Ruthless (Part 3): Seeing God in Romance & Singleness

Welcome to Orchard Hill.

It's great to be together in all three locations.

And I want to say a special welcome to those of you who are declaring an official uh partnership with the church today through membership.

We often call this uh ministry partnership, and I want to say a special welcome to those of you in Butler County and in the strip district who are doing that today.

It is a great commitment just to say theologically, doctrinally, and methodologically, I align with this church and want to see God's glory and fame spread through what God does here.

And here's something that's really cool.

This time, for the first time, if you look at the little sheet that's in your program that says who came to join the church, there are as many people in Butler County and in the strip district as in Wexford, which is really an awesome thing just to see uh happen.

Well, today we are continuing our series in the book of Ruth.

We've called this uh series Ruthless.

Uh, we're dealing with several issues that uh come up as we look at this book together.

And today we're in chapter three, which deals with how Boaz and Ruth ultimately made their connection and how they in essence courted and went to marriage.

And my thought originally was it's the middle of February, it's near Valentine's Day, this will fall nicely.

I can talk about romance and singleness.

And that's true.

But what I think we also see here is that sometimes when people read this text, what they do is that they'll read it and then they'll say, Well, here's a tip on how I should date or how I should be.

And I think that misses the point of the bigger issue that's involved here.

And here's what I mean.

So, for example, in Ruth chapter uh three, verse four, we read this.

Here's what, or verse two, excuse me.

It says this, and this is verse three, this is uh Naomi 2, Ruth.

Wash, put on perfume, get dressed in your best clothes.

And then she basically says, now go and approach uh Boaz.

And so what some people will do is they'll say, Well, this is just good advice for women here.

You know, wash, put on perfume, put on your best clothes, like it's Hebrew for don't wear yoga pants.

And therefore, the the the tip, the advice is like, here, do this.

Or it'll say, somebody will say, Well, Boaz had a job.

Before you should pursue a woman, you should get a job.

You know, those are fine pieces of advice.

I don't think that's what this passage is teaching.

I don't think that it's fair to say this chapter of the Bible was given to us so that we can say, women, you should get dialed up before trying to get together with a guy, and men, you should get a job before you like try to find a woman.

I think there's something much bigger that's happening here.

And here's what I think this is ultimately, and that is that our God is at work in the desperate circumstances, in the steps and in the missteps of his people.

That's what we've seen throughout this book already.

Because the way that the book started was that there was a famine in the land, and so it was a desperate circumstance, and Elimelech and Naomi migrated to Moab.

May have been a misstep.

May have been an okay step.

It's hard to tell from the text.

But while they were there, the sons died, alimelech died.

But but the the wives that they married, one of them, Ruth, became somebody who helped Naomi navigate life.

And now they've returned to Israel and they live here, and as two women living alone, they would have been on the margins of society, right on the edge of making it.

And what we see is that God is at work in the desperate circumstances, both in the steps and in the missteps of his people.

And what we'll do here today is we are going to look at this story.

So, first, I'm just going to walk through this story so that we understand a little bit of what happened, and then I'm going to draw some principles about romance, about singleness.

But ultimately, what I hope happens is that we see God in this story.

We see how God's at work in our romance and singleness.

There's a movie that came out several years ago, uh, had many profound thoughts.

The movie was called Hitch.

And uh it's about a man whose job it was, his self-appointed career was to help people connect.

And here's what Hitch says at one point to one of the men he was trying to help connect with a woman.

He says, No woman wakes up saying, I hope I don't get swept off my feet today.

Now, she might say this, this is a really bad time for me, or something like I just need some space, or my personal favorite, I'm really into my career right now.

But do you believe that?

Neither does she, is what he says.

And here's why I simply quote that, and that is to say, wherever you come from, romance, relationships are a big deal.

They're a big deal in our lives.

And what I think we'll see in this story today, in Ruth, is that even in our singleness and in our romance, God is at the work in the lives and the steps and the missteps of his people.

