Trusting God in the Face of Suffering

Bart Ehrman, the atheist and recently retired professor of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill, once shared how the topic of suffering in the world directed his path away from faith. He said,

“The God I once believed in was a God who was active in the world. He saved Israelites from slavery; he sent Jesus for the salvation of the world; he answered prayer; he intervened on behalf of his people when they were in desperate need; he was actively involved in my life. But I can’t believe in that God anymore, because from what I now see around the world, he doesn’t intervene.”

—Bart Ehrman, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer (professor of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill; grew up a Christian but became an atheist as an adult after studying the problem of evil)

That’s a feeling that might not be uncommon in the room this morning. It’s certainly not uncommon in our culture. We see all kinds of disorder, disease, and death around us, and I think it’s a natural reaction to throw up our hands and wonder, “Where are you God? How could you let this happen? What are you doing?”

In the book of Ruth, we get an incredible picture of the kindness of God demonstrated through the kindness of other people, and we’re going to see that over these next 7 weeks. As the subtitle of our series says, “God lovingly provides.”

But that’s not how we’re introduced to this book. No, the first 5 verses are devastating. We see a country in famine and a mother endure the death of her husband and two sons. How would you respond to that? I don’t even want to think about what it would be like.

But there’s a unique resource within Christianity that gives us hope in suffering that the secular world doesn’t have. Without faith in God, suffering can only be an impediment to our lives, an “interruption” as the late pastor Tim Keller put it. Only for the person believing in a sovereign, loving, creator God of the universe can suffering be meaningful. Only then can it be purposeful. Not merely an obstacle to the good life but as a tool that can refine us toward a deeper life.

We don’t have to look any further than the start of the book of Ruth for a great example. Verse 1 begins, “In the days when the judges ruled.” That phrase is giving us the context of the story we’re about to read. If you’re familiar with the narrative of the Old Testament, there was a time that was known as the period of Judges.

Various men and women, like Samson if you’re familiar with that story—various men and women known as “judges” were used by God to call the Israelites to repentance for following other gods and failing to trust in Yahweh. It was a season of God disciplining his people and them turning from their rebellion to follow him only for them to repeat the cycle of rebellion and discipline all over again. The book of Judges ends in verse 25 of chapter 21 in this way:

Judges 21:25

ESV

25 In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Israel was lost. Aimless. They needed someone who would lead them to trust in the Lord, and yet there was no king even though God had promised Abraham all the way back in Genesis 17:6 that kings would come from him. What was God doing? Was his plan failing? It’s during this period of struggle and doubt and rebellion that we get the story of Ruth.

Why does that matter? Well, we can fast forward all the way to the end (this isn’t some new movie that I’m worried about spoiling; it’s kinda important to understand the beginning in light of the end—I think that could be said of the entire Bible, by the way). But if we fast forward to the very end of the book, we find a genealogy of Ruth, Boaz, and their descendants in Ruth 4:18-22:

Ruth 4:18–22

ESV

18 Now these are the generations of Perez: Perez fathered Hezron, 19 Hezron fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab, 20 Amminadab fathered Nahshon, Nahshon fathered Salmon, 21 Salmon fathered Boaz, Boaz fathered Obed, 22 Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David.

Did you catch that? Ruth’s son was Obed, whose son was Jesse, whose son was David, who you might know as “King David”. In the middle of God’s people struggling, of them doubting God’s promises and being disciplined for rebelling against God’s rule, he was sovereignly working to provide exactly what his people needed—not just an earthly king that would lead his people toward him, but from the family tree of David we eventually get Jesus, our eternal king who would once and for all reconcile God’s people to him.

Even in what feels like the worst of circumstances, even in our lack of faithfulness—God lovingly provides. The fact that God can bring meaning and purpose in our times of suffering gives us a foundation for living in peace and joy regardless of what we may be going through. But that’s not always how we understand our suffering in the moment. And here at the beginning of Ruth, we see people respond to God in a few different ways as they experience incredible pain.

So, what I want us to do this morning as we start our study of Ruth is to look at three of the main characters in these first 18 verses and think through how they responded to the suffering in their lives and relate that to our own experience.

