There’s an old French fairy tale about two daughters-one bad and the other good. The bad daughter was her mother’s favorite…but the good daughter was kind of a “Cinderella” in that she was unjustly neglected, despised, and mistreated in her own home. One day, while drawing water from the village well, the good daughter met a poor woman who asked her for a drink. The girl responded with kind words and gave the woman a cup of cool water. The poor woman-who was actually a fairy in disguise-was so pleased with the girl’s kindness and good manners that she gave her a gift.
She said, “From now on, each time you speak, a flower or jewel will come out of your mouth.” Well, when the little girl got home, her mother began to scold her for taking so long to bring the water. The girl started to apologize and when she did, two roses, two pearls, and two diamonds came out of her mouth. Her mother was astonished! But after hearing her daughter’s story and seeing the number of beautiful jewels that came out of her mouth in the telling she called her other daughter-her favorite child (bad, though she was)-and sent her out to find the old woman and get the same gift. The bad daughter, was reluctant to be seen performing the lowly task of drawing water, so she whined and grumbled sourly all the way to the well. When she arrived, a beautiful queenly woman came by and asked for a drink….this by the way was the same fairy in another disguise. Disagreeable and proud, the girl responded with a rudeness that was typical behavior for her but she received a “reward” from the fairy as well. Each time she opened her mouth, she emitted snakes and toads.
Now — how’s that for poetic justice!?
Don’t you enjoy stories with that kind of ending!? There’s something inside us that says, “YES! That wicked little spoiled brat got just what she deserved!” We like stories like this because in life we want bad people to be punished and good people to be rewarded…we yearn for justice to be done and fairness to reign supreme…but sadly enough, things don’t always work out that way — except in the realm of fairy tales. No — in the real world bad AND good suffer. In fact, it often seems that the wicked prosper while those who do good are ignored or even persecuted. In this life fairness is a rare thing.
This morning as we continue our series on the WOMEN OF THE BIBLE, I want us to look at a woman to whom life dealt a very unfair blow. Her name is Ruth and, like Deborah and Hannah, she lived in Israel during the time of the Judges. The four chapters that tell her life story are sandwiched in between the books of Judges and 1 Samuel. And it’s easy to find because Ruth is one of only two women who has an entire book of the Bible named after her…the other woman is Esther and we’ll study her life next week.
Ruth’s narrative has been called the most charming short story in the Old Testament. Even people who are not believers have enjoyed reading this tiny book of the Bible. When Benjamin Franklin was United States Ambassador to France, he occasionally attended The Infidels Club, a group that spent most of its time searching for and reading literary masterpieces. On one occasion Franklin read the book of Ruth to the club members, but he changed the names in the text so it would not be recognized as a book of the Bible. When he finished, they were unanimous in their praise. They said it was one of the most beautiful short stories that they had ever heard and demanded that he tell them where he had run across such a remarkable literary work. It was his great delight to tell them that it was from the Bible, which they professed to regard with contempt, and in which they felt there was nothing worth reading! Well, let’s begin our own study of this story by reading the first 17 verses of the book…
1 – In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab.
2 – The man’s name was Elimelech, his wife’s name Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.
3 – Now Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons.
4 – They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years,
5 – both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
6 – When she heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of His people by providing food for them, Naomi and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there.
7 – 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.
8 – Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show kindness to you, as you have shown to your dead and to me.
9 – May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Then she kissed them and they wept aloud
10 – and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”
11 – 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?
12 – 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-
13 – 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 gone out against me!”
14 – At this they wept again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-bye, but Ruth clung to her.
15 – “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”
16 – 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.
17 – Where 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.”
Okay,let’s review what has happened so far….Ruth’s young husband has died. Her father-in-law and brother-in-law have died as well. Perhaps there was some fever or plague going around or some accident, I don’t know but all the men in the household are gone. And Ruth’s mother-in-law, Naomi, whose name means “pleasant” and who must have lived up to that name, since she had obviously endeared herself to Ruth and Orpah…well, she has slipped into a deep depression that has caused her to become very cynical. In verse 20 she changes her name to “Mara,” which means “bitter.”
