In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the LORD had visited his people and given them food.

Ruth 1:1-6 ESV

“In the world you will have tribulation,” says our Lord. And the apostles affirmed that reality, for they taught new believers “that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Paul told the Philippians that they were graced not only with belief in Christ but also to “suffer for his sake” (1:29). And in 1 Peter 4:12-13, the apostle counsels: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something stranger were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.”

There is a strain of teaching today that claims that suffering and tragedy stem from a lack of faith, and that if our faith is great enough, we should be healed and free from those afflictions. Such theology is contrary to what we find in the Scriptures, which repeatedly call us to endure the various tribulations that we will encounter in the world. Indeed, since we will inevitably face tragedies, we would do well to consider how God’s Word teaches us to respond. Thankfully, we find just such a teaching from Jesus in Luke 13:1-5:

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Notice that Jesus is first told about a tragedy of violence and malevolence, in which Pilate had a group of Galileans put to death while they were making sacrifices in the temple. We do not know anything else about this incident, but it is clearly human-induced violence. But in His response, Jesus brings up another incident: a fallen tower. That was not a tragedy of violence but of misfortune, an act of God, as many used to say. Indeed, these represent the two broad categories of tragedy and suffering, one caused by the sin of others and the other seemingly by happenstance.

And Jesus’ response to both is this: repent. Thom Schreiner writes: “His point is that every disaster in history points forward to the judgment of hell on the last day. Hence, every time there is a disaster, we should be reminded that we will experience something even worse–judgment in hell–unless we repent.” While this may not be the answer that we would expect from Jesus, it fits our present passage well, for it gives us the same message: when faced with disaster, repent.

THERE WAS A FAMINE

As we established last week, the book of Ruth takes place in the days when the judges ruled, which was one of Israel’s darkest periods. As the book of Judges concludes, “in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).

Verse 1 continues that dark setting by establishing the initial hardship of our story: there was a famine in the land. Thankfully, today we wrestle with controlling ourselves while having an abundance of food, but throughout history, famines were both regular and devastating. But this famine has a bitter irony to it whenever we learn that the land is Judah and specifically the city of Bethlehem. Generally, the land of Israel was supposed to be flowing with milk and honey, which is a picture of abundance and plentitude. Specifically, Bethlehem means “house of bread.” Indeed, bread (lechem) can mean food in general, as it does at the end of verse 6. So, the milk and honey have ceased flowing in the Promise Land, and the House of Bread is all out of bread. Clearly, there is a problem here.

Famines, like all disasters, are from the hand of God. We may not appreciate that truth, and we may even rebel against it. But truth remains true regardless of our emotional consent to it. John Piper points to Psalm 104’s celebration of God’s governing and sustaining hand in the natural world and then writes:

It is a tragic fact of the modern world that most contemporary, scientifically minded people think it is more true and significant to speak of the technicalities of photosynthesis than to say, “God makes the grass grow.” This is not a sentence–a reality–desperately needed by the soul-shrunken modern man whose world has been reduced from a theater of wonders to a machine running mindlessly on mechanical laws.

Of course, a God-entranced Christian may happily go about his scientific work on photosynthesis and put technical names on the ways of God. But woe to us if we follow the secular spirit of the age into a frame of mind where God is out of sight, out of mind, and out of our everyday conversation about the wonders of growing grass. (Providence, 224-225)

And if that is our secular tendency with the ordinary things of nature, how much more with natural disasters! Yet it is precisely these that we separate from God as if tornadoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis occasionally slip past Him to strike mankind. Although we deny God’s ordaining of disaster and tragedy in order to comfort ourselves, in so doing we actually strip ourselves of the only real comfort found in the providence of God. To quote Piper again:

Thousands of Christians who have walked through fire and have seen horrors embrace God’s control of all things as the comfort and hope of their lives. It is not comforting or hopeful in their pain to tell them that God is not in control. Giving Satan the decisive control or ascribing pain to chance is not true or helpful. When the world is crashing in, we need assurance that God reigns over it all. (Works Vol 8, 25)

