A New Chapter Begins

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Good morning, church.

Amen.

Take your Bibles and turn to Ruth.

Amanda, that was a great job.

I was standing over there going, I know, I know the book.

I know the book.

It's a good one.

Ruth chapter one.

Before I forget to do this, I want to ask if Amanda and David, if you're still in the room, could you lift your hand?

Granthams.

Amanda right here.

Y'all, we need to be praying for them.

Lil Wills is having his ASD closure procedure.

And they're hoping to be able to do that, to go in.

And if uh, and that's what we're gonna pray for Wednesday, that they'll be able to do that for him.

If they don't, they'll have to schedule uh an emergency, tell me the right word, open heart surgery.

And you see that little baby.

So there's a lot on them right now, and I want you to join me.

We'll continue, but just join me in prayer right now as a church family.

Father, we love you.

We are thankful for your goodness, God, for your grace, for your sovereign hand, for your control.

And we're calling on all of that as well as your mercy, Lord.

We ask that this Wednesday, God, at 5 30 in the morning, that doctors will be able to see, and God, that they will be able to use these instruments on little wheels.

And God, I pray that this closure, this ASD procedure would do the work that they need to see.

And God, we pray that you would begin a work of healing.

I pray it's already beginning.

And God, that you would close these holes in his heart and help him to be able to live and function perfectly, Lord.

That uh everything moving forward would just be a testimony of your goodness and grace.

Be with Amanda and David.

And Lord, we as church family wrap our arms around them now and let them know they're loved, and let them know more than us they're loved by a sovereign God who's in control.

We ask these things under your mighty and precious name.

All the church, can we say amen?

Amen.

We agree, amen.

We'll be praying, and please continue praying, church.

Just a couple other things I want to uh share this morning.

There is a certain person in the crowd, Mr.

Darren Parsons, who's having a 60th birthday today.

I missed it a few weeks ago, but I'm not gonna miss it totally.

Richard had a 50th birthday, Richard self.

He told me not to say anything, but that's okay.

That's okay.

Uh, when you stand up here, you can say it.

One more thing, um, just a reminder.

We are continuing, and this is the last week.

If you have a nomination for the office of deacon for the church at Chelsea West, or please email me uhwrite at the church at cw.com, and we'll be um moving along in that process come December.

So please note those things.

All right, now into the Bible, Ruth chapter one.

Have you ever written something?

A letter, or you've started an email, a text, even a post, and as you were writing, you stopped yourself.

You said, Oh, maybe not, or you checked it with somebody, you stopped, you deleted, you started over.

Some of you, you've had that angry text many, many times.

And you've deleted and deleted and went back and deleted, and you thought, man, I just need to start over.

You realize what you'd written wasn't quite right.

It needed rewritten.

Our lives can feel like that a lot.

You ever needed a rewrite?

You ever felt like the next page can't be like the last page?

The next chapter can't be like this last chapter?

For some of you, you've said that this year.

You said the chapter of 2025 has got to be in the books, Pastor.

This one's got to be done.

And you've thought about that, and maybe it's just a few lines, maybe it's a paragraph.

Maybe this month has been the paragraph of your life, and it could have been a bad decision or a chapter that we didn't think would go the way we thought it would go.

And we love to just hit backspace.

Well, I've got good news.

God never wastes a rough draft.

He's continually writing and rewriting, and in God's hands, I want you to know this.

Stories are rewritten.

They're rewritten all the time.

The book of Ruth is a story about a rewritten story.

Would you pray with me over it?

Father, we pray as we jump into this book about a Moabite woman, a woman that seems like would be on the lowest of the low.

Lord, that we today have a book of the Bible over her life.

God, I pray that you would uh inundate us with the chapters and pages of this book and help us to see the story of redemption that runs through it.

And God, not just see it for Ruth, but see it for us.

And God, what we need.

So I pray that you would feed us everything we need this morning.

And we thank you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I'll say this so I don't forget if you didn't get your Lord's Supper, your communion, please make sure there are tables set up in the back.

We will be partaking of that as the message closes.

As we open up, we see point number one this morning, a time of desperate circumstances.

Look at Ruth chapter 1, 1 through 5.

Ruth 1 · chapter mention

It says, Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land.

And a certain man of Bethlehem, Judah, went to dwell in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.

