SPEAKER_00: Church, we are in Ruth this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We begin our Advent series.
SPEAKER_00: If you're unfamiliar with Advent, it is the first four weeks leading up to Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: And some churches celebrate this in different ways.
SPEAKER_00: Some light candles, like we have a candle lit for each week leading up to Christmas, remembering and reminding ourselves that Christ has come and that Christ is going to come again.
SPEAKER_00: So we're in Ruth this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We'll be taking a chapter each week, Lord willing, for our series through Advent.
SPEAKER_00: And Ruth might seem like an odd place to begin.
SPEAKER_00: It's in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: It's a story about a woman and a widower or two widowers, and it's kind of surging into different lands and God's provision.
SPEAKER_00: But as we get into this this week and in the weeks to come, you'll realize how significant Ruth is.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you were with us when we were in Nehemiah, at the very end of Nehemiah chapter 13, there's this judgment brought because the people have been intermarrying with Moabite women.
SPEAKER_00: This curse amongst Israel because they've been intermarrying with Moabite women.
SPEAKER_00: But yet here in the story of Ruth, we see an immigrant foreign women, woman coming in, and she then becomes a great, great, great, great, great grandmother of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus' lineage comes from Ruth.
SPEAKER_00: He's a descendant of Ruth.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to talk about that as we go, but I just want to give you some framework there as we begin this study in Ruth.
SPEAKER_00: Before we go any further, let's pray together this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Gracious God, we are glad that we can gather together.
SPEAKER_00: I am just glad to be here with the church, gathered to singing together, reading the word together, praising you, confessing, reminding ourselves of who you are, how good you are.
SPEAKER_00: We praise you for that.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you, Lord, for your goodness to us as a church.
SPEAKER_00: How you have sustained and blessed us, how you provided for us, how we have seen just so many different people's lives.
SPEAKER_00: Built up, encouraged, transformed.
SPEAKER_00: Not because we're something special, but because you're using broken people.
SPEAKER_00: Use the church to make disciples, to see the lost come to life in you.
SPEAKER_00: We praise you for this.
SPEAKER_00: I pray, God, that you would give us encouragement as we open your word.
SPEAKER_00: May you give us life through your living word.
SPEAKER_00: May your spirit bring conviction where there needs to be conviction.
SPEAKER_00: May it bring hope and may it bring joy.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we pray for other churches.
SPEAKER_00: We pray especially for Grace Church in Danville, with our brothers and sisters there who have gathered together this morning to make much of you, to proclaim your word, that they may be more and more like you.
SPEAKER_00: They may share your love and your joy and your grace with others.
SPEAKER_00: So encourage Ron as he preaches, be with the team they're serving, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for a church in Danville that is making much of you, that is serious about the word of God, serious about making disciples.
SPEAKER_00: We praise you for that.
SPEAKER_00: May we do likewise here.
SPEAKER_00: May we be serious about your word, what it means, what it says.
SPEAKER_00: May we be serious about sharing our faith with others, our neighbors, our families, our co-workers.
SPEAKER_00: May we be serious about following after you and making much of you.
SPEAKER_00: I praise you, God, that you have sustained us for another week.
SPEAKER_00: That you're good.
SPEAKER_00: This morning may our hope rest in you.
SPEAKER_00: May we trust in you.
SPEAKER_00: I pray all this in your holy and precious name, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Church, imagine um living in a time when the law of the land was treated as more of a suggestion.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: When people were allowed to pretty much do whatever they wanted, when leaders were some of the most wicked people around.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine living in a land that was once filled with prosperity and blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Although far from a perfect place, it was arguably one of the greatest places to live on the planet.
SPEAKER_00: But things have changed.
SPEAKER_00: Things change as they do, right?
SPEAKER_00: People, they disregard the law and they disregard order, they disregard God's commands.
SPEAKER_00: The commands of God begin to kind of disappear from the culture, and they're replaced with personal preferences, with personal freedom, which sounds really, really good.