So let's walk through this text.

Let's start actually in Ruth chapter 2, verse 20, just to get a little bit of the context.

Ruth 2:20

Says the Lord bless him, Naomi said, to her daughter-in-law.

He has not stopped showing kindness to the living and the dead.

Now, this is after Ruth has come back and said that she's made a connection with Boaz and his people.

And we heard about this last week.

Brady and Joel did a nice job teaching that text.

But but here, what we get is we get basically the repetition of this word kindness.

And if you've been here, you've heard us talk about this.

This is the word Hesed in Hebrew, and it means a covenant kindness.

So here she's probably referring to God's kindness and saying, God, even through the kindness of Boaz, has not stopped showing kindness, his goodness to his people.

And so here they are in a desperate circumstance saying, God's kindness and provision is still at work in our lives.

And then verse 23, you see this.

So Ruth stayed close to the women of Boaz to glean until the barley and wheat harvest were finished.

And so what she was doing was she was gleaning.

And here's a picture from Jean-Francois Millet that shows a little bit of what it would be like to glean.

And I like this picture.

A friend sent this to me, knew I was teaching on this, because it shows just a little bit of what life would have been like on the margins.

You could make a case, you could say that Ruth was participating in like a 30-day barley shred.

I mean, that's what's going on right here.

She is working hard to make her way in life.

And then we come to chapter three.

One day, Ruth's mother-in-law, Naomi, said to her, My daughter, I must find a home for you.

So Naomi's getting advanced in years, and she says, You need a place.

By the way, home here is the same word that's used in chapter 1, verse 9 for rest, when she basically said, I want you to both of her daughter-in-laws to find a place of rest, to find a husband.

And so now she's saying, I want to see this come true.

She's saying, Maybe Boaz is the answer to the prayer that we prayed.

Because sometimes the things that we pray for don't come true initially, because God has a greater answer later.

And that's what was happening here.

Then verse 2.

Now Boaz was with whose women you have worked, is a relative of ours.

I'll talk about the relative kinsman redeemer thing later, so just put that on the back burner for now.

And he says this tonight, or she says this, tonight, he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor.

Now, to winnow barley was basically to take barley, so to take the crops that they would get, and they would leave a corner of it so that people on the margins could glean, which was basically like social security of the day.

But then when they would take the crop, they would winnow it and they would take pitchforks, they would throw it in the air, and the chaff would go away, and then the crop would settle.

Here's a picture again that gives maybe a little feel of what this looks like, and the people resting afterward.

And what would happen is when the people would finish, the owners would stay near their piles.

And there were probably two reasons for this.

One reason is probably that they would stay near their pile because it would provide security.

Nobody could come take it.

But a second reason was that they would do this as it was a way of celebrating what they had just had.

Remember, there had been a famine in the land.

Now they have this bumper crop.

This would be a little bit like you close a big deal somewhere, and you get all the cash in one place, and you say, I don't want anybody to take it, so I'm gonna sleep on it, but you also lay down on it and it's like, yes.

Made the deal.

That's a little bit of what's happening here.

And so what Naomi does is she says in verse 4, so here's what I want you to do.

I want you to basically sneak in to where he's going to be sleeping, take note of it, and go and uncover his feet and lie down.

He will tell you what to do.

Yeah, that's uh that's a tax.

Now, if you've stopped paying attention, my guess is I have your attention now, because the text all of a sudden is saying, here's what I want you to do, Ruth.

I want you to sneak into where Boaz is gonna sleep.

I want you to lay down, I want you to uncover his feet, and he'll tell you what to do.

So here's the question Is there something shady going on here?

Now, most commentators will say, oh no, there's nothing shady going on here.

This is just an honorable way for a woman to approach a man in that day and age.

You know, you sneak in, uncover his feet, lie down next to him, and say, he'll tell you what to do.

And uh, and that was kind of the thing.

That's all in the text, by the way.

I'm not making any of this up.

