A Steadfast Love
(KJV) Ruth 1:14 And they lifted up their voice, and wept again: and Orpah kissed her mother in law; but Ruth clave unto her. 15 And she said, Behold, thy sister in law is gone back unto her people, and unto her gods: return thou after thy sister in law. 16 And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: 17 Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.
Steadfast love means having a loyal and firm love. The love exhibited in the book of Ruth is beyond most mortal love and is certainly steadfast.
You know the story. Naomi and her husband leave Jerusalem during a severe famine and travel into Moab, where her sons meet and marry Moabite women.
Naomi’s husband and two sons die, leaving her in a foreign land with her daughters-in-law. (It is important to remember that women in that culture were completely dependent upon their husbands.)
Totally bereft, Naomi tells her sons’ wives to return to their mothers and she will return to her homeland. But Ruth, with a love and devotion that exceeds anything many of us can understand, clings to her mother-in-law. She leaves the only land she has ever known to work in the fields. There, she reaps the corn and grain left intentionally according to Levitical Law to provide for those who had no provisions.
The rest of the story shows us how Boaz, the owner of the field, becomes the Kinsman Redeemer of Naomi and Ruth and ultimately he and Ruth are the ancestors of King David. And Ruth becomes one of only two Gentiles in the bloodline of Jesus.
I delivered a sermon a few years ago called “The Steadfast Love of God” and the final point was that we can never outrun the love of God, nor out sin the mercy of God. Just as Ruth gives us a snapshot of a deep sacrificial love, God shows us the truest love of all. “For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
I pray today we would be given a fresh understanding of the meaning of steadfast love.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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