As a powerful example of this comfort, Piper presents a missionary family whose plane was mistakenly shot down by the Peruvian Air Force in 2001. The father and six-year-old son survived, but a bullet passed through the mom’s back and into the seven-month-old daughter in her lap. At the memorial service, the father, Jim Bowers, said these words:

Most of all I want to thank God. He’s a sovereign God. I’m finding out more now… Some of you might ask, “Why thank God?”… Could this really be God’s plan for Roni and Charity; God’s plan for Cory and me and our family?… Roni and Charity were instantly killed by the same bullet. (Would you say that’s a stray bullet?) And it didn’t reach Kevin [the pilot], who was right in front of Charity; it stayed in Charity. That was a sovereign bullet… Those people who did that simply were used by God. Whether you want to believe it or not. I believe it. They were used by Him, by God, to accomplish His purpose in this, maybe similar to the Roman soldiers whom God used to put Christ on the cross. (Ibid, 26)

True comfort is found resting (and even lamenting) under the sovereign hand of God, trusting even when we cannot see that He is working all things for the good of those that love Him.

Yet there is a particular theological significance to this particular famine, for God’s law warned of this very thing. Through Moses, Yahweh repeatedly told Israel what their obedience or disobedience would mean for them. We see this in Leviticus 26, where God promises blessings when they keep His commandments and curses for their rebellion. In verse 20, He says, “And your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield its increase, and the tress of the land shall not yield their fruit.” And in verse 26: “I will break your supply of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in a single oven and shall dole out your bread again by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied.”

Deuteronomy 28 is another such passage. It comes at the end of the final sermon that Moses delivers to Israel while they were in the land of Moab and preparing to finally enter Canaan. Verses 22-24 are indicative of the curses:

The LORD will strike you with wasting disease and with fever, inflammation and fiery heat, and with drought and with blight and with mildew. They shall pursue you until you perish. And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron. The LORD will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed.

Sinclair Ferguson writes:

Now, ‘in the days when the judges ruled’–actually, days when the people were unruly–this was really happening! God’s word was coming true. There was famine; the fields were bare; the barns were empty. And the author of Ruth understands that this is not an accident of history but the outworking of God’s covenant promise: ‘Turn away from me and I will send physical deprivation to make you face up to your sin and your hardness of heart. Trust and obey me again and I will bless you and your harvests will be bountiful.’ God had, as it were, switched on the amber warning light. It was a clear signal that his people were drifting from him and needed to repent. (23)

SOJOURNING IN MOAB

But verse 1 does not give us any indication of repentance from God’s people. In fact, we find the exact opposite. Verse 1 continues, saying:

and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there.

If we have read Genesis through Judges, we should immediately be skeptical of this decision. The nation of Moab was distantly related to Israel, for they were descendants from Abraham’s nephew Lot, though that origin is itself a sinful tragedy (see Genesis 19:30-38). In Numbers, the king of Moab hired Balaam to curse Israel, which though it failed was immediately followed with God punishing Israel for whoring “with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods” (Numbers 25:1-2). Later, the second judge Ehud liberated Israel from being under Moab’s oppression. Indeed, such was Israel’s relationship with Moab that God gave this command in Deuteronomy 23:3-6:

No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever, because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way, when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. But the LORD your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the LORD your God loved you. You shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days forever.

Thus, even though the text does not comment on the morality of this family’s decision to sojourn in Moab, we can conclude that it was not the proper course of action. They ought to have remained in Israel and saw the famine as sign hand of discipline upon them. They ought to have repented of their sin and cried out of Yahweh. But they chose to go to Moab instead. Iain Duguid asks a fitting question:

