Finding Hope in Suffering: The Story of Ruth

Here are the selected quotes from the sermon transcript:

1. "Catherine says this about suffering. She says, suffering is never a mistake, and is never the end of the story. Suffering is not the absence of God's goodness, because he is present in pain. Don't you love that, church? This is a good word for us, because sometimes we fall into the trouble of suffering. We fall into the trouble of suffering, and we fall into the temptation to believe that God is absent when we face hardships, and we feel that he has forgotten us, or he doesn't care about us." [00:02:43] (34 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "And I want to tell you that God is far kinder and far more merciful than that, that he's a plan, and that he's with you, not away from you. And I want to tell you that God is far kinder and far more merciful than that, when you suffer. And that's what we're going to unpack through this series in Ruth. Ruth is a story with a seemingly hopeless time. But we see God working in the background to use this story to not only change Ruth's life, but to change the world. And that is the God we serve, church." [00:03:02] (30 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "And it's our hope that what we learn through this series is that we don't minimize suffering in our life. We don't try to spiritually bypass the difficult things in our life. But at the same time, we would allow the sovereignty of God, the truth of God's sovereignty to comfort us and to kindly pursue us and teach us when we face inevitable challenges that the world will throw our way. And that's what we're going to see through Ruth chapter 1." [00:04:15] (28 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "This climate is the climate in the backdrop of the story of Ruth. It's the time of the judges where there was no king over Israel, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. But here's what else has taken place. Second part of verse one, there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judea, his name is Elimelech, we'll get to in a minute, went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons." [00:07:00] (36 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "And I hear this oftentimes when people will make plans. They will make plans, but they decide to put God somewhere deep down on this list of how we make plans. I know this because we see often people move to Greenville. They live here for a while. They move away. And then when they move away, then they decide, okay, then how can I position my life around the gospel? Here's how I know that. Like they'll move somewhere and they'll text or email me and say, Pastor Ben, I've been here for a few months. Do you know a good church here?" [00:14:02] (27 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6. "And friends, if he's not sovereign, I got to tell you, he's not good. If he's not sovereign, that means he turns his eye to bad things. If he's not sovereign, that means he spins the world like a top and then he walks away. If he's not sovereign, that means he's just doing the best he can, which is not a God we can trust." [00:32:03] (23 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7. "And what God is going to do here, he's going to provide something for them that is far better than they would have ever imagined. And he's going to provide for them a redeemer here on earth. That's going to point to a greater, redeemer, the one that we have hope in, and his name is Jesus. And church, we have a greater hope even than Ruth and Naomi. They didn't know what would happen next. All they knew is they were back in the house of bread. They were back in Bethlehem. And it's the beginning of barley harvest, meaning hope is on the horizon." [00:33:14] (30 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8. "And friends, we live with a hope that Ruth and Naomi did not have access to at this time in their life, that we have access to Christ. We have access to the Father through Christ who died in our place and is risen from the grave, and we can come to him who is a great high priest who sympathizes with our weaknesses. We can come to him because of what Christ has done. We can have hope, and we have an eternal hope that, yes, suffering is a little while, but we have a God who wants to restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish us. This is the hope. This is the hope that we have in the gospel." [00:39:37] (37 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)