A Committed Love (Ruth #1)

How many of you are parents? And how many of you have had that moment where your toddler looks up from their toys, their whole face brightens, and they come sprinting to the door to meet you?

That is the absolute highlight of a day. I miss those days.

I could have had a genuinely awful day, and that one moment — a small child running at me yelling “Daddy!” — changed everything. And if I was already having a good day, it escalated it into something better.

Why do we love that so much? Whether it’s a toddler or a dog that actually bothers to greet you at the door?

Because every one of us wants to be loved. We want to know we matter — not for what we do, but simply for who we are.

I don’t care if you’re young or old, rich or poor, left-handed or right-handed, Republican or Democrat. You want to be loved.

Which is, I think, why so many people are drawn to God through the gospel. The gospel hands us some bad news: we are far more sinful than we’d like to admit. And it hands us staggering news: we are far more loved than we could ever imagine.

No matter what has happened in your past, no matter your current circumstances, no matter who has hurt you or whom you have hurt — God loves you. And He loves you far more than any puppy or toddler racing to the door.

But Some Days We Doubt It

If we’re honest, there are days — whole seasons — when we doubt that love. Moments when we don’t feel it, when this truth doesn’t feel like truth at all.

When the financial pressure keeps grinding. When the healing you’ve begged for hasn’t come. When the relational needs go unmet. When your past keeps clinging to your present — you start doubting God’s goodness.

And when the addiction, or the depression, or the anger feels more real and stronger than this love that pastors like me preach about — you start doubting His power. And sometimes His existence.

That’s why we’re pressing pause on our study of Acts.

Since March we’ve been working through it, watching the early church explode and the gospel go on the move. We’ve just come out of the first part of chapter 8, with the disciples scattering and the gospel spreading through Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

But if you’re wrestling with the truth of God’s love — if you’re carrying doubts — then Acts is going to feel like a story with nothing to do with your life.

So we need to stop and be reminded of God’s love for us. And to do that we’re taking the four Sundays of July in the book of Ruth.

Some Basic Questions

Open your Bible to Ruth — a tiny four-chapter book in the Old Testament. Four chapters, four Sundays, so today is chapter 1.

Before studying any book of the Bible, it’s good to ask the basic who, what, why, when, and where questions. With Ruth there are a few gaps.

We don’t know who wrote it. Some people assume Ruth did, since other books carry their author’s name. That’s almost certainly not the case here. Ruth was very likely uneducated — no knock against her, simply the nature of that culture. She is a remarkable woman, but she probably couldn’t read or write, so she didn’t pen this herself.

The Jewish Talmud, a kind of commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures, claims Samuel wrote Ruth. That’s possible. You may know his name from 1 and 2 Samuel — though he didn’t write those either, given that he dies about three-quarters of the way through the first one, which makes finishing rather difficult. But with God all things are possible.

We also don’t know exactly when it was written. All we have is a rough approximation from the opening phrase: In the days when the judges ruled.

If you’re not familiar with the history: the Jewish people spent four hundred years enslaved in Egypt before God sent Moses to lead them out. They spent about forty years in the wilderness. When Moses died, God used Joshua to take them across the Jordan into the promised land, where they conquered and settled.

When Joshua died, no single leader rose to take his place. Instead they had judges.

When I hear “judge” I picture someone in a black robe on an elevated bench presiding over a case. That’s not what these were. They did rule and make decisions, but they functioned more like mayors and governors. And they weren’t kings either — when one died, his children didn’t inherit the position. It went to whoever seemed wisest, whoever emerged as the natural leader.

That period lasted roughly three hundred years.

Because Ruth takes place during that era, her story was originally part of the book of Judges — right at the end. Later the Hebrew Scriptures were restructured and her story was pulled out and placed among the Writings.

Personally, I’m glad. I just finished reading Judges a few weeks ago, and it is a wild book. There are famous stories in there — Samson the strongman — but there are others that, if filmed faithfully, I’m not sure an R rating would cover. Genuinely shocking, I-can’t-believe-this-is-in-the-Bible material. Nobody’s putting those verses on a coffee mug.

