He was an extraordinarily intelligent child Entering Yale College before his 13th birthday at the completion of his formal education He became the minister of the congregational church in North Hampton, Massachusetts A few years later in 1734 a revival fell upon his congregation I'm outpouring of the spirit of God that eventually swept across all of New England and what came to be known as the Great Awakening As many as 50,000 people were brought to faith in Jesus Christ and joined churches His name was Jonathan Edwards It has been said of him by secular authorities that his was the greatest mind North America ever produced I am tempted Martin Lloyd Jones set on one occasion To compare the Puritans to the Alps Lutheran Calvin to the Himalayas and Jonathan Edwards to Mount Everest In all probability He has been the single most significant influence in my own Christian experience On the home front he and his wife Sarah Reared a family to prove to be a far-reaching gift to American cultural history It was just 150 years after his death that his immediate descendants included 13 college presidents 65 professors two graduate school deans 100 lawyers 66 positions 80 holders of public office including three senators and three governors a roster of prominent bankers and industrialists not to mention a legion of missionaries God's blessing upon this man was incontrovertible and Yet my friends let it not go and said this morning that Jonathan Edwards was a man who knew of God's dark Providences in some profoundly agonizing ways For example his dear friend David Brainerd a significant Christian missionary in his own right was Invited into the Edwards home where he was nursed for the final months of his life until he died from tuberculosis During those months Brainerd a young single man fell in love with Edwards's daughter Jerusha who while caring for Brainerd contracted tuberculosis and died herself shortly thereafter It was just a few months later when a severe dissension erupted in the Northampton congregation To the great disdain of the people Edwards refused to serve the Lord supper to those who had made no profession of faith in Jesus Christ Consequently in what would prove to be perhaps one of the blackest moments on the American Church history seen Jonathan Edwards is fired by a vote of his congregation after 23 years of faithful pastoral ministry He immediately received offers from churches in New England and Great Britain He moved instead out to the New England frontier to become a missionary to the Stockbridge Indians During which time providentially He penned some of the greatest and most influential theological works ever written in the English language Eight years later he was called to become the president of what would one day come to be known as Princeton seminary It was during this time that an outbreak of smallpox
Covered the New Jersey area the New Jersey region Always a man ahead of his time Edwards chose a new and controversial form of intervention He took a vaccination of smallpox to inoculate himself against the disease It would prove to kill him At one point while on his deathbed He took notice of the anxiety and fear on the faces of those surrounding him And though his throat was lined with nodules that made it impossible for him to even swallow water He somehow managed to eke out these words Trust in God And you need not fear A few days later he died He was 54 years old His beloved and companion Sarah who herself was suffering from such severe rheumatism that she could barely manage to hold up her head Wrote a letter to their daughter Esther one of their remaining ten children Esther had been married to Aaron Burr senior who just Shortly before had also died unexpectedly Sarah's letter read like this What shall I say a Holy and Good God Has covered us with a dark cloud Oh that we may kiss the rod and Lay our hands on our mouths The Lord has done it He has made me adore his goodness that we had your father so long But my God lives and he has my heart Oh what a legacy my husband and your father has left us. We are all given to God and There I am and love to be
She had learned the theology of her husband. Oh that we may kiss the rod And lay our hands on our mouths
The Lord has done it
Not fate Not fortune Not coincidence It just so happened God is the author of frowning providences And my dear friends if you were concerned to be a biblically informed Christian You want never to blush at such an assertion There are times when it seems as though God himself has taken up Sides against us and has become our most violent enemy and yet as we have discovered in recent days God does not hurt his covenant children for no reason His afflictions are never capricious They are never whimsical. They are never random to the contrary Contrary they are specific expressions of his providential purpose for your life So that you can say with Sarah Edwards especially on those occasions when there seems to be no apparent reason for such afflictions A holy and good God has covered me with a dark cloud Now my dear friends if a thing as this is not theological fiction But is in fact altogether true of what then can we be confident? We can be confident of what we learned last Lord's day That behind a frowning providence There hides the smiling face Good will come of it to be sure not because bad karma must