SPEAKER_00: But then eventually what is deemed right is whoever is the strongest.
SPEAKER_00: It's the whole might is right paradigm.
SPEAKER_00: And everyone does what is right in their own eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe you don't have to strain your mind too much to imagine a place like this.
SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, this description could fit any number of places in the world throughout human history.
SPEAKER_00: But what I'm referring to is the land of Israel during the time of the book of Judges.
SPEAKER_00: This is a book, it's in the Bible right before the book of Ruth, and it's set in the same time period.
SPEAKER_00: The book of Judges is set between the death of Joshua, when the Israelites come and they come into the promised land, and Joshua dies, and then the time when Saul is coronated as king.
SPEAKER_00: So the time between Joshua and Saul, it's like a 200-year, 200-year span, and there's just wickedness in the land.
SPEAKER_00: It's a terrible time for Israel.
SPEAKER_00: If you're familiar with that time, it's it's heart-wrenching, it's confusing.
SPEAKER_00: You're left wondering, man, what's going on?
SPEAKER_00: It's called judges because the land is ruled by judges.
SPEAKER_00: Now they're not judges like we think, like a magistrate judge, but more like a kind of a king judge.
SPEAKER_00: Someone who's who is to govern the law and to lead the people as well.
SPEAKER_00: And God starts this system of judges, and things quickly spiral out of control.
SPEAKER_00: And again, it just gets, to be honest, weird and sad and heartbreaking and crazy.
SPEAKER_00: There's pagan worship of idols, it's rampant.
SPEAKER_00: It's just um, it's a book of increasing depravity.
SPEAKER_00: You have a woman who drives a tent peg through a guy's head.
SPEAKER_00: You have the story of a guy who's stabbing another guy with a dagger and he loses a dagger in the guy's belly because he's so big he can't find it where it went.
SPEAKER_00: It's just weird things like this.
SPEAKER_00: You have someone who takes the jawbone of a donkey and kills thousands of people.
SPEAKER_00: There's the stories of a guy sacrificing his daughter by mistake, but he still does this.
SPEAKER_00: You have a story of a man whose concubine is kept out at night, and when the guy comes out in the morning to get her to move out to the next town, he finds her dead, so then he chops her up and sends her to the 12 tribes of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And then the eleven tribes come together and almost annihilate one tribe, the tribe of Benjamin.
SPEAKER_00: These are dark, dark times in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: This is the story of Ruth.
SPEAKER_00: This is where it takes place in the midst of all this.
SPEAKER_00: Now you might be thinking, wow, this is not the Christmas message I was coming here to hear.
SPEAKER_00: But here we are.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're not living in the day of judges, and we're not living when people are literally just doing whatever they want and hiring their own priests and dismembering people's bodies, and that's kind of okay.
SPEAKER_00: We have sanctioned things for all those in our culture.
SPEAKER_00: It's much cleaner, it's neater, and it's tucked away in different places.
SPEAKER_00: But we do live in a wicked time, and we do live among wicked people, and if we're honest, there are even things in our own heart that we hold on to, things that are not pleasing to God.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're not careful, we can despair.
SPEAKER_00: We despair.
SPEAKER_00: You look around and think, what is going on?
SPEAKER_00: Has the Lord forgotten us?
SPEAKER_00: Does he not realize like where the society is at and how bad things are getting?
SPEAKER_00: Surely he's gonna come back this year, maybe next, with AI and all this gender stuff and people like mutations, like who knows?
SPEAKER_00: But God has to come back.
SPEAKER_00: This is getting just too crazy.
SPEAKER_00: But yet there is always hope in dark times.
SPEAKER_00: There's hope in dark times.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just gonna confess I mistitled this the bulletin on that.
SPEAKER_00: It says there's light, which is good.
SPEAKER_00: There is light in dark times, but this morning I want to talk about hope in the midst of dark times.
SPEAKER_00: And it's good that we understand the context of scripture.
