Ruth 1 | Seeing the Unseen Hand of God: The Power of Providence and Repentance

Well, welcome.

I appreciate you being here.

It's going to be a good Sunday.

It already has, Minister.

It's going to get better because we're going to open up the Word of God together.

And, consider a little book in the Old Testament called The Book of Ruth.

And so I'll give you a little bit of time to get there.

If you brought a Bible with you.

Turn to the book of Ruth that we're in this short for a four week series.

There's four chapters in Luke.

We're going to go through a chapter a week starting today with chapter one.

But before we get into it, let me just ask this question.

Have you ever had those moments

or events or seasons in life that made you ask the question,

God, where are you now?

Nobody. Okay.

Pretty spiritual group we got here.

Okay.

It's likely that some people

have had those moments and seasons and events in life

where they just could not see the quote

unquote, hand of God doing something.

Would you agree that some people have experienced times like that?

Okay.

Would you agree that maybe you have had times like that?

Yes. And so what we're going to look at in the book of Ruth

is what I've titled this series, Seeing the Unseen

Hand of God.

We don't often see God's

hand through the front windshield.

We often see it through the rearview mirror.

It's easier to see it looking backwards

than it is looking forward.

And the reason for that

is this word called providence.

Everybody say providence.

Okay.

This is one of the biggest themes in the book of Ruth.

And the word isn't used in the book at all.

But Providence is seen from start

to finish, and all four chapters.

And I want to help us understand what providence is.

And I want to help us see it in the book of Ruth.

And the goal is that Will will be able

to move through life.

With an eye towards

the good and providential hand of God.

Now that's going to come with an asterisk.

So I'm going to get to in a minute.

But let me just help us understand this idea of providence.

God normally works in one of two ways.

He works miraculously,

and he works providentially.

We all know what miracles are, right?

Yeah, they are

miracles.

When God overrides or suspends

the natural laws that he has established.

And there are times when God chooses us in his sovereignty

to override and overrule the natural laws

that he's put in place miraculously.

And most people would love

and desire the miraculous hand of God to move on our lives, right?

Man, we pray for it.

It would seem as though in the Bible

God was just doing miracle after miracle after miracle.

But let me just help you understand the miraculous hand of God.

Before I talk about the providential hand of God,

though it may seem as though in the Scripture record God was doing miracle

after miracle after miracle, just take the Book of acts as an example.

It covers about 30 years

and in the book of acts, if you don't understand that time frame,

it feels as though on every page there's a miracle.

Because that's just what God was doing over and over and over.

But over a 30 year span in the book of acts, there's about 30 miracles.

And for

those of you who are great mathematicians, that equals

to about one miracle a year.

It's not much.

But when you read the book of acts, it just feels like you get a miracle

and you get a miracle and you get a miracle.

God still moves in this world miraculously,

as he did in biblical times.

But that's not his normal method.

You follow me?

Yeah.

Does anybody else hear that little, buzz or something?

Can one of you investigators figure out what that is

and put an end to it?

So that's the miraculous hand of God.

The other way God moves is the providential hand of God

and the providential hand of God is this.

When God works

supernaturally, naturally, when he works.

I think I got a slide for that fall along with those slides.

When God, it works through natural means supernaturally,

and God takes

the the, our lives, our decisions, our choices, the events

that happen in the natural world and supernaturally works them together.

It's what we read about in acts 828.

The Bible says this, for we know

that God works all things together.

I think I have this slide to Romans 828. Pull it up.

We know that for those who what

love God, all things work together for good,

for those who are called according to his purpose.

This is the providential hand of God,

that through the natural world God works supernaturally,

orchestrating all things.

The caveat to God's providential hand of God

orchestrating all things for the good of those who love him.

Is that they

love him.

This doesn't say that God,

God's providential hand, works all things together for good, for everybody.

It doesn't say that.

It doesn't say that.

Everybody just gets to enjoy the providential

hand of God, working all things together in their lives for good.

It doesn't say that.

Instead, God does that, but he does that for a specific group of people.

Who are they? Those who? What?

Those who love him.

For those who love God

and are called according to his purpose.

