The relationship between Naomi and Ruth offers a powerful model for mothers-in-law. A truly good mother-in-law cultivates a love so deep that the distinction between daughter and daughter-in-law fades away. This is a love that seeks the best for the younger woman, even if it means letting go, and wisely empowers her to take initiative, trusting in God’s guidance for her new family. Through this relationship, we see how a woman who chose to belong to the people of God was welcomed and became an ancestor of Jesus Christ Himself.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] We are in the book of Ruth, and if you want to find it in the Pew Bible, the ones that look like this, scattered around the church, it’s page 222, 222, so easy to find in the Old Testament. It’s been my task this week to get ready for today, and I was intending to speak on a topic for the morning that had to do, coming out of the book of Ruth, the very predicament that Boaz was in when Naomi, by the way, her name means not bitter, that’s Mara means bitter, but Naomi, I had it around the wrong way last week. Naomi means pleasant, and anyway, Naomi arrives with Ruth back in her home country, and Boaz is there that sees these two coming, and he’s the one who has a bit of a predicament to know how to handle the scene,

[00:01:08] particularly as there is some requirement within their customs that where there is a widowed woman, a young widowed woman, that generally speaking, a relative is meant to step up and help her find a second marriage. And so here’s a bit of a scenario for Boaz, and so I was interested in a sermon along the line of having a predicament of guidance to know whether or not this is what God is guiding to happen. However, the story line is one about Naomi, as well as Ruth meeting up with Boaz, and the story of the book very much concentrates on the faithfulness of God to look after Naomi as she goes back to her own country and then looks after Ruth.

[00:02:01] And the relationship between the two is one that’s particularly relevant for Mother’s Day, and so I found myself with two sermons that I’ve been garnering from the scriptures. And I’m giving one now which will be one more for mothers, and tonight the one about Boaz’s dilemma is to know whether God was leading in this or not. And so that’s how we’ll go today. But the interesting thing is that this story line in the book of Ruth about Naomi returning home with Ruth, and Naomi being one of the stars of the story, one of the people who’s in it from beginning to end, and is a good person for us to talk about mothers from. The only thing that you could fail to notice if you weren’t careful is that Naomi is not Ruth’s mother exactly. She’s actually her mother-in-law.

[00:03:06] And so this morning I want to bring a message about how to be a good mother-in-law. Now what’s interesting about such a topic, and it’s not really a bad bending of a Mother’s Day address, because of the very first point I want to bring out to you, that here we have the story line about Naomi and Ruth, and one of the things that you notice is that although at first in the recitation of what’s going on, it talks about the two girls who are the wives of Naomi’s sons that die, her husband dies as well, and she’s left just with these two daughters-in-law, that the relationship is spelled out as Naomi being the mother-in-law. But as the narrative continues, you’ll find that it begins to talk about Ruth and Naomi, when Naomi calls her daughter.

[00:04:05] And the very first point that I want to bring out to you in this story line about being a good mother-in-law is that something happens between the two women, the older one and the younger one, such that Naomi calls her daughter. And indeed, in the verses that you’ve got up there on the screen, if you look down there in verse 2, and what’s happening is that Ruth has arrived back with Naomi, they’re back in the land of Israel, they’re back in Bethlehem, and then Ruth, the Moabitess, in verse 2, says to Naomi, let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him, in whose sight I shall find favour. Gee, there’s a lot in that verse, when you know about mothers and daughters-in-law. And the first thing that I notice is that Naomi has been narrated as definitely the leader in all of this,

[00:05:09] and she’s the one who decides to go back to the land from which she’d come, back to Israel. And the two girls are sort of following on, and it’s Naomi who has the initiative. And as she’s heading back, this is in chapter 1, you can go back and read it yourself later, she says that she’s going back, and the two of them say, we’ll come with you. and Naomi tries to dissuade them. And she tries to dissuade them not because she’s wanting to go back to her own country and shed off what had happened, the accretions she’s gotten of these two girls who are Moabitesses, but it is that she really is concerned for them. There has come about a relationship of love and care, a motherly love of Naomi for the two girls. And what she says to them is not because she’s trying to brush them off