SPEAKER_00: It's a side note, but you've probably heard it from, hopefully you've heard it before.
SPEAKER_00: But when you look at scripture and you're trying to understand what is going on, what's the message that that passage has for me?
SPEAKER_00: One of the questions you need to ask yourself is what is the context of the passage?
SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
SPEAKER_00: Because that context is going to tell you a whole lot about that passage.
SPEAKER_00: So, what's the context of Ruth?
SPEAKER_00: Darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Sad, heartbreaking, wicked darkness.
SPEAKER_00: But this is where the story picks up.
SPEAKER_00: The story of a Moabite woman, a foreigner, whom God shows great kindness to.
SPEAKER_00: God shows Ruth kindness by bringing her a mother-in-law who fears God.
SPEAKER_00: God shows Ruth kindness by giving her a family and a future.
SPEAKER_00: God shows Ruth kindness by using her to bring about the Messiah, King Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So in the midst of the darkness and the depravity, God is still at work.
SPEAKER_00: He's still keeping his promise.
SPEAKER_00: He's bringing a savior.
SPEAKER_00: He is not absent, he is present.
SPEAKER_00: So as we look at chapter 1 today, that God is bringing hope in the midst of darkness.
SPEAKER_00: He brings hope in dark times, he brings hope through loving people, and he brings hope to desperate people.
SPEAKER_00: So hope in dark times.
SPEAKER_00: Those first five verses kind of lay out.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is the time of the judges.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a famine in Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: There's this thing going on where there's no food.
SPEAKER_00: Could very well be just the judgment of God upon the people for their wickedness.
SPEAKER_00: But either way, there's a famine.
SPEAKER_00: So Naomi and her husband and her boys, they leave Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: The same place that the Messiah is going to be born, Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting that there's a famine, there's no food, they're leaving because Bethlehem means land of bread.
SPEAKER_00: This is the place where the bread's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00: It's a fertile land.
SPEAKER_00: There's no bread here in the most fertile part of the territory, then we must leave and go to Moab, to a foreign land.
SPEAKER_00: But one day there will be a Messiah who was born in the land of bread, who would also flee that land from another persecution.
SPEAKER_00: And would flee to Egypt to live for a time, then come back, and then live in the territory and share the eternal bread.
SPEAKER_00: The good news of the gospel, that he was the Messiah, that he had come to pay the price for the sins of the world, that they would not perish in their sin, but that they would have life.
SPEAKER_00: So again, the context of what's going on here.
SPEAKER_00: This is Naomi.
SPEAKER_00: They travel, her and her husband and their sons, they travel.
SPEAKER_00: Then her husband dies.
SPEAKER_00: Then her sons marry Moabite women.
SPEAKER_00: And then her sons die.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is in the midst of this dark time, a season of darkness, there is yet hope.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not like a cliche, like, well, just hang in there.
SPEAKER_00: Things will get better.
SPEAKER_00: They kind of have to.
SPEAKER_00: You know, people say, well, you've hit rock bottom, there's nowhere else to go but up.
SPEAKER_00: And somehow that's just not the encouragement that it sounds.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it just doesn't quite bring joy, that line.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is that they don't realize what Naomi doesn't realize, what Ruth doesn't realize, is that God knows what he's doing, that he has a plan.
SPEAKER_00: So in the midst of these dark times and dark seasons, the reality, again, doesn't feel like a reality, doesn't feel to be true, but it is true that God sees the whole picture.
SPEAKER_00: Now we get to look and we see the whole story, we see how this kind of ends up.
SPEAKER_00: So even from the beginning, if you've grown up in the church or you know the story of Ruth, how encouraging.
SPEAKER_00: You know how this goes.
SPEAKER_00: So you read about a famine in the land, and you read that her husband died and her sons died, and that's terrible.
SPEAKER_00: But you do know how it ends.
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna spoiler, you know, you've had some time, a couple thousand years to read it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the way it happens is she then marries another guy who provides her, Ruth does, and loves her and all these wonderful things.
