Ruth: Beauty from Ashes (Episode 1)

i must have been about five years old the first time i decided to run away from home i think i'd seen it on a movie before because i grabbed a stick and a bandana bundled up a few of my belongings and announced to my parents i was heading out on my own welcome to the women of the bible podcast i'm aaron davis and in this season we're rediscovering the book of ruth the story begins when a man named elimelech decides to leave home when i was a little girl and decided to run away my parents let me go likely knowing that i wouldn't make it past the end of the block and god let elimelech go deep into enemy territory as we open our bibles together and explore the book of ruth for the next six weeks we're going to see that it's really a story about how god calls all of his children home so grab your bible and come along on the journey with me and some of my favorite friends as we walk through ruth experiencing a life restored i came to jesus kicking and screaming i'm fond of saying kicking and screaming obedience is still obedience how does my work ethic show that i value work because i was walking through some of these darkest moments the valley may be long and it may be very dark but god promises to be with you in the midst of it everything i get in this world and this earth is a treasure and a gift do not turn off the podcast at this moment i often have to think god is not oblivious to the situation that i'm in welcome to the women of the bible podcast does anybody have the first day of bible study jitters does that happen to you in real life the first time you have a bible study i mean this is real life but the first time we have a new bible study at my church i always feel a little nervous what's that about i don't know i don't know either well i hope that if you're listening you don't have butterflies in your tummy i hope you're just eager to be with us but we are about to jump into the book of ruth and i have a question to get us started i want you to tell us your name and how long you've been walking with the lord we'll start with you so my name is porsha collins and i have been walking with the lord oh since i was honestly since i was a little girl i say that the lord gripped me as a child um even though i probably didn't fully understand until i got into my late teenage early young adult years you've been walking with the lord for decades decades all right over here your name and how long you've been this is you're going to win this question i'm afraid your name and how long you've been walking with the lord i'm gail v alba and i've been walking with the lord since the age of five which is many decades and i'm aaron davis and i gave my life to jesus at 15 and i just turned 40. so somebody do the math for me i don't do math but uh i've been walking with the lord for a couple decades too and the reason i ask that is because whether you've been walking with the lord five minutes or five years or 50 years we all need the word of god at every step in that journey i'm curious think back to those early days for you as when you were little girls for me it was when i was a teenager when you first started reading the bible how has your study or your approach to scripture changed over time gail when i started i didn't love it it was a job it was a something to check off of my to-do list because i wanted to do this well right this business of being a christian i didn't really love it i didn't really understand the relationship part as well as i did as i got older i so appreciate that honesty i imagine that there are women right now sitting in bible study groups they're getting ready to do ruth and there's a woman sitting there going i don't want to do this i don't i don't have the time or i don't know how to study my bible or i don't know these women or i don't know how to do this and so i so appreciate your honesty but i'm glad she's there i'm glad she's listening to us how about you portia over time how would you say your your attitude or your approach to scripture has changed um i think that um in my younger years i had such a disjointed understanding of scripture it was like i didn't see this as one big beautiful picture it was like okay extract a little yeah you gotta like i didn't see like i hated the old testament didn't want to read things ruth was probably one of the only stories that i wanted to read because i thought oh i gotta find my boaz and so this is this is a hot house yes but um over time i have i have a more holistic understanding of god's word and i see the beauty of it and like gail at first i didn't love reading scripture i felt like it was one of the things to do to check off you know a notch on my debbie do-gooder christian list um but now it is just such a joy for me it's like food it's food for my soul like i can't go without eating and so i can't go without just sitting and sulking in the scriptures love that i think my early days as a believer i expected to have an emotional emotional response every time i open my bible i was supposed to you know open my bible to the psalms and birds would start singing up over my shoulder and i would have some revelation and um sometimes you do get those lightning bolts with scripture but i think over time i've learned to just be disciplined and the more you know the word the more you love it i think i had those flipped i was trying to let my love for scripture motivate us so um i hope that as you're listening your approach to scripture is evolving like ours is and i think ruth is actually an interesting case study for us to jump in with because i'm not sure it's the ruth you think you know uh you may have heard the story of ruth you may even read the whole thing it's only four little chapters so we'll get through all of it in the season of the women of the bible but um i think it might not be the version we've always heard so what is the ruth how have you always heard the book of ruth described portia you mentioned as the how-to guy to get your bow as love that is what it is i think most of the time when i uh from talking with like women in my church or community they automatically think oh that's the book about you know how to get a man how to do it the right way and i'm like uh no right and so um i think that is like the biggest thing