December 23, 2007

"Ruth: Hope for the Empty"

Ruth 1: 1- 21; Ruth 4: 13- 15; Matthew 1: 5- 6 

Last Sunday I mentioned that our scripture referred to Rahab as Rahab the harlot or Rahab the prostitute; the woman whom we will discuss this morning had another description attached to her name.  Throughout the book that bears her name Ruth is referred to as Ruth, the Moabitess.  This description refers to her nationality.  She came from the land of Moab.  Her people were the Moabites.  Do you remember who the Moabites were?  They were descendants of Lot. 

Lot, you may recall was Abraham's nephew, who came along with him from Haran to Canaan.  Like his uncle Abraham, Lot was wealthy and owned much livestock and had many servants.  Because the land they settled in could not support both Abraham's and Lot's livestock, fights broke out between Abraham's servants and Lot's.  To keep peace in the family, Abraham suggested that he and Lot split up.  He gave his nephew first choice over where to settle.  Lot surveyed the land and saw that some of it was greener and more fertile than the rest.  He chose that better land for himself.  But, this was a poor choice, because in the middle of this lush land were two of the most wicked cities ever to exist, Sodom and Gomorrah.  It wasn't long before Lot settled in Sodom.  I think everyone here remembers the rest of the story.  God decided to destroy these two cities with fire and brimstone.  He sent two angels to rescue Lot and his family, but they lost everything.  And not only did they lose their possessions:  His daughters lost their husbands and families and Lot lost his wife, who was turned to pillar of salt when she ignored the angel's warning and looked back at the burning city.  The only ones to escape were Lot and his daughters.  Lot was so afraid, he lived far away from other people in a cave in mountain.  Instead of fullness, his greed left him empty.

Moab was the son of Lot and his older daughter.  Many years had passed and Lot's descendants no longer served the true God and had begun worshipping idols like all the other nations around them.  These were Ruth and Orpah's people, the Moabites.

Naomi, her husband Elimelech and their sons Mahlon and Kilion also sought greener pastures.   Her family settled in the land of Moab to escape a famine in Judah.  But, as we saw from our scripture things did not go so well.  Elimelech, Mahlon, and Kilion all died.   And in Naomi, echoing Lot's experience, laments,

"I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty."

  Some commentators who have studied this scripture say that Naomi's family was responsible for this disaster that had come upon them-that they never should have left the land of Israel to go live in Moab. Some fault the sons for marrying Moabite women. But as you can see, the scripture doesn't really say why Naomi returned empty-just that she did. 

There are so many things in life that are that way.  Last Wednesday I was called to the emergency room at the hospital.  A 59 year old man from Oconomowoc had just passed away.  His wife was there.  They both had been ice fishing in Fox Lake.  What if they had stayed home?  Would that have made any difference?  Probably not.  And what‘s the sense in even bringing up such a question?  None of us can predict the future.  But, at those times when you're struggling to come to grips with what happened such questions often come to mind. 

Now, certainly there are times when our emptiness and misery result from our own poor choices.  And we must deal with that.  Where there are sins they must be confessed.  But the little book of Ruth is not so much about that.  Rather it is a beautiful story of how the Lord brings hope and fullness to the empty.  If there are any here this morning running on empty, this message is for you.  But, it also has something to say to the rest of us.

As we were saying this is a story of how the Lord brought fullness to one who was totally empty.  We cannot understand this story without realizing how absolutely impossible Naomi's condition was.  It is quite apparent from the story that she had very few material goods left.  In chapter 2 Ruth goes to glean in Boaz's field.  Gleaning was one of the welfare programs established in the Law of Moses to help the poor.  The poor person would follow after the servants who harvested the grain.  And they could keep whatever the servants dropped or left unpicked.  The fact that Ruth did that was clear indication that she and Naomi were very poor.

But, their poverty was not the worst of it.  Naomi and Ruth were all that was left of Elimelech's house.  Not only did they not have husbands and sons to provide for them.  The house they were a part of was a dying house.  After they died, the land they lived on would be given to others.  In that part of the ancient world a woman's chief calling in life was to provide heirs for the house.  In that day for a woman to fail to produce heirs was for her to fail as a person.  Barrenness was a curse.  Naomi came back barren.

Her utter sense hopelessness is surely prominent in her words to her daughters in law in verses 12-  13,

¹²Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me-even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons-¹³would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the LORD'S hand has gone out against me!"

