SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: Such a joy to be with you this morning to worship our Lord and Savior who lived and died so that sinners like you and me from all across the world can find rest and worship him.
SPEAKER_00: What a joy it is.
SPEAKER_00: My name is John Prabaker, and I'm here with my wife Kelly Beth.
SPEAKER_00: I came to the US 2013 for our studies at RTS in Jackson, and that's where we met.
SPEAKER_00: And we've been sent by Mississippi Presbytery through Mission to the World to plant a church in Bangalore.
SPEAKER_00: So we are part of a church planting team in the city of 12 million people in a country of 1.3 billion, 90% of whom have never heard the full gospel of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And our mission is to take the gospel to as many people as we can.
SPEAKER_00: And since the local church is Jesus' idea, we want to plant one.
SPEAKER_00: And we ask you that you join us in praying as we uh as uh as New City Fellowship, which was itself planted by PCA missionaries a few years ago, um, has uh is now uh multiplying to planting a new church in the middle in the northern part of the city, um in our neighborhood, actually, um where we live called Redeemer City Church.
SPEAKER_00: So please be in prayer for that.
SPEAKER_00: We want to I want to thank you so much for supporting the work of the gospel in Bangalore and in India.
SPEAKER_00: God has used uh your efforts and answered your prayers um in many small and big ways.
SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for your partnership with us in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm very grateful to get to preach God's word to you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So please turn in your Bibles to Ruth chapter one.
SPEAKER_00: Um Ruth chapter one, it's right after Judges.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's printed in one of your uh handouts as well, or you can thumb your way on your phone to it.
SPEAKER_00: This is God's word.
SPEAKER_00: In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land.
SPEAKER_00: And a man of Bethlehem and Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.
SPEAKER_00: The name of the man was Elimelech, and his and the name of his two and his wife, Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Malon and Kileon.
SPEAKER_00: There were Ephraithites from Bet Bethlehem and Judah.
SPEAKER_00: They went into the country of Moab and remained there.
SPEAKER_00: But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons.
SPEAKER_00: These took Moabite wives, the name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth.
SPEAKER_00: They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Kilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.
SPEAKER_00: Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food.
SPEAKER_00: So she set out from the place where she was with the two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah.
SPEAKER_00: But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, Go, return each of you to her mother's house.
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband.
SPEAKER_00: Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept.
SPEAKER_00: And they said to her, No, we will return with you to your people.
SPEAKER_00: But Naomi said, Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me?
SPEAKER_00: Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands?
SPEAKER_00: Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband.
SPEAKER_00: If I should say I have h hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, would you therefore wait till they were grown?
SPEAKER_00: Would you therefore refrain from marrying?
SPEAKER_00: No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.
SPEAKER_00: Then they lifted up their voices and wept again.
SPEAKER_00: And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods.
SPEAKER_00: Return after your sister-in-law.
SPEAKER_00: But Ruth said, Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you, for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge.
SPEAKER_00: Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.
SPEAKER_00: Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried.
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.
SPEAKER_00: And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.
SPEAKER_00: So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem, and when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them.
SPEAKER_00: And the women said, Is this Naomi?
SPEAKER_00: She said to them, Do not call me Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.
SPEAKER_00: I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty.
SPEAKER_00: Why call me Naomi when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?
SPEAKER_00: So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab, and they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of Bali harvest.
SPEAKER_00: Our Father and our God, this is your word, and we are your people, and here we are at your disposal to do what you will by your spirit to work in us.
SPEAKER_00: So would you please lay the weight and the promises of the truths of your word with deep conviction in our hearts that our souls might be stirred to live for Christ our King and make Him known around the world?
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Home.
SPEAKER_00: So one word that but what what picture comes to your mind when you think of home?
SPEAKER_00: What emotions evoke in your heart when you think of home?
SPEAKER_00: A place of excitement, a place where you belong, a place where you know the people, a place maybe where you can more than elsewhere be a little of yourself.
SPEAKER_00: A place where you are known by the others.
SPEAKER_00: Um a place, some of you, depending on your upbringing, is actually a place of pain, of hurt.
SPEAKER_00: So when you're out in the world and you're working on a Monday, you can't wait to get home.
SPEAKER_00: To be free from the regular stresses of life.
SPEAKER_00: And to some degree suffering, even.
SPEAKER_00: To go back home, find refuge, find rest.
SPEAKER_00: Suffering and home have this unique relationship.
SPEAKER_00: The extent and degree to which we engage with one, to that extent, will we long for the other.
SPEAKER_00: To the degree to which we suffer, to that degree will we long for home.