Naomi is no longer pleasant! Before all this happened Naomi and her entire family must have had a deep faith in God. In fact Ruth’s father-in-law, Elimilech….his name means, “God is my King.” The family’s faith was so genuine in fact that it drew Ruth from worshiping the false gods of the Moabite people to following the one True God. But now Elimilech and his sons are dead and his wife seems to have lost her faith. She’s angry at God. She blames Him for the unfairness of her situation. So, Ruth-a new believer in God-has gone from being a part of a large, happy, God-worshiping family-to being a young widow alone with an embittered mother-in-law.
And in fairness to Naomi, we should note that she had good cause to be concerned about her situation. These two women were in just about as dire a straight as women could be in that male-dominated age for to be women alone without men was to be faced with ruin. There was no social security in those days, no safety net, no source for any kind of future if a woman didn’t have a man in her life. In those days, as Naomi alluded in verse 12, a woman without a man was a woman without hope. So I am sure you will agree that at this point in her life Ruth had definitely been forcibly enrolled in the school of hard knocks! She had run smack dab into the unfairness of life.
And I think that we should pause here and note that several women here at Redland are in a similar situation. Now, they don’t live in that kind of male-dominated culture but, like Ruth and Naomi, they are suddenly single. Several of our women have had their husbands to die in recent years and are dealing with the unfairness of being alone. The Bible says that in marriage husband and wife become one and this is not just referring to a physical oneness. There is a spiritual union that takes place-especially in long marriages. If you’ve had a spouse die then you know that there’s a sense in which you feel incomplete as if half of you were suddenly gone. I’ve read that it normally takes about two years to become emotionally stable after the death of a spouse. Sometimes it takes even longer.
As the months drag by widows wonder if their life will ever be happy and fulfilling again. I’ve had some tell me that months after their husband’s death they would think of something during the day and say to themselves, “Oh, I must tell him about that when he comes home.” But then it would hit them: “He’s is not coming home tonight or ever.” I’ve heard of other widows who said they would be singing a hymn in church and suddenly see the back of some man’s head that reminded them of their husband. And they would feel the pain of his death all over again. Many of you here this morning are widows-whose husbands died in recent years and so I know you can identify with Naomi and Ruth in the grief they experienced.
We also have some women whose spouses are still living but have left them….and they are going through the pain of separation or divorce. And this is also incredibly agonizing. Divorce brings a deep lingering pain. I would say that in a way divorce is more difficult than the death of a mate. There is no closure-no funeral-so the wounds it causes are very slow in healing. If you are here today and are dealing with either of these particular types of unfairness-then listen – because I truly believe that Ruth would want you to know some things she discovered that will help you.
1. First of all, I think she would urge you to CLING TO THE HOPE THAT YOUR HURT WILL EASE.
You may feel like you have an ache in your heart that will never go away…and it may never TOTALLY disappear-but it WILL ease. Your life may feel like a long, dark tunnel at the moment but its not endless. There is light at the end of the tunnel. It may seem like it is far away but it is there! A time will come when you will be able to will feel joy once more. Just be patient. The sun will shine again in your life! Remember, it takes far more time for emotional wounds to heal than it does physical ones but they DO heal!
Scripture records that there came a time when Ruth and Naomi came to the end of their “tunnel of darkness.” Ruth met Boaz, a godly man, and they married and he took care of both Ruth and Naomi. Things got better! There was laughter once again in the lives of both of these women. So if you are hurting and alone like they were — then cling to the hope that your pain will ease…there’s did and yours will as well. And then….another thing that I think Ruth would advise is that you…
2. ….GET INVOLVED WITH LIFE!