Which road will each of us choose? Very often in those defining moments in life where we get to direct our own course for the future, the factors that weigh most heavily in our decisions are those that seem most likely to provide us with comfort and security. The bottom line in our lives is rarely God’s will, as it is revealed in his Word, especially if it seems to cut directly across our best prospects for happiness and success. We rarely think seriously about the impact our choices will have on our ability to raise a Christian family in a world that is often less than ideal. Like Elimelech, we act as the sovereign of our own lives, making the choices that seem best in our own eyes, without reference to God and without serious thought about the long-term implications. Many bear the label “Christian,” yet their Christianity has no real impact on life-defining decisions, just as Elimelech bore the name “My God is king” yet lived in a way that made it evident that God wasn’t his king at all. The roads we choose for ourselves often make our deepest heart commitments plain for all to see. (133)

Sinclair Ferguson also makes a wonderful point:

Do Elimelech and Naomi intend only a brief sojourn? Ten years later Naomi is still there (v. 4). When we turn our backs on the Lord’s word we never intend to do it for long. It is only going to be for a little while, over a small matter. But it rarely works out that way. (25)

Small compromises with sin almost always lead to further and deeper sin.

DEATH AND DISOBEDIENCE

Although they likely remained in Moab because food was there, tragedy still struck: But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. We should first notice how the narrative shifts onto Naomi as the main character. In verse 2, she was introduced as Elimelech’s wife, and now with his death, he is presented as being Naomi’s husband.

Although we do not know the cause of Elimelech’s death, Yahweh both gives and takes, for life and death are in His hands. Fleeing to Moab could not save his life, for Elimelech’s days were numbered. Therefore, Tolstoy right said, “It’s all the will of God: you can die in your sleep, and God can spare you in battle.” As the LORD says in Deuteronomy 32:39:

            See now that I, even I, am he,
                        and there is no god beside me;
            I kill and I make alive;
                        I wound and I heal;
                        and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

There is no escaping from the plan and will of Yahweh, just as Jonah.

But as tragic as the death of her husband surely was, Naomi still had her two sons to care for her, but verse 4 digs the hole a little deeper: These took Moabite wives; the name of one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. What else could they do? They were living in Moab, not Israel, after all. Even though God forbid such intermarrying, Mahlon and Chilion did so anyway. Again, small compromises lead to bigger ones.

Verse 4 ends by saying: They lived there about ten years. It is unclear when exactly Mahlon and Chilion married Orpah and Ruth, but the layout of events seems to imply a decade of their marriages in Moab, which makes the lack of children another strike in the life of Naomi.

Finally, verse 5 completes the disaster: and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. Mary Hannah notes that “Calling Naomi ‘the woman’ stresses her vulnerability as a sojourner without husband or sons in a society in which legal and economic security depends on a male family member, while calling her sons ‘children’ stresses her maternal agony.” Indeed, for a woman in the ancient world, this was the worst-case scenario come to life. She is left without any providers and protectors in a very dangerous world. Further, she was not even among her own people, where she could at least appeal to the charity of those around her. She was a childless, widowed foreigner. In verse 20, she will say that “the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.” And in verse 21, she will say that “the Almighty has brought calamity upon me.” Both are true statements.

Ferguson writes:

Would you dare to say to her: ‘the explanation is simple: you left the Promised Land; you deserved everything you got’? Is that an adequate explanation? Probably others had done the same thing without suffering such horrendous consequences. Why is Naomi experiencing such a catalogue of grief? Is, Naomi and her husband did sin, no matter who took the lead. But the significance of her experience is far more complex than simply being a punishment for sin. True, we really deserve nothing from God’s hand but punishment. But we cannot draw over-simple equations between the suffering of this woman and the sin in which her family engaged. Naomi’s suffering is not explicable merely in terms of her sin. If it were that simple, she might be able to cope with it. But God is too majestic, to infinitely wise in his providences, to be reduced to simple formulae when he brings his children into experiences of suffering. There must surely be a deeper analysis of these events. (27)

RETURN TO THE LORD YOUR GOD

Indeed, we do not even know the extent of Naomi’s sin in these events. Did she nag Elimelech until he finally agreed to move to Moab? Or did she dutifully submit to his decision to do so? Or was it something less black and white? Scripture simply does not, so we cannot definitively say what role her actual sin played in her suffering.