[00:06:04] but because she knows that their best possibility of getting another husband is if they return to their original homes and from that original home they have an availability with respect in the community that they’ve grown up in that they’re likely to catch another husband. And so she’s thinking of them for the good of them even though she’s come to love them. and she says to them, this is in chapter 1, that they should go back to their families and from there in the purposes of God they might discover another marriage, another husband to come about and that’s something that she’s doing out of concern for her daughters-in-law. She’s developed a relationship over them that they’re not just accretions that now that there’s no need for them to hang around

[00:07:00] the husbands have died, the sons who are husbands have died but she’s concerned for that process that is a natural process of some single girl being in a family. Now this is somewhat culturally different from today. Back then the single women stayed in families and families were a much bigger deal back then. Now it’s interesting because it’s closer into the history of the whole human race for when God made us he made us to be in families and he made it quite it’s quite in the book of Genesis we’ll put up on the screen a verse in Genesis about how first when Adam had Eve brought to him and how he discovered the first marriage was happening and in Genesis 2.24 the Bible narrates and says therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh and there is in this

[00:08:03] teaching of the scriptures this is God’s narration about the first marriage there is in this teaching that the family is prior until a new marriage happens and that is the construction of a new family and in the new family it takes precedence as leadership is concerned and the man leaves his father and mother and he holds fast to his wife. The actual Hebrew word underpinning this, that word hold fast, is the idea of doggedly not letting go. It’s the idea of putting as prior in terms of all the securities involved the new marriage. And one of the problems that happens between mothers-in-law and daughters is a question of who’s still got the ear of the son? Who still wants to cling to that which has been the joy of their lives? And the scripture is saying that when a new wedding happens, when a wedding happens,

[00:09:07] there’s something new that’s created that takes precedence over the old, takes precedent over the old. And so a man who gets married should recognise in his new family where his chief place of belongingness and sharing and the question of where decisions are made is in the new, not always running back to the old. Now, that’s something that Naomi would have already faced in chapter 1, in the narration of the events that are in chapter 1. Naomi, when her two sons had died, is left with two girls who are her daughters-in-law and they have lost the new and so they’re clinging to Naomi, which is appropriate. But she’s not one who has treasured for herself to keep that forever as her securities. She might have hung on to those two girls as what the only living persons there is that’s close to her.

[00:10:14] Is she going to go back to Israel with absolutely nothing? But instead of that, as, thank you, you’ve got the right verse. He’s doing that automatically. 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, that’s their dead husbands, and with me. And so she’s actually thinking of the daughters-in-law benefit to make that suggestion rather than clinging to them as a security, the only securities that she’s got left. Later on she’s going to talk about her name should actually be Mara, which means bitter, because she says, The Lord has dealt bitterly with me. She’s really got nothing but these two girls. But she recognises the principle that they’re better off to go back to their original families

[00:11:11] to have a belongingness and a family than just to be sticking with her. Now some people read this entirely the opposite, that Naomi is showing that it’s good you to stick with your mother-in-law. That’s not the point at all. It is that Naomi is developed into a care for the best spot for the daughter-in-law. And how to be a good mother-in-law is when you are able to see what is best for them. And your advice is not just that you continue the joy that you’ve had with your own son and whatever at the cost of the new marriage. A good mother-in-law is one like Naomi who saw that it would be better for them to go back to their families. Now what happens actually is not that with both of them because one of them, the older one, decides to do as instructed. But when you read it, we’ll go back to Ruth chapter 2.

[00:12:13] When you read it there, it says as to what happened a little earlier. I think, let me see, probably at the end of chapter 1. Never mind. See if you can find that. All right. No, it’s earlier still in chapter 1. I’ve got him fishing for what he hadn’t been told to do, but that’s good. All right. And what about verses 9 and following? Have you got chapter 1, verses 9 and following? And anyway, what actually happens there is that when the older sister goes back, what happens is that, yeah, we’ve got the right spot. On my screen, it’s a smaller print, but on there, if you put that, yeah. And Naomi’s telling him to turn back in verse 12. And so we really need verses 23. Never mind. Well, what happens is that the Bible tells us that Ruth clung to Naomi. And the clinging was a tight clinging that wouldn’t let go.