There are some places in the Bible where uncovering someone's feet, you can look this up later, is basically uncovering anything that's private, anything that's not seen publicly.

So you could make a case that this was shady advice.

I don't think it's shady advice, I'll tell you why in just a moment.

But what you have here at a minimum is is uh Ruth in a kind of vulnerable situation.

Because she comes in and let's just go with she just was uncovering his feet, and so she just uncovers his feet and she lies down, and and most commentators will say, well, it was what was it was kind of a customary way to approach somebody.

And so here she is, she's lying on his barley harvest with him, and we're told actually just even before that, that when Boaz had finished eating and drinking, verse 7, and was in good spirits, he went over to lie down at the far end of the grain pile.

Ruth approached quietly, uncovered her feet, and lay down.

So Boaz now has been been having a little party.

By the way, the the Bible has quite a bit to say about alcohol.

It does not say that consuming alcohol is wrong or sinful, but it always says that drunkenness is.

And so when it says here that that Boaz was merry, I don't believe that he was necessarily drunk, but but what is happening is he's he's had some drink and now he's he's feeling good, he's about to lay down.

But when it comes to alcohol, one of the things that we do know in the Bible is that it's full of warnings about what drunkenness can do to us, about how how over-reliance on alcohol can take us down a bad path.

And so if you ever find yourself struggling with drunkenness, then stay away from the drinking altogether, is basically what the Bible says.

And be aware of how your use of alcohol promotes it in the use in life of other people.

But here's then what happens next.

Verse 8 and 9.

In the middle of the night, something startled the man.

I love this.

You know, here he is laying there, there's Ruth, maybe his feet were cold, I'm not sure.

And there's a woman lying at his feet.

Who are you?

He asked.

And she says, I am your servant, Ruth.

And here's why I don't think anything shady was going on.

She says this, Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are the guardian, redeemer of our family.

And to spread the corner of the garment over her was basically a bigger illusion.

In other words, I think what she was doing here was she was proposing that he propose.

She was basically saying, take the corner of your garment and put it over me, because the garment, the corner of the garment was a word in Hebrew, the kanaf, and the kanaf meant wings or protection.

It's the same word that's used in Malachi when we're told that God will come with healing in his wings, that he'll protect and he'll put things right.

So she's saying, Would you put things right in my life?

Would you be the person who will protect me, provide for me?

And so she's making a proposal here that he proposed to her.

And then we see this.

It says, and by the way, I love the the change of words here.

She says, I'm your servant, and he says, You're my daughter.

And he says then that you could have run after younger men, but you didn't.

And again, this is maybe why we don't take tips from the text, because this isn't saying anything about age difference in marriage.

Uh, you could try to infer that it's good for older men to marry younger women, but that would be an inappropriate use of this text.

But here's what's happening when he says daughter, I think.

I don't think he's saying daughter because she's so much younger.

I think he's saying, you aren't going to be my servant, but I'm going to care for you like a father cares for his daughter.

And if you've ever had a child, especially if you've had a girl, you know how much you have a desire to say, I'm going to protect you, I'm going to spread my kanaf over you, I'm going to make sure that things go well for you.

And that's what he's doing here in this moment.

And then we read this, verse 11, and now, my daughter, don't be afraid, for I will do for you all you ask.

Notice he says, I'll do for you, not I'll do it with you or I'll take from you.

He says, I'll do for you.

And then it says this all the people of my town know that you are a woman of noble character.

This, by the way, is the same word that's translated in Proverbs 31, the well-known chapter about women.

And the New Living Translation says about this woman in Proverbs 31 that she is a virtuous and capable wife.

In other words, he says, Everybody knows that you're virtuous, they know about your character, and they know about your capacity, all the things that you're able to do.

And then we see this, verse 14.

So she lay at his feet until morning, but got up before anyone could be recognized.

And he said, No one must know that a woman came to the threshing floor, and so he tells her to leave early, and he gives her some barley and sends her on her way.

