Your God, My GodRuth 1:15–22

Introduction 26:40

Welcome. If you are new here, or if you have not been here in a while and have a bad memory like I do, my name is Pastor Tim. I am preaching through the book of Ruth right now. I am what is called an expository preacher, which is a big word to say that I don’t think I am smart enough to preach topic by topic. I like to preach book by book, line by line, word for word, because I believe God’s Word has everything we need and He will present it to us when we need it. Today we are in Ruth 1:15 through the end of the chapter, verse 22.

The story so far 28:20

One disclaimer first. Naomi and Ruth are backwards in my brain a lot. For some reason, in my head Ruth is the mother-in-law and Naomi is the daughter-in-law. It has been that way my whole life. So if you hear me say Naomi when I mean Ruth, I am asking for forgiveness up front.

Here is the background. Naomi was married with two sons, and they lived in Judah. A famine hit Judah, and Naomi, her husband, and their two sons left the promised land and went to Moab, a neighboring country known to be hostile, to try to find a better life. While they were there, the sons met women and got married. Everything was going great, until it wasn’t. All of the men died. I would not want to eat the food in that house. Just kidding.

So Naomi is left with her two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth. She tells them, “I cannot produce any more sons for you to marry. Even if I married right now and had another child, it would be a long time before he was old enough, and you would not want to wait. Go back to your families. I will survive.” Orpah listens. But the Scripture says Ruth clung to Naomi. That is where we finished last week.

Reading the passage 30:40

You may have heard verses 16 and 17 before. They are well known. Let’s dive in.

[Pastor Tim reads Ruth 1:15–22 from the New King James Version.]

Naomi tells Orpah and Ruth to go. Orpah listens. That was not a bad thing. As we discussed last week, she was not abandoning Naomi. It was expected. It was the cultural, social, and religious norm for her to go back to her family in Moab. Ruth broke every norm when she clung to Naomi.

Verse 15: one last way out 33:30

[Reads Ruth 1:15.]

This is Naomi’s last push. It could come across as harsh: “Your sister-in-law is gone. Please, just go.” But Naomi is not being harsh. She is giving Ruth one final, completely reasonable off-ramp to go back home.

“Her gods” is a matter-of-fact statement, not an insult. Orpah has gone home to Chemosh and the other gods of Moab, which is exactly what any culturally normal widow would do. She would go back to the land she knew and the family who could help her survive. This is not 2026. Women could not easily get jobs. They could not go down to Walmart. There was no Social Security.

Naomi is making sure Ruth understands the full weight of what she would be choosing. Not only the family relationship, but the religious and national identity that comes with it. “Go back to your country, your nationality, your religion, your gods.”

We might ask, why would a follower of God tell her to go back to her gods? Remember the first sermon. This takes place during the time of the Judges, and Judges says the same thing over and over: everybody did what was right in their own eyes. Naomi sees that everything is gone. She cannot take care of her daughters-in-law. What was right in her eyes was to send them back to Moab and their old gods.

Verses 16–17: five steps of a vow 36:55

[Reads Ruth 1:16–17.]

Now we are looking at Ruth’s vow. It is her answer to her mother-in-law telling her to go. The declaration builds in five escalating steps, each one a deeper commitment than the last.

First, “Wherever you go, I will go.” That is physical relocation. “Wherever you go, I am going with you.”

The second goes beyond that. I could walk with you, and when you reach your destination I could keep walking. So she says, “Wherever you lodge, I will lodge.” Now she is talking about shared daily life and provision. “Wherever you call home, I will call home. If we are traveling and you need to stay somewhere overnight, I am staying with you. We are living life together.”

Third, “Your people shall be my people.” Now she is completely changing her nationality and social identity. Ruth is saying, “I no longer want to be a Moabite. Everything you just told me to go back to, I am leaving. I do not have a family there anymore. You are my family, and your family is now mine.”

Fourth, “Your God, my God.” Now it is a religious conversion, not just relational loyalty. She is saying, “It is not even only about you anymore. I want what you have. I have seen what my gods can do, and I do not want them. I want your God to be my God.”

Fifth, “Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried.” This is a permanent, irreversible commitment, even past Naomi’s death. “After you are long gone, I will still be here. And when God says it is my time, I will be buried right next to you.” Ruth is telling Naomi, “This is not lighthearted. This is not for a season. I am making a lifelong commitment to you, to the point of my death. Do not send me away.”

A formal oath in the Lord’s name 42:20

Each phrase builds on the last, and then Ruth caps it with a formal oath: “The Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me.” It is a formula that essentially means, “May God punish me severely if I break this.”

It shows up elsewhere in the Old Testament in the mouths of Israelites making binding vows. You will find it in 1 Samuel 3:17, 1 Samuel 25:22, 2 Samuel 19:13, and 1 Kings 2:23. It is used over and over to mark a binding vow.

