Sermon Tone Analysis

*Behind a Frowning Providence God Hides a Smiling Face (Ruth 1:6-14) *

/Preached by Pastor Phil Layton at Gold Country Baptist Church on November 15, 2009/

www.goldcountrybaptist.org 

 

We’re going to see once again that Naomi feels that the Providence of God is frowning at her, that God is against her, not for her.

She recognizes the biblical truth of God’s Providence, that a sovereign predestinating orchestrating plan of Almighty God governs all things, good and bad.

But she and we need to be careful not to judge the Lord and what He is doing by our feeble sense~/minds, certainly not by our feelings or circumstances.

We need to trust God for His grace, behind what seems like a frowning providence.

God for His people actually has a smiling face and a good and kind end for us in mind, even if we can’t see it behind the dark clouds.

/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.

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.

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

6 Then she arose with her daughters-in-law that she might return from the land of Moab, for she had heard in the land of Moab that the Lord had visited His people in giving them food.

7 So she departed from the place where she was, and her two daughters-in-law with her; and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah.

8 And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, return each of you to her mother’s house.

May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me.

9 “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.

10 And they said to her, “No, but we will surely return with you to your people.”

11 But Naomi said, “Return, my daughters.

Why should you go with me?

Have I yet sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands?

12 “Return, my daughters!

Go, for I am too old to have a husband.

If I said I have hope, if I should even have a husband tonight and also bear sons, 13 would you therefore wait until they were grown?

Would you therefore refrain from marrying?

No, my daughters; for it is harder for me than for you, for the hand of the Lord has gone forth against me.”

14 And they lifted up their voices and wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her./

 

Art Azurdia tells how ‘Jonathan Edwards was a man who knew of God’s dark providences in some profoundly agonizing ways.

For example, his dear friend David Brainerd … was invited into the Edwards home where he was nursed for the final months of his life until he died of tuberculosis.

During those months, Brainerd, a young single man, fell in love with Edward’s daughter Jerusha, who while caring for Brainerd contracted tuberculosis and died herself shortly thereafter.

It was just a few months later when a severe dissension erupted in the Northampton congregation.

To the great disdain of the people, Edwards refused to serve the Lord’s supper to those who had made no profession of faith in Jesus Christ.

Consequently in what proved to be perhaps one of the blackest moments on the American church history scene, Jonathan Edwards is fired by a vote of his congregation after 23 years of faithful pastoral ministry.

He immediately received offers from churches in New England and Great Britain.

He moved instead out to the … frontier to become a missionary to the Stockbridge Indians, during which time, providentially, he penned some of the most influential theological works ever written in the English language.

Eight years later he was called to become president of … Princeton … [but a small-pox vaccination gone wrong] would prove to kill him.

At one point while on his death bed he took note of the anxiety and fear of those around him, and though his throat was lined with nodules that made it impossible to even swallow water, he somehow managed to eke out these words: “Trust in God and you need not fear.”

A few days later he died, age 54.

His beloved [wife] Sarah, who herself was suffering from such rheumatism that she could barely manage to lift up her head, wrote a letter to their daughter Esther, one of their remaining 10 children.

Esther had been married to Aaron Burr, Sr., who just shortly before had also died unexpectedly [like Naomi and Ruth, both widowed in a short amount of time].

Sarah wrote to Esther:

"What shall I say?

A holy and good God has covered us with a dark cloud.

O that we may kiss the rod and lay our hands on our mouths!

The Lord has done it.

He has made me adore His goodness, that we had him so long.

But my God lives; and He has my heart ... We are all given to God; and there I am and love to be."[1]

 

Did you catch that theology that she caught from her husband?

“God has covered us with a dark cloud …” but the first part of the sentence and the sentence that follows affirms this God is good.

She understood not only God’s providence but God’s love and smiling face behind the dark cloud she couldn’t see through.

Like Naomi, she was trusting God even when life hurts.

There are two truths that must be kept in balance (that Naomi appears not to always keep in balance in this chapter): God is sovereign, and God is God.

God is not only sovereign over our dark times, but He is good in all times.

You say, “that’s easy for you to say, Pastor when not in my trial,” and you may be right – but it wasn’t easy for this wife to see whose husband had died, leaving his wife and 10 children, in a household where their beloved friend and beloved daughter had recently died.

It wasn’t easy truths for her daughter Esther, whose husband also suddenly died – but it was essential truths for these widows who must now look to their Maker as their husband, as Naomi and Ruth will in their story as well.