The name of the man was Elimelech, the name of his wife was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Malan and Chilean, Ephrathites of Bethlehem, Judah.

And they went to the country of Moab and remained there.

Then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died.

And she was left, and her two sons.

Now they took wives of the women of Moab.

The name of one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth.

And they dwelt there about ten years, then both Malan and Chilean also died.

So the woman survived her two sons and her husband.

Alright?

In five verses, we see a ten-year nightmare unfold.

And they say this type of writing uses a literary device, a style, it's called like a staccato, it's unemotional, it's tersive, it's um unresponsive, and there's no real details.

It sounds like this.

And Elimelech died.

Sons married Moabite wives, and then these sons, Malon and Chilean, died.

It is choppy, it is unemotive, and it's a lot of desperation in ten years that happens in five verses.

To understand some of the context, you have to go back to Judges, the book right before, the very last verse.

It sets us up.

It says, in those days there was no king, and everyone did that which was right in his own eyes.

Desperate circumstances define Judges 21, 25.

And letter A, it leads us into what it was.

It was a frantic time.

It's a frantic time.

Our human flesh believes in itself that it can self-govern.

We have been deluded to this lie of ourselves for years and years and years.

We struggle with every type of authority, especially if you're like me.

There are some people here.

I know there's a few in every crowd that like a little bit of authority and like to follow rules, but I bet they still break some.

And they stick their head up and say, Well, it's okay, well, I was right to break the one I broke.

We don't like things like speed limits.

We don't like things like late fees with library books.

We don't like things like tax season.

If anyone says, I like tax season, well, then I don't know, we need to sit together because I'm just not as godly.

But the epitome, God gave us 17 years with youth ministry, the epitome of anarchy, the epitome of self-governance gone wrong.

Have you ever played a game of dodgeball with teenagers?

All the rules are out the window.

And there is still some story, some myth, some fable of a dusty, musty, dome-shaped building in Connorsville, Indiana, where I, the youth pastor, who these young children didn't realize, still had what I possessed in my right arm was the power to still throw an 80 mile an hour fastball.

And we got in the dusty, musty, dome-shaped building, and we began to play dodgeball.

It was the story of legends.

I grabbed that eight and a half diameter rubber-coated ball, and there across from me stood the most arrogant senior high boy I'd ever met in my life.

And his head looked like a target, and I could not wait.

And I hurled that ball with all the ferocity and intensity in my soul.

And I'm telling you, church, I wish every one of you could have been there when I threw it, it went flying through the air.

It hit his face, and the ball burst on his face, and it wrapped around his head, and everyone stood there amazed.

You can listen, you can clap.

You can go ahead and clap.

Yes, not too much, but a little bit is appropriate.

But those little heathen cheats, you can hit them over and over again, and you see the ball bounce and go misdirected.

It didn't hit me.

I mean self-governing liars.

If nobody saw it, then they were never out.

Never.

I'm telling you, go do a game of kickball with your kids this afternoon.

You'll hit them in the head.

Watch their head go like this.

And go, nothing hit me.

That didn't happen.

They will lie and cheat based on whoever is looking.

This is anarchy.

Cheats and liars.

You're in here.

You're in here.

I see some of you.

That's silly.

But Israel was self-governing, judging, and judges end in chaos, and Ruth begins in crisis.

When the world is left to self-governance, you have chaos and crisis.

It wasn't just a frantic time, though.

It wasn't just every man doing that which was right in his own eyes.

It was every man doing that which was right in his own eyes and a lack of food.

Add that to the picture.

2020, people can't get toilet paper, you know?

And the world is an upheaval.

Imagine no food, right?

A frantic time mixed with a famine time.

So we're gonna give a limelech a bad rap, but I want to give a little background there so it eases the pain, right?

A Limelech, this is the situation.

It's famine.

They were afraid of starvation.

They were planting and watering, but no food.

Right?

There was no food.

And sometimes, church, the Bible says, whom God loves, he chastens.

Sometimes there is a lean lesson to be had going through leanness, God is teaching.

But let's look at what Elimelech did.

Elimelech transplants the family.

He leaves Bethlehem during this time of famine.

It's a relocation, and that meant abandoning Bethlehem.

Bethlehem is known as God's bread, the place of God's house.

Because there's no prosperity, he leaves.

