All right, if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn with me to the Book of Ruth. We're going to begin a new sermon series this morning on the Book of Ruth. We will be studying this book together until Advent, so I encourage you to be reading it. It's a very short book. You can read it each week, and we'll learn from it as we walk through it. This morning, we're going to look at Ruth chapter 1, verses 1 through 5, as we kick things off. So if you turn there with me now, we will get underway. I'm excited about Ruth. Ruth is a really amazing little story, and a couple big themes we'll be seeing. One is the sovereignty of God. We see that so much in this book, that God is in control of all things at all times, and that's really good news. Another big theme in this book is the grace of God, that God is a God of grace, who pours out his blessing on people who have not earned it, don't deserve it. And another big theme we see in this book is the faithfulness of God, the loyal love of God. So it's going to be cool to see those things as we work our way through this book, which begins, even though the book is called Ruth, it begins really with the story of Naomi, and that's what we'll be focusing on today. So here now, God's holy, true, and life-giving word, Ruth chapter 1, verse 1. In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to Sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimalec, and his wife, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Melon and Kilion. They were epithides from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there, but Elimalec, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives, the name of the one was Orpa and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and then both Melon and Kilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons in her husband. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray together. Father, we do thank you so much, that you are gracious and that you are kind, and that you have revealed yourself to us in your word and by your spirit and through your son. And we pray that as we begin a journey through the book of Ruth, that you will speak to us, and we thank you that we can rest assured that you will speak to us. We will speak to us, you will use things you reveal to us through this book. To fill us with faith, to help us trust you more deeply, as well as to equip us to continue our mission to make disciples. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. This is one of my favorite scenes in the Star Wars trilogy, the original three movies, as in the Empire Strikes Back. And, of course, I've seen this, so the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chubacan, C3PO, or in the Millennium Falcon, they're running from the Empire, so they're being chased through space, and there's this moment where they come to an asteroid field. And Han Solo indicates that he wants to go through it. And so this gets everybody pretty upset, Princess Leia starts saying, no, no, no, you don't have to do this to impress me, and Chubacan starts saying what he says, I don't know, his noise, whatever, and then C3PO comes in with the math. C3PO comes in with the math, and he says, sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1. And then Han Solo says, one of his classic awesome Han Solo lines. Never tell me the odds. And I love that, right, because here's this situation where everything could go really, really bad, and he's like, I don't care what the odds are, we're doing it, right? That's some bold courage right there. And as we begin this book of Ruth, we're beginning with something that's actually quite dark and sad. And it kind of begs the question, like, what is our attitude? How are we, when we are facing something really dangerous, really scary, really tragic, maybe really even disastrous? Because most of us are probably in that moment going to operate a little more like C3PO, and say the odds that this works out for me are not good. But as we study the book of Ruth, and as we seek to double down on our faith in Christ, we can begin to face these challenges in lives with a little more boldness like Han Solo, and say, never tell me the odds. That we can be a people who doesn't care how unlikely it looks that this will work out. We'll trust that God's in control. And the reality is, you know, this could be this right now, some of you might be going through something very difficult. You might be facing a tragedy right now. And there's probably some of us who are on the heels of one that it already happened in the aftermath. Some of us might be about to experience disaster or tragedy, and we don't even know it. And the thing is, what's so powerful about what God reveals to us here and through His scriptures is that we can trust Him. That that's the only thing we can do in these hard times. So we have good news this morning that we find hope for hard times when we choose to trust in our good God. The hope would be that we're more ready this morning and when we go from here to trust God when things get out of control and when things are crazy. And so we're going to talk about finding our hope in God during hard times this morning by talking about Naomi's case. We'll just look at how bad Naomi's situation is and we'll learn some things from that. And then we'll talk about Naomi's connection. It's really interesting. If we pan out, we see that Naomi's story is actually connected to the big story in a very important way. And so is ours. And third, we'll talk about Naomi's choice. What does she do in the face of all this disaster? So those three things. Naomi's case, Naomi's connection, and Naomi's choice. So look back at these verses one through five. Let's talk about Naomi's case. And here's something that is very difficult for you and I to believe and to swallow, but it's true. And that is this. Living for Christ does not exempt us from experiencing tragedy. So huge for us to remember, for us to teach our children, that a life lived for Christ is not exempt from tragedy, from suffering, from disaster. And that's really what we're seeing here in Naomi. Naomi belongs to God. Naomi is an Israelite. Naomi is someone who is loved by God, yet look at her situation. Verse one through five tells us number one that she's experienced famine. Her family was starving, so they left for Moab. She had not only to live in this terrible place, Moab, but then she becomes a widow there. And then her boys get married and