The Mistake

A certain man of Bethlehem Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.

Ruth 1:1

We've spent some time looking at the two important markers at the beginning of this Book of Ruth which set the context for us.

First of all the writer tells us that the Book of Ruth was set in "the days when the judges ruled"; and we took note of the fact that at the very end of the Book of Judges we have this summary of this period, "in those days there was no king in Israel, every man did that which was right in his own eyes". The one great characteristic of this period was this general rebellion against the authority of God and his law and his word. Time and again God handed his people over to the power of their enemies, who afflicted them; then they called to God and God raised up the judges to deliver them and to lead them out of their bondage and out of their difficulties. And yet shortly after that, when they had peace and prosperity they were back to their sins, back to their own ways, back to their independence and back to their own autonomy, back to doing what was right in their own eyes.

And I have suggested that that is one of the reasons that the Book of Ruth is so relevant to us in our society. Today we too are living in a day when the authority of God's word has been despised and neglected, and men and women have a reduced view of the supremacy of the Scriptures. We are called to maintain the absolute standards of the Word of God. God does not allow us to do what is right in our own eyes. There are only two eyes that matter, and these are the eyes of God, that are able to look right into the depths of a man's soul. The Bible is calling us to remember that the eyes of God are in all the earth (2 Chronicles 16:9), and that the God who cannot be blinded cannot be mocked (Galatians 6:7).

And the second great characteristic was this famine: "there was a famine in the land." That was not some accident of providence, some unfortunate disaster that afflicted the nation. The Bible, you will recall, throughout the Old Testament, makes it very clear that famine in God's land is a chastisement for the sin of his people. It is his judgement upon them because they have sinned against Him. He does not tolerate their independent, self-willed, rebellious spirit forever. He sends a famine to the land, even into the place that flowed with milk and with honey.

Indeed, part of the irony of the opening words of this chapter is here, in the statement that there was 'a man from Bethlehem' around whom the opening events will revolve; because Bethlehem means "the house of bread". It was a place where God blessed his people, and ultimately it was to this place that the bread of life was to come when Jesus was born into this world and became incarnate in our nature. Yet here is the house of bread lacking bread. God has denied his people their very sustenance. He has done it not because he is some kind of capricious God, some kind of self-willed deity who delights to see people suffering. This famine has one end in view; God is calling his people to repent and return to him.

Well, it was this famine that really sparked off the whole chain events that led to the conversion of Ruth and to her coming from the land of Moab back to the house of bread. The first event in this chain was that Elimelech took his family away from Bethlehem to Moab when this famine was in the land. I think that it is interesting that Elimelech is not named at this particular point in verse one; he is described as "a certain man". I think the significance of that is this: Elimelech was probably not the only man who made this journey from Bethlehem to Moab. He may well have been one of many who took their families away from Bethlehem to Moab because they knew there was plenty of food there. And amongst the many men that went to Moab there was a certain man of Bethlehem-Judah who went with his wife and his two sons.

Then at verse two, we are told his name. His name was Elimelech, the name of his wife was Naomi, his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem. That means that they were of the stock of Abraham's race. They were, in the words of Paul, "Hebrews of the Hebrews" (Philippians 3:5). There was no mixed blood in their family; they were genuine members of God's covenant people, Ephrathites of Bethlehem. And they came into the country of Moab and the Bible says that "there they continued".

Now I do not want to labour these opening verses but it is, I think, vitally important that we grasp what is happening here, because you cannot appreciate the story of Ruth until you understand the story of Elimelech. Part of the significance of this man's story is in his name. You see the name Elimelech means "my God is king". There was a priest in the Old Testament who was called Eli: that is the Hebrew for "my God". And "melech" is the Hebrew for a king. This man carries a great name. He is named after the God of the covenant and his name signifies that the God of the covenant is his sovereign Lord.

