We have in the book of the Ruth
a story that's 3,000 years old, but the Word of God says that
these whatsoever things were written aforetime were written
for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures
might have hope. God the Holy Spirit has preserved
the book of Ruth so that we now might learn some lessons. And
of course, one of the great stories of Ruth is that Ruth, a lady
from a cursed nation, was the great, great, great grandmother
of our Lord Jesus Christ. I don't know how many greats
are in there, but enough to cover that next thousand years or more. And the remarkable thing is that
Boaz, whom she married was the grandson of Rahab the harlot
from Jericho. So there are great pictures,
aren't there, in both of these women, but in particular this
one we have before us now to study. There are great pictures
that the Lord has his people out there and as Norm prayed,
he will gather his people. And so we have In the book of
Ruth, the extraordinary picture of the way the Lord gathers His
people, the way He brings them to the house of bread, He brings
them to the place of fellowship. But also, as I just read out
of Romans 15, these things are written for our comfort, for
our learning, and in the book of Ruth, As in the rest of the
scriptures, in the very way that God saves his people are very
serious warnings to those who stand opposed to him. And if
you read in Jeremiah 48, you'll see that Moab is a country that
is cursed. It's cursed. It's cursed because
they trusted in their works and they trusted in their treasures.
their god Chemosh shall go forth into captivity. Moab shall be
ashamed of Chemosh. This is Jeremiah 48.13, Moab
shall be ashamed of Chemosh, as the house of Israel was ashamed
of Bethel, their confidence. And there are many others, just
warning after warning after warning. Moab shall be destroyed from
being a people, for he hath magnified himself against the Lord. And it's remarkable why you have
your Bibles open in Jeremiah 48. There's a verse there that
caused me and has caused me over the past many years to tremble. It says in Jeremiah 48.10, in
the midst of all this cursing and all this warning about Moab
and its wickedness, Moab and all of its pride, Moab and its
gods, it says, verse 10, Cursed be he that doeth the work of
the Lord deceitfully, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword
from blood. We have, in the story of Elimelech,
as we've looked at a little bit on Sunday, and we might see again
in the next few days, the beginning of the Book of Ruth, a few weeks,
the beginning of the Book of Ruth. is a picture of the warnings
and God's judgement on people who move away from him. Malibu
Lake took his family away from the house of bread. He took his
family away from the place where the bread of life, the Lord Jesus
Christ, was worshipped, where he who is the word of life was
held forth where he fellowshiped with his people and his people
fellowshiped with him. The lesson, of course, is a simple
one, isn't it? Little Emilek thought that it
was just for a sojourn. As we saw on Sunday, he went
down there to sojourn just to spend a short amount of time.
He ended up continuing there and he ended up staying there
ten years. He ended up dying there in accursed
land and his sons died in accursed land. The simple obvious lesson
is that any departure, any departure from the house of God and the
people of God and the Gospel of God is always a departure
which is extraordinarily dangerous. And it might seem a small thing
at the beginning, just a sojourn, but there never are small things
in the providence of God. There are never small things
in our dealings with God. And compromise for the sake of
convenience will always take the easier path. Balaam, this
shocking in the way he is spoken of in the Word of God, and if
you read Balaam's messages as he was overruled by God when
he took the wages to curse the people of God, God turned it
into a blessing of God's people. But Balaam is held up before
us as one of the worst false prophets in all of the scriptures. He's mentioned in 2 Peter, he's
mentioned in Jude, he's mentioned in the book of Revelation that
says they followed these people in this church, they followed
the doctrine of Balaam who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block
before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto
idols and to commit fornication, to commit both fornication physically
but to commit spiritual fornication. All this council was is you just
have to be down there next to them and they will join with
you. These false prophets that were
around in Jude's day and are around in our day are said to
run greedily after the era of Balaam. He caused the children
of Israel through the council of Balaam to commit trespass
against the Lord. The reality is Elimelech led
his family, and whether we wish it to be the case or not, we
lead others. We are, in all sorts of ways,
influencing people around us. Elimelech took his family, and
he and his sons died there. The other challenge that lies
before us is that Elimelech was placed with an opportunity, wasn't
he? An opportunity to take a place,
to take a path of ease. A path where he could continue
in his comforts rather than suffering with the people of God in a land
