The Emptying of Naomi

If you have your bible, I want you to turn to the book of Ruth nestled between Judges and first Samuel. It's a small book. This summer over the course of the summer, I'm gonna do a little series through this little book. We got four preaching slots on Sunday evening.

There's four chapters in Ruth. So we're just gonna go through a chapter each time. Man, Ruth is a book that the last two weeks I've been studying, and it's really blown me away. It it's kinda like if you take a towel and you you throw it in a bucket full of water, I'm kinda like somebody grabbing that towel, and I'm gonna begin to wring out just the riches of this book, Lord willing.

It's an incredible book, and many of you are familiar with the story. You know? We begin with the darkness of Naomi's circumstances, and Ruth comes in and there's that amazing ending to the story. And if you're not familiar with the story, well, you should be excited because it's incredible.

Book of Ruth reminds me of a quote, and if you've seen the movie recently, Great Awakening, you might remember Benjamin Franklin saying this, the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth that God governs in the affairs of men. Ruth is a book where we see God's sovereign providence on display.

We see God delivering a family from destruction. Ruth is a book about the significance of the physical land of Israel and God's plan. Ruth is a book about self sacrificial love as God's ideal. And Ruth is a book about David ultimately and ultimately Messiah. Ruth points us in that direction.

And Ruth is a book about how God welcomes strangers into the fold of his own people. And so you'll see all of these themes come out of Ruth as we go through it this summer. Now who wrote Ruth? You know, that's the age old question. The short answer is we don't know.

It would have been somebody who lived either during or after David's reign. But the most important thing about the author of Ruth is he knows how to tell a good story. He's a master storyteller. One of the things you'll see in Ruth is it's a literary masterpiece, and people see this as one of the great works of literature in human history.

It has all of the elements world. And proud proud the and chapter one is pretty full, so, you know, we're gonna work through it. In chapter one of Ruth, we see two images primarily. That's what the author wants us to see. The primary image we see in chapter one is an a woman whose life has been turned inside out, upside down, torn apart, and she struggles to see how God could bring something good out of it.

I think we can all relate to that. That woman's story is a story of bitterness and bereavement, and it's Naomi's story in chapter one. The second image is that of a younger woman whose life is similarly destroyed, but who makes an amazing decision of self sacrificial love toward Naomi.

That's Ruth. And in Ruth, we see that self sacrificial love offers hope in situations of bitterness and bereavement and suffering. And so my goal tonight is to take you kind of by the hand and walk you through chapter one. And I want you to see these two images and how they relate to your life, and especially how they relate to God's providence.

There's really in chapter one, there's three movements, and it's pretty simple. There's verses one to five, we see Naomi's bereavement. Verses six to 19, we see Naomi's return. And in verses 19 to 22, we see Naomi's emptying. And those will make more sense as we move through. But let me just begin by reading verse one.

Let's start with Naomi's bereavement. Right? Verse one verses one to five start with a family disaster. And there's three crisis crises we see in verses one to five. Look with me at verse one, chapter days when the governed that there was a famine in the land. Okay. Stop there.

So before we get anything with Ruth, our author wants to situate us in the time period. And he says, it's in the days when the judges governed. What does that mean? Well, if you look to the left of your bible, you can see the book of Judges. And so very simply, it's everything that transpires in the book of the period of the book of Judges.

And just a little recap of history, God brings the nation of Israel out of Egypt, and he Moses passes off the scene, and Joshua steps up to lead the nation into the land of Canaan that God had promised. And the conquest starts, and Joshua leads his people into the land, and the conquest ends, and the land is parceled out and different clans and families settle on their inheritances according to God's will.

And so things start out well, but then things start to go off the rails. You know, Israel begins to abandon God and pursue false religion, and we see Judges as a book of darkness. That's what characterizes the period that Ruth the events of the book of Ruth happen in.

It's a period of ignorance. You could say it's like the dark ages of the Old Testament and really of the bible as a whole. People are ignorant of God's law. There's anarchy. There's violence, especially against women, genocide. By the time we get to the end of the events of the book of Judges, we see a city in Israel had become just as we're going to that time the And the we're we're A drought is going striking in Israel.

