Loss

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9:00 Service | 10:30 Service | Sermon Audio

Good morning Chapel family. Happy Independence Day weekend. Some of you know that I do a little one-minute devotional on Star 99 radio—it runs throughout the day every Friday. So in light of the holiday weekend, I just wanted to read you my devotional that ran this past Friday.

I am so grateful for this country that we live in. We are living at such a divided time in our nation’s history. But maybe this weekend we could set aside our differences and join hands as Americans. The Bible says there’s no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend—so this Fourth of July, let’s come together in gratitude for the countless men and women who’ve laid down their lives for us. Let’s join our hearts and celebrate the blessings of freedom and opportunity and the ethnic diversity that make this country great. This truly is a special place. So happy Fourth of July…and may God bless America.

So I hope you have a very meaningful and joyful 4th of July celebration!

So…we are starting a brand new series today on the Old Testament book of Ruth. And I’m calling the series, “A Story of Redemption.” What does that word mean? What does it mean “redeem” something? Well, there’s a general meaning that we use all the time, and there’s a more specific biblical meaning. The more general meaning is to turn something bad into something good. Your teacher says, “You’re failing my class, but if you get a good grade on the final exam, you can…what? …you can still redeem yourself.” So it looks really bad now, but you can pull something good out of this. Or, “I watched the first episode of this new series on Netflix, and it was so depressing, I could not find any redeeming value to it.” So it was all bad; nothing good in it. So that’s the general meaning of redeem—to turn something bad into something good.

But in the Bible, it has a much more specific meaning. In the Bible, redemption means to buy something back, or purchase the freedom of something. When the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, God said, “I redeemed you from slavery.” I set you free. So it’s still taking something bad and making it good, but in a much more specific way: by paying a price for it. In the New Testament it says believers have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. So we used to be enslaved to our sin, but the blood of Christ paid the price and freed us from that slavery.

So the point is: redemption is a big deal! You need redemption in your life, on both of those levels! Because right now, you have bad things in your life. Right? Anybody not have bad things in their life? So you need those bad things to be redeemed for good. Right? But even more specifically, you need to learn how God has paid the price to free you from all the things that want to destroy you. So on every level, we need redemption! And that’s what the book of Ruth is all about. It’s a story of redemption.

It’s a beautiful story. And it starts out with a bad situation that desperately needed redemption. So—let’s begin by reading the first chapter. Ruth chapter one. Let’s hear the Word of God…

1 In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. 2 The

man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.

3 Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.

6 When Naomi heard in Moab that the LORD had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. 7 With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.

8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the LORD show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. 9 May the LORD grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”

Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud 10 and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”

11 But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? 12 Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— 13 would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the LORD’s hand has turned against me!”

14 At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.

15 “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”

16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

19 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?”

20 “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. 21 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.”

22 So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning. This is the Word of the Lord.

So this opening scene is all about loss. And we see three things about loss: Experiencing Loss, Interpreting Loss, and Redeeming Loss. Experiencing it, interpreting it, and redeeming it.

So, first: Experiencing Loss. The story begins with a guy named Elimelek—he lives in Bethlehem with his wife and two sons. There was a terrible famine, so they decide to pack up their stuff and leave

their country in search of food. Huge decision—to leave behind everything they know. But they’re desperate. So they leave their homeland and go to a place called Moab.

And that’s the first loss: the loss of their home. But at least they have each other.

And then the unthinkable happens: Elimelek—the husband and father—dies. Have you ever lost a close family member? All of a sudden you find yourself doing things you’ve never done before: meeting with a funeral director…deciding between burial and cremation…and it’s all so surreal, and your head is spinning. And hopefully you have friends and family members and a church family that surrounds you and carries you through that. But Naomi has none of that. She has her two sons; that’s it! Totally isolated from her culture and her support system.

But thank God, she still has her sons. And both of them find nice local girls to marry—Ruth and Orpah (not Oprah). So for Naomi, her sons represent hope for the future.

Several years go by…and then the unthinkable happens again: her two sons pass away. Can we try to feel the weight of Naomi’s situation? She’s in a foreign country. Her husband is dead. Her children are dead. This was a highly patriarchal society. So if there was no man in your life, you were in trouble. So now she’s facing the prospect of old age with no one to care for her. It was a bad situation. Later—after she returns to her hometown—she describes it like this in verse 21—she says, “When I left here I was full…but I’m coming back empty.” Major losses in life can make us feel utterly, terrifyingly, empty.

Do you see any reflections of your story? Have you experienced big loss? Do you know that terrible feeling of emptiness? I tried to think of some of the main kinds of losses we experience, and I came up with six big ones. See if any of these are part of your story.

The most obvious one is Death. This person is in your life and then they’re not…and there’s a crushing finality to that.

But there’s also the loss of a Relationship. A divorce or another long-term relationship ends, and it’s devastating. I’ve been on the receiving end of phone calls, where someone had just discovered their spouse was being unfaithful. And I’ve had several people say to me, “It feels like death. I can’t even find the desire to go on living.” Because the sense of loss and pain are so crippling.

