Sermon Tone Analysis

*The Clouds You So Much Dread Are Big With Mercy, Part 2 (Ruth 4:11-22)*

/Preached by Pastor Phil Layton at Gold Country Baptist Church on Sunday, February 28, 2010/

www.goldcountrybaptist.org 

* *

A preacher named Art Azurdia introduced his series on Ruth with this story that took place 63 years ago to this very month:

 

‘The sound was deafening [that day, Feb. 1947].

Although no one was near enough to hear it, it ultimately echoed around the world.

None of the passengers in the DC-4 ever knew what happened.

They died instantly … The Avianca airline flight bound for Quito, Ecuador crashed clumsily into [a] 14,000 foot high peak … then dropped a flaming mass of metal into a ravine far below.

A young New Yorker Glen Chambers was one of the victims.

He had planned to begin a ministry with the Voice of the Andes, a lifelong dream that suddenly aborted into a nightmare.

Earlier that day before leaving the Miami airport, Chambers hurriedly dashed off a note to his mother on a piece of paper he found on the floor of the terminal.

On the other side of that scrap of paper was what had once been a printed piece of advertisement with the single word “WHY?” scrawled across the center.

Of course between the mailing of that note and its delivery, Chambers was killed.

When it did arrive, his mother removed it from its envelope and tearfully read each handwritten word.

Then as she turned it over, there staring up at her was that haunting question in big bold letters … WHY?

In a world that is still so violently marred by the consequences of the fall, this may be the single most difficult question we’re faced with in this life.

It’s the question that forces itself upon each of us when a package of tragedy or disaster is dropped on our doorstep.

WHY?

            It’s the question asked by a mother who gives birth to a baby with [a severe disability].

It’s the question asked by parents when they get that dreaded phone call late at night [you can fill in the blanks].

It’s the question asked when you get word from the doctor that the [disease] is inoperable.

It’s the question asked by a sister when told her brother has [died tragically] ... It’s the question asked by a military wife when an official vehicle drives up to her curb, two men dressed in full uniform get out, and she hears them begin with these words “we regret to inform you …” It’s the question that’s often aroused when mention is made of those recognizable words that need no adjectives, those words which when standing alone need no explanation.

Words like: stroke … miscarriage … [you could add others to the list]

When the doors are closed and the curtains are drawn, and the lights are dimmed, even the most vehement atheist looks up to heaven on such occasions and asks … “WHY?” …’[1]

 

That very question that some use to try and disprove God and the Bible is actually itself one of the proofs of God and the Bible which says that every man knows deep down inside not only that there is a God but that He is a God of all power (He’s sovereign).

Romans 1:19 … /that which is known about God *is evident within them*; for God made it evident to them.

20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, *His eternal power and divine nature */[including common grace, goodness, as well as wrath]/,* have been clearly seen*, being understood through what has been made … *they knew God*, /[but] /they did not honor Him as God …/

God doesn’t believe in atheists.

Men know there’s a God instinctively though not relationally without special grace and special revelation.

Men even know of God’s nature and His power over all of nature and all of life – and one of the evidences that this is true is this universal human heart question /to this God/ …WHY?

Unbelievers may pose this question to try to justify why they don’t want to believe in the God of the Bible during death and suffering … but true believers also ask this question in the midst of death and suffering because they want to trust God, but it’s hard at times.

In Ruth 1:3-5 Naomi is in one of these types of times:

/3 Then Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died; and she was left with her two sons.

4 They took for themselves Moabite women as wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth.

And they lived there about ten years.

/

/ /

As a single mom far away from her women friends in Bethlehem, Naomi in her years in Moab must have wondered many times why God had tragically taken her husband from her, but she never gets an answer.

She can’t be very happy that her sons married Moabite women instead of Israelite women, but at least she has her 2 sons.

And soon she should have a grandson?

Maybe as she had the girls over, she had her way as a mother-in-law of dropping hints about how things are going … any news?

But the days and months and years go by … neither daughter-in-law can get pregnant.

10 years.

Remember, this is a world where sons were everything.

But then…

/5 Then both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and the woman was bereft of her two children and her husband.

/

 

In 3 short verses we have 3 funerals.

In cold print is the cold reality that everything she holds dear is taken from her.

But why … why?

Last week we saw in the first couple verses of Ruth how the very dark clouds that were so much dreaded by Naomi were actually big with mercy all along, as seen so clearly in the end of the book.

The clouds included a time of spiritual darkness, a time of physical and financial difficulty (in the famine), but in v. 3-5 we see the darkest cloud of all: a time of emotional devastation and desperation.

But this darkest most dreaded cloud of all also had God’s biggest mercy of all.

God is not asleep in or absent from life’s storms or the waves on the sea of life that toss us to and fro, as William Cowper knew from experience.

