Keys for a Successful Family Life - Part 6 — Don Courville

Well, you ready for more? I'm going to shift gears a little bit this morning. I love to go through books of the Bible and sometimes do a character study. And I thought about doing that this year and then the expression was put out a couple times to maybe focus on the family.

And in that area, so I'm going to do that this morning. I do have one message that I gave, I think it was last week at our church. I can't remember if it was last week or the week before. And I would like to close up with that one this evening.

Naomi's Family Leaves Moab and Returns to Bethlehem

But I'm going to take you for a little bit just into the life of Ruth. Now I can't do all of it. It would be, we could do the whole weekend on Ruth maybe. But the reason is it's because of its theme of the family.

And basically how a father took his family down to Moab and they all died except Naomi and you know the story. But there are some principles there that will help us. And so let's open up with prayer. Our Father, Thou art gracious and You're kind and You're forgiving and You're merciful.

And You pour Your grace out upon us undeserving folks, especially me. And we come again as beggars back to our Father saying we need more blessing. We want more blessing. Would You bless us again? And we've learned some tremendous things from Your Word.

And Father, the kids have really enjoyed the stories. But Father, I'm planning on going a little bit deeper today with maybe not so many stories. But just to dig into Your Word and draw out truths that the Holy Spirit could open up to us.

And again we pray if there would be anybody that would be listening to this message or watching this message without Christ or possibly here. That the Holy Spirit would draw them to the lovely Lord Jesus.

That they would see that You died on the cross for them. And You want them to give their heart to You. To surrender themselves to You. To believe on You. And to do it by faith. To be willing to turn from their sins.

Now Father, we come again asking You to bless us. And that we might be a blessing to You. And maybe what You give us we could use to be a blessing to others. Now Father, You know we have some hard things happen in our lives.

Some of us have had some great tragedies. And we come and ask that the healing power of the Word of God with the work of the Holy Spirit would work in our hearts. That we would be free. You said the truth would set us free.

And sometimes it's a challenge to us to obey Your truth. But You've given us everything that we need for life. For godliness. To make it. And Your grace is sufficient for all our needs. So we thank You now for this time.

In Jesus name. Amen. Okay, the book of Ruth. You're familiar with that. And I have an outline. I gave this so at our church. Actually, I think I started this August the 15th in 2010. And while I was given that message that morning.

And afterwards, I wrote a son's wife was giving birth to a baby. Their first born. And Christina Hope. And it was really amazing to hold that little girl that afternoon. She lived nine hours. She was a preemie.

I think she was 23 and a half weeks along. And that was a hard day. They really wanted that little girl. And then the Lord's given them a couple more little girls than boys since. But I've got that marked here.

That's how I remember that. So as we go into Ruth. I'm going to give you some questions later on somewhere in here. Maybe this afternoon I'll have those questions. But I do want you to ask God to teach you.

Ask God to show you something you need to hear. Ask God to open up your heart to maybe an area you never even thought of. And maybe he'll give you something for somebody else. You see, Jesus left us to be his hands and his feet and his eyes and his tongue.

He left us to do the work that he started. So let's don't fail him. And I know we're full of weakness and fear. And we have issues. But there's nothing too hard for God. As I've shared what he can do in my life, he can do in your life.

Ruth, now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land. Would you like to stand while I read a few verses? Your last stretch before we go three hours. Just kidding.

I don't think I can make it three hours. Now, it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem, Judah, went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.

And the name of the man was Elimelech. And the name of his wife, Naomi. And the name of his two sons, Melon and Kileon, Ephratites of Bethlehem, Judah. And they came into the country of Moab and continued there.

And Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died and she was left. And her two sons. And they took them, wives of the woman of Moab. The name of the one was Orpha and the name of the other Ruth. And they dwelled there about ten years.

And Melon and Kileon died also, both of them. And the woman was left of her two sons and her husband. Then she arose with her daughter-in-law that she might return from the country of Moab. For she had heard in the country of Moab how that the Lord had visited his people and given them bread.

Wherefore, she went forth out of the place where she was and her two daughters-in-law with her. And they went on the way to return unto the land of Judah. And Naomi said unto her two daughters-in-law, Go return each to her mother's house.

