I’m really excited to be able to share with you this morning. I want to start by greeting my fellow Ukrainians here in their own language. Ukraine has an amazing future.

I want to bring you greetings from the group of churches in Ukraine which I have the privilege to lead. It is a great honour for me to be here with you today and I would like to share today from the book of Ruth in the Old Testament.

I really believe there are lots of useful things which this book can teach us that will help the church today grow and develop. While I am speaking, I’ll share some news with you from Ukraine. Let’s pray together.

Heavenly Father, we stand before you and we enjoy your love, we can enter the Holy of Holies because you broke through the veil and made us part of your church. It’s an amazing privilege to stand in your presence today and to have these scriptures here. We ask that they become like bread for us today, bread which will feed us and build us up as a church family together. Amen.

I hope that you’ve already read the book of Ruth before. On face value it can be difficult for us to see something useful for the church within this book. It’s much easier for us to see application from a book like Ephesians but when you get into the situation that Ruth and Naomi were living in you can see how God can build up his people during times of suffering and trial.

The truth is, this isn’t the first time I’ve preached from this book or even used these notes. The reason I have decided to preach this message here is that I think it will be interesting for you to hear about our experience as the church in Ukraine as we walk through this time of war. There are similarities to what we are facing now and the situation which Ruth and Naomi find themselves in.

There are only four chapters in this book, we’ll read the first chapter and then I’ll summarise the remaining chapters for your briefly.

Naomi Loses Her Husband and Sons
1 In the days when the judges ruled,[a] there was a famine in the land. So, a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. 2 The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there. 3 Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.

Naomi and Ruth Return to Bethlehem
6 When Naomi heard in Moab that the LORD had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. 7 With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah. 8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the LORD show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. 9 May the LORD grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Then she kissed them goodbye, and they wept aloud 10 and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”

11 But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? 12 Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— 13 would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the LORD’s hand has turned against me!” 14 At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.
15 “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”

16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
19 So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”
20 “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”
22 So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.

So, in the second chapter we read about an amazing event. After returning home, Naomi and Ruth face the fact that they are now poor, and they’re really struggling to rebuild their lives and break free from the situation they have found themselves in. They arrive in Judah during the harvest time and so the people were out gathering crops in the fields. Unexpectedly Ruth ends up in the fields of her future husband. The story shows that she receives kindness from this man, who is so generous and allows her to gather the crops from his field and protects her. It begins to look like her life will return to some sort of order.

In the third chapter, we read that Naomi told Ruth she should consider marriage with Boaz and that Ruth talks this through with Boaz and he marries her.

In the final chapter we read how Boaz & Ruth are married, and they gave birth to a son, but this was no ordinary son, because he became the grandfather of King David.

So, within this story I see four prophetic components for developing the local church. The first one is the story of inconsolable grief. This is the story of Naomi's family. The second story is a story of a striking goodness. The third one, it's a story of a saving incident which is described in the second chapter and the last story is the story of their role in the redemptive mission of God.

Today we will discuss the striking goodness and we will just briefly touch other components.

The Story of Inconsolable Grief
We arrive in the story and find that Naomi and her husband have become refugees in another country. In my country, in Ukraine, there is a war, and it is very cruel. It’s the cruellest war in Europe since the Second World War. Every day, thousands of people die and it’s very challenging for us as a church as well.

Naomi’s family is in a situation where they have escaped from hunger in their own country. Now hunger is much worse than war! I praise God that we don’t have hunger in our nation despite the war. In Ukraine, we have this amazing fertile soil and it’s almost even if you plant something like a Coca-Cola bottle, an apple tree will grow up! Even during this war, our country can export food for African countries.

The situation with Naomi's family is very sad, they're in a different nation, with a different culture, a different religion and they also don't have friends there! The suffering doesn't stop there, her husband dies and it's very challenging! In those days, they don't have the Red Cross or humanitarian centres or social centres where you could go for help. If your husband died, you didn't have any protection, any provision. But the suffering didn't stop. During the 10 years, all men in her family died. Do you know anyone who has suffered so much? I don't know anyone!

Her family were met with this huge grief and in those days, when they had huge sorrows, they became mystical about it. They’d create different ideas about what the sorrow meant. They were met with this huge grief, and they would ask the question “what does this mean”? When they had all this grief and sorrow come to their home they would begin to think, may be God is against me and that explains why all these awful things have happened to us.

Orpha and Ruth could also have thought the same thing, “we’ve married people from Judah, may be our Moabite God’s are causing this trouble because we haven’t honoured them”. Maybe we’re cursed.

Who would want to stay in such a household? Who would want to continue to be a part of this family? As we read through the first chapter there is a very funny moment which happens in the story.