The first character we meet in the story is Elimelech. Now, granted, we don’t meet him for long. He dead by verse 3, which you might think means we don’t get to see his response to suffering—we just see his passing as the source of suffering for Naomi. But there’s a lot more to the story here.

Remember, verse 1 tells us that all of this was happening in the days when the judges ruled and there was a famine in the land. Like so many of the other difficult things the Israelites went through during this period, this famine would have been God’s discipline for his people rebelling against him and pursuing false gods.

When we discipline our 2 year old, we’re trying to remind him of the importance of obeying his parents. Of how dangerous it is when he goes against his parents because we want what’s best for him. We see the same motivation in God when he disciplines his people. He’s leading them back to himself, which is the best possible thing for us.

But when this famine comes to Israel because of their disobedience to God, and it’s meant to lead his people to repent and place their faith back in God, what does Elimelech do? He tries to flee from God. There was no question why this famine was affecting the Israelites. Each judge that came and spoke to God’s people told them exactly how their rebellion against God was leading to their discipline as they were called to repent and follow him again.

But in the middle of being disciplined for pursuing false gods, Elimelech leads his family to the land across the Jordan River where the Moabites unsurprisingly… worshiped a false god. And the cherry on top? The name Elimelech literally means, “My God is King.”

I can’t blame Elimelech for trying to escape famine any more than I blame my son for trying to leave the couch when he’s been put in timeout. But the problem is that he’s in that situation for a reason. He’s there to remind him of the importance of listening to his Father.

Now, not every experience of suffering we have is discipline from the Lord. We can read places like Romans 8 and see that all death, disease, and decay is a natural byproduct of sin and the way it’s broken God’s good creation.

And that makes sense: If a computer was made to function outside of water and you toss it into a pool, it’s not going to function properly. If all of the universe was made to function in line with God’s character, and we introduced sin and rebellion into that design, then things are not going to work the way they were created. It’s going to break down. Sin doesn’t just affect us. It affects everything.

But when suffering does come, whether you deserve it or not, what’s your posture towards God? For Elimelech, he knew God would meet him in the famine, ready to forgive him along with the rest of the Israelites and restore the kingdom (just like God had done over and over again with each cycle of the judges). Yet, Elimelech’s response to difficulty isn’t to lean into God; it’s to try to fix things himself.

“If God’s punishing Israel for our sin against him, then I’ll just take my family somewhere away from Israel.” When things go wrong in your life, who do you look to first? It could be yourself, it could be a family member, a friend, even a pastor. When life isn’t going the way we expected, we look for safety. We look for someone or something we can trust.

And if you’re not trusting in God regularly during your normal days, you’re not going to know how to trust him during your hard days. Maybe that’s where the disconnect has been for you as you wrestle with faith and think about God and suffering. You wonder why God would allow suffering, but you don’t seek him in the suffering; just an answer or an end to the suffering.

The problem isn’t that a good God can’t exist because you experience suffering. The problem is that you won’t really know him and his goodness in your suffering if you’re only depending on yourself to get you out of your suffering.

But that might not be your concern at all. Your concern might be closer to Naomi’s story. Not that you’re fleeing God when you suffer but that you’re blaming God for how you suffer. In these first five verses, Naomi loses both her husband and her two sons, leaving her with just her two daughters-in-law: Orpah and Ruth. But then, we get a glimpse of God’s provision in verse 6. It says,

Ruth 1:6

ESV

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.

This verse is packed full of God’s grace. To start with, Naomi hears that her home in another country has food again. How did the word of the famine ending get to her in a field? God provides. And we see God’s grace in how he ended the famine here: he visited them. A people who had rebelled against him; their gracious God drew near to them. And more that, he didn’t just draw near to any people. Verse 6 still describes the Israelites as “his people”. Even in spite of their sin. That’s grace.

And the way Naomi talks about it, it seems like she understands God has lovingly provided for his people. Then, as we read verse 7-9, we see that she believes God will lovingly provide for her daughters-in-law as well. Starting in verse 7, we read:

Ruth 1:7–9

ESV

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.