like you know for me and things that i want to challenge other women with is seeing like what are we looking at is here is this really this fairy tale this princess story that we think um or is there more here like what's the depth um and i'm excited to explore that too gail how have you always heard the book of ruth brained a love story the ultimate love story um you know she meets her prince basically right yes it's cinderella yes yes and that's way more than that it's so much more than that it is a love story um that part's true but that's it's just so much more than that so i'm so glad we're going to go a little bit not a little bit a lot deeper are there other places in scripture that you thought you knew and over time you go wait a minute that's not the way i'd heard it framed or it's not the story i thought it was or it doesn't mean what i thought it had i'll give an example i've spent a lot of time recently studying the book of leviticus yes leviticus 23 describes these seven feasts and um man the gospel is all over those feasts and so that's been that light bulb for me lately like oh this is not what i thought this was it's so much more can you think of an example of elsewhere in scripture where you've had that experience portia oh honestly all over scripture um because for so long i failed to see the gospel-centeredness in every passage and so i would take passages just like with the book of ruth and i would make them about me you know like this is like my my how to as opposed to seeing like what god wants me to see learning about him like and of course the truths in scripture um they're meant to shape our hearts to reshape our hearts and transform our minds but like it's not about you it's not like we can just cherry-pick these verses and apply what we want to to our lives to kind of concoct or make this perfect picture um it's like a whole thing and so i would say that it's about jesus yeah and it's about jesus right and so there's so many places like i can't even think specifically but um a good one would be like jeremiah 29 and 11. um just kind of snatching that verse out of context sometimes and try to apply it to you know going to college or um buying a house yeah or getting that dream dream job and um it's more than that you know there's so much more in those in those verses and then even knowing like my friends jokingly called me the weeping prophet like uh jeremiah and so like if you just see the the lament and his burden it's not all just rainbows and gumdrops right in that book yeah i love that in this first session of this season you're reminding us that scripture is not about us because i think the lens we want to view ruth is i'm ruth and the lord's going to give me my boaz or he's going to transform my current man into a boaz or you know whatever and this story isn't about us so i love that you're setting us up for that gail can you think of an example of scripture where you thought it was one thing and the lord gave you eyes to see it was so much more all the way through yeah i'm presently doing the chronological bible me too and are you yeah so ezekiel right yeah we're in the weeds a little bit yes yes um but i'm trying to see it through the lens of jesus finding jesus in the hard areas of scripture and it's there and it just fills me with joy every time i see it yes i love that all right let's jump into the book of ruth uh we are gonna start where we should start in ruth chapter one one through five portia do you have that and can you read it for us absolutely in the days when the judges rule there was a famine in the land and a man of bethlehem and judah went to sojourn in the country of moab he and his wife and his two sons the name of the man was eliminalic and the name of his wife naomi and the names of his two sons were maelon and kilian they were ephrathites from bethlehem in judah they went into the country of moab and remained there but elimelech the husband of naomi died and she was left with her two sons these took moabite wives the name of the one was orpha and the other ruth they lived there about 10 years and maelon and killian died so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband did you notice how i threw you the passage with all the difficult names you're welcome i got your back um for this session i would like us to focus on elimelech now i know the name of this book is ruth but there are lots of other important characters well they aren't even characters there are lots of other important people in this story real people who really lived and i want us to think about elimelech in this session so from these just five verses what do we learn about elimelech look at it again just holler out what you see he left his home and where was his home bethlehem and that matters because where is bethlehem situated we're using old testament language we kind of tend to think of bethlehem as the birthplace of jesus which it was and that's going to matter moving forward but in old testament language where was bethlehem situated judah judah in the promised land so he leaves his home in the promised land you mentioned it when life gets hard and he heads over to where moab to moab let's file that little nugget in the filing cabinet of our brains and we'll come back to it what else do we learn about elimelech from these five verses he dies he dies right his wife is naomi we learn his children's name and then we learn that he dies and the fact that he went to moab matters let's look at our bibles to find out why gail do you have genesis 19 36-37 and i'll warn you it's a little bit of a squirmy passage but if you could read it for us that'd be great okay so both of lot's daughters became pregnant by their father the oldest daughter had a son and she named him moab he is the father of the moabites of today the younger daughter also had a son and she named him ben ami he is the father of the ammonites of today okay so nobody wants to get a sign this passage in first grade sunday school right no because the father of the moabites was born out of a relationship between a dad and a daughter so we need that context as we're considering the fact that elimelech fled he didn't just flee anywhere he fled right here to moab i've got another squirmy passage to help us consider when we think about the moabites