always be balanced out by good karma But because a good and purposeful God is the author of my dark providences I may not understand how he will affect good nor have I been given a promise as to when he will affect good But I can be certain of this devastations from God Are always compensated by his inevitable work of restoration Devastation from God Is always compensated by his inevitable work of restoration And this you see in large part is what the story of groove is all about That's why it's in the Bible friends It teaches us to wait patiently for the beauty in God's providential purposes to emerge While everything around us seems to be filled with chaos and suffering You know, it's very much like that scene in the book of Revelation You remember the opening of chapter 4 When a voice out of heaven cries to the apostle John Come up here You need to appreciate John's setting The Church of Jesus Christ is being assailed by false doctrine Nostus is a man particular Authentic Christians are being persecuted The other apostles are being martyred John himself has been exiled on the Isle of Patmos Now friends John is a human being bearing all the frailties to go along with being human being And he wonders to himself Is this what Jesus expected would happen when he entrusted us with the good news And as it were he is taken up into heaven Where he is graciously given a vision of the victorious outworking of God's plan to save the human race through the conquering lamb Jesus Christ Come up here John See things from this vantage point That's what this storyteller is doing He is saying perhaps she is saying Come up here Read this story And then learn to interpret God's providence from this vantage point
The great Puritan John Flavall said it like this
Some providences Like Hebrew letters Must be read backwards
At times beloved The only way to rightly interpret God's providence in your life Is to begin at the end of the story That's the advantage we have right here We know how this story ends We know going in the glorious intention of God Boaz will become a Redeemer for Ruth Ruth and Boaz will supply a Redeemer for Naomi The covenant nation will be given her greatest king And a nearly extinct family in Israel Will be continued to ultimately issue forth the Savior of the human race Jesus Christ From reading this story beloved We come to discover that each dark providence Is an intentional step toward the fulfillment of God's glorious and multifaceted purpose But if this is the only reason why this story is here To provide us with an accurate historical account of the outworking of God's providence
No beloved this story has been written to you This story has been written for you This story has been written to affect you and to persuade you To persuade you To confidently trust God through your own dark providences Until the intended beauty of his sovereign purpose makes itself apparent
At times our lives very much resemble the hidden sign of a cross-stitched tapestry You ever seen the backside of those things? What does it look like? Nothing but a tangled mesh of unrelated colors loose and frayed ends of thread unravelable knots It makes no sense, it reveals no design, it reflects no beauty But when the work is finished Turned over And displayed for all to see The beauty of the intended design becomes apparent and serves as a means of bringing delight to all those who see it My friends as you reckon with God's dark providences, you can always be certain of this There is purpose at work There is intention at play, there is design going on And that devastations from God are always compensated by his inevitable work of restoration Now this morning we're confronted with both The vehement reactions of devastation Followed by the almost nonchalant signs of restoration What is clear is that neither of these things just happens but that God himself is the author of both Now let me remind you of the context Word comes to Naomi that the covenant lord has visited his people With the result being that the famine The original dilemma which triggered her descent into the dark night of despair Has been reversed With only to close on her back she sets out for Judah accompanied by her two daughters-in-law Orpa and Ruth And somewhere along this 50 mile journey she stops in her tracks and she exhorts the two of them to go back to Moab In fact and don't forget this She actually prays that Yahweh himself would show his great has said to them his covenant love his loyal love and kindness By supplying each of them with a husband and children go back and so Orpa Does this very thing? She returns to her people And her gods It is no accident that we never hear from her again
Ruth refuses Not because she's an obstinate young woman But because she's a changed young woman Something has occurred in her that only God himself can affect she's been converted and the evidence of it the proof of it She turns her back on everything else so as to not forsake Yahweh in his people And so there at the crossroads of Judah and Moab