The story continues that when they had taken stock of their situation, without any husbands or men in the family, they decide that the best thing to do would be to return to the land of Judah. So, Naomi, Orpha and Ruth begin the journey back to Naomi’s homeland.

As they are returning to her homeland, as they are walking, Naomi suddenly came to the realisation that she had no more relatives and that nothing now connects her with these women. She stops, looks at them both and urges them. “Stop, come on, where are you going? We are not relatives anymore, I cannot give birth to more sons, so that they can become your husbands, we’re fooling ourselves, go back to your own land and find husbands there.”

In that moment Orpha and Ruth ask Naomi, they plead with her, to allow them to stay with her. Why??

The story of Striking Goodness
The answer to this question why is really very simple. Naomi was an amazing, I mean truly an amazing mother-in-law! This is how the church is built up during hard times, during times of challenge. This should be our strategy. To be a good, a great, an amazing church, during times of suffering!

I know in the UK you also have plenty of your own suffering and this gives us an opportunity to do good, in fact in any time and in any country, there are opportunities for the church to do good. I call this goodness, Naomi’s goodness, a striking goodness. It's something more than usual goodness.

You can imagine the situation when Orpha and Ruth are asked by their friends. “How are things going on in your family”. They would have answered, “we have never met such an amazing mother-in-law as we have in Naomi”. “When I was sick, she took care of me. When I had a fight or argued with my husband, she comforts me”. “When my husband becomes angry with me, she stands up for me”. Even my own mother doesn’t show me this sort of goodness and affection, it’s not the same as my mother-in-law, she’s different.

Ruth and Orpha have this moment, where they must decide about what they will do. Will they continue this journey with Naomi or will they back to their own home? At this point Naomi’s family is divided into two groups, Orpha and Ruth because they each choose their own way.

Both women are crying, both don’t want to leave Naomi, but they depart in opposite directions, why? Because for Orpha, all this striking goodness which she has experienced whilst living with Naomi, is simply part of her life. People get to experience goodness and good things in their lives, and they simply admire it. They think it is something which is normal and is a good thing which is happening in their life. Usually, these people are not familiar with the story of Adam and Eve, and they don’t understand that after sin, there is a curse coming.

However, Ruth, makes a different choice. Ruth heard the voice of God behind all this goodness she had experienced. There were so many reasons not to stay together. Let’s face it firstly, quite often daughters-in-law are not so happy with living with their mother-in-law. Secondly these women are from different cultural backgrounds. Thirdly there is the challenge of deep sorrow, but Ruth decides to stay with Naomi.

Why? Because behind Naomi and all this goodness that Ruth has experienced, she saw the face of God. The world is divided into two groups. One group simply receive goodness, they use it up and there is even a culture of simply receiving good gifts. The second group is a group of people who are captured by goodness, or those who see God in all this goodness which they have experienced. They see the signs of God at work in this goodness they have received or been the recipient of. I want to tell my friends from Ukraine, if you have met goodness here in this church, if you have seen any goodness in this church, then I want to tell you that this is God’s way of revealing himself to you! It’s one way in which God shows us that he is here. So, if you have seen goodness, it means that God is here!

Ruth understood that she didn’t deserve such a good mother-in-law, but she has her. In v16 it says “do not beg me to leave you or turn away from following you. I will go where you go. I will live where you live. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God.”

Graham – do you recognise anything in this verse? It’s like a baptism, when a person connects to God. If you meet a goodness which just blows your mind, it can change your whole life and it can change your whole identity. When you see yourself as a daughter or son of God.

You know in our church we have a lot of refugees and each of them have different experiences of church. One lady she came forward to receive prayer. You know every time I preach, I try to link it into a gospel message as well. Whilst I was preaching on this occasion, I was talking about how a person is redeemed by the work of Jesus, not by his or her own deeds. She told me that she’d attended an Orthodox Church for a long time and had bought lots of icons but that all the time she just felt like she wasn’t good enough. She told me that whenever she went to church the priest would explain that she isn’t good enough. When she heard me explaining that she’s redeemed not because of her deeds but because of someone else’s work all this sorrow and guilt just left her. It was just so revolutionary for her; it influenced her whole spiritual identity.

Think about the early church, the first church. It must have been so striking, these men and women who gathered as the first church. They were so different from any other people in Judah. They also believed in the God of Isaac, Abraham and Jacob but they were also different.

What made them different, what made them so attractive. They had this striking goodness, because they believed in the striking goodness of God’s love. It’s a gospel quality. No other religion shows it, represents this. The gospel tells us that the judge proclaimed judgement on the sinner but then he sent His own son to take the punishment upon himself. In which other religions is there this kind of hope?

