Ruth part 2 Everybody needs a friend.

23^rd September 2018

P.A.Thatcher

The Mustard Seed Evangelical Church.

Series: “The best is yet to come!” {Lessons from the book of Ruth Part 2}

Everybody needs a friend.

Ruth chapter 1:

In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man’s name was Elimelech, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.

Now Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.

When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.

Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, ‘Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.’

Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud and said to her, ‘We will go back with you to your people.’

But Naomi said, ‘Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? Return 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 – would 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 turned against me!’

At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.

‘Look,’ said Naomi, ‘your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.’

But Ruth replied, ‘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. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.’ When Naomi realised that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, ‘Can this be Naomi?’

‘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 returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.

NIV UK.

Wishbone Ash sang:

Trust in me, I'll try to do
Everything to help you that I can
Broken wings can heal and mend again
Don't be afraid to cry your tears out loud
Everybody needs to have a friend

It's only love that I can give
And I give to you the only love I have
When I see you're so unhappy
It makes me want to try and understand
Everybody needs a helping hand

If everything should turn around
And it's me who feels so down and out
You could be the kind of company
To share a load and know how bad it feels
Everybody needs to have a friend

Ruth possibly would have a said similar thing to Naomi. Ruth, whose name simply means friend, was a true friend to her mother-in-law. She had no legal responsibility to her, but she would rather be with Naomi than stay at home with her family, neighbours and friends. What an amazing declaration of love and respect that was. At that moment she was making a commitment to widowhood and childlessness. Naomi could not marry and have a replacement son for Ruth to carry the family line with. This decision of Ruth's was massive.

Her decision was also made even more pertinent by the fact that she was not just moving home, she was emigrating to another country with a very different culture and belief system. She was moving to live amongst a people who did not welcome the foreigner, and especially a Moabite, and a woman at that. Ruth was certainly putting her whole life on the line, BUT God was in all of this!

If we go back to our thoughts of last week for a few moments, it will maybe help us to understand just how much God is working out His plan, within this vitally important story. The family are just an ordinary family of believers, they have made an unwise decision and gone to live in Moab at a time when God was punishing Israel, due to their sin and idolatry.

God at the same time was working out His purposes in an even bigger way than we might at first imagine.

It is good for us that we know the end of the story, and we remind ourselves that the family had to live it out on a daily basis. Just as we have to they had to live and cope with the circumstances that they found themselves in. As we do they made decisions in line with their experience and their personal wisdom and understanding. Emotions clearly played an important role in their decision making.

As each one of us are, this was a small family living life's experiences.

Some decisions were righteous and good, others not so good!

As God was working with them so He works with us today!

APPLY.

Whilst all of this was happening in a small and seemingly insignificant family, God was also doing other things amongst His people. Firstly we notice that the famine was over. That indicates that the people had sought Him in repentance and He was once again blessing them. Naomi now discovered what it was like to be living in a land of plenty (Moab) but being outside of the true blessing of God. What was it that happened? We do not know, but we are assured that God was working His purpose out, which would include this humble young widow being a part of the family line of the the Lord Jesus Christ!

We might not have an accurate dating to the happenings to Elimelech's family, but we can surmise and work back and get an idea as to what the date was roughly.

In the lab, if we wanted to weigh something accurately, we always would weigh by difference. That means we would accurately weigh the jar with more than we needed of it's contents and then remove an amount carefully into another container, the difference in weight would then tell us accurately how much we have taken away. We can apply a similar strategy to the bible, in order to work out when all of this is most likely to have happened. For instance David's father was Jesse, David was a generation younger than Saul, therefore David's parents and Saul would have been of similar age. Samuel was a generation above Saul which means that Obed was born at the time the Samuel was judging Israel. This means that Hannah who was Samuel's mother was approximately of the same generation as was Ruth. It is not accurate I am sure, but the timing must be there abouts.

Why do I say this?

Remember Hannah was broken hearted because she had no children, but God was bringing a judge who would righteously lead Israel, at around the time when Naomi and Ruth were returning to Bethlehem. Here we have two fascinating parallels of God's provision for His people. One would be Samuel who would bring about the end of the judges era, which would lead to the monarchy, but not the one of God's intention. Through Ruth, David was on his way, he was to be the foundation for the true King to come.!

