Redeeming Love - Studies in the Book of Ruth
5 - Submitting to God's Will
Naomi had been living in the land of Moab. Her husband and two sons had died there. While they lived there her two sons had married Moabite women. Their names were Orpah and Ruth. Naomi decided to return to her home in the land of Judah. It was quite a long journey of some 110 kilometres. The descent from the mountains of Moab to the Jordan valley was about 1400 kilometres. They would have then had to travel the 1200 kilometres ascent to Bethlehem, Naomi’s home town. Orpah stayed in Moab, but Ruth decided to go with her mother-in-law. We read in chapter one verses nineteen and twenty, “So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, ‘Can this be Naomi?’ ‘Do not call me Naomi’, she told them, ‘but call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter’”. The name Naomi means “pleasant”. Naomi’s last ten years in Moab had been far from pleasant. Mara means “bitter” and Naomi had gone through a bitter time of grief and heartache. Yet in it all she testifies to God’s activity. She says (verse twenty-one) “I went away full but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me”.
You will have noticed that she refers to the Lord twice in these verses as “The Almighty”. This translates the Hebrew word “Shaddai”. It is a word that is derived from another Hebrew word for “mountain”. It provides us with a powerful image of God. Like a mountain, God is strong, steady, immovable and stable. It refers to that which is dependable, solid and trustworthy. Naomi recognised God’s sovereign activity in her life. The Lord determines our circumstances and sometimes they can be perplexing. We grapple with issues and experiences we face and we find them hard to understand. But Naomi’s faith did not waver. She told it how it was, and what she felt in her heart. She humbly submitted to the Lord and his dealings with her during her time in Moab. Naomi believed in a God who could be trusted and who was righteous in all his dealings with her. She went away full, but she came back empty. In all the changing circumstances of life we have an all powerful God who can be trusted. Vance Havner put it well when he said, “I thank God for the unseen hand, sometimes urging me onward, sometimes holding me back; sometimes with a caress of approval, sometimes with a stroke of reproof; sometimes correcting, sometimes comforting. My times are in his hands”.
He is the Almighty, the rock who supports us and who is unchanging in his love toward us. This is good to remember when you go through a bitter time. As the Almighty, He is in control of all that happens to you. When you experience the bitter times in life they have not caught God by surprise. He watches over you during those times when He permits trials to come into your life. We read in First Corinthians chapter ten verse thirteen, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”. The word “tempted” here in the original Greek has the idea of testing. It can be the testing of our faith or the testing of our obedience. In times of difficulty and testing remember the faithfulness of the Almighty. The words in this verse, ”He will not let you”, show that He must be in control. You are not the victim of chance. He is able to draw the trial to a close and to deliver you from it, or give you grace to bear it. The fact that He promises a way of escape shows that God has the last word in the circumstances you face. God can be relied upon. He will never fail you in your times of affliction. He permits them for a purpose. Hudson Taylor, the missionary to China, wrote a short poem. He said, “Ill that God blesses is our good, and unblest good is ill, and all is right that seems most wrong, if it be his sweet will”.
What possible purpose could God have in the afflictions that Naomi experienced? In it all God had a purpose for the young Moabite woman Ruth. He needed to get Ruth to Bethlehem. Even Elimelech’s failure to trust God in the famine, and his mistake of taking matters into his own hands and moving to Moab, was turned around and eventually the Lord brought blessing out of it. He would fulfil his perfect plan. God has a perfect plan for your life. To perform it may mean that He may take you through times of fullness and emptiness. There may be times of affliction and apparent misfortune. At the end God will bring to pass that purpose He has for you. A. W. Tozer, a great Christian writer, commented, “We travel an appointed way”. We read in Ruth chapter one verse twenty-two, “So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabitess”. Mission accomplished! This would result in blessing and provision for Naomi and for Ruth, and would bring about another step in God’s plan of salvation for the world.
Naomi had learned to read between the lines. There were the lines of her life experience and there were those things that could be seen and observed. There was the move to Moab. The tragedy of losing her husband and sons, the emptiness and the journey home. But there were the unseen lines and the hidden hand; the story within the story. There was the unseen hand at work in the events of Naomi’s life. Another writer, Eugenia Price, said, “If only we could get hold of the life-changing fact that there are no little things with God! Your seemingly small trouble is of eternal importance to Him at this moment. He has some lovely lesson it for you. A lesson if well learned now, will affect you eternally. If you and I refuse to learn it now, He still cares. The next time we ‘fall to the ground’, He will still be there”. So, we need to look for the lessons that God wants to teach us through the problems we have to deal with. These lessons are discerned by looking behind the things we can see with our eyes. It is seeing the Almighty in the afflictions. It involves recognising the hand of providence in all the various experiences of life whether good or bad. It is this that helps us to cope and provides us with a sense of purpose. Without this trust life will seem merely a vicious circle of haphazard events without purpose or meaning.
Naomi and Ruth arrived in Bethlehem at the time of the barley harvest. This means that it was around April time. This was a providential time to arrive because workers would be needed in the harvest fields. This would be the very means that God would use to move the events of Ruth’s life forward as we shall see in the next study.