Now, I am going to just kind of dive into this just for a second, and this might violate what I said about tips, but this is actually more for the whole of scripture, and that is I've noticed something, and I'm getting older as everybody is, but I've been around church now a long time as a pastor.

And here's something I've noticed that there's a generation emerging that thinks that sleepovers are okay.

And when I say sleepovers, what I mean is is they're sleeping at the feet, you know, I'm gonna stay on the sofa in the apartment, but we're not going to actually do anything physical.

We're just going to be in the same space, you know, we're going to sleep in the same bed, but we're not going to have sex, kind of a thing.

And there's a group of uh of people who are emerging who are saying, ah, that's okay, nothing happened.

Now, Boaz, even in that day, said, Look, I want you to go home before dark because I don't want people to get the wrong idea.

And I just want to say, now, again, this isn't based as much on this text.

This is me talking as a longtime pastor, as somebody who says, I'm concerned for how things live out, and kind of my understanding of all of scripture.

There's at least three reasons that I think sleepovers are a bad idea if you're a Christian young person.

Even if you say, Well, you didn't do anything.

The first is the reputation.

Because even in Boaz's day, if you slept in the same presence as somebody, what people assumed is that you were hooking up.

And today the same is true.

You spend a night somewhere, that's just what everybody thinks, and they go, Well, you as a Christian must not be any different.

You must not have a different standard.

Secondly, I would say that there is temptation.

I would guess that Boaz, when he woke up in the middle of the night and his feet were uncovered, and he said, Who's this?

Had a moment.

Because he's a dude.

And it isn't just dudes, it's men and women who can be tempted if you are in close proximity in the middle of the night.

And then, third, and this is probably the biggest one, I just think that that if you don't save something unique and special for marriage, what happens is you cheapen marriage.

Because then what happens is someday you'll get married, but you've already done everything that married couples do.

You go on vacations together, you stay in the same places, and then you get married, and it's like, ah, yeah, we just got married.

Let alone if you don't marry that person.

And so, sleepovers, just as an idea, and again, I don't think there's a verse in the Bible that says, thou shalt not have sleepovers, but I think you can infer from some principles that it's not God's best for you if that's where you're at.

Now, here's the question that we're really asking.

That was, by the way, just a little aside.

Where do we see God in this passage?

And what does it mean for us?

And I'm going to suggest that there are three kind of principles that we can draw about singleness and romance, but ultimately seeing how God is at work in this.

And the first thing is this, and that is, I just want to say that singleness is honorable.

Certainly Boaz was single for a long time, but again, Ruth was living with a sense of desperation and was going out of her way to try to connect with the guy.

She would stay in his field, she would almost like stalk him.

You know, wherever Boaz goes, I he goes, and I sneak up into his house in the middle of the night or his bed and I lay there.

I mean, you can make a case that she was pretty forward.

But here's why I say singleness is honorable.

We live in a culture that tells us that if you're single, there's something wrong.

And what they tell us in that is is that basically you need the affirmation of somebody to, and the companionship of somebody to be somebody.

Just think about the TV shows that are on around reality dating.

Let me just give you a partial list.

I've only seen a couple of these.

The Fifth Wheel, the 12 Corazones, Are You the One, Average Joe, Baggage, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Beauty and the Geek, Blind Date, The Dating Game, Love Connection, Bachelor in Paradise, Temptation Island, Flavor of Love, Dating in the Dark, Love in the Wild, The Cougar, Who Wants to Marry My Dad, The Ultimate Catch, Ocho Cinco, Dismissed, I Love That Title, Dismissed.

And Date My Mom.

Now I I I read that, and again, that's just a partial list, because what it shows us is as a culture, we're obsessed with people getting together.

I I saw uh an indication of this last summer.

I have a couple teenage boys, and one night uh last summer there was a whole basement in my house full of kids, probably a lot of church kids.

Some of your kids were probably there.

And they were watching a show called It Takes a Church.

And this show was a Christian version of the dating show where they would contract with a church and they would find like a single person and eligible other single people within the church, and then the church would vote on the on the connection between them.