The And The rains have failed and people crops aren't growing, and there's no food. And that's not a good situation. And often that was associated with God's judgment. And the author doesn't tell us that that's the case here, but it's very possible, I would say likely, that this drought is a result of Israel abandoning God's law as we see in Judges.

But look with me again at verse one. And a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the land of Moab with his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kileon, Ephrathites of Bethlehem and Judah.

Now they entered the land of Moab and remained there. So now the author zeros in. He set the scene, and now he's gonna zero in on how this crisis of a famine affects a certain man, Elimelech. He's living in Bethlehem, which ironically that means house of bread, the city of Bethlehem.

He has a wife, Naomi, two sons, and he needs to survive. Right? Imagine you have a family, there's no food, and you hear maybe there's some food in this place across the Jordan River. You know, what are you going to do? You're going to go there and try to find some food.

So Elimelech determines that's his only option. Now Moab is has an interesting history. It's related to Israel. Anybody remember Lot, Genesis 18 to 19? Lot was related to Abraham, but they go separate ways. Long story short, Moab goes off the rails as well, becomes a place of paganism and false religion, and the people worship Chemosh, a false god.

And so there might be food in Moab, but there's also that component culturally. But Elimelech moves his family there, wife, his two sons. His wife, Naomi, that name means pleasant. Keep that in mind. That will become important. Just write that down somewhere. Pleasant. So that's crisis one. Crisis two, we see in verse three.

Look at verse three. Then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died. She was left with her two sons. Stop there. Elimelech just dies suddenly in the narrative, and our author doesn't give any explanation for what happened. It's just sudden, bam, tragedy. And it suddenly breaks this almost idyllic family image. I imagine like if you're able get going to get across to us.

Tragedy And we're strikes Naomi. Okay. Crisis two is Naomi is widowed. She loses Elimelech. What's crisis three? Crisis three is she loses her two sons. Look at verse four. Then they took for themselves Moabite women as wives. This is Naomi's sons. The name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth.

And they lived there about ten years. Verse five, then both Makhlon and Chilion also died, and the woman was bereft of her two children and her husband. So not only does she lose her husband, she loses her entire her sons. And she's lost her whole family at this point.

And notice there's a phrase that the author uses here. Verse three, then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died and she was left with her two sons. Verse five, then both Mafflon and Kileon also died, and the woman was bereft of her two children and her husband. Naomi is bereaved. And the author emphasizes verse five.

He really wants us to see that Naomi is left alone. And not only that, the major crisis here is this. Elimelech's family is going to go extinct. That's the wording of one commentator. His more significantly, his his tribal inheritance, that land he had in in Bethlehem is gonna go to somebody else.

God wanted his people to be living in the land and enjoying the blessings of fellowship with him, but we see that's no longer gonna be possible for Elimelech's family because it's it's we've lost Elimelech, we've lost his two sons. I mean what else is going to happen at this point?

And really the fate of Elimelech's land is something that becomes really prominent in the rest of the book, and we'll see more about it then. But really in Chapter one, the author is zeroing in on Naomi and the experience of her suffering. And it's at this point where we begin to ask, why?

Why does this happen to Naomi? Maybe there's some human elements here. Maybe God's kind of bringing retribution on Naomi. That might be possible. The author gives us some hints that Elimelech's move to Moab may not have been a good idea. The family's problems really started when they left the land of Israel, God's land.

Israel's role in the Old Testament was to stay in the land and be a light to the nations. They didn't have a mission mandate the same way we do. Second element here is that Moab was a place idolatry. And even we see that Mafflon and Killion marry Moabite women and apparently don't have any children for ten years, as we'll see later.

And Naomi seemed content to stay in Moab after Elimelech's death. So maybe there's something a little bit amiss in this family. But there's no explicit statement about that from the author, and that's because of this. He wants us to focus not as much on the human choices that might have caused Naomi's suffering.

He wants us to focus on the experience of the suffering itself. He wants us to get in Naomi's world. And you have to realize this, in that culture, to be widowed is to be left without provision. It's bad enough to lose a spouse. It's bad enough for Naomi to lose her children.

But it's in that culture, it was the men who provided everything, who provided food, who worked the land. And Naomi is left behind. And it's possible she'll spend the rest of her life begging as a beggar, begging for food. And so there's a sense in which Naomi might may have felt that she would have rather been among those who passed away than to be left behind with all the mess, to be left alone.

