes the sun to shine, grain grows up, and bread is made. We have enough to eat. And when the rains don’t come, we don’t have enough to eat. And she knows where that’s coming from. “God has dealt bitterly with me,” is the refrain of her life, and she’s right.

Then there’s this decision to go to Moab, which is a pagan land. I don’t think they should have done that. Foreign gods are there. They’re playing with fire. And lo and behold, their sons marry, against the Law, Moabite women. It’s a dangerous thing. That can draw you away from the faith. So the Bible was against it.

Now if you were Naomi, you would tremble because you would see what’s coming, and it came. Her husband died. Her sons and daughters were barren for 10 years in their marriage (Ruth 1:4), and the boys died. And if you were Naomi, you would have probably said, “We shouldn’t have come.” There was a famine, they moved to pagan Moab, she had the death of her husband, and her sons were married to foreign women, there were two barren marriages, and she experienced the death of her sons. That’s a lot of blows.

So you, quite apart from the situation at Redeemer, may have felt already, “This is my life. Blow after blow, after blow, after blow. How many can there be?” Naomi surely must have thought that. She said very clearly, “The Lord has dealt bitterly with me.” And she was right.

Ruth’s Refusal to Leave

What’s going to happen next? Ruth 1:6 says:

The Lord has visited his people and given them food.

She hears that in the field. Rumor has it that the famine is lifted and Judah has food again. The Lord gave, the Lord took away, and the Lord is giving again. So she decides to return to Judah with her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, and then in Ruth 1:8–13, evidently, for some reason changes her mind while they’re on the way and tries to persuade them to go home. Ruth 1:11–12 says:

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? Turn back, my daughters; go your way, for I am too old to have a husband.

Now, that wouldn’t make any sense at all unless you know the custom in the Old Testament that if a brother who’s married dies, the brother of that brother can marry the remaining wife and raise up children in seed to the name of that brother. And that was a sacrificial thing that a brother would do to preserve the name and the lineage of his dead brother. And what Naomi is saying is, “Mahlon and Chilion don’t have any brothers. And I’m too old that if I had a baby tonight, you wouldn’t wait for him to marry, to fill in. And therefore, if you are committed to their name, you’re committed to widowhood and childlessness for the rest of your life. So go home and turn it around and find another husband. It won’t work to go with me. It doesn’t work that way in Israel.”

That’s how she’s trying to persuade them to go home. Then, in Ruth 1:13, she says:

No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.

In other words, “Don’t come with me because if you come with me, all I experience from God these days is bitterness and opposition, and that’s what your lot is going to be. So go home.” And here is where Ruth is absolutely astonishing. Astonishing. Which is why I want you women to be Ruth-like women here. Ruth 1:14 says:

Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.

There’s even another plea from Naomi in Ruth 1:15 for her to leave and get Ruth to go away. So Naomi is trying her best to present Ruth’s future as dark and bleak and hopeless as it is going to be. And Ruth walks into that darkness instead of away from it. So I thought one of the ways I could have preached on this was to say this situation at Redeemer is going to separate the Orpahs and the Ruths. Orpah, when she heard a description of what a future with Naomi and with the God of Israel would mean, left. She thought, “It’s too dark, it’s too bleak, it’s too much bitterness, it’s too much trouble.” And Ruth stared into that darkness and said, “I’m there. I’m going.” That’s weird. That’s wonderful. That’s beautiful. That’s strange.

Remarkable Determination

That requires some remarkable explanation. So let’s read Ruth’s words in Ruth 1:16–17:

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. 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.

This is astonishing. This is an astonishing commitment. What does it mean for Ruth to go with Naomi? First, it means leaving her own family and land. She probably had an extended family in Moab and she’s going to walk away from that family. Second, it means a life of widowhood and childlessness. Neither of them knows anything about Boaz. Boaz is not on the scene yet. God knows Boaz, they don’t. So as far as she knows there will be no children, no marriage. She will just be with her mother-in-law.