The Lord deal kindly with you as ye have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant you that you may find rest, each of you, in the house of her husband. Then she kissed them and they lifted up their voice and wept.

And they said unto her, Surely we will return with thee unto thy people. And Naomi said, Turn again, my daughters. Why will you go with me? Are there any more sons in my womb that they may be your husbands?

Turn again, my daughters. Go your way. For I am too old to have a husband. And if I should say I have hope if I should have a husband, also tonight, and should also bear sons, would you tarry for them till they were grown?

Would you stay for them from having husbands? Nay, my daughters. For it grieveth me much for your sakes that the hand of the Lord is gone out against me. And we'll just stop there. There's more. You may be seated.

Warren Wiersbe shared a story years ago how a maid at a motel found a dead man in the room when she went to clean it. And he had left a note. And here's what the note said. I leave to society a bad example.

I leave to my friends the memory of a misspent life. I leave to my father and mother all the sorrow they can bear in their old age. And I leave to my wife a broken heart. And I leave to my children the name of a drunkard and a suicide.

And to God, a lost soul that has insulted his mercy. This is not how you handle life. This is not how you lead your family. In thinking about this, I've got a list in one of my little prayer books I wrote probably ten years ago.

I don't know, eight, ten years ago. And I've got a list of eight families I know of that were crashed by the father. And I could probably add two or three more to it now. And this is why I'm sharing this morning on Ruth, even though we can't go through the whole book, just to get some principles for us fathers to know how to make it in these rough days.

Even right now. I know of some that are in the process of crashing their families. Life is hard. And here's one thing about life. Life has no handles. You just can't grab ahold of it. Okay, we're going to hang on to this.

And this is going to go right. It just doesn't always work that way. We can't guarantee health. We can't guarantee our wealth to continue, our jobs, live long lives. And just we have no handles. Success, fame, honor, all these things can be crashed in a moment in our lives.

But there is a handle of hope we have in the Lord. There is that. Praise the Lord for that. So the book of Ruth is about a family's hard times. You could maybe even call it a prodigal family led by a father.

And he's going to teach us some things I think that will be interesting. This is a story of redemption. Of course, we know how it ends because we got the last chapter there. And it all leads to Christ.

It's about Christ. Actually, I titled this for you guys that want titles, Christ in Ruth and Ruth in Christ. Christ in Ruth and Ruth in Christ. And of course, you got Naomi there, but Ruth seems to be the main one.

In my outline when I did this series, I've got words for each chapter. In this chapter, I had four C words. And these C words were choices, consequences, correction, and coming home. And I don't think we'll go very far into these.

And then the next chapter, I had five P words. The first one was providence. The next one, protection, prostrate, and provision and possibility. Chapter three, I had five S words, seeking, surrender, sensing, seizing, and sitting.

And then chapter four, I had nine A words, anticipation, attempting, assured, announced, approval, accomplished, adored, adopted, ancestry. We would have a whole weekend to go through all of that. And if somebody wanted a copy of this, I do have an extra copy, or you could take a picture of it.

But what we want to focus on probably this morning is the first two or maybe three as we go through this. So let me just jump in. And I may not have as many stories as I've been giving you, but you need some meat.

We can't have all dessert, even though we might not mind that as kids. But it won't be very healthy. I want to give you a little bit more meat. We're going to get into some meatier things this morning.

God's Providence in Famine and Hard Times

And the providence of God is just an amazing subject. And I do have a couple of stories we might go into about the providence of God. But there was a famine in the land, and sometimes we have famines in our life.

And there was a famine in the land, and it was the time of Gideon, probably around 1130 B .C. And the time maybe they said of Eli the priest back in those days, the time of the judges, there's no king.

And if you go back over to the last verse in Judges, verse 25 there, in those days there was no king in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes. Not the best of times when it's like that.

They need the king under the headship of Christ. And so that was sort of the setting and not the greatest of times. As a matter of fact, the reason of the famine was God was judging them because they did their thing.

God sent them out, got them out of Egypt, and they got free, and then they go through this cycle of getting free and then getting back into bondage, worshiping idols, getting chastened by God and getting free again.