the two of them resume The lonely walk back to Bethlehem Now in all probability Bethlehem like most cities in the ancient Near East had gates through whom all people would need to enter Cummings and goings then were very easily noticed And such was the case as we see now with the arrival of Naomi and Ruth verse 19 When they arrived in Bethlehem The whole town was stirred because of them and the women exclaimed can this be Naomi? Now the word here translated stirred the whole town was stirred is a very positive enthusiastic exuberant word it means to echo with excitement to resound It's the word that's used to speak of the joyous excitement that surrounded the coronation of King Solomon It was used to speak of the joyful shouts of the people of God when the ark is brought back into the camp of Israel It is a joyous stirring it is an enthusiastic jubilant kind of spirit that is permeating the people of Bethlehem and the usage of that word the understanding of this word helps us then to rightly interpret and hear the following question Can this be Naomi? They're not saying with shocked concern
Could this be Naomi? The image here is that of Excited people Scurrying around the streets of Bethlehem buzzing with excitement and joy and enthusiasm and saying to one another in in positive surprise Is it true? Is she really back? Can this really be Naomi? Now the listeners to this story would have picked that up in the storyteller's voice Why do I make a big deal of this? Because their joy was the final twist of the dagger in Naomi's heart
You can hear it in her response
Don't call me Naomi She told them Call me Mara Friends try to envision what's going on here
It's been 10 plus years and here she is now standing in Bethlehem You can imagine what's going on in her heart All of those familiar sites Dear friends grown old The streets that she had walked with ilmalek The places where her sons had played The resurgence of all those pent up emotions The she had shoved down so long ago The enthusiasm of all of the people buzzing and brimming around you But let me ask you something friends It's a very practical question When you are overrun with bitterness What's the one thing that arouses your anger faster than anything else?
The joy of other people And when she hears those old familiar voices enthusiastically speak her name Naomi Pleasant one The bitter irony of it all brought every ounce of repressed resentment to the surface You see in Israel Names were not just labels of identification Names were the descriptions of a person's inner character Which in turn were presumed to influence a person's conduct But the Naomi you see the contradiction between her name And her circumstances smacked of mockery Pleasant one Who are you kidding? Every time I hear that name it makes me sick Don't call me Naomi she told them Call me mora bitter
Because that's who I am And let me tell you why Because the Almighty has made my life very bitter 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 Did you catch the parallel here? Bitter is as far from Pleasant as empty is from full Pleasant one may have been an appropriate name for me When I was full When I had a husband When I had children When I had the prospect of a long lineage But now I'm bereft of everything that gives a woman worth in this culture I'm empty the name bitter Better suits my empty condition And beyond all of that beloved what is so utterly clear in the words of Naomi at this point Is that to her way of thinking her situation is not the consequence of fate fortune or coincidence It didn't just happen she understands the far-reaching implications of God's divine providence She knows that nothing takes place in the entire universe Apart from the irresistible decree of the God of Israel She is a red-blooded thorough-going Old Testament believer who has read the word rightly And knows the God of Israel And in fact beloved the way she lays this at his feet is extraordinarily infaddened Look at this closely it's one of these places where you really need to Put your thinking cap on for a minute look at this closely She speaks in two couplets take notice Of the names that she assigns to God and the order in which she speaks them The Almighty has made my life very bitter I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty here's couplet number one first couplet Two names for God. This is the order. Almighty Shaddai we sing that song out Shaddai Almighty Lord Yahweh Look at the second couplet Notice the same names Reverse order the Lord has afflicted me The Almighty has brought misfortune upon me now watch this watch now very important first couplet Shaddai Yahweh Second couplet Yahweh Shaddai Why do I bother you with this? So that you'll see the emphasis in Naomi's complaint in a structure like this and what we call a chiastic structure the emphasis is on the name that is in the middle in this case Yahweh Naomi is saying do you know who has done this to me? I'll tell you It's the God with whom I am in a covenant relationship The God who was promised to take care of me The God who was promised his has said to me The God who was promised to love me the God who was promised to bless me my covenant God has done this to me and to stress his culpability even further She identifies him in a second way with a name that eliminates from him all possibility of escape from responsibility
Shaddai the all-powerful omnipotent one
It's as though she anticipates the reaction of the women Naomi Yahweh would never do this to you She shuts that door right now
This is the work of the God who's limitless power defies resistance
His fingerprints are all over the situation Who is the culprit in my disasters?