What a great mother-in-law (and I have a great mother-in-law, especially if she watches these sermons). But we see such a tenderness, such a kindness from Naomi here. That word “kindly” in verse 8 is from the Hebrew word hesed, which most often is used to describe the faithfulness of God’s love. This isn’t just a hope that maybe God will look after Orpah and Ruth and provide them with a future. Naomi believes he will.

So, back in verse 6, Naomi acknowledges that God provided for his people, and then in verses 7-9 she believes that God will provide for two ladies who aren’t his people (they aren’t Jewish; they’re Moabite women). Naomi can see God working generally in others, and she can see how God would provide specifically for these ladies who are close to her. But what she can’t see is how God would have anything positive to do with her.

She encourages Orpah and Ruth to return to their families rather than travel back with her to Bethlehem, but in verse 10 they refuse and say they want to go with her. Check out her response starting in verse 11:

Ruth 1:11–13

ESV

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.”

Hope for Israel. Hope for Orpah and Ruth. But no hope for Naomi. She can see God in all the goodness surrounding other people, but she hasn’t processed the goodness of God within her own pain, and so she wrongly assumes in verse 13, “that the hand of the LORD has gone out against me.”

Clearly, she’s had a terrible tragedy happen in her life. But now, in her grief, she can’t see how anything positive could ever come back into her life. Starting in verse 11, she says she has no sons for Orpah and Ruth, and no husband that she might give them sons. Even if she were to somehow find a husband, she doesn’t believe they would wait around for her future children to grow up. She has resolved herself that she’s going to be alone.

And this isn’t her practicing contentment and trusting that God is with her and sovereignly rules over her circumstances. It’s her being bitter. If we fast forward to the beginning of our passage for next week, we find that Naomi gives herself a new name when she returns to Bethlehem. Look with me at verses 19 and 20.

Ruth 1:19–20

ESV

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.

The world Mara literally means bitter. She’s fully aware of how she’s dealing with what’s happened in her life. It doesn’t make her disbelieve in God; it makes her believe God is at odds with her.

Have you ever gone through a difficult season in life where it made you wonder, “Does God really care about me as much as he cares about this other person whose life is going so well?” First off, I want you to know, that’s not an uncommon thought.

This weekend I took my annual pilgrimage to a Vietnamese restaurant in Covington to wait in line for an hour and a half and get this year’s Dong Phuong king cake (with cream cheese). My brother-in-law, Zac, just moved here and has never experienced Mardi Gras before, so we’ve been getting several more king cakes than normal this year for him to try out various kinds and put together his own rankings.

If I showed up at home after getting the Dong Phuong king cake and as everyone was about to dig in, I pushed Macie’s hand away and told her, “I got this for your brother to enjoy. It’s not for you”… I might lose that hand.

You’d understand that Macie would feel left out, like I was thinking more of Zac than her, and she’d wonder why. So when someone’s life seems to be going well and yours isn’t, it makes sense that you’d wonder if God really cared about you as much.

The Bible specifically addresses this question. Your life isn’t necessarily worse off than others because you’re a worse person. The story of Job in the Old Testament gives us a clear answer on that. Job was an upright man who lost everything, not because he did something wrong, but so God could encourage his people that he is sovereignly able to give us so much more than we ever imagine. As Job1:21 says, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Your life also isn’t worse off than others because God cares about you less. In Luke 12:7, Jesus says of every person, “even the hairs of your head are all numbered.” He knows you intimately. Psalm 139:14 says, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Again, he’s speaking generally for all people. And that’s because the creation account all the way back in Genesis tells us that human beings, both man and woman, are created in the image of God. That means that God will value you because he sees his value in you.

We can know that God still cares for us in our suffering because he stepped into suffering as our Savior to deliver us from the worst kind of pain we experience: our sin against God that keeps us separated from God. Whenever you have questions or doubts if God loves you, the cross of Christ tells you how much.

So, while we sympathize with Naomi and how she’s trying to process everything that’s happened in her life and doubting that God cares for her like he does for the people around her, verse 13 shows the disconnect in her mindset. She says,

Ruth 1:13

ESV

it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.

She makes two wrong assumptions here that I can be so prone to make in my life as well:

• She believes what has happened is about her, and
• She believes she knows what would be good for her.

