Come, let me love you with my covenant love: It saves us from empty desperate anxious living and blesses us with hope and purpose! Chapter 1: How and in what areas of your life is he calling you to repentance? Will you let him empty you? Chapter 2: Will you, after you’ve repented, trust and obey Him and let Him fill you? Chapter 3: Will you wait for Him, will you trust Him for ultimate rest, will you stop taking matters into your own hands and in try to fix things in your own way? Chapter 4: Will you let go of being big in your own small story and get excited about being swept up in his bigger story of salvation? Will you give yourself to Him and his cause and plan anew?

The book of Ruth, friends, is a story about how the one and only true God, who is not needy at all, pursues his people out of pure love! Not because of anything they can bring to the table, but simply because he is Love and Grace and Goodness and Kindness AND Holiness personified, I mean there is no other God like Him. If you are still asking questions about Christianity, please do go and compare the God of the book of Ruth to the kind of god’s we create as humans. I believe you will find that Ruth’s God, has no equal! As Chapter 4 brings this story to a powerful wonderful climax, we are reminded of this truth when we see God in his covenant love and grace, doing what the law could not do: He redeems his people! We see how his covenant love bears redemptive fruit in the lives of his children: He blesses his people! We see how ordinary, unexpected people gets swept up in his big story: He gives hope and purpose to his people! He redeems He blesses He gives hope and purpose.

People in the world do what is right in their own eyes; God’s people do what is right in God’s eyes, they know and trust His providence, and they keep looking to their Redeemer.

Chapter 1 ended with Ruth and Naomi returning and we read in the last sentence of Chapter 1:And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest. And so, let’s look for the crop, the harvest, the fruit as they push into God’s covenant love! To help you follow, we will look at how God’s covenant love bears providential fruit in the lives of these 2 repentant sinners, Naomi and Ruth God’s covenant love bears spiritual fruit in the lives of especially Ruth and Boas, who we meet for the first time. And finally, we are going to ask and reflect on this question to apply what God is revealing to us here: Are you pushing into his covenant love?

God does indeed work in different ways with different people, but one thing we know for sure: In the life of his people, his chosen ones, the ones he calls out of the darkness into his marvelous light (1 Pet 2), the objects of his covenant love, in their lives, suffering always lead to: Repentance, a turning around, turning back, turning anew towards Him and his ways! We’re going to work through Chapter 1 under these three headings: 1. Our sin and God’s gracious providence. 2. Our response and God’s covenant love. 3. Our confession of faith and God’s gospel of hope!