And so it's up and down. And it's not the exact pattern of a spirit-filled life. So the book of Ruth is a subject about Christ, though, and how the Lord is always there. It's Christ in the life of Ruth.

The theme, as I said, is redemption. And Ruth, being a Gentile, a Moabitess girl, the line goes through Boaz all the way to Messiah, though not through her. But it shows God's mercy and grace to take somebody you wouldn't think should be in there, to be in the line of Messiah and put her in there.

The amazing grace. It's a love story. It's a love story out of tragedy, of God's love for these people. There's a birth. There's triumph over tragedy. And at the end there, of course, the amazing thing of how the Messiah.

New beginnings come out of our tragedies. Out of poverty, they have an experience that they didn't plan on. So many times we do these things. Out of their sorrow comes the Messiah. And out of these tragedies of life, God always is leading us to triumph.

We talked about that last night. So what I want you to do is learn some lessons. And I've got these, and I'll let you know when I hit one each time. We're going to just sort of roll through here and just hope you're taking notes.

So we'll just get some lessons. And, of course, the Holy Spirit is the one that teaches us and leads us and guides us through the Word. Someone talking about the Holy Spirit said, Christian life and character in its beginning, middle, and end is the Spirit's work.

So it's the Spirit of God working here as he works in lives. He said we are natural lovers of independence. Isn't that true? And slow to learn that it is the fundamental law of nature that we're lovers of independence.

And that's where we get in a lot of trouble. But just as no one can be good without God or a Christian without Christ, so no one can be holy or useful in the New Testament sense without the Holy Spirit.

So let's trust the Spirit of God to teach us. And then he said, this is from James Denny, As King Robert of France in his hymn to the Holy Spirit wrote in the 11th century, What without thine aid is wrought, skillful deed or wisest thought, God will count but vain and not.

So independence, separation from God leads us into trouble. All right. I might say something more about providence in a minute. So we're going to try to learn some lessons as we go into the life of Ruth here.

Ruth helps us understand the purpose of suffering and trials and gives us these wonderful lessons, these principles. And the cross is actually all through these lessons here. The cross of Christ, of course, the Lord sets us free at the cross.

He died on the cross for our sins. And we've got the song at the cross and all these things. But would you like to see God do some things in your life that's beyond the normal, beyond maybe what you expect?

The Bible gives us tremendous promises. Call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knewest not. And these different things. When I was over in Turkey and in our Bible study there, I just got saved after going through my training in the Air Force, my basic training and schooling.

And there was an Army guy there by the name of Bill Stewart, been a missionary, just retired here just in the last few years, and then his wife's been fighting cancer down in Pensacola. But he would take men and disciple them, and I was one of those.

And what he did, he spread, he's got preachers and missionaries all over the world, probably hundreds. And I was one of them he took and put his life into. He was over in Korea for about almost 30 years working with servicemen.

And so there's a verse. There was a verse. Call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knewest not. That was our verse, and God did it. So use the verses and the promises of God for your life.

Okay, so Ruth helps us understand the purpose of suffering some things. And I'm hoping that God will use these things in your life. Are you willing to stay in your Bethlehem and tough it out? Some people like to run.

We glory in tribulations, Paul said in Romans 5 .3. We don't necessarily enjoy them, but we learn to glorify God in our trials. There was a young man that asked, I don't know if he was a Puritan or what, he was in England back in the old days, George Goodman, maybe you know him.

But he said, would you pray for me that I would have patience? Sure. And he prayed that God would give him tribulation. Because tribulation works patience, Romans there. So Ruth is about life. It's about a father who makes a decision to take his wife and sons down to another land.

It's a subject of family and marriage and a bad economy and love and all these normal things of life. All right. I've got a statement for you. And this is no new statement, we've said it before, but God always gives his best to those who leave the choice to him.

Now they make a choice because there's a famine to go down into Moabite territory. And as we go through these principles, I want to ask you to ask yourself these three questions. Number one, what is God saying to me right now?

Number two, what new insight have I gained? And number three, is there something I need to do? All right. What is God saying to me right now? What new insight have I gained? And is there something I need to do?

