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Ruth 1:1
1 Now it came to pass in the days when the judges
ruled, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of
Bethlehemjudah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he, and his wife, and
his two sons.
A famine is an ugly thing. And when it come. It
disrupts lives, destroys land and carry on devastation beyond anything we
can ever imagine.
When famine comes, it leaves the earth parched as if
with fire. No clouds appear in the heavens by day to hide the burning
sun, when famine comes. No dew or rain refreshes the thirsty earth, as
it becomes dry. When famine comes. Vegetation withers and streams fail
as brooks dry up, when famine come.
The air becomes dry and suffocating, when famine
comes. Dust storms blind the eyes and seems to stop the breath. As bleating
flocks and thirsty herds wander from place to place in distress seeking to
find some place to quench their thirst, when famine comes. Prosperous
cities and villages become places of mourning. As Hunger and thirst
begins to tell upon man and beast with fearful mortality, when famine comes.
Flourishing fields become like burning desert sands as the gardens and
vineyards grow leafless and the forest trees, become like skeletons
But worst of all, when famine leaves Fathers and
mothers powerless to relieve the sufferings of their children and forces us
to watch them die. Such was the condition of Israel in the day of the
Judges, that forced a man named Elimelech to leave the land of Israel, and
travel to the distant land of Moab there to provide for the needs of his
family Famine is a terrible thing and in all our lives, famine
comes.
But so many times, when famine come, Fathers are
tempted to desert their families in a bid to survive. It would be
well, if Fathers in America today, would learn the lesson of Elimelech, who
would not desert his family under any conditions.
Children needs fathers., They need men who are
reliable and dependable. They need Fathers who are trustworthy and
attentive. They need Fathers who would stand over them like a shelter.
Fathers who would stand by them like a fortress. Fathers who will go before
them like an armor.
Fathers who would stand behind them like a motivating
power, saying , go on my child, for success is waiting to attend you. And
there is few greater things that the parents of Calvary can do for their
children, than to ensure them the security and stability of a home, where a
dependable, God fearing father dwells.
While there in Moab, the sons of Elimelech take to
themselves wives, and while the seek to build a happy live, something
terrible happens because fathers and sons die, and three women are left
widowed.
Ruth 1:3-5
3 And
Elimelech Naomi's husband died; and she was left, and her two sons.
4 And they
took them wives of the women of Moab; the name of the one was Orpah, and the
name of the other Ruth: and they dwelled there about ten years.
5 And Mahlon
and Chilion died also both of them; and the woman was left of her two sons
Between these lines may be read the story of
all the widowhood of the world. See these women then and now, silent
in long array, standing in the gap. Some of them are conspicuous:
Rizpah, who stood alone, fighting off the raven from eating the body of an
only child. She of Nain, who silently in here pain took the body of
her only boy to the grave as anguish ate away at her very soul. Mary, who
stood by the cross, and watched the death of the child whom God had promised
would be Emanuel. Most of them stand nameless; but all of them stand
are desolate. Some of them are our mothers, our grandmothers, our
aunts our sisters. We have seen their pain and have wondered if something is
not wrong with a world that brings them the sorrow and sighing so
prolonged, the sorrow and sighing so uncomforted, so unexplained.
Our deepest nature tremble at the thought that such
notes should have been struck on a woman’s heart - that instrument so
capable of bearing pain. Yet we must realize that elsewhere in the universe
of God and audible to His ear, these cries does not go unheard, For one day
we will realize that these cries are met by other notes in harmony with
which they unite to form some justifying and eternal melody.
In connections with all this grief and tear-shed of
time, God seems to charge himself and His eternity with responsibility, when
He thus remembers Naomi, and perpetuates her pain, weaves her complaint into
His own everlasting Word.
The relating of these details of a life’s sorrow in
the case of Naomi shows how intimately God knows all, and pities all, and
that he has a place for all in His great perfect plan.
What befell these widows of Moab and Judah long ago,
God is still permitting to befall human life in all lands every day.
