Sorrow: You can’t run from your problems
Ruth 1:1–5
Sept 11, 2011

The underlying character in the book of Ruth is a young lady from the land of Moab, but the story does not open with her, it opens up with some very general and yet very specific information. We have specifics of time (days of the Judges) activity (famine) and specific locations (Bethlehem, Judah and Moab) but a generality in individuals (certain man, wife & two sons). It’s not until you get to verse 2 that you get individual identities attached to the former generalities.
Since God opens this book with these specifics, let’s take a look at these specifics.
Days of the Judges – the time period between the deaths of the last individuals of Joshua’s court until the establishment of King Saul, about 1390 and 1050 b.c. As we looked at in my last message it was a time period where God’s people were in and out of relationship with Him. It was a period of time in which the people did according to their own desires which lead them to live like the world.
It was during the darkest period of walking in the ways of the world that they realized they had strayed from God and called out to Him and He then sent a Judge (military leader) to rescue them and restore them once more to him.

Famine - Genesis 47:13 Now there was no bread in all the land-
Living in America today we have a hard time fully incorporating this word into thought process. I know that there are some severely hard hit areas in America today, but it is nothing like the news pictures that come out of North Eastern Africa in the region of Somalia. A region where food and water is so scarce that people pack up and travel for miles to get a little food from some generous hands.

Moab -  A land on the Eastern Shore of the Dead Sea. The Moabites were descendants of Lot from his incestuous union with his firstborn daughter and the Ammonite from the incestuous union with his second daughter, Genesis 19:36 – 38. It is the same descendants that God condemns and forbids from ever having the ability to enter the assembly of the Lord to the tenth generation for they refused to give the nation bread and water and placed a curse on them on their original journey to the Promised Land. Deuteronomy 23:3 – 4.

Bethlehem – House of Bread. Formerly known as Ephraim or Fruitfulness (Future Birth place of Jesus – The Bread of Life)

Judah - Praised

Let’s put the known information of verse one together.

There is a certain man living in the land know as Fruitfulness or the house of bread in the land of Praise that is experiencing a time of lacking all three, in a period where everybody does what seems right in his own eyes, who decides to pack up his family and move to a land where the people despise God and His people.

Psalms 60:7 – 8a
7     Gilead is Mine, and Manasseh is Mine; Ephraim also is the helmet for My head;
Judah is My lawgiver.
8     Moab is My washpot;  Over Edom I will cast My shoe;
Probably a wide, shallow bowl in which the feet were washed. The word is applied in triumphant scorn to Moab’s inferiority
In reference to Edom again a position of low recognition,

The truly sad part of all of this, this certain man is taking his family out of what God called the Promised Land to a land that God refers to as a washbasin.

God Ordained Famine
Why is this happening to the Land and the people that God has spent so much time with?
Deuteronomy 11:13 - 19

These are some of the final words before the death of Moses and the nation of Israel crossing over into the Promised Land.

  13   “It shall come about, if you listen obediently to my commandments which I am commanding you today, to love the Lord your God and to serve Him with all your heart and all your soul,
14   that He will give the rain for your land in its season, the early and late rain, that you may gather in your grain and your new wine and your oil.
15   “He will give grass in your fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.
16   “Beware that your hearts are not deceived, and that you do not turn away and serve other gods and worship them.
17   “Or the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and He will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its fruit; and you will perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you.
18   “You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontal on your forehead.
19   “You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up.

 