of promise. He took the path of compromise
for the sake of convenience. He took his path based on providence
and based on human wisdom and not upon the Word of God. You no doubt are very aware of
those famous verses in Proverbs 3, but it's interesting What
the Holy Spirit says, He says, Trust in the Lord with all thine
heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy
ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes. Fear the Lord, and depart from
evil. It shall be health to thy navel,
and marrow to thy bones. Trust in the Lord with all thine
heart, and lean not on thine own understanding. One of the
reasons why the Word of God and the preaching and proclamation
and the gathering of God's people together is that again we might
hear from God. We might hear that His Word is
true. We might come to understand yet
again in the midst of all of our failings and all of the frailty
of our flesh, we might come to understand that His promises
are true and His reality is the reality. Lisa and I are going
to a funeral tomorrow. When that man died some weeks
ago, he faced reality. He faced reality. People might
speculate about God and speculate about eternity and speculate
about all sorts of things. He faced reality and so must
we all. We lean not on our own understanding,
we set the course of our lives and we set the course of the
way we think and the way we assess things in this world according
to the Word of God. Not our wisdom. Lean not on their
own understanding. Not the wisdom of this world.
The wisdom of this world it knew not God. And also Elimelech shows
us that we are to trust what God says even if the providences
that are laid before us seem to lead us in a path that we
could very easily say that God has opened up a door for that.
The great one of course is Jonah, isn't it? Jonah was told very,
very clearly to go to the east, to go to Nineveh. But when Jonah
went to the west, all of a sudden what did he find there? He found
a ship. And it was so easy for him to
say, well the Lord has provided a ship, I can go to the west. You know the rest of that story.
Again and again in the scriptures we find people who are faced
with a choice, faced with the riches of this world, just think
of the good that Moses could have done for the people of God
as Pharaoh over Egypt. He could have made those Jews,
he could have made life for those Jews. So very, very comfortable
there. And he spent the next 40 years
looking after sheep in the desert rather than being king over Israel. The reality is we interpret the
providence, the reality, the events we see around us in the
light of the Word of God and not in the light of human reason
and human wisdom. See, human reason interprets
God's revelation by providence, what's going on around me. But
faith interprets what's going on around me in the light of
God's Word. If we could see this world as
clearly as this Bible lays it out before us, we would find
it a remarkably different place to live in than the people of
this world do and the religious people of this world do. God's
revelation in His words tells me how to live and where to go
and what to do. And no matter what God puts before
me, seemingly improbable, This Word, His Word, teaches me what
I'm to do, teaches me what I'm to believe. We don't stand above
God's Word and stand over it and manipulate it. What a shocking
verse that is. When you think of the religious
people of this world, cursed is the man who does the work
of the Lord deceitfully. That's a curse from God. People
might curse each other. God's curses are a different
order of reality altogether. We never interpret God's revealed
will by providence. And that was Illumilek's problem.
There was a famine in the land and there was a trial. And as
there will be for us in our lives here, there will be trials, there
will be seemingly times of famine in our lives. And it seems so
often in the midst of trials that there's an easy way of escape
from facing the trials. And here for Elimelech and his
family, there was the land of Moab. And it was just down the
road, it was just next door. And he could have rationalised
so easily, couldn't he? Bethlehem, Judah has a famine. I've got a family to feed. I
have responsibilities. I have to look after them. I've
got to make a living. You see, he went out full. He
wasn't starving when he went out and he wasn't poor when he
went out. He went out to try and maintain
what he had in the midst of that. Moab has plenty. I can feed my
family with these. And he could have justified it
in all sorts of spiritual ways, couldn't he? We can send some
of this back to our friends. We can send, we can go down there
and we can make enough money. We'll send it back and we can
send them bread. We can send things back to Bethel. We can
still bring an offering, as it were, from afar. The reality
is that for God's children, it's better for us to be with our
brethren, to suffer with them, than in some ways to provide
for them from a distance. One of the greatest acts of faith,
isn't it? One of the greatest acts of faith is just being together. just being here under the sound
of the Gospel, in a place where God has determined to place His
name and a place where He has promised to bless His people.
