Hopeless

As we scan at the political landscape for the rest of 2024, many are discouraged. As we face personal trials of difficulty and struggle, many are feeling down. As others experience the heartache of loss, they are grieving deeply.

Whenever we face trouble, we can deal with it in various ways:

We can simply endure the pain. We can decide to simply tolerate what is going on and sometimes even fight against what’s going on, but that usually doesn’t change the situation. It makes us angry. And over time, it often makes us bitter. But trials, tragedies, and turmoil are not given to us just to endure or get enraged.
We can try to escape our problems. We can attempt to escape and leave the place God wants us (either physically or emotionally) and avoid the place where God plans to help us. Whenever we walk away from God, whenever we fail to hear and trust His voice, whenever we do not stay when we should, we risk all kinds of challenges.
We can entrust our lives to God. In other words, we can let God use the hard times in our lives to make us better, to help us grow in His grace, and help us learn to trust His loyal love and faithful truth more and more.

In the Book of Ruth we find a scene similar to ours today.

During the time of the judges, there was a famine in the land. A man left Bethlehem in Judah with his wife and two sons to stay in the territory of Moab for a while. The man’s name was Elimelech, and his wife’s name was Naomi. The names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They entered the fields of Moab and settled there. Naomi’s husband, Elimelech, died, and she was left with her two sons. Her sons took Moabite women as their wives: one was named Orpah and the second was named Ruth. After they lived in Moab about ten years, both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and the woman was left without her two children and without her husband.
Ruth 1:1-5.

The Book of Ruth explains how to deal with trials and tragedy.

The very first verse begins, “During the time of the judges.” The setting is literally during times of judging, when “in the days when there was no king, when everyone did whatever seemed right to him, and the people of God walked away from following Him (Judges 21:25). During the time of the judges there was a pattern of the people’s sin and God’s judgment. Notice the next part of the scene, “there was a famine in the land” (Ruth 1:1). The famine on Israel at this time indicated God’s judgment for their unfaithfulness. Rather than entrust their lives to God in the Promised Land, Elimilech and Naomi chose to escape their trials and move to Moab where they experienced further tragedy. First Elimilech died (vs. 3), then their two sons died (vs. 5). Naomi was left alone in a foreign land without her husband, without her two sons, without a source of income, without hope. This is just tragic.

That’s when God comes back into the picture (Ruth 1:6). Naomi heard of God’s faithfulness and responded by faith. We deal with trials and tragedies by entrusting our lives to the LORD. Not just enduring them, not by escaping them, but by trusting God through them. Sometimes it means abandoning our reasoning, our plans, our understanding and returning to God’s plan and place of provision.

The Book of Ruth expresses the Sovereignty of God.

In Ruth, the LORD uses a woman who is a godless Moabite to carry out His will. If you remember, the Moabites were the enemies of Israel; yet Ruth the Moabitess will marry a son of Israel. She responded to Naomi with loyal love and was used by God to provide not just for Naomi, but for Israel. God took this woman from the lowest of conditions and raised her to the highest of privileges, an ancestor of God’s Messiah. In a vivid display of God’s sovereignty, the Book of Judges – which closes with the statement that “that was no King in Israel” and moved to the end of the book of Ruth, which closed with the genealogy of David and the geneology of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Himself. In the process, the key player was a faithful woman, a Moabitess, by the name of Ruth.

We may wonder, “How could this woman, Ruth, ever be used by God?” And yet, she was. Sometimes we wonder, personally, how we could ever be used by God? Sometimes we wonder how could God possibly redeem these days of political turmoil, personal trouble, and painful tragedy? Ruth reminds us that God sovereignly rules over our lives and our future.

The Book of Ruth encourages faithful believers.

What encourages me more than anything else in the Book of Ruth is that it is the story of a godly family which existed in a time that was even worse than the world we face today. As we see how this book fits into the historical panorama of the Old Testament, we can understand why Ruth is such a key book for all of us as we deal with the differences between the “rebellious majority” and the “righteous minority” in our own world.

