Ruth 1: Where you go, I will go

Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
– Ruth 1:16

On Sunday, we began a new sermon series on the Book of Ruth. It is a four-chapter book, and we’ll go through one chapter per Sunday.

It’s an incredible story of friends reflecting to one d God’s hesed (faithful, loyal love). God shows this kind of love through relationship, or covenant, throughout the Old Testament. In this story, we see three people who reflect this well and provide us examples of how we can love others as God loves us. In chapter 1, we meet the first two people: Naomi and Ruth. Naomi travels to the foreign country of Moab, seeking refuge from famine in Bethlehem, with her husband and two sons. In this foreign land, she loses her husband. As a widow, she depends now on her sons. After her sons marry, they also die, leaving Naomi stranded with only two daughters-in-law. She needs to return to Bethlehem and urges her daughters-in-law to stay in Moab and remarry. But one daughter-in-law, Ruth, refuses. She stays with Naomi. At the end of the chapter, these two women, two of our three our hesed role models, return to Bethlehem at the time of the barley harvest. In Chapter 2, the harvest saves them.

Here is Sunday’s sermon manuscript: Ruth 1 Sermon

Reflection/Discussion Questions:

1. How has God shown you faithful, loyal love?
2. How have others? How can you to God and others?
3. Read Ruth in one sitting. What stands out to you? Who inspires you in the story?
4. Naomi demonstrated to Ruth God’s love, and Ruth in turn decided to make Naomi’s “God, my God.” Naomi’s faith and the one true God she worshiped, were irresistible and Ruth wanted to continue worshiping God. So she left her false Moabite gods and traveled with Naomi to Bethlehem. What false gods do you need to leave behind? How do they get in the way of worshiping the one true God?