SPEAKER_00: It's like a kind of a fairy tale ending.
SPEAKER_00: But the hard part is they don't know that.
SPEAKER_00: And there's so many times in our lives we're just in really dark seasons.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes those things, there are things around us.
SPEAKER_00: Man, just the world's in chaos, our family's in chaos, our children or our parents, they're just relationships, there's darkness.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes there's there's darkness, just we feel like in our own heart.
SPEAKER_00: Like there's just no joy.
SPEAKER_00: I feel no meaning.
SPEAKER_00: I feel no purpose, I feel no interest in these things of God.
SPEAKER_00: There's just nothing going on.
SPEAKER_00: It's just dark.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't get to zoom out and say, okay, Lord, well, how's this gonna end?
SPEAKER_00: Give me a snapshot of the last chapter of my life.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't give that to us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what he does give us, and the reason we do have hope, is what?
SPEAKER_00: We know how it ultimately ends, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: We know that Jesus Christ will return, that those who belong to him will be with him forever, that he will wipe every tear away, that he will bring hope and peace, and he will strip us of ourselves, our selfishness, and give us joy.
SPEAKER_00: So we don't, we know ultimately how it's gonna end, and that's what gives us hope.
SPEAKER_00: So here we are in the midst of we know the ultimate ending, but we're not there yet.
SPEAKER_00: We're here, we're struggling, we're in a hard season, a dark season.
SPEAKER_00: We have to trust the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, chapter 3, verses 5 and 6 says, Trust the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
SPEAKER_00: In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this proverb doesn't say, trust the Lord with all your heart and lean on him with all your understanding, and he's going to make your life happy again, and he's gonna make everything all right again, and you're gonna be just a good person.
SPEAKER_00: You can skip along through the day.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what he says.
SPEAKER_00: But when we trust the Lord, when we trust in him, when we lean on him, and we say, Lord, I'm just putting all of my heart out there for you.
SPEAKER_00: What he does is he makes the path straight.
SPEAKER_00: And the way that he does that, I think, is he just clears everything else out.
SPEAKER_00: You begin to realize what really matters.
SPEAKER_00: Well, relationships matter, yes.
SPEAKER_00: Jobs, yes.
SPEAKER_00: Uh what people think of you, okay, yeah, probably.
SPEAKER_00: There's these things that matter, but none of them matter to the degree that God matters.
SPEAKER_00: And so he begins to clear all these things out of our lives in these hard times.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it doesn't just, we don't just wake up happy, but we wake up with joy.
SPEAKER_00: We wake up with purpose and with meaning.
SPEAKER_00: We wake up and we know that God is sovereign and he's good, and we trust him with everything.
SPEAKER_00: That he can handle it.
SPEAKER_00: See, God brings hope in these dark times, and he brings hope through people who are loving us well.
SPEAKER_00: Hope through people who love well.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verses six.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna look at verses six all the way through the rest of the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want us to see how much the Lord provides through people, provides hope through people who love well.
SPEAKER_00: So you see, and that there's this thing happening.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna play by play through this passage of kind of how things happen.
SPEAKER_00: And although Naomi was an Israelite and her daughters were Moabites, she loved them dearly.
SPEAKER_00: She loved them dearly.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, and you can imagine for a second, your husband has died.
SPEAKER_00: As a woman.
SPEAKER_00: You imagine that?
SPEAKER_00: As a man, your spouse dies, your wife dies, and you have your daughters-in-law who come marry your husbands, and you you live together for 10 years, the text says.
SPEAKER_00: They begin to develop these relationships, this friendship.
SPEAKER_00: But after all these things are gone, all the things that kept these ladies together have been removed, yet they love one another.
SPEAKER_00: Naomi loved them.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't know what the future held or how things would work out, or how God would provide them for them.
SPEAKER_00: They're in a foreign land, Naomi is at this point.
SPEAKER_00: And then soon Ruth comes into a foreign land.
