Let the Shepherd Lead

Originally Proclaimed 10/28/18

Intro:

• Last week we were supposed to begin a series in the Old Testament taking us through the first chapters of Isaiah and highlighting how Isaiah expected and gave us hope for our Messiah.
  • But life as it so often does interrupted.
  • As I began to turn my attention to this message, during the week, I reflected upon how pointless it would be to ignore the circumstances and press on with the series I had begun to prepare.
  • I also considered how much I and perhaps some of you needed to hear from God about what we should do when life interrupts.
  • Thus today we begin a series of messages through the book of Ruth in a series called “when life interrupts” beginning with this message “Nowhere to turn”.
• When life interrupts, one of the first experiences that we feel is the sense that there is nowhere to turn.
• Martin Luther, who launched the Protestant Reformation we celebrate today understood that sense of having nowhere to turn.
  • We often think of the boldness of Luther nailing the 95 Theses to the castle church door in Wittenburg demanding a debate upon the practice and abuse of indulgences.
  • We may also likely remember the staunch faith of this man who under the threats of the Catholic Church to recant or die asked for an evening, prayed and returned to say, “I am bound to the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise. Here I stand. God help me. Amen.”
  • We might know of Luther’s jovial side, the constant puns in his writing, the theology discussions that often happened around the local ale house, or the kindly and loving instruction of his own family at their meal table which became known as Table Talk.
  • But we cannot ignore Luther’s anfechtung or anxiety that often interrupted his life.
    • According to one biographer, Eric Metaxis the German word Luther used for these boughts was a combination of the word used for fencing or dueling. Thus Luther was dueling with his own thoughts and as he often put it, with the Devil.
    • Even the words we sand today in the anthem came about in response to a dreadful summer interrupted by anfectung.
      • In 1527 a plague struck Wittenburg. Though he was ordered to leave the city, he refused to care for the sick and dying as Christ would have his church do.
      • During this time of death, Luther had time to reflect and became immensely depressed. Though he had stayed to minister, the care he offered others left him almost defenseless to the assaults upon his own soul. In no time, he felt alone, abandoned, left to do battle with the forces that assaulted him at times through his life.
      • To his friend and co-reformer Melanchthon he wrote on 8/2/1527, “I spent more than a week in death and hell. My entire body was in pain and I still tremble. Completely abandoned by Christ, I labored under the vacillations and storms of desperation and blasphemy against God. But through the prayers of the saints (his church friends), God began to have mercy on me and pulled my soul from the inferno below.”
      • He also said of this time that “the devil was in the habit of turning an insect into a camel. It would be neither good nor useful to know what great blessings lie hidden under such trials. Some have wanted to fathom this and have thereby done themselves much harm. Therefore, we should willingly endure the hand of God in this and all in suffering.”
      • So during that summer as he asked the saints in his church to pray for him, Luther applied himself to meditation upon the Scriptures, most specifically Psalm 46.
      • From those days, Luther penned “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”. Those lines that confess God as “our helper amid the flood of mortal ill prevailing” were deeply personal and Luther’s solution when he felt as if he had nowhere to turn.

Hook:

• You might hear that account and say, “that is easy for Luther. Look at the great man of God he was.”
• But friends, I assure you if you read Luther’s works and own reflections such a realization was not easy for him.
• Remember his name for his depression. It was a duel for Luther, in which he had nowhere to turn.
• And friends, when life interrupts, it is often a duel against our thoughts and the devil for us as well.
  • All of our normal resources seem exhausted. All of our ordinary means of grace do not seem good enough. We feel as if we have nowhere to turn.
  • Have you ever felt that way?
  • Has some event in your life so blinded you to the presence and power of God that you felt as if you had nowhere to turn?
• I want to suggest to us today that such a feeling is not unique to any one of us, but is common to us all. And it is a circumstance that the writers of the Bible knew well as we will see in these first verses of Ruth. Today I hope to answer three questions we must answer when we feel as if there is nowhere to turn.

Message Points:

• Ruth in the Hebrew Bible is one of the books of the Megilloth.
  • It along with Song of Songs, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther were all collected onto one scroll used at feast times.
  • The books are read each for one of the Jewish feast, Ruth being read at Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks. That feast celebrates the barley harvest and spiritually the giving of God’s law fifty days after the Exodus from Egypt.
  • We call this feast Pentecost and spiritual for a Christian this is when God gave to His church the Holy Spirit’s indwelling power and presence.
• Tradition tells us that Samuel was the author of Ruth, perhaps as a way to further legitimize and anoint David as God’s chosen king.
  • That said, no author is given for the book, and for several generations arguments have been made that it was not complied until sometime after the Exile.
  • But based on certain pre-Exile forms of Hebrew words and syntax in the text there is good reason to reject a late date for this book.
  • Most certainly the concern of the author, Samuel or otherwise was to reinforce God’s intention to utilize the line of David to bring forth His salvation.
• So as we begin to read and examine Ruth we can see there is much more to this small book than meets the eye.
• The first verse sets the book in the turbulent times of the Judges.
  • In this season of the life of the nation of Israel, local leaders would rise up and lead God’s people for a time and a season.
  • That said there was very little consistent faithfulness to God or to His law. As the last verse of Judges indicates, “In those days Israel had no king: everyone did as they saw fit.”
  • There were no national or spiritual leaders to turn to in crisis. The original impulse of the Judges generation to cry out to God for help had faded.
  • The people did as each desired and Naomi’s family was no different.
• The first verse also tells us a famine had come upon the land. God had foretold this in His Law, if anyone had cared to look to Him.
  • In Leviticus 26:18-20 God promises to discipline his people for their sins. He says he will break their pride by making the heavens, or sky, like iron and the earth like bronze. This is a picture of famine. The verses then say that the land would not yield its increase no matter how much labor was exerted.
  • Similarly Deuteronomy 28:23-24 retells this consequence of sin by telling the people that he would make the rain of the land powder and dust shall rain down their destruction.
  • Did you hear how God promised to discipline the people for their sin by making it seems as if the heavens above and earth below them were as hard and unyielding as metal?
  • God allowed life to interrupt with this family from Bethlehem and He did so with hopes that their pride would be broken.
  • If they had only known God’s Word, and turned to those passages were the consequence of famine was described and read, in Leviticus 26:40-42 God says that if they confess He will hear and remember His covenant with them. That promise is also repeated in Deuteronomy 30.
• But Elimelech’s solution was not to turn to God or to His Word. His solution was to turn to Moab.
• That leads us to our 1st question: Should we turn towards locations? (1:1-2)
  • The answer must be no.
    • Bethlehem is a town whose name means the House of Bread. For this family turning to home would do them no good because the House of Bread was empty.
    • Though settled in their own land these Israelites become Hebrews or wanders again, sojourning in a foreign land.
      • Moab the neighboring territory occupied by distant relatives of the Israelites had food.
      • In fact the term used here for country is the Hebrew term for field emphasizing the fact that there was arable land already being cultivated.
      • That word sojourn is also important. We see it translated as went to live “for a while”. That means the family saw this as a temporary solution.
    • Why was it temporary? Because Israel had a past with Moab.
      • The founder of the nation named Moab was the son of Abraham’s nephew Lot with one of his daughters. The nation was born in incest.
      • The Moabites had refused to help Israel as they made their Exodus from Egypt.
      • Instead they sent their women to seduce the Israelites.
      • God had forbidden Moabites from entering into an assembly of worship.
      • And Moab during the time of the Judges had ruled over Israel in the person of Eglon.
    • This family knew that their solution of a new location had to be temporary because no Israelite would be welcome or settled with Moabites.
  • Friends, while a “change of scenery” may do us some good, these verses remind us that the good done is extremely temporary.
    • There is no location that we can run to where our problems will not ultimately find us.
    • And further, when we change scenery there are ordinary problems that will follow us. We will have to have shelter, clothing, food, and all of that has a cost.
    • Even if we have unlimited means, as Luther’s life reminds us, the great enemy is not the place we are in, but the way that the devil makes camels out of the smallest insects of thought.
    • Though we might change a location, we cannot guarantee that the change of scenery alone will allow us to refocus our minds so that we can clearly see and hear from God.
• That leads to a discussion of our 2nd major question. Should we turn towards relations? (1:3-4)
  • Notice that this family is called Ephrathites.
    • That is like a family name or a clan.
    • They were respected and likely the leaders of the village of Bethlehem.
    • The family like our families could have turned to their relatives. But friends, no matter how wonderful our family might be, relatives alone cannot solve our problems.
    • Being near family may comfort us and help us to remember better times.
    • But in a famine, spiritual or physical, family may be just as desperate as we are.
  • Elimelek’s name means “God is my King” and Naomi means “laughter or to be pleasant”.
    • Perhaps in their distress they decided that children are a blessing and they welcomed two new children into their family.
    • These new relationships while good and joyful also present many normal challenges. And we see this in the boy’s names
    • Mahlon’s name, while uncertin, seems to be derived from the word for “sickness”. Chilion seems to be derived from the word for “cut off or come to an end”.
    • From names of faith to names that denote the ominous nature of this family’s struggle; we can see that even children did not restore the joy to this family
  • So while sojourning in Moab, Elimeleck dies and Naomi is left with her sons who desire to be married.
    • Marriage is another way that we can place a balm on our troubled hearts.
    • But friends notice that though these marriages bring some joy, there are also new challenges.
    • Orpah means neck, which may describe her physical appearance. Ruth on the other hand means friend or companion.
    • No matter how beautiful or how good a companion these women were, they were forgein wives, something expressly forbidden in God’s law (see Deut. 7:3-4).
    • Though they lived in matrimony for around 10 years both sons came eventually to die.
• 3: Should we turn towards desperation? (1:5)
  • This leads us to have the final words of verse five.
  • Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
  • And though we know how this story ends, pretend for a moment that you do not know this.
  • Would you not despair? There was nowhere to turn.
    • Not to a new location, not to family, not to closest kin, not to daughters in law of dead husbands.
    • It would be easy to imagine all is lost.
  • But is that what God desires?
    • If we were to just look ahead into verse six we would see a ray of hope in God’s providence and salvation that Naomi must have clung to.
    • And friends is that not what we must do when we feel as if there is nowhere to turn?
    • Should we not examine our lives and search our heart? Should our despair not cause us to begin with vigor a search for just the smallest sliver of hope in God?
    • Is that not what saints of old have done as they search the Scriptures and sing old songs and pray and pray and pray?

Conclusion:

• Friends if you are here today and feel as if you have nowhere to turn search for the God who gives you the hope you need for salvation.