[00:13:25] She’s been instructed to go back to her own family, but Ruth clung. And it’s really the idea in the original language of tight. She’s not going to get talked out of it. And when Naomi saw that Ruth was not going to be dissuaded, she let it be. And so Ruth accompanied her back to Israel. And so that’s the story that we’ve seen. And what that tells me is that Naomi and Ruth had developed such a closeness. Now, what a good mother-in-law is, is someone who’s treating the girl as her own daughter emotionally. A good mother-in-law is not one who still has all the connections of her original family and has a distance between the newly one that’s coming. There has to be a hard working that goes on for there to be from a woman and her new daughter-in-law. And how do I read that in the scriptures?

[00:14:33] As it shifts in its description and just calls, Naomi calls them daughters. And she says to them, my daughters, do this and that. And later on, there it is, up there on the screen, verse 13, no, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me. But she’s shifted to just be treating them as daughters and talking to them as daughters. And when that happens, and it doesn’t happen to every mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship, but it’s something to be worked toward where somehow the newly come one has become in the mind and the eyes and the heart of the mother as like another daughter. That’s a good mother-in-law, daughter-in-law relationship. And so Naomi is very much aware of the difficulty they’re in. And there’s that verse in verse 14,

[00:15:33] they lifted up their voices and they wept again. And Orpah, that’s the other one, kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. And something had happened to make the connection to be so close. That’s what is the result that can happen with a mother-in-law who has that love in her life. I did a bit of listening on the internet to other sermons given at Mother’s Day. It’s not exactly my strong point to be able to talk on this topic. But I listened in to what others had to say. And one idea I did hear was that the opinion, and I’m not sure whether I could prove this biblically, but the fellow who was speaking, said that when God makes us, when he made Adam and Eve, he made the male and the females with such differences that in the woman, there is a capacity to love in the way that mothers do.

[00:16:34] Now, you know, we have a bit of a saying that we talk about a mother’s love. And in some of our minds, we just think of the style of loving that a mother is in a role to do. And I confess that I had that idea in my head as to what it meant when I read A Mother’s Love. But I’ve been convinced that when you read about A Mother’s Love, it’s not talking about just the role that one is in because you are a mother. It’s talking about something that God has made a capacity for in what it is to be a woman. And there are many women who have this motherly type of love even though they don’t have their own children. I understood that as a little boy without it registering. It’s only in reflection. I’ve come to see through what happened to me as a little boy going to school. I was very skinny.

[00:17:29] My parents were in Christian work and I had a teacher who was from the country, a rather strong woman who was probably from a farm with lots of food. I don’t know. Anyway, but she looked at me and she saw this skinny little fella in the class. This is grade three in primary school. And she looked at me and because she knew my parents were in Christian work, she made the assumption it was that they didn’t have much money and that I wasn’t fed properly. It was the wrong assumption. I ate like a horse back then. And anyway, what she did is when they had those milk things, you know, a little third of a pint of milk were given to kids once upon a time in schools, where she used to get extras and she’d line up at least six, I’m not sure of the number, it’s a long time back, but she’d line six of these little bottles

[00:18:24] and she’d make me gradually drink them through the day. Every day, six extra bottles so she was trying to fatten me up. And she was a big strong farming woman and she’d look at me and would make me drink these drinks. But she was acting like a mother who couldn’t bear to see a little boy looking so underfed in her bite. but there’s something about women it doesn’t come out in every woman equally and I know that there’s some who look at themselves and think I don’t have any motherly instincts but I think they’re there somewhere maybe repressed maybe not given an opportunity to be expressed but I think that then I agree with the preacher I heard saying that there’s something about a woman that God has given them motherly instincts just naturally and you notice that amongst people

[00:19:19] who are not necessarily good Christians or people who are sometimes you can meet up with people with criminal backgrounds and yet you’ll see a woman nonetheless who every now and then shows some instinct to take care of some poor wee little fellow and his six little parts. What is it that causes that to exist? It’s because God made women with a capacity to be mothers and even if the Lord doesn’t give the opportunity or the biology of it all doesn’t let it happen yet there is within a woman a capacity to find a way to be a mother and I would urge us all to take that on board as something that tells us that we can find an expression for motherhood even if we ourselves are not mothers because the mothering has been put there by God and can be brought out like that lady in charge of my class did.