God providentially works things together for good.

Do you follow that? Yes. And so?

So the caveat to God's providence working all these things together

for our good is that we love God.

Now, the question then is, how do I know that I love God?

It doesn't have to do with feeling.

It doesn't even have to do with confession, necessarily.

Jesus will tell us, do you want to know how you know you love God? Yes.

For the two of you who said yes, I want you to pay attention.

John 1415.

Look at Jesus's words.

If you love me, you will.

What do you like?

Conversions.

So it becomes very easy right up front

to discern for ourselves.

Am I living a life of love towards God?

If I keep his commandments, I know that I am.

It doesn't mean perfection.

It means a lifestyle of obedience with quick repentance.

When I'm not.

That's love for God.

And if I love God and I'm walking in obedience,

God providentially works

all things together for my good.

And what that means for me as a Christ follower,

living in repentance and obedience,

that means for me that I know

that life is always working in my favor.

That's what it means.

Do you know what type of peace

and security

and purpose and power it gives me?

When I realize that life is working in my favor?

That's what the God promises us.

Positive momentum.

He promises us positive momentum

in this very passage and this very idea.

His providence is working all things together for my good

because I love him and I'm living in repentance and obedience.

And I know that even though I don't see it through the front windshield,

I know because of second

Corinthians five seven, I walk by faith, not by sight.

And so I know

that in obedience and repentance, God is working this together for him.

I get it's life is always in my favor,

even when it doesn't seem like it is.

You follow so far?

Yeah. Listen.

That's providence

and God yields it and levels

it and blesses those who walk in obedience, who love him.

It's.

It's been said that the hand of God is most powerful

when it seems most hidden.

The hand of God is most powerful

when it seems most hidden.

And when you understand the providence of God and walk in repentance

and obedience, you know that his hand is in your favor and.

And it's powerful to know that

when you can't see that.

Then I'm not shaken.

The Book of Ruth

is a beautiful picture of the providence of God.

It's also a beautiful foreshadowing of Jesus and what he will

accomplish on the earth in his life, his death, and his resurrection.

Understand the book of Ruth

is about a man from Bethlehem.

If you ever heard a story about a baby from Bethlehem. Yes.

Okay. The book of Ruth is the story.

It's the historical account about a man from Bethlehem

who pays the dowry price.

The redemption price for a Gentile bride.

Ruth is not a Jew.

She's a Jewish from the land of Moab.

And so this man from Bethlehem pays the price for a Gentile bride.

It's the story of Christ paying the price

for the church.

It's all through Scripture.

It's all through the book of Ruth.

The book of Ruth opens with choices.

And choices are both precious and precarious.

It is a precious,

blessing to

to have the opportunity to make choices.

It's also a precarious thing because fill in the blank.

What happens if I make the

wrong choice?

Some people get paralyzed

with the freedom of choices because they're paralyzed.

What if I made the wrong choice?

Like I'm at this crossroads.

I could go, like, how do I know what's right? What do I do?

Someone please tell me.

And that's one reason we love people in our lives.

To tell us what to do.

Because it absolves us of responsibility for our decisions.

We can always blame them,

right?

Yeah.

And so this whole idea of choices is both.

It is a precious thing to have the liberty and the freedom

and the authority to make choices.

It's also precarious

because what happens

if it's the wrong choice?

Have you ever been there?

And if you had a choice to make and just been paralyzed, I don't know what to do.

Like, well, what if it's the wrong one?

I don't want to be the wrong one. Right? Anybody?

Okay.

Here's the great thing about God's providence.

If I'm walking in obedience and repentant.

I know that God is working

all my life for good.

So even a wrong choice is a good choice.

Not because it's the right choice,

but because of God's providence in the choice.

Do you follow that? Yes.

I can't say it again, so I don't know exactly what I said, but it felt right.

It sounded right.

It sounded right.

It was a belief track and.

And so there's so much freedom

and security in the providential hand of God

the Father. Thank you.

I'm asking for wisdom.

I'm making the wisest choice I know how to make.

And I'm confident

I'm going to stay in repentance and obedience,

that you're going to work this together

for good.

I'm stressed.

