Ruth, romance and redemptionRuth 1: a widow

• Background • Divine Providence • Where is God when it hurts • The benefit of hindsight • Ruth’s faithfulness is a picture of God’s faithfulness • Three widows • God at work

Background • ‘It was the best of times, it

was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…’

Background• Hebrew Bible ‘ketuvim’ (writings) • Ruth 4:18-20 has David’s genealogy

indicating it may have been written after he was made King

• Ruth 1:1 Takes place in the times of the judges

• Purposes • biography of David’s pious ancestors • contrast Bethlehem in Judges (Micah

and the priest) with the account of the righteous in Bethlehem

• Israel’s historical literature to teach about how God keeps His covenant in light of Israel’s failures

• YHWH supplies for his people’s needs - individually and nationally

Divine providence • ‘general providence’ is God's

continuous upholding the existence and natural order of the universe

• ‘special providence’ is God's intervention in people’s lives

• meaning from pro (before) to see (video)

God moves in a mysterious way

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust Him for His grace;

Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.

William Cowper

• a famine (God causes them: Leviticus 26 ‘I will give you your rains, the land shall yield its increase.’)

• a forbidden people (Judges 10:6 ‘The people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab…’)

• a forbidden liaison (Deuteronomy 7:3 ‘You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons…’

• a sad sequence of deaths (Elimelech, Mahlon and Chileon)

Where is God when it hurts?

Where is God when it hurts?

1:13 ‘…the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.’

1:20 ‘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?’

Sovereign Lordship

Living responsibly

The Almighty (‘Shaddai’):• Genesis 17:1 God confronts

Abram to walk before Him and

he will turn his helplessness into blessing

• Genesis 43:14 Elderly Jacob

allows the return to Egypt and

puts his trust in God’s protection in a time of

uncertainty • Genesis 49:25 Jacob’s prophecy

about the Almighty blessing Joseph

The benefit of hindsight

• God breaks the famine and opened the way home (1:6 ‘…the Lord

had visited his people and given them food’) • God has a kinsman to continue Naomi's line (2:20) • God constrains Ruth to stay with Naomi (who is so absorbed in her

grief she says in 1:21 ‘…the Lord has brought me back empty…’)

Sovereign Lordship

Living responsibly

Naomi has forgotten Joseph: Genesis 50:22 ‘As for you, you meant evil against me, but God

meant it for good…’

Three widowsComparison Contrast

Ruth and Orpah

• Moabite women • Israelite husbands • Childless • Daughters in law • Committed to Naomi

• Orpah listens to Naomi’s reasoning

• Orpah is committed to Moab’s gods (1:15)

• Orpah acts in her own interests

• Oprah does the ‘sensible’ thing (no author’s criticism)

Ruth and Naomi

• Leaving her own family and land

• Widowed • Childless • Recognition of God’s rights

• Ruth has faith in God that sees beyond present setbacks

Ruth’s faithfulness• She is prepared to leave her family and land

• She faces a life of widowhood and childlessness (Naomi rules-out the ‘levirate’ marriage - Deuteronomy 25:5, 6)

• She commits for all her lifetime, not even until Naomi dies

• She commits to God

• She demonstrates hesed love like the covenant keeping God (JHWH)

1:16-17 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.”

God at workAbram

Genesis 12:1-3Ruth

Ruth 2:10-12

Leave relatives

‘Go out from … your relatives, your

father’s household…’

•

‘…you left your father and mother’

Leave homeland

‘Go out from your country…’

‘You left…your native land and came to a people that you did not know…’

Trust God

‘I will make you into a great nation…’

‘The Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by

the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take

refuge!”

Summary• Ruth 1 is ‘winter’:

• death (husband, sons) • despair (‘against me’, bitter) • emptiness • hopelessness (too old for bearing sons)

• Concludes in ‘spring’ (literally as barley harvest 1:22) • Reason: Ruth’s commitment; God’s faithfulness • Sub-plot: Naomi’s story for in 4:17 ‘A son has been born to Naomi’ • Circumstances may be such that we can’t see a future: even at your

lowest point, God has not abandoned you! Trust in an Almighty God, in a covenant-keeping LORD

• Ruth 2 begins: ‘a relative… a worthy man… Boaz’