The summer series hadn’t even officially started yet, but you could feel the momentum in the room. Pastor Rob opened by mentioning a citywide worship night earlier in the week — dozens of churches, hundreds of people, all gathered together as one body. Then a Wednesday night service right there at First Assembly, altars full, teenagers down front praying alongside families. It had been one of those weeks where the church felt like the church.

That energy carried into Sunday morning.

“I want to see the church be the church,” he said simply. “Because that’s what Jesus is coming for. His plan to save the world is through us.”

A Story That Starts in Tragedy

For the next several weeks, First Assembly is working through the book of Ruth — all four chapters, 84 verses, a story Pastor Rob described as one that “starts off tragic but ends up beautiful.”

He issued a challenge before diving in: read the whole book this week as part of your devotional time. Ten to twelve minutes, he said. That’s all it takes.

Ruth is one of only two books in the Bible named after a woman. But what makes her story remarkable isn’t just her gender — it’s that she’s a Gentile. A Moabite. And yet the Jewish community preserved her story in their scriptures. More than that, her name appears in Matthew chapter one, in the genealogy of Jesus himself.

Her choice to stay loyal to her mother-in-law Naomi, Pastor Rob pointed out, brought her into the lineage of the Messiah. An unexpected ancestry. A story that no one could have scripted.

Before introducing Ruth, though, he introduced the man whose decisions set everything in motion.

Elimelech’s Choice

The book opens in the time of the judges — a roughly 400-year period in Israel’s history marked by a familiar cycle: follow God, drift away, face consequences, return, repeat. Judges 17:6 captures the era bluntly: In those days Israel had no king. Everyone did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.

Into this backdrop steps a man named Elimelech — a name that means God is king — living in Bethlehem with his wife Naomi (pleasant) and their two sons, Mahlon (sickly) and Chilion (weak, tired). A famine has hit the land hard. The shelves are empty. The bellies are empty. And Elimelech makes a decision.

He takes his family and leaves.

He packs them up, hikes them through the desolate Judean wilderness, crosses the Jordan River, and settles in Moab — the very land God had delivered his ancestors from. He’s not just moving. He’s backtracking. Trading the Promised Land for something that feels safer in the moment.

Pastor Rob was careful not to pile on the man. “I have a hard time faulting the guy for going to where there was food,” he said. “Your boys are named Sickly and Tired. You see them without food. What do you do?”

But the problem wasn’t the desperation. It was the direction. Elimelech never sought God on the decision. He took matters into his own hands, left the place of promise, and walked his family into even deeper trouble. Elimelech dies in Moab. His sons marry Moabite women — against God’s explicit instruction. Then both sons die too.

Naomi is left alone. A widow in a foreign land, with no husband, no sons, no stability, no way forward. The lowest of the low.

Three Things to Hold Onto

From Naomi’s wreckage, Pastor Rob drew out three responses for trusting God when life falls apart.

Don’t run away. It sounds simple, but the impulse to escape is nearly universal. People run from jobs when they feel undervalued. They run from marriages when expectations go unmet. They run from churches over relational drama. Some run physically, some emotionally, some spiritually. Some cut away everything that once gave them stability in exchange for temporary relief.

“Christian, we don’t run unless we run to God.”

He pointed to Esther, who didn’t run when her people were facing annihilation. She called a three-day fast and leaned into God — and an entire nation was delivered. He pointed to Job, who lost everything in a single day and still said, The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job stayed the course. He kept the faith. And he saw the blessing.

Embrace the pain. This one’s harder. The instinct is to fix, avoid, or escape. But Pastor Rob pushed back on that instinct. Elimelech’s family moved to a new place and found the same problems waiting for them. A change of environment doesn’t promise a change of situation.

He quoted Spurgeon: “I’ve learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.” Not lean into another trap. Not fall into something else. Lean into God and let him do what only he can do.

And then Paul’s words from 2 Corinthians 4:17: For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. The sting of the pain, Pastor Rob said, gets removed when we hold it up against that truth. This too shall pass. There is something on the other side.

Call on Jesus. He saved the most direct point for last. Three psalms from David — 18:6, 34:4, 118:5 — all circling the same truth: cry out, and he hears. He answers. He sets free.

Then he told a story about a friend’s wife named Tamara, who had been attacked by her own dogs in the backyard — knocked to the ground, fighting off two large animals, biting and scratching and overwhelming her. Her husband David was upstairs, oblivious, until she stopped screaming at the dogs and screamed one word: David.

That name cut through everything. He came running.

“She called the name she needed to call,” Pastor Rob said. “If she had called anyone else’s name, David wouldn’t have heard it. He couldn’t have helped.”

He let the parallel land on its own.

Blind Bartimaeus didn’t politely ask the crowd to step aside. He called out — loudly, persistently — Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. The ten lepers called out from a distance. Peter, sinking in the water, cried out. Every one of them called the right name. And every one of them received.

“There was a name given to humanity to help us,” he said. “And it is Jesus.”

The Last Chapter Isn’t Written Yet

Pastor Rob closed the morning with a reminder that cut through any tidy resolution.

“At some point, life is going to break down again for you. It does for all of us.”

But when it does — when the famine hits, when the losses stack up, when you find yourself in a foreign land with nothing — God is still writing a redemptive story. The book of Ruth opens in tragedy and ends in beauty. Naomi goes from empty to full. Ruth goes from outsider to ancestor of the Messiah.

“Your story is not over,” he said. “The last chapter has not been written.”

Don’t run. Embrace the pain. Call on Jesus.

A Few of My Own Thoughts

Life is pretty good right now — but busy. Three kids, work, board commitments — it all adds up. And if I’m honest, the easiest thing to do when the pressure builds is to reach for my phone and scroll instead of actually sitting with what’s going on.

That’s my version of running, I think. Not dramatic, not obvious, but it’s still avoidance.

This sermon was a good reminder that the answer isn’t a change of scenery or a distraction. It’s leaning in. Calling on the right name. I’m trying to be more intentional about that — writing things down, being thoughtful, building habits that actually help me process instead of just escape. This blog is part of that. My own little space to be honest with myself without an algorithm pushing back.

No big revelations. Just a good Sunday.

First Assembly meets weekly in the Fort Wayne area.

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