Well good morning.
My name is Brian Robinson, and I'm one of the elders here.
And I wanted to start with a little bit of audience participation.
So this is the last Sunday before school starts back up.
I don't know where you are, but some of the Robinson family is not super excited about this.
So, um, how many of you guys went to the beach this summer?
Just raise your hand.
If you went to the beach, raise your hand.
Okay, fair amount.
How many of you went to the Atlantic Ocean part of the beach?
All right, that's a fair amount.
All right, what about the Gulf of Mexico?
How many went to the Gulf of Mexico?
I think more.
So if you've lived in Marietta long enough, you know this is a bit of a rivalry.
You got the Atlantic Ocean people and the Gulf of Mexico people.
And the Atlantic people, they're a little old school.
They got the big beach, it's not so crowded.
The Gulf of Mexico, a little bit more of a kind of a smaller beach, but clear water, fluffy sand.
And things, like I said, you you know as well as I do, it gets heated.
I've seen it get heated in my dental office.
I think the only rivalry I can think to compare this to, and you're you're probably thinking it too, is the hip-hop rivalry of the mid-90s.
Um East Coast, West Coast, Biggie and Puff.
And that culminated, um, as most of you also know, in the 95 Source Awards, where Puff, where I'm excuse me, Snoop Dogg gave an amazing speech.
Um, and I just think it's important just get that out there.
Um as for me and my family, we roll with the Gulf Coast, and you need to know that about me.
Um my mom grew up in Panama City, and my dad grew up in Alabama, so I like to say I'm pretty purebred redneck.
Um, which I think explains my fascination for Airbrush and Brad O'Kelly sermons.
So when Manny and I first got married, we we went down to Seaside.
We took our family to Seaside.
We just had Cindy and Meg, and we had great memories there.
This is all along the Gulf Coast, just two little kids there that have grown up a lot.
Um, as Seaside became more crowded, we started going to Rosemary Beach, which was um it's a beautiful place.
We have like more kids now, but I just have great memories of like teaching kids how to ride bikes and going snorkeling and um just a lot of fun at those beaches.
And that's also we're at Rosemary Beach, we saw this fig vine there.
And the fig vine was something that Manny and I both saw as like at this nice house, and we kind of wanted to bring that back to Marietta.
Yeah, there it is.
That's kind of what we saw.
And so I'm gonna come back to the fig vine, but before I do, I wanted to tell one last story about one of my favorite places on 30A.
Has anyone ever been to the restaurant George's?
Have you ever heard of George's?
It's in Alice Beach.
As the kids say, Bosson.
I mean, it is good.
It is a good restaurant.
So, um, about several years back, something happened to me at George's that I that I need to share with y'all.
Um, we had had a busy day at the beach.
Manny's mom came and um was babysitting our kids that night, and Manny and I had a date night at the at George's.
And I think we had ordered our food probably at that point, and it had been raining outside.
Okay, that's an important detail in the story.
I had on flip-flops, not great traction in the rain.
And we ordered our food, and I went to go use the restroom.
Well, another thing you need to know about George's at that point was it's different, it's changed now.
The restroom at George's was outside.
You had to enter outside, like a gas station or something.
It was weird.
So I went to the restroom, and the restroom at George's, you also need to know, was probably about as big as like this this area right here up on the stage.
I don't know.
And then it had really important detail one sink, one commode.
Okay, you men know what that means.
It's a one, it's a one-person bathroom.
So I don't know if anyone's ever compared the stage to a restroom, um, but that's what just happened.
So I'm coming in hot into the restroom at Georgia's.
Remember, it's wet.
I have on flip-flops.
So I come in and I open the door and notice a gentleman is sitting on the commode.
So I put on the brakes pretty hard and flipped into the bathroom.
I'm on my back in George's bathroom.
I think my flip-flops were touching this man's wadded-up pants at that point.
And I was saying, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
And then um I left, I left the restroom and came back, and Mandy's like, what in the world just happened?