I want to tell you a truth that you've heard your whole life.

The grass is not greener on the other side.

The grass is greener where it's watered.

Stephen Yoes, a pastor in Texas, said the grass is greener where there's fertilizer.

That means you go through some stuff.

He says, better the dysfunction that you know than the dysfunction that you don't know.

Y'all with me?

The grass isn't greener somewhere else.

The grass is greener where it's watered.

And so we see this situation.

Relocation for them meant accepting paganism.

In Israel, they were still functioning as a place that looked to Yahweh, to the Lord God.

But relocation for them here to Moab meant accepting paganism.

Psalm 68 gives you a picture, 60 verse 8, of what David felt of Moab.

I want you to see it.

After a military invasion, David gave this verse.

Moab is my wash pot.

Over Edom I will cast my shoe.

This is a before Christ put down.

David says, They are dirty.

They are low.

They are like the pot that I clean my feet in.

Moab was a place, remember, Elimelech decided to take his family to, it was filled with idolatry and paganism and sexual immorality.

Elimelech's promise to his family was, I'm going to get you more food at the cost of your souls.

Relocation meant Elimelech failed his family.

It's a big decision, but it was a decision where he failed his wife and he failed his sons.

All of God's people were in Israel.

The temple was in Israel, the synagogue in Israel.

And in Moab, there's none of that.

Elimelech provides food, but I want to tell everyone something today.

A provider is more than a paycheck that puts food in the pantry.

A provider fills the home with presence.

A provider is providing not just a paycheck, but spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and socially, community.

A provider does those things.

Men today, it's our responsibility to lead our families.

If you're frustrated with your family, you better get frustrated with you.

I'm preaching to me.

God made you to be the head.

We quote that often, the head of this family.

Well, if you're gonna act and say that you're ahead, you better act like someone who's gonna lead a body.

Act like you know where you're going.

And it better hear me, it better not be Moab.

It better not be Moab.

That's exactly where Elimelech took his family.

It was a frantic time.

He didn't just fail his wife, he failed his sons.

In Deuteronomy 23, verse 3, we've seen this quick description of Ruth.

Deuteronomy 23:3

It says, And their sons married Moabite women.

In Deuteronomy 23, 3, in the law it says, No Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord unto the tenth generation.

It meant 10 generations would not be allowed to church.

Elimelech didn't do what he needed to do in this time.

They would not take the 30-mile walk back to Bethlehem, saying, I failed.

I made the wrong choice.

They needed instruction.

They needed a daddy who taught scripture.

They needed more than just bread.

They needed a daddy who'd see his mistake and walk them back to Bethlehem.

Well, they go from famine to foreign land to let her be.

We'll see the funeral trio.

Unemotion, the writer.

Elimelech dies.

Naomi's husband.

If you look up the home stress scale, number one on the stress scale is the loss of a spouse.

Number two follows.

Malin and Chilean die.

No mother should have to watch the death of her children.

No birth of grandsons.

So now, in those five verses, unemotive, now we have dreams are dead.

The future of my family and my name, all of it dead.

I wanna pause and ask a question.

How many of you, church, you've lost someone that you loved in 2025?

You've lost a family member, lost some friends.

Look around, church.

I'm sorry that you've walked through that.

How many of you here in this year, you or someone close to you, have experienced health problems, been in a hospital, had a scare like this?

All over.

You went through something.

Anyone been through a trial in 2025?

If you didn't hit the other two, but you've been through a trial that you didn't expect.

I mean, I'm sorry that you went through what you went through.

Naomi loses essentially everything.

She lost her husband, she loses her sons, and the sidebar conversation she's now stuck with her in-laws, who are not Israelite women, they're Moabite women, which Israelites believe to be their washbot.

Have you been through something hard?

Warren Wearsley, there's a picture I've got of a quote that he shared with me.

I believe.

But the quote says to this effect nothing paralyzes our life like the attitude that things can never change.

You see that?

Nothing paralyzes our life like the attitude that things can never change.

Church, if all we see is desperation, all we're gonna see is defeat.

So what happens after this?

Well, here's the time, point number two.

It's a time for deliberate changes.

Look at Ruth 1, 6 and 7.

We got through that 10-year misery.