Right, right

here.

I could whatever.

And so

if he got something so far that you can take with you this week.

Yes, yes.

Okay. So we haven't even gotten to verse one yet.

So let's get into verse one.

So let's go that we got 22 verses to get through.

That was just the Welcome to Church part.

Verse one.

In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land,

and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn to the country of Moab,

he and his wife and his two sons.

Listen.

And this is just I'm going to push pause on a message from.

And I'm just going to I need to say this.

I see a lot of you here without one of these.

Okay.

So this is your fair warning.

Like, bring one of these with you.

Okay, so here's my concern.

You're going to listen really, really, really well.

And I appreciate that.

But we know that within 72 hours you're going to forget 90% of what I say.

That's just how it's going to go.

And so you get one of these with you and you start taking notes in it

and writing stuff down, so you remember it.

You got it.

This is good.

And so, so this is this is this is what we're in.

So let's bring them let's let's take some notes.

That's right in the margins.

That first verse is is pregnant with meaning and implication.

In the days when the judges ruled.

If any of you were here during our judges studies,

went through the whole book of judges. You remember that study?

If you weren't here for that.

Go back to our website. Our app.

Go through that judges series.

It's a profoundly dark time in ancient Israel's history,

one of the darkest moments in ancient Israel's history.

It was horrible.

Matter of fact, at the end of, of the book of judges, in chapter

21, verse 25, it says, in those days

there was no king in Israel.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

That is a horrible place for any person in any society to be.

Because what it means is complete relative.

Moral relativism, where personal

freedom overrides moral good.

This sounds like our culture today.

The prevalence and predominance of moral relativism,

where my personal freedom overrides what is morally good.

That was the time of judges.

It feels like it's our day to where there's no restraint.

There's a rejection of civil authority.

Abject relativism.

And it's as if the more

the people did what they pleased, the less pleased.

They were with what they did.

And that, my dear friends,

is the results and ramifications of relativism.

The more I do what I pleased, the less pleased I am with what I do.

That's the danger of freedom.

Oftentimes, the more

freedom I have, the more constraint I'm under

because I become a slave to my own debauchery.

Because I'm free to make every bad decision I want.

And that was the time of the judges.

It's a time where in.

And the time of judges.

There was a famine in the land.

There's a lot of reasons why

famine hit the ancient world.

Sometimes it was just a matter of weather, and there would be these huge

hot winds that would blow through and just scorched the crops.

Sometimes it was the result of, of, of just no rainfall.

And we did go through those seasonal dry spells.

Just as a natural,

the natural stream of things, sometimes it was a result of war.

An invading armies would come in and cut off water supplies.

Sometimes they would just burn fields and produce.

And there were there's a lot of reasons for famine, but this famine was unique.

This famine

was because of the judgment of God,

because of his people's disobedience.

I think I can prove it to you.

This famine

I'm going to read for you Deuteronomy chapter 11, verses ten through 15.

Deuteronomy 11 · chapter mention

This is God talking to his people.

They've just left

Egypt under the leadership of Moses, and they're going into the Promised Land.

And this is God's word to them.

Look at what God said for the land that you are entering.

The Promised Land you take possession

of is not like the land of Egypt from which you've come,

where you sold your seed and irrigated it like a garden of vegetables.

You're saying,

listen, you're going into a land that's not like where you came from.

Egypt was super fertile.

Had the Nile River, they divert water from the Nile River.

The Nile River never ran out of water.

They drew all kinds of stuff like it was easy gardening.

He said the land you're going into is not like that.

The land you're going into,

over to possess is a land of hills, and valleys,

which drains water by the rain from heaven.

A land that the Lord your God cares for.

He said the land you're going into is not is not served by rivers and streams.

It's served by the hand of God.

And it drinks up water as God opens the heavens and sends rain.

So, so, so.

And he did that so that his people would forever

be reliant upon the hand of God

and realize where their sustenance

came from.

For the eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it.

From the beginning of the year to the end of the year, God's watching.

Verse 13.

And if you will indeed obey my commands, that I command you today

to love the Lord your God, and serve him with all your heart and your soul.