Third, it means going to an unknown land, with new people, new customs, and a new language. And here’s the one that amazes me. It means that her commitment to her mother is stronger than marriage. Do you see that? She says in Ruth 1:17, “Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried.” You would never say that to a husband. You say, “Till death do us part,” not, “If you die in Minneapolis and I’m 40, I’m staying and dying in Minneapolis.” There’s no way I would promise that to my wife or anybody.

What is that? She is saying, “If you’re 20 years older than I am and you die at 60 while I’m 40, I’m not going home. I’m going to die and be buried right beside you, Naomi.” That’s amazing. That is amazing. Where’d that come from? What is going on here? And surely the most amazing commitment is in Ruth 1:16, which says, “Your God will be my God.”

Now, you do realize how Naomi has only painted a bleak picture of being a friend of God? Ruth 1:13 says, “The hand of the Lord has gone forth against me. He has dealt bitterly with me.” I mean, is that the way you witness to people to try to win them to Jesus? “Come to Jesus, he deals bitterly with his children. He goes forth against them. He strikes blows to their churches and their marriages.” People will walk away from a God who deals bitterly with them. But not Ruth. Not Ruth. Ruth hears all this word of, “God is dealing bitterly with me,” coming from Naomi and she says, “I want your God. I’m not leaving.”

Redeemer is walking through the bitter providence of chapter one, and this will separate the Orpahs from the Ruths. She has seen something glorious in this God that she cannot walk away from. We don’t know how she saw it. It could have been 10 years with Chilion. Maybe he was a good man, a wonderful man, and he knew God. I don’t know. But she knew God now. And she’s saying to Naomi, “I’m not leaving your God. The God of Israel is my God. Your covenant God is my God. I’m staying right there with your God. After you’re dead, I’m with your God in your land with his people. That’s who I am. That’s my new identity.” That’s amazing in the light of all the bitterness that Naomi spoke of and experienced.

Calamity from the Hand of the Almighty

So they returned, as Ruth 1:19 says, to Bethlehem. Isn’t it amazing that Bethlehem is where they go? Bethlehem is the town of horror and the town of hope. The Son of God, the Savior of the world, is born in Bethlehem, and Herod cuts down all the kids in Bethlehem. Is there any place in life that isn’t like that? No, there isn’t. This sword is always slicing in two directions.

So they recognized her, or at least they thought they did. “Is this Naomi?” (Ruth 1:19). And she responds to them, and Ruth has to listen to this again:

Do not call me Naomi (pleasant); call me Mara (bitter), for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. 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? (Ruth 1:20–21).

Way to witness to the greatness of God, Naomi. What do you think of Naomi’s theology here? I would take Naomi’s theology here over the sentimental views of God in our culture any day. Naomi knows three things beyond a shadow of a doubt: number one, God exists; number two, God is sovereign; number three, God has gone forth against me. She knows.

It never entered her mind nor the mind of any saint in the Old Testament to solve the problem of their evil by denying the sovereignty of God. Never. God exists, God is sovereign, and God brought the famine. She says, “God took my husband. God took my sons. God made the women barren. God has brought me back empty.” That’s all true.

What’s her problem? She has a problem. She’s wrong about coming back empty. What happens when your life is just burdened with one burden after the other — wave, after wave, after wave of bitter providences crash over your life — is that you can’t see anymore. If somebody would wave a flag of hope in your face, you couldn’t see it. She didn’t come back empty. She has Ruth. She’s not empty.

She’s also forgetting her Bible, like the story of Joseph in Genesis 37–50. It’s one of my favorite stories in the Bible. I go to it over and over again because I feel like I live between his being sold into slavery and his becoming the vice president of Egypt. It took about 13 years or so for him to be ripped off by his brothers, sold as a slave, lied about, and cheated by Potiphar who accused him of sleeping with his wife when she was setting that up and it didn’t happen. And then he gets thrown into prison for two more years.

At any point along the way, Joseph could have rightly said, “The Lord has dealt bitterly with me.” But evidently, Joseph held his peace and waited 13 years of inexplicable abuse. And then he becomes the vice president of Egypt and saves the sons of Jacob that sold him into slavery by feeding them. That’s what Naomi has forgotten. She has forgotten those stories and how God works in the world.

