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Dec 02, 2018

Famine, Fear and Faithfulness

Passage: Ruth 1:1-22

Speaker: Brian Land

Series: Advent 2018 - Ruth

Category: Grace Brevard

Keywords: alone, community, fears, friendship, frustrations, grace, trials

During the times of the Judges, there was a perpetually repeated cycle: Rebellion which led to God’s painful discipline, which led to the people crying for help, which led to God helping by healing their land and raising up a new Judge to guide them back to Faith, which led to comfort, which led back to Rebellion….We meet Naomi along with her husband and two sons in the middle of a famine, one of these times of discipline. Instead of turning to God for help, they sought their own solution of going to Moab, a place God very clearly prohibited them from going. In Moab her sons married Moabite women, but then died along with her husband, leaving the three women in utter desperation and Naomi declaring  that she was totally WITHOUT. One of the daughters-in-law (Orpah) went back to her Moabite home while the other (Ruth) tightly clung to Naomi, promising to be WITH her. This advent season is designed to prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus: “THE IMMANUEL: GOD WITH US”. In the famines of our lives we have run off to fend for ourselves (“sin”), only making matters worse. But God chases us down and assures us that he will be WITH us, intertwining our lives together.

Order of Worship

Prelude: Sons & Daughters - God With Us

Call To Worship: Psalm 146:1-9

LEADER: Praise the LORD!

ALL: 1 Praise the LORD, O my soul! 2 I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

LEADER: 3 Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.

ALL: 7b The LORD sets the prisoners free; 8 the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. 9 The LORD watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

Music:

  • What Child Is This
  • Come Thou Long Expected Jesus
  • How Great Thou Art
  • O Come O Come Emmanuel 

Prayer of Confession:

LEADER: Let all bitterness, wrath, clamor, and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. See to that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.

All: Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Assurance of Pardon:

LEADER: And you, who were dead in your sins and outside fellowship with God, He made you alive through Christ, having forgiven all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.  He diffused it, nailing it to the cross, obtaining total victory over our sins.

Advent Readings:

  • Jeremiah 33:14-16
  • Luke 1:26-33

Message Title: Famine, Fear and Faithfulness

Central Text: Ruth 1

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. 2 The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. 3 But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, 5 and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. 6 Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. 7 So she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. 8 But 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 with the dead and with me. 9 The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!” Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. 10 And they said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.” 11 But Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters; why will you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? 12 Turn back, my daughters; go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, 13 would you therefore wait till they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.” 14 Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. 15 And she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” 16 But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return 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. 17 Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” 18 And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more. 19 So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, “Is this Naomi?” 20 She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. 21 I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” 22 So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest.

Benediction: John 6:35

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst…

Media:

12.02.18 Album

Discussion Questions:

  1. When hit with hard times, do you FIGHT, FLIGHT OR FREEZE?
  2. Talk through the “JUDGES CYCLE” (below)
    1. Can you blame them? They were just hungry?
    1. Why are we prone to “rebellion” when we are comfortable?
    2. How is Naomi and her husband going to Moab “rebellion”?
    3. What does “famine” look like in our world?
    4. What does rebellion look like in us? (it’s not always being “naughty”)
  3. How do we pursue comfort to the point of it actually hurting us?
    1. How does this often specifically happen during Christmas?
  4. Why is our fear of being utterly alone so powerful?
  5. When have you felt “hopeless withoutness”?
    1. What did you do?
  6. Talk about Ruth’s response to Naomi’s Hopeless Withoutness.
    1. How was this extremely risky?
  7. Relate all of this to Jesus as “THE IMMANUEL: GOD WITH US.”

Quotes:

  • “The celebration of Advent is possible only to those troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
  • “. . .the best solution involves loss as well as gain.” - W.H. Auden
  • “I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with men” - Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

Books / Articles

Sermons / Talks:

Ruth / Advent Series  (Veritas Church, Fayetteville, NC)

“Ruth, Part 1 by Sinclair Ferguson

Lament by Jeff White (Redeemer)

Ruth 1:1-22