That old troublemaker Yahweh my covenant lord The God who possesses all power in the universe the Almighty one He is the cause of my bitterness He is the source of my misfortune He is the one who has afflicted me He is the one who stripped away everything that could have defined me as full
and left me bare It's him Now maybe beloved you're taken back a little bit by this kind of talk The baldness of it Almost brazen But do you realize beloved that Naomi is not the only person in the Bible who speaks this way to God Moses did Elijah did The psalmist did Job did Jeremiah did Abraham did And you want to know what is absolutely amazing to me
Not one of them was ever zapped for doing so
There is a theology of complaint in the Bible Now beloved please listen to me very carefully I in no way mean to justify irreverence And to be sure bitterness unchecked can easily evolve into something exceedingly sinful and even crippling But having made those disclaimers let me suggest that not only are these complaints from God's faithful people tolerated by him there are occasions when they are welcomed by him in the sense that they reflect a person who takes God's godhood seriously In other words anybody who recognizes the absolute and full sovereignty of God My sooner or later confront the very real problem of human suffering the existence of pain in this fallen world And to wrestle with that problem beloved is not simple even when we attempt to put God on trial Okay It didn't just happen You have done this
Why why did you ordain my business to fail Why did you afflict my body with cancer Why did you cause my children to suffer Why did you afflict my father with Parkinson's disease I Grant that you are sovereign I bow to your almightyness But the very fact that I recognize who you are leaves me with no alternative but to direct my complaints to you
And beloved let me tell you something that I hope with all of my heart brings you great encouragement this morning The God that we worship Is not a God who has no feelings We worship a God who is filled with compassion and understanding and mercy and love Nothing impossible God of the theological rationalists We worship a God who himself by virtue of his own eternal decree has entered into this world of suffering and pain in the person of his son Jesus Christ We worship a God who himself has experienced the agony of shattered relationships as his beloved son uttered that cry of death Our election from the cross my God my God why have you forsaken me My dear friends whatever game God is playing with the human race He himself has seen fit to enter into this game and to become a participant He has submitted himself to the darkest of providences And in his son Jesus Christ he knows all of the pain and anguish and discouragement and despair that you and I Will ever feel and what's more even now at his right hand there sits his son in the fullness of his humanity resonating with all of the trials and struggles and griefs and discouragements that attend us this side of heaven God is not afraid of your questions beloved God is not afraid of your prosecutions either He will not zap you for directing them to him To the contrary doing so reveals your confidence in the fact that he's still the one in charge If you would allow me to say it like this There is a very real sense in which such questions are an expression of worship He's sovereign Naomi's theology Has no place for chance fate or coincidence You never hear her say you know it just so happen Let me tell you what evil people did to me but because of that We're left with two nagging questions as we come to the end of this chapter First of all will God's character be vindicated I mean some pretty strong things have been said about God here The Almighty has made my life very bitter The Lord has brought me back empty the Lord has afflicted me the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me Will God's character be vindicated will there be an answer to that accusation? And two Secondly Will God hear the prayer that Naomi prayed back in verses eight and nine when she calls upon this God to show his Has said to root by providing her with a husband and children The answer to both of these questions begins to reveal itself as we transition into the next chapter But before they we go there. Let me ask you one final question Are Naomi's complaints about God Accurate I didn't ask you if they're honest They are painfully honest. I'm asking you are they true Is what she says about God accurate and the answer is Yes In that God himself has been the author of these dark providences No In that she has not returned to Bethlehem empty Verse 22 So Naomi returned from Moab Accompanied by Ruth the Moabitis Her daughter in law She is more full than she knows What did I tell you at the outset this morning You can be confident that devastations from God are always compensated by his inevitable work of restoration God's compensation to Naomi has begun with the conversion of Ruth though as yet she is all together unaware of it And as this next chapter begins to unfold this compensation from God begins to pick up momentum The signs of restoration appear almost nonchalantly the end of verse 22 So Naomi returned from Moab Accompanied by Ruth the Moabitis or daughter in law Arriving in Bethlehem
Just as the barley harvest was beginning
