Introduction
Are you willing to keep trusting God, and keep loving people, when your life feels dark, confusing, and delayed? Advent teaches me to prepare my heart for the incarnation by remembering this: God uses seasons of darkness and waiting to carry forward His redemption, often through surprising people and painful circumstances. That’s why we start in Matthew 1. Jesus didn’t arrive out of nowhere; He came through a real genealogy with real stories, stories that prove God was working even when His people couldn’t see it. In Matthew 1:5, we find a surprising name in the Messiah’s family line: “Boaz by Rahab… Boaz begot Obed by Ruth.” Ruth, a woman, and not even an Israelite, but a Moabite, stands in the line of King David and ultimately of Christ. Her story (the book of Ruth, only four short chapters) shows how God brings light little by little until His plan becomes clear.
Main Points
Are you willing to keep trusting God, and keep loving people, when your life feels dark, confusing, and delayed? Advent teaches me to prepare my heart for the incarnation by remembering this: God uses seasons of darkness and waiting to carry forward His redemption, often through surprising people and painful circumstances.
That’s why we start in Matthew 1. Jesus didn’t arrive out of nowhere; He came through a real genealogy with real stories, stories that prove God was working even when His people couldn’t see it. In Matthew 1:5, we find a surprising name in the Messiah’s family line: “Boaz by Rahab… Boaz begot Obed by Ruth.” Ruth, a woman, and not even an Israelite, but a Moabite, stands in the line of King David and ultimately of Christ. Her story (the book of Ruth, only four short chapters) shows how God brings light little by little until His plan becomes clear.
Advent Reminds Us Life Gets Dark
Advent is not just about singing that everything is wonderful. The church calendar wisely trains us to remember that believers often wait, and sometimes we wait in darkness and confusion. Just as Israel longed for the Messiah in hard times, we also face seasons where worship gatherings are not the whole story of our week. Life includes funerals, diagnoses, fractured relationships, and long stretches without clear answers.
God even built darkness into the rhythms of the year: the days shorten toward December, and then the light returns. That’s a parable for the disciple’s life: we are not moving in a straight, upward line with constant emotional brightness. We will have times when we genuinely wonder what God is doing.
Ruth Begins In Famine And Chaos
Ruth opens with an “establishing shot” of trouble: “In the days when the judges ruled… there was a famine in the land” (Ruth 1:1). If you know Judges, you know the repeated description: everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Chaos spreads quickly when that happens, and Ruth begins right there, during national disorder and personal scarcity.
Naomi’s family leaves Bethlehem, ironically the “house of bread”, because there is no bread. They flee to Moab seeking survival. And then the trouble intensifies: Naomi’s husband dies, her sons marry Moabite women (spiritually dangerous territory for Israelites living in a foreign land), and then both sons die too. Naomi is left a widow with two widowed daughters-in-law. The story is intentionally heavy: it sets the “hard-times bar” high so any sufferer can walk under it and say, “God sees this kind of pain.”
Covenant Love Clings In Hard Places
When Naomi hears that the Lord has provided food again in Bethlehem, she decides to return home. She urges her daughters-in-law to stay in Moab and find husbands. Orpah returns, but Ruth makes one of the most profound covenant commitments in all Scripture:
“Wherever you go, I will go… Your people shall be my people, and your God my God… The Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts you and me.” (Ruth 1:16–17)
Here is one of Advent’s discipleship lessons: when you’re going through hard times, cling to love. Sometimes God strips away so much that what remains is this surprising grace, “nothing left but love.” Ruth’s loyalty becomes a living picture of steadfast faithfulness, and it becomes the hinge on which the whole story turns.
So I want to gently press you: don’t underestimate the spiritual power of simple, covenant love in a dark season, staying, serving, refusing to abandon. God often advances His redemption through that kind of love.
Bitterness Tests Our Trust In God
When Naomi returns to Bethlehem, the town remembers her and the women exclaim, “Is this Naomi?” But Naomi answers:
“Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara… the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me… I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home again empty.” (Ruth 1:20–21)
This is one of the real tests of faith: not denying God exists, but wondering whether God still cares. Naomi’s struggle is painfully relatable. There will be seasons when your heart says, “God, are You against me? Have You forgotten me?” Advent gives us permission to name that darkness without pretending.
But Ruth also shows us that God’s plan can be unfolding even while we’re still speaking bitter words. The book moves like Advent itself: deep darkness, then a little light, then more light, then the revelation that God was writing redemption all along.