It was hideous, but I could not look away.

And I want to tell you right now, we will never do that here.

And here's my point, and that is as a society, we're told all the time you have to have somebody to be somebody.

And here's what this this has done is it's led to a culture, and I heard somebody say this, this isn't my line, that basically lives like this look up, hook up, shack up, break up, repeat.

Look up, hook up, shack up, break up, and repeat.

And what happens when when as a single person you say, I have to have somebody, is that you go through life always saying, you know what?

I need somebody, but what you're doing is you're practicing to end marriage in the future.

And so what we need to do as a church is we need to recover this idea that being single is Is honorable.

And here's where we find this biblically.

Again, I don't think this is in Ruth chapter 3 because it doesn't really allude to this, but because it touches on romance, I think it's legitimate to talk about this here.

Ruth 3 · chapter mention

Here's where we see this.

This is 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 32, and following.

1 Corinthians 7:32

And there are a whole section here that talks about being single and how important it is if you can't remain single that you marry and some things like that.

But here's what it says.

I would like you to be free from concern.

An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord's affairs, how he can please the Lord.

But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world, how he can please his wife.

And the interests are divided.

An unmarried woman or a virgin is concerned about the Lord's affairs.

Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit.

But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world, how she can please her husband.

I'm saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but so that you might live in the right way, undivided, with undivided attention to the Lord.

And here's why I say this is honorable, because what this is doing is it's saying, in essence, if you are single, either you've chosen it or it's just the way your life is worked out, and you say, I'm going to give my attention, not to pleasing another human being, but to God, that is an honorable choice and an honorable way to live.

And here's what I want to say, especially to those of you who are in your teens, in your early 20s, maybe even into your 30s.

If you're not good being alone, you won't be good with somebody else.

If you're not good being alone, you won't be good with somebody else.

Because what happens, and you see this all the time, especially with teenage kids, sometimes where they'll be like, I have to date, I have to date, I have to find somebody.

And as soon as they break up with one person, they say, I've got to find somebody new.

And what they're doing is they're saying, it's no good for me to be alone.

I have to be with somebody, but if you're not good alone, you won't be a good boyfriend, a good girlfriend, you won't be a good spouse someday.

Because you're needy, you're dependent on what they say about you rather than on what God says about you.

So singleness is honorable.

Here's a second thing that we see, and that is that courtship is really an evaluation or a preparation.

And I say this because in the text, Boaz says that everyone in the town knows that Ruth is a woman of noble character or a worthy woman.

Or as the New Living Translation translates it in Proverbs, that she's a virtuous and capable woman.

In other words, Boaz had seen enough of Ruth that he knew who she was.

And Ruth had seen enough of Boaz to know who she was.

She had seen his kindness.

She had seen him choose to be for her.

That's what that text says.

When he says, I will do for you, instead of taking from her when he had the opportunity, he didn't take advantage of her sexually.

What he did instead is said, I'm gonna be for you, I'm gonna pray for you.

He did have a job.

And she had seen all of this.

And here's the assumption that some people make, and that is that when I get married, things will be different.

Can I just tell you, as somebody who's worked with couples for a lot of years, rarely do things get better after you say I do.

Whatever problems you have beforehand will probably be bigger, not smaller, after you say I do.

And so what's important here is that we get past what I call the marketing phase.

Do you know what the marketing phase is?

The marketing phase is where you can still portray yourself the way you want to be portrayed.

And what's important is that you get to the point where you have seen somebody at their best and at their worst, where you really know who they are.

And that can't happen sometimes in a compressed schedule where we're trying to just get together with somebody quickly.

Because we need to know who it is that we're marrying, because this will impact us for the rest of our lives.

Even if you get out of the marriage, it will impact you for the rest of your life.

And so let courtship be a period of evaluation and a period of preparation of yourself.

You know, by the way, what marketing is.