So Naomi's bereaved. She's alone, and she's in a place of desperation. So we see Naomi's bereavement in verses one to five one through five. And let's look now at the next movement in the narrative, and this is where things start to get moved around a little bit. So look with me at verse six.

Something happens to bring Naomi out of Moab and back to Bethlehem, And this something is the providence of God. Look at verse six with me. 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 and giving them food.

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. Let's stop there. So this is the first that we kinda hear about God in the narrative, and we see a couple things here.

First, we see the name of God, the Lord, all caps, as some of your Bibles might have it. That's the be we're we're we're that. And to world. Going able so we're to Judges period, they don't necessarily deserve do this. That. Maybe this is a period where Israel repented.

We don't know. But ultimately, this is God's grace in bringing mercy to his people. This idea of God's providence is huge in Ruth, as I I said in the beginning. And it's finally what gets Naomi out of Moab and back into God's land, and God wants his people in the land.

So Naomi leaves with her daughters in law, and she goes back. But we're gonna find out that Naomi really doesn't want Orpah and Ruth to go all the way with her. Look with me at verse eight. 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 that. Do So we're Naomi we're wants something that. Here. She wants her daughters not to follow her to Bethlehem. Why? Because there's nothing for them there. You see Naomi is old at this point, and we'll see this in a second.

Naomi has no possibility of remarriage and having someone to provide for her and salvage her situation. Her daughters are young enough to where that could be the case. And so she wants them to go back and live a life and a future and have hope. And so she says, go return each of you to her mother's house.

And that that's that's kind of an idiomatic expression. It means she's simply saying you're free to remarry and to have a future and to start a new life. Verse eight, she says, may Yahweh deal kindly with you. May he show his faithfulness, his kindness because of what you've done with me.

Verse nine, she says, may the Lord grant that you may find rest. The idea of rest there is remarriage, security, provision. And I think if, you know, if I was in Naomi's situation, that's what And to to do that. And And we're so we're do return with you to your people, And Oz, there.

So they refused. They wanna go with her to Bethlehem to this foreign land to take care of her. And Naomi's initial request was kinda polite. It was restrained. And we're about to see her true emotions about the situation come out. Let me read verses 11 to 13. 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? Return my daughters. Go for I'm too old to have a husband. If I said I have hope, if I should even have a husband tonight and also bear sons, 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. So so there's this emotional explosion from Naomi. And and I want you to you gotta feel the emotions there with what she's saying.

Notice the first thing she says in verse 11, return my daughters. Why should you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb that they may be your husbands? That's a rhetorical question. The answer is no. She's past menopause. She can't have children. Verse 12, she says this, 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, would you therefore wait until they were grown? Another rhetorical question. The answer is no. Would you therefore refrain from marrying? Again, the assumed answer is no.

And then she says, for the hand of the Lord has gone forth against me. And verse 13 before that, she says, for it is harder for me than for you. What does that mean? The word harder there is the word bitter. She's saying it's more my circumstances are too bitter for you to partake in.

Think of the have you ever tasted something really bitter? I can think of several examples in my life. That's the imagery here. It's bitterness, bitter suffering. We're able so that. And do that. And And we're to so do And life. The hand of the Lord in the Old Testament, it's pictures this God as this warrior attacking Naomi's life.

And we're kind of looking for that expression of trust that that caps off Naomi's emotional outburst here. But we don't have that. She she doesn't say, though you trust slay me, yet will I trust you like Job does. We just have the raw emotional experience of someone whose life has been destroyed by the bitter providence of God.

And we're between between to two see going suffering of Naomi the is bringing out her true heart. She looks at her life and she concludes that God's attacking me. He's made my life bitter. He's taken everything from me, and he's destroying my life. Have you ever felt that way?

Do you know someone who feels that way? I I there have been times in my life where I've I've felt tempted to conclude that of God. Naomi gives God the lip service of causing her calamity, but not the trust that he deserves. Some of you might be struggling with this right now.