But if this story tells us anything, it tells us that a name is not enough. John was called by God in the Book of Revelation to write seven letters to the churches throughout Asia, and to one of them, God said, "You have a name that you are alive but you are dead" (Revelation 3:1). This church had a reputation and a denomination (a denomination simply means that she had a name). Most Christians have attachments to particular denominations or congregations. We may be Presbyterians, or Baptists, or Anglicans, or whatever. And our names may carry their reputations with them. But God's message to the church in Sardis was that a name is not enough. It's not enough to have a good name and a good reputation and to be able to say "I belong to this denomination"; not if we are spiritually dead or spiritually comatosed. It's not enough for a Christian to have a name, to have the profession and to wear a the badge that denominates him a Christian. The acid test goes much, much deeper.

The story of Elimelech tells us of the great distance there can be between a man's reputation and profession and name and public standing, and the reality of his private, personal relationship with God. This brings us to the very heart of the Bible's teaching. There was a man in the New Testament who had a great name, a great religion and great standing in his religion; he was a leader amongst his people. Nicodemus came to Jesus at night and said to him "We know that you are a teacher come from God. No man can do those works that you do unless God is with him" (John 3:2). Jesus is not prepared to enter into this religious discussion that Nicodemus. Nicodemus has come to the Lord with his own agenda, and Jesus says to him "Unless a man is born again, he will never see the Kingdom of God." It does not matter what name he has. The test is -- has he been changed from the inside? Is his will captured to obedient service to Christ?

There is a sense in which every Christian bears the name of Elimelech. Do you remember what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:3: "No man speaking by the spirit of God calls Jesus accursed. And no man can say that Jesus is Lord, except by the spirit." Paul is telling us that if we have the spirit of God in our heart, Jesus Christ is our Lord and our God and our king. True Christianity, true biblical religion bows like Thomas did at the feet of Jesus and says "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28). That is the badge of Christian profession.

But is it the reality? Is a name all we have? Does our profession have substance and meaning? Or does our life argue against our profession? Do our actions and our words and our behaviour in our homes and our families and our communities, argue against the very profession we are making as Christians?

The story of Elimelech tells me about the distance there can be between a man's profession and his conduct; between a man's reputation and the reality of his life. You see this man went to Moab. On the surface of it there were many reasons why he should go to Moab. He had a home to look after, a wife to look after, two sons to look after -- and there was no bread in Bethlehem. It was only logical that he, as a responsible husband and father, should take his family elsewhere. So they went to the country of Moab. And if he had not gone to the country of Moab his sons would not have married. His son would not have married Ruth. Ruth the Moabitess would never have come to Bethlehem. Surely it was God's will that Elimelech should go to Moab?

But there is a fundamental principle of behaviour brought before us again and again in the Bible, and it is this: you cannot justify an action by its consequences. God is able to bring good out of evil, to make even sin work for good in the experience of his people; but you cannot justify an action by the blessings that may follow it. Perhaps Naomi could have said to herself, "At the end of the day, well, it was good for us to go to Moab. There we met Ruth and Ruth came with us and Ruth was saved and converted." I know that, and I know that this family enjoyed blessings that God gave them out of his grace and out of his kindness, but I am going to say that nothing can justify the decision that Elimelech took to go to Moab at all. It was fundamentally wrong.

I have heard people try to justify having women in the ministry because they received a blessing from hearing a woman preach. That may or may not be right; I am not going to deny that they received a blessing, but if they did, it was in spite of the action and not because of it. You cannot justify the action from the consequences: the Bible makes it very clear that the ministry of the Gospel is for males only in the church of Jesus Christ. The issue is not whether or not people have had blessing from women preachers; the issue is -- what does God say? Does he not say through Paul "I suffer not a woman to teach?" That ought to be the end of the matter.

I have heard people justify Christians marrying non-Christians because blessing came from it. Maybe the unconverted husband was converted and found the Lord; maybe their children grew up to know the Lord. God is able to use all of these things to fulfil his purposes; but the Bible is clear that there are 'unequal yokes' into which believers are not to enter (2 Corinthians 6:14). So, whatever course of action you follow, whether it is in your own personal life, or in the life of your church, must have the sanction of the Word of God. I know that there are difficult questions relating to the subject of guidance; and I know that there are issues over which the Bible seems to be silent. But there are other issues where the Bible is not silent, and we dare not go against the mind of God speaking to us in Scripture, not even on the grounds that others did it and were blessed. I am going to argue here that it is impossible to justify the action of Elimelech in going to Moab; even though blessings followed, and even though Ruth was converted, the decision to leave was wrong.