This page of Scripture is a Divinely sanctioned transcript from universal
human history. Sooner of later God deals in such a way with all of us that
we are made to feel that this world is not our home and we come to confess
ourselves strangers and pilgrims.
God makes some old before their time; God
blights hopes that have but budded. God stirs up the nest and leaves
them desolate. God sends the weariest on pilgrimages. He spread famine
and hunger around homes and sends hunger into hearts. God takes from
Judah and give to Moab, and again from Moab and give to Judah, because he is
God, and he know best. God sometimes strips so bare and leaves so
bereft that we are compelled to cry.
Thou the spring
of all my comfort
More than life
to me,
Who have I on
earth, besides thee,
Who in heaven
but thee.
And when all this is done, God never repents or
regrets;
For it is done deliberately and of set purpose,
according to some wise and tender motive beyond our present knowing.
This is the lesson of what is here told us in these
verses of a lost husband and two sons.
The object of this tale of an old time sorrow is not
merely to work compassion in our heart, but rather to show us that there is
a God in heaven who cares, a God in heaven who knows, I want to remind you
this morning, widows of Calvary, Jesus know all about your sorrow, he’ll be
there when the day is done, for there’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus,
no not one, no not one.
When earth shatters your home and changes you form wife
and mother to solitude and pain, God knows. When divorce separation or
desertion sets in, and there is no one there to dry your tears, and the pain
is more than you can explain to anyone. God knows. When you cry
yourself to sleep at nights, because the void in your heart is so big it
strives to suck you in, God knows, and he has a plan for it all. When
you marriage is ugly, and your spouse is cold and insensitive, yet you must
keep your secret and hide you pain. God knows
So there might be a famine in your life today, Not
necessarily a famine of bread and a thirst for water; But there might
be a famine in your heart. A famine of love, A famine of trust, A
famine of sympathy, You might be longing for help and cant find it, You
might be hoping and praying for sympathy and care, and you cant find any
answer.
I want to recommend you to the God who is the
controller of famines.
Look at what happens because of the famine.
Naomi decides to go home, and she sends her daughters
in law back to there homes and Orpha kisses here and return home, but Ruth
decides to stay, and Naomi, is troubled about the famine. She believes God
has dealt hard with her, and she is not sure how to explain this God to her
daughter in law, and she want to make shore the daughter in law is willing
to trust this God she does not even understand and so she says.
Ruth 1:15-17
15 And she said, Behold, thy sister in law is gone
back unto her people, and unto her gods: return thou after thy sister in
law.
The Famine Led Ruth to Trust Yahweh:
16 And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or
to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and
where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God
my God:
17 Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be
buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee
and me.
The trial and tribulation did not cause Ruth to give
up on God. Her faith had grown through her difficulties and her
trials. Her faith was like pure God. She was the means that God would
use to care for this old woman Naomi. She would not allow peer
pressure. Or family pressure. Or discouraging words, to cause
her to neglect her relationship with God.
Rev 3:18
18 I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the
fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be
clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine
eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.
Now look here, Ruth had everything against her.
She had been cradled in a heathen home and trained in the worship of immoral
gods. How cheerless seemed the prospect of living an exile, and never
setting eyes on home again. If she spoke Hebrew, it was no doubt
stumblingly and with an accent; and in all the peculiarities of Hebrew life
and usage which parted Bethlehem from Moab she would blunder often and have
to make appeal for patience. Most of all in religion and its practices she
was barely at the threshold, only she had a mind that took her past the
threshold and prepared her for anything that might be involved in being
Hebrew now and not Moabite. And that steady casting of her vote on the
noble side secured her entrance, and in God mercy it secures and entrance
still.
To those who are halting at the door, well inclined to
Christ way and yet undecided, and to those within the door whose task it is
to welcome and encourage, there is admonitions even in the minor detail of
the story. It is fine to see how promptly Ruth was taken at here word, and
not held in some middle stage of probation. In Israel the name Moabite was
a grave burden of disadvantage, and odious tales were told of the origin of
the tribes which spring from Lot. But nothing of this suspicion and dislike
appears in the talk of the village gossips.
