"There was a famine in the land (Chap. i. 1);--the land that flowed with milk and honey, when God's people were willing and obedient. A famine, because God had to deal with His people. When the Judges ruled, His people were going away from Him, and God had to correct them by bringing their enemies upon them. We read in Judges vi. 1:
"And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord: and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years."
"God was ready to set them on high and to give them the victory, but because of their sin they had to live in 'caves and dens and strongholds.' Israel was greatly impoverished because of her enemies. The people of God were feeling the bitterness of backsliding from God, and the fruits of their sin and apostasy. Famine was raging and one family anyway, Elimelech, his wife and two sons tried to escape this judgment of God by going to sojourn in the country of Moab. He did wrong, for he turned from the land that God had given to them, to a heathen land. Just like every backslider, he thought he would only go there for a time and soon come back to God. But
"They came to the country of Moab and continued there."
"A backslider generally continues to live away from God, with a heart unyielding to His Word. So they backslid, and they continued in that state.
"Then came disaster upon disaster. Elimelech died, and then his two sons. Backsliding brings bitter fruit. But at last the tide turns. The chastening does it work. Naomi hears that there was bread in the land and plans to return from the country of Moab. The Prodigal said:
"I will arise and go to my Father."
"It is hard to start home again, but Naomi had tasted the bitter fruits of backsliding, and now arises to go.
"In Jer. ii. 19 we read:
"Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of Hosts."
"Because of backsliding, bitterness has come into the life of Naomi; and even though she returns, she goes back feeling the bitterness. She says,
"Call me not Naomi, call me Mara." (Verse 20.)
"Translated, it means:
"Call me not Joy, call me Bitterness."
"What a pathetic cry that is! She had been called Joy, and I do not doubt God meant her to have the joy of the Lord, and rejoice indeed in Him, even as He wants us to have joy. Each child of God ought to inherit that name, but she had lost her name, for she had lost her joy. In place of that her name is Bitterness, because as she says:
"The Lord hath brought me home again empty."
"She has been emptied. A backslider loses joy and peace; he loses insight into God's Word; he loses power over sin; he loses fellowship with other Christians. Naomi feels that she is empty of those blessings that she had enjoyed before; and more than that she believes that God is against her, for in verse 13 she says:
"The hand of the Lord is gone out against me."
"And in verse 20:
"The Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me."
"Yet though she comes back in this bitter spirit, all the time God is stretching out His hands to her; and all her sorrows and losses have been proofs of God's love and guidance. He longs to bring her back into the land, and to the privileges that were awaiting her, and He is dealing with her in order to bring her back. If she had really yielded to the Lord, and really seen His hand in it all, she would have come back and found peace, and joy and rest and prosperity.
"A backslider hardly ever gets back again to all the joy and peace he had before. And yet he ought to. God invites him, with most tender invitations, back to all the joy and peace he has had; and indeed, more than that, God means the end to be better than the beginning.
"The prodigal had a better time when he returned home than he had before, and God is prepared to pour out the riches of His grace upon a backslider. Yet if the backslider comes back with Naomi's thoughts of God, thinking that God's hand is against him and God is dealing bitterly with him, he will not get the joy and peace that God plans for him.
"If there is a backslider reading this, God wants to give you again your name of Joy. He wants to take away that name Mara, that you may be Joy to yourself, and Joy to God, and Joy to those around you.
"In Isaiah lxi. 3, we have a revelation of what the Lord Jesus is prepared to do:
"To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."
"He wants to take away mourning and bitterness out of your soul and give you the oil of joy. He wants to give heavenly joy, that your character and name may be Joy.
"The thirty-third chapter of Jeremiah gives us the same spiritual teaching as the Book of Ruth. It says, verse 9:
And it shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and an honour before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear all the good that I do unto them: and they shall fear and tremble for all the goodness and for all the prosperity that I procure unto it.
Thus saith the Lord; Again there shall be heard in this place, which ye say shall be desolate without man and without beast, even in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, that are desolate, without man, and without inhabitant, and without beast, the voice of joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that shall say, Praise the Lord of hosts: for the Lord is good; for his mercy endureth for ever: and of them that shall bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord.
For I will cause to return the captivity of the land, as at the first, saith the Lord."
"Thus He gives back that name of Joy."
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