SPEAKER_00: Husbands or relatives are dead.
SPEAKER_00: This blended dynamic, this hard relationship dynamic, maybe?
SPEAKER_00: These women are loving one another because of what God has provided for them.
SPEAKER_00: And just remembering these things.
SPEAKER_00: See, when they were coming out of the land, and look at verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: Something had changed.
SPEAKER_00: For she heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food.
SPEAKER_00: So what's going on?
SPEAKER_00: The Lord's bringing food back to Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: There's bread back in the land of bread.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Naomi, now her husband or her sons are dead.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, hey, there's food back there.
SPEAKER_00: Now remember, this has been years.
SPEAKER_00: Years.
SPEAKER_00: Ten years at least.
SPEAKER_00: This famine has been going on.
SPEAKER_00: So they begin to travel back, return to Judah.
SPEAKER_00: But Naomi tells her daughters to go back to their families.
SPEAKER_00: Don't go with her.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: This is what it says in verse 8.
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 with the dead and with me.
SPEAKER_00: So she's saying, Listen, I'm a widower, I'm old, I'm going back to my country, not your country.
SPEAKER_00: You're still a young woman.
SPEAKER_00: Go back to your mother's home, live there, be with them, and carry on your life.
SPEAKER_00: And this makes sense, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: Go back to where you're from and you know, your people.
SPEAKER_00: But it's also an interesting dynamic of, like, well, Naomi is uh an Israelite.
SPEAKER_00: She she knows the God of Abraham, Jacob, and Isaac.
SPEAKER_00: You'd think that she would also be like, you can come with me and you can worship my God.
SPEAKER_00: You can worship the creator God, the one true God.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what Naomi does.
SPEAKER_00: She just says, Listen, my heart is broken.
SPEAKER_00: I'm done.
SPEAKER_00: I'm bitter.
SPEAKER_00: You go back to your people.
SPEAKER_00: So Orpah goes, she goes back, but Ruth clings.
SPEAKER_00: She clings to Naomi.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very vivid image here.
SPEAKER_00: Broken, two, three broken women.
SPEAKER_00: One just clinging, saying, I'm not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: And what a testament to Naomi's love.
SPEAKER_00: That Ruth could have gone back to her family.
SPEAKER_00: Probably she had family.
SPEAKER_00: She could have gone back and it would have been more comfortable.
SPEAKER_00: It would have been easy, but she clings to Naomi.
SPEAKER_00: Before we move on to Ruth's vow that she makes to Naomi, I just want to point out how vital it is to have people in your life who love God and love you.
SPEAKER_00: How important it is for each one of us.
SPEAKER_00: If we're serious about our faith, if we're serious about following Jesus, to have people in our life who love us and who love God.
SPEAKER_00: Praise the Lord for people in your life who don't love God, but who still love you, who come and help you move or help you with all kinds of different things.
SPEAKER_00: Praise the Lord for that.
SPEAKER_00: That's wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying shun those people.
SPEAKER_00: When you have people in your life who love you and they love God, there's a dynamic there that can't be uh that can't be replicated.
SPEAKER_00: Because they know what your ultimate good is.
SPEAKER_00: They know what you need.
SPEAKER_00: They know how to encourage you.
SPEAKER_00: They know, now they're broken, they mess up, and they might not be doing those things perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, they love you and their love for you isn't just about you.
SPEAKER_00: It's because you're creating God's image and because God loves you, because they want to spend eternity with you in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And so the advice they give, the counsel they give, the way that they show up for you, the way that they serve you.
SPEAKER_00: It's just so different because without God and his life, their world is this.
SPEAKER_00: It's on this plane, right?
SPEAKER_00: They see things this way.
SPEAKER_00: But as Christians, we we believe in God's word, we trust in God.
SPEAKER_00: We know that there's the heavenly realm, there's eternity, there's God at work in us, the Holy Spirit among us.
SPEAKER_00: So that changes the way we view the world.