The tone of Ruth is entirely different. I’m glad she gets her own section, because it’s a beautiful and powerful story.

Within that period, though, we can’t pin down the date. A decent case can be made for early on, because next week we’ll meet Boaz, and we’ll learn he is the son of Rahab. You may know that name — Rahab was a prostitute living in Jericho who helped the Israelite spies when Israel first crossed the Jordan. God protected her when Jericho fell, she became a proselyte, joined the Jewish people, married an Israelite man, and had a son named Boaz.

But a case can also be made for later, because at the very end of Ruth there’s a short genealogy showing that Ruth and Boaz have a son, who has a son, who fathers David — and David’s reign ends the period of the judges.

Honestly, I’m fine not knowing. It takes nothing from the power of the story.

Meet Naomi

What we do know is the who: three main characters — Boaz, Naomi, and Ruth.

Today we meet Naomi. Her name means pleasant, which is deeply ironic, because at the start her life is anything but.

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. 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.

But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

Was Elimelech Wrong to Leave?

When I started studying this, I noticed a number of commentaries — and a couple of sermons I listened to — making a great deal of Elimelech’s name. In Hebrew it means my God is king. And the argument runs: if he had simply lived up to his name, he’d never have left Israel, and none of this would have happened.

I initially thought that was unfair. Look at the context in verse 1: there was a famine. And that’s already ironic, because they’re from Bethlehem — yes, that Bethlehem, the one you sing about at Christmas, birthplace of David and Jesus. Bethlehem means house of bread. And the house was empty.

So I thought: if I had no food and I needed to feed my wife and children, and I heard there was food in Moab — of course you go to Moab. You survive.

But the more I studied, the more I found context clues my modern American eyes were skipping right past. The original readers would have caught them instantly and understood that what Elimelech did was not merely unwise. It was sin.

Clue one: he went to Moab.

Read the book of Judges and you’ll find Moab wasn’t merely an enemy of Israel. They were bullies. There’s a story of Moabites sweeping in and harvesting everything before the Israelites could get to their own crops. They’d come in and destroy fields without even taking the produce for themselves. Pure cruelty. That may well be contributing to this very famine.

So for Elimelech to leave his people and go live among the bullies is a betrayal at the deepest level. This isn’t a Broncos fan switching to the Chiefs because they’ve won more lately. This is leaving your own people to join the people who have been terrorizing them.

Clue two: he simply vanishes from the story.

You’re thinking, well of course he does — he died. But watch how the text handles it.

This is such a patriarchal society that from this point on, Naomi should be known as Naomi, the widow of Elimelech. She isn’t. She’s just Naomi. His name resurfaces only a couple more times, and mostly in connection with property and land, not his role as husband and father. Elsewhere Naomi is identified as the mother-in-law of Ruth.

And look at verse 3: “Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died.” The order flips. It began as Elimelech and his wife Naomi; now Naomi is the reference point and he’s described in relation to her.

He is being written out, because what he did was wrong.

Clue three: his early death would have read as discipline.

The original readers would have understood his demise at the very start of the story as God’s discipline.

If Elimelech — whose name means my God is king — had simply trusted God and stayed in the house of bread, he very likely would have been fine. Instead he fled Israel thinking he was escaping death and finding life in Moab. And he got death. And, as we’ll see, he missed the life that returned to Bethlehem.

Incidentally: Bethlehem means house of bread, and Jesus is called the bread of life. The bread of life comes out of the house of bread. There’s your Bible trivia for the day.

The Sons Follow

So Naomi is left without a husband, cared for by her two sons. Those sons marry — and then they die too.

The undercurrent is that they followed in their father’s footsteps.