If you if you agree

to love me and obey

me, just what we talked about in Providence, right?

If you could love and serve me, that's what God says.

He will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain

and the latter rain that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil.

And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock,

and you shall eat and be full.

He's saying, listen, here's my covenant with you.

This is my covenant, a promise that I will never break.

That if you love me and obey me,

I will send rain on your land, and you will have abundance.

We know there in a time of famine, and we know it's during the time of judges.

This famine is a result of the judgment of God, because the time of the judges

was complete rebellion against God by his people.

Do you follow?

And so God says,

I know you want my providential hand to work this together for your good.

You're in disobedience right now.

There's another law at work.

So there's a famine in this land.

And the man from Bethlehem

in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab.

He and his wife and his two sons,

he went to sojourn.

That tells us he wasn't planning on staying in Moab.

He was going in his mind.

He was going for a short time because things are bad.

I got to solve this myself.

So I'm going to

look at some greener pastures and I'm going to go to the greener pastures.

And that was this idea that he was just going there

for a short time to sojourn for a little while.

So he goes to the land of Moab.

What's significant about Moab?

Well, I'm glad you asked.

The land of Moab is down and kind of present day Jordan.

It's outside of the Promised Land.

And the land of Moab was a result of this.

This sexual relationship between lot and yet this his daughter.

Yeah.

Read the book of Genesis.

There's this time when Abraham rescues his nephew lot from Sodom and Gomorrah,

and God destroys those cities.

Lot's wife is turned to a pillar.

It's all in the Bible. It's. It's weird story.

But then lot's daughters, his two daughters are sitting there

with their dad in his cave.

Like we got no men to perpetuate our family.

And so,

they get their dad drunk

on two subsequent nights, and they each sleep with him.

And the one daughter son from this incestuous

encounter is a boy named.

She names Moab.

And that's where the Moabites came from.

The other one's named Ammon, which is the ammonites.

And both these groups were detestable.

And God said, cut yourself off from them.

Don't mix with them.

Don't intermarry with them. Don't live near them.

Cut yourself off from the Moabites in Moab.

So, so strong

was a statement against them by God in Psalm

60, verse eight and Psalm 108

nine it says of Moab, Moab is God's wash basin.

It's just dirty pot.

And so this man of God

leaves Bethlehem, which is the house of bread,

looking for greener pastures,

and goes to a place of cursing and a place of sin.

He didn't plan to be there long.

He stayed there.

Well over a decade and it cost him his life.

Here's what sin does.

Sin takes us places we don't want to go, keeps us longer.

We don't want to stay and cost us more than we want to pay.

It's the land of Moab, and when we look for greener pastures,

and it takes us from where God has placed us

to the land of Moab, it will be costly, not just on us,

but on those who are coming after us, our families and our children.

He didn't want to stay there long.

He stayed there for the rest of his life, and so did his sons.

The land of Moab.

He and his wife, she says in

verse two, that's one verse.

You ready?

Verse two.

The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi.

And the names of his two sons were Mahlon and children.

They were Ephrathah from Bethlehem in Judah.

They went into the country of Moab and remained there.

Let me just stop at verse two.

His name is Elimelech.

That literally means God is my king.

Though he claim the name of God, he didn't live like it.

Because if God is your king, you're going to trust him

even in the difficulty and remain faithful to your king even when it's hard.

He says, yes,

I will say that God is my King, but I will not trust him in the difficulty.

I'm going to solve it myself.

I'm going to go to greener pastures.

He looked at Moab.

He saw where he was, and he thought, Lord, this is not where I want to be.

You're not doing things like, I want you to do it.

He looks over Moab, which was at 3500ft,

and got 16in of rain a year, truly greener pastures.

And he thought, God,

if you're not going to do that for me here, I'm going to move myself there.

Though I claim God is my king, I'm not going to live like it

because I'm going to do it.

What I want to do, the way I want to do it,

when I want to do it where I want to do it.

Do you understand? Yes.

When his sons were Mahlon

and chilling names in the Bible were important,

Mahlon literally means sickly kid

and chill out means crybaby.

It's just what he named his kids.

I don't know why.

