Finding God's Mercies in the Shadows of Grief

Philip Miller: Here's what I know about grief, and you know this, too. That grief can turn us bitter and hard, or it can make us soft and tender. Everything hinges on what we do with God's mercies in those dark shadows of our times and our lives.

Larry McCarthy: Welcome to Living Hope with Pastor Philip Miller. I'm Pastor Larry McCarthy, and we're so glad you've joined us for this new series of on the Book of Ruth, Mercies in the Shadows. Wow. Pastor Philip, I mean, everybody grieves. There's really no way to avoid it in this book of. Of Ruth. It's really about grief, isn't it?

Philip Miller: Yeah, I mean, it's full...it starts with tragedy. You know, Naomi and her family, they go to a far off country. Everybody in her family ends up dying, and she's grieving, and she ends up really hard and bitter because of the disappointment and trauma and the hard things she's faced. In other words, it's a story we can really relate to. Right. You know, and for some of our listeners, you might be in a season of grief right now, and there's a lot here that I think God wants to speak to us in the middle of our grief. And for other listeners, I'm sure there's somebody, you know that's grieving. And so there might be some resources here that are helpful. And then the reality is we're all going to grieve at some point, aren't we? And life is hard and there's full of really difficult things. And so the question is, where is God in the midst of our suffering, our pain, our disappointment, our disillusionment? Where can we find Him? Are there really mercies in the shadows for us? And that's what we're going to be talking about in this series. And the good news is God is near, closer than we think.

Larry McCarthy: Now, stay tuned after the message, because Pastor Philip and I, we're going to discuss the stages of grief from a biblical perspective. But now let's go to the pulpit of the Moody Church for part one of the sermon, Running to Reality.

Philip Miller:  when we experience loss, we also experience grief. There’s no question. We face grief.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t like grief. I don’t want to feel it. I don’t want to deal with it. I try to ignore it. That’s my basic instinct, but the reality is, we are all grieving. As a city, as a world, we are grieving, and we have to face that reality square in the face. We need to see grief, feel it, experience it, and invite God into our grief if we’re ever going to make it through the darkness into the dawn. And here’s what I know about grief, and you know this, too. Grief can turn us bitter and hard, or it can make us soft and tender. Everything hinges on what we do with God’s mercies in those dark shadows of our times and our lives.

And so what I want to do this morning is we’re going to read the passage, the first six verses of the book of Ruth. We’re going to pray and ask God’s help for our time together. We’re going to make some comments about the historical background and sort of the context of what’s going on in the text. And then I want to show us today three realities we need to run to if we are to successfully walk ourselves through grief in the presence of the mercies of God. Okay? So three realities we need to run to.

Let’s open God’s Word together. We’re going to be in the book of Ruth, and the first chapter, the first six verses. If you will, follow along as I read here. We’ll also have the verses on the screen for you.

Ruth 1:1–6

“In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. 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 Orpah and the name of the other was Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. 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.”

Thanks be to the Lord for the reading of His Word. Would you bow your heads and pray with me?

Father, we ask as we open your word now, which is sharper than any two-edged sword, it is living and active, we pray that we would also open our hearts, our lives, our souls to you, that we would lay them bare, and that you would teach us, instruct us, change us, draw us close by the power of your Holy Spirit. Transform us, we pray, in the name of Jesus, Amen. Amen.

Our author begins this passage with a chronological marker. He tells us this story takes place in the days when the judges ruled. This is the period after Joshua when he brought the people of Israel into the Promised Land and before the days of the monarchy, so Saul and David and Solomon, when they ruled. The period in between was called the Period of the Judges. The story takes place approximately 1100 B.C. during the period that historians refer to as Iron Age I.

There’s a reoccurring cycle in the book of Judges that, if you read it, you will see that the people of God wander away and rebel from God. God sends famine and He sends invasions from foreign hostile countries to come in and take His people captive. The people then cry out in agony and cry to God for relief. He raises up a judge, a deliverer who comes and fights on behalf of the people and sets them free. And the people return to God, and then a few years later, they repeat the pattern all over again.

It is a time of unrest and instability and disruption. And in the end of Judges it is summarized with this verse,
Judges 21:25: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” And it is in the midst of all of this chaos now that we find our story, this family of four, a husband, a wife, and two sons who are going to make a journey. They are Ephrathites. This is a regional clan of the half-tribe of Ephraim.