Because Elimelech wasn’t simply a hardworking, God-fearing man protecting his family. He was a weak man. He was exactly like the people in the book right before this one. Judges ends with this line:

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

That is precisely what Elimelech did. It just seems right to leave my people — and in a sense leave my God — to go get food. And then he disappears from the narrative.

His sons had watched him. They’d absorbed his heart. And they, too, likely did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.

Dads — your kids are watching. They’re observing and absorbing. How are you living?

I’m not trying to lay a guilt trip on you. I’m acknowledging how it works. If you live hypocritically, you make it that much harder for your children to believe the gospel is true. If you genuinely seek after Christ, they’ll notice. They’ll take notes. It becomes part of them.

Naomi Pays the Price

Elimelech’s decision created grave consequences for Naomi.

Some of you know exactly what that’s like. Someone else made a decision and you bore the consequences. It doesn’t feel fair. That’s Naomi.

She’s widowed, and now sonless. In these ancient cultures that meant no man, no income, no food, no protection. And on top of it she’s an Israelite — a foreigner. She may have lived there ten years, but make no mistake, these people were not going to embrace her. She is now at serious risk of manipulation, exploitation, and worse.

Which is why she decides to go home.

Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. So she set out from the place where she was, with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah.

Reading further, Naomi stops and essentially tells them: Girls, I love you. But just as I’m in danger staying here, you’ll be in danger coming with me. You’re young Moabite women walking into Israel from the bully nation. You won’t be accepted.

And more than that: Even if I could marry today and have a son, are you prepared to wait twenty years for him to grow up so you could marry him? This doesn’t work, ladies. Go home. Go back to your fathers, who can protect and provide for you and help you find husbands.

By the way — the one daughter-in-law is Orpah, not Oprah. Oprah Winfrey has told the story that her mother meant to name her Orpah, and somehow the P and the R got transposed. Which probably worked out for the best.

Orpah hears the reasoning and concludes there’s wisdom in it. If you read it, she’s in tears — but she leaves and goes home.

Ruth Clings

Ruth’s response is different. My Bible says she clung to Naomi. And what she says is extraordinary:

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. 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.

Those words sound like a marriage vow, don’t they? I’ve heard people use them at weddings.

And because we live in a time when some might try to read a romance into this, let me be clear: there is none. Same-sex marriage in that culture would have carried the death penalty. Beyond that, the age gap and the prior mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship would have made such a union unthinkable. This is not a wedding vow.

It’s still beautiful — and notice how each line escalates.

Where you go I will go. It’s one thing to travel with someone.

Where you lodge I will lodge. Now we’re living together. Anyone who’s had a roommate knows that’s a different proposition.

Your people shall be my people. She’s surrendering her identity, her culture, her family.

And your God my God. She’s surrendering her religion. She’s following Rahab’s path — becoming a proselyte, joining Israel, even though Israel may never fully accept her because she’s a Moabite. She’s attaching herself to a people who might reject her, at tremendous personal cost.

Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. You are no longer merely my mother-in-law. I will love you as my own mother — to the point that I want my bones buried with yours, because we are family.

Ruth is saying: I am committed to you.

Imagine what those words felt like to Naomi in that moment.

Consider what she’s been through in just a few verses. Famine. A hundred-mile move on foot, roughly a week’s walk. Life among a foreign people. Her husband dies. Her boys marry and then die. She is completely widowed in a foreign land.

No wonder that when she gets home and people recognize her, she says this:

Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?

Mara means bitter.

Reading that, I realize this is a woman who hasn’t only lost a husband and two sons. She has lost her faith. She doesn’t believe God is for her. She doesn’t believe God is with her. She doesn’t believe God loves her. She believes God is punishing her.

So imagine how Ruth’s vow would have landed. No matter what has happened in your past, no matter what awaits in your future, no matter your circumstances right now — I am committed to you.

She is hurting, depressed, and bitter. And she hasn’t lost everything. She has Ruth, saying: I will care for you and protect you as best I can for the rest of our lives.

That is love.