She certainly did! Ruth didn’t drop out of life when her husband died. She moved to a strange land and started life all over. And you know…its not so important WHAT she did as is the fact that she DID something. Ruth stayed busy. She refused to quit on life. When they arrived in Bethlehem she heard about the law of gleaning which forbade Israelite landowners to reap their property to the very edge. God’s law required them to leave a border of grain standing so poor people could gather enough food to survive. Well Ruth took full advantage of this law and got up and went to work to find food for herself and Naomi. She didn’t quit and go into seclusion…no, she got involved with life. Keeping busy like this….starting over….learning new things goes a long way toward helping healing to begin. And then, I think there is one other thing those who are suddenly single can learn from Ruth…
3. …and that is THE IMPORTANCE OF MAINTAINING THEIR INTEGRITY REGARDLESS OF THE SITUATION…
Ruth certainly did this. In fact, Boaz told Ruth that the thing that attracted him to her was her integrity. Listen to the words of Boaz in verse 11 of chapter 2: “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband-how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done.” You know, many times when people face loneliness they become vulnerable, and fall into a physical relationship that is wrong. Some singles get so lonely that they run to the first person they find and then compromise their moral standards in their search for something to ease the pain. Many turn to other sinful behaviors and involve themselves in actions that are contrary to God’s will. So if you are suddenly single….I urge you to do as Ruth did….and guard against this temptation. Do all you can to live a godly life.
In his book, Hope Again, Charles Swindoll points out that there are two kinds of bad in this world. There are consequences of living in a sinful world….an unfair world. But there are also consequences of disobeying God…repercussions of ignoring His guidelines. And as a rule life is fair-er for those who try to live God’s way. This is what I Peter 3:13 is referring to when it says, “Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good?” You see, as a general rule if you live a life of purity and integrity, in the long run you usually won’t suffer as much as those who habitually traffic in evil.
For example, if you pay your debts, chances are good that you won’t get into financial trouble. If you pay your taxes on time, you probably won’t have the IRS down on your back. If you take care of your body and get enough sleep and exercise watch you diet and your stress level chances are good that you will live a healthier life than those who don’t If you help others, you will probably have someone to help you when you are in need. To paraphrase Peters’ verse, “those who do what is right are usually not in harm’s way…USUALLY.” Now please hear me in this…we live in a fallen world where the just still suffer unjustly, “rain DOES fall on the good and the bad…” but unjust suffering is always better than deserved judgement.
So in your grief don’t abandon your moral principles…no matter how tempting it may be to do so.
You know, as a church we need to be sensitive to the needs and hurts of women in our membership who, like Ruth and Naomi have lost a spouse unfairly…suddenly. And the story of Ruth is a great place for these hurting people to look for help. But…the wonderful thing about this little book of the Bible is that it also contains principles that will help the rest of us….as we deal with other kinds of injustice…
1. For example…one thing all of us can learn from this story is that IT IS NOT ALWAYS BAD TO GO THROUGH BAD TIMES.
Ruth’s bad experiences deepened her trust in God. They led her to a new husband and together they had a son who was the grandfather of King David. I believe even Naomi would agree that good came from their bad experiences. You see, often the most valuable lessons of life can only be learned amidst the unfair…..the tough times. Listen to what Malcolm Muggeridge had to say in this regard:
“Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the same time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my 75 years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness. In other words, if it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo jumbo…the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal and trivial to be endurable. This, of course, is what the Cross signifies. And it is the Cross, more than anything else, that has called me inexorably to Christ.”
As Muggeridge points out amazing good can come from bad times. If we let God, He will help us experience eternal blessings-even as we go through temporary pain. You see, with God problems can turn into opportunities for us to grow and mature. So, when unfair times come, we need to trust in God’s perspective for if we allow Him, He will use even these bad times to our advantage.
Sue was telling me this week that in the Women’s Bible Study, Joanne Cheng listed several benefits of the tough experiences of life. In these trials our eyes are opened so that we see and understand eternal principles. God’s Word becomes more real to us. Unfair situations give us a platform of witness to others. They give us an opportunity to trust God. But the greatest benefit of tough times is when God uses them to shape us more into the image of Jesus. God promised us this in Romans 8:28 . Remember its words?
