PSBC

7/18/99 AM

In a nutshell: The facts and the truth are not the same thing. Ruth gives us an example that tells us to live, like God loves us. Because He really does. And that’s the truth about our facts.

The truth is, facts are very important, aren’t they? But the problem many of us have in our Christian lives is that we often focus too much on the facts, and not enough on the truth. Because... and this might surprise you... but the truth and the facts are not always the same thing.

Now, if you think I’ve completely lost it, then the beginning of the story of Ruth and Naomi, will help you understand what I’m talking about. So, if you have your Bibles, please turn in them to the first chapter of the book of Ruth (right after Judges)...

The book of Ruth opens with a very sad story of grief and hardship...

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 Mahlon 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.

The opening sentence in verse one tells us the facts on the macro level. It says that the story takes place during the period of the judges. As you may remember if you have some knowledge of this period of time, this was a not a good time in Israel’s history. It was a time of moral chaos for Israel. The Bible tells us that this was a time when the normal operating procedure was ...that people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes. So the people living during this time, lived in a really selfish and morally messed up society.

On top of that bad social climate, at the time when the events of this book took place, the weather climate was not real good, either. We are told that a famine had struck. And that famine lasted for ten years.

Then we are given insight into the facts on a micro level. We enter the personal story of a family. The family is comprised of a man named Elimelech, which means "My God is King," and a woman named Naomi, which means "Pleasant."

With such names, we can assume, they were good people.

Elimelech was a farmer. And in order to survive the famine and provide for his family, he moved his wife and two sons to the neighboring country of Moab. While in the land of Moab all three of the men in that family died, prematurely, for reasons we don't know. So in our story, all we have left are three newly widowed women.

Now we narrow the focus of the book even further to a mini-micro level and focus on Naomi. She has been left in dire straights. Not only did she experience premature widow-hood, but she had two sons who also died–not as older men who had lived full lives and accomplished much–but as young men, both recently married.

Personal reflection: I’ve faced, like some of you, the death of a parent. That’s hard, especially when it happens well before old age. But can you imagine the emotional pain and loss that Naomi felt, seeing her entire family die?

And to make matters even worse, Naomi was a woman, in a time when women had no security for the future outside of their family. There was no social security, no life insurance, no safety net, no way for a woman to anticipate good things for her future if she didn't have a man in her life. So, Naomi's future was filled with threat and fear and difficulty.

Those are the facts. But what do they mean? What is the truth about those facts?

The rest of chapter 1 is going to give us two ways these facts can be understood–One is Naomi's understanding, and the other is Ruth's understanding. Ruth is Naomi’s daughter-in-law, who is also a premature widow, childless, and would go to live in a strange country.

Seeing the two women’s understanding of the identical facts, will help us understand much of what God has to say about the difference between our facts and the truth.

So, let’s look at the dialog between Naomi and Ruth, and hear from them about the facts of their lives and how they each understood what was true.

Let’s first look at Naomi...

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

What’s significant here is not what she says, but what she doesn’t say. When she says to her two daughters-in-law, "May the LORD show kindness to you, as you have shown to your dead and to me. May the LORD grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband," she leaves herself out of that prayer to God. She prays for the girls, but not for herself.

That tells me the first way Naomi interpreted her facts. She interpreted them as, "I don’t matter!" She started thinking that she didn’t matter to God anymore. She had stopped praying for herself. She had concluded that God didn’t care for her. In essence she was saying, it’s God’s prerogative to hate whom He wants to hate. So she had stopped asking for her own future. She still believed in God's power. But, in practice, she had stopped believing in His love.

2. Answers for God

But her daughters-in-law made a beautiful statement in verse 10:

10 "We will go back with you to your people."

These young women had been exposed to Naomi’s family. Naomi’s people were the covenant people of God, the ones who were given the promises of God, the ones God had chosen especially to work through in all of history. These two girls wanted to go and join the community of those who knew this God.

But instead of being excited about this sincere desire to be involved with God’s chosen people, Naomi started answering for God, based on how she interpreted her circumstances. Look at her sarcastic remarks in verses 11-13...

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!"

Do you hear what she’s saying? "You can’t count on anyone but yourself. You've got to face the facts as they are, calculate the possibilities, maximize the opportunities for yourself. That's the only way reasonable people survive in this world."

And she’s also saying, "We've asked God, He didn’t answer in the time framework we gave Him, so, let’s just forget that nonsense. If I were rich, I'd help you. If I had sons, I'd help you. But I don't have anything. I can’t do anything for you. Therefore, you have to help yourself."

She was answering for God. That’s the second thing she does with her facts.