SPEAKER_00: So it's so important that you have people in your life who love you and who love God.
SPEAKER_00: Not people who are just kind of fair weather fans.
SPEAKER_00: You know, like when things are going well, they're there for you.
SPEAKER_00: When things are not going well, they're not there for you.
SPEAKER_00: People who can say, man, that's a really, really hard situation.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that they have always really, almost never do they have this brilliant counsel of like, well, let's open God's word and let me illuminate something to you that you didn't know before.
SPEAKER_00: But what the Christian can say to another Christian is let us take this problem, this heartache, this difficulty to the creator God.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll pray.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll ask Him to be working in us.
SPEAKER_00: You don't get that with unbelievers.
SPEAKER_00: They're not trying to bring God into the dynamic.
SPEAKER_00: Now, again, there's wonderful people in your lives, in my life, who don't know God.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm very, very grateful that they're in my life.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm praying that they would know God.
SPEAKER_00: But when the ultimate things of life come up, they don't have hope.
SPEAKER_00: They don't have anywhere to turn other than to say, man, life's a mess.
SPEAKER_00: What about it?
SPEAKER_00: Let's get some drinks or let's go kind of make ourselves happy some other way.
SPEAKER_00: But the Christian has hope because God never fails his people.
SPEAKER_00: So Ruth loved Naomi.
SPEAKER_00: She clung to her.
SPEAKER_00: The passage says, and she was committed.
SPEAKER_00: We look at 16, verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: But Ruth said, Do not urge me to leave or to return from following you.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: There I will be buried.
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts me from you.
SPEAKER_00: Ruth's vow seems almost absurd.
SPEAKER_00: It seems almost ludicrous.
SPEAKER_00: You've just lost your husband, your brother-in-law, your father-in-law, all these things are happening.
SPEAKER_00: And you're going to a foreign land and you're saying, listen, wherever you go, I'm go.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you're doing, I'm doing.
SPEAKER_00: When you're worshiping God, I'm going to worship God.
SPEAKER_00: When you die, is where I'll die, and I'll be buried there.
SPEAKER_00: And if I do not commit this vow, may God bring death to me.
SPEAKER_00: See, the reality, Ruth knew, what was true about Naomi that Ruth knew was that she was following God.
SPEAKER_00: And for Ruth, where else was she going to go?
SPEAKER_00: Back to her pagan land, back to her pagan people, without hope, without any purpose, without any meaning.
SPEAKER_00: The vow demands much from Ruth.
SPEAKER_00: It demands much.
SPEAKER_00: Because Ruth is saying, listen, it strips her of all previous identity.
SPEAKER_00: No longer can she say, well, I'm going to kind of pick my way for life.
SPEAKER_00: Or I have these preferences.
SPEAKER_00: Or I have, I have this way, this vision of how I see my future going.
SPEAKER_00: Or this is how I want people to think of me.
SPEAKER_00: Or this is the title I want to have, or this is where I want to get with life, or where I want to go.
SPEAKER_00: All those things are taken away with this vow because she's committing everything to Naomi.
SPEAKER_00: Your God will be my God.
SPEAKER_00: Your people will be my people.
SPEAKER_00: Where you die, I will die.
SPEAKER_00: It's complete selflessness.
SPEAKER_00: Ruth is stripped of all her identity, all her value apart from what she's committed to.
SPEAKER_00: That the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will now be her God.
SPEAKER_00: That the people of Israel will now be her people.
SPEAKER_00: But she's still a foreigner.
SPEAKER_00: But it's interesting, this same language and idea for what it means to follow Christ is for what it means to follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Ruth's commitment to Naomi is a shadow, if you will, of the commitment that Christians make to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: God, you are, I'm going to follow you.
SPEAKER_00: You're my God.
SPEAKER_00: I'll be with your people.
SPEAKER_00: I'll do what you command me to do.
SPEAKER_00: I will follow after you.
SPEAKER_00: I'll follow your ways.