Our pain has a tendency to turn us inward. We dwell on how it affects us, and we can even push away from being in community with other people. We see Naomi doing both. But remember the setting of this book in the Bible. It’s a time when God had promised a king, but there was no king; when he promised the world would be blessed from his people but his people were too busy rebelling against him to bless anyone.

It’s in this context that God sovereignly uses Elimelech, disobediently leaving Israel, to bring Ruth into his family—and then the eventual tragedy of Elimelech and his sons dying as the catalyst for bringing Naomi and Ruth back to Israel (where we know Ruth is about to meet Boaz, her future husband and they become the parents of King David’s grandfather… not to mention Jesus’ great, great, great, great grandfather).

This tragedy certainly affected Naomi, and God would still provide for Naomi, but it wasn’t only about Naomi. Of course, she didn’t know how God was going to use these awful events, so she’s only thinking in terms of what she would consider good for her and bad for her. And we’re prone to be the same way. We think we know what would be best for our lives. But when we get to the end of this story, we see the women tell Naomi in Ruth 4:14-15,

Ruth 4:14–15

ESV

14 “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! 15 He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.”

God used the events around Naomi’s life to bring new life—for her, for Israel, and for all the world as their family tree continues to march toward the birth of Jesus. Here we see the framework of the gospel, pointing us towards it’s fulfillment in Christ: the ultimate “restorer of life” and “nourisher for those of any age who place their faith in him.”

Maybe this morning you’re like Naomi, and the tendency in your suffering is to blame God. Maybe you’re more like Elimelech and your tendency is to try to avoid the idea of God. Where can we find genuine comfort and hope for both our good and bad days in life? For that, we turn to our last character, Ruth. Read with me one more time, now in verses 14-18. After Naomi encourages the two woman to leave her and go back to their homes, we read:

Ruth 1:14–18

ESV

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.

If you’re familiar with this story, what often jumps out in Ruth’s speech in verses 16-17 is her loyalty to Naomi. But the author of this book actually intended for that to be secondary. I’m going to Bible nerd on you for a second, but I think at the end of this, you’ll be nerding out too.

Ruth makes five statements in verses 16-17, and that’s important. Because the Old Testament is big on numbers, and when an odd number is used in a list, it’s a dead giveaway for a literary device called a chiasm. A chiasm was essentially a way of ranking a list of items.

For example, if I wanted to tell you my king cake rankings from what I’ve eaten this year, I might say, “Dong Phuong, The Reminding, Gingerbread Twins, Marguerite’s, and Caluda’s.” In that list, which one would you say was most important? Which was my favorite? Dong Phuong, right? Because I said it first. But if that was a chiasm, then Gingerbread Twins would be my favorite, because it was in the middle.

Jewish literature loved parallelism, almost like an A-B-B-A format in poetry, and so they would often wrap parallel statements around the most important statement, which sat in the middle.

So, if I were to re-write verses 16 and 17, putting the parallel statements from the beginning and end together, it would be:

• Statement 1: Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you… May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you. (See how they connect?)
• Statement 2: For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge… Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. (Again, the parallel from the beginning and the end.)

So, then, what lies in the middle? What’s the most important commitment from Ruth that serves as the foundation for everything else she promises Naomi? “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

See, Ruth didn’t stay just because she was committed to Naomi. She stayed because she was committed to Naomi’s God. While Elimelech fled from God in his suffering and Naomi blamed God for her suffering, Ruth trusted God through her suffering. That’s what gave her the strength to continue moving, it’s what gave her the internal peace that allowed her to care for someone else who was struggling, and it’s ultimately what gave her the boldness to engage with Boaz as her potential redeemer even though by the worlds standards she had nothing to offer.

This isn’t a story trying to teach us that Ruth trusted God and cared for the people around her, and so you should too. The point of this story is that God is trustworthy, and whether you’re having a good day or a bad day in life right now, he can stand up to your questions, and he’ll be faithful to complete the work he’s promised he will do in his Word.

That’s what we see in Jesus. A God who answered our doubts about suffering, not by fleeing from it and not just by blaming us for it, but by stepping into it. Suffering in our place, for our sin, so that we can experience a right relationship with God as his redeemed people.

Let’s pray.