[00:20:26] Well, anyway, in the storyline Ruth has such a relationship with her daughter-in-law that no longer when the fellow writing the story or whoever wrote the story no longer says daughter-in-law he said it at first using the word sister-in-law or daughter-in-law but eventually he just calls Ruth my daughter and it stands out when you read the story my daughter and the next thing I notice in this storyline particularly when we get in chapter 2 is that when it comes to arriving back there in the homeland it tells us that the whole of the town we’re all talking about or all aware of the arrival of Ruth coming back again with one of her daughter-in-law and there’s a moment where it was a little bit how shall I say a very scary thing for Ruth to arrive back and have no reservation of funds

[00:21:28] so she’s come back because they’re absolutely empty she’s come back to her home country but she’s got nothing and something happens here is that instead of it being Naomi who’s giving all of the ideas and directions to go that Ruth seems to take over and it’s in the story here in the verses that we’ve got on the screen now verse 6 a servant who was in charge of the reapers no sorry didn’t mean to make you shunt it alright we’re in the right spot in verse 2 Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi and if you read between the lines it’s always a bit of a guess when you’re reading between the lines of any story but I do I’m reading between the lines I know but I think it’s there Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi it’s not Naomi saying I’m off you can do this and you do that it’s Ruth saying to her because she’s taken the initiative

[00:22:34] it’s a relationship that leaves room for the young ones who are becoming strong in their own right to exercise who they are. And Ruth has said to Naomi, let me go, Naomi’s still the one in charge, but Ruth says, let me go to the field and glean among the ears of the, go gleaning. Now, by the way, gleaning was something that was done at harvest time where the law required in the land of Israel that when you went harvesting, that you always didn’t clean up all the scraps but allowed people who were homeless or people who had no income to come behind the reapers and pick up all the little extra pieces to be their own. It was called gleaning, coming after the harvesters. So Ruth says, let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favour.

[00:23:35] Now, I’m going to talk about that tonight when we talk about the other message I was trying to get out of this passage when we talk about how to know whether God is in something or not. Anyway, she said to her, go my daughter. What do those words represent? But Naomi, being prepared to let some of the power that she had as the older woman, the mother-in-law, for the daughter to have an initiative and she allows her to go. Go my daughter. There’s a lot in those words and I think something about bringing up for young people has to do with the fact that you can’t always have them do what you want. You’ve got to nourish them and hope that they’ll get in touch with God to have his instructions but then you’ve got to let them make some of the decisions and Naomi is going to let Ruth

[00:24:36] take the initiative and make a suggestion. Possibly one commentary I read had the idea that Ruth was in such a tis going back to her home country and so desperate and being without money and whatever that she’s lost a lot of get up and go and Ruth is having to take up the slack. I don’t know whether that’s true or not. I just know that a good mother-in-law is doing what Ruth did when she let the young one have some of the decision making. Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favour. And she said to her Go my daughter. It’s a bit of a chant almost as a go my daughter. We do that when we go along to the athletics and we see our little ones running off and we want to cheer for them to win the race. But here it is a bit more of go and take the initiative

[00:25:40] and do what you can see to do. And so she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers. She happened to come to a part of the field belonging to Boaz. It was a collective work where a lot of fields would be done by a group of men. And Boaz is a man of the clan of Elimelech. That’s the clan that got to live when they came in to conquer the land. That’s the clan that took that area and included Bethlehem. So a person who is a Bethlehemite is most likely to be someone of the clan of Elimelech. So that’s what happened. and it shows what a good mother-in-law does, that she’s able to see the capacity of the young one and rather than continuing to have the role of a mother when you have little children and you tell them all the things they’ve got to do, but to let them to have grown up to be an adult

[00:26:32] and let them, so that the mother-in-law says, go my child or go my daughter and that’s a part of what it is to be a good mother-in-law that you don’t stifle their initiative but you let them be taking it according to the age that they are. Now she goes and she’s in the field of this place and there’s going to be a later moment when the friendship between Boaz and Ruth is beginning to blossom and there is a moment when the mother-in-law has some good advice as to how to go about it and I think there’s nothing better for a mother daughter relationship than for both not only is the mother in law or the mother giving the daughter opportunity to express their own decisiveness but there’s also a place for daughters and daughters in law to recognise that there’s a good deal of wisdom wrapped up in that mother

