A Famine in the House of BreadRuth 1:1–2

Introduction 34:50

Today we are starting a new series on the book of Ruth. I have been preaching since I was fourteen years old, and I am now forty-three. That is a long time. As far as I can recall, I have never preached a sermon from the book of Ruth. I have taught countless Bible studies in it, but I have never preached through it. So this is going to be new and fun for me, and I am excited about it.

Where Ruth sits in the Bible 35:50

It is a short book, only four chapters, so we should not be in it for a year the way we were with Acts and Romans. I am expecting about six to eight weeks. We will see.

In our Bibles, in the Christian Old Testament, you will find it between Judges and 1 Samuel. Go toward the front: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and then Ruth.

In the Hebrew Bible, though, it is grouped with Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Esther as one of the five Megillot. And yes, I looked up on YouTube how to pronounce that. These are short scrolls, and each one is tied to a festival. Ruth is read at Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks. That is the same festival during which the Holy Spirit comes down in Acts chapter 2. So when you read Acts 2, understand that one of the scrolls being read at that festival was Ruth.

Today we are going to go crazy and cover two whole verses, Ruth 1:1–2. We are using them to introduce the book and where we are headed. This may not be the kind of sermon where everybody comes down the aisle. I want to be more teacher than preacher today, so that I can be more preacher in the coming weeks. I want to lay a foundation before we start breaking down the book.

Who wrote Ruth? 38:20

Who is the author of Ruth? That is a great question, and nobody knows with complete certainty. It is not like Paul writing, “Paul, a servant of Christ, to the church in Corinth.” The author does not give his name. Technically the book is anonymous, like Judges, Samuel, and Kings.

However, Jewish tradition, in the Talmud, credits Samuel as the author, and most Christian scholars believe it was Samuel as well. To me, that fits best. Samuel was Israel’s last judge. You will find that in 1 Samuel 7:15–17. His life bridges the era of the Judges and the era of the monarchy, of Saul and David and Israel’s kings. He knew this world firsthand, and he had every reason to want David’s family history put in writing. That matters, and we will see why later. At the end of Ruth there is a genealogy that leads to David, and it does not go past David.

The classical Hebrew writing style also lines up with that era. It is not one hundred percent certain, but it is the most defensible view, and it is the one I will work with through this series.

Two dates that matter 41:10

Now, the date. With Ruth you cannot simply say, “It was written in such-and-such a year for these people.” There are two different dates that matter. The first is when the story happens. The second is when the story was written down. They are different time frames.

The story took place in the period of the Judges, roughly 1150 BC. We will read that today in Ruth 1:1. If you are a nerd like me and want to know what was going on in the book of Judges at the time, it likely falls somewhere between Judges 17 and the end of the book.

What those days were like 42:30

There are stories in that part of Judges that show how the world worked. Let me briefly tell you about Judges 17. There is a man named Micah. A Levite priest comes through the area, and Micah says, in effect, “I have some money, and I want to be in good standing with God. I will hire this priest to work for me.” The priest comes to live in his house. But the priest is not doing God’s will either. Micah and this priest make idols and worship other gods as well, and because there is a Levite priest in his house, Micah thinks he is in good shape. It is a lot like Malachi. People were not thinking correctly. They were making it up as they went.

Later in Judges there is a civil war. All of Israel comes against the tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin defeats them, and defeats them again, and then God sends them out a third time and they defeat Benjamin. So it is not a time of prosperity. The world does not look great.

Judges is one of my favorite books in the Bible, because it is very simple. Israel obeyed God, until they didn’t. Then God would punish Israel, and they would live under oppression for a time. Then Israel would cry out to God, and God would send someone to set them free. They would worship God, until they turned their backs on Him. It is one big cycle, over and over again. That is the time frame in which the story takes place.

When the book was written 45:30

The writing came later. The genealogy at the end runs straight to David and then stops. There is no mention of Solomon. If Solomon had been king, they would have listed the next king as well.