SPEAKER_00: Uh as Kellibhut and I have traveled and lived in the US, now live in uh India, and if you uh were to talk to Laura and Foster, who who live in Italy and now are back for a brief period, or even the report we just heard, who moved to Atlanta.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you talk about home.
SPEAKER_00: Having lived in different places, what is home?
SPEAKER_00: Is it where we live or where we grew up?
SPEAKER_00: Uh but like my wife, whose dad is a Southern Baptist miss, they've moved around all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, when you ask her where she's from, she has no idea how to answer that question.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they've moved around quite a bit.
SPEAKER_00: But yet we all have this picture, this idea of what we want to find in a home, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: We want it to be free of suffering.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to go home and experience more suffering, of course.
SPEAKER_00: But yet, to whatever degree, it is still a place where there's relational conflict.
SPEAKER_00: It is still a place where there's much pain to varying degrees.
SPEAKER_00: India is actually the Asia's suicide capital.
SPEAKER_00: Bangalore is has one of one of uh India's highest suicide rates.
SPEAKER_00: Because people leave their own native homes in their villages and towns, come to big cities in search of job opportunities to acquire wealth to some degree, to take care of their own families, in hopes maybe they'll find a better life.
SPEAKER_00: But you see, Bangalore, like much of the global cities of the world, we suffer from social fragmentation.
SPEAKER_00: We are so lost in the sea of faces of 12 million people in Bangalore that people are longing for home but never really finding a place they belong.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're here like that this morning, you're in the right place.
SPEAKER_00: Because both Bangaloreans and Birmingham are encountering three women who have gone through much suffering in their life, who also, like us, because it's a human need, have a longing for a home, but yet with three different expectations of such a home.
SPEAKER_00: So we'll follow the narrative of these three women.
SPEAKER_00: The first two will go by rather quickly than the third one, okay?
SPEAKER_00: The first one is Orpa.
SPEAKER_00: Orpah, who settles for a lesser home.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Orpah has grown up in Moab all her life.
SPEAKER_00: She's worshipped her gods, she's worshipped many gods.
SPEAKER_00: They probably, as a family, had their own worship room, like many Indian Hindus.
SPEAKER_00: Um, they have their own puja room, as they call it.
SPEAKER_00: She's worshipped them, she's sacrificed to them, she has a community.
SPEAKER_00: But now when these when a son, when a Yahwehite son marries Orpah, naturally she's ostracized from her community.
SPEAKER_00: Because Yahwehites are exclusive, they don't worship the many gods, but the one true and living God.
SPEAKER_00: She is she's been ostracized from her friends, and so she comes to this, enters this new home, this covenant household, hoping for a new life, maybe even a better life.
SPEAKER_00: But you see, suffering has laid siege on this family.
SPEAKER_00: She's come home to this new family without a father-in-law, where the sons are the only hope.
SPEAKER_00: So she marries one of them, and she finds somewhat of a friend in her mother-in-law, Naomi.
SPEAKER_00: They're reasonably close, as we can expect, as we can see from this passage, they're somewhat close to one another.
SPEAKER_00: They like each other.
SPEAKER_00: But you see, as hardship of life would have it, well, the son dies.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, both the daughters-in-law lose their husbands.
SPEAKER_00: Naomi loses both her sons.
SPEAKER_00: There is no future prospect in this culture for a home without a man who provides for them almost exclusively.
SPEAKER_00: It's now up to these three women to make their way up in life, but Naomi is old, which means the daughters have now to work.
SPEAKER_00: Orpah has now to work, and now they're on their way to not just a covenant commun covenant family, but a covenant community in Israel, back in Judah.
SPEAKER_00: So they're probably walking towards the salt sea that's that divides Judah and Moab, and they're about to catch a ferry to go across into Judah, and it strikes Naomi, this is not your home, girls.
SPEAKER_00: You should go back home.
SPEAKER_00: You don't belong to this new community.
SPEAKER_00: We are exclusive people.
SPEAKER_00: We worship this Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: But as you can, as you've heard from Naomi's own lips, she doesn't think this Yahweh is that is all that very good.
SPEAKER_00: She encourages Orpah and Ruth to go back to their gods, to go back to their family.
SPEAKER_00: You just you just recant, you denounce the Yahweh religion, the Yahweh faith, and then you go back and they'll welcome you back.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps, she says, You may find rest, you may find menukah in Hebrew, you may find a home with them because you're sure not to find it with Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: And Orpah, having heard Naomi's able defense, gives in.