Ruth is not using generic language of devotion. She is not saying, “Don’t send me away. I enjoy your company. I think I will have a better life with you.” She is using Israel’s own covenant oath formula, and she is swearing it by the name of the Lord, Yahweh specifically, not a generic word for a deity.

A Moabite woman is using the binding, covenantal language that Israel had used from generation to generation. She is saying, “I am making this commitment, and it is not only to you. It is to Yahweh. If I break it, may He do worse to me.” A woman raised under the god Chemosh in Moab is binding herself with Israel’s covenant vocabulary. This is conversion language, not just affection. Ruth does not only love Naomi. She is making a covenant with Naomi and with God. It is so much bigger than love alone.

Verse 18: the argument is over 45:55

[Reads Ruth 1:18.]

Naomi stopped speaking to her. That sounds harsh, but it is not what it means. She did not give Ruth the cold shoulder. She did not say, “I will ignore you until you go away.” She stopped arguing. Once she saw Ruth was fully resolved, she quit pressing the case for her to go back. This is the end of a negotiation, not the start of a rift.

I like to picture it. Ruth has just given this great speech, the kind that would make you want to run through a wall if you heard it at halftime. And I can see Naomi looking at her, rolling her eyes, letting out a sigh, and saying, “Fine. I am done arguing with you. My life is already bad enough.” If you have kids, you understand. “I don’t want to argue about this. Whatever.”

Verse 19: “Is this Naomi?” 47:42

[Reads Ruth 1:19.]

The two of them travel until they come to Bethlehem, where Naomi was from. The whole city is stirred, and the women say, “Is this Naomi?”

They are not asking because they do not recognize her. She is not a stranger. They clearly know her, and they know her by name. It is not, “Is this the lady who used to live on the corner ten years ago?” It is, “Wait. Is this really Naomi? The woman we used to have breakfast with? The woman I washed clothes beside? The woman who kissed my child’s scraped knee?” They see her, and they can hardly believe their eyes.

They are shocked by how much she has changed. She has been gone ten years. When she left she had a husband and two boys, who should be strong young men by now. They are not with her. She has certainly aged, and with the life she has lived, I have no doubt she was weathered and visibly poor. The town is not merely curious. It is stirred by how different she looks. It is physically evident that Naomi has been through a great deal.

Verse 20: “Call me Mara” 50:05

[Reads Ruth 1:20.]

“Do not call me Naomi.” Naomi means pleasant. “Do not call me pleasant anymore. What about my life is pleasant? Where is my husband? Where is my oldest son? Where is my youngest? What about the ten years I lived away from home? Call me bitter.” Mara means bitter. She is making her grief part of her public identity.

Verse 21: the Almighty has afflicted me 51:40

[Reads Ruth 1:21.]

This is the first time this particular name of God shows up in Ruth. The name is El Shaddai, the Almighty.

It is the same name God uses to reveal Himself to Abraham in Genesis 17, in connection with His covenant promises. It is also the dominant title for God throughout the book of Job, where it appears more than thirty times, almost always in the context of suffering, mystery, misery, and questioning.

By reaching for this specific title, and not a more generic word for God, Naomi puts herself in the same category as Job. She is someone wrestling honestly with a God whose power she does not doubt, even when she does not understand what He is doing to her. She is not doubting that God is God. She is being honest and still trusting.

“The Lord has testified against me.” This is legal, courtroom language, and it is used on purpose. Naomi pictures herself as a defendant, with God Himself on the witness stand testifying against her. Back in verse 13 she said, “The hand of the Lord has gone out against me.” This is the second time the chapter has used this framing of legal accusation. She is not only sad. She feels as though her life has been put on trial and she is losing.

Full and empty 54:50

“I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home again empty.” This is irony. She is saying, “I left full. I had my husband and my sons. Now I am back in Bethlehem all by myself.”

Is she all by herself? “Entreat me not to leave you.” “When she saw that she was determined to go with her.” That is a strange thing to say for someone who is not alone.

It is dramatic irony, something the narrator wants us to catch that Naomi cannot see yet. She says she is empty while standing right next to Ruth, the daughter-in-law who has just sworn an unbreakable covenant oath to stay with her forever.

Naomi is not lying. From her vantage point, having lost a husband and two sons, she feels genuinely empty. But we, the readers, know something she has not grasped. Her emptiness already holds the seed of her restoration, and it is walking right beside her. She just cannot see it. That was not in my notes, but I don’t know about anybody else. That one got me right between the eyes.

Verse 22: the beginning of barley harvest 57:01

[Reads Ruth 1:22.]

They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest. It is an easy detail to skim past as mere context. I think it is doing real work in the story.