And so you got this family

that's just in shambles right now.

They were ephrathah.

It's from Bethlehem in Judea. That's why this is important.

If you were to read, Micah five two.

Micah five two is a great prophecy

of Scripture, and Micah five two says this.

But you, O Bethlehem, Ephrathah

they were from

they were Ephrathah from Bethlehem, they were from Bethlehem.

The fact that here's why that's important.

But you, O Bethlehem, Ephrathah, who are too little to

to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me, one who is to be

the ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is of old, of ancient days.

It's a prophecy that

Jesus is going to come from the people from Bethlehem.

Ephrathah, which was a tiny little, wasn't even dot on the map

hundreds of years before Jesus was ever born,

Micah and Micah five two prophesies that out of a group of people

from Bethlehem, Ephrathah will come the Messiah.

Fast forward to Ruth.

This family is from Bethlehem, Ephrathah

living in disobedience and sin in Moab.

But God's providential hand is never

without action.

They went to the country of Moab and remained there.

Verse three.

But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons.

These took Moabite wives.

The name of the one was Orpah, the name of the others, Ruth.

They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon

and children died, so that the woman was left without her two sons

and her husband.

The compromise of Elimelech cost him his life.

The compromise of Elimelech cost

his sons their lives, their own sin.

Being responsible for their own sin and marrying Moabite women

cost them their lives.

Unrepentant sin will cost us everything.

This is what sin does.

The devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy.

But I've come that you might have life in its fullness,

in repentance

and obedience.

God's providential hand working for

not against.

You got enough there.

That's the first five verses

where in the first five verses is God

ever mentioned?

He's not.

Just pay attention to this.

I claim the name of God.

I'm supposed to be his.

I don't like what he's doing.

I leave him

and go to a place I'm not supposed to be.

A place of sin

without one thought of God.

Tragedy hits

difficulty and pain.

Verse six.

Then she, Naomi, arose with her

daughters in law to return from the country of Moab.

For she had heard that the fields of Moab, in the fields above,

that the Lord had visited his people and given them food.

In the first five verses decades, no mention of God,

no spiritual awareness,

no spiritual sensitivity.

And now Naomi's heart starts

to turn back to the God she left.

And it wasn't through blessing,

and it wasn't through prosperity.

It was through affliction.

Because affliction does two things.

One of the things affliction does is affliction gets our attention.

That's the beauty of affliction.

And that's oftentimes the purpose of it is to get our attention.

And doesn't this happen

when everything is up and to the right and we don't have to live,

look for greener pastures because we're living in greener pastures

and we go on with our spiritual sensitivity is dulled

because God's been so good and I'm just living in this.

He's been, you know, and I start to neglect him and deny him.

And I use the blessings he's given me to allow me reasons to not

sacrifice and give and worship and repent.

And we live in that blessing so long we find ourselves all somewhere in Moab.

And so he says, look,

if you're not going to give me your attention

because of my blessing and my favor on life,

then I will send affliction to get your attention.

And some of you in this place, some of us in this place,

are going through times of affliction, and our cry is God moved miraculously?

And God says, that's not how I normally do things.

And if I move miraculously, you would not give me your prolonged attention.

And because I want your prolonged attention,

I will allow great affliction to get your attention.

Amen.

You understand what's.

And so now, through affliction,

he has got her attention.

She hears of what God has done.

Oftentimes when we look

and seek, the bigger and the better.

We don't seek God first and

yeah, yeah.

And in verse six

she hears that the Lord had visited his people.

That's capital L already all capitals.

That's the covenant name of God.

God made a covenant with his people

that when you love me and obey me, I will take care of you.

So now this covenant name is used again, because it's assigned to us

that the people God's people are turning back to him,

and he's faithful to his promises, faithful to his covenant.

You come back to me,

am I providential hand will return for you, not against you. No.

Verse seven.

So she set out from the place where she was with her two

daughters in law, and they went on the way

to return to the land of Judah.

I said, affliction does two things.

Here's what they do.

Affliction gets our attention, and affliction changes our direction.

Yeah,

it gets our attention, but it doesn't do any good thing

for God to get our attention, to change our direction.