SPEAKER_00: So the options before her are Yahweh and his promise of a Messiah who will rid the world of all sin and misery and all suffering, and rid people like Orpah, even, of all tears and agony and of all relational conflict, all of that on one hand, along with some suffering, to temporal relief, some material comfort, some belonging, only to lose out on the eternal home.
SPEAKER_00: And Orpah settles for less.
SPEAKER_00: She settles for a lesser home.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Orpah is a case in point of someone who has considered the truth claims of Christianity, and there are many in the US and in India who have considered the truth claims of Christianity, but the cost is too heavy.
SPEAKER_00: The cost is too much.
SPEAKER_00: To suffer ostracization from my own community, to be disowned by my family, that cost is too much, a burden, too much to bear.
SPEAKER_00: I'd rather have orpah things.
SPEAKER_00: I'd rather have some material comfort, some temporal good, with maybe a little bit of suffering than risk all of that.
SPEAKER_00: On this journey, when I've already suffered so much suffering, how is the home gonna be any better?
SPEAKER_00: So Orpah settles for a lesser home.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you're here this morning and you have had one goal in life to make it big.
SPEAKER_00: It's the American dream.
SPEAKER_00: It's to study well, work hard, uh while you have energy in your body, make a ton of money, make get a bigger home, have a little bit of a family, and get a few cars and settle well.
SPEAKER_00: And that's your idea of a home.
SPEAKER_00: To alleviate as much natural suffering and stresses of life as possible in this world.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's your idea of home.
SPEAKER_00: And you see, Orpah would be on your side, who settled for a much lesser home.
SPEAKER_00: We have been offered a much grander home, a much bigger home where there is much safety and security.
SPEAKER_00: And Naomi is that one woman who, in this story, has been in that home.
SPEAKER_00: She's grown up in that household, having tasted the promises of Yahweh as a little child, as a little covenant daughter.
SPEAKER_00: She's grown up hearing of all these promises.
SPEAKER_00: But in this story, it's remarkable.
SPEAKER_00: She's blind to a beautiful home.
SPEAKER_00: She's gone through a lot in life.
SPEAKER_00: She's left her home with her people, her community, her friends, and all of that social setting to this new country with her husband.
SPEAKER_00: She's fled with her two little sons, Mahlon and Kilion.
SPEAKER_00: Great names for your sons, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Um, she's fled with them.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it was a hard decision, but you see, you want to sympathize on the one hand, and yet the context gives a bigger picture of what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: The reason why Elamelech fled with his family is because God was visiting his people with judgment.
SPEAKER_00: They had, they are living in times of the judges, that's what verse 1 says.
SPEAKER_00: And you remember what the last verse of Judges is?
SPEAKER_00: Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
SPEAKER_00: That's a terrible place to be, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: And just to give an example, if you were to walk out here right now, I mean, not right now, stay till the end of worship, but after worship, you were to go out and the just imagine that for some reason the government of Alabama said, we're gonna suspend all traffic laws for one day, which means you can do what you want.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to drive on the left side of the road, as we do in India, you can do it, but you can stay on the right side if you want.
SPEAKER_00: Or if you want to ride a car, that's okay, but if you want to write drive a bulldozer, why not?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, or if you want to stop at a red light, you may, but if you feel like going, go for it.
SPEAKER_00: Just imagine the chaos that'll ensue.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't, it's not too far from that that Bangalore is, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: It's it is kind of chaotic.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but imagine the chaos if everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
SPEAKER_00: But then spiritually, spiritually, each of us did what was right in our own eyes.
SPEAKER_00: And so Elamelech, whose name means my God is king, contrary to his name, flees from his king and runs to Moab, an enemy of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He finds, he seeks to find refuge for him and his family from God with God's enemies.
SPEAKER_00: What a miserable state that is.
SPEAKER_00: And Naomi, throughout this passage, she doesn't seem to be encouraging these little these girls to go with her to the new land, right?
SPEAKER_00: She's discouraging them on the contrary.
SPEAKER_00: She's saying, There is no good in that land.
SPEAKER_00: Don't don't come with me, girls.
SPEAKER_00: Go back to your gods.
SPEAKER_00: You know, my God is king and all of that, but I'm not sure he's good.
SPEAKER_00: Go back to your gods.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they'll be better to you and kinder to you than my Yahweh has been to me.
SPEAKER_00: And because of your relationship with me, you have suffered the brunt too.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's like you and me saying, walking out the street, telling people about Jesus and saying, but life is gonna be hard.
SPEAKER_00: Go back to your gods.
SPEAKER_00: There's no point in worshiping Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Naomi makes for a lousy evangelist.
SPEAKER_00: Really?
SPEAKER_00: She really does.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're here and receiving some correction from God directly or through a formal church disciplinary process, don't run.
