Don't Run From Trouble

Ruth 1 & 2

Moving to another location did not protect Elimelech and Naomi’s family from tragedy. God was disciplining Israel with drought. Moving away from Israel did not remove Elimelech and Naomi from share in that discipline. The last verse of the preceding book (Judges 21.25) defines the problem in Israel. In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Everyone did what suited them. They had lost their vision for God’s work and paid no attention to his word.

Many years before, Moses had recorded for Israel God’s warnings against disobedience. These included the likelihood of famine as a direct result of neglecting God’s teaching. Leviticus 26.14ff But if you will not listen to me and will not carry out all these commandments, if you spurn my decrees and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, then I will do this to you: 20 your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield its increase, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit. 26 When I break your supply of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in a single oven and shall dole out your bread again by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied.

God does not hide from us the miserable consequences of our sins. He often reduces and softens the severity of their consequences, but he does not remove them entirely, in case we continue on in our sin oblivious to the alienation it is causing between us and him. Much of God’s judgement is mercy. It aims to arrest us, to awaken us to our danger and turn us back towards the path of blessing.

God also uses the collapse and ruin of others to warn us away from sin. One day some people were talking to Jesus about others caught up in tragedies, such as 18 people who were crushed when a tower collapsed on them. Jesus warned them not to think that those people were worse offenders than everyone else. He said they should pay attention because unless they repent of their own sinful lives they will all lose their lives.

And God also disciplines those he loves – just as a father disciplines the children he loves.

When calamity comes we should fall on our faces before God to find out what his purpose is. Read Hebrews 12.5-11

When drought and famine came on Israel, Elimelech took his family off to greener pastures. He would have been better to have stayed where he was and repented, for God had promised to remember his covenant with them if they confessed and turned back from their rebellious ways (Lev26.40-42 But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me, so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.).

Elimelech led himself and his sons into a shortened life, by failing to face up to God’s discipline.