So that's the second step of what affliction does.

It gets our attention.

So a change our direction. Notice what the Bible says.

They went on the way to return to the land of Judah.

They had to turn their back on God's promise and walk away

and then in repentance, they turn back and walk back.

Repentance is returning. That's all it is.

No matter how far you and I have walked away

from God, repentance is a one step process.

Just turn back.

You understand?

It's not about proximity, it's about direction.

So return to this covenant God who has made promises,

who will fulfill his promises.

And if you have walked away, repent and turn back.

Because then you know that all things, even your sin of your past

and repentance, God works now together for your good.

Isn't that amazing?

It's amazing.

But the sin of my past, without repentance, it's all to my demise

and destruction.

But the moment I return, I just turn to one step.

Now God's providence.

Your hand says, Oh God, now

for your favor.

Why would anybody choose

to not give themselves to Christ?

Do they return?

Oh, you know, I'm going to share

this verse with the Psalm one 1916 I think I have this one.

So pull up some one.

1867 look, look, look at this, this late, this again before I was afflicted,

I went astray.

But now I keep your word.

How many of us could claim that

for ourselves, for

God, before you allow

such great affliction and pain?

I walked away from you.

But now.

I get it,

yeah.

The pain

that you've allowed in my life because of the precious

and precarious choices I've made.

Like I walked away from you

in my freedom.

And so you've allowed affliction.

Before I was afflicted I went astray.

But now

you've got my yellow.

You I'm changing my direction.

And yeah, look at verse eight.

But Naomi said to her two daughters in law,

go return each of you in her mother's house.

May the Lord be with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.

The Lord grant you.

Grant that you may find rest.

This is verse nine.

Find rest, each of you in the house of her husband.

Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept.

And they said to her, no, we will return with you to your people.

But Naomi said, turn back, my daughters.

Why will you go with me?

Have I yet sons in my womb, that they may become your husbands?

Turn back, my daughters.

Go your way, for I'm too old to have a husband, if I should say I have hope.

Even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons,

would you therefore wait till their were grown?

Would you therefore restrain from marriage?

No, my daughters, for is exceedingly bitter to me.

For your sake, that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.

It lifted up their voices and wept again.

And Aubert kissed her mother in law, and Ruth clung to her.

I want you to notice a couple of things.

Verse nine, she said, I want you to go back to your people, your Moabite women.

We're in the land of Moab.

I'm going to go back to my God. I ran away from him.

I'm going to return.

You stay here with your people,

she says, and I want you to find rest in the house of your husband.

Let me just make this statement about marriage.

The purpose of marriage.

Is to find rest

and comfort and ease in each other.

All right.

And that's only possible if that marriage

with the two people, man and woman, are in Christ together.

Apart from Christ, marriage

is anything other than rest and comfort and ease.

It's difficult and destructive and hurtful.

Once you understand that about marriage,

it's it's designed by God between a man and a woman to put you

to be a place of peace and comfort and ease and strength

in Christ.

She says, even if I had a husband now need a British summer.

You're going to wait 18, 20 years to get married, because that was the custom.

If a woman was married to and her husband died, then the next up in line, brother

would, would, help fulfill the family line and give her a baby.

And all this stuff have is a crazy custom.

If you got, you know, siblings, make sure they marry well.

That's.

And she's like.

Like, this isn't going to play out for us.

Go back home and notice what she says.

The hand of the Lord has gone out against me.

This is indication that she felt incredible

responsibility for the course of her family's life.

She she was buried and we don't know.

But it's likely, given the text, it's likely that she was one of those

who nagged and coerced

and convinced her husband to move out of the place.

He knew he should have been,

and he gave in

rather than standing strong and say, no, this is the call of God.

This is what obedience is giving into this wife that night

and coerced him to move somewhere they shouldn't be.

And she's looking back over that decision,

and she realized it is the Lord's hand who has turned against me.

And now my husband and my two sons are dead.

She overrode, and she subverted

the God ordained authority in the marriage and the home,

and he let her do it.

And now there's

I mean, you understand, right?

Just remorse.

They lift up their voice and they wept.