In verse 15, we see a third way Naomi interprets the facts of her life. She concludes that it really doesn’t matter what God you believe in. They’re all the same. This is seen when Naomi couldn't persuade Ruth to leave, she said,

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

I think that is one of the most heart-breaking statements in this book. Naomi sent her daughter-in-law, Orpah, back to the worship of the god, Chemosh in Moab. Chemosh was a demon. The Moabites worshiped an image of him that had an open mouth and a fire inside. Their regular acts of worship included placing living children into the open mouth as a sacrifice to that demon. And Naomi was urging Ruth to go back to that, too.

That’s tragic when you realize that Naomi had lost all hope in the God she worshiped, even to the extent of saying it’s just as good to go worship a demon as it is to worship Jehovah, God. All because the facts of her circumstance clouded her ability to see the truth.

Finally, we have Naomi's statement in verse 20 that shows she has lost hope in anything or anyone. When she arrives in Bethlehem with Ruth, people come running to grab her and greet her, but she tells the people...

"Don’t call me Naomi," she told them. "Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.

Remember, Naomi means "pleasant". She’s saying, "There's nothing pleasant about me. Call me "Mara", which means...wretched, bitter, angry. God has dealt bitterly with me. I went out full, and I've come back empty." She had completely given up. That’s the fourth way she interpreted her facts–"It’s no use, I give up!"

So, given the facts of her life, this was what Naomi created as her truth–

–I don’t matter;

–I’ll answer for God, because He’s not answering in my time framework;

–One god is as good as the next;

–I give up .

Joke: There’s the story of an older woman and a young preacher. At the end of every service, she would come up and list all the problems in her life. And when she was done, the preacher would try to give her some positive reason to look at life differently. Finally, one day, she got quite angry at the preacher, and said, "You know, young man, when God sends tribulations he expects you to tribulate."

But Naomi had gone way beyond tribulating about her tribulations. She had decided that God

had it in for her. Even though He loved some people, He surely didn’t love her.

Now let me ask you a question... Were her interpretation of her facts true?

Let me tell you the truth about Naomi’s facts...

...The truth was that she was coming back with the whole future of the human race holding onto her arm.

...She came back with a young woman who would marry a wealthy Israeli land owner.

...She would be the mother of Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David the king of Israel, the father of the Messiah of Israel and the Lord of the nations, and the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world.

That's who she came back with. Not empty, but fuller than she had ever been in her entire life! Yet in her bitterness she couldn't see it. She let her facts distort the truth.

Now, let’s turn our attention to Ruth, very briefly. What was Ruth's understanding of the truth in the facts of her life?

The first truth Ruth understood through her facts, is that she wasn’t necessarily going to have the life she wanted. I find that in what she didn't say.

She didn't say, "I'm going to go back with you to Bethlehem because God will surely provide a husband for me there." She had listened to Naomi give her all the reasons why that wasn't going to happen, and she basically agreed with her. There is no evidence that she believed she would ever have a husband again. After all, in the self-centered time of the Judges, she was not great catch for any man...

–She had demonstrated that she couldn’t bear children, because she wasn’t able to give her husband, Mahlon, a child when they were married.

–She wasn't a Jew,

–She had no money or property to give as a dowry.

–Basically she had nothing to offer to any would-be-husband. So, why would anyone marry her?

The second thing Ruth understood is found in what she did say in ...

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."

Basically Ruth was saying, "God has given us each other, and that is something very special." The way we have to read Ruth's speech in this setting, is that at the heart of it was gratitude. Gratitude for what she did have.

Naomi had chosen to focus on what she didn't have, and had grown angry and bitter and had assumed God didn't love her.

But Ruth had chosen to focus on what she did have and was thankful, because everything had changed.

--She had grown up as a worshiper of a demon and she now knew the God of Israel.

--She had grown up among a people who had no future, and she now had the possibility of joining the people of God, the heirs of the promise, the ones to whom the Law had been given, the ones from whom Messiah would come.

--She had the opportunity to have two things she had never had before: intimacy with God, and a true friend in Naomi.

Ruth chose to be grateful for what she had. She analyzed life 180 degrees opposite of the way Naomi analyzed life.

Corrie Ten Boom a teenaged, Dutch girl, who was a prisoner of the Nazi’s in World War 2, because she and her family hid Jews from the Germans, wrote a book called, The Hiding Place. In one of the chapters, she relates an incident which taught her to look for the truth in the midst of the facts of her life.

Friends, one of the greatest lessons you can learn from this story of Ruth is this...

Live life like God loves you! Because He really does. And that’s the truth about your facts! Amen.