SPEAKER_00: The reason you're being disciplined is because the father loves you.
SPEAKER_00: Stay.
SPEAKER_00: Receive the temporary rod of correction so that you may save your soul eternally.
SPEAKER_00: That's the hope we have, right?
SPEAKER_00: Don't be like Elimelech who who ran away with his family.
SPEAKER_00: You know, C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis says we can ignore pleasure, but pain insists on being attended to.
SPEAKER_00: God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.
SPEAKER_00: It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
SPEAKER_00: And contrary to the suffering of life rousing a deaf world at the deaf ears of Orpah and Naomi, Orpah settles for less and it blinds Naomi's eyes.
SPEAKER_00: She scales her eyes up.
SPEAKER_00: She is so discouraging to both Orpah and Ruth.
SPEAKER_00: And so we come to our third woman of the story, Ruth, who enters a A home.
SPEAKER_00: She has gone through hard providence, like Orpah, and to some degree with Naomi.
SPEAKER_00: She has lost her husband too, like Orpa.
SPEAKER_00: She's a Moabite, which means she has been ostracized from her community and potentially even kicked out of her family because they're so exclusive Yahweh people.
SPEAKER_00: She's experienced a lot of hardship.
SPEAKER_00: She has no sons either.
SPEAKER_00: She needs to figure out life.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, contrary to suffering, pulling Orpa away, pulling her away like Orpah, or blinding her eyes like Naomi, it catapults her forward into deeper trust in Yahweh and his promises.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that here?
SPEAKER_00: The way she says, Don't urge me to leave you, woman.
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't say that, but it sounds like it.
SPEAKER_00: Where you go, I will go.
SPEAKER_00: Where you live, I will live.
SPEAKER_00: Your people are my people.
SPEAKER_00: Your God are my God.
SPEAKER_00: Where you die, I will die.
SPEAKER_00: And there will I be buried.
SPEAKER_00: And until death parts me, woman, no one's gonna take me from here.
SPEAKER_00: You see that sense of intense commitment in Ruth?
SPEAKER_00: So you have to ask the question.
SPEAKER_00: All of them seem to have gone through suffering.
SPEAKER_00: All of them have an expectation of a home because Naomi says, Perhaps you can go back and the Lord may grant that you find rest, she says in verses 9 and 10.
SPEAKER_00: And that word really is a place, home, a secure, safe haven, free from this kind of suffering where you can actually rest.
SPEAKER_00: All of them have this longing for home.
SPEAKER_00: All three of them have experienced suffering.
SPEAKER_00: How is it we must ask that Ruth experiences something different to say what she does?
SPEAKER_00: What is it?
SPEAKER_00: You see, Ruth has heard of Yahweh's promises.
SPEAKER_00: She has heard.
SPEAKER_00: She has read, she has probably heard from Naomi about the stories of God's redemption from Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: How God has parted the Red Sea and after four hundred years of slavery, has brought them remarkably by splitting the ocean and led them through the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, this God would make a people so rebellious, his own people.
SPEAKER_00: Time and again, Naomi has told Ruth and Orpa perhaps even that you know, we have been so bad and such bad people to God.
SPEAKER_00: We have disobeyed him and dishonored him, and yet he loves us.
SPEAKER_00: He's a God, Ruth must have heard somehow that he's a God slow to anger, rich in love, and abounding in covenant love.
SPEAKER_00: She must have heard that Abraham was chosen from among the lot of the world through whom redemption might be played out in this world as we know it.
SPEAKER_00: And Ruth hears all of that and she says, Sign me up.
SPEAKER_00: I want in on that news.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be a part of the story.
SPEAKER_00: And your lousy evangelism, Naomi, is not gonna stop me from that.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it such an encouragement to us that God can use lousy evangelists?
SPEAKER_00: It really is.
SPEAKER_00: That God can use lousy evangelists.
SPEAKER_00: And this Ruth, she sees that, she sees a great hope in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: She sees, she hears of the story, and she says, wait a minute, unlike Elimelech, and this is the gospel, my dear friends, unlike Elimelech, who fled from suffering, your Savior and Roots left his home with his father, entered our place, this world of suffering, and when we weren't even asking for forgiveness, purchase forgiveness for us.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: When Naomi was so forcefully discouraging of Ruth to settle for less, tempting her, and Orpah gave in, and Ruth probably fought with all her might.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is better than Ruth.
SPEAKER_00: He fought against Satan.
SPEAKER_00: If you and I had 50 years to prepare, to have a battle plan to go to war against someone, that would be good, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Satan had thousands of years to prepare for this time against Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He gathered up all of his best tactics.