there's surely some excitement about that. But after 10 years there's no children and then both those boys die. And all of a sudden Naomi finds herself widowed, childless, and basically destitute. And yes, the book of Ruth is about Ruth, but it begins about Naomi. And what we see here is you have a person who belongs to God experiencing just incredible disaster. And it reminds us, should be a reminder that living for God, trusting God, being a follower of Christ does not exempt us from tragedy. So we need to know that these things are going to happen from time to time. We also need to know that when tragedy strikes, our natural reaction is often to get mad at God, to get frustrated, to kind of ask why would this possibly happen? Maybe even to entertain some doubts, maybe God isn't good, maybe God doesn't exist. And it's pretty important that we know that that's normal when things go really bad in our lives. It does create this struggle for us to trust in God, because our hearts are wondering where is God? What is he doing? Why is he allowing this? Does he love me? Is he here? I remember a few years ago, when our youngest child was just a few years old, and she one night got pretty scared. So she left her big girl bed, and she came into our bedroom, and she suddenly climbing into our bed in the middle of the night. And I was like, this is awesome, it's my favorite. And so she gets into our bed, and then she lays down between us, and she tries to go to sleep. And I'm trying to decide, am I going to be able to sleep with her here? And I can hear her breathing through her sweet little nose, and I can hear her sucking on her fingers, and so I'm thinking, yeah, we can do this. And then, you know, it's pitch black in the room, and I start to hear this pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, and I'm like, what's going on? And then again, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, I hadn't said anything, but she was patting the pillow. And I'm about to scoop her up and take her back down to her room and say, you need to be here, and then go back so I could go to bed. And then the patting stopped because pat, pat, pat, and also in her hand landed on my face. And then she stopped, and I realized that in the dark she was reaching around, where's dad? Where's my dad? Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, and then she found me, and then she fell fast asleep. And listen, I don't care how tough you are, I don't care how strong you think you are, I don't care what you've been through. When disaster hits, you better believe your heart is reaching out, pat, pat, pat, pat, looking for God, wondering where is he. And Naomi's story is really helpful because what we're looking for and what we want to know in that moment is, does God love me? You see, with me. And seeing that Naomi, someone loved by God, went through such tragic things, reminds us to believe in those moments that, yes, God loves me. Even though this tragedy is happening, I can rest assured that God loves me. And we can not only look at Naomi to believe that, but even more so, we look at Christ. Because if there's one thing that's unequivocally clear in the Scriptures, is that the Father loves the Son. The Father says of Jesus, you are my Son with whom I am well pleased, yet the Father allowed the Son to suffer. As A. F. 5310, it was the will of the Lord to crush him. And here you can hold the absolute fact that the Father loves the Son next to the fact that the Father let the Son suffer, yes, for a purpose. But what that does for us is when we look at the cross in tragedy and we're pet, pet, pet, looking for God and asking, are you there? Do you love me? We look at the cross and we remember, yes, God does allow people He absolutely loves to suffer. Jesus is the proof. And so knowing that what we're going through does not mean God doesn't love us, well, then leads us to that next question and then that question being, so why is this happening? And so let's talk about Naomi's connection. Naomi's connection. And what's amazing about Naomi's story here, and really the whole book of Ruth, is that it's connected to the big story. It's connected to the whole big story of Scripture. And so one of the things we can learn from all her tragedy is that when tragedy strikes us, there's always a whole lot more going on than we're able to see. When ever we're going through something really, really difficult, God is up to more than we know at the time, generally. And the reason we can know that is because we think about Naomi's story and we see all the suffering and the tragedy that she's experiencing here. We can see that she didn't know what the future held. She didn't know what God was doing. And the reality is, although she surely didn't know it at the time, Naomi's story matters for the world. Because Naomi's story, in other words, let me put it this way, if these tragedies hadn't happened, if the things that she went through didn't happen the way they did, we could actually say, without Naomi's story, there's no gospel. One of the things that scholars believe about the book of Ruth is that it was written to give the full account of the lineage of David. We'll talk about that more at the end of the book when we see a genealogy that points us to David. And see, it was very important to have a full lineage and understanding of the lineage of David to know that he was the rightful king in the Old Testament, just like we need that same thing for the Son of God, Jesus Christ, in the New Testament. If God's promises are going to be fulfilled as he has said them, then not only does David have to have this right lineage, but the Son of God, Jesus Christ does as well. And if we pan out and realize that all of these things that happened to Naomi, as bad as they were, we're actually still connected to the big story. It helps you and I realize that we're just like any child of God, the things that are happening to us are somehow connected to this big unfolding story that God has written and is bringing about. Every single thing, as bad as it is that we face somehow has a tremendous purpose. And when we believe that, that question of why is this happening may not be exactly answered, but at the very least we can live with assurance that if I knew why this was happening, if God were to pull back the curtain and let me see all that this does in the world, I would not change a thing. We can be a people who have that much confidence. We talked about how