The Rebellious Majority: Remember, the first verse of Ruth said, “During the time of the judges…” In order to understand the significance of that time, we must go all the way back before the period of the judges, before Joshua, back to the days of Moses.

In the history of the Jewish people, there were:

The Slavery Days of Moses. The children of Israel, the people of God, were slaves for 400 years, during which they made mud bricks for Pharoah. Toward the end of that experience, God raised up a leader to rescue them: Moses. Even in the days of sorrow and slavery in Egypt, God raised up a leader who brought them out of slavery. Even then, the people grumbled, complained, and rebelled against Moses (and the LORD).

The Conquering Days of Joshua. After Moses, God raised up Joshua, and his task was to lead the children of Israel into the land of Canaan, take control of the land, and settle it. And in Joshua 24:31 we read, “Israel worshiped the Lord throughout Joshua’s lifetime and during the lifetimes of the elders who outlived Joshua, and who had experienced all the works the Lord had done for Israel.” But when Joshua passes off the scene, Israel enters the …

The Hopeless Days of Judges. Here’s what happened between the Book of Joshua and the Book of Judges.

The people worshiped the Lord throughout Joshua’s lifetime and during the lifetimes of the elders who outlived Joshua. They had seen all the Lord’s great works he had done for Israel. Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110. They buried him in the territory of his inheritance, in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. That whole generation was also gathered to their ancestors. After them another generation rose up who did not know the Lord or the works he had done for Israel. The Israelites did what was evil in the Lord’s sight. They worshiped the Baals.
Judges 2:7–11

What a sad commentary! In the Book of Judges, the failure of one generation to pass along its faith and hope in the LORD to the next generation is summed up in the repeated statement,

In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did whatever seemed right to him.”
Judges 17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25

That biblical indictment is followed by a tale of incredible brutality and immorality. The 400-plus years of the Book of Judges, when there was no moral leadership in Israel except in times of emergency and crisis, is not unlike our culture today, when everybody is “doing their own thing” and following “their truth.” What’s right for one person is not necessarily right for the next person. Relativity rules.

Amazingly, every time Israel got into trouble, God would send them a leader – a judge – to help them get out. Over and over, again, this cycle was repeated, possibly as many as 14 times.

But in that day, as in our day, God always had a remnant of people faithful to Him. They are…

The Righteous Minority: If we don’t see anything else from Ruth, we need to see that one godly family can make a difference. The Book of Ruth is about a little family of godly people who lived right in the middle of a moral mess. And though they lived in the mess, they lived above it, they honored God, they did what was right, loving, and kind. They entrusted their lives to God and were faithful to Him through the darkest of days.

A Godly Woman: Ruth. She is a bright star in the middle of a dark night. When Orpah walked away, Ruth held on (1:14-17). When the multitudes had abandoned God’s moral boundaries, she lived with refreshing and wholesome purity (3:10-11). God uses godly women who walk with Him by faith.

A Godly Man: Boaz. He is a reflection of moral strength in a weak society (2:1: 3:10-13). An honorable man who was patient and trusted the Lord. Over the next several weeks, we’ll explore the faithfulness of Boaz as a kinsman redeemer. When others were pursuing whatever was right in their own eyes, Boaz was more concerned about doing what was right in God’s eyes. God uses godly men who walk with Him by faith.

A Godly Heritage: Jesus the Messiah. In the days when there was no king, God paved the way for a future godly ruler for His people in King David, the great grandson of Ruth and Boaz. Through David, God sent His promised Messiah as a Redeemer for all humanity. In the little town of Bethlehem, God used one family to make a difference in the middle of a moral mess. As far as we can tell, the quiet faithfulness of Boaz and Ruth didn’t necessarily make a difference in the world during their lifetime, but God used their lifetime of faithfulness to change the world. God uses godly families who walk with Him by faith.

Whenever we face political turmoil, personal trials, painful tragedies in our lives, we can simply endure them, we can try to escape them, or we can entrust our lives to God through them. The book of Ruth encourages God’s people to remain faithful to His Word and obedient to His Will.