The first church, they knew the God of the Old Testament, they understood the power of God’s judgement and none of them could imagine how God could solve this problem, the problem of justice, of true justice. Instead of simply destroying all sinners, God sent His son who died for us! It changed their minds, their whole outlook, their whole understanding of God. If God loves us in such a magnificent way, it means that we can love others in the same magnificent way!

In Romans 5 from verses 5-8, Paul shows us the uniqueness of this love:

5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. 6 You see at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us./p>

This love amazed Paul as well! Even Paul, is simply amazed by this love, this striking goodness is a core quality of the new church and only gospel can inspire us to become like this.

There are certain moments, where we cannot develop a strategy of church growth. In Ukraine, we cannot plan, because normal processes don’t work right now in my country. I know when church leaders meet, they often talk about their plans, about their vision, about their strategy for the church.

Recently I was at a leadership meeting at a church but the people hosting the meeting hadn’t realised I was there for a while. When they realised, they asked me to tell them of my church and share some thoughts with them. I opened my notebook and talked about different schemes, different tables and I started to speak to them about our vision, our strategy and our goals for this year and it seemed that they like what I talked about.

They asked me a few questions about it, and I answered them but then said, there is just one problem in all of it. It doesn’t work, until we have people who will implement all these plans and where are we going to find the people who are going to do all these things!

When they see all these good things and all the goodness in the church, and it blows their minds and touches their hearts powerfully. When this happens, they will say, I will go with this church till the end of time. I will walk with this pastor till the end of time. I am ready to stay with this leader, with this leadership group till the end of the war (for example).

Saving Incident
In the second chapter we read about the saving incident. When we are focussed on doing good things so many incredible things happen. When we are planning the success of the church, we are drawing schemes but when we tell of how God blesses the church, we tell different stories.

In the second chapter we can read that Ruth ends up in the field which is owned by Boaz by accident. You know what we have a lot of coincidences in our Ukrainian churches. Back in 2022, we had a lot of refugees in our home who stayed overnight. A lot of people from Mariupol for example stayed with us, sometimes we had about 30 people in one night!

It makes me laugh at it because I realised how many people, we had in our house because of how many flushes of the toilet took place. We had a lot of people come through our home who were not Christians.

Later, we had a Zoom meeting with several UK churches, and I hear of an amazing story. A Ukrainian family ended up in a town in the UK and they ended up going to a church which was part of Newfrontiers, they became believers in this church and were invited to join in with this Zoom meeting which had been planned because of their connection to Ukraine. When this family saw Tanya and I on screen, they said “oh we knew them, we stayed in their house overnight”.

I find this incredible; how could this happen but God gives these incidents, these coincidences!

We come to the last important prophetic episode in this story. Ruth and Boaz have a baby, and this is no ordinary baby, his name was Obed, he was the father of Jesse, the father of David (King David). Here is the moment of truth, Ruth the Moab becomes part of the blessed family. Through this family, the Messiah came. Could Naomi know and understand that becoming or being a good mother-in-law for Ruth meant that she was preparing Jesus’ coming into this earth. This is incredible!

However, this is something that she brought into the global plan of salvation for the world! You know, friends, our goodness, the goodness which we sow even now, which we are practicing now, is preparing the Messiah’s coming to Earth!

I would be happy to share some practical implementation of this story.

First – show direct help to people in your town. Help the people for whom no one else wants to provide help. Find the people who are in very critical situations and help them in such a way that no one has beforehand.

Help for those people who are so ill, that they have no future, like there is no other possibility for them to be healed or treated and demonstrate the love of God to them.

We have two women in our churches who have been healed from cancer and we have the medical documentation to prove their healing. It’s been verified by doctors! To be honest I’m thrilled when I pray for someone and they are freed from a runny nose but when a person is freed from cancer, it’s just magnificent!

Feel compassion for the people, be compassionate, if it’s appropriate in your culture simply hug them. In our culture, it’s quite easy to simply hug someone, when people come into our church, we just hug them! A lot of refugees are simply looking for this hug of welcome. They just simply need a hug, in a town or area where they don’t know anyone at all.

Another way in which you can practically implement this story is to open your homes to those who are in need and let the flushes of your toilet, tell you how many people are being shown love and compassion!

The last one, do good things and proclaim God and just share the gospel.

Thank you. May God bless you. Amen!

Watch this preach here:

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Note from the editor:  
We have worked hard to translate this preach which was interpreted live from Russian into English by our good friend Kate. We used a transcript of the preach to re-work some of the text to allow further understanding however any mistakes are ours not Igor or Kate's. Live interpretation is a very techincal skill particularly when translating biblical themes and we are so grateful to Kate for being with us to enable us to hear so clearly from Igor during his time with us!

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