Have you ever been out to dinner and you've been near a couple that's talking next to you and they're talking too loud for you to have to eavesdrop, like they're just talking and you can hear it and it's unpleasant.

Have you ever been in that situation where they're talking to each other in a harsh way?

And then you see the waiter or the waitress come up and they're like, hey, how's it?

You're great.

And then the waiter or waitress leaves and they're back to at each other.

That's marketing.

And that's why I say it's important that we understand and get past marketing to reality.

But here's really the big point, and that is marriage is a picture.

Marriage is a picture.

And the reason I say this is because even when Boaz and Ruth married, their marriage was picturing something.

Now, clearly in the Old Testament, their marriage was picturing something greater because their son had a son who had a son who several generations later gave birth to Jesus Christ.

And so the point here of this text is yes, God provides for his people in their desperate situations, in their steps and missteps, Ruth and Boaz and Naomi, but it's also ultimately God does that through his son Jesus Christ.

That yours missteps, my missteps through the cross of Jesus Christ can be provided for because of what Jesus has done.

And all my desperate situations, my most desperate situation, that I'm a person who's sinful and deserves hell, is addressed by Jesus Christ, by his grace, not through what I've done.

And what Boaz and Ruth demonstrate is Ruth's desperate situation is taken care of by Boaz.

But but there's something more here, too, than even that, and certainly that is in many ways the big point.

But I want to just drive this for a moment, this idea of marriage is a picture.

Because I believe that Boaz and Ruth, although they don't have the benefit of the New Testament, are actually living out New Testament principles without even knowing them and showing a pattern or a way that God designed marriage to work.

And that's why I say marriage is a picture.

Let me show you this.

This is Ephesians chapter 5, verse 32.

Ephesians 5:32

This is why I say it's a picture.

This is a profound mystery.

I'm talking about Christ and the church.

Now, just before this, he's been talking about marriage, and he says, says, This is what marriage is.

And he says, but I'm not even talking about marriage, I'm talking about a mystery.

In other words, I want marriages to picture something.

Well, what is it that he wants them to picture?

The relationship between Jesus and the church.

And here's where we see this.

Verse 23.

Now I know what I'm about to say is going to grate some of you wrong, by the way.

And I'm just going to simply read this text and try to tell you what it says.

And the fact that it will grate on some of you wrong or just annoy you tells us something about the culture that we live in that has tried to level all gender distinctions.

To say that men and women never have distinct roles.

Now, again, we're not talking about equality, we're not talking about value, we're talking about roles here.

Here's what the text says, verse 23 of Ephesians 5.

For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of his church, of the church, his body, of which he's the Savior.

Any of you have a little internal reaction?

The head?

What do you mean the man's the head?

Like Christ is the head.

What are you talking about?

That doesn't feel right.

I don't like that.

That's because we've been culturally conditioned to level any gender distinctions in our day and age.

But here's again what this text says.

Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

So this is saying very simply that husbands are called to selfless servant leadership in the home.

And you see this again, that Boaz was willing to live in this way in the Old Testament without any benefit of this text.

But not only that, what we see when we read on is we see that there are some other things.

Now, I know some of you might say, Well, are you saying that women shouldn't lead?

No, not at all.

Are you saying that men shouldn't ever submit to women?

Not at all.

The text says earlier that all people should submit to all people, but there's something unique that it says here, to the husband and to the wife.

And if we do away with all of that uniqueness, then we just say, well, everything's a general command to everybody.

But here the text is actually saying, I want marriage to picture something.

Then he says this, verse 25.

And following, husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Here's this servant hood where he says, I'm gonna do for you, I'm gonna pursue you, to make her holy by cleansing her with washing and water through the word.

There is a spiritual responsibility that is given to the man to set a tone in a relationship for how things are spiritually.

That means if your family doesn't have a passion for the things of God, there's a sense in which that's on the man in the house.

There's a sense, going back to Boaz, where he set the tone for the relationship sexually.

She laid down in the middle of the night at his feet.

