Deo Gloria
Sermon for July 13, 2025
Pastor Martin Bentz
Ruth 1:1-19a
Theme: Display Uncommon Love and Kindness to Others—Like Ruth!
She wasn’t related to Job, but she could just as well have been. Like Job, she experienced more than her share of heartache and tragedy and loss in her lifetime. It started with a famine in the land. Naomi and her family lived in Bethlehem—yes, the very town where Jesus was born many centuries later. The word Bethlehem means “house of bread.” Ironically, because of the famine there was very little bread in Bethlehem. So Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, and their two sons, Mahlon and Kilion, moved to the land of Moab for a while. Moab was located on the other side of the Jordan River, to the east of the Dead Sea. Those of you who have lost your job and been forced to relocate to another town or even another state and start over—you can related to Naomi and her family. It wasn’t an easy time for them.
And then things got worse. Naomi’s husband, Elimelech, died very unexpectedly, and Naomi was forced to raise their two boys on her own. You single moms who have had to provide for your families and raise your children on your own—I’m sure you can relate to her. You know what a difficult job that is.
Her two boys grew up and both married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other named Ruth. And things seemed to be going along pretty well for a while—no children or grandchildren yet, but still going along pretty well. And then tragedy struck again. Both of Naomi’s sons also died very suddenly and unexpectedly. Were they both killed in a construction accident? Were they out cutting lumber for a new addition on one of their homes and a tree fell on the two of them? We don’t know. All we know is that they both died and Naomi was left behind, without her sons or her husband. I can hardly imagine her grief. Losing Bev would be hard enough, but then to lose both of our children too! To say that my heart would be hurting, that my heart would be broken, would be an understatement to say the least.
And imagine how difficult it would be for Naomi just to get by, just to survive! She couldn’t collect any Social Security benefits. They didn’t have Social Security back then. They didn’t have any community assistance programs. They didn’t have any subsidized housing. She didn’t have anyone to provide and care for her. Back in those days it was the husband’s job to provide for his family. If he died, then it was the responsibility of one of the sons, especially the eldest son, to take care of and provide for his mother. Usually he would take her into his home and she would live with them. But both of her sons were also dead. Yes, she did have her two daughters-in-law, but chances are they would get remarried and end up becoming part of a different family, which is exactly what Naomi encouraged them to do. And when that happened, Naomi would be left with no one. And don’t forget—Naomi was still living in Moab, a foreign country. She didn’t have any relatives there or extended family who might be able to help her out. How was she going to provide for herself? How was she going to put food on the table? Sure she could plant a garden. But she couldn’t go out in the fields and pick corn and bale hay and combine wheat. How was she going to survive?
Then she heard that the Lord had come to the aid of his people and brought an end to the famine in the land of Israel. There was bread once again in Bethlehem. So she decided to head back home. And her daughters-in-law decided to go with her—at least at first.
For a while they walked with her on the road to the land of Judah. But Naomi encouraged them to go back home. I mean, why should they come with her? Could she have any more sons who could become their husbands someday? Of course not. She was too old for that. And going back with her to the land of Israel would only make it more difficult for them to find a future husband and get remarried. In Israel they would be foreigners and strangers. No, it would make a lot more sense for them to return home and find a new husband from among their own people and start a new family with him. So after a tearful goodbye, Orpah turned around and went back home; but not Ruth. Naomi encouraged her again, but Ruth refused and insisted on going with her. She said to Naomi:
Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.(vv. 16-17)
What an amazing statement for Ruth to make! Why would she leave her family and friends behind and move to some strange and foreign land? She didn’t know anyone in Bethlehem or the land of Judah. If she went back home, her family could help support her. And her chances of finding a new husband and starting a family would be far better in the land of Moab than in the land of Israel. After all, weren’t the people of Israel a little reluctant about marrying foreigners? And didn’t Naomi know that? It didn’t make any sense at all. What Ruth was volunteering to do was showing tremendous love and kindness for Naomi, uncommon love and kindness. She was going way beyond what anyone would expect of her, what even her own mother-in-law expected. Basically she was telling Naomi that she would be her family and she would help support her, to her dying day. So why would she do that?