Verse 15

and she said, see, your sister in law has gone back.

Orphan went back to her people under her God's return.

After your sister in law.

But Ruth said, this is one of the most beautiful things

that have ever been penned in the history of the world.

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.

Your people shall be my people and your God, my God,

where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.

May the Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts me from you.

And when Naomi saw

that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.

One of the most beautiful passages

ever been penned by human and where you go, I will go.

Where you lodge. I will lodge.

Your people will be my people.

And here it is.

Your God will be my God.

Conversion.

She is making her conversion from the God of the Moabites.

She Moche who part of the gods

she masters worship was child sacrifice.

It was horrific, completely pagan culture.

And now there's a conversion to the God of Israel, the one true God.

Your God will be my God.

I'm converting

where you die, I will die, and there I'll be buried.

And I'm committing.

I'm converting and I'm committing.

I want you to notice something

that it wasn't until Naomi's repentance

and return

that Ruth was converted.

Ruth met Naomi and the joy of marriage

in the greener pastures, in prosperity and goodness.

None of the greener pastures and prosperity converted.

Ruth.

It was Naomi's repentance

in the midst of tragedy that she chose to trust God

as a person of God in difficulty.

That caused her daughter in law's conversion.

Listen, listen.

It is not likely that God's

blessing on your life will cause your huddle to turn to Christ.

It's your repentance that will get dinner, stand.

And we have to consider carefully.

We have to consider carefully

that if people follow me, will they find Jesus?

I was thinking about this this week,

and I thought,

do the trappings of this world that God has blessed us

with make people want our lives, or make people want Jesus?

His life?

Let me, let me let me put it

in this terms for you.

Does all the stuff I post

make people desire my life,

or make people desire the life of Christ?

Just think about it for a minute.

This has become such an idol,

an addiction in our life that when we use it

to say, hey, look at this great thing that I get to do right now.

Look at this great experience that I have.

Look at this vacation. Look at this.

Look how great my kids are. Don't you wish your kids are like my kids?

Like all that is designed to make you want my life.

Not to make you want the life of Christ.

You can argue with me about it.

So it wasn't all the stuff that makes

you want my life that will lead people to Christ.

It was her repentance

and her return to obedience and love of the father that converted

those in her huddle.

Do you hear what I'm saying?

Church?

Yes. You're.

Okay, I I'm almost done.

I'm a I'm. Verse 19.

So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem.

When they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them.

And the woman said, is this Naomi?

That word stirred is important.

It means excited.

This little town of Bethlehem was a little tiny.

It wasn't even really a dot on the map.

There was nothing, had no commerce, had no Starbucks.

They talked about putting one in, but it wasn't done yet like it was nothing.

They had no businesses like everybody from

the ranchos knew who was in the ranchos.

They were getting a little bit of pressure from Riverstone,

maybe like, here's some outsiders, but we know who's who, right?

I and that was the feeling of this little Bethlehem.

And they knew that this woman, Naomi left.

They knew she left with her husband.

They knew she left with their two sons.

They knew she left what was the obedient place for her to be for disobedience.

And they knew it. And they knew that her husband died.

They knew her sons had died.

And she comes back.

Listen, they were excited when she came back.

They didn't treat her with contempt.

They didn't treat her with shame.

They didn't treat her with judgment.

They weren't the ones like, ha, you got what you deserve.

You should have never left.

Like they weren't church people, but

they were excited.

We got to be here.

Here's here's what I'm saying.

I want you to see that it's important

how people who never left welcome back.

Those who have.

To understand.

Yeah, it's really important

for all you good, righteous church people.

How you welcome back

all you good, righteous church people who never left.

It's real important how you welcome back.

Those of us who have.

They're excited.

She said to them, don't call me name.

It means pleasant. Call me Mara.

For the Lord has dealt bitter very bitterly with me.

I went away full and Lord has brought me back empty.

Why call me Naomi pleasant, when the Lord has testified

against me, and the Almighty has brought calamity on me?

I'm so amazed by this woman, Naomi, because she sees the hand of God

has gone out against her in tragedy and difficulty and loss and pain.