Choices, Consequences, and the Decision to Leave Bethlehem

Okay, I'm jumping into it. Verse one. Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled. And so the atmosphere is not the greatest. It's not the greatest of times because there's no king. Meaning that the sovereign working of God there was not really working that good there.

They had turned from God and got into their typical thing of going after idols and stuff like that. And so judges rule, but judgment is given to them with the famine that's in the land. And so they're dwelling in the Bethlehem area there, which is the house of bread, the house of blessing, place of praise.

But there's no crops and no rain. Normal things of life. And so here's a lesson. When we get into the hard times, are we going to go to Moab? Are we going to stick it out and stay in the place where God wants us to stay?

This prodigal father of Moab, Psalm 68, God calls it his washpot. Wasn't exactly a place, and we're going to learn some interesting things here. Was there anything wrong with going to Moab? Maybe not, but as we go through here, you might say, well, maybe that wasn't the wisest thing to do, and we're going to learn about what God does when we do get into the wrong places.

Because as I said, God's going to fix you with the fix that you're in. And we try to fix the fix we're in. He'll find another fix to fix us with until finally we get fixed. But he's not going to give up on you.

You may give up on God, but he'll never give up on you. And so what they're going to do is they're going to turn aside. When they go in verse 1, it says, they go there to sojourn. Came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land.

And verse 2, in the name of the man, we go on to these things, but they go down to sojourn down there. And that's a word that means to turn aside from the road. It means to go and dwell as a stranger someplace else and to live among people that they don't know.

And so he said he went. He went there. And I've got a principle here I'm going to move into, and here's what I wrote out years ago in this area. As I meditated on them going down there, went down there and everything, they didn't believe God could take care of them where they were at, the house of bread and praise.

So they ran off to the land of Moab thinking God would take care of them where they were not at. And so many people think their circumstances need to be changed or whatever, but most of the time it's us.

Our heart needs to change. And here's a principle. The more we get what we want, the less we want of what we get. Think about that. The more we get of what we want, got to have this, got to have that, the less we want of what we got.

Think of Judas. He wanted money. He wanted more money, and Judas was just, he was there to be the treasure in the kingdom with Jesus and whatever. But when his dreams began to dissipate, at least he's going to get 30 pieces of silver out of the deal.

But after he got what he wanted, he found out he really didn't want what he got. So we need to be careful in what we do in this area. And this is why we need to let God make our choices for us. And so actually Ruth at this point, and we look in there when she comes back to Bethlehem, she's not looking for a husband because she's resting in God, and God met her and took care of his needs.

So God always gives his best to those who leave the choice to him. And so Ruth begins with no king, and they end up with the line of a king coming, a great-grandson David that's going to be born, and the king all the way to Jesus.

All right, here's another principle. Whoever your king is makes your choices. He guides the affairs in your life. And so I'd have to say that this is the normal thing of life where we're going to logically do what we think is best.

I don't know if he prayed about going down there or whatever, but choices have consequences, and we're going to get into that next thing because we reap the consequences of our choices, good or bad. That's why we really need to have God direction us clearly in what we do.

Years ago, I think this happened in Atlanta, over in there, there was a preacher that went to preach in a prison, and one of the prisoners knew him. And so just before he's fixing to preach, this prisoner jumped up, and he said, I want to tell you something.

I want to tell everybody here. I don't know if he could get away jumping up in a prison, but he said, I want to introduce you to this preacher. And so here's what he said. At one time, there were two boys.

They were in the same town. They went to the same church. They went to the same Sunday school. And one dropped out and rejected Christ, and the other one went on to follow Christ. And that's the pastor that's going to speak to you.

And I'm the other boy that dropped out and rejected Christ. And I'm here because of my choice, and he's here to speak to us because of his choice. Wasn't that quite a story? So we reap the consequences of our choices.

A major lesson here. We, where we are, sometimes we have homeless people come. We're near an area where there's a lot of homeless people, and they're there most always because of bad choices. They live lives that's amazing, and they're almost always lying to us, trying to get money out of us.

And so we try to separate them if there's two and find their stories and whatever, and all their choices and things. My favorite story is the one about the couple that came there, and they're usually always shacking up together.

