Sermon Tone Analysis

*The Clouds You So Much Dread Are Big With Mercy (Ruth 4:11-22)*

/Preached by Pastor Phil Layton at Gold Country Baptist Church on February 21, 2010/

www.goldcountrybaptist.org  

* *

Ruth 4:11-22 (NASB95) /11//All the people who were in the court, and the elders, said, “We are witnesses.

May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, both of whom built the house of Israel; and may you achieve wealth in Ephrathah and become famous in Bethlehem.

12//“Moreover, may your house be like the house of Perez whom Tamar bore to Judah, through the offspring which the Lord will give you by this young woman.”

13//So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife, and he went in to her.

And the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son.

14//Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed is the Lord who has not left you without a redeemer today, and may his name become famous in Israel.

15//“May he also be to you a restorer of life and a sustainer of your old age; for your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.”

16//Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her lap, and became his nurse.

17//The neighbor women gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi!”

So they named him Obed.

He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.

18//Now these are the generations of Perez: to Perez was born Hezron, 19//and to Hezron was born Ram, and to Ram, Amminadab, 20//and to Amminadab was born Nahshon, and to Nahshon, Salmon, 21//and to Salmon was born Boaz, and to Boaz, Obed, 22//and to Obed was born Jesse, and to Jesse, David./

/ /

At first reading, that genealogy in v. 18-22 may not seem like a life-changing or powerful or profitable passage, does it?

At first glance, it would seem the story could have ended in v. 17.

Most of you maybe recognize only 1 or 2 names in the list, and when you come to these lists of names in Bible reading, you usually skip right over them.

Reading who /beget /who may not make you be getting too excited.

But we affirm here that 2 Timothy 3:16 is actually true: “*/all Scripture/*/ /[not some of it] /is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness …” /[including genealogies]

/ /

I not only want to say that, I want us to /see that/ at the end of Ruth 4, and how its last chapter and even its last verses tie in with the first chapter and its first verses in ways God intends to profit us, even in the genealogy if not especially the genealogy.

Romans 15:4 /For *whatever was written in earlier times* was written *for our instruction*, so that through *perseverance* and *the* *encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope*./

Willam Cowper wrote these words in our hymnal (#342)

1. God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform;

He plants His footsteps in the sea And rides upon the storm.

2.

You fearful saints, fresh courage take; The clouds you so much dread

Are big with mercy and shall break In blessings on your head.

3. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust Him for His grace;

Behind a frowning providence God hides [alternate: “faith sees”] a smiling face  

4.

His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour;

The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower.

5. Blind unbelief is sure to err And scan His work in vain;

God is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain.

And I think Ruth chapter 4 does exactly that.

God is His own interpreter and He will make plain some of what He was doing at the end of chap.

4, though much of what He was doing the original characters did not understand in their lifetime.

That hymn has good theology from someone whose life didn’t always seem or feel “good.”

I’ve heard a pastor share how impactful it was in his church when he preached through the book of Ruth on 4 successive Sundays.

Each service they sang that hymn I just read, and after he finished the series, a mother who had been suffering terribly in her life told him how much her life and thinking had been transformed by that series, as if God had written this book for her (which He had, along with others, too :) She embroidered the words of the hymn as a gift to express her appreciation at how much that song had come to mean to her in light of the message of Ruth, and I believe that pastor to this day hangs the tapestry in his home as a testimony, not a tribute to his great sermons, but their great Sovereign God.

May God similarly write the truths of Ruth on the fabric of our hearts!

The title of today’s message comes straight out of hymn line #2:

 

*The Clouds You So Much Dread Are Big with Mercy  *

 

The theology that undergirds that title and that hymn and my life begins with the doctrine of God’s providence; the Scriptural truth that all things in life are given or guided or governed not by fate or forces outside God’s control, but by the hand of a sovereign and good God.

And that includes the dark clouds and dark times of life, and the things that we don’t at the time understand or even want.

Providentially, the next verses we’ll be studying in James (5:10-11) actually tie very much in with the story of Ruth and point us back in suffering to consider OT believers, and their stories, how their compassionate merciful God sustained them (Job, prophets).

God’s Providence has big mercy for us as we taste and see He’s good by looking back to the OT.

John Flavel wrote: “Some providences like Hebrew letters, must be read backwards.”

And in the book of Ruth, if we go backwards from the end back to the beginning of the story, we can read ~/ see God’s Providence.

Ruth 1:1 /Now it came about in the days when the judges governed, that there was a famine in the land.

And a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the land of Moab with his wife and his two sons. 2 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, Ephrathites of Bethlehem in Judah.

Now they entered the land of Moab and remained there.

/

 

In the first verses of the book, there are dark clouds for Naomi that will only get darker (v. 3, 5), but the clouds she so much dreads are big w~/ mercy.