It's usually in the valley of suffering. Actually, it's always in the valley of suffering where your true theology about God comes out. I know that's been true in my life. Even recently with circumstances, my truth, you have my professed theology, you know, what I would confess, and then suffering hits.

And then I discover what I real what was really in my heart comes out. That's what we see with Naomi. Do we trust God when his providence is bitter? Now how did Ruth and Orpa respond to Naomi begging them to leave? 14. Sorry. Verse yeah. Verse 14. And they lifted up their voices and wept again, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law.

Stop there. That's a farewell kiss. Orpah is saying, okay. I understand. And I see what you want, Naomi, and I'm gonna go back. Orpah kisses her mother-in-law goodbye, and she starts back on on the road back to Moab. Okay? We would expect this. Naomi told Orpah to do this.

She wants Orpah to go back. This is expected, and it's what we'd ordinarily expect. We look again at verse 14 now, and I want you to use your imagination here and picture something. Orpah kisses her mother -in-law goodbye forever. They'll never see each other again. And she steps away and starts back toward Moab.

And Orpah is receding into the distance. She's getting further and further away. Keep that image in your mind and look at verse 14, the last part. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. So Orpah leaves, but Ruth has embraced Naomi, and she's not letting go as Orpah recedes into the distance.

Look again. And Naomi says this in verse 15. Then she said, behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods. Return after your sister-in-law. Ruth, you have to go back. There's no future for you with me. There's nothing for you in Bethlehem. You still have an opportunity to have a future.

Go back. And notice she says, return to your people and your gods. And going able we're we're do Now look at verse 16, and we we love that. This part. This is so famous. But Ruth said, do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you.

For where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me and worse if anything but death parts you and me.

That has to be one of the most famous expressions in scripture. There's so much here. There's so much to unpack. It's it's beautiful. What we see from Ruth from a 50,000 foot view is one of the most amazing acts of self sacrificial love in the bible, really, even in the old testament.

You see Ruth committing herself to Naomi. Where Naomi goes, Ruth goes. Where Naomi stays, Ruth stays. Where Naomi dies, Ruth dies. Where Naomi is buried, Ruth will be buried. She's committing herself to the people of Israel, and she's committing herself to Naomi's God. And this is where Ruth counters Naomi's statement, return to your people and to your gods.

Ruth says, no, your people are my people. Your God, Yahweh, is my God. Now this is amazing because who did Naomi just blame for all of her circumstances? She blamed God, and yet Ruth here is committing herself to the true God. This is really the clearest conversion we have in the Old Testament of of a a non Jew to the living God.

And it's amazing. Ruth's saying the Lord is my God. And notice verse 17. Ruth says this, may the Lord do to me and worse if anything but death separates you and me. Now this is an oath in the Old Testament context. And Ruth is making basically an irreversible commitment.

She's severing all ties with her people and her gods. And she's saying, may God hold me accountable if I don't keep my word to you, Naomi. This is amazing. And there's really four implications that we see from Ruth's decision. Number one is a decision that was voluntary. Ruth didn't have to do this.

Naomi told her to go back. That's what makes it amazing. It's it's Orpah does what's ordinary, what you'd expect. We would have never expected Ruth to do something like this. It's incredible. Number two, it was it was voluntary. Number two is decision that was costly. It costed something for Ruth to display this kind of love to Naomi.

She's giving up her future. She's moving to a land where she might be ostracized as a foreigner. And I didn't mention this earlier, but there is bad history between Moab and Israel. We have one episode in the Old Testament where Moab tried to seduce Israel away from the Lord.

So there's a bad history between these two peoples. But Ruth is giving up her people, her nation. She's giving up her false religion. She's giving up everything to Naomi. Number three, it was a decision that was permanent, and that's what we see in verse 17. She's severing she's burning the bridge behind her.

There's no way that she can get herself out of this after she makes the decision. She's binding herself to Naomi and to Israel's God. Number four, it was a decision ultimately that was loving. Ruth's decision to give up her future, her life, everything, was born out of self sacrificial love toward Naomi.

And it's not kind of a romanticized sentimentalism that, you know, Ruth is suddenly overcome with this, you know, so that she's lost all control and she's just doing this. This is a decision that Ruth makes toward Naomi, and it just almost defies explanation. Why would Ruth do this?

