This five-day track through the book of Ruth, taught by Grant Partrick, demonstrates what it means to trust God even in the face of adversity and embrace His redemption. 

As we dive deep into this book, which is often highly regarded as the greatest short story of all time, we pray that you will be inspired by the faithfulness of a young Moabite girl named Ruth and encouraged in your faith to trust God in all things obediently. 

The book of Ruth poignantly describes a story of redemption and love. Ruth, a Moabite woman and one of the book’s main characters, was saved by the sovereign care of God. Through her relationship with her late husband and mother-in-law, Naomi, Ruth learned about the God of Israel, became his devoted follower, and faithfully followed his lead. Undoubtedly, this decision did not come without cost for Ruth. However, through obedience to Yahweh, she found greater blessing — both the provision she needed to survive and a central role in the family line of Jesus Christ (Ru 4:18 – 22; Mt 1:5).

Ruth’s story takes place during a time when a series of judges led the people of God. This period is known to have been a time of extreme moral decline and spiritual poverty. The story of Ruth and Boaz provides a glimpse of the hope of redemption that can come even amid overwhelming cultural chaos and immorality.

Ruth’s loyalty toward Naomi throughout the book symbolizes the type of covenant love God shows to his people. Even though Ruth was originally unfamiliar with the Law of God, she received God’s gracious blessings.

God’s sovereign work is seen throughout the story of Ruth and Boaz. The odds seemed stacked against their relationship from the outset — Ruth was an outsider who, after suffering significant loss, followed her mother-in-law to Bethlehem. She had every reason to feel discouraged and defeated. Without a husband or a family, Ruth’s prospects were dim. She was a poverty-stricken widow scraping out a meager existence by gleaning what the harvesters left in the wheat fields. What she could not see is transparent to the modern reader – God was orchestrating all the seemingly isolated events of her life to bring her to the knowledge of the one true and living God and into the blessing that he had promised to his children.

A central concept of the book and the role played by Boaz, Ruth’s eventual husband, is that of a guardian-redeemer. In ancient Israel, a man’s nearest relative was expected to marry a widow and provide for her needs to fulfill her husband’s obligations, including providing an heir. Boaz claimed that responsibility for Naomi’s deceased husband and sons dramatically changing the lives and the futures of both Ruth and Naomi. Like Boaz, Jesus was a guardian-redeemer. He paid the ultimate price for humanity’s redemption — his blood — and claimed his people by the power of his love, changing their eternal futures. Boaz’s love for Ruth is a picture of the way that God loves his church. He takes notice of her, redeems her, lavishes grace upon her, and places her within the community of faith as her guardian-redeemer.

God blessed the marriage of Ruth and Boaz with a child who would become an ancestor to King David and later a part of the earthly line of the promised Messiah.

“May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” – Ruth 2:12

This excerpt was from The Jesus Bible. If you would like to purchase a copy of The Jesus Bible, click here.

This five-day track through the book of Ruth, taught by Grant Partrick, demonstrates what it means to trust God even in the face of adversity and embrace His redemption. 

As we dive deep into this book, which is often highly regarded as the greatest short story of all time, we pray that you will be inspired by the faithfulness of a young Moabite girl named Ruth and encouraged in your faith to trust God in all things obediently.

For today, let’s jump into the first few verses of chapter one of Ruth.

In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.

Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. 

Ruth 1:1-3

It’s day two, and today, our focus will be on Naomi’s decision to leave the Kingdom of Moab and Ruth’s declaration that she would follow her mother-in-law wherever she went. Both women left Moab with nothing, hoping and believing God would provide for them. In these verses of Ruth, we see Naomi filled with shame, exclaiming, “The Lord’s hand has turned against me!” 

We’re also reminded of a similar story in the book of Luke: the parable of the lost sons. As we study these verses, we see the prodigal son leave home and, later, a homecoming between a lost son and a loving father. 

Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband. 

When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah. 

Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”

But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons—would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”

At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.

“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”

But Ruth replied, “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 even death separates you and me.” When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

Ruth 1:3-18

God is hardly mentioned in the book of Ruth, yet He is at work in every verse. This is true of days two and three, and it is no different for day four as we focus on Ruth gleaning in the field and meeting Boaz for the first time.

We read a story filled with promises from the Lord that you may mistake for coincidences. As we study these following verses together, we recognize God’s sovereignty in the story of Ruth and Boaz and see that character and integrity matter to God.

Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelek, whose name was Boaz.

And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.”

Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.” So she went out, entered a field and began to glean behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelek.

Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, “The Lord be with you!”

“The Lord bless you!” they answered.

Boaz asked the overseer of his harvesters, “Who does that young woman belong to?”

The overseer replied, “She is the Moabite who came back from Moab with Naomi. She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She came into the field and has remained here from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.”

So Boaz said to Ruth, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with the women who work for me. Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.”

At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She asked him, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?”

Boaz replied, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”

Ruth 2:1-12

It’s the final day of this track through the book of Ruth, and as we close out this study, our focus is on the ultimate redeemer: Jesus. As we meditate on these last few verses, we see God always had a greater plan. Not only was Ruth redeemed by Boaz, but in her marriage with him, she became part of the lineage of the Messiah.

How good is our God? A book beginning with such distrust and grief ends with a lineage leading ultimately to Calvary, where the greatest redemption story occurred.

Then Boaz announced to the elders and all the people, “Today you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelek, Kilion and Mahlon. I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite, Mahlon’s widow, as my wife, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property, so that his name will not disappear from among his family or from his hometown. Today you are witnesses!”

Then the elders and all the people at the gate said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the family of Israel. May you have standing in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. Through the offspring the Lord gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.”

So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he made love to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.”

Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. The women living there said, “Naomi has a son!” And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

This, then, is the family line of Perez:

Perez was the father of Hezron,

Hezron the father of Ram,

Ram the father of Amminadab,

Amminadab the father of Nahshon,

Nahshon the father of Salmon,

Salmon the father of Boaz,

Boaz the father of Obed,

Obed the father of Jesse,

and Jesse the father of David.

Ruth 4:9-22

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

Hebrews 2:14-15