SPEAKER_00: He brought the best of his legions to fight against against Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And he was defeated.
SPEAKER_00: From the garden to the cross, he was defeated.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is victorious.
SPEAKER_00: This gospel, my friends, Ruth wanted in.
SPEAKER_00: And she says, I want in.
SPEAKER_00: And this gospel is for everybody who would have it.
SPEAKER_00: How do we know that?
SPEAKER_00: Because you see, Ruth is a Moabite woman.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a refresher on the history here.
SPEAKER_00: Ruth belongs to a very scandalous people group.
SPEAKER_00: She belongs to the people group that came out of Moab, a man named Moab.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know whose son Moab is?
SPEAKER_00: He is the son of the elder daughter who, after she slept with her father Lot, gave birth to him.
SPEAKER_00: It's a scandalous past.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, with such a horrible past, she comes and finds a new home with this Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: My dear friends, this gospel is for you.
SPEAKER_00: The offer of a better home is for you.
SPEAKER_00: The grandest of dreams of this world pales in comparison at best with the offer that Jesus is offering to you and to me right now.
SPEAKER_00: This gospel is worth risking everything for.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what compelled Ruth to go on this journey despite the suffering that she had, despite the looks around, everything that there was around her was discouraging.
SPEAKER_00: If she had only had to set eyes on that.
SPEAKER_00: Not a kind of home that's having a lot of sin with each other like we do now, and we do have to bear with one another.
SPEAKER_00: But what what we've been promised is much better than what we are living now.
SPEAKER_00: What we have now is only a down payment of what we are to experience soon.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has promised that the heavenly Jerusalem will descend.
SPEAKER_00: People from every tribe, tongue, and nation will be in that home.
SPEAKER_00: Ruth will be in that home.
SPEAKER_00: You Gentiles and a Gentile like me will be in that home.
SPEAKER_00: Jews who have trusted in Christ will be in that home.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord's table that we are about to partake here is a feast that Christ has set for everybody.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus sits down to eat with us, there'll be all kinds of shades of people there.
SPEAKER_00: That is our hope, my dear friends.
SPEAKER_00: We want that.
SPEAKER_00: Don't settle for anything less than that.
SPEAKER_00: And whatever it takes to make this gospel known to as many people as possible, wherever we are, let's make it happen.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, it might mean that you sacrifice a bigger amount of your paycheck than you already are.
SPEAKER_00: That giving to the church or giving to missions is not the last thing on your budget, but it's one of the first things in your budget.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something that you get to to see how much is left after everything else and then get to it.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: It might be that God is calling you to put it up higher up in your budget.
SPEAKER_00: For some of you, it may be that God is even calling you to go to the mission field.
SPEAKER_00: It might be an international student ministry like we've heard in another part of the country, or maybe even in this city, to reach out to the international students.
SPEAKER_00: But it may be that you're called to relocate to another country.
SPEAKER_00: And it may be that you may be called to relocate to another country where you may be asked to give your life up for this gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Are you okay with that?
SPEAKER_00: Parents, are you okay with encouraging your children with this mission, with this gospel in mind, and as the motivation?
SPEAKER_00: And if it means that you sacrifice your relationship, are you okay with that?
SPEAKER_00: Is this gospel worth that relationship?
SPEAKER_00: Is this gospel worth your comfort, my dear friends?
SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters, Christ has given his all.
SPEAKER_00: That he yells out, no one comes to God except through me.
SPEAKER_00: I want my fellow countrymen to come and experience this love.
SPEAKER_00: Our missionaries here, they want to experience their students or the gullets in Italy, their Italian friends, to come and experience this love.
SPEAKER_00: This love of the Father in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's worth risking everything for.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're here and you have never tasted this love, I beg you.
SPEAKER_00: Come home to the Father who has loved this world and given up his son for you and for me.
SPEAKER_00: Come home.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Our Father and our God, we thank you for this glorious gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That we can go to any corner of this world that I would be here and worship you the same way that I did a few weeks ago in Bangalore.
SPEAKER_00: What a glorious gospel! And yet, Father, there are so many who are yet to hear of this glorious news, to taste your love, find this eternal home where they can be free from suffering one day, free from their own sin, and experience your eternal love forever.
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, oh God, send more people to the ends of the earth to proclaim the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Send more church members from this congregation as missionaries to the ends of the earth for the sake of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Oh Father, your love and to proclaim it is worth sacrificing our lives for.
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, may the gospel compel us to live holy lives and to sacrifice all that we tend to hold dear to make Christ known across the street and around the world.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.