The Bitterness of Fullness Apart from Christ
8/8 Reading Portions: Ruth 1; Acts 26; Jeremiah 36, 45; Psalm 9
Online Bible Audio/Readings Links (ESV)
8/8 Reading Portions: Ruth 1; Acts 26; Jeremiah 36, 45; Psalm 9
Ruth 1:20-21
She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the LORD has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”
MARA
Naomi’s utterance is a powerful reflection of the Holy Spirit’s work to awaken a soul toward repentance unto salvation. She declares to have gone away from Bethlehem full during the time when there was a famine in the land. Cannot a sovereign God provide during a famine, since Boaz remained? (See devotional on Ruth 1:1 from 3 years ago). She was full of her husband, who led her away from the Promised Land and their apportioned inheritance to cause his family to live among the idolatrous Moabites. She was full of her two sons, who married foreign wives. Apart from the promises of God in general, and apart from the Messiah in particular, we are full of many things, including ourselves. But that earthly happiness is superficial and temporary, ending in death and bitterness. Fallen mankind must be stripped of everything that keeps us from Christ, else we will erect all kinds of idols, whether they are made of wood, stone, or precious metals, or whether they are fashioned in our own minds from the works of flesh, bone, and blood. Naomi’s prophetic utterance was a true experience in her life, as the Holy Spirit began working so that Ruth may marry Boaz to create even more stupendous gospel pictures in the lineage of David, and ultimately for Jesus Messiah. Naomi’s given name means “pleasant.” Yet before she could know the fullness of joy and pleasures forever more at the Messiah’s right hand (Psa 16:11), she must know the bitterness of godly sorrow unto repentance without regret (2 Cor 7:10). This is not just a one-time event prior to salvation. It is ongoing for you and me as sinners saved by grace. Our flesh will often lull us into finding fullness and pleasure in temporary, earthly things. But those things must die in the land of idolatry. Even our relationships can be idols in our lives. Jesus said,
“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:26
When those relationships we give weight to pull us away from Christ, we’ve created an idol of that relationship. But when Jesus is exalted because we respond to His love with love and godly fear, Jesus blesses those relationships with His very presence in the Bethlehem of our salvation. Hallelujah! What a Savior!