True Love Is Committed

The problem is that our music, our films, and our conversations at work and school are constantly teaching us that love is a feeling. That it’s temporary. That it’s seasonal.

How often have you heard: Well, they’re divorcing — they just grew in different directions. They outgrew each other. It happens.

The only committed love our culture genuinely celebrates is commitment to self. Be true to yourself. That’s the vow of our age.

And we’ve already seen two people committed to themselves in this story.

Elimelech left the house of bread for Moab because that seemed right in his own eyes. And Orpah did the same.

In some ways I don’t blame either of them. On the surface, both look like the sensible choice. But sometimes what looks right isn’t right, because you’re not putting your faith in God.

Orpah is committed to herself, so she goes home hoping to find a husband, have children, and secure the Moabite dream. And her story ends. We hear nothing of her again.

Ruth does the crazy thing. She commits herself to an old widow. I will take care of you. Yes, that likely means I never marry, which likely means I never have children, which likely means I stay poor for the rest of my life. I’m risking exploitation and abuse. And I’m committed to you.

That selfless, committed love is why Ruth is in the canon of Scripture, and why we know her story and not Orpah’s.

The fastest route to unhappiness is selfishness. If you want your story to disappear, live for yourself. Follow the discipleship our culture offers. Become a devoted follower of you — and I can guarantee your story fades and you’re forgotten. Nice things will be said at your funeral, and that will be that.

But if you want a life whose story keeps going, keeps making an impact — give it away. Commit it to others.

Where Does That Love Come From?

How do you live that way when everything around you, and much inside you, insists on commitment to self?

It comes from God.

First John 4:8 says God is love. Not love is God. God is love. He is the definition of it.

Which means the commitment we see from Ruth toward Naomi doesn’t surpass or outpace God’s love. It’s merely a glimpse of the love God has for humanity.

God is committed to you. And everything in Ruth’s vow, God has shown you through Jesus.

You’ll never hear Jesus say “your God will be my God,” because He is God. But the rest of it He lived out. Leaving His throne to take on human flesh was His way of saying: I will go where you go. I will stay where you stay. Your people are my people.

And where Ruth could only say “where you die, I will die,” Jesus says: I will die for you, so you can come into the life I always intended for you.

Not even death stops His commitment. Which is exactly Paul’s point in Romans 8:

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That is how committed God is to you.

It doesn’t matter what happened in your past — it cannot stop the love of God. It doesn’t matter what’s happening right now — your circumstances are not a gauge of His love. And it doesn’t matter what’s coming, because you are secure in it.

He is radically, totally, completely committed to you. Not because of anything you’ve done. Simply because of who you are. His image is in you. He made you. You matter to Him.

Even If You’ve Had an Elimelech Moment

The question is whether you’ll be like Naomi and accept His committed love — believing it despite what you feel — or be like Elimelech and Orpah and do whatever seems right in your own eyes.

And before you think I’m building toward a guilt trip: I have good news.

Even if you’ve had an Elimelech moment. Even if you’ve been Orpah, doing what seemed right in the world’s eyes and your own. God is still committed to you.

Remember, Naomi went with her husband to Moab. She lived there with her sons. She was fully on board. She even says, “I went away full.” I assumed they left because of famine — but no, her life had been fine. She had a husband and children, and they went there for the good life. They left God.

“And the Lord has brought me back empty.”

And as we keep reading, we’re going to discover it wasn’t only Ruth who was committed to Naomi. It was God Himself, leading and guiding this entire story.

So even if you’ve had the Orpah moments and the Elimelech days — God is still for you. He is still with you. He is completely committed to you.

So come. Come to Jesus. Bask in His forgiveness. Live in His presence. Let His love become the definition that surrounds you.

And I should say plainly: as we’ll see in this story, things don’t get better for these women overnight. Giving your life to Jesus doesn’t fix everything on the spot. But it gives you hope. It gives you a future. And it gives you the chance to realize how deeply loved you are — because that, deep down, is what you long for, since it’s what you were made for.