Jesus is our Redeemer

Ruth is a story within a story. A story we are a part of and people we can identify with, about how God is redeeming His people from despair to delight, from hurt to hope, and from darkness to light.

In Ruth Chapter 1 we read that there is a famine in Bethlehem. Elimelech moves his family to Moab. Soon after he dies and Naomi’s 2 sons also die. Naomi is left with her two daughters-in law, Ruth and Orpah.

Naomi decides to go back to the land of Judah and Ruth clings to Naomi even though she tells her to stay in her own land and to find another husband to take care of her. Ruth tells Naomi in Ruth 1:16-17 “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 even death separates you and me”.

Ruth “just so happens” to find work in a field that belongs to a relative of her deceased father-in-law. Boaz hears all about Ruth and how she has been faithful to stay with her mother-in-law. He tells Ruth to stay in his fields until the end of the barley & wheat harvest and she will be taken care of.

Boaz ends up being their family redeemer and marries Ruth. God used Boaz as a picture of how He restores and redeems us.

He can turn your bitterness to happiness!
He can turn your emptiness into fullness!
He can turn your despair into Hope!

Ruth 1 starts with the death of 3 men where we see despair and hopelessness.
Ruth 4 leaves us with redemption, new life & the promise and hope for what’s to come!

In this story God is not mentioned very often. Only 2 times. Once in Chapter 1 and at the end of the story in Chapter 4. But he was constantly working behind the scenes as He always is in our lives!

When it may seem like God is farthest from us and seems distant, He just may be laying the foundations of His greatest displays of His faithfulness to us!