All the town knoweth that thou art a virtuous woman,
was the report of her and to Naomi they said, Thy daughter in law, which
loveth thee is better to thee than seven sons.
It is very pretty. In that jealously exclusive people
she was not kept at arm’s length; and in their traditions she sits
enthroned, though she was born an outcast beyond recovery. She is mother in
Israel, Mother of David, mother of Jesus the Christ, so gloriously has she
entered within the pale, because with heart and will she sought for it.
She meets Boaz.
Boaz was known throughout the whole district as a man
of honor. Here was this African man, the son of an Egyptian woman.
Here was this African man, son of Rahab. Strong as he was considerate,
fit to rule others because he was able to control himself, No liquor
or drugs found themselves in his body. A man to whom a defenseless
woman might entrust herself without the slightest fear of his taking undue
advantage of her.
Women were respected by Boaz. The boys and youth
of Bethlehem looked up to Boaz as their model. His pure simple and
beautiful life was the daily admiration and incentive of his fellow
townsmen. Then according to God's divine plan, African man, meets
African woman. She had come to the village with Naomi, and Boaz had
heard the story.
You can image how it goes. Say Boaz, someone
said, have you seen that dark skin, chocolate brown sister who came with
Naomi from Moab, brother this is one woman you want to meet. Man her eyes
are as bright as the sunshine. Her skin is as cool as the evening
breeze. When she speaks there is music in her voice. Melody in her
laughter. And brother, she carries herself like a lady. You got
to meet this African sister. The anticipation in Boaz is building.
He is the choice pick of all the Israelite women.
But non has caught his fancy yet. He loves his single status, but he
was about to meet a woman, who would change all that.
When he see her, he calls her by her name. He had
never met her before, but this magnificent beauty, seems like the person he
has heard so much about. She answers to his call, and made touching
obeisance and syllable out in broken Hebrew her gratitude;
Then it all hit him like an unexpected dream. It
slapped him like an awakening to the reality of a dream coming true.
He had his own mental picture of a woman far traveled. Despite what he
has been told, any woman who had traveled in the hot son must look wear and
tattered, but this woman was more than he had imagined. And to top it
all off, she was full of loving-kindness and came and went on gracious
errands;
She was agile, She was bright, And she
swayed with grace when she moved.
As she stands before him, He thinks about all he
has been told, repeating it to himself and he looks her over, as only a man
awestruck by beauty can. Finally after his heart skips a beat or two,
he musters enough energy to speak, It hath been full showed me, all
that thou hast done unto thy mother in law, since the death of thy husband:
and how thou hast left thy father and mother and the land of thy nativity,
and art come unto a people which thou knewest not before.
Gazing as he spoke and quietly investing her one by
one with those virtues which he names out of his memory, he was allowing her
to become before his eyes the living impersonations of a dream. His
heart is held captive by this African beauty as she stands innocent and
helpless before him, yet wielding the power, as only a beautiful woman can
wield.
Boaz had long been thrifty of his love, but it looks
as if all that is now over. Here was standing before him, was the
ideal woman, and if he was not captivated, he would not have been a man.
As the reapers gather for their meal, he bids Ruth sit
with them; and when the meal is over, he bids her instead of following the
reapers afar off, gleam among the sheaves. Then he whispers to the
reapers pull out a few ears from those they gather in their arms and let
them fall where she will find them. Above all, he charges them: Don’t mess
with her. Don’t jest or romp in their rude country fashion so as to
cause her to blush.
And the following verses tells the story.
Ruth 4:13
13 So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife: and when he
went in unto her, the LORD gave her conception, and she bare a son.
Ruth 4:21-22
21 And Salmon begat Boaz, and Boaz begat Obed,
22 And Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David.
And David became the second King of Israel.
And God said David is a man after my own heart.
And it all began with a famine.
Amos 8:11
11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I
will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for
water, but of hearing the words of the LORD:
But I am here to tell you this morning, that God is the
God of the famine.
So if the famine Is in your life, I give you Jesus.
Black women in the bible.
Ruth |