And rather than running further away from him, she turns around

and runs towards him, towards the hand that hurt her.

Wow. Towards the hand that have afflicted

because she knew his heart.

That if she would just return, that hand that had gone out

against would become the hand that turned for

beautiful,

beautiful.

Listen.

There's a bigger story behind your pain.

Yes. She didn't know it at the time.

You don't realize it at this time.

But there's a bigger story behind your pain.

And when we turn back and repent,

God in his providence, miraculously,

in his providence, works even that together

for good.

Yeah.

And so we walk by faith,

not by what we see.

And from verse 22 of chapter one on,

we see at play the unseen hand of God.

Let me just wrap up with verse 22.

So, Naomi, return, and Ruth the Moabite, the outsider,

the daughter in law with her who returned from the country of Moab.

And they came to Bethlehem. And here it is

at the

beginning of the barley harvest, the providential hand of God.

Now in repentance they've repented.

And in that repentance

they arrive at the exact time of the barnea,

the providence of God, to get them there at the barley harvest,

to lead them to a barley field,

to lead them to the owner of a barley field named Boaz,

to lead her to the owner of the barley

field named Boaz to become his wife,

to lead her to the owner of the barley field,

named Boaz, to become his wife and be her redeemer.

That put a broken foreigner

in the lineage of Jesus the Christ.

Providence.

And at this moment her life

completely changed.

It is Romans 828 for we know we don't have to hope.

We know that for those who what

love God, repent,

walk in obedience, all God works all things together for good

for those who are called according to his purpose.

One last thing.

The providence of God.

I want this to ring in your ears, in your mind.

It means that your story isn't over.

It's just unfolding that.

But it begins with repentance.

Yeah.

Without repentance, your story might be over.

But then repentance is just unfolding.

Amen.

And God's beautiful hand of providence

works even the manure of your past

to be the fertilizer for your future.

And it is wonderful

to fall into the hands of a providential God.

And repent.

And so, dear friends, I invite you to pray.

Father.

Thank you.

Thank you are a good God. Good God,

I thank you for your miracle, certainly.

But I thank you even more so for your providence,

because your providence is without fail, and it is constant,

and you are so good

and so loving that you've promised us

that you will work all things, even the difficult,

the even the pain, even through our sin, even the tragedy.

All things together.

For the good of us who love you,

who are called according to your purpose.

And so, father, in this moment

hear our hearts

and respond

to our repentance and commitment.

Friends, I invite you in this moment.

If you know and are realizing in this moment

that there are surely some things

that you have walked away from the love of the father

and the way of the father into Moab, as it were,

you're in a place you shouldn't be.

You're in a place you shouldn't be.

You're doing things you shouldn't.

You have walked away.

Repent.

Repent. And I invite you in this moment.

Just say, father, I confess that I have walked away from.

I am in a place I shouldn't be.

I am in Moab.

And I realize as much as I want you

to turn things around, they won't until I turn around.

And so today

I turn around

and I repent.

I agree with you about sin and my sin,

and I'm choosing to leave it behind.

I'm choosing to go a different way.

I'm choosing to go the opposite way of my sin, of my addiction,

of my habit, of my pain.

I'm choosing to go a different way.

And in my repentance.

Oh providential God, give me all that

your grace allows.

That in my repentance

my hurdle will see how good you are and trust you with their lives.

As I'm trusting you with mine.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Oh, God.

Make it so.

Father,

I thank you for the promises of your word.

You are so good. So.

We love you.

Help us to love you more.

Jesus.

In your name I pray these things.

Amen. Amen, Amen.

Listen. Yeah. You okay?

Yeah.

Ruth is a form book.

Here's my desire for you.

Let's this week, let's together let's read chapter one again with new eyes.

Okay.

And then let's read chapter two and get ready for next week.

Can we do that? We agree. Let's do that.

And now listen, if you know somebody doesn't have a church home,

they're in your huddle,

your people close to you invite them.

This is a great book to to be invited into.

So you invite them next week.

You got it.

Yeah. Okay.

Hey, I love you.

This would be good for us to go through together.

God is doing good things.

Don't doubt that.

Or God's doing good things right.

Let's sing together.