Coincident Good luck Now Friends Maybe you picked this up when we read the narrative at the beginning this morning But when you read this narrative rightly Verse 1 in chapter 2 seems as though Someone just kind of arbitrarily stuck it in there and it doesn't make sense in the flow of the narrative Let's begin back at chapter 1 verse 22 skip verse 1 and read verse 2 See if that flow doesn't sit better with you So Naomi returned from Moab Accompanied by Ruth the Moabitis her daughter in law Arriving in Bethlehem is the barley harvest was beginning and Ruth the Moabitis said to Naomi Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor sound better does to me So why does the story teller interrupt this wonderful flow in the story to throw in this little thing about Boaz Especially when everything he says here about Boaz in verse 1 we're going to discover later as the story unfolds Why throw it in here It's his way of saying Fix your eyes on this guy Watch this guy Might he be God's answer to the lingering questions of the previous chapter
Now it just so happened That Naomi had a relative on her husband's side Coincidentally from the clan of Illuminac And as good fortune would have it A man of standing Is that how it is seen in And Ruth the Moabitis said to Naomi let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor now friends Ruth and Naomi have nothing at this point But it just so happened That God have made a provision for such people in his law hadn't he Leviticus chapter 19 reads like this When you read the harvest of your land do not read to the edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest Do not go over your vineyard a second time to pick up the grapes that have fallen leave them for the poor and the alien I am the Lord your God in other words God says here is our welfare system When you go out to glean landowners Don't glean to the very edges of the field to make sure that you squeeze out every scent of profit out of that land And when you happen to miss a stalk of wheat the first time around don't go back with your sickle and Cut it down when you're loading up your wagons with stalks of wheat and one happens to fall to the ground Don't pick it up leave it there for the marginalized leave it there for the people in your community who are disenfranchised Why he says I am the Lord your God in other words I want my character to be displayed in your relationships to one another Let's be a bit more focused. I want your socio-economic life To reflect the nature of my heart not profit first compassion generosity And love apparently Naomi instructs root That this has been God's provision Ruth volunteers to go Naomi said to her go ahead my daughter verse three so she went out And began to glean in the fields behind the harvesters As it turned out She found herself working in the field belonging to boas who was from the clan of Illuminati can you see the gleam in the storytellers eye Can you hear the smile on his face when he says As it turned out the way it actually comes across in the Hebrew As luck would have it He's playing with us you see he's teasing us What is he getting at? That there was no intentionality on roots part She went looking for a place to find work not to hunt down a man by the name of boas You see dear friends and part of this can be more fully appreciated when we understand the nature of farming life in that day in that age Fields for farming in the ancient Near East were portioned out sections of large tracks of land So that you might own one piece Someone else might own the piece next to you and yet a third and a fourth and a fifth and a sixth and a seventh The person might own other pieces in order to maximize the productivity of that land No fences were used to define the boundaries of an individual's field So imagine now this giant patchwork of land with hundreds of men and women working in so many different fields that it all looks like this indistinguishable mess to you And moreover don't forget that There is a sense in which Ruth doesn't belong there Did you notice how the author makes pains to tell us in verse two That the author make sure to remind us of her ethnicity Out of the blue Ruth the Moabodis we all we know she's from Moab Why does he throw it in here? Because there's a sense in which she doesn't belong there There's a sense in which things may be dangerous for her there Now we read that God's law was designed to protect aliens Leviticus chapter 19 But as you can appreciate my friends God's law does not automatically invalidate the very real sin of racism Later in the chapter both Naomi and Boaz are very much concerned with Ruth's safety So here she comes on the scene a scene that is all together strange to her She's out of place. She's in a somewhat of a precarious position. She is confronted with this ocean of harvesting activity And for all intents and purposes She's got to flip a coin Pay your money and take your choice the old axiom goes six or one half dozen to the other I guess all inquire Here she goes up to a guy wearing a hard hat and carrying a clipboard pencil behind his ear Excuse me, sir. May I glean here? Well the owner's not in right now. That's usually his call But I guess there's enough to go around take your place behind the harvesters And so she does As it turned out You know field belonging to Boaz Who was from the clan of ilimola Hmm From the clan of ilimola The author just said that back up in verse one in that strange out of place verse Makes a point of saying he's from the clan of ilimola