it comes from numbers 25 1 through 4. while israel lived in shatin the people began to with the daughters of moab these invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods and the people ate and bowed down to their gods so israel yoked himself to be all a pure and the anger of the lord was kindled against israel and the lord said to moses take all the chiefs of the people and hang them in the sun before the lord that the fierce anger of the lord might turn away from israel and moses said to the judges of israel each of you killed those of his men who have yoked themselves to be all of pure whoa this is part of the backdrop of the book of ruth and this is why i say it's not the ruth you think you know because um it's very significant that elimelech took his family in to moab what happens in your insides when you read passages like that in the old testament gayle i would liken it to taking your your wife and children from a godly family camp environment and moving to las vegas where there is blatant sin yeah and trying to protect everyone yeah they've built that city on sin right right and just side city sin city that's right deciding we're gonna move into that place portia when you hear those descriptions of the moabites being born out of an incestuous relationship and and yoking themselves to foreign pagan gods as the backdrop of ruth does that change the picture at all for you absolutely um because it's it's really like blatant disobedience got going against what god had instructed what they had been taught it's like what i know about some of the books that precede ruth it's blatant like we're gonna do our own thing here and we're gonna go somewhere else um god was very um particular about saying to his people the israelites you know don't do this don't yoke yourself with these people don't be with the canaanites don't be with the moabites yeah he warned them about it yes like no no like living there and intermingling and so to take your family out of the safe land the promised land and to go into a land that god had already said don't do this it's kind of like oh something's bad yeah it's significant and what we don't know from the text is did naomi have a say we don't know right did elimelech just say we're going and she had to go along did she protest was she grieved by it we don't know any of that but we are going to work towards a happy ending in ruth and man happy endings are so much sweeter when you see the true darkness of the beginning of the story and the true darkness at the beginning of this story is that elimelech took his family and fled 60 miles into enemy territory and it wasn't just a visiting neighbor when you study the bible i love that you mentioned this porsche you connect all of those parts if we look back at ruth one it tells us that elimelech intended to just sojourn to moab that's not a word we use very frequently but what do you think that means that he just intended to sojourn in moab to just travel there for a little while you know maybe go and sit there just for a minute and come back home yeah just wait out that famine maybe right but that's not what happened no the reality is he gets to moab his wife has children they put down roots and he dies there and i assume is buried in the land of moab let's talk about that famine for a moment um elimelech and naomi were from the promised land they were children of the promised land uh who's got deuteronomy 28 15-18 this is some insight into what life was supposed to be like there in the promised land but if you will not obey the voice of the lord your god or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that i command you today then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you cursed shall you be in the city and curse shall you be in the field curse shall be your basket and your kneading bowl curse shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the increase of your herds and the young of your flock so we don't know but it's possible that the famine occurring in judah was the judgment of god that's not a very popular idea no is it not at all but we see this in scripture if you honor the lord we're going to give you fruitful life in the promised land and if you turn from the lord i'm going to curse shall be your knating bowl and curse shall be your fields and all of those things why why do you think the lord says if you don't follow me i'm going to curse the fruit of your life or your land gail you got thoughts some of that i believe was natural consequences of going against the natural order of things he laid it out pretty clearly for them as to how to live and if you don't do this there will be consequences so i think it's a combination i mean i'm not taking away from the punishment aspect by any means but some of it should have made sense to them and it didn't right so here in deuteronomy he's giving them instructions for how to live in the promised land right and they've been enslaved so he's kind they're kind of starting over this is how you live a good and fruitful life right and also his judgment is to call us back to him right so that we can experience life out there without him what it's like when we're out from under his blessings in the hopes that we would run back toward him so i don't want to over apply this it doesn't say right here in ruth 1 judah was experiencing a famine due to god's judgment but um it's possible that that's what was happening and yeah elimelech makes this choice to flee the promised land to get out from under god's judgment which i've experienced that haven't you when conviction comes you like want to squirm your way out of it any way you can but i wonder what does it communicate about eliminates faith that he fled the promised land when the going got tough that he allowed his sons to marry moabite women we would be reading between the lines here to make that clear we're not saying something that's overtly in scripture but do you draw any conclusions about elimelech's heart from those factors portia oh he was disobedient and you know it's so hard because we never want to we want to see all the pretty fluffiness in scripture right but like we don't want to wrestle with uh what it looks like when you are disobedient and the consequences of that and i think that's what we see in these beginning