That was Bethlehem. That was Bethlehem, the town
that they left. This is the house of bread. Every Gospel church in this world
is a house of bread where God feeds His people, He nourishes
His people. No matter what compromising,
rationalising ways we want to justify our departures from the
house of bread, none of them stack up. You see, the times
of famine and times of physical famine, but the times of all
sorts of spiritual famine when our brothers and sisters and
us are struggling in all sorts of ways. They are times of opportunity. They are opportunities to bear
one another's burdens. They are times and places to
support one another. They are times and places where
we can say, we care about you. They are places and times where
we can actually bear one another's burdens, as the scriptures describe
it so often. that we can be there and say,
this is a time of great anguish for you, but I'm here for you. I'm here with you in the midst
of it. I'm here again to remind you
that our God reigns. There is someone beyond all of
these things that cause us grief temporarily. There is someone
above it and beyond it. who rules over all things, for
the glory of His name and for the good of His people. Christ
bears our burdens. He bears them so that we can
bear one another's. The providential provision of
this path to Moab, which is more pleasing to our fleshly needs
and more comforting to us in so many ways, is the path of
sin and rebellion. So it's an opportunity to show
faith. The trials are an opportunity
to say, what is God saying to me in this? What does faith look
like in this circumstance? Faith says, I will take God at
His word. I will take in the land of promise,
in the house of bread, in the house of the Lord Jesus Christ,
I will take and accept His chastening. Psalm 23 says, thy rod and thy
staff They comfort me. It's remarkable, isn't it? I'll
wait to learn of Him, and I'll wait to see His faithfulness. It's interesting, at the end
of David's life, Satan tempted David to number the people. Why
on earth would he want to number the soldiers of Israel? One angel
can kill 185,000 troops parked outside, camped outside the city
of Jerusalem. But David, against all the advice
that he could possibly have, he numbered the people. Satan
provoked him to number the people. And he was left with three choices.
Gad the seer comes along and gives him three choices to David. And you can either have three
years of famine, you can have three months being destroyed
by your enemies, or you can have three days under the sword of
the Lord, under the hand of the Lord's chastening. It was a no-brainer
for David. He didn't have any problem whatsoever
making the decision. He says, I am in a strait, let
me now fall into the hand of the Lord, for very great are
his mercies, but let me not fall into the hand of men. It's remarkable, isn't it? He
was wicked in what he did. Joab and others warned him, the
Word of God warned him, he didn't need to know how many people
the Lord had. The Lord who is the Lord of hosts has multitudes. But God's children in faith say,
I'll wait to learn of Him. I will rather have His chastening
hand upon me than have all the pleasures of this world, to have
Moab and all of what it offers. I'll wait to learn of Him. I'll
wait for Him in the midst of this trial to reveal His faithfulness
to His covenant, His faithfulness to His people, His faithfulness
to honour His Son in the midst of His people, His faithfulness
to honour His Word. He must honour His Word. He will honour His Word. I love
Psalm 138 verse 2. It says that He has magnified
His Word. is magnified thy word above all
thy name. Psalm 138 verse 2 is fed by the Lord. The faithful
household is fed by Him. He nourishes His own. And all His children are members
of His body. They're bone of His bone and
flesh of His flesh. And He feeds them and He nourishes
them. We can't live without the bread of life. And God will make
sure, no matter what the circumstances, that he will bring his people
to himself. He'll bring Naomi, his chosen
child. He'll bring Ruth, his chosen
child. He'll bring them to himself and
he'll bring them to a place of nurturing and nourishment and
a place of blessing. You see, if the Lord will enable
us to see this world through the eyes of scripture, we will
see how faith interprets God's providence by His word. See,
Moab is a place on which God's curse rests. There is absolutely
no reason for a limeleck to go to Moab ever. There is no reason
for a limeleck to go down there and seek comfort in the place
that is cursed by God. It's outside the land of promise.