As Sarah wrote “But my God lives and He has my heart” – reminiscent of Job’s great confession in the midst of some of the darkest days of suffering and tragic loss of children that any human has ever experienced:

/I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another.

How my heart yearns within me!/ (Job 19:25-27 NIV)

 

Sarah Edwards’s phrase “God lives” may also be an allusion to the widow speaking to Elijah (1 Kings 17:12) with the same phrase not knowing how the Lord would provide for her to live the next day.

Or as the psalmist wrote “/The LORD liveth, and blessed be the rock, and let the God of my salvation be exalted” /(Ps 18:46)

 

What about when Sarah says of her husband’s death “the Lord has done it.”

Is that unbiblical language?

Amos 3:6 says calamity ~/ disaster doesn’t come to a city “/unless *the Lord has done it*?/” (ESV).

Naomi also believes in v. 13 that the Lord’s hand was ultimately behind the calamity ~/ disasters in her life, but that’s not all Scripture has to say.

God is not only providentially ruling over sin, suffering, singleness, Satan, and all secondary causes, but because God is /that sovereign, /He can even move the wills and hearts of sinful people, as Sarah Edward’s letter also said: “He has made me adore His goodness, that we had him so long.”

What a difference in that perspective of providence that is married to God’s goodness!

She recognized God didn’t owe her more than 20-some years of marriage it wasn’t unkind to take him away so soon – she recognized how kind, gracious and good God was in letting her have a gift so long.

Sarah wrote her grieving daughter “Oh, that we may kiss the rod and lay our hand on our mouth.”

Kiss the rod?

That could only be written by someone who had meditated on the 23rd Psalm “/Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me” /(even through the valley of the shadow of death Naomi is in, too)./

/The Shepherd has to use the rod which hurts, but He is the Good Shepherd, and His rod is for our good not evil, and though sheep aren’t very intelligent compared to the Shepherd (or even compared to other animals) the rod comforts

 

When Sarah Edwards writes we must “lay our hand on our mouth,” she must have memorized what Job said after God spent 2 chapters affirming His sovereign control and care over everything good or bad that takes place in the universe: Job 40 (NASB95) /3//Then Job answered the Lord and said, 4//“Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to You? *I lay my hand on my mouth.*/

In that context, it means I will not complain against God, I will not find fault with God or demand He give me answers.

It is possible to recognize the absolute sovereignty and providence of God in giving and taking away, in both good and evil, and yet not find fault or blame God or charge God with the sin or wrongdoing.

We know that because Job said in Job 1:21-22 “/The LORD gave and *the LORD has taken away*.

*Blessed be* the name of the LORD.”

Through all this Job did not sin nor did he *blame* God.

/(NASB)

-         NKJV: /nor did he charge God with wrong/

-         NIV: /Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing/

 

He tells his wife in chapter 2, v. 10: /Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

In all this, Job did not sin in what he said./

Job said those words maybe a thousand years before what Naomi says in verse 13 (and it was not wrong or sinful what Job said) and Naomi like him understands that trouble is from God as well as good, and that it is the Lord that takes away, even though sin and sickness and other secondary factors are at work in our lives.

End of v. 13: “/the hand of the Lord has gone forth against me.”/

It was not wrong for Naomi to recognize the Lord’s hand was in her suffering, or that ultimately the Lord had taken away.

But she in this verse seems to have lost sight of the other half of the truth, that the same Lord gives and is good and will take care of her daughter-in-laws in Israel as well in His sovereign kindness.

End of v. 21: “/… the Almighty /[Shaddai] /has afflicted me.” / 

Before we rush to correct what Naomi says, listen to some verses in the Hebrew Scriptures:

Gen 12:17 (ESV) “/The LORD afflicted/” (in Egypt)

The prophet Jeremiah said in Lamentations 1:12 “/The LORD hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger” /(KJV)

 

The prophets did not believe the Lord never afflicted, but they prayed like Isaiah 64:12 that He would not /afflict beyond measure.

/Their hope was what the LORD said in Micah 4:6 /“In that day,” declares the Lord, “I will assemble the lame And gather the outcasts, Even those whom *I have afflicted.*

/(NASB)

 

They hoped in the relenting God of Nahum 1:12 /Thus says the Lord, “Though *I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no longer.*”

/

/ /

The God of Providence can and does afflict even God’s people, but never forget God does it for a good purpose, even if man or Satan intends evil by it (Gen.