All she can see is, “I came back empty, I came back empty. I once had a husband. I once had sons.” She’s right to believe in the sovereignty of God and she’s wrong to be blind to the signs of his merciful purposes, signs like Ruth and signs like this.

The Signs of Merciful Providence

Look at Ruth 1:22. It says:

They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest.

I love that. If I were to title this message, it would be Bitter Providence and Barley Harvest. If you don’t know the book, that won’t mean anything to you. So let me try to tell you what that means. It is laden with hope.

Here she comes back. As far as she knows, Ruth is not going to have any husband and she’s not going to have any children. She is just a mother-in-law who’s got a sour attitude towards God and a future of childlessness and no husband.

And there’s a barley field owned by a man named Boaz, a good man, an upright man, a righteous man, an older man who’s kept himself pure all these years. And she goes down there to glean in the field because she’s poor and poor people were allowed to go around the edges and pick up what was left over after. And Boaz sees her and he likes her. He likes her. And he wonders about her and he makes sure there’s enough left on the field for her to have.

Her mother-in-law tells her who he is, and lo and behold, he is a kinsman. She thinks, “He could do what I thought nobody could do for you. If the two of you got together, your husband’s name would be preserved. You could have a child, I could have a grandson, and maybe there is a future.” But these two people, Ruth and Boaz, are as pure as the driven snow. They are so careful. They are so upright. They are so delicate about this.

So Ruth goes down there, Boaz talks to her and says, “Just be careful you don’t go for the younger men. You can’t tell what they might do. We’ll take care of you.” He was going to guard this woman, make sure she was kept safe. And then her mother said, “Why don’t you go down there and show him in the middle of the night that you’d like to marry him?” And it could have gone all wrong. But those two people are not that way. And Boaz says, “Not tonight, we will make this right. I will find out whether there’s another kinsman closer than I. And if there’s not, I’ll have you, old as I am, young as you are, Moabite though you be.”

It turns out the other kinsman who was closer didn’t want Ruth. So Boaz married Ruth and God opened her womb after 10 years of childlessness. And they had Obed, who bore Jesse, who bore David, who bore Jesus, so to speak. Don’t be blind when mercy drops around are falling in the desert of these days.

Behind a Frowning Providence

She couldn’t see the mercy drops. She couldn’t make any sense out of Ruth. She didn’t know what it meant that it was barley harvest. These stories are in the Bible so that you won’t make that mistake. We sang this:

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
     But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
     He hides a smiling face.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
     And scan his work in vain;
God is his own Interpreter,
     And he will make it plain.

I said to the pastors and elders before the first service as we were chatting, “My main word” — and there are many words — “is don’t rush this pain. Don’t rush this sorrow. Don’t rush this brokenness. Don’t heal this lightly.”

In chapter one, famine broke. There was a foreign country with foreign wives, barren marriages, a dead husband, dead sons, and a lost daughter-in-law. That’s chapter one, and that’s where you live right now in this church. That’s chapter one. And it is barley harvest. It is. And those who have eyes to see, can see it. I can see it.

In three to seven years from now this will be a mighty church, mighty in the Spirit, mighty in the word of God, mighty in salvation. I have no idea in God’s providence how long God may keep you in chapter one. For Bethlehem, it was about three years. I can almost date the moment his hand lifted and we took off again under his favor. I don’t know. There’s no sacred number. I just know that however long he has you in chapter one, doing the necessary and painful work, don’t begrudge him.

Say if you have to, “The Lord has dealt bitterly with us.” Naomi said it, and it was true. Say that. But don’t say it to the expense of not even seeing Ruth, not even seeing the barley harvest coming in that year. Don’t say it to the exclusion of your confidence in the sovereignty of God. Bear the mighty hand of God, patiently trust his sovereignty. Look away to your Savior and his sovereign timing, and know that there’s coming a day when this church is going to be more mighty in the word of God, more mighty in the Holy Spirit, and more mighty in fruitfulness in this city.