[00:27:32] or mother in law and that there’s a time to take advice as well as to exercise your own initiative and that’s in the storyline as well because the advice that Naomi gives is that which works as far as bringing about the recognition of Boaz that there’s something that should be happening with Ruth. They eventually get married. By the way I don’t know whether last week I made it clear that with regard to Boaz he is one who when he married Ruth had a son and that son became the father of Jesse and Jesse the father of David and in actual fact so Ruth’s name gets to be listed in the forebears of the Saviour of Jesus. He comes from a line that includes Ruth. She came from right out there a nation that actually had been God was against because they betrayed the children of Israel at one stage

[00:28:33] and God said don’t let anybody who’s a Moabite person come into my people at all. But because Ruth had that moment when she said your people will be my people and I will be yours when Ruth said I will never leave you and if I die from anything other than if we cease to be together from anything other than my death then that’d be terrible. That’s basically how Ruth talked, all of that showed that Ruth became, in terms of allegiance and Israelite and the condemnation of the Moabite people as to not let them in to be a part of the people of God, did not apply to her because she’s someone who chose to be what an Israelite is. It was always the case that anybody who was a Gentile could come and become a part of the people of God in the Old Testament even if they were not the actual physical derivatives of

[00:29:28] Abraham but if they chose to belong to the people of God they were welcomed by God that’s why the actual temple in the Old Testament era had a part for a court for the Gentiles because those who weren’t the people of God could come along and worship and some of them even became and there was such a thing as proselyte baptism whereby the baptism made you a part of the people of God We actually have an application of that with our Christian baptism. For what that is, is a recognition of someone who is outside of the family of God, having come to Christ in our case, as in the Christian era, having come to Christ and received the forgiveness of sins, they become a part of the people of God, and what the baptism represents, which is why we teach what we call

[00:30:16] believers baptism, as someone who’s come to believe, then we baptise them as a sign as to what that means the significance of their believing is that they’ve become a part of the people of god it’s a marvelous thing when someone who’s been an outsider from god’s people but they hear the gospel message and they find christ as savior and then they come along and say i want to be baptized because what they’re saying is i’m in the family and i want to declare it i want to show it i want it to be demonstrated in what’s meant by baptism that i’ve become a part of the family of God. That was the case of the Israelites able to take on board Gentiles who came right in and became a part of the Israeli background, the Israeli race. So also, we today in the New Testament era, when we come to Christ,

[00:31:06] we become a part of the people of God, which is what baptism signifies. Anyway, this was a storyline with Ruth that she has become someone who is a part of the people of God. And it was something that was begun because she had a mother-in-law who didn’t keep her at a distance or a mother-in-law who allowed her to gradually grow, a mother-in-law who gave in to her desire to come back with her to her own country and let her become a part of the very thing that Naomi represented. It’s a beautiful story, but I think I’ll have to continue tonight with the other half of what I had prepared about what we can learn from the storyline of Ruth. But this morning what is important to see is that a person who is a good mother-in-law is someone who no longer sees them as not in their family. She calls her my daughter.

[00:32:05] And secondly, as I’ve been bringing out, she’s prepared to encourage the young one to have some of the initiative and go my daughter, she says in verse 2. So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers came to a part that would belong to Boaz and so the story continues. So that’s what makes a good mother-in-law someone who ends up hardly able to distinguish whether the person was actually a biological daughter or not. they’ve become as equally a daughter by being in the family and that’s what makes a good mother-in-law. I’m going to have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the story of Ruth. It is a really fascinating story that happened way back in history of the Israeli nation that happened to a girl who’s got married to a person from the family of God,

[00:33:08] the people of God and then the husband dies and then finds herself nonetheless attached to a mother-in-law. We thank you for this story because it’s a story that tells of how Ruth got to be one of the ancestors of Jesus Christ and that you used all of that. No doubt they had no idea of all those later to develop things but we praise you for how you used all these steps to bring about your handiwork to design the ancestors of Jesus Christ and we thank you for this story in Jesus’ name.