It's outside the house of bread. It's a place of idolatry. And God, seemingly in judgment
and definitely in judgment, is not even bothering to correct
them. He's leaving them. You see, this
world is parading its triumph of human wisdom and human reason. over the sovereign God of this
universe. And the world thinks that it's
a great thing that finally we've got a society, we can mould a
society where God is on the periphery at the very least. And that we
can make the rules, we can decide what marriage is, we can decide
what sin is, we can make the rules that govern this society. And we now have a freedom, it
seems, a freedom. And yet we turn to the Word of
God, and it's horrifying to think of what God in judgment is doing. He's given them over. He's given
multitudes over. He's not, as He'd let Moab go
its way for a little while, and He didn't bother to correct them. until the time, the time of His
judgment fell upon them. Where are the Moabites today?
See, faith says that Bethlehem is the land of promise. Moab
is the land of cursing. Faith says that the house of
bread, the bread in the house of bread, even if it's just a
few crumbs, is better than the feast of Moab. the house, being
in the house of bread, being in the house of God, is where
he put his people, is where he's established his worship, it's
where he's established his place. of where his people still honour
him. It's remarkable in chapter 2
that Boaz comes to Bethlehem. It's the first mention of him. He came to Bethlehem and said,
verse 4 of chapter 2, he said unto the reapers, just the ordinary
workers in the field, he said, the Lord be with you. even in their work day to day,
and they answered him, and the Lord bless thee. It was the place in the ordinary
activities of life God was honoured. You see, faith says that God
has promised He will provide for His people. There's no record
of them dying and starving in Bethlehem. They might have done
without and it might have been very tough. and they might have
needed to care for each other in remarkable ways, but there
was no sign in the Word of God that people were going to die
there. It's a place where He is. It's a place where He chastens
and chastises and corrects His people. It's better to be under
His hand, no matter what He brings, than to be out there in the world
enjoying its pleasures. to be with His people, His promise
to bless them. I love what Exodus 20 says, verse
24, In all the places where I record My name, I will come unto thee,
and I will bless thee. And that's the description, isn't
it, that's given of what's happened in the land of Israel, that she
heard that the Lord had visited His people. and they had blessed
them with food. It is the place, isn't it, where
He records His name. It is the mercy seat where the
blood of the Lamb, where the High Priest of God's choosing
takes that sacrifice in and everything represents our Lord Jesus Christ.
It's the place where He fellowships with His own. Faith says, the
place where I have established my Gospel and my witness is the
place where I promised to visit, and where He is, where He is,
no matter what the circumstances, where He is, you're better off. We often quote that verse from
Hebrews 13, let us therefore go unto Him, Hebrews 13, 13,
go unto Him. Let's go forth unto him without
the camp, outside the camp. The camp that he's talking about
is the camp of Jewish religion. It's the camp of any religion
in this world that doesn't honour the Lord Jesus Christ as the
sovereign God and saviour and effectual saviour of his people,
bearing his reproach. So not only do you have the camp
against you, you have the camp in your bearing his reproach.
To walk through this world as one of God's children is to tread
a path that is very similar in many aspects to the path that
the Lord Jesus Christ led. I love what John 12 says, he
says, there my people will be also. He'll never, ever, ever
leave them. He'll never, ever, ever forsake
them." You see trials, trials are opportunities that God presents
for us to deny ourself and to follow Him. They're opportunities
to show and to teach others there is nothing more important than
obeying God's Word. That's a testimony, isn't it?