verses of ruth is a man who didn't make the right choice and it severely impacted not just him but his entire family his wife we're going to see is deeply impacted at a heart level by his choices his sons we don't know much about except for that they married by women and died but they were also buried in the land of moab which is considering all we know about moab so yeah we're seeing a picture of disobedience here and we do want to fast forward it and get to the wedding in ruth chapter four [Music] we want to get our boaz and throw the rice in this case it's barley but uh and then move on but we've got to sit in this a little bit to understand it gail any thoughts about elimelech's heart as we kind of extract these first few verses yes by personal experience i think when you take a step of disobedience and you think i'm going to go this far and no farther the default is just to keep going down that path and even though his his sons marrying moabite women by then i don't know in elimelech's heart but i just can imagine by then he was saying whatever right i'm already here i've already disobeyed which is really sad but i remember times when i've gone there in my life well i did this so i might as well do that i'm always amazed how quickly sin progresses yes we see it in genesis it goes from the bite of the apple to murder in one generation and here it goes from let's just move to moab i hear they have food to let's let our sons marry moabite women which is a big leap and it happened in one generation right so you know what this reminds me of in my local small group we um often talk about head hard hand and how basically sin starts with like just a thought sometimes and i can imagine if we were to use our imagination in looking at this text elimelech probably thought that he was smart and was like okay i'm gonna leave this land where we're experiencing trouble you know this is a bright idea i got a wife to protect you whatever it takes yes and so it starts in the head and then it goes to the heart and it's like okay well now we're here and i'm gonna just settle and we're gonna stay here in the hand and just acting that out and probably i can imagine that they probably picked up the customs of that land and like with him letting his sons marry moabite women like you're becoming exactly what god told you to stay away from i love that progression that is so how it happens and we're going to see some other people in this story that have a totally different head heart hand response i think all of our human tendency is to want to run away from the pressure of god um and into the arms of lesser comfort so i can't well i would love to paint elimelech as the bad guy because that makes me not like elimelech i'm so like a elimelech i want to get out of the pressure so i always want us to think about the women on the other side listening right now she's mopping the floors in her kitchen she's got her air pods in her ears or she's driving down the road in your own lives are the women you know what are the pressures that we as women and the women we know want to run away from it doesn't have to be the conviction of god but just the the pressures of life what is it that makes us want to press that pressure release valve well as a wife and a mama that is tough sometimes me and my husband we have to i call them um come to jesus meetings and we have to sit down and talk through things and sometimes i feel like oh it's not fair you know i gotta do all of this and i feel like i'm always juggling 15 things and it's easy to kind of start letting that resentment settle in and god just kind of reels me back in and reminds me look i gave this to you i gave this is your portion of life and so um choosing to find joy in those ordinary day-to-day things um that you're doing you know when your husband has left his socks in the floor for the 15th time where his trousers on the foot of the bed and you're like dude you know but really just learning to appreciate what god has given you and be joyful where he has placed you even when it's hard i think a lot of women feel that that pressure to do it all that you're mentioning that makes you want to sit down and have the talk i call those the state of the union addresses you call them come to jesus dogs time for a state of the union the marital union um but that pressure like i can't keep the house clean and the marriage good and the kids happy and the meals cooked and that's kind of a constant pressure that i think a lot of women want to escape or struggling to do with joy gail you minister to lots of women what are some areas where they're feeling pressure and you sense they just want to escape the pressure there's so many ways um we deal with a i deal with a lot of pastors wives and you just can only imagine the difficulty of being a pastor's life and living up to everyone's expectations personally um i think my default thinking is and we're at a whole different an entirely different stage of life than than you ladies are and we don't have young children at home it's just the two of us we enjoy our family but they're grown and gone and when we've led a pastor's retreat and we've been serving for seven days we come home and i think i listen to the lie i believe the lie that says you deserve um r and r you can do whatever you want watch mindless hdtv or you know read a book that has no feeding in it for my soul and that's a dangerous place to be because the truth is what do i really deserve i deserve hell right and everything i get in this world and this earth is a treasure and a gift yeah yeah i feel i'm in this interesting season of life where i do have small children at home but i'm also the caregiver for two aging relatives yeah and man the caregiving pressure is real i think i can default to some of the dessert i deserve but what i most often default to is i can't i can't i can't and i just want a pressure release i just want to go get a sonic drink in my car in the quiet i just want to sit in a movie i just but those things don't change my circumstances that's right and i don't know what elimelech faced in moab but i know that it wasn't carefree so i wonder as we think of those things women want to escape what are the moabs we run to you mention kind of empty sources of comfort food can be a real moab