Now, you can say that wasn't shady, you can say whatever, but she was in a vulnerable place.

And you know what he does?

He doesn't say, Oh yeah, this is my my night.

What he does is he says, I'm gonna pray for you, and I'm gonna spread my kanaf, my garment over you.

You're gonna come under my protection.

I'm going to set a tone.

And so there's a call here, but then there's also this.

It says, uh, and to prepare for her, verse 27, a radiant church without stain or wrinkle, or without blemish, but holy and blameless.

In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife loves himself.

After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body just as Christ does the church.

So what's that saying?

That the husband or the man in the relationship has a responsibility to protect and to provide for his wife just like for Christ has for the church.

Now again, I realize for some of you you're saying, well, wait a second, wait a second.

Are you saying that the woman shouldn't work?

No, not at all.

Proverbs 31 says that women have worked and contributed, so that's a beautiful thing.

Are you saying the women should never lead?

Not at all.

Good leadership in anything sometimes says, you lead in this, you know more about this.

This is better.

And there is a sense of mutual submission.

What I'm saying is that Boaz, without the benefit of the New Testament, understood what it meant to provide the picture of what marriage is, which is saying, I am going to provide and care for you physically, I'm going to set a spiritual direction, and I'm going to selflessly serve.

And when we as a church can't say that those are unique responsibilities of men, not saying that there's nothing for the woman there, then what we do is we just participate in the leveling of all gender.

And we miss something of the picture that God has.

Now, let me just try to help us understand this, and I'm going to choose probably the easiest of these to do this with, but I think I could do this with all of them.

But but let me just choose this one.

The idea of protection.

So if my wife and I go out for a walk, and while we're walking, a dog that's large and scary approaches us and clearly has male intent, like toward us, you know, it wants to wants to get at us somehow.

Now I have a couple options at that moment, right?

One option is I could say, run.

And I think that would go well for me, because I think I'm faster than my wife.

I could say, you know what, honey, you've been doing CrossFit.

Why don't you take on the dog?

And you know what?

If I did either of those, you would say, you're kind of a slime ball.

And you would be right.

And it doesn't matter what you think of kind of the idea of Ephesians 5, that's just by nature you would say that.

It wouldn't matter if my wife had done the barley shred for 30 days and was like like jacked and able to take on the dog.

If I don't step in between the dog and my wife, you'd say, What's wrong with you?

Because there's something in us that says that's a good and right thing to do.

And here's the the point.

And that is, that's what marriage should be.

That's what Boaz did for Ruth, but more than that, that's what God has done for you and me with Jesus Christ.

Because Jesus took the punishment that was due to me.

He stepped between me and sin on the cross.

And when I believe that, then I come under his kanaf, under his wings, and I can live in a way that I can say, God has worked in the desperate situations, even in my steps and missteps.

And here's where the real joy of this comes.

When you and I get this, then whether we're single, in courtship, whether we're married, whether we're in a happy marriage, an unhappy marriage, whether things are great, whether they're not so great, we start to say, you know what, this isn't ultimate.

What's ultimate is what God has done for me, and now I can enter this and live out a picture that God has given me.

Knowing that He's at work in all things.

Yeah, I don't know how you come here today.

Maybe you come here and you're feeling alone and sad about being alone.

Maybe you're good being alone.

Maybe you're here and you're in high school, college, and and you're just thinking, you know, I just want to find somebody to go out with on Friday night.

Maybe you're in a marriage, maybe your marriage is great, maybe it's not great, maybe you're bored, maybe it's stale.

But wherever you are, when you say, God has been my truest lover.

You know, marriage will always be imperfect.

The best husbands, the best wives will let us down, but God is my truest lover.

He meets my deepest need, then you can enter your romance and singleness and say, I see God in it.

And that's a God who's worthy of worship and praise.

Father, we ask today very simply that you would help each one of us not just to see romance and singleness as detached from you, but but see that there are principles and things we can learn, but even more than that, that it that it is a picture of what you do for us.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.