Ruth 1:1-19 Fifth Sunday after Pentecost Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke Sunday, July 13, 2025
“Ruth: A Real-Life Good Samaritan?”
“Go and do likewise.” That’s the way that Jesus ended his famous story, his famous lesson. It was an answer to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Your neighbor is someone who has needs. Your neighbor is anyone who needs your help. It was not a direct answer to the previous question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
That was the question that prompted the entire exchange that included Jesus’ famous story of the Good Samaritan. Maybe it is better to say that “Good Samaritan” is a famous phrase, because many people use it even if they don’t know the story Jesus told or the fact that the term comes from it. The Good Samaritan was the least likely person to help the man in need, but he was the one who helped him, the only one to help him, and he did so in incredibly generous ways. What an interesting account to pair with another story, this one a true story, not one made up for teaching purposes. The true account carries with it many similar lessons and similar warnings to the story Jesus told. The true story is the story of Naomi and Ruth.
Today we heard most of the first chapter of that story. That is to say, we heard most of the first chapter of the Bible’s book of Ruth in the Old Testament. We’ll focus on those verses, but we’ll also mention a few things that come later in the book, which you might consider reading today or later on in the week.
The action begins with a famine in the land in which Israel lived in the time of the Judges. That means that Israel did not have a king yet. They had moved into the Promised Land, but they weren’t fully settled in. The judges were people whom God used to protect his people and help them and rule over them at a time when a lot of people were doing all sorts of things that were not in keeping with God’s plan and design. The family we meet belongs to a man named Elimelech. His wife is Naomi, and they have sons Mahlon and Kilion. They are Israelites living in Bethlehem who go to Moab to escape the famine. The Moabites were descendants of Lot, Abraham’s nephew, so related to the Israelites.
In Moab, things got pretty bad for Naomi. Her husband died, leaving her to care for the two boys alone. The boys married Moabite women, but after about ten years, Naomi’s sons died. Naomi’s family was three widows, not the sort of group that had good prospects in that time and place. So Naomi made a plan to head back to Bethlehem. According to the customs and curtesy of the day, Naomi’s daughters-inlaw accompanied her, something they would have done for a way whether or not they planned to go the entire journey with her. Naomi did not plan for them to come. After they had walked a bit, she thanked both Orpah and Ruth and encouraged them to return home. Orpah eventually did. Ruth did not. Ruth was going to serve and honor and love her mother-in-law in what amounts to a rather shocking way. She would leave her own mother and father, leave her own home and hometown, her own people, and go with Naomi. In fact, she spoke one of the most memorable lines in the entire book when she declared her intentions. She said: “Do not urge me to abandon you or to turn back from following you. Because wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you make your home, I will make my home. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely and double it if anything but death separates me from you.”
Can you imagine making such a sacrifice? Understand, this was not the days of highways and air travel. This was leaving and perhaps never coming back. This was sacrificing a lot—nearly everything—for someone else. You could make a pretty convincing case that this was a lot like, maybe even more impressive than, the actions of the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ story. He gave up his time and money and efforts to see to it that the man who was hurt got all the help he needed. Ruth gave up her home and family for her mother-in-law, Naomi.
How would you do when faced with such an opportunity? That’s the question this text and Jesus’ story beg us to consider. How have we been as neighbors? How have we served others? How close have we come to the sorts of examples that are given in Scripture? How loving, kind, compassionate, caring, selfsacrificing? What would you do if you met the man left for dead on the side of the road on the way to Jericho? What would you do for the weary widow in Moab? What would you do for your neighbor in need? You won’t face the exact same situation, but wouldn’t we all like to be able to say, “I do pretty well”? And maybe there are times when faced with a unique opportunity to serve in an extraordinary way, we might do it. But what about all the everyday ways in which we have opportunities to serve? Why are we often so hesitant to let go of our own opinions, or our own political beliefs, or our own clothing preferences, or our own comfort levels? If those things are getting in the way of what our neighbors need from us, that is a problem. And that doesn’t even take into account our time, our money, our efforts that others might need from us, too.