there's a theme of sovereignty. Here's a perfect picture of that. Although Naomi didn't realize it at the time, God is sovereignly using her story and all these terrible things to unfold his great plan to redeem the world in Christ. And we know that, there are times where we will say yes, this terrible thing happened and good has come of it. Like we see that. You might know a little bit about this. I was reading about this interesting. There's a time where an airline from Korea went through a complete restructuring because they were having a lot of crashes. In 1997, a Korean Air Flight 801 crashed and it was terrible. It was terrible crash. Almost everybody on the airplane died. And there's no other way to refer to it as just complete tragedy. But what's interesting is it launched an investigation. And there was an investigation done on this particular flight as well as some other crashes that had happened. In this investigation, they find that Korean airlines planes were crashing 17 times more often than these other airlines around the world. And so obviously they're realizing there's this big problem. So they do this full investigation. And interestingly enough, after they have investigated all these different crashes, they find something out. That's not only important for Korean airlines to improve, but for all airlines around the world, particularly ones from certain countries. And what they realized is that a big issue was the Korean culture. In Korean culture, you don't question authority. In Korean culture, you don't challenge authority. And what was happening, they realized. It's these pilots who are human and therefore they can make mistakes. When they were making mistakes that were going to lead to a crash, the flight crew, the first officer didn't want to challenge them. Didn't want to say, hey, this is really bad. You need to do something different. And so what was happening is these pilots were flying into the ground and were crashing from time to time. So what Korean airlines did is they found this out and so they restructured how they do this and they changed the ways they operate. So that when a captain who's a human being and makes mistakes is making a mistake that the crew feels okay and even that it's the right thing to do to go ahead and challenge. And what happens is the Korean airlines success rate in goes up goes through the roof. They become one of the safest airlines on the planet, but that's not all. Also, this reality of cultures were questioning authority is not allowed all over the world. There's cultures that are like that. And so aviation changes for all these places all around the world as well. And you could then say that from this crash that happened in 1997. Now, because that happened, there are so many countless lives that are far safer in the air because of that one crash that launched this investigation. One author writing about this says aviation experts will tell you that the success of this war on mitigation, which is what they called this issue, as much as anything else accounts for the extraordinary decline in airline accidents in recent years. So in other words, we can look at that. We can say yes, this terrible thing happened, but God did bring all this good out of that situation. And if we can see that there, then even more importantly, we should be able to see that in the scriptures. And believe that is true. That whenever we're going through something difficult, something tragic, some sort of suffering, he's going to bring good out of it. At some point and in some way for us, for the world. Listen to this. We need to don't let your circumstances shape your understanding of God. Don't let your circumstances shape your understanding of God. Rather let God through his words shape your understanding of your circumstances. And as we are facing tragedies, it's very easy to make us doubt God. But if we face those tragedies by listening to what God has said, the proof in his word that he uses these terrible things to bring about good, we see that in places like Romans 8, 28. Where it says we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. That's the guarantee. God says whatever's happening, no matter how bad it is, it's working together for the good of his people. Genesis 50-20 says, as for you, you meant evil against me but God meant it for good to bring about this saving of many lives. Another example. God using something terrible to bring about something very good. God's word says he'll never leave us or forsake us. God's word says he is our refuge and strength, the very present help in time of trouble. God's word in Revelation 15-4 indicates that at some point God does pull back the curtain. And he does reveal all that happened and why. And we sing for your righteous acts have been revealed. So you and I may not get to know exactly why we're going through something very difficult but we can be certain that God's going to bring something very good out of this. That it's connected to the whole story that God's well aware what's happening and he's using it to bring about such good that when we look back from the New Heavens and New Earth and look upon history, we won't change anything. We'll simply say everything you did, God, everything you let happen, God, brought about good will approve. If you think I mean just imagine the disciples seeing Jesus hanging on the cross right they're thinking this is a disaster. They've been following them for three years and now here he is being executed and they're thinking this is a disaster. And it was supposed evil thing that ever happened the murder of the Son of God but yet out of the worst thing that ever happens God brings the best thing possible the forgiveness of sins. Because as he was dying on the cross he was paying for the sins of all who would trust in him so that you and I can know that we're reconciled to him through faith alone. So if we believe that then if we believe okay I'm going to choose to believe that just because I belong to God doesn't mean I'm not going to suffer I'm not going to face tragedy. And just because I can't tell how God's going to bring good out of this doesn't mean he isn't if we believe somehow he's bringing good out of all these things then the next question we're going to have is can I actually run to him with this. And so let's third let's talk about Naomi's choice okay Naomi's choice and here's the point when we let tragedy and disaster drive us to God it sets the stage for our lives