But my favorite one, and this guy got mad. They were not married on the same day. They were not married in the same month. They were not married in the same year. They were not married in the same state and not married in the same town.

He got mad at her for lying. Oh, wow, we had some really interesting times. But there was one man that was desperate for money. And so what he did, he went to one of these convenience stores, and he handed a $10 bill, and he said, I would like some change for this.

And so the gal opened up the drawer, and he reached around and grabbed the door, dumped everything in his bag, and ran off out of the store. Left his $10 bill and got back to his shack or wherever he was, and he got $4 .34.

He's $5 .66 short. We're going to always come up short when we try to provide for ourselves and not let God help us out. There's your story. Okay, Elimelech means my God is king. That's what it is, El, and then coming from Melech, and just digging into this, looking at the Hebrew on all this.

And I don't know much Hebrew. I do know a few Hebrew people. But Jehovah is the sovereign of Israel. He's the sovereign of my life. This is what El, Elohim, is talking about. He's the great creator, and he's my king.

These are all the things from Elimelech. And so here's the principle from his own name that I wrote out. The king always has the final word, but for that to work, he needs to have the first word and the last word in our life.

And so this is why we go to God and get directions. Sometimes it's really hard to know, and so we struggle with so many things. But it works best if the king has the first word and the last word. And we do good if we just listen and obey.

It doesn't do too good to tell the king what to do and how to do things in our life. We sing that song, King of My Life, I Crown Thee Now. But he probably needs to be crowned every day. Choices, choices.

I probably shared with you this the last two years I was here, but since the kids like stories, I'll give you another one, because this is one of the great stories in my life. And we have things that happen that we don't necessarily like.

When I was in Turkey in the Air Force back in 1967 and 68, we could go on, we could travel. I could actually just go out and hop on a plane and go anywhere in the world. If there was room on the plane, it's a lot more complicated nowadays.

And if you had the time, you had to leave. And so also we would have what they call R &R tours. And so all my buddies, all of them, they got lined up to go on this R &R tour to Israel. Y 'all remember this story?

And so we all signed up for that, and I got cut off. I was the last one, and I got cut off. And all my friends got to go to Israel. This was 1967 in June, the first part of June in there. And so they went down there, and I stayed and got to work.

And so I wanted to go to Israel. I wanted to get down there someday. And so another whole year went by, and I'd been out in the agency. Our base had a tugboat, and so we would go out into the Greek islands.

I'd go to Patmos a couple times, and we'd go to Chios and these different Greek islands. And so I'd come back. I'd been out on the boat, and we'd gone a few days. And I had to leave, and I had money, and I had my suitcase sitting there.

And I'm sitting on my bed, and I'm thinking. And it's like I hear God speaking to me, not out loud. But it's like, get up and go out to the airport and see if there's any planes going to Israel. Oh, I never even thought about that.

So I did. I grabbed my suitcase. I had it unpacked. Went down three flights of stairs, went out to the terminal out there. Really remote, just a small place. It's 100 miles from Athens over. Actually, it was in Smyrna, the seven churches.

I lived in the middle of the seven churches for a year and a half. Just a wonderful blessing. After I got saved, God gave me an education there. I go in there. You got any planes going anywhere? You'd just be glad to go anywhere from there.

And he said, yeah, we've got one coming in in 15 minutes going to Athens. You got any room? Yeah, put me on it. I flew over to Athens. I went into the terminal there. I said, you got any planes going to Israel?

And they said, yeah, we have one plane a week that goes to Israel. Oh, wow, that's great. And he said, it just left three hours ago. Oh, no. So I hopped on a bus, went all the way around to the civilian side of that airstrip.

Went in there. He said, you guys got any planes going to Israel? And they said, yeah, we got one a week. Oh, I've heard this story before. And it goes in three hours and we have one seat left. Well, I just say, I'll go pray about it for a while.

No, I'll take that seat. It cost me $147 to go to Israel. And so my whole trip went like that for 10 days. When I got there, I was standing out there by the curb where the cabs are and started talking to this gal there waiting for the cabs.