for me i just want to run into that pantry and find some quick satisfaction venting with women in the same season of life as me so all my closest friends have young children and when we get together if we're not very very careful we can just get right right gripe and that's a moab it doesn't actually relieve any of the pressures of parenting can you think of some moabs you run to or women you know run to porsha what comes to mind exactly what you just said um venting and complaining like it's my security blanket sometimes and i feel like if i can just say what it is that i feel and let it out then i'm gonna you know it's gonna be better but like it's like god reeled me back in and it's like sometimes it's just zip it just be quiet a soft answer or you know be gracious and so it's um i guess you would say trying to vindicate myself through my words or through expressing uh my frustrations as opposed to um praying and seeking god like i often have to think god is not oblivious to the situation that i'm in like he's not oblivious to that and so when i think that sentence i need to vent i just add two words to it or what like or what what is going to happen if i don't i don't think any woman has ever spontaneously combusted to my knowledge from not getting it out of her mouth but i do face that temptation i'm feeling pressure over here i'm just going gonna run over here and spew it and then i'll feel better usually i don't because then i usually have a lot of repenting to do and venting is just another word for complaining yes it is you're right you're right so um i think there is we if we wanted to apply ourselves here at this point in the story we could ask ourselves when i'm feeling that pressure do i run into moabs or do i turn to god instead i'd love for us together turn to psalm 55 and if you are listening with us and you're not cruising down the highway i hope you have your bible handy and you can turn to psalm 55 with us and we'll see david who wrote psalm 55 um kind of go through this progression a little bit where at the beginning he's feeling some pressure and then there's a turning point where he chooses not to run into a moab so to speak but to turn to the place that can really relieve pressure gail can you just read us verses one through eight okay listen to my prayer oh god do not ignore my plea hear me and answer me my thoughts trouble me and i am distraught at the voice of the enemy at the stairs of the wicked for they bring down suffering upon me and revile me in their anger my heart is in anguish within me the terrors of death assail me fear and trembling have beset me horror has overwhelmed me i said oh that i had the wings of a dove i would fly away and be at rest i would flee far away and stay in the desert i would hurry to my place of shelter far from the tempest and storm so david goes on like that for a little bit and you can always tell when you're reading david because this is how he talks like the enemies are going to get me everybody's surrounding me and don't you love that that he acknowledges the pressure that he's under gail you and i were just talking a little bit about sometimes when we're in the heart we we need to say the heart right we can absolutely trust the lord and still say the heart right and david is such a great example for that but what he doesn't do is he doesn't flee to moab spiritually speaking portia can you pick it up at 16 i love to hear you read scripture portia so can you give us 16 through 20 through the end of psalm 55 perfect but i call to god okay i got to pause you right there but i call to god that's so important if you're writing your bible girl just go ahead and circle that yes let's let's use our imaginations and imagine elimelech in the land of famine but he called to god it would have been a very different story i'm sorry i interrupted you right up there at 16. all right but i call to god and the lord will save me evening and morning and at noon i utter my complaint and moan and he hears my voice he redeems my soul in safety from the battle that i wage for many are arrayed against me god will give ear and humble them he who is enthroned from from of old because they do not change and do not fear god my companion stretched out his hand against his friends he violated his covenant his speech was smooth as butter yet war was in his heart his words were softer than oil yet they were drawn swords cast your burden on the lord and he will sustain you he will never permit the righteous to be moved but you o god will cast them down into the pit of destruction men of blood and treachery shall not live out half their days but i will trust in you he ends the psalm like with a little fortitude right at the beginning it's like everything is terrible and it was i'm sure he was facing real enemy armies but then he gets to this turning point he says but i'm gonna trust in you and then he ends with some fortitude some strength given to him by the character of the lord and so as we wrap up this first session of ruth i think that's the application for me and the application i would give women is to sit in the challenges a little bit sit in this tension that we're in here in ruth one don't fast forward to the wedding sit in the challenge of opening your bibles that can be tough sit in the uncomfortable parts of the story and there's gonna we've been in some we're gonna read some more uncomfortable parts of the story sit in your own commitment to attend or lead a bible study i love the bible i love bible study and there's still a part of me that kind of wants to wiggle out of that commitment and i need to kind of sit in it this is not the book of ruth you thought you knew but it is so so so much more so we're glad you're with us on the journey thanks friends thanks for watching this episode of the women of the bible podcast be sure to subscribe and be the first to watch new content from revive our hearts like more podcasts teaching videos and testimonies come back next week for another episode of ruth experiencing a life restored

Channel: Revive Our Hearts

Views: 11,146

Rating: 4.9662919 out of 5

Keywords: revive our hearts, ruth, women of the bible, erin davis, nancy demoss wolgemuth

Id: QF9tsycOwUc

Length: 36min 1sec (2161 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 11 2021