If Samuel is the author, that narrows things further, because he died before David became king. His death is in 1 Samuel 25:1, well before David’s coronation in 2 Samuel chapters 2 and 5. So the book was most likely written in the window after Samuel privately anointed David in 1 Samuel 16 and before Samuel’s own death, which means Saul was probably still on the throne.

The world of the Judges 47:10

We have to understand that world before we get into the book. There was no king. There was no governing authority. It was tribes fending for themselves.

The book of Joshua ends with Joshua saying, “Choose for yourselves whom you will serve. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” All the people agreed. “Yes, Joshua. We will serve the Lord. God will be our king.” And they obeyed, until that generation was gone. After that, things started to come apart. Tribes began fending for themselves and doing things to each other that they should not have done.

Judges ends with the line that defines the whole era: everyone did what was right in his own eyes. A whole nation, twelve tribes, all doing whatever they thought was right. I don’t know about you, but I live next to other people. When they do what is right in their eyes, I may not like it. When I do what is right in mine, they may not like it. Without a good relationship, that leads to conflict and infighting. And there was no authority to step in and say, “You are right, and you are wrong.” So there was a lot of butting heads and a lot of evil.

That is where the cycle comes from. Israel abandons God. God allows an enemy to oppress them. They cry out. God sends a deliverer. Then they drift again.

We are about to read that there was a famine in the land. That is not random. In Israel’s theology, famine is one of the covenant curses for unfaithfulness. And Israel was surrounded by hostile neighbors: Moab, Ammon, Midian, and the Philistines were all pressing in during this period.

So that is the background of Ruth. It is not a pleasant time. It is dark. Everybody is doing whatever they want, and very rarely are they serving God.

Reading the passage 50:40

[Pastor Tim reads Ruth 1:1–2 from the New King James Version.]

Lots of unusual names. Forgive me if I do not pronounce them correctly.

Verse 1: in the days when the judges ruled 51:45

“In the days when the judges ruled.” The narrator does this on purpose. He is telling you exactly which world you are standing in before the story even starts. He is painting a picture of lawlessness, of people doing whatever they wanted. Everything we just covered about Judges is packed into that phrase.

And in that time, there was a famine in the land. That is not a random detail. Famine was understood as God’s discipline on the land. Deuteronomy 28 covers that. It was one of the ways God disciplined His children. They were doing wrong, He needed them to realize it, and nothing else was working, so He made things hard for them.

I like to think Israel is a lot like me. You can praise me, and I love praise. But if I am doing something wrong, sometimes I need a little swat. When I was a kid, I needed to be disciplined in order to realize I was not doing the right thing. Israel is in that place. So God allows a famine. The wheat does not grow. They cannot fix it on their own. They have to call out to Him and turn back.

A famine in the house of bread 54:00

Interestingly, this famine is happening in Bethlehem. Do you know what Bethlehem literally means? The house of bread. God sent a famine to the city called the house of bread, so that maybe they would open their eyes and realize they were not doing the right thing. The irony is built into the name of the town.

Verse 2: what the names tell us 54:52

The man’s name was Elimelech, which means “My God is King.” Here is a man living in a time with no kings, when God is supposed to be the king, and his name means “My God is King.” When everyone else is doing what is right in their own eyes, here is a man whose very name is a confession that God is king.

And what is the first thing we see him do? He leaves the land God gave His people. Instead of trusting the King he is named after, he goes to an enemy country. His name makes one confession, and his feet make another. He is saying, “God, I know You are king. I know You will provide. That is what my name means. But I am not going to trust You with this. I am going to a land that does not know You.”

His wife’s name is Naomi, which means “pleasant.” Hold on to that, because later, in chapter 1, verse 20, she will ask people to call her Mara instead, and Mara means “bitter.” The narrator names her “pleasant” right before her whole world falls apart. I do not think that is an accident.