God is in the midst of them, as his hymn says:

 

“/God plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm/”

 

God’s mercy wasn’t manifested by answering the WHY question in this story (or any story I can think of in the Bible).

But He gives mercy to people like Naomi who don’t know why, and who even can’t see His mercy through eyes blinded by self-pity.

Naomi has nothing left, she feels, and decides to go back to Bethlehem, and her daughters accompany her part of the way.

In v. 9 she tells them:

/“May the Lord grant that you may find rest, each in the house of her husband.”

Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept/

Look at the end of v. 13: .../ my daughters … it is harder for me than for you, for *the hand of the Lord has gone forth against me.*”

/[she feels she’s “behind a frowning providence” and God is against her] /14 And they lifted up their voices and wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her .../ /19 So they both went /[Naomi with Ruth] /until they came to Bethlehem.

And when they had come to Bethlehem, all the city was stirred because of them, and the women said, “Is this Naomi?”

20 She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi /[sweet ~/ pleasant]/; call me Mara, for *the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.* /

/ /

Play on words, same root in Hebrew twice: “call me /Mara/, for the Almighty has /marred/ me…”

Mara=bitter: “call me bitter, God has given me a bitter cup in life”

/ /

/21 “I went out full, but the Lord has brought me back empty.

Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has witnessed against me and the Almighty has afflicted me?” /

 

I can’t pretend to fathom the hurt, hopelessness and helplessness that Naomi felt under this dark cloud in her life.

I am moved by it, and I can honestly say I’ve been moved to tears contemplating this story.

But if Naomi only wants sympathy and not Scriptural truth, she’ll stay at the end of Ruth 1 emotionally in depression.

I don’t know if she meets the technical definition of depression, but in the beginning of chapter 2, Naomi seems immobilized by what her emotions are telling her.

Ruth goes out to work, while Naomi stays home, not working w~/ the widows (not just down, down and out?).

Perhaps she keeps replaying in her mind and thru her mouth the hurts and the pains and her complaints.

It’s a bitter endless cycle.

And without being hard on her or harsh with her, if you really love people and have a desire to truly help people, your heart goes out to Naomi and you want her to have true help from God’s heart, by instilling hope and help from God’s Word, speaking God’s truth in love, turning her to His comforting character.

She may or may not have been ready to hear on this occasion, but your prayer and hope is that by letter or by your lips at an appropriate time you want to bring God’s truth to bear in her thinking, because so much of life’s difficulties have more to do with internal responses than outward circumstances, as we’ve been seeing in James over and over.

It has to do with our desires and expectations and thinking and feeling patterns that go unchecked by God’s Word if they’re un-submitted to God’s sovereign plan for the future (key message of James 4).

You don’t have to know experientially fully what someone’s going through, because there is a Redeemer, Jesus God’s own Son, who does.

He is a Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, and He can sympathize with our temptations experientially fully.

And the Good Shepherd not only has future mercy for Naomi in chapter 4, he has mercy for her (and for us) /in the present darkness/

 

What would you say to Naomi if you were one of those women?

At the moment, the text doesn’t record they said anything.

Maybe they didn’t know what to say or do other than hug her and tell her they loved her and would be praying for her and were available to pray with her and talk with her and help her in any way they could.

We /will hear/ these same women speak truth to Naomi in chapter 4. What Naomi said in 1:21 actually had some truth in it.

But there is other truth that /is not in it/, like God’s goodness and mercy that would follow her all the days of her life, in Moab, even that very day.

God /is/ sovereign.

His hand of providence /was in her affliction/ and the hymn-writer William Cowper could sympathize but could and would also say:

 

Take fresh courage, Naomi; These clouds you so much dread

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

Not just in chapter 4, the mercy was already raining in chapter 1, even at the very moment Naomi was complaining, that’s how amazing the grace of God is! That’s how magnificent His mercy is.

It takes the eyes of faith /to see that/ behind a frowning Providence, to actually believe there is a good God smiling above, but that’s a choice you can make by God’s grace that makes a big difference if you have this big view of God with big mercy even in big trials.

But don’t take my Word for it, take God’s.

Trust His future grace.

God is writing a story with all of our lives when we suffer, a story for others to see.

What he’s doing is not mainly for us or about us (and as long as /us /is our focus we’ll miss out on it).

God intends to write something on our lives /for others/ to see, to give them the same comfort and mercy we’ve received (2 Cor.

1), and ultimately above any person, to glorify our big God and His very big mercy.

The WHY question cannot be answered superficially or entirely (and when people try to, like Job’s friends, it may make it worse).

I'm not so sure Scripture encourages us to try to answer WHY, nor am I sure the question has a /single/ /answer/.

God may be doing an uncountable number of things in any one thing, most of which we know nothing about, but I want us to look at some of things He was doing in Ruth 4. /God is His own interpreter and He will make it plain…/though it may not be till eternity.