Ruth: Week 1

Pastor Mike Lyle opens our new series in the book of Ruth — and it starts in a season when everyone did what was right in their own eyes (Judges 21:25).

There's a famine in Bethlehem. The name means house of bread, and there's no bread in it. So Elimelech takes his family to Moab, and he goes for a little while. That's always how it starts. But temporary compromises have a way of becoming permanent addresses — and ten years later, Naomi has buried a husband and two sons in a country that was never supposed to be home.

This week Mike walks us through the hard mercy of chapter one: that there is a way that seems right to us whose end is death, and that when there's no bread in Bethlehem the answer was never Moab. It was always God. He also shows us the fork in the road where two women make opposite choices — Orpah kisses her mother-in-law goodbye and goes back, and Ruth clings to her and won't let go. One leaves. One says, where you go I will go.

Naomi comes home telling everyone to call her bitter, convinced she left full and returned empty. But she arrives at the beginning of the barley harvest. Your story may say empty. God's timing says harvest.

"Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!" — Psalm 126:5