You’ll remember that Joseph, who was one of the twelve patriarchs, had two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, each of whom took half of the tribe that would have been belonged to Joseph and this family here is from the tribe of Ephraim. They hail from Bethlehem in Judah. Now Bethlehem to our ears is a very famous town because that’s where Jesus was born. But at this time it would have been a town of no consequence, just located five miles southeast of Jerusalem. Bethlehem is a name that’s made up of two compound Hebrew words: Bet, meaning house, and Lehem, meaning bread. Betlehem, House of Bread! And that’s ironic, of course, because there’s a famine going on.

Elimelech is the name of the patriarch of this family. His name means, in Hebrew, “My God is king.” He is married to Naomi whose name means “pleasant, kind, or sweet.” And they have two boys here, Mahlon and Chilion, whose names respectively mean sickly and frail. Now, those are likely not their real names because what parent would name their kids Sickly and Frail? Right? What’s probably going on here is that the author has tweaked the spelling of their actual names in order to create a kind of pun here, what’s called a “nomen omen,” an ominous sign of what is to come in the story.

Now, in light of the famine, this family of four ventures out into the country of Moab. They go east across the Jordan Valley into the hills rising above the Dead Sea into what is now modern day Jordan. Moab was populated by the second cousin hillbillies of Israel. These are hillbilly second cousins here. They were founded through an incestuous relationship between Lot and one of his daughters. It’s a very sad story. You can read about it in Genesis 19. And actually, Moab itself, the name for the people, is a compound of two words–Mo, meaning who, and Ab, meaning father. Who’s your father? Moab literally means, “Who’s your daddy?” Okay? (chuckles) Who’s your daddy?

And so Moab and Israel were not on friendly terms at all, to say the least. The king of Moab was the one who had hired Balaam to come and curse Israel, if you remember that story from
Numbers 22–24. When that didn’t work, the Moabite women seduced the Israelite men in retaliation (Numbers 25). The Moabites were those who worshipped the false god of Chemosh, and there was all kinds of messed up stuff in their worship there.

And just recently in history in the time of the Judges, the king, Eglon, had been oppressive to the people of Israel, and it was only when the left-handed dagger man, Ehud, killed him in his palace that the people were delivered in Judges 3.

And so all of this is just to say Moab is not a good place. Okay. It’s not a good place historically, politically, morally, or theologically. That Elimelech is going there is a problem. Now, Elimelech and his family may have intended only a brief journey to the land, but sojourning became remaining, remaining became dwelling, and when it was all said and done, they were there over a decade. And it is in Moab that the tragedies go from bad to worse.

First, Elimelech dies, leaving Naomi widowed. In an agrarian patriarchal society, this is especially devastating. There’s no life insurance, no social security. Women had very few legal rights. They were not allowed to inherit property. Property was passed down the male line in these days. But she does have her sons which means they can work the fields. They can inherit the property and care for her in her old age.

Both of these sons get married. They take Moabite wives. Orpah and Ruth are the names of these ladies, but after ten years they are still childless. And the point here is that there are no sons and there are no heirs. And then they both tragically die, which leaves Naomi now in utter destitution. There’s no one to work the fields and earn income, there’s no one to protect and defend if there’s a legal issue, there’s no way to pass on property through inheritance. There is no hope, no future. Everything is done.

Now, in Israel there was a kind of social safety net for situations just like this. It was called Levirate Marriage. If a woman was widowed without an heir, it was her deceased husband’s brother, it was his responsibility, if he was unmarried, to actually marry his dead brother’s bride, and then father a child and carry on the family name so that the property could stay in the family. And the problem here, of course, is that Naomi is well beyond child-bearing years. And we don’t even know if Elimelech has a brother, and so there’s really no real hope in this situation.

Naomi has lost everything. I mean, can you imagine her suffering and anguish? She’s not only lost her husband and sons but she’s lost her livelihood, her social stability, her future, everything! She has entered into a kind of living death. No hope, no future, and nowhere to turn! That is until she hears a rumor that there is bread once again in Bethlehem. Bethlehem, the House of Bread, has bread in it, that the Lord (You’ll notice the capital letters in this verse. The Lord, the L-O-R-D! This is the covenant name of God, Yahweh.) the covenant keeping God has been faithful to His covenant, to His people. He has visited and graced them once again. And so she gathers her things and heads for home. And thus begins what is, I think, one of the most beautiful stories of redemption in all of the Bible.