SPEAKER_00: So even though thousand were a thousand years before the Messiah would come, at least here, Ruth is making this vow that whatever God wants, she'll do.
SPEAKER_00: She's gonna, through namely, she's gonna follow him.
SPEAKER_00: There's great hope for you and me when we get to a place in our life when we're finally done trying to make much of ourselves, when we're finally done trying to put ourselves in the center of everything, when we're trying to make the world revolve around us.
SPEAKER_00: There's great hope and joy when that reality comes.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's no longer that you're chasing your dreams.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever the Lord brings, that's what you want to do.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, whatever you bring, I want to be faithful to that.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever life comes, I want to be faithful to you.
SPEAKER_00: Hard times, good times, plenty, want, whatever it is, I want to honor you, I want to make much of you, I want to live for you.
SPEAKER_00: And that desire is a supernatural work that the Lord does in you.
SPEAKER_00: You don't just kind of have that.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord brings that about.
SPEAKER_00: So there we see this hope that God brings us through even people who love us well and point us to God.
SPEAKER_00: Not back to ourselves, like, well, you're worth it, you're good, you're gonna be fine, the world's your oyster, make it about you.
SPEAKER_00: That's not a loving thing to do because it's not a reality.
SPEAKER_00: It's not true.
SPEAKER_00: What is true is it's about God, and God has come for us that we maintain to ourselves and follow after him and enjoy his creation and enjoy his words and follow what he's commanded because there is life and there is joy in that.
SPEAKER_00: So there's great hope for us.
SPEAKER_00: In dark times, there's great hope for us with God bringing people into our lives who love us, and there's hope to those who are desperate.
SPEAKER_00: There's people who are who are desperate.
SPEAKER_00: Look with me in verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: This is the rest of the passage.
SPEAKER_00: They went then from um the so the two of them went unto they came to Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred up because of them.
SPEAKER_00: And the women said, Is this Naomi?
SPEAKER_00: She said to them, Do you not call me Naomi, might call me Mara?
SPEAKER_00: For the Almighty has dealt with very bitterly with me.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's interesting, the name Naomi means uh pleasant.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord has been pleasant to her, the Lord's pleasant, but the name Mara means bitterness.
SPEAKER_00: So you can just feel this woman.
SPEAKER_00: She comes back, and everyone's kind of this hubbub like, is that Naomi?
SPEAKER_00: She left like 10 years ago with a husband and two kids.
SPEAKER_00: Where are they?
SPEAKER_00: And who's a who's this Moabite woman?
SPEAKER_00: And she just says, Don't even call me Naomi.
SPEAKER_00: Life is not pleasant anymore.
SPEAKER_00: It's bitter.
SPEAKER_00: It is a bitter time, it's a bitter day in my life.
SPEAKER_00: Again, what Naomi doesn't know, what we know, what God always knew, was how he would provide for them, how he would answer the prayers and provide resources, family, and provision for them and bring blessing.
SPEAKER_00: So we see that in this desperate time, how desperate Naomi is, bitter.
SPEAKER_00: What is she returning to?
SPEAKER_00: But here we also have Ruth, who's arguably more desperate than Naomi.
SPEAKER_00: Now she is in a foreign land, she's a Moabite woman, not very welcome in the land.
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't have a husband, she doesn't have any wealth, she doesn't have a name to speak of, she's not bringing anything, but she is clinging to Naomi.
SPEAKER_00: See, the the the picture that we have here of desperation, these two women.
SPEAKER_00: And so often we look at our lives and we feel like we're desperate, or we are in desperate situations, and we just forget that no, the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord has provided.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just in our church alone, how many stories of people who've been in desperate situations?
SPEAKER_00: Where if the Lord didn't show up, your marriage is done.
SPEAKER_00: It's gone, it's over.
SPEAKER_00: If the Lord doesn't show up, your body, you're gonna die, you're not gonna be healed.
SPEAKER_00: If the Lord doesn't show up, this relationship is severed.