But what about Jesus’ words that we read at the beginning? Isn’t disaster meant to lead us to repentance? It certainly is. However, notice that Jesus did not have a widow of one of the Galileans whom Pilate killed asking Him why her husband died. I am certain that Jesus’ answer would have been much more compassionate if that were the case.  No, someone was just telling Jesus the latest headline from Judea, and He gave us our guideline for thinking through such tragedies.

But, of course, while none of us have the wisdom to fully discern how much of our suffering is caused by our own sin and while we should not imitate Job’s friends toward those who are grieving (that is, theologizing over those who are in pain), we ought nevertheless to prepare ourselves for the trials and afflictions that are sure to come. Particularly, we should prepare ourselves to use such times for repentance. The saying from William Bridge that we read last week is still true: “Suffering times are sin-discovering times.” For as Beeke summarized, “The sins we cannot see in the summer of prosperity are more visible in the winter of affliction.”

Indeed, for we who are in Christ, Romans 8:28 is one of the most marvelous of all promises in Scripture: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” That verse is a powerful reminder of God’s providential hand over all our suffering in this life. Whatever hardships we face, whatever suffering we endure, whatever disaster afflicts us, whatever tragedy strikes us, God is using it all for good! Amen!

Now here’s a quick question: what do you call good? Is your definition of good the same as God’s definition of good? If not, God’s definition is correct because goodness is one of His divine attributes. He does not simply align with what goodness is; He Himself is goodness.

Let’s look at how Paul continues the thought in verses 29-30:

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

The good that God is working in verse 28 in conformity to Jesus. God is providentially bringing those whom He has called to look more like His Son. Although we think of our good in terms of being safe, comfortable, and happy, God, who defines goodness in Himself, calls being made like Him good.

And this is not isolated to this passage in Romans. Hebrews 12:10 expresses the same reality: “For [our earthly father] disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but [God] disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.” Our good is sharing in God’s holiness.

This means that we should, indeed, view times of affliction as times of sin-discovery and, therefore, as times of repentance. And we have a picture of that repentance in Naomi in verse 6:

Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the LORD had visited his people and given them food.

She heard that Yahweh had given the House of Bread bread again, so she returned. The word for return (shub) is a key, repeated word throughout the remainder of chapter 1. Here it means to return or to go back, but it is also sometimes used for repentance, as in Ezekiel 14:6: “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: “Repent and turn away from your idols, and turn away your faces from all your abominations.”’” Significantly, it is also used in Deuteronomy 30:1-6, which comes after all the blessings and curses that we discussed earlier:

And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, and return to the LORD your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there he will take you. And the LORD your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it. And he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.

After all her loss, Naomi decided to return to the Promised Land. After ten long years, she was returning to the place of her God. She was finally looking to Yahweh as the Giver of bread. Like the prodigal son, she would return destitute and empty with nothing to offer or to bring. But that is how we call come to the Lord. As the hymn rightly says, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling. Naked, come to Thee for dress. Helpless, look to Thee for grace. Foul, I to the Fountain fly. Wash me, Savior, or I die!” The afflictions and disasters of life simply reveal what was true even in times of joy and prosperity: that we have no good apart from the Lord (Psalm 16:1).

Since we have the full revelation of God before us, we are able to see what Naomi never did: that her sufferings played a role in God’s plan to bring His Son into the world. But we have an even greater promise, for we now have the comfort of knowing that God is using all of our suffering to make us more like His well-beloved Son, Whom He loved before the foundation of the world.

Although our curiosities are often drawn to news of blood-mingled sacrifices and fallen towers, in the Table before us, we have far greater news than that. Naomi returned because she heard that Yahweh visited His people and given them bread. The word for visit (paqad) very often has a negative connotation of judgment. But Yahweh has done far more than simply visit us; He has come down to dwell among us. And He did not come to visit our iniquity upon us but to be “crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5). Indeed, He came not merely to give us physical bread but to give Himself as the Bread of Life, which He gives to the poor in spirit without price. Let our coming to the Table be a tangible picture of our turning away from our sins and returning to the Eternal King who became the Man of Sorrows to defeat sin, sorrow, and death for our sake, once and for all.