God Provides Through Ordinary Obedience
The story turns with a providential detail: Naomi and Ruth arrive “at the beginning of barley harvest” (Ruth 1:22). In chapter 2, Ruth asks to glean in the fields, using God’s merciful provision in the Law (see principles in Leviticus and Deuteronomy) where landowners were to leave portions for the poor and not gather every last stalk.
Ruth goes to a field that “happened” to belong to Boaz, a wealthy relative of Naomi’s late husband. What looks accidental is actually God’s careful orchestration. Boaz hears of Ruth’s faithfulness to Naomi, honors her character, protects her, and instructs his workers to deliberately leave extra grain. Ruth returns home with an astonishing amount, an undeserved abundance that begins to thaw Naomi’s bitterness.
When Naomi learns the man’s name, she recognizes God’s kindness:
“Blessed be he of the Lord, who has not forsaken His kindness to the living and the dead!” (Ruth 2:20)
Disciple, notice how God often answers despair: not first with an explanation, but with provision, daily bread, timely relationships, small evidences that His kindness has not stopped.
Redemption Comes Through A Righteous Redeemer
Naomi realizes Boaz is a close relative, a potential “kinsman redeemer,” someone in the family line who could restore what was lost. She gives Ruth a bold plan: approach Boaz at the threshing floor after the harvest celebration, uncover his feet so he wakes, and ask him to act as redeemer (Ruth 3).
The plan works. Boaz is willing, yet he is also righteous. He tells Ruth there is another relative closer than he is, someone with first right to redeem. In chapter 4, Boaz gathers witnesses at the gate and offers the nearer relative the chance to redeem Naomi’s land. The man initially wants the real estate, until he learns it also involves taking Ruth as wife. He declines.
Boaz then publicly redeems the land and takes Ruth as his wife. The story moves from famine to wedding, from emptiness to restored inheritance. This is not merely romance; it is redemption, costly, legal, public, and compassionate.
God Turns Emptiness Into A Future
Ruth 4 concludes with fruitfulness:
“So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife… and the Lord gave her conception, and she bore a son.” (Ruth 4:13)
God brings life where there had been death, family where there had been isolation, and a future where there had been bitterness. And this child will not be a private blessing only, he becomes part of the line that leads to David and ultimately to Jesus (Matthew 1). In other words, God was not merely fixing a sad story; He was advancing His salvation plan through it.
So when you feel like you’re just surviving, remember Ruth: your obedience, your love, your endurance in darkness may be caught up in a bigger redemption than you can currently see.
Conclusion
Advent trains us to wait honestly: to admit the darkness, to resist the lie that God has stopped caring, and to keep walking in hope and love. Ruth’s story begins in chaos and famine, sinks into grief and bitterness, then turns, chapter by chapter, into provision, redemption, and new life.
I want you to hear this clearly: God can take confusing, painful circumstances and weave them into His redemptive plan, just as He did for Naomi and Ruth, and just as He did in the genealogy that leads to Christ. When you cannot see what He is doing, cling to love, keep obeying, and trust that the Redeemer is at work.
Father, thank You for sending Jesus into a dark world as the Light we desperately need. When my life feels confusing, when I am tempted to bitterness like Naomi, meet me with Your kindness and steady my faith. Teach me covenant love like Ruth, faithful, humble, and enduring. Provide daily bread for what I need today, and help me trust You with what I cannot yet understand. Thank You that You redeem what is lost, restore what is broken, and bring life out of death. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Conclusion
Advent trains us to wait honestly: to admit the darkness, to resist the lie that God has stopped caring, and to keep walking in hope and love. Ruth’s story begins in chaos and famine, sinks into grief and bitterness, then turns, chapter by chapter, into provision, redemption, and new life.
I want you to hear this clearly: God can take confusing, painful circumstances and weave them into His redemptive plan, just as He did for Naomi and Ruth, and just as He did in the genealogy that leads to Christ. When you cannot see what He is doing, cling to love, keep obeying, and trust that the Redeemer is at work.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for sending Jesus into a dark world as the Light we desperately need. When my life feels confusing, when I am tempted to bitterness like Naomi, meet me with Your kindness and steady my faith. Teach me covenant love like Ruth, faithful, humble, and enduring. Provide daily bread for what I need today, and help me trust You with what I cannot yet understand. Thank You that You redeem what is lost, restore what is broken, and bring life out of death. In Jesus’ name, amen.