Because I was crying.
I was crying, laughing.
Um, so that's who's preaching today.
Again, that's who you have in front of you.
That was probably one of the most embarrassing moments of my life.
The other involves a push card on the golf course that I'll tell another time.
But um let's let's pray and get into Ruth.
Um, if you'll bow your heads with me.
Uh Heavenly Father, I'm so thankful for this church.
I'm thankful for you continuing to provide for us through staff, through buildings, but most of all, um, just that you've kept your you in front of us, that our plans wouldn't get in the way.
I pray that you would preach through me this morning.
That is my only hope.
Uh in Jesus' name I pray.
Amen.
So if you haven't been here in the month of July, we've been going through the book of Ruth.
And Sam and Matt have done an awesome job going through that book, but they left me, thank God, they're the professional Christians.
They left Amateur Hour, the best part.
So this is kind of the gospel part of Ruth.
Um I'm going to focus more on Naomi's perspective in this story.
So the book is called Ruth, but a lot of it is really about Naomi.
And Naomi, in this, in these four chapters, experienced a death and a rebirth.
And that's going to be the theme of this sermon.
And it seems to me that God's pattern is often to work through death and then rebirth.
And we don't just see that in our own lives, we see it in nature, we see it in his son, uh, sending his son to die and then to be reborn for us.
Why does God work in this way?
Well, the honest answer is I don't know.
Um, but it does seem to be a very effective way to get me to trust in him and depend on him.
So, first let's talk a little bit about Naomi's death.
So, Naomi, in the earlier books of this of Ruth, she experienced a famine in her hometown of Bethlehem.
She and her husband left their hometown with her two sons and moved to Moab.
In Moab, her husband dies, and then her sons both die.
So, to recap, famine, death of a spouse, death of her only two children.
She decides to go back to Bethlehem, and her daughter-in-laws both go with her.
Um, Ruth, and then Orpah, which is one of my favorite biblical names, Orpah I don't think we have any Orpas in the house today, probably.
But Ruth, Orpah eventually decided not to go.
So we read this story, and it's like five minutes of our lives.
But this was like years of Naomi's life, all of this death.
And what I want to know when I'm experiencing trials like this is why so long?
Like, speed it up, right?
Um, one of my favorite books is called The Green Letters.
I'm gonna read a quote from there.
It says, When God wants to make an oak, he takes a hundred years, but when he wants to make a squash, he takes six months.
There are idle days, days apparently useless, when even prayer and holy service seem a burden.
Are we in any sense renewed in these days?
Yes, for any experience which makes us more aware of our need of God must contribute to spiritual progress unless we deny the Lord who brought us.
So God's basic ingredient for growth is our need, and I have plenty of that.
But death is not the end of Naomi's story, or yours, or mine.
Naomi also goes through a rebirth.
So this is kind of the verses that were read this morning.
So her daughter-in-law, Ruth, eventually found a kind and wealthy man.
His name was Boaz, and he's known as the Kinsman Redeemer, which Sam and Matt have both done an excellent job preaching on, and that just means he kind of points us to Jesus.
He redeemed her family.
He was a Christ-like figure.
So then Ruth and Boaz have a son named Obed.
I'm going to read two of the verses from the end of Ruth, Ruth 4, verses 14 and 15.
Blessed be the Lord who has not left you in this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel.
He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age.
For your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.
So he has not left you this day without a redeemer.
I mean, isn't when I really kind of strip away all my prayers, that's really my ultimate prayer, is that he will be with me.
This is not how Naomi felt a few chapters earlier when she came back to Bethlehem.
The people of Bethlehem saw Naomi coming back and they said to her, Naomi, and she said, Don't call me that.
Call me Mara, which means bitter.
But these verses say that's not true.
He will be to you a restorer of your life and a nourisher of your soul.
So this is the gospel.
This is the good stuff in Ruth.