There’s the loss of a Job. Especially when it’s a job you’ve had for a long time, and you’ve spent 40 or 50 hours a week with these same people, feeling like you’re useful and valued, and suddenly it’s gone. A few years ago, I had a friend who was very successful in business. And I was in Home Depot one day, and there was my friend, the businessman, wearing the orange Home Depot apron—you know, his name written on the apron with a Sharpie. And I was so surprised by it; I said, “Hey—I didn’t know you were working here.” And he said, “Yeah, I got laid off a few months ago, and this is the only thing I could find.” And you could feel the humiliation as he said it. Not that Home Depot is such a terrible job, but for him it was a big loss. And you could see the emptiness in his eyes.

How about Sickness? Especially serious illness—like cancer or MS or Parkinson’s. After the initial sympathy of your friends and family kind of wear off, you’re left with the reality of your situation. And it can feel like the world is going on without you.

And then there’s Aging. I mean, sure, hopefully you’re gaining some things as you grow older—wisdom and maturity and all that. But you lose a lot, too. Hair, energy, muscle tone; eventually teeth, memory, friends as they start to die off. Anyone wishing they skipped church today?

One more kind of loss: loss of Security. I will never forget standing in this room on the night of September 11, 2001. This place was packed with people who gathered to pray and mourn. And I

realized that nothing would ever be the same in this country. Twenty-two years later, thank God there hasn’t been another 9/11, but there’s been a pandemic. And life feels a little less secure. That’s a loss.

So the list could go on, right? If you’re feeling a little depressed, that was my goal! Because if we can’t connect our own story with this biblical story…it’s just a story. The reality is, in some way, the story of Naomi and Ruth is our story. To live in this world means you will experience loss.

But here’s the thing: every one of us not only experiences loss; whether we realize it or not, we Interpret Loss. We give it some kind of meaning. So as we look at Naomi, how did she interpret what happened to her? Here’s what I would say: part of her interpretation was accurate, and part of it was off.

So let’s talk about the part she interpreted well. From lots of things Naomi says in this chapter, I’d say this is what she got right: she realized God is in control. I believe Naomi had a mature understanding of what theologians call “the sovereignty of God.” Which means, the events of life aren’t random; God doesn’t passively stand back and watch things happen. When you listen to Naomi explain what’s happening, she always says, “The Lord is doing this.” Two times, she calls God “the Almighty”—it’s the Hebrew term “el Shaddai”—which emphasizes God’s power. So Naomi recognizes nothing happens outside of God’s sovereignty. He’s in control. It might be a little strong to say that God causes difficult things to happen in our lives, but at the very least, we can say he allows hard things to happen. He’s overseeing the process. He’s ordaining the events of our lives.

And I know some of you don’t like that idea. You might even be offended that I would say that—that God could be involved in the losses of our lives. I’m just going to ask you to keep your heart and your mind open as we go through Ruth. Because understanding God’s sovereignty can give meaning to suffering like nothing else can.

So Naomi understood that God—the Almighty—is in control. Now at the moment, that was not a comforting thought for her. It was actually more of a complaint! But she understood that God is in control. She got that right.

Okay, so what did she get wrong? Here’s what she got wrong: She believed that God was against her. When she was trying to convince her two daughters-in-law to go back to their families, she says It is more bitter for me than for you, (listen to this…) because the LORD’s hand has turned against me!” After she gets back home to Bethlehem, Naomi says to her friends: The LORD has afflicted me. The word Hebrew word for “afflicted” means that God was testifying against her. Like, he’s pointing out something wrong in me, and he’s punishing me for it.

See, Naomi had a view of life that was common back in her day. And here was the view: if I’m good, God will make my life go well; if I mess up God is going to get me. So, since God is obviously getting me, I must be getting punished for something I did wrong.

It’s really interesting—when you read the commentary of some of the ancient rabbis, most of them had that same view. They said all this bad stuff happened because this family wasn’t trusting God. They shouldn’t have left Israel; the two sons shouldn’t have married non-Jewish women. And so God was punishing them for those decisions. That was the typical rabbinic explanation for all this loss. And it seems like that’s how Naomi was viewing it. But they were wrong. You don’t find any hint of that explanation in the book of Ruth.

You know, there’s another major book of the Old Testament that deals with loss. Do you know the book I’m talking about? Job. Job loses everything. And his so-called friends come to comfort him. And they take about 35 chapters to say basically one thing: You must’ve done something really bad to

deserve this. Do you have any friends like that? Your life is going down the toilet, and they’re like, “Man, you must’ve really screwed up. For this to happen.” Great friends, right? And finally, at the end of the book of Job, God shows up and he says to Job’s friends, “You guys have no clue what you’re talking about.”

But that was the view of life that Naomi seemed to hold. The Lord’s hand has turned against me. The Lord is testifying against me. And listen: the way we view God deeply affects our whole outlook on life. The way we view God deeply affects our whole outlook on life. So because Naomi believed that God was vindictive and harsh…she got bitter.

