Elimelech – Responding to Divine Judgement Wrongly (Ruth 1:1-5)

This sermon was preached on 22/7/2012

The Book of Ruth can be read at many levels. To begin with we can see that it is a story about people because we are introduced to several very different individuals in the book. Some are privileged in a spiritual sense in belonging to the covenant community, others were outside of it. Some are young, others are old. Some are named, others are not. Yet they are all involved in one way or another in the story.

A second level at which we can read it is that it is all about problems, whether it be the famine in 1:1, or the problem of race because Ruth was a Moabite, or the problem of social customs preventing Boaz from marrying Ruth right away. Indeed the book could be called Naomi’s Problems and How God Solved Them.

Connected to both these details of people and problems is the level of providence as we watch God working in their circumstances. Sometimes his working is obvious as in the case of Ruth; at other times, it is not so obvious, but that does not mean his control is less real. The Book of Ruth emphasises God’s overall control of life. It does not deny the reality of human plans, indeed it refers to several of them and their consequences. Yet the author stresses that divine providence is above all the planning that humans make.

The reality of providence introduces us to a fourth level, which is God’s divine purpose. We can see his purpose for Ruth, for Boaz, for the future royal line of David (Ruth 4:18-22), and ultimately for the coming of Jesus because he would be a descendant of Ruth. We can imagine Ruth as a young girl, as a teenager, as the wife of one of Naomi’s sons, and all the time she is being prepared to be an ancestor of Jesus.

That final factor means that God was thinking about us when he was working in the lives of these people. Although they did not realise it at the time, God was working in that situation to bring about worldwide opportunity of blessing through the gospel. We can trace his activities all the way back to Ruth and Boaz and back beyond them as he looked ahead to the days of the gospel.

The time

The book opens by saying that the events recorded in this story occurred during the days of the judges. We can read about some of them in the Book of Judges, and the accounts there tell us that it was an uncertain period spiritually. It is not clear how long the period is that is covered in that book because it is possible that some of the judges ruled simultaneously in different parts of the country. The book describes a regular cycle of backsliding by Israel, divine punishment (usually in the form of captivity), repentance, raising up of a judge who brought spiritual recovery as long as he reigned, followed by backsliding and so on. Indeed we are told more than once that the outlook of each person was that every man did that which was right in his own eyes (Judg. 17:6; 21:5).

It looks as if the period of the Book of Ruth was quite early in the period of the Judges. Boaz’ father was Salmon, and he was a prince of Judah who married Rahab from Jericho (Matt. 1:5). Rahab became a believer in the God of Israel at the beginning of Israel’s campaign to conquer the Promised Land. It took a long time for Israel to conquer the Promised Land and to find rest under Joshua. Boaz would have lived through those years and is introduced to us as an older man in the Book of Ruth. So the incidents described in the Book of Ruth must have taken place within living memory of the victories that God gave to Israel and how he had provided miraculously for their needs.

The judgement

Yet the period in which the story of the Book of Ruth begins looks like it was a period of backsliding and that God had sent a famine as punishment on Israel (there was not a famine in Moab, which was beside Israel geographically, so that suggests that the famine had been sent specifically to an area of Israel). I am not suggesting that every famine is linked to divine judgement, although sometimes they are caused by human greed and sinfulness. Nevertheless famine was one of the threatened judgements that God said he would use against his people when they sinned (Deut. 28:15). So we could entitle the opening section as One Response to a Time of Divine Judgement.

The reality of living in a time of divine judgement should be of interest to us because we are living in such a period. It is the case that God has not judged us by sending a famine, but then he has a wide range of punishments to use. The biggest form of judgement that a society can undergo is the withdrawal of gospel blessing, and although there are places where the gospel is being blessed we are not enjoying the degree of gospel blessing that our forefathers experienced. As a nation we are under this expression of divine judgement.

What if the famine was not sent as divine judgement? It was still a test of those who were affected by it. When it came, would they respond by living in obedience to God or would they respond otherwise? We know what Elimelech and his family did – they went to Moab. But were they right to do so, whether the famine was an expression of divine judgment or only a test sent by the Lord in his providence? One way of answering this question is to look at where an expression or idea is found elsewhere in the Bible. And the clause ‘there was a famine in the land’ is found in the Book of Genesis in connection to both Abraham and Isaac, and with regard to them they were wrong to leave the Promised Land. So I suspect that the author of the book wanted us to keep those previous usages in mind.

Elimelech

The head of the family is a man called Elimelech and his name means ‘God is my king’. This name would suggest that he had pious parents who wanted him to live in a certain way, as a subject of the Lord. Perhaps they had been living in a time when God had restored his cause and wanted their son to serve him wholeheartedly. Every time he heard his name mentioned he would be reminded of what his relationship should be to the Lord.