Basically she telling them that she has been cursed by God and that if there is any hope for Orpah and Ruth, they must leave her.  She makes a similar point when the women of Bethlehem come to see her,

"Don't call me Naomi," she told them. "Call me Mara,  because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me

So, Naomi, not only had nothing left, but from everything she could see she had no hope.  God was against her.  All she could look forward to was to live for a few more miserable years and then to die.

Yet, unknown to her God had not abandoned her.  He had a plan to bring her fullness again, a plan no one could have predicted, a plan involving a Moabitess, a daughter of Lot, named Ruth.

When things go wrong in our lives or in the lives of our friends, we sometimes look for hope by trying to figure out how God would possibly bring good out of that awful situation.  For example someone loses a child; others say, "Maybe God allowed that to happen so that you can better minister to others who have lost children."  Friends, that's not the way it works.  Speculation on what might be will not bring much comfort.  Hope that is only a possibility is not hope at all.  The next time you're tempted to tell someone that, imagine yourself in a plane that is spiraling to earth from 30, 000 feet in the air.  How comforted would you be if someone said, "Maybe you're going through this so that you can help others who in this situation?" The other person's world has just been destroyed and they are just trying to survive.  Speculations about the future don't really help that much.  They need to know that God is there for them right then.  Only then can they begin to understand that he will be there for them in the future.  Remember comfort comes not from knowing the future, but from trusting the one who holds our future in his hand. 

And how did God show his presence in Naomi's suffering?  He did it through a Moabitess named Ruth.   That's another thing about surprising way God brings fullness.  He frequently does so through people.  God put us here for a reason. 

Oh, we may not know how God will use us.  But this morning God is calling us to be available.  Ruth had no idea what God would accomplish through her.  She had no solution to Naomi's problems, nor any understanding of how God would use her.  She was simply motivated by a sense of love and faithfulness.  Listen again to her words,

"Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. ¹⁷Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me."

I remember years ago seeing a movie about Joni Eareckson Tada's life.  Long before she met her husband Ken-in fact, shortly after her diving accident which left her paralyzed from neck down, she had a fiancé who believed that she would be healed if only she truly trusted the Lord.  And together they would pray for healing.  They did this for months.  But, when she wasn't healed, he concluded that she didn't have true faith and he left her.

Sometimes we think we have the answers to someone else's problem.  And if it doesn't help we get frustrated.  You're not trying hard enough.  You're dong it wrong.  Just keep doing what I tell you.  And when they give up, we give up on them.

Ruth didn't even have a solution.  Instead, she gave up what little possibility she had for hope and joined in her mother-in-law's misery.  Where you go, I will go.  Your God-  the God who you say cursed you will be my God.  Your life will be mine.  And I will be there for you as long as we both live. 

Ruth's sacrifice reminds us of a descendant of hers who gave up everything.  Ruth reminds us of Jesus.  On Christmas we will celebrate the time he came to earth to be one of us-to share in our misery-more than that-to take all our misery upon himself.  Turn in your Bibles to Philippians 2.  Let us read verse 6- 8 together.

           Who, being in very nature God,

            did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

                but made himself nothing,

            taking the very nature of a servant,

            being made in human likeness.

                And being found in appearance as a man,

Did you notice the context in which Paul wrote those words?  It's found in verse 5, which says

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Ruth, as a little girl, grew up in a pagan land, worshipping idols.  She probably didn't even know about the true God until she married Kilion.  Yet, she demonstrated a self-giving love and a humility that reminds us of Christ.  How much more should that be true for us who know Christ and who are, in fact, called his body.

Ruth made the opposite choice that her ancestor Lot made. But, the result was opposite also.  Lot chose fullness and received emptiness; Ruth chose emptiness and received fullness.

Jesus said,

And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother^ or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. ³⁰But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.

We all know the rest of the story for Ruth, don't we?  She bore a son, who not only redeemed Naomi's family, but who was the grandfather of King David and an ancestor of our Redeemer and King Jesus, the king before whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord to the glory of the Father.

But, did you know Ruth's story can be ours as well?   In 2 Timothy 2: 11 we read this promise,

¹Here is a trustworthy saying:

            If we died with him,

            we will also live with him;

¹²            if we endure,

            we will also reign with him.

When we give up our comfort zone and empty ourselves in the name of our king to serve "the least of these," we can know that someday he will say to us,

Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!'

And then we will know fullness like we've never know it before.  AMEN!