The end of chap. 4 moves clouds and mercy abounds

 

*1st Cloud: A Time of Spiritual Darkness (1:1)*

When the first verse of the book tells us this story took place in the days of the judges, we should notice that the book right before Ruth is the book of Judges, one of the most discouraging books to read in the OT, in one of the darkest times of their history, and it ends on one of the most dismal notes of any book … it leaves you looking for something better and wondering what God will do.

Judges 21:25 /In those days there was no *king in Israel*; everyone did what was right *in his own eyes*./

So that’s where the first verse of Ruth picks up with, a time when there is no king, which sets up the need for the last verse of Ruth.

The very last word in the book of Ruth is what?…/David/.

The book begins in a time where Israel had no king, and it ends with the birth of Israel’s greatest king of OT times, King David.

At the beginning of this story, all that can be seen is the dark cloud of the time of the judges, but that very cloud itself is actually big with mercy and it is on this barren landscape that God will rain blessings on their head.

The story of Ruth should encourage God’s people of all times:  God is always working, even in the darkest of times.

Where we can’t see His hand working, we can still trust His heart, because He is working in all things (even things that are not good in and of themselves) bringing about final good to all who love Him /even at the very moment that sinful men are doing whatever they want/!

-         This very time of darkness was /not just used by God but intended by God/ to be the backdrop for His merciful light

-         The dark background of immorality through the book of Judges is where the glory of purity shines brightly in Ruth

-         The very dark cloud of idolatry in the days of Judges, every man choosing whatever “god” his own eyes sees is right, this makes Ruth’s following the true God stand out (1:16)

-         The very cloud of disloyalty is a set-up for Ruth’s devotion

-         Her love is contrasted with lustful men in times of Judges

-         Her kindness diverges from the cruelty we read in Judges

-         Her obedience stands out against Israel’s disobedience

-         The faithfulness of a Gentile woman is all the more striking on the stage of the faithlessness of men of God’s covenant people … that very cloud of the judges was big with mercy

-         Right in the middle of a desert of rebellion spiritually, God plants an oasis of righteousness; big mercy from a big God!

You fearful saints, fresh courage take; The clouds you so much dread

Are big with mercy and shall break In blessings on your head.

The introduction to the list of names in 4:18 uses a term that may even hint of this.

It’s translated as “family line” or “generations” or “genealogy.”

In the Greek translation of OT, it uses the word /genesis.

/In the underlying Heb., /toledoth /is most frequent and famous in the book of Genesis.

Why might that be significant in a time of spiritual darkness?

One writer explains: ‘The use of the term /toledoth /in Genesis always designated a significant movement in God’s program of redemption … [and] signaled either the continuance of the “Seed” promise of Genesis 3:15 or the narrowing of that promise [Abraham through Isaac] … This /toledoth /here at the end of the book of Ruth, then, would signal to the believing remnant that something significant in God’s program of redemption was being revealed – and quite likely it involved the narrowing of the “Redeemer-Seed” promise that would lead to the world’s blessing and redemption.

The final “genealogy” in Genesis was of Jacob and his twelve sons (Gen.

37:2) [which Ruth 4:11 alludes to, Rachel and Leah who birthed the 12 sons who became the 12 tribes of Israel].

At the end of Jacob’s life, as recorded in Genesis 49:8-12, he prophesied that the Ruler would come from the tribe of Judah [which Ruth 4:12 alludes to, Judah thru son Perez] … the “sons of Perez” became the leading~/dominant clan within the tribe of Judah.

The believing student of these Scriptures would then wonder if the Ruler~/Redeemer-Seed would then be from that clan.

This genealogy confirms … and leads the reader from “Perez” to “David” – who would then be graced with the divine promise of a “Seed”~/Son who would rule God’s house forever…’[1]

 

In the midst of a time of spiritual darkness, big mercy was at work.

*2nd Cloud: A Time of Physical and Financially Difficulty * 

 

Ruth 1:1 /Now it came about in the days when the judges governed, that *there was a famine in the land* ... /

/ /

In an agrarian society, a famine meant tremendous physical and financial difficulty, and the real threat of your family dying out.

It was not just a brief downturn in their economy of a few years.

The text later explains it was more than a decade that went by before the land was again visited with God’s favor.

This dark cloud of difficulty must have made it hard to see what God was up to.

Israel was the one piece of real estate on earth God had promised to bless

 

Where is God in times like this?

Why do we have to go through this for so long?

Why does it seem He’s not keeping His promise?

Why is God’s Providence frowning on His own people?

Actually, the famine /was /God’s keeping His promise, as He said He would do to get their attention when His people turned away.

It was God’s kindness that brought this dark shadow over the land, so that His people would recognize His sovereignty and repent and return (a word used over 10x in Ruth 1 as a theme).

God’s kindness should lead us to repentance (Rom.

2:4).

Behind the frowning providence and circumstance, God’s smiling face was hidden from their sight, but it was there.