to be transformed. I know how easy it is to let tragedy and disaster send us running from God but we see from Naomi's story and from the whole teaching of scripture that when we let tragedy drive us to God and double down on our faith it actually sets the stage for our lives to be transformed. And we see that because of what happens you're right right now at the end of verse five Naomi's life is in a complete disaster we've acknowledged that and next week we'll see how she was saying that God had dealt very bitterly with her but by the end of this book Naomi is in a very different situation her life has been transformed and the people around her are praising God for the way God has restored her life. The way God has given her this future and so the question is how did that come about well as we'll see next week Naomi chose in this moment of complete disaster to go back to the promised land to go back to the people of God which tells us that when we are facing difficulty we should flock right to the church we should run to our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ we should be with God's people that's part of the world. God's people that's part of how we say I'm going to trust God through this we get back with God's people but I'll tell you something I've been a Christian long enough and I've had enough conversations with people who have let tragedy and disaster drive them from God to know something there's always something deeper. So like I've sat with a number of people who say because this happened because this bad thing happened to me or to someone I love I can't trust God or I don't believe God is good or I don't believe God exists and it's very interesting when we sort of park that question for a moment and I ask do you want God to actually be good to truly be for you and to be able to make all things new and bring good all of this do you actually want that. If that could be true would you want that I've never met anybody that said no I actually don't want that and then I've been able to ask okay so why. Is it possible. Is it possible that the reason that you want to keep going towards towards the unbelief route is a possible that you actually don't think God would accept you. Is it possible that you're saying you're not sure if you can accept God because the real thing is you don't think God would accept you and it's very interesting what kind of conversations come when we bring it there. And there might be some of you here who are sort of justifying unbelief because of something bad that's happened to you and I'll ask you the same thing do you want there to be promises. That God uses it for good do you want to believe that one day you'll be able to see why things happen and you'll praise God for it. And is it possible that you're struggle to accept God for who he is is because you don't think he'll accept you for who you are. And if that's the case I have good news and the good news is that when Jesus was dying on the cross to pay for sins he really was paying for sins. He really was reconciling people to God. He really was taking the punishment we deserve for our sins and therefore through faith we really are fully reconciled to God. We really are completely forgiven. He really is not waiting to pounce but rather waiting to embrace. And that with faith in Christ we can then run to him instead of away from him. You know Sarah Groves is one of my favorite singers. Sarah Groves she's one of my favorite singers one of my favorite songwriters I think she's absolutely brilliant. And my one of my favorite songs by my favorite singer is the song My Dream. And you can you should look it up and listen to it later. Sarah Groves My Dream. And she writes the song it's really powerful. And what it's about is she's talking about how this she's sort of paints a picture of her life in which there's some darkness characterizing her life at the time. She's definitely wrestling with some doubts. Her assurance that God loves her is really low or seemingly gone and she's really really struggling the first part of this song but then she talks about this dream she keeps having. And she says this you are standing in the driveway. This is her dream. This is what she sees. You are standing in the driveway as I come up the street. I can tell by your movement you're not angry you are waiting there. And then song continues and she talks about all her foolishness and her folly and her doubt and her melancholy and she's she's giving all these reasons why you shouldn't be there. You shouldn't be there. You shouldn't be there. You should be running from me. And then she finishes the song saying every night for a year you have come to me here. Just a simple image in my mind as I fall asleep of you standing in the driveway as I come up the street I can tell by your movement you're not angry. You are running now. You are running now friends. The only way you live with hope in light of the tragedy is by running to him. And if what's stopping you from trusting him more deeply is the thought that he wouldn't accept you. You look at the cross and believe that it's true. Believe in the sufficiency of what Christ has done on your behalf. Believe your sins are forgiven. Believe he has given you his righteousness. Believe you are welcome in his presence. See yourself coming up the street. See him standing in the driveway. Be able to tell by his movements. He's not angry. He's waiting there. Now he's even running to you. Even now. Because Christ has paid our debt. It's pray, Father. I want to pray especially for those who have been really wrestling with doubts, unanswered questions, objections, specifically surrounding these difficult things that they've been through or seen others go through. Holy spirit would you do what only you can do and peel back layers to see if just perhaps their struggle to accept you is really a struggle to believe you would accept them and would you then shine the light of the cross that they might believe they are forgiven. Believe that you accept them and that you are there ever present strength in time of need and that you will be with them and for them and that you will help them through this and one day reveal how it played a role in the big plan. That one day they'll see you face to face and be able to praise you for all that has happened all your righteous deeds have been revealed we will sing together until then keep our eyes on Jesus the author and finisher of our faith we pray in his name amen.