Examples like these can certainly highlight our lack of love and concern and care. But don’t take the wrong lesson from that. Don’t just stop there and think that the answer that Jesus wants to drive home or the lesson from the life of Ruth is that we just need to do better. “Go and be a Good Samaritan. Go and be like Ruth!” Christian teachers even have a term for that idea. They call it moralizing. When we moralize, we make the Bible into a big book of the things you need to do to please God. The problem is, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t do it.
We need a different answer. And we find it in Bethlehem. That town sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It should. That’s the Town of David. That’s the little town that saw a silent, holy night when Jesus the Savior was born. That’s not recorded for us in Ruth, because Ruth’s story came centuries before. What is recorded in Ruth? How God took care of Naomi and her daughter-in-law. How God provided for them by means of a caring relative, a man named Boaz, who helped these women and married Ruth and became with her an ancestor of the future King David, meaning that they were ancestors also of King David’s greater descendant, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is our answer. He’s not a Good Samaritan, he’s much better. He’s not an example like Ruth, he’s much greater. He didn’t come to show us a way to please God. He came to please God in our place. He came to serve a world of his neighbors with an incredibly self-sacrificing love, a love that gave up everything, even his own life, to serve people who had in no way deserved it. We were in worse shape than the man beaten on the side of the road. We were dead in our sins. We were on the path to hell. We were worse off than widowed Naomi in Moab. We were citizens of the kingdom of Satan and sin. Jesus did not walk by, and he did not turn his back. No, he gave us everything that we need for this life and for eternity. He gives us the promise that he will never leave us.
And all that he gives us becomes our own possession through faith. Believing his promises is how we receive his goodness and love and salvation. And when we believe, we act. Jesus Christ, our risen Lord and Savior, empowers us to follow his example. He empowers us to respond to his story about our neighbors. He strengthens us to live in a way consistent with his Old Testament servant Ruth. Was Ruth a real-life Good Samaritan? I suppose in a sense that’s exactly what she was. Her story is a story of self-sacrifice, a story of love, a story of how God used his people to serve his people. But in another sense, she was so much more. She was a part of salvation history with her very own salvation story. The God she met through her mother-in-law was the true God, the only God, the God who saves. Because he lived in her, she served others. Now, dear Christian, go and do likewise. You get to be a reallife Good Samaritan, too. After all, in Christ, God has given you your own salvation story.
The Text: Ruth 1:1–19 (EHV)
1 During the days of the judges, a famine occurred in the land. So a man left Bethlehem in Judah to stay awhile in the territory of Moab—he, his wife, and his two sons. 2The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were from the clan of Ephrath from Bethlehem in Judah. They entered the territory of Moab and remained there.
3But Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, so she was left with her two sons. 4They then married Moabite wives. The name of the first was Orpah, and the name of the second was Ruth. They lived there for about ten years. 5But Naomi’s sons, Mahlon and Kilion, also died. So the woman was left without her two children and without her husband.
6Then Naomi set out with her daughters-in-law to return from the territory of Moab, because while she was in the territory of Moab, she had heard that the Lord had graciously visited his people by providing them with food. 7So she left the place where she had been, and her two daughters-in-law left with her. They set out on the road to return to the land of Judah.
8But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back. Both of you return to your mother’s house. May the Lord show you kindness as you have shown kindness to the dead and to me. 9May the Lord grant that each of you finds security in the house of a husband.” Then she kissed them, and they wept loudly.
10But they said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.”
11Then Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters. Why should you go with me? Am I going to give birth to any more sons who could become your husbands? 12Turn back, my daughters. Go! For I am too old to be married to another husband. Suppose I say, ‘I have hope, and I will be married to another husband tonight, and I will even give birth to sons.’ 13Would you wait for them until they grow up? On the basis of that hope would you give up the chance to marry another husband? No, my daughters. It is much more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has reached out against me.”
14They once again wept loudly. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth would not let her go.
15Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law has returned to her people and to her gods. Go back! Follow your sister-in-law.”
16But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to abandon you or to turn back from following you. Because wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you make your home, I will make my home. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. 17Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely and double it if anything but death separates me from you.”
18When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
19Then the two of them traveled until they arrived at Bethlehem.