Now, we’re going to look at this more over the coming weeks, but today what I want to focus on is I want to show you three realities that we need to run to if we are to navigate grief in the graces of God, in His mercies.

So the first reality we have to run to is this. Life is full of grief. Life is full of grief! 

Larry McCarthy: This is Living Hope with Pastor Philip Miller, I'm Pastor Larry McCarthy. And as we open today's discussion, what you're hearing is only made possible because of people like you, people who generously support this ministry. And as a thank you, we have a gift we want to make available to you. We have a resource. We just love to share it with you. Go to livinghopeoffer.com or call us 1-800-215-5001. We're so glad you joined us today as we face how life really is full of grief. Now. Pastor Philip, Elimelech and Naomi, they're grieving the famine in their land and their sojourning. And Moab becomes remaining and remaining becomes dwelling. And what we're really talking about is they got stuck. And that isn't uncommon from what happens to people who are grieving now. They get stuck in their grief. So how do we help today with somebody from this period of grief that they have to acknowledge to this just being now the new reality of their life where they're stuck there?

Philip Miller: Yeah. You know, grief does take a while, doesn't it? It's a process. It takes time. I think sometimes we rush through grief and that's part of the problem. We try to make it go away instead of actually recognizing we have to feel it, we have to process it, we have to go through it. You know, I think famously we've, you know, people know this, this language. We, the five stages of grief. Right. That we tend to go through, they' linear, but we tend to go through, you know, denial and anger and bargaining and depression. And then finally we get to that point of acceptance. Right. And, and of course, it's not linear. You can kind of flip around and experience those overlapping stages. And, and it's, it's not like you go through them in sequence.

Larry McCarthy: That's so important that you mentioned that. And they can come back. It isn't like graduation.

Philip Miller: Yeah, I think grief feels a lot like you're like on, like waves on an ocean is like you get waves of grief and you, they sometimes they catch you off by. Off guard, by surprise. They just sweep over you and all of a sudden you're in it and you're, you know, you're in the grieving, you know, and then you kind of, you think, okay, I get equilibrium. And then it comes back. Right. And so, but the reality is we, we having God with us in the midst of our grief changes everything. You know, instead of denial, which we tend to go to, that's the first stage. Right. You tend to go to denial and tend to hide and pretend it's not real and ignore it, not deal with it. The Bible gives us resources to actually face reality, to, to feel the grief, to, to sit in our sorrow and not be alone in it. Because, because God is with us. And I think that allows us strength to actually face grief head on in a way that it would be hard to do without God, you know, and then, and then when you think of bargaining, bargaining is trying to, like, gain control. Like, well, you know, maybe I can fix this. Maybe I can make it go away. Maybe I don't have to deal with it. Like, maybe I can, I can wrestle through and gain mastery over this situation, exert my will and just sort of, you know, that's the bargaining process. And the reality is, like, we're not as strong as we think we are, and we don't have as much control, and we're at the mercies of all kinds of factors we can't actually manage. And, but the good thing is we have a sovereign God who's with us, and he does have control. And he has, he holds the future and he holds us. And so we're, we may not be in control, but we're, we're in his hands. And I think that is a huge, that's a huge shift once we acknowledge that. And then, you know, think of anger. Anger is, I can't control this, so I'm just mad about it, right? I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm mad about what happened. I'm angry. I'm like. And a lot of times we don't think of anger as grief, but it is, that's, that's what it is. We, Anger comes out hot and aggressive, but underneath it's sad. And it's, it's that, that's, that's the root, you know, and, and so I love the Psalms. You know, David is so raw in the Psalms. Sometimes he says things to God's face and you're like, I don't know if that's okay to say that. You know, he's just like, where are you? Why are you not coming through? I can't trust you right now. But what we're learning is that God can handle all of our emotions. Like God wants our hearts, even when they're ugly. That's amazing to me. And God is the safe place where I actually can bring all my anger and all the gross stuff that's inside of me. I can actually just put it on the table in his presence. And he doesn't deserve my anger. He's a good God. But you know what? He can take it. And he wants it. He wants. As a father, I would much rather my kids be honest and tell me what's going on and express that anger than bottle it up and, like, go to their room and just keep quiet. Right. I would much rather have an open heart, even if it's ugly, than some. A heart that's retreating. Right? And our Heavenly Father's the same way. He wants our hearts even when they're ugly. And then, you know, depression. Depression is that sense of lack of hope. It's like, this will never change. I'm just stuck. It's sad, it's miserable. I can't change it. And so I'm just in a funk about it, you know? But the beautiful thing is that our God is a redeemer, and he turns crucifixions into resurrections. And there is abundant hope on the horizon for everyone who trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so if our God is for us, there's always hope. And that glimmer of hope pulls us right, you know, out of that depressive state. So acceptance is really when we learn to accept everything in the presence of our good God who's with us, even when it hurts. You know, the scriptures say God is near to the brokenhearted. Jesus is a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. The Holy Spirit grieves with us. He groans with us in our weakness. So our whole triune God comes close in the midst of our grief. And that's what makes it so different, is if we have God, it'll be different. It'll be okay.