The famine that the nation of Israel was experiencing was a deliberate walking in their own eyes, thus taking them away from God and the blessing that come with obedience.
The nation of Israel was experiencing a physical absence of rain, thus the inability for crops to grow in the region, but famine can result in other ways. Remember back I Genesis 47:13 it said; “Now there was no bread in all the land” but famine does not necessarily have to be the result of a lack of rain. Famine is the result of the lack of ability to get sustenance. A shutting down of a food source results in a famine. Floods can also produce a famine
But this famine is more than just physical. This physical famine they experienced is the result first and foremost because of a spiritual famine, they stopped having regular fellowship with God.
Look back with me at verse 16
“Beware that your hearts are not deceived and that you do not turn away and serve other gods and worship them.
This verse is the separation between blessings and consequences. Remember back to the book of Judges, when the people followed God through the judge, the people prospered, but when the judge died the people returned to their wicked ways.
America’s Famine
Today in America, most people are not going as hungry physically as they are spiritually. Since the US Supreme court ruled On June 17, 1963, the Court decided, by an 8-1 majority, that the required religious practices of Bible reading and recitation of the Lord's Prayer and the laws requiring them are unconstitutional.
A lot of people know about this particular case but very few have ever heard of the ones that lead up to this infamous case.
Prior to the Supreme Court's decision, laws requiring Bible reading in public schools has been tested in courts in twenty-three states. In seventeen they were upheld, but courts in Illinois, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Washington, and Wisconsin declared Bible reading exercises in the schools unconstitutional. The Illinois decision dates back to 1910 with Wisconsin dating back to 1890.
State ex rel. Weiss and others vs. District Board, etc. 76 Wis. 177 (1890)
In this case, popularly known as the Edgerton Bible case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court determined that Bible reading in public schools is unconstitutional. Until this point, the King James Bible had been recommended as a textbook by the state superintendent of schools.
What Are You Hungry For?
It’s one thing to know when you are hungry and what you are hungry for, but it is quite another to be hungry and not know what you are hungry for or that you are even hungry in the first place.
This is what is happening in the world today, people are hungry and they know they are but they don’t know exactly what they are hungry for so they are going after whatever they think will satisfy.
When Jesus was closing in on the end of His forty days of fasting just after His baptism, as a physical human being he was hungry and the devil knew it so he challenged Jesus to turn some stones into bread and Jesus responded by saying in Matthew 4: 4, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”
There is more to finding satisfaction in this world than what is  physical.
Philippians 4:11 – 13
11   Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.           12 I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.   13 I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

Paul said that it is wonderful to have physical things in this world, but what do you do when you do not have access to the things of the world. He said that we need to learn where our strength for everyday living comes from and that is through the only one who can strengthen.
In a confrontation with the Jewish people about how the people who followed Moses survived in the desert, they were insisting that Moses gave them the bread on which they had survived and Jesus said that their existence was based on their belief in God, for it was God who gives life and now Jesus says in quit stark terms that He is the sustainer.
John 6:31
31 “aOur fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread out of heaven to eat.’ ”
32   Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven.
33   “For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.”
34   Then they said to Him, “Lord, always give us this bread.”
35   Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.

The devil in this temptation is the same one that he tries on us every day, “You got to live don’t you? Yes, you do. The question is on what will you live?
This brings us to verse 2 and the identification of the certain man.
Ruth 1:2 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, Ephrathites of Bethlehem in Judah. Now they entered the land of Moab and remained there.
Just as the names gave us understanding in verse 1, the names here will give us some added insight.
Elimelech -
This man name means, My God is King.
What a name to have, but oh what a failure he was in living up to the name.
When the times got rough, just like Elimelech we have three choices in facing our famine; endure it, escape it, or enlist it. If we only endure our trials, then trials become our master, and we have a tendency to become hard and bitter. If we try to escape our trials, then we will probably miss the opportunities God wants to achieve in our lives. But if we learn to enlist our trials, they will become our servants instead of our masters and work for us; and then God says in Romans 8:28, He will work all things together for our good and His glory.
Where did Elimelech go wrong?
He honored the enemy and not the Lord.
Fifty miles, fifty miles of separation. About a one hour drive today is all that it took to separate Elimelech from God. Elimelech only started out to travel to Moab to escape the trials of the famine, but his travel cost him so much more. It cost him and his two son’s grave plots in the land that God despised.

In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:32
But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.
Today if you are experiencing a famine in your life, I urge you to ask yourself, where are you walking? If it is not with God, ask yourself why have you chosen to walk that way? If you are walking with God and feel this emptiness, I urge you to ask yourself, what is God trying to show me?
How you deal with your famine will be resolved in, “Where have I placed my faith?” Don’t let your famine destroy you, as it did Elimelech and his sons.