SPEAKER_00: If the Lord doesn't show up, the house is gone, the job is gone, the security, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: If the Lord does not show up, it's all gone.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord showed up.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord has shown up.
SPEAKER_00: And for some, you've gone through just horrendous, difficult situations and things in life.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord still showed up.
SPEAKER_00: He still kept his promise.
SPEAKER_00: Still, in the midst of desperate times and dark times, hope comes.
SPEAKER_00: It comes through people who love you and love the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It comes through situations where the Lord illuminates your eyes so you can see his goodness.
SPEAKER_00: See, no one could have imagined how the Lord was gonna work.
SPEAKER_00: How their lives are gonna be intertwined with the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: So many of you are in situations hard, not hard, confusing, difficult, boring.
SPEAKER_00: And you're just like, I don't know what's next.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what life is gonna bring.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to close with this this here.
SPEAKER_00: I want to ask you a question.
SPEAKER_00: When you when you hear the phrase, our hope is in Christ, put your hope in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: When you hear that, what what does that bring?
SPEAKER_00: Is it stale to you?
SPEAKER_00: That news is it old news that Christ is hope, the hope of the world?
SPEAKER_00: See the the truth.
SPEAKER_00: We must first acknowledge the truth of this.
SPEAKER_00: That Christ is the hope of the world.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not enough.
SPEAKER_00: We must cherish it.
SPEAKER_00: So I just want to encourage us as Christians, as a church, in the midst of what feels like at times hopelessness or confusion or dark times.
SPEAKER_00: There is hope in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And for most of you, if not all of you, you've heard that many, many times before.
SPEAKER_00: And you need to remember it.
SPEAKER_00: And we need to be praying for one another to remind one another the hope that we have in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna partake of communion here in a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Communion is given that we may remember what Christ has done for us.
SPEAKER_00: That we would remember his grace and his mercy.
SPEAKER_00: That we would remember that our hope is in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: See, the land of the Israel during the time of judges, as wicked and as confusing as it is, those are people left to themselves, left to just kind of figure things out.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't want to obey God or his commands.
SPEAKER_00: And here we are gathered this morning that we might know God's commands and understand who he is and enjoy him, that we may put our hope in him.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because what he's done for us.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus Christ did come, the Messiah, all through the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: They're waiting for the Messiah to come.
SPEAKER_00: And he did come, and he lived a perfect life on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And then he was crucified for what?
SPEAKER_00: For claiming to be God, who he was.
SPEAKER_00: And in that, he died for your sin.
SPEAKER_00: He died for my sin.
SPEAKER_00: He died for the sin that you committed this morning.
SPEAKER_00: He died for the sin you're gonna commit later this afternoon.
SPEAKER_00: And the penalty for your sin is death.
SPEAKER_00: That's not new news for most of us.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality of what Jesus has done for us, coming for us, gives us great hope.
SPEAKER_00: Because you're no longer stuck in your sin.
SPEAKER_00: You're no longer bound to sin.
SPEAKER_00: You're no longer stuck in a pointless, meaningless life.
SPEAKER_00: In the midst of your struggle, in the midst of your toil and the difficulty, there is hope because Jesus came for you.
SPEAKER_00: Not because you're gonna figure it out, not because you're gonna unlock a secret to your own mind, but because Jesus Christ has come.
SPEAKER_00: And he came to give life, that you and I would have life in him if we repent from our sin and follow after him and enjoy him.
SPEAKER_00: Church, let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you for your love and your mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your goodness to us.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that your word is here for us.
SPEAKER_00: And even in the midst of the story of Ruth, your grace, your sovereign hand, in the midst of all the affliction, in the midst of the confusion and the difficulty, oh Lord, you are present, you are engaged, you are involved, and you bring hope.
SPEAKER_00: So I pray for us this morning that our hope would be in you.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God, for your love and your mercy.
SPEAKER_00: May we trust you in all things, may we enjoy you forever.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in Jesus' name.