“In ALL THINGS [Good and bad] God works for the good of those who love Him,
….who have been called according to His purpose.”
And according to verse 29, that PURPOSE is for us to be “conformed to the image of His Son.” If we let Him, God uses bad times as tools to make us more compassionate….more humble…more patient…more self-less….more like Jesus!
So it’s not always BAD when bad comes our way for God can work even the unfairness of life to our good. In this month’s READERS DIGEST there is the true story of Hugh Carrier who, when he was 10 years old….was abducted by a man trying to get even with Hugh’s father. The man took him to a secluded spot in the Florida everglades, stabbed him repeatedly with an ice pick, shot him in the head and then left him for dead. Miraculously Hugh somehow survived. He was blinded in one eye but he survived. However, the incident left him emotionally scared. For years he never went anywhere alone and could only sleep at the foot of his parent’s bed. He was very self-conscious about his injured eye and never smiled. He became insecure and resentful. But when he was 13 Hugh got active in a local Baptist church. He found acceptance and love in the youth ministry there and became a Christian.
One Wednesday evening, at the urging of his friends, Hugh shared his testimony and as he did he saw his own horrible experience help others…this caused him to grow deeper in his faith. After high school he entered Carson-Newman and graduated with a degree in Psychology and then surrendered to a full-time call to youth ministry and entered Southwestern Seminary. He graduated, married and had three children. God has used him over the years in a powerful way to minister to the unique needs of adolescents. Eventually Hugh met his assailant-a man named David McCallister. Police found him in a nursing home decades after the crime…a feeble, bed-ridden old man. Shortly after they met, MacCallister apologized to Hugh for all he had done to him as a boy. And, empowered by the love of God, Hugh forgave him. In fact he continued to go and visit him. The two became friends. MacCallister told Hugh how he had grown up without a father spending much of his childhood in juvenile halls and that he was drinking heavily by the time he was a teen. He said, he had always considered God to be something only suckers believed in but with Hugh’s help he began to pray and before he died he became a Christian. Hugh said, “What that man did was not the end of my life.
It was the beginning. As strange as it seems, that old man did more for me than he could ever have known. For…in his darkness I found a light that guides me still.” So Ruth’s story can teach us that it is not always bad when bad times come. God can redeem even horrible experiences and make them work for our good.
2. Another thing her experience can teach us is that when unfair times come…WE MUST NOT GIVE IN TO SELF-PITY.
Ruth and Naomi had two options of how to respond to their unfair situation. One was to have wallow in self-pity and bitterness and the other was to face life with optimism and hope. And….Naomi…chose the former. Listen to her words, “I am too old to have another husband….and even if I did and had sons they’d be too young for you to marry….you’re better off leaving me…the hand of the Lord is against me…” When they arrived in Bethlehem her friends came out to meet them and noticed her bitterness.
They said, “Can this be Naomi?” and Naomi says, “Don’t call me Naomi…call me Mara, because the Lord Almighty has made my life bitter.” Ray Stedman used to tell the story of an old woman and a preacher. She would come up and list all her problems in life at the end of every service and he would try to give her some positive reason to look at life differently. Her response to the preacher was: “You know, young man, when God sends tribulations, He EXPECTS you to tribulate.”
But Naomi went beyond that. She wasn’t just tribulating amidst her tribulations. She had decided that God didn’t love her. He loved some people but not her. She believed God had left her and that she was going home to Bethlehem alone and empty-handed. But was she? Was she alone on the way back to Bethlehem? No…there was a young woman named RUTH with her. And as far as God was concerned, Naomi came back with the whole future of the human race holding onto her arm. For as I said earlier….this young woman would be the mother of Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David, the King of Israel…ancestor of the Messiah, the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world. That’s who Naomi came back with. So her hands were far from empty…they were fuller than they had ever been. Yet in her bitterness and self-pity she couldn’t see it.