Larry McCarthy: This is Living Hope with Pastor Philip Miller. Today we're starting our new series in Ruth, and we're talking about grief. You know, when you were talking about denial, I think one of those things there is that it isn't so much denying that the event is happening, but in the life of believers, denying the impact that it's having that "I'm okay. I'm fine." You're not. You're grieving. And it's absolutely okay for you to acknowledge that. And we see that becomes a trap of sorts, another place to get stuck, because they're not really addressing the fact that "I'm not okay. I am hurting. I do need help. I'm in a bad spot right now. When people are grieving, I don't know if you've seen this, but I certainly have well, they'll do anything to anesthetize their feelings. It's sometimes it's shopping or overeating or drugs or alcohol. They'll develop bad habits, I guess, just so that they don't have to feel. Have you seen this?

Philip Miller: Yeah. And grief is a window of time when we're super spiritually vulnerable. Right? We're so it's so easy to run to anything other than God for a quick fix, a little self medication to kind of get through. And the problem is those things only work for a little bit and then they have all this damaging fallout from that comes afterwards. It damages relationships and ourselves dehumanizing it. So anyway, so they're really lousy substitutes for running to God. But sometimes I think, you know, it feels like we have more control when we're self medicating. But to be in the presence of God, relationship relationally is vulnerable. It's opening up. It's inviting him into feelings that we don't like and don't like to experience, but we're feeling them in his presence and with him. And that's actually the only way to heal. We got to open up. We got to open up and acknowledge and deal with these things and invite God into that space. And again our God draws near. That's the beautiful thing, right? That God meets us in the midst of our pain. And the reality is the cross is such a beautiful picture for us, right? Because there we see God suffering with us in the midst of a broken world. And that's unique to the Christian story. That's beautiful that God suffers with his people. And so our grief is not something that God doesn't share or understand. He's the place where we can go with that grief.

Larry McCarthy: We sure hope this has been helpful. You know, everyone grieves, beloved. And it's absolutely okay for you not to be okay. But we can be confident that we know the end of the story. That blessed hope is at the heart of our latest resource, When Jesus Returns. When the future feels uncertain. This book reminds you that Jesus Return is a sure and certain hope, no matter how heavy today feels. When Jesus Returns brings together faithful Bible teaching from trusted voices like Erwin Lutzer, Anne Graham Lotz, and Jack Hibbs. It was curated by Jan Markell from one of the nation's respected prophecy conferences. It doesn't shy away from the hard realities of our world. You know, the wars, false teaching and uncertainty we all face. Instead, it points past them to the God who's working all things together for good and who has already promised to make all things new. The aim of the book is to make you like the sons of Issachar who understood the times, not anxious about them, but living in expectation of the King who is coming to reign. We'd love to send you a copy today so that you can face whatever comes with confidence instead of fear. You can rest in the promise that this story ends with Jesus, no matter what today looks like for you or how uncertain things seem to appear now. You might want to request a copy for a friend or, you know, somebody who needs to be reminded of our blessed hope. Someone who needs to be reminded that God is still writing our story. To request a copy of When Jesus Returns, Simply go to livinghopeoffer.com or call us 1-800-215-5001. You can also write to us at Moody Church Media, 1635 N. LaSalle Drive, Chicago, IL 60614. Beloved grief is heavy, but we don't carry it alone. And next time we'll talk about leaning into God in the midst of our grief. Thanks for joining us for Living Hope, where you'll always find gospel truth for the journey of a lifetime. Living Hope is a production of Moody Church Media and is sponsored by the Moody Church.