Perhaps I should say at this point that one thing the story does tell us is that God rules over all. In a strange way, Elimelech's name could stand as the theme of the whole book! God IS king! Even when we disobey his command, and walk contrary to his will, he over-rules every experience for his own glory and the good of his people. He has revealed his will in the Bible, and if we are truly born again we will wish to acknowledge God's sovereignty in loving obedience and service for him. Yet he has purposes which he has not revealed to us; and perhaps what shows us God's kingship more than anything is the fact that even our disobedience is over-ruled by him.

Is that not a great comfort to you -- I know it is to me! There are areas in my life when I go far astray, and come far short of what God wants me to be. Yet in his grace, he over-rules my sin, and permits me to fall and allows me to disobey, so that he will show that he truly is in charge. Elimelech's name at one and the same time both condemns his personal action, which was a transgression against the God of the covenant, and sets for us the great lesson of this book. I believe that in the Book of Ruth we see that God is actually king. He does rule. I believe that Ruth came to know the Lord as a result of God's overruling grace, although her story begins with her father-in-law whose name said that he was subject to the kingship of God and yet he lived as thought he were not. This man whose name said "the God of the covenant is my sovereign", acted in a way that went directly to the contrary of the command of that very sovereign.

Elimelech Heard the Voice of the King

What was the story of Elimelech? Elimelech was a man who heard the voice of God speaking to his soul. He was part of God's covenant people, God's covenant community there in the house of bread in Bethlehem, and he heard the voice of God.

He heard it, I think, in at least two ways. He heard the voice of God first in the famine. He heard the voice of God in this crisis of providence that God sent among his people when he cut off the supply of bread, and they had absolutely nothing. That, as we saw, was God's voice to his people. It was God's convicting voice, God's chastising voice, God's voice in judgement, God's voice calling them back to himself, back to repentance, back to the God from whom they had strayed. The famine was the herald of God, wakening up his people to see their sin and their rebellion and their waywardness.

Elimelech heard that voice -- perhaps you have too. Perhaps there were times of crisis that God sent your way - things that you never dreamt of, things that you never wanted, things that came into your life so completely unexpectedly and they had the effect of turning your whole life and home and thinking right upside down. Perhaps illness struck and stayed; death came in and took away loved ones and your home was never the same again. There is a sense in which there is not one crisis that is not a herald from Heaven to our soul.

How many times has the voice of God come your way? When disaster struck, and you had your share of disappointments, when some things that you had planned and hoped for fell crashing to the grounds -- this was not the way you wanted it and not the way you planned -- God was saying to you that it was time for you to bow before him. It was time for you to say with Abraham "shall not the judge of all earth do right" (Genesis 18:25). To say with Job "the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21). To say with the Apostle Paul, "I know that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed" (Romans 8:18). How often does God bring home to us the most majestic truths about himself, as well as the glaring truth about ourselves, not in the School of Peace and Pleasure, but in the University of Grief and Pain?

Elimelech heard these truths in the providence that determined a famine on the land. God was calling his people to account and to attention, to repentance and renewal. Yet they did not hear.

But there was more. Elimelech heard the voice of God not just in his providence. Elimelech heard the voice of God in the Bible too. We have already noted that these were not people without a Bible; God had given them his law long before this. The law had been preserved for them: written by Moses, preserved by Joshua and recounted time and time again in their hearing. And part of that law had a direct bearing on the situation of God's people at this point. You see, God forbade his people to have anything to do with Moab!