I have to say, if I had a daughter, I I really wouldn't particularly want her to give up her entire future to go take care of an old suffering widow who's bitter against God with no possibility of anything ever changing. I wouldn't want that for my daughter. But this is self sacrificial love.

This is Ruth saying to Naomi, I'm for you. I'm for you in your suffering, Ruth, Naomi. And so this brings us to the question, is this type of self sacrificial love something that's unique to Ruth? Is it something that God expects of everyone? To put it another way, is it something how do we know whether or how to apply something like this in our lives as Christians?

One thing we have to keep in mind is this is Old Testament narrative. You know, it might just be describing something that happened without necessarily giving us God's that. We're we're able to And we're have do do that. We're to going do like Ruth does here. And Maybe it was just a set of circumstances that was unique to Ruth.

And it doesn't seem like the author explicitly tells us that we should imitate Ruth, at least here, or does he? Of course, some of you know where the story of Ruth is going. And we don't we're not getting into chapter two yet, but I am gonna read a scripture from that that chapter, and you'll you'll know where this is going, and we'll pick it up next month in chapter two.

But later in the story, Ruth is told something by a very important person, Boaz. We'll talk about him. Don't worry. Boaz tells Ruth this at one point. All that you have done for your mother-in-law after the death of your husband has been fully reported to me and how you left your father and your mother in the land of your birth and came to a people that you with with pleased are with Jesus.

For those who know the story and the name good ending, we see that God rewards Ruth for this decision. And the author wants us to see that. And it's Ruth's self sacrificial love that becomes the thing that brings hope to Naomi's situation. And it's through that decision that God begins to move the chess pieces in Naomi's life to do that.

To be we're And was something that God desires in all of us. Now what does this mean for Christians? Right? I can't help but be reminded when I look at Ruth of that incredible example of voluntary, self sacrificial love in Jesus Christ, who came, Mark ten forty five, not to be served but to serve and give his life a ransom for many.

See, that's who Ruth is pointing us toward. You know, Jesus didn't have to step out of heaven and take on human we're do that. And we're going to and so there's a problem though is that their And feet haven't been washed, and their feet are dirty in that culture.

And one of the disciples should have stooped down to meet that need, but nobody does. And we see Jesus stooping down, displaying that voluntary self sacrificial love to meet that need and wash the feet of sinners. Romans five eight, God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Jesus voluntarily died in the place of people who were not deserving, who were sinners. So when this kind of love from God comes into your life and rescues you through the new birth, you get new taste buds. You become a person who begins to love God and to love other people.

And maybe it's you know, it starts as a trickle, but it begins to grow into a stream and then into a river. Because the more you understand the ir lives. Do to so we're going do do that. Going that. That. That. To And we're And And by this all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another, if you have love for one another.

So I wish I could say that, I could stand up here and say, man, I've really mastered this. I've got this self sacrificial love thing down. I've got that taken care of. That's not the case in my life, and that that's and I see so many areas for me where I fall short in this area even as a Christian.

And if, you know, me and you are brought before the judgment seat of Christ today and Jesus were to, you know, evaluate our our works as a believer and our how we stewarded our lives, would he see Orpah, somebody who does what we expect, ordinary? Or would he see Ruth, somebody who does what we don't expect and displays displays that self sacrificial love toward others.

Somebody who's who's truly grasped the implications of the love of Christ. What we see with Ruth is she that she brings that love into a situation of somebody who's in almost incomprehensible suffering. And the question for us is when God brings those suffering people, those Naomi's into our lives, do we retreat, or do we press in and begin to say, I'm I'm for you in your suffering because Christ was for me and showed his love to me and forgave me.

Often when someone's in horrible suffering, they find out really fast who their friends who their real friends are. You know, maybe the situation gets a lot of attention at first, but then it doesn't quite get the quick fix that we all wanted. And then people start receding into the background.

And then it gets forgotten about. People going able to And have we're do the not world. Of world. We people in perfectly modeled for us. Now don't hear what I'm saying in isolation from the gospel. I'm not saying, okay, go try to will up and through law, try to create this in yourself.

No. God has saved you, and he's given you the Holy Spirit to empower you to walk in love. And me, you can only love well when you understand the mercy of Christ. So who is the Naomi in your life or in my life? Who is the Naomi in your church family?