I wonder if that will prove to be important
God's compensation To Naomi has begun Though she's all together unaware of it
For more than ten years She has lived with suffering and pain and despair and now In a handful of weeks
Restoration Will engulf her Where has God been in all of this
Right in the middle of it It's the old corny folksong That we learned as children That is more true than we realized
He's got the whole world in his hand And perhaps in a more refined manner
For from him and through him and to him Are all thing Many of you hear this morning will probably recognize the name Kent Hughes Kent Hughes is an acquaintance of mine who is the pastor of college church in Wheaton, Illinois And some years ago his Kent tells the story His wife Barbara checked into the local hospital for the purpose of undergoing a very simple surgical procedure And while she was in surgery Kent waited patiently in the lobby During that time much to his surprise he was greeted by a friend of his wife's niece A young girl by the name of Suzanne Suzanne hardly knew Barbara had no idea that Barbara was undergoing surgery that afternoon She was a lab technician in the hospital who Rarely if ever by the way Walked through the waiting area of the hospital After a brief conversation She wished Kent and Barbara the best and went on her way A little while later the doctor came into the waiting area and told Kent that the surgery had gone well And that he would able to be able to see Barbara in about an hour and a half And so Kent decided to run home pick up some things come back to the hospital When he arrived back at the hospital he found his daughter there totally distraught Only to discover that Barbara had been rushed back into surgery She had started to hemorrhage and the doctors didn't know why This went on for five and a half hours late into the night Finally after doing everything they could to stop the bleeding without success the doctors closed Barbara back up At two in the morning the entire pastoral staff from the church showed up the hospital to pray And uphold the family Barbara continued to hemorrhage however throughout the night they continued to replace her blood But they couldn't find a way to make the bleeding stop On the morning of the next day With the family still gathered in the waiting room Suzanne walked by All together unaware of what had transpired through the night she decided to bring Barbara some magazines to read And while she notices the family gathered together in crisis it dawns on her It probably is inappropriate for me to be here and so she very quietly turns around and begins to walk away When she hears Kent's associate pastor say to him You need to go into encourage Barbara Kent. She knows her blood will not clot. She knows she's dying Suzanne here's that little phrase her blood will not clot and Her memory immediately goes back to an occasion 10 years earlier when she was in med school with Barbara's knees One evening while they were in the lab with nothing else to do out of sheer boredom They decide to take each other's blood test And in so doing they found out that Barbara's knees had a rare condition that prevented her blood from clotting properly She runs back to her lab looks up the data on Barbara's knees Prince it out runs it to the nurse overseeing Barbara's care the nurse looks at it takes it to the surgeon He in turn has an immediately sent to a pathologist who compares Barbara's blood to the blood condition of her knees He determines that they have the very same problem and thus orders a course of treatment that proves to save Barbara's life
It just so happened But 10 years earlier two medical students were so bored with their day that they decided to do blood work on each other It just so happened that one of these same lab technicians would walk through a part of the hospital That she very rarely frequented on the very same day that Kent and Barbara happened to be there It just so happened that the same young girl returned the next morning only to overhear the words her blood isn't clotting It just so happened that her memory was sufficiently job to remember the apparently meaningless event 10 years before
There is no fate There are no coincidences Accidents do not befall us nothing Just so happened
We need to learn to say with Sarah Edler the Lord Has done it Would you pray with me please Father, we love you And how it thrills our hearts to have you become bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger in our minds eye
It is comforting to us to know that you are God in all that that means
That you are vast that you are expensive that your sovereignty
Is bounded by nothing
So that father when the dark providences Are placed on our doorstep we can know In the midst of all of our inability to understand
That they are packages sent from you and that you are good And that everything you ever do has purple or father may we learn that to be the case In our own lives May we remind ourselves frequently That the devastations that come into our lives from you will inevitably be compensated by your work of restoration And so dear God with our hearts breaking It is with anticipation That we wait to see you work in the lives of Mike and messy Our father, this is real for us This is not theory May the word of God Cause us to view the events of our lives differently
We love you and we adore you In Jesus name Amen