Restorer of life.
What does that look like in our lives?
Well, it doesn't look like what I think it's going to look like usually.
Um literally, restorer of life means rebirth.
And I think this kind of rebirth is like the abundant life that Jesus talks about in John 10.
Nourisher of your old age.
Well, the older I get, um, I think that looks like peace.
I think that looks like freedom.
Uh in the midst of hard things, I think it's possible to have this.
And we will have it in heaven.
Naomi's grandson, Obed, was David's great's grandfather, not great-grandfather.
And David was a man after God's own heart, and then was also in the lineage of Jesus.
And I think God is showing us by including that little line at the end that he's using Ruth and Naomi in his greater redemptive plan of his son.
So a few things in conclusion to wrap up.
Um, we're all in some type of death and rebirth.
And that may be a literal death, or it may be the death of a goal, or the death of your plans.
Um, and it may not have even been happening to us.
It could be happening to someone close to us.
So, how is it possible to have joy or peace in the midst of that?
James 1, 2 through 4 say, consider pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
Mature and complete sounds like something that I need and that I would love to have, but I would like a shortcut through the trials.
I don't really want to go through the hard things.
Um, I remember studying these verses with my friend Bo, and he pointed out the verses say, consider it joy when you face trials.
The Brian Robinson revised standard version would say, one year after you face the trials, consider it joy.
So, how does this happen?
I mean, how is this possible?
Well, I know it's possible.
I've seen it, I've seen it in my life, I've seen it with my friend's life.
I was talking to my friend Matt Hooper.
It is happening for him right now in the midst of some really hard things.
And I want it more and more.
We know what from what's preached here every week, there's not anything that we can do to like behave our way into it or earn it.
I think the Holy Spirit has got to be the active agent in this.
I think it may have to do more with our perspective.
Scotty Smith says we move from the general of John 3.16, which says God loved the world, to the specifics of Galatians 2.20, which say Jesus loved me and gave his life for me.
So I think we have to shift our perspective from ourselves to God, and that can feel like freedom.
Dane Ortonland, in his newest book, Deeper, he says, we grow in Christ no further than we enjoy his embrace of us.
There are times when I don't really believe that Jesus could love me, as I know the depths of my sins, and that's probably true for you too.
But I think that's actually when Jesus wants to love us all the more.
Dan Ortland also writes, in those times, and hear these words, these are so good.
Jesus lovingly tells us, you know you're a mess.
Your entire existence has been built around you.
Step in out of that storm.
Let your heart crack open to joy.
Plunge your parched soul into the sea of my love.
There you will find the rest and relief and embrace and friendship that your heart longs for.
I need to hear that like every morning.
Um, what about that fig vine that I brought up earlier after the weird bathroom story?
Um, so about 10 years ago, I planted a fig vine in the back of our driveway.
And it took a little while for it to finally start spreading, and it's at the end of my driveway that I see every day.
And uh back in December of this past year, we had like a deep freeze, and my fig vine started to die.
It started turning brown.
And I was kind of thinking, like, ugh, it's it's taken over kind of this whole black uh brick wall.
It's gonna be a mess to clean up.
But then I noticed spring came, and you can see on the on the photo that I took, so the brown is like the dead part.
If you look really closely, kind of on the top, there's some dark, dark green.
That was kind of the normal size leaves, all those like greenish yellow, that was like new life or new leaves coming out.
And it just occurred to me like this is God telling me, what looks dead to us, God may be um creating rebirth that's even more abundant than we could have ever dreamed of or imagined.
And I think that's how God works.
Um, and I think our job is to remember he is the vine, and he's the ultimate restorer, nurturer, and redeemer.
And we are the branches, and our job is to abide and to look to him.
Let me pray for us.
Heavenly Father, I'm so thankful for this book of Ruth, where you assure us that you are with us and that you will take care of us, and that Jesus lives inside of us, and that is all we need.
In his name I pray.
Amen.