Do you recall what the Moabites had done when the children of Israel were wandering in the wilderness? They refused to give them bread and water (Deuteronomy 23:4; Nehemiah 13:2). And Balak, the king of Moab, called for Balaam to come and to curse Israel but he couldn't (Numbers 23:7ff). They were a people who enjoyed the blessing of God. So God said in Deuteronomy 23:3, "do not have anything to do with the Moabites or the Amonites in all your generations, forever." This was on the very eve of the Israelite occupation of Caanan; and at this crucial, turning point in their history God said to them, "these are people from whom you are to be separated. These are people with whom you are not permitted to mix. These are a people to whom you are not to give your sons to marry their daughters or your daughters to marry their sons." The law was written plainly and clearly: "An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the congregation of the Lord for ever" (Deuteronomy 23:3).

You see, God is jealous of the distinctiveness of his own church; and his call to his people is this: "come out from among them and be separate" (2 Corinthians 6:17, referring to Numbers 33:51-56). In God's army you cannot nail your colours to a fence; you cannot sit in no-man's land, with one foot in the world and one foot in the Kingdom of Grace. God calls his people out of darkness and in to the kingdom of light, so that they will stand unreservedly and boldly on the side of Jesus in this world not compromised in their religion but standing firmly in defence of God and his word and his cause and his name and his day.

So Elimelech had it there in the Bible. God prohibited relationships between his people and the Moabites. And is it not interesting that when the people of God returned from the exile in Babylon, under the governorship of Nehemiah, Nehemiah took them back to that very passage in Deuteronomy 23 when he saw that in his absence the Jews had allowed their families to marry and intermingle with the Moabites and the Amonites. (Nehemiah 13). It's just not meant to be. God's people are called to be distinctive and to be distinctively holy. That is the call of the Gospel, and Elimelech heard it. He heard it in his providence, he heard it in the precepts of the Bible; and you've heard it too. Has God not called you to take up the cross and to follow Jesus? To "leave your father's house because the king desires you" (Psalm 45:10-11). Do you know what it is to be so caught up in your heart with the burning attractiveness of Jesus Christ? To know him and love him with such an intensity of devotion that you will follow Jesus Christ, come what may?

Elimelech Silenced the Voice of the King

But the tragedy of Elimelech's story is that he silenced the voice of God. The famine called him to repent, but he did not repent. The famine called the people back to God, but many of them, Elimelech included, did not turn back to God. The famine said to them, "it's time for you to get your relationship with God right". They did not get their relationship with God right; instead they went to Moab and they flew full in the face of the direct precepts and prohibitions of God's word.

Why did they do that? Why did Elimelech do that? Why did he go to Moab when God's word said "Don't go to Moab"? Why did he turn away from Bethlehem, when God sent the famine to call his people back to himself? There was one fundamental reason for it. Moab had bread, and Bethlehem did not. And Elimelech is reasoning it out in his mind and in his heart and in his soul and saying, "We need bread". And he takes his wife and family to Moab looking for bread, because there is bread there.

But Elimelech is addressing the wrong problem. The problem was not the lack of bread! The problem was the lack of a right relationship with God. This was not the first famine in the history of God's people. Listen to the summary of Psalm 105:16-19

Moreover He called for a famine in the land; he destroyed all the provision of bread. He sent a man before them -- Joseph -- who was sold as a slave. They hurt his feet with fetters, he was laid in irons, until the time that his word came to pass; the word of God tested him...

The same God who had sent the famine, sent the provision. He was not about to leave his people in abject despair. No, he provided for them. He raised up a Joseph, whom they despised and neglected and cast into prison. Yet Joseph was the one through whom God gave them bread. The history of God's church is a history of supernatural, gracious provision on the part of God. If he sends a famine, it's not forever; he will provide bread for his people.

But Elimelech is not going to wait for God's bread. He is going to go for Moab's bread. He is just walking by sight, not by faith. He is living for the here and now, for what his eye can see and for what his heart wants, for what his appetite craves. In spite of the clear message of the famine, and the clear counsel of the Bible, Elimelech yields to the temptation to disobey God and to distrust his provision.