I pray that the Lord would write on our hearts that we might live
in this world in such a way that when we finish our course here,
the people of this world will be acknowledged to say, even
if they despise the Gospel, they will say that the Lord kept that
man faithful. He'll bring them. As we wander
into Moab again and again, He'll bring us as He brings Naomi and
Ruth back to Himself. It's also the trials are an opportunity
to show that it is never right for us to lean on our own understanding,
but in all our ways acknowledge Him. It's an opportunity for
Him to lead us in faith, to find ourselves, as the Lord Jesus
told His disciples, in Luke chapter 9 and in several other places
in the scriptures. He says, or be cast away. For whosoever
shall be ashamed of me and my words, of him shall a son of
man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory and in
his father's and with the holy angels." We have in our time
together and over these many years now we have seen many people
who've come for a little while and have gone. And I cannot,
I cannot but look upon all those who like Arthur have walked a
little way and then walked away. And any time I meet with them
and see them and see where they are in terms of their profession
of faith and their bearing witness to the Lord Jesus, I am left
fearful. I'm left fearful of the limelights
that we have witnessed so many times. Faith interprets this
world and the journey of men through this world, through God's
world. Trials come when we look at others,
when we look around And they look at these, and they look
like Moab, that they're doing well, and the people of God are
struggling. They have so many, and the people
of God are so few. And the people of this world
are having a party, aren't they? Collecting experiences honoured by many. Such is the state of God's people
so often, isn't it? I love what Psalm 73 says. The
psalmist struggled like us so often. Truly God is good to Israel,
even to such as are of a clean heart. But as for me, my feet
were almost gone, my steps had well nigh slipped. Do you bear
any resemblance to anything that you've been through? For I was
envious of the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
For there are no bans in their death, they don't even struggle
on the day of death, but their strength is firm. They are not
in trouble as other men, they don't bear the troubles and the
burdens that the children of God bear. as we lay our case
before the Lord and think of His care and providence of His
own and think of His judgement upon those that we love and know
so well. They are not in trouble as other
men, neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride
compasses them about as a chain and violence covereth them as
a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness.
They have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt and speak
wickedly concerning oppression. They speak lawfully. They set
their mouth against the heavens. What a description of this world
that we live in. They set their mouth against
the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth. Therefore
his people return hither as the world is of a full cup are wrung
out of them. And they say, How does God know? And is there knowledge in the
Most High? Behold, these are the ungodly
who prosper. in the world. They increase in
riches. And the Samas says, Verily I
have cleansed my heart in vain, I have washed my hands in innocency,
for all day long I have been plagued and chastened every morning.
If I say I will speak thus, behold, I should offend against the generation
of thy children. When I thought to know this,
it was too painful for me, until The psalmist struggles with his
own thoughts. He struggles with what's happening
around the world in sight of him. It was too painful for me
until I went into the sanctuary of the Lord. and understood I
their end. Surely Thou didst set them in
slippery places, Thou castest them down to destruction. Psalm 92 verse 7 says, When the
wicked spring up as grass, when all the workers of iniquity do
flourish, they spring up as grass, and
they flourish, the workers of iniquity. It is that they shall
be destroyed forever." My brothers and sisters in the Lord, we have
before us and we will have again and again, we'll have many trials. Elimelech and Naomi and Ruth
remind us of two great things, isn't it? The God in judgment. God in judgement will hold them
responsible, the limelights of this world, he'll hold them responsible
for them turning away from him and his word and his people.
And because he holds his son perfectly responsible for all
his own, he must, he must in justice and in judgement and
in honour of his covenant promises, honour of the death of his dear
son, he must bring every wandering Naomi and every Ruth home to
himself. There won't be one tiny little
part of his body missing in heaven. He works repentance and faith
even in the midst of the rebellion of his children. Ruth had to
be brought to the house of bread. Brothers and sisters, you will
never be wrong in trusting the Lord in his word, no matter how
much you suffer in this world. The Lord has to, as He did to
Naomi, take every hindrance and every other thing away from us
such that we will trust Him. We will really trust Him. As
the Apostle said, where else shall we go? We really trust
Him when we have nowhere else to go. Let's pray.