Barley harvest in ancient Israel fell in early spring, around the time of Passover, roughly our March to April. It was one of the first signs of a new agricultural year. Putting it in verse 22 creates a deliberate bookend for the whole chapter. Chapter 1 starts with a famine in verse 1 and closes with the beginning of a harvest in verse 22. The chapter that began in scarcity and death ends, quite literally, at the start of abundance. The night does not last forever. God has a plan.

What does this mean for us? 58:40

Great, Tim. Cool story. What does it mean for me? I live in Gold Canyon. I am not trying to marry my brother’s wife if he dies. I have not been through what Naomi went through. I see three clear things in this passage that we can tie to our lives today.

First, Ruth’s vow is a conversion, not just a loyalty statement. She chooses Naomi’s people. She chooses Naomi’s God. She seals it with Israel’s own covenant language. That is what genuine faith commitment looks like. It is costly. It is specific. It is not a vague sentiment. My friends, in the same way, our repentance should be a conversion, not just a loyalty statement.

I have to say this carefully. I think a lot of Christians mean well when they say, “All you have to do to be a believer is admit you are a sinner, believe that God sent His Son to die on the cross, and confess your sins to Him.” We treat conversion like a prayer formula. Notice how we say it: “All you have to do is pray this prayer.” My Bible is falling apart because I have read it so much over the years. I will give you a hundred dollars right now if you can show me where it says, “All you have to do is pray this prayer.”

Romans 10:9 is clear: if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. “Doesn’t that say what you just said we don’t have to do?” No. That word “believe” does not mean only to agree that something is true.

How can I say that? Let’s be honest. Satan was at the cross when Jesus was crucified. Satan was on earth when, three days later, my God rose from the dead and walked out of that tomb fully alive. Not a zombie. Not a ghost. Are you telling me Satan does not believe in the Creator he saw in heaven before he was ever cast down? Are you telling me the demons do not believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that He lived a perfect life, was executed on a cross for my sins and yours, was buried, and rose again three days later? They were there. That is why the Scriptures say the demons believe, and they tremble. They tremble because they know the power He has.

So it is not only about agreeing. That word “believe” means to believe so much that you do what Ruth did. She left everything she had to cling to Naomi. “Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people. Your God will be my God.” That is the commitment God calls for from us. Believe it so much that you change your life for it.

My friends, if you have made a loyalty statement to Jesus but have not repented and changed the way you live, call me crazy, but I believe that many in the North American church are unsaved, because they have had a religious experience or said a prayer but never changed their lives. We must have life change, not just a loyalty statement.

Second, Naomi renames herself out of pain. She uses courtroom language against God and calls herself empty. Her grief is allowed to be total and unresolved at this point in the story. The text does not rush her to comfort. It does not say she put on a smile and went about her day. She grieved.

There are a lot of people here who are grieving, and because they do not have a smile on their face, they feel that God has abandoned them. Or, even if they still believe God loves them, they feel that sitting in grief means they are doing it wrong. All you have to do is read the Psalms to find that God is near to the grieving heart. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn.” We do not always have to rush to make everything okay. God uses Naomi’s honesty and her pain. If you will let Him, He can and will do the same with you.

Third, in her pain Naomi cannot see that God is already beginning to provide in the background. She thinks she is alone. She thinks she is empty. Ruth is standing right next to her. Our own sense of empty can exist alongside provision God has already put in place that we cannot yet see or believe. In those moments we must not lose hope. Remain faithful, and you will see the provision come.

Jesus said to look at the birds of the air. They do not struggle to find their meal. God the Father takes care of them, and He loves you more. So in those moments of hurt, even when you cannot see it, I would encourage you to be honest with God, and like Naomi, to hold on to the fact that God is God. Even when you cannot see it, He will provide.

Closing prayer 68:15

Father, thank You for the story of Naomi and her life, and for the example we see in her daughter-in-law Ruth. I pray this is not just a passage we have read a hundred times and call a great story, or a sermon we call a great sermon.

I pray that we would make sure our conversions are not loyalty statements. I pray that we would stop telling people to make loyalty statements and start teaching them about true conversion, that their lives must change. They will not be perfect. They will still stumble and fall. Paul, the man who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament, says, “What I do not want to do, I do, and what I want to do, I do not do.” So we know we will stumble. But the righteous man falls seven times and gets back up. Help us to be like that, to get back up, because You have changed our lives and we want to change for You.

I also pray that we would not rush things or feel we have to put on a show for You or for anyone else. Help us to grieve the way You want us to grieve, and to be honest with ourselves and with You.

And finally, God, help us in those moments not to lose hope, but to remain faithful until Your provision comes. I pray this word would be life-changing and that we would share it with the world. In Jesus’ name, amen.