I think we can find two answers in our text. One is out of love for Naomi. Though she had only been married about 10 years, during that time she had developed a very close relationship with her mother-in-law. All the time they had spent cooking suppers together, all the conversations they had had around the dinner table, all the walks to the well and to the local market, all the joys they had shared, all the sorrows they had shared, all the kindness Naomi had shown her, accepting her and loving her like her own daughter—it all had led to a very close bond between the two of them. Ruth had come to love her mother-in-law as much as her own mother. And her heart just went out to her. Ruth knew what a bleak future was in store for Naomi. She knew she had no chance of getting remarried. She knew her family members were all gone and there was no one left to provide for her. Yes, I’m sure Naomi still had some relatives and friends back in Bethlehem, but she hadn’t seen them in 20 years. Would anyone step up and help her? Or would she be left by herself to struggle in abject poverty for the rest of her life? Who knows? Ruth just couldn’t bear the thought. In love she couldn’t watch Naomi go back by herself and try to fend for herself. In love she was determined to go with her and do whatever she could to help her and support her.
The other reason for Ruth was her love for the LORD. Did you catch that in her words to Naomi? Did you notice that she not only said Naomi’s people would be her people, but that Naomi’s God would be her God? Did you also notice that when she swore that nothing would ever separate the two of them except death, she took that oath in the name of the LORD? The LORD was not the god of the Moabites. Chemosh was the god of Moab, a god of war and power and victory. Followers of Chemosh did their best to serve him by offering sacrifices to him, including human sacrifices, including even the sacrifice of young children and infants—anything to win his favor and secure his help. There was no such thing as forgiveness. There was no mercy and kindness, no faithful love. There was only fear and duty and obligation.
What a difference there was between Chemosh and the LORD, the God of the Israelites, the God Naomi had told her about. Yes, the LORD was a great and awesome God, a God who deserved your awe and reverence and respect; but he was so much more. He was also a God of compassion and mercy and kindness, a God who actually cared about you, without your trying to earn his love and favor; a God who actually loved people, loved them so much in fact that—now get this—that he promised to send a Savior to redeem his people, to save them from sin and all the awful consequences of sin, so they could live with him forever in heaven. The more Ruth came to know the LORD, the more she came to love him and trust in him as her God and her Savior. So when confronted with the choice of continuing her relationship with Naomi and also with the LORD or going back to her own family and the god Chemosh, Ruth chose Naomi and the LORD. She didn’t want to go back. She had found something better, and she didn’t want to give that up. She wanted to follow the LORD and serve the LORD and reflect his love in her life.
So what about you? How have you done when it comes to showing love and kindness to the people in your life? If I’m honest, when I look at the extraordinary love and kindness Ruth displayed to Naomi, I’m a little embarrassed. And I’m probably a little ashamed as well because I know there were people I could have helped, people to whom I could have shown kindness and love and compassion and didn’t, because I was too busy, because I didn’t want to be bothered. And I can think of others I did help, but only so far, only to a certain, limited extent. I mean if it wasn’t too much of a sacrifice for me and I really didn’t have to go out of my way too much, well O.K. But if I really had to go out of my way to help them or if it really did require a sacrifice of my time or energy or money, forget that. They can find help somewhere else. As I said, when I look back on some of the opportunities I’ve had to show love and kindness to others, I have to hang my head in shame and ask for my Lord’s forgiveness, because I really kind of blew it. Is the same thing true of you?
That’s another reason I’m so thankful for my Savior Jesus. When it came to showing love and kindness to others, when it came to showing love and kindness to me, Jesus didn’t hold back at all. He was all in—whatever it took. No cost was too much. No sacrifice was too great. He was willing to go way out of his way to come into this world of ours to help someone like me, to pay the penalty for all of my sins and all of my failures so that I might enjoy his forgiveness and love both now and forever. The kind of love and kindness he displayed in giving his life on the cross for my sins and your sins and the sins of the whole world is truly uncommon, truly extraordinary, truly amazing.
So could I do the same thing in my life? Could I show uncommon love and kindness to others the way Jesus did, the way Ruth did? Could I make sacrifices in order to help others? Could I go out of my way or go the extra mile in order to help someone in need? I think that’s what Jesus would want me to do, don’t you? I think that’s what Jesus would want all of us to do.
And this story is a good reminder that often times I don’t have to look that hard or that long to find opportunities to show love and kindness to others. I mean, like Ruth, doesn’t it start with the members of my own family? Doesn’t it start with being extra patient with my spouse, being extra forgiving with my children, going out of my way to help my parents or my grandparents in their old age, showing them extra kindness and patience and love, even when I’m tired, even when they’re asking for help again?
Lord, help us to do that for your sake. Help us to see the opportunities we have to show love and kindness to the people in our lives—whether it’s our own spouse and children, or the widow across the street, or the friend who just lost his job. Help us to show them the same kind of love you showed us and that Ruth showed Naomi—uncommon love and kindness—to your glory. Amen.