Now Ruth…the younger…the new believer in God — well, she didn’t follow in her mother-in-law’s pitiful footsteps. No, instead of the road to self-pity, she choose the road of optimism and hope. She pointed out what they had…not what they didn’t have. Ruth knew they still had each other and their relationship with God and that certainly was something. So she decided to go for life…to glean its simple pleasures, to harvest joy even in a strange land. And this positive attitude was another thing that attracted Boaz to Ruth…he was drawn to her go-get-it work ethic. This is why he instructed his workers to be sure and leave a little extra grain for Ruth to glean. After they were married, I imagine Ruth discovered his provision. And, when we choose not to be blinded by self-pity we can see that God does the same for us. In the midst of our struggle to survive, emotionally, financially, through sickness or bad relationships…whatever it is, if we look…..we can see that God does provide for us…just as Boaz did for Ruth.
God misses nothing…He’s looking out for us…He’s listening to our prayers. I Peter 3:12 says, “The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears attend to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” Ruth’s and Naomi’s contrasting responses remind me of an old poem my dad used to quote: “Two men looked through prison bars…one saw mud…the other saw stars.” And when you face unfairness in life be like Ruth look for stars! Don’t slip into self-pity!
3. And then perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from Ruth is that when bad times come WE MUST STAY CLOSE TO GOD…
Many times when we face unfairness in life we respond much like Naomi and blame God and give up on Him. We move away from His love….unlike Ruth, who clung to her new-found faith. In his classic book, Disappointment With God, Philip Yancey tells of a man by the name of Douglas who faced a great deal of unfairness in life. His troubles began when his wife discovered a lump in her breast. Surgeons removed that breast, but two years later the cancer had spread to her lungs. Douglas took over many household and parental duties as his wife battled the debilitating effects of chemotherapy. Sometimes she couldn’t keep down any food. She lost her hair and was almost always tired and vulnerable to fear and depression.
One night in the midst of this crisis, Douglas was driving down a city street with his wife and twelve-year-old daughter…when a drunk driver swerved across the center line and smashed head-on into their car. Douglas’ wife was badly shaken but unhurt. His daughter suffered a broken arm and severe facial cuts from windshield glass. But Douglas himself received the worst injury…a massive blow to the head. After the accident, Douglas never knew when a headache might strike. He could not work a full day, and sometimes he would become disoriented and forgetful. Worse, the accident permanently affected his vision. One eye wandered at will, refusing to focus. Due to double vision he could hardly walk down a flight of stairs without assistance or even read a book! Yet he told Yancey that he felt no disappointment in God over his situation. His faith in God was still strong. He said, “I learned first through my wife’s illness and then especially through the accident, not to confuse God with life.” In other words Douglas realized that life is unfair but God is not life! And he refused to let the unfairness of his life push him from God.
You know, we do live in an unfair world. No one is exempt from tragedy and disappointment and as Yancey reminds us God Himself was not exempt. His only Son, sinless though HE was suffered and died unfairly for the sins of others. Yancey writes, “At once the Cross revealed what kind of world we have and what kind of God we have: a world of gross unfairness and a God of sacrificial love.” This morning I invite you to respond to that sacrificial love. If you are here this morning and are not a Christian then I urge you to trust Jesus today. Ask Him to forgive you of your sin and to come into your heart and life as Savior and Lord. I John 1:9 says that, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just….HE IS FAIR….in that because of His Son’s death on our behalf….He forgives our sins and purifies us from all unrighteousness.”
If you are here, and are a Christian, then I urge you to commit to draw even closer to God…in spite of the unfairness of your life. In the privacy of your seat utter a prayer in which you pledge to do all you can to be in the very center of God’s will. That may involve your joining this church…..serving with us in this place. Any decision you have to make, we invite you to do so publically…won’t you come as we sing?