Sermon Tone Analysis

The book of Ruth teaches us that God providentially guides and blesses all who trust Him.

The book of Ruth summons Christians to be committed to Jesus Christ and to do His will at any cost.

Faith is not believing in spite of the evidence but obeying in spite of the consequences.

The Prostitute and the Moabite According to the first verse of the book of Ruth, the story took place during the time of the judges.

That’s why Ruth comes right after the book called Judges in our Bibles.

The time of the judges was a 400-year period after Israel entered the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua and before there were any kings in Israel (roughly 1400 B.C. to 1000 B.C.).

Although some generations may be left out of the genealogy in Ruth 4:18–22, Boaz, who marries Ruth, is linked as a descendant from Rahab, the converted prostitute who lived when Israel first came into the Promised Land (Joshua 2:1, 3; 6:17, 23).

We learn this from the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:5.

This signals to us that remarkable things are in the offing.

Why would a prostitute and a Moabitess be mentioned back to back in the genealogy of Jesus?

Why would they be mentioned at all?

We are getting in at the ground level of something amazing.

God at Work in the Worst of Times

You can see from the last verse of the book of Judges what sort of period it was.

It was a very dark time in Israel.

The same gloomy pattern happened again and again: The people would sin, God would send enemies against them, the people would cry for help, and God would mercifully raise up a judge to deliver them (Judges 2:16–19).

From all outward appearances, God’s purposes for righteousness and glory in Israel were failing.

But what the book of Ruth does for us is give us a glimpse into the hidden work of God during the worst of times.

Consider the last verse

The child born to Ruth and Boaz during the period of the judges is Obed.

Obed becomes the father of Jesse, and Jesse becomes the father of David who led Israel to her greatest heights of glory.

One of the main messages of this little book is that God is at work in the worst of times.

Putting in Place the Ancestry of Christ

Even through the sins of his people, God plots for their glory.

It was true at the national level.

And we will see that it is true at the personal, family level too.

God is at work in the worst of times.

He is at work doing a thousand things no one can see but him.

In the case of this story, God is at work preparing the way for Christ in a manner no one can see.

The reason we know it is because the book ends by connecting Ruth and Boaz with David the king.

The last words of the book are

Jesus identified himself as “the son of David” (Matthew 22:41–46).

He forged a link straight from himself, over all the intervening generations, to David and Jesse and Obed and Ruth.

Knowing how this book ends gives us a sense, as we begin, that nothing will be insignificant here.

Huge things are at stake.

God is putting in place the ancestry of Jesus the Messiah, whose kingdom will endure forever (Isaiah 9:7).

Behind a Frowning Providence

As a means to that end—and everything is a means to glorifying Christ—the book of Ruth reveals the hidden hand of God in the bitter experiences of his people.

The point of this book is not just that God is preparing the way for the coming of the King of Glory, but that he is doing it in such a way that all of us should learn that the worst of times are not wasted.

They are not wasted globally, historically, or personally.

When you think he is farthest from you, or has even turned against you, the truth is that as you cling to him, he is laying foundation stones of greater happiness in your life.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,

But trust him for his grace;

Behind a frowning providence

He hides a smiling face.

What William Cowper says in these lines is a description of how God brings about the eternal salvation of his people.

It’s the way he governs history, and it is the way he governs our lives.

The book of Ruth is one of the most graphic stories of how God hides his smiling face behind a frowning providence.

The Miseries of Naomi

These verses describe the misery of Naomi—the frowning providence, as we will see.

Naomi is one of the three main characters in this drama.

She will become the mother-in-law of Ruth.

She is an Israelite with her husband Elimelech and two sons Mahlon and Chilion.

They are from Bethlehem where we know Jesus will be born one day—which raises our awareness again of how explosive this book is with connections to the Messiah.

Naomi, not her husband or sons or Ruth, is the focus of the first chapter of Ruth.

This chapter is about her miseries—her bitter providence.

The first misery (1:1) is a famine in Judah where Naomi and her husband Elimelech and her sons live.

Naomi knows who causes famines.

God does.

Perhaps she learned this from the Scriptures, which say in

In other words, God rules the rain.

When the rains are withheld, this is the hard hand of God.

Is This Blasphemous or Comforting?

Please know that I am aware of how unacceptable this truth is to some.

That horrific suffering serves God’s purposes is not seen as good news by many.

Flesh-and blood calamities, like the tsunami of December 2004, are so devastating in the human agony that they cause that many Christians cannot ascribe them to the plan of God.

For example, David Hart wrote in the Wall Street Journal,

When confronted by the sheer savage immensity of worldly suffering—when we see the entire littoral rim of the Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children’s—no Christian is licensed to utter odious banalities about God’s inscrutable counsels or blasphemous suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God’s good ends.

These are strong words.

And I strongly disagree with them.

It is the message of the book of Ruth, as we will see, that all things mysteriously serve God’s good ends.

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.

I say these words because they are true.

I also say them because after twenty-eight years of ministering to real people, I know they are precious to those who suffer.

The people who most cherish the sovereignty of God in suffering are those exposed to the greatest dangers.

For example, on April 20, 2001, the Peruvian Air Force shot down a missionary plane, mistaking it for a drug courier.

In the plane were the pilot Kevin Donaldson and a missionary family, Jim and Veronica Bowers and their two children, seven-month-old Charity and six-year-old Cory.

Veronica had Charity in her lap sitting in the back of the Cessna 185.

As the bullets sprayed the plane, one of them entered Veronica’s back and passed through her and into her daughter.

Both died.

The pilot, with shattered knees, crash-landed the plane in a river, and the other three survived.

Seven days later at the memorial service in Fruitport, Michigan, Jim Bowers gave his testimony and explained why the sovereignty of God in the deaths of his wife and daughter was the rock under his feet.

Most of all I want to thank God. He’s a sovereign God.

I’m finding that 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?

I’d like to tell you why I believe so.

He goes on to give fifteen reasons.

In that context, he says, “Roni and Charity were instantly killed by the same bullet.

(Would you say that’s a stray bullet?)

And it didn’t reach Kevin, who was right in front of Charity; it stayed in Charity.

That was a sovereign bullet.”

But what about the Peruvian fighter pilots? Didn’t they have wills?

Didn’t they make mistakes or, perhaps, even sin against an innocent missionary family?

Jim Bowers said, “Those people who did that simply were used by God.

Whether you want to believe it or not.

I believe it.