Ruth 1:1-5

In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. 2 The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. 3 But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, 5 and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

Ruth 1:15-17

15 And she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” 16 But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”

Ruth 2:1-3

Now Naomi had a relative of her husband's, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz. 2 And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favor.” And she said to her, “Go, my daughter.” 3 So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech.

Ruth 2:19-20

19 And her mother-in-law said to her, “Where did you glean today? And where have you worked? Blessed be the man who took notice of you.” So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, “The man's name with whom I worked today is Boaz.”20 And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead!” Naomi also said to her, “The man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.”

Ruth 4:13-17

13 So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went in to her, and the Lord gave her conception, and she bore a son. 14 Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! 15 He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.” 16 Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse. 17 And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” They named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

Sermon Recap

Have you ever doubted God’s goodness? Have you ever looked at the suffering in the world or been through something personally that made you ask the question, “What is God doing?”

In response to that question (as is so often the case), the Bible gives you a story.

It’s the story of a woman named Naomi who loses everything. And it’s the story of her daughter-in-law named Ruth who chooses to stay with her in the midst of it. After Naomi’s son (Ruth’s husband) dies in the land of Moab, Naomi and Ruth go back to Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem, where Ruth decides to go find some grain in a “random” field. It just so happens that field is owned by a man named Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s now deceased husband. When Naomi finds out, she says that he is one of their family (or kinsman) redeemers.

This was a process God established for his people in order to care for and provide for widows. When a woman’s husband died, a close relative of her husband could choose to “redeem” her by marrying her and providing for her. If he chose not to, the only alternative would have been to sell herself into slavery in order to provide for herself. So to make a short story even shorter, Ruth proposes this idea, and Boaz agrees to be a redeemer - a person who pays a price to rescue and restore.

But the story doesn’t end with a wedding. It ends with a birth - the birth of Obed, the grandfather of King David. The King who could rescue and restore Israel was born through the pain of two otherwise unknown widows.

This story is teaching you that God is writing a story of redemption bigger than your individual story. But it’s also showing you that your story is a part of this big story because Ruth’s line didn’t end with David. It kept going and going all the way to Jesus, the true Redeemer, the one who has paid the price to rescue and restore us.

So what do we do to live in this story? We stay in the Redeemer’s field. When we go through hard things, we acknowledge that they are hard, but we do so with a commitment to stay with Jesus in the midst of it. And when you do that, your place of greatest pain can become a place of redemption.

Application Questions