The Caring, Saving and Sovereign God – a sermon on Ruth 2 by Rev. Colin Pretorius.

Sally was a young Christian girl and, like many young girls, she dreamt of meeting the right guy and getting married. She had a lot of plans and dreams, which included becoming a pianist. When she met Harry at uni, it seemed the perfect match – a nice-looking Christian boy, very much into music. They started making plans together, how they were going to get married, have kids and open a music store…. Well, they did get married and had a child. They started a small store where they sold all sorts of musical instruments, and were quite active in the local church where Sally was the pianist and Harry one of the elders.

But not everything went according to how they had dreamt their lives would pan out. Their only child died of cancer when still very young. Then along came Covid, and their business failed. They lost their home. Harry’s anxiety, stress and a feeling of failing his family led to a fatal heart attack. Sally earned some money giving piano lessons, but soon she was diagnosed with a disease which caused her fingers to thicken and curl up. After a few months she could no longer play.  So here’s Sally, someone who has trusted in the Lord and served Him as best as she could, but also someone who was afflicted in so many ways – the loss of her only child, her husband, her home, her financial security and even the enjoyment of playing the piano in church.

Friends, you may be wondering why I’m telling you this story. It’s because Sally’s story is also Naomi’s story. As we look at the book of Ruth, especially the first chapter which we read earlier, we get a sense of how life hadn’t worked out all that well for Naomi. Her life was a bitter one. But as we progress through the book and as the story unfolds, we also see God at work. And that has to inform our reading of chapter one too. You see, God is at work, even in the very difficult circumstances in which Naomi finds herself. As we make our way through this text, we see firstly that God is a caring King. He’s also a saving King and a sovereign King.

• The caring King (v1-6);
• The saving King (v7-18) and
• The sovereign King (v19-22).

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