Where that bitterness really comes out is in the homecoming scene. Look at verse 19: 19 So the two women (this was Naomi and her one daughter-in-law, Ruth) 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?” So after ten years, everybody was all excited—“Naomi’s back home!” Verse 20: 20 “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.” The name “Naomi” means “pleasant” or “delight.” And Naomi was feeling so sorry for herself, she said, “I don’t even want that stupid name anymore. It doesn’t fit. Call me Mara.” You know what the word “mara” means? “Bitter.”

One of the unhealthy ways we can respond to loss is to become self-pitying. Have you been there? You develop this tunnel vision, where all you see is the terrible things that have happened to you. So if we’re not careful, we can let our lives be defined by our loss. That’s what she was doing by changing her name, right? She was saying, “The primary way I think about myself is through the lens of what I’ve lost…and that’s how I want you to think about me, too.” Don’t call me Mrs. Pleasant; call me Miss Bitter.

Let me ask you a hard question: have you allowed the losses of life to make you self-pitying? I mean, some very real loss happened to you—with a relationship or a child or a parent or health…and you’ve been defining yourself primarily by that loss. You have this sense that life has dealt you a bad hand, or God has been harsh with you. And it puts a cloud over you. Do you ever wonder why God arranged for obscure stories like this one to be in the Bible? I mean, it seems so random, right? A nobody from Bethlehem in 1200 BC who loses her husband and her sons. I mean, so what? Why would this matter? Because you and I are so much like her. And God wants us to see that we don’t have to get bitter.

So let’s talk about Redeeming Loss. When you read this first chapter, and you get pulled into the drama of Naomi’s life, it’s easy to forget there are two other women in the story who suffer tremendous loss. Ruth and Orpah became widows at a very young age. And unlike Naomi, they never had any children. So the logical thing for these two young widows—was to stay in their homeland, go back to their parents, and try to find new husbands for themselves. So that’s what Naomi tries to convince them to do.

Look at verse 8: 8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the LORD show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. That word that’s translated “kindness” is an extremely important Hebrew word. It’s the Hebrew word hesed. And it’s impossible to adequately translate it with one English word. It means loyalty…kindness…faithfulness…love. And it’s done by someone who’s in a stronger position, for someone who’s in a weaker position. Does that make sense? So hesed is an act of kindness and love to someone in a weaker position, not because of anything the giver can gain for themselves, but because of loyalty to that person. And Naomi says to her two daughters-in-law, “May the Lord show you that kind of kindness.” So Orpah kisses Naomi goodbye and goes home to her parents.

But Ruth isn’t convinced. And she makes this passionate speech starting in verse 16: 16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” It’s really a beautiful speech, isn’t it? Unfortunately, Naomi is already so bitter, she misses the beauty of the moment. She almost seems annoyed with Ruth, like, “Yeah, yeah—your people, my people, your God, my God, blah blah blah…if you’re coming, pack your bag and let’s go.”

Something rare and beautiful is right in front of her, and she completely misses it. This young girl from a pagan country, right?—a gentile!—has just shown her…what? Hesed. Loyalty…kindness… faithfulness. Not because of anything old Naomi can do for her, right? It would be much better deal for Ruth to stay in Moab; find a nice Moabite man to marry. But she gives that up, and at great cost to herself, she binds herself in loyalty to Naomi. And Naomi misses it. She doesn’t realize that the words and the actions of this girl are actually part of God’s reaching in and redeeming this whole situation.

Sometimes God’s redeeming work is right in front of us…and we miss it because we’re so absorbed in our own bitterness.

Did you notice the very last verse in Ruth chapter one? It says they arrived in Bethlehem as barley harvest was beginning. That might seem like a random detail, but it’s not. Because despite the loss, and despite Naomi’s bitterness, God had planted something, and it was about to come up. It was hidden—you couldn’t see it—but through the loss, God was preparing a harvest. And when you believe we have a God who works like that, it completely changes the way you respond to loss.

Some of you have heard the name Joni Eareckson Tada. She was a young athletic girl; she went swimming in the Chesapeake Bay with her friends and she misjudged the shallowness of the water, so she dove in and hit her head; she heard a crack and felt this strange electric tingle. And from that day on she never moved anything from her shoulders down. It was a tragic, life-altering loss.

And over the years, she has struggled with living in a wheelchair, and being dependent on other people. And at times, she struggled with bitterness. But in the process, she has become an incredibly powerful person. Her relationship with Christ has completely transformed the way she looks at life. And I personally have not heard anyone speak about loss with such power.

And I want to close with her words. She said,

“That truth set me free…realizing that God’s children are never victims. Everything that touches their lives, he permits. The irony is, you can’t imagine a more victimized person than Jesus. Yet when he died, he didn’t say, “I am finished” but “It is finished.” He did not play the victim, and thus he emerged the victor. Forget the self-pity. True, your supervisor may be trying to push you out of your job. Your marriage may be a fiery trial. You might be living below the poverty level. But victory is ours in Christ. His grace is sufficient. Know this truth and it will set you free. This day, Jesus, I can feel sorry for myself or victorious in you. Show me how to choose the latter.”