James tells us that that is exactly how sin works in human life. A man is tempted this way: he first lusts after something. He sees it and desires it and "lust, when it conceives," says James, "brings forth sin" (James 1:15). Sin is the child of lust. Sin is never the child of faith. So here is Elimelech, with his name, "my God is king". Yet in spite of his professed allegiance to the God of the covenant, he desires bread and goes about getting it in a way that is directly contrary to the prescriptive will of God.

The Bible, however, calls us to live the life of faith. That means looking and trusting to things we cannot see with the natural eye. The Bible is calling us to trust in Jesus Christ. We cannot see him with our natural eye. But the Bible says he is alive; that he came into this world and died and was buried and who is now at the right hand of God. And the Bible asks us to live by faith in that Christ. It says to us "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 16:31).

Elimelech's desire for food leads to his disobedience and his moving away, further and further away, from God. And every step he takes on the road to Moab not only complicates the problem, but brings the problem with him. You see, the heart of Elimelech's problem is the problem of Elimelech's heart. We may change our circumstances, as Elimelech did, and try to go off in a different direction, just like Elimelech did, but until we deal with the problem of our heart's relationship with God, we will never deal with our problem. So Elimelech leaves Bethlehem looking for a solution, but he is only getting deeper and deeper into his problem.

There is only one place where burdens are lifted and problems dealt with, and that is at the cross of Jesus Christ. Isn't that how John Bunyan painted his pilgrim, Christian, in Pilgrim's Progress? When Christian came at last to the cross, the burden that he had been carrying from the city of destruction all along the way rolled right off him, away down into the grave, into the tomb. There, near the cross, he says,

Must here be the beginning of my bliss?
Must here the burden roll of my back?
Must here the strings that bound it to me crack?
Blessed cross. Blessed sepulchre. Blessed rather be
the man that was put to shame for me.

Do you know anything of that? There is peace in Christ, a fulness of grace in him that means that whatever our burdens and trials, he will give us grace to face each day and cross each difficult valley. Burdens are lifted at Calvary. They are dealt with when you bring them to Jesus. But they are never dealt with when you take them to Moab. Going to Moab only compounds the problem. It may offer a quick solution, but in the end will bring only more heartache and sorrow.

Martin Luther experienced this very thing when he was a priest in the Roman Catholic church. There he was, working out his salvation, climbing stone steps to get rid of his burden. But the burden was still there. He had not got to the heart of the problem, which was the problem of his heart. And he never did get to the heart of his problem until he came to the cross. Romans 5 told him that if we are justified by faith, we have peace with God; the burden is lifted and it rolls away. There is peace for those who are justified, and only for those who are justified. There is no peace, God says, for the wicked (Isaiah 48:22; 57:21).

Elimelech Lost the Voice of God

Eventually they came into the country of Moab and, we are told, "remained there ... and Elimelech died. "Lust," says James, "when it conceives, brings forth sin. And sin when it is finished, brings forth death." There is always death as a result of sin. Sin never yielded a positive return. Life never came out of sin, peace never came out of sin. Out of sin there comes a grave, there comes a broken heart, there comes tears and mourning and memory, there comes bitterness instead of blessing. Naomi went with Elimelech to Moab and ended up weeping at the grave of her late husband, because death always follows sin.

That is why the Saviour died, to deal with sin, and to deal with it on its naked territory. As Hebrews 2:14 puts it, Jesus took flesh and blood so that through death he might destroy the devil. He took the nature of those who were subject to death, in order that he might go into death's territory and conquer sin and death for ever. He went right into the grave to destroy the power of sin, and he comes out from the grave, having dealt with sin, having risen with victory and with power. Sin is robbed of its sting, the grave of its victory, because the Lord has died.

Are we living as Paul desired to live, knowing the power of Christ's resurrection (Philippians 3:10)? Have we learned the victory that comes through faith in Christ? Or are we still prone to live the flesh life -- tempted by our own lusts and sinful desires to move away from God as Elimelech did? Let's seek for God's help and grace to rise above sin's power and to live in heavenly realms, experiencing peace and blessing in our souls.

© Iain D. Campbell 2001