Then there are their sons, Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem. Many scholars connect their names to roots meaning sickly, wasting away, or pining. That is debated, and I will not spend a whole sermon on it. But spoiler alert: both of these sons will be dead by verse 5. It is hard to pass over “sickly” and “pining” as names when that is where the story is headed. Whether the names were literal, or the narrator preserved them because of how the story turns out, this family is heading somewhere very sad.

They went to dwell, and they remained 58:10

It says they “went to dwell.” That is the New King James translation. If you have the ESV, it says he went to “sojourn” in Moab, and that is closer to the Hebrew word.

If “sojourn” is new to you, it means to stay temporarily, like a foreigner passing through. You are not moving in for good. You might stay a week, or a month. Maybe you are trying to get to Phoenix and you have to stop here because you ran out of water. Maybe you ran out of money and need to work for three or four months before moving on. You are staying for a while, but only for a while, on the way to somewhere else. That is what the Scripture says they went to do. They were passing through, not planning to stay.

That matters because of how verse 2 ends: “and they remained there.” They were only supposed to pass through, and they ended up staying. That is worth sitting with. What started as “We will just wait out the famine” turned into “We will just stay here.” What was “God, once You bring back the rain and the wheat grows and the famine is over, I will return” became “Actually, I am comfortable here.”

Nobody plans to leave God’s people for good. Nobody plans on walking away from God. Very rarely does someone who has said, “God, I love You, and I trust You as my Savior,” go to bed and wake up saying, “I loved God yesterday, but today I hate Him and I am walking away.” That does not happen. It starts with, “God, I love You, but I am going to make this one small compromise. I still love You. My eyes are still on You.” And it goes on, until He is so far away that you cannot see Him, so you might as well keep walking. That is how most people leave. It starts with just a little while.

Where we are headed 62:00

So where are we headed? A man named “My God is King” leaves the land God gave him. A woman named “Pleasant” is about to become bitter. Two sons whose names may already be a warning are going to die. And a family that meant to stay for a season ends up staying for good. That is where we will pick up next week.

I wanted you to see, before we go any further, that this story is loaded from the very first sentence. We have to understand what is going on in order to understand what Naomi, Ruth, Boaz, and all the others are doing.

Elimelech did not reject God. He just stopped trusting Him with the hard part. The road away from God rarely looks like rebellion. It looks like a man doing what is right in his own eyes, just as in the book of Judges, while still wearing a name that says God is king. Nobody wakes up one day and decides to walk away from God. It starts with one hard season, one reasonable decision, and one “just for now.”

As we study through the book of Ruth, I want you to be thinking about your own life and your own seasons, the hard times you are facing and will face. Even then, there is a God whose hand is in your story. Ruth and Naomi are going to see God provide in ways that will blow your mind when you really study it.

It is going to be a constant reminder that if you are dealing with something, and it feels like there is evil all around you, God’s hand can still be in it. When you are dealing with depression, with sickness, with the death of a loved one and the grief that follows, with a rebellious child, with whatever it is, God has a way of showing up. We are going to look closely at that as we go through this book. I want you to understand that you can trust Him with the hard part. You do not have to claim God and then take small steps away from Him.

I am excited for the next few weeks. I apologize that this was not a big three-point finish, but to preach the way I want to preach next week, we have to understand this first.

Closing prayer 65:50

Father, thank You for Your Word. Thank You that it was given to us so that we can understand it and learn from it. Open our eyes to what You would have us understand in this series.

Thank You for people like Samuel, who I believe wrote this book because Your Holy Spirit prompted him to. Thank You that he was obedient, so that we can study it thousands of years later.

God, help us not to be like Elimelech. Help us not to wear a name that says “My God is King” while disproving it again and again with our actions. As we go through this series, help us see the hard times in our lives, and may the book of Ruth be the encouragement we need to face them. We love You and we honor You. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.