A story of human love reflecting and enacting divine love, the book of Ruth is a rich text for a sermon series, particularly in August days when farm fields flourish with the promise of an abundant harvest.

Themes of emptiness and fullness abound in this little book: famine turning to abundant food, loss turning to love, bitterness turning to joy, barrenness giving way to birth.

And the improbable catalyst for all this is Ruth, neither king nor prophet, but only a widow and a foreigner. This little domestic tale is a story of God’s hesed, God’s faithfulness, God’s covenant love, lived out in the lives of everyday, ordinary human beings, much like you and me.

I have written before on this website about the book of Ruth and will undoubtedly touch on some of the same themes, but I will organize this essay according to the four chapters of the book. It is a story in four acts, and lends itself well to a four-part sermon series. For an example of such a sermon series on Ruth, including a sermon that I preached, see the Spring 2013 issue of Word & World.

Week 1: August 10, 2014
Preaching text: Ruth 1:1-22; accompanying text: Matthew 5:3-9

Ruth 1: Loss and Loyalty

The first ...