And she found out I wanted to go to Jerusalem. And so a cab come up and she stuck her head in there and talked to that cab driver. And she said, he will take you to, I forget what it was, YMCA, a place like that or something.

And also I told him not to rip you off. And my whole 10 days went like that. But I'm saying, I just let God do that for me. I just said, once I was cut off and couldn't go, I just forgot it. I just gave it to God.

And so this is the lesson. We give God our choices. So he went. And leaving, he turned his back on his inheritance, though. Did you know that? He turned his back on his inheritance. And he's actually running from the chastening of God.

He let me like this. And so if we try to run from the chastening of God, because God deals with Israel as a nation. He did back to those points. Now he's individually dealing with people, but then he'll come back later and deal with them.

But he's running from the chastening hand of God. That doesn't usually work out too good. And so here's another principle. Better, get this one. He's going down to Moab, and I wrote this. Better to stay with God's people under chastisement than to go live with the devil's crowd with food.

And there's going to be some lessons here. So the famine represents rebellion. I wrote this out this morning. God will cover us when we get into Moab. But it's, or get into, I wrote down, Bypass Meadows, if you read Pilgrim's Progress.

God's going to cover us, but it's usually going to cost us something. And it usually does. It costs him his life, and his sons died there and left his wife as a widow. Now Naomi, in verse 2, the name of the man, we went through his name, but his wife, the name of his wife was Naomi.

And that means delight or pleasant. And so when God is my king, then I am his delight, and I delight in him. I delight in his ways. So that's what I get out of her name. And I delight in his choices. Melon, I guess Melon and Keelyon, these boys, wow.

Be glad that your mom and dad didn't name you Melon and Keelyon, because Melon means sick or painful and weak. And Keelyon means pining or consuming, consumption or failing. I don't know. Maybe she had a hard childbirth or whatever.

But anyway, we need to be careful what we do with our kids and how we name them even. Let me tell you a little story. You want stories, I'll give you a story anyway, along with some of this meat. This is an amazing story.

One time there was a kid by the name of Phineas Taylor. And I'll give you his last name in a few minutes. Phineas Taylor, and he had a very kind old grandfather who told him that he was going to give him the deed to a sizable piece of ground.

And so Phineas Taylor, little 10-year-old boy, looked forward to the day when he would get this piece of ground. And he dreamed about it. And the story went like this. He dreamed it. It was called Ivy Island.

And he dreamed of it as a land rippling streams and waving grain. He dreamed of this fabulous island every day. This was his dream. His grandfather promised him this. And he looked forward. He would beg his father to take him there.

And his father never would. And finally one day his father said, okay, Phineas, I'm going to take you to see your Ivy Island. And oh, he was so excited he could hardly even sleep that night with all the anticipation.

And so he was taken to the island. And he dashed out to the end of the meadow of his property that his grandfather had promised that would be his. And he stood there and he looked at his dream. It was the big moment.

And finally he gazed upon these five barren acres of worthless snake-infested mainland. Struggling vines clung for their lives to a few scrubby trees in the midst of a dismal swamp and nothing more. And so as young P .T. Barnum looked at what had been promised to him, he realized that he'd been made a fool of.

And his dad was there and another friend and they were just rolling over with laughter. This big joke to this little boy. And he was devastated. It was the great humiliation of his life. But this joke shaped his whole future.

So what we do, fathers with our children and mothers with our children, is very important. It shaped his whole future. And so his dream was turned into a drive. And his drive was to do this. And let me read it to you.

Young Phineas was not laughing. He eventually forgave, but he never forgot. He became the ultimate con artist in our country. One of the greatest con artists, maybe there's better ones nowadays, that the country had ever seen.

He forgave, but he never forgot. He became the ultimate con artist determined to prove the world is full of fools. He was inspired to make a lifelong career of deception. P .T. Barnum, whose fondest hopes once rested on a soggy patch of worthless real estate, became the master of the greatest show on earth.

He declared that there is a sucker born every minute and he spent his life proving it. We've got this circus that comes to town at the fair and all this. They walk off. I think one of the guys there told me one time they could make a quarter of a million dollars a night sucking people into their little booths and everything.