Of course, it is not enough to have the right name. What is important is that a person lives up to his name. It is a common occurrence in the Bible for a person to be tested by a trial which reveals whether or not he lives up to his name. We can think of individuals such as Elijah and Daniel who had God in their names and found themselves being tested for their faith. The trial came to Elimelech when the famine came. Would he stay in the land of Canaan or would he leave it and go elsewhere? He had a choice to make: he could stay in the land of Canaan and wait patiently on the Lord to restore his people (which he did do, ten years later) or he could leave the country which God had given to his people. Sadly, he chose to go to Moab, which was a strange choice because the Moabites had enslaved some of Israel for eighteen years during the early days of the Judges (Judg. 3:14) and were known for the cruel form of idolatry that they practised.

Yet we can almost see his reasoning in the words of the story. A place of provision was close by and it would have been very easy to interpret that as an arrangement in providence. We can imagine him explaining this to his wife Naomi, mentioning how near it was, and it would not be far to return from. Also he only intended to go for a short time; he only went there to sojourn, not to become a resident. But he was going to be there for a long time, for the rest of his life.

There are some important lessons for us from the story of Elimelech. The first one is that we should have a right relationship with God. That relationship is one in which we confess that he is King. Is that not what the gospel is all about? The Bible tells us that as sinners we are rebels against God, against our King. Yet the King himself came to deliver us from our sins and offers us a full pardon. The King went to the cross and bore the punishment that was due to sinners. Then he sent out his ambassadors with an offer of peace and forgiveness to all rebels who repent of their sins and rely on the King to deliver them. Every Christian can be called Elimelech because Jesus is their King.  

The second lesson is that all professed subjects of the King will be tested as to their commitment to him. Jesus makes that very clear in the parable of the sower. The first wrong response was by those who rejected the gospel immediately. The two other wrong responses were made when various kinds of testing came into their lives. Each person did not succumb to the same test. For some it was trouble, for others it was riches. What marked each of them was that they failed the test.

Elimelech here failed the test as well. I have no idea whether or not Elimelech was a true believer. It is the case that true believers can fail a test when it comes, as we can see from the lives of Abraham and Peter. What we need to be careful about is to ensure that we don’t fail the test and therefore we have to watch what we do.

The third lesson is that we must avoid the two pitfalls that Elimelech chose not to avoid. We cannot use providence as a reason to disobey what God commands. If I find a bag of money on the street, that is not a sign in providence that God wants me to keep it. If I do keep it, I will have broken the eighth commandment. God expects us to obey his commands whatever the providence. I have seen many Christians succumb to this interpretation of providence and assume that somehow God is indicating they can ignore his requirements. Such choices lead to real troubles in the Christian life.

We must also avoid the assumption that Elimelech made about how long he would be in Moab. He did not intend to be there for long, only as long as the famine lasted. Yet he had no idea how long the famine would last. There are Christians whom I have known who decided not to come to the prayer meeting for a short period of a few weeks because they thought they had to do something else for that time, but the outcome has been that now they have not been to a prayer meeting for years. It did not take long for Elimelech to become acclimatised to life in Moab and it will not take long for anyone to become accustomed to living with whatever they do in place of the things of God.

There is a fourth lesson from Elimelech and that is the effects of his actions on his family. Of course, he could have said that he was going to Moab because he wanted to provide for them. Yet because he had darkened his spiritual outlook, he forgot two things. They were the spiritual future of his children and the spiritual needs of his wife. Peter speaks about backsliding Christians and he gives two marks of them. One is that they have bad memories and the other is that they cannot see far ahead (2 Pet. 1:9). Elimelech had forgotten what God had said to his people about the Promised Land and he could not look ahead and see the pitfalls he was digging.

What happened to his sons, who were teenagers when they left Israel? In passing, we can note that their names seem to indicate that they were sickly, which may explain why they died young. They became absorbed with the culture of Moab and despite the father’s intention for a short stay they made it very clear that they were there for life by marrying into Moabite families, which God had forbidden Israelites to do (Deut. 7:3). His sons don’t seem to indicate that they shared the faith of their mother, Naomi, and had no desire to return to Israel. While it is true that Elimelech could not give them spiritual life, he could have prevented them from ever living in Moab.

What about his wife? The day came when she became a widow, dependant on her sons. But they wanted to be in Moab, not Israel. There is poor Naomi, living in an appalling spiritual condition in an alien land because her husband did not anticipate an obvious possibility, a situation which became worse when her sons died. Elimelech’s decision has a drastic effect on those he loved the most.

So it looks as if Elimelech was one of those many people in the days of the judges who did what was right in his own eyes. Is there any hope for his widow? The rest of the book will tell us.