Okay. That brings us to the end of this difference And And between we're the we've seen we've half first the the the to world. World. The the we're difference to the the over a decade. She looks different. She's coming back alone. Her life's been destroyed. She's grieved, and that shows on a person physically.

And so there's almost a sense in which are they saying is, is this Naomi? Now remember Naomi's name means pleasant. And so she's hearing this. She's hearing, is this pleasant? Pleasant's back. Pleasant came back to Bethlehem. She's here and she's hearing her name and she's reminded constantly of the fact that her life has been anything but pleasant.

So Naomi hears this and snaps back in verse 20, do not call me Naomi, call me Mara, for the almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. What does does the name Mara mean? It means bitter. God's brought bitterness into her life. Her circumstances, right, they're so bitter that she identifies herself that way now.

Notice what she says in verse 20. Be to do And afflicted me. So God's dealt bitterly with her. Notice in verse 21, she went out full. Right? She left Bethlehem full. She's got her family. She's got her children, her husband. She came back empty. It's like God we of have midst And the so been the God is taking the stand against Naomi, the and he's afflicted her.

And so this really confirms that Naomi is is viewing God as the enemy of her life. She attributes entirely the blame for her life circumstances on God, and we're beginning to think that her suffering has almost destroyed her trust in God. If you're in that situation, has that happened?

God brings all of us through that suffering, the valley of suffering sooner or later. God wants us to trust him. We don't see that with Naomi, but we want to see that in our lives. Now here's the ir we're the see three. Difference And we're see and we're the and three.

And we're future. The the And we're who returned from the land of Moab, and they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. So our chapter has been very heavy. We see Naomi's life destroyed, but we see the is is that to rest we're able do so to to And a barley farmer in a field, and that begins to move all of the circumstances into through God's providence into salvaging and rescuing Naomi.

And we'll see that as we progress through the book. But we see chapter one ends with this note of hope in God's providence. And I couldn't help it. I was reminded of that last hymn we sang, God moves in a mysterious way. Think about the last two verses of that hymn.

His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour. The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower. Blind unbelief is sure to and scan his work in vain. God is his own interpreter. He will make it plain. So earlier in the hymn, it says behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face.

Naomi couldn't see that, and I don't even think Ruth could see that. But we'll see that as we move through the story that Ruth is a book about the providence of God in rescuing this family situation. That's what we see in verse 22. The author is kind of winking at us.

Us. See God's providence here. You know, wink. Wink. Wink. You know, God is the one He's signaling to us that God is the one who's sovereign over rain and barley and the universe, and he's going to bring something good from Naomi's circumstances. It's going to come through Ruth's decision of self sacrificial love.

And that choice is going to bring hope to the situation. And Ruth's bitter suffering, a LMLX family, And ultimately, we know that Ruth is someone in the line of Christ. You know, we'll end Ruth, and we'll see that. I wish I could spend a whole sermon just introducing the book of Ruth because there's just so much here.

But chapter one has taken us on a journey. You know, we've seen Naomi's bereavement verses one to five. We've seen that return scene to Bethlehem in six to 19, and we saw how Naomi understands her circumstances, her emptying in verses 19 to 22. We could summarize it differently.

Remember those two images I mentioned at the beginning, the image of that suffering woman, Naomi, blaming God for her suffering, not seeing God's hand in the providential circumstances of her life. Her faith between we're we're of see see the see world. We're we're to to so going see be this.

Be And could say this is a cliffhanger. And Unfortunately, I won't be up here again until June, so hang with me. But there's a lot more to the story, and we'll see that. So let me pray for us. Father, we thank you for your providence. We thank you that you're sovereign over the events of our lives and even over those bitter circumstances that you bring.

And, Lord, we we trust you, father. We don't wanna be those who scan your work in unbelief and doubt you. And, Lord, I pray you give us faith to see your goodness and that you are working all things together for good for your people and most importantly for their eternal good.

Father, help us to see that self sacrificial love of Ruth who gave up everything, and you rewarded that so graciously. Lord, we desire that in our lives. We we desire that. We pray you'd create that in us and grow that in us, father. Jesus' name. Amen.