There is also another helpful co-incidence, Boaz' father was Salmon who was the son of Nahshon whose wife was Rahab, she of course was the woman of Jericho. Rahab, like Ruth was a foreign woman, who put God's people before her own. Rahab was included into the line of the Lord Jesus. God was working His purposes out through a man called Boaz whose grandmother was a foreigner, no wonder that he had a friendly disposition towards another foreign lady, who had his nation at heart. It is good to look at the tapestry of God's plans and purposes being worked out through His people's ordinary and mundane lives. Through our experiences, both bitter and sweet, He has a purpose, which He will fulfil. This makes it all the more important that we live the life that He has set before us, our daily decisions, both as individuals and as the church do have eternal consequences. Let us covenant to make right decisions in all things.

Of course we must not leave that there, we must apply it. Rahab was a prostitute and a pagan but yet was converted and as a result she befriended God's people, she belonged to them and was key in the building of the nation. The same was true of Ruth and it is true of us today. We are aliens to God and His people until we are converted and then we become a friend of God which means that we become friends with His people!

So what does that friendship look like?

But Ruth replied, ‘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. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.’ When Naomi realised that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

Let us learn from Ruth's statement to Naomi. Naomi for whatever purpose was trying to encourage Orpah and Ruth to return to Moab, Orpah whose name means “back of the neck” went back to her family, her people and their traditions. She turned her back on the opportunity to become a part of the people of God. On the other hand Ruth, whose name means friend, wanted friendship primarily with Naomi and then with God's people, but more importantly with Naomi's God.

She began by stopping Naomi in her tracks, she told her “don't talk to me in this way!” “Stop urging me to leave you and to go back, I do not want to do that!” Friendship begins with honesty and continues in a straightforward way.

See how it develops with Ruth, “where you go I will go, where you go I will stay.” This is covenantal, it is a promise, Ruth was telling Naomi that from this moment on they were joined at the hip. True friends want to be together. Do you have this friendship, that wants to be together?

But, this friendship is built on more than just circumstance. Ruth also tells Naomi, “Your people will be my people and your God my God.” In other words Ruth was saying that all she had ever been was now behind her. Moab was no longer of importance, God's people are now of far greater importance because God is now singularly most important to Ruth. Naomi's God is her God and she is now His servant, and so her place is with His people, of which Naomi is her first priority.

Do you have this same faith in Jesus Christ? Is He everything to you just as God was to Ruth?

Would you leave absolutely everything for Him?

Have you left everything for Him?

Just think again of the things that Ruth left behind, she left her family and any inheritance that she might have had. She left her reputation, and from this decision onwards, she would be the Moabite girl that left home to go off with foreigners, and to make matters worse the Israelites. She left friends and security, familiarity and tradition. She left her husband's grave and so many other things and then went off on the journey of her lifetime. We know how it all turned out for Ruth, but she could never imagine the blessing that was to come. Ruth upon her declaration to Naomi was taking on a whole new existence and that is exactly what we do when we become Christians!

This is the journey of our lifetime!

On the other hand Orpah could not go that far, a short journey towards the land of promise was enough for her, the pull of Moab and family and friends. Her security and familiarity were all too much for her to give up. Poor old Orpah, she went back to Moab and never became friends with God. There are so many who profess to be Christian that do such things. I pray that there is nobody here today who are like Orpah. There might even be somebody who is worse off than she was, she gave up after a few miles down the road. You might have been travelling along the church road for a long time, and have not yet acknowledged the God of the church to be your God! You might have promised to be with the people, to be a part of the church, you might even have been baptised and become a member but are not yet in true friendship with God! I urge you if that is your state to deal with it now.

You see “everybody needs a friend!” Ruth is a friend to Naomi, she is a friend of God but she is also a friend of ours because she speaks by her life of a Friend who sticks closer than a brother. He is Jesus who just happened to be a distant descendant of this amazing woman.