And verse 6, then she arose with her daughters in-law that she might return from the country of Moab, for she had heard the country of Moab that the Lord had visited his people by giving them bread.

Therefore she went out from the place where she was, and her two daughters-in-law with her, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah.

It's a time for deliberate changes.

Letter A is a time to reevaluate and return.

Naomi's choice to continue on in desperation or to make a change.

The Bible says in James 1, 22 and 23, it says, Be ye doers of the word, not just hearers only.

That's telling us, okay, you can take this and hear it and go out the door and live life as normal.

You can do what was right in your own eyes, or be a doer of the word and not just a hearer.

You can leave this place today, and there can begin a story that is rewritten in your life.

This was a time for change.

She re-evaluates the situation and what her husband wouldn't do, what a limelect wouldn't take the family to do, was to go back in the place that he needed to go, and now Naomi makes a choice.

Not doing means not evaluating.

When you leave here and you don't do what the word said to do, it means you're not evaluating where your life really is.

Lamentations 3.40 says, let us test and examine our ways and return to the Lord.

Psalms 139, David, when he comes to this cross, he says, Search me, O God, try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me unto another way.

Do you seek your spiritual life and walk in this manner?

Zechariah 1.3 says, Return unto me that I'm a return unto you.

Hosea 6.1 says, Come, let us return unto the Lord.

There is a time for return.

And Revelation, and when he's talking to the churches, he says, If you have left your first love, repent and return.

Naomi had been in Moab over ten years.

Think of it.

Ten years out of the temple, ten years out of God's will, ten years in a sinful land, ten years out of God's presence, ten godless years.

I never heard one person, not someone ever say, you know what?

I've been away from the Lord, pastor, for ten years, and it's been too short.

I need more time away.

I've been out of church for months, living in sin.

That's right where I need to be.

I'm so far away from God, I couldn't be happier.

No.

Every moment away from God is misery.

Ten years is misery.

Church, today is the day to return.

Get out of Moab.

Get your heart out of Moab.

A deliberate change was needed to allow for letter B to happen.

Letter B is a time to release grief.

Look at verse 8 and 9.

And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, go, return each to her mother's house.

The Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me.

The Lord grant that you may find rest, each in the house of her husband.

So she kissed them and lifted their voice, and they lifted their voices and wept.

I want you to see, go to verse 20 and 21 just for a moment.

Then Naomi said to her daughters-in-law, Blessed be he of the Lord who has not forsaken his kindness in the living and the dead.

And Naomi said to her, This I'm reading the wrong chapter.

That was not working.

We'll try chapter one.

But she said to them, Do not call me Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.

I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home empty again.

I want you to see this grief that Naomi has.

There's a time to release our grief.

There's a weeping.

It says that they held each other and wept.

They left.

Hear this.

They left Bethlehem.

Naomi, her husband, and sons left Bethlehem because they did not want to die.

Famine sent them out of the land.

They were fearful.

And then three of four of them died.

In verse 19 through 21, we went there because we see at this point, Naomi is feeling destitute.

She said, I left filled.

Now that's interesting that she said that.

She comes back and she says, Don't call me Naomi.

Call me Mara.

Call me bitter.

Because I left filled.

Did it seem like she left filled?

She said I left filled because she recognizes, you know what?

There's something worse than famine.

I left and I had a husband and I had two sons.

And you know what's worse than not eating, not having them?

I left filled.

But she says, she comes back to her people who are excited to see her, and she says, I and Mara.

God made me bitter.

I left full and now I'm empty.

I'm nothing.

But there with her, her widowed daughter-in-law.

She said, I left full.

I left with everyone.

Everything I love.

Don't miss the tension.

Think about Ruth standing there quietly.

And she says, I'm Mara, I'm bitter.

I had everything, and now I have nothing.

I've come back with absolutely nothing.

Ruth is a picture of Naomi's affliction standing there.

Yet, we have a book in the Bible written about a lowly widowed woman from Moab.

It's interesting.

Well, she had this grief.

And you all have had griefs by the showing of hands that were lifted.

You've been through something.

At minimal, everybody here, it seems like has been through a trial.

The maximal, you've lost somebody.

People here who have been hospitalized, you've been through all kinds of things.

And I want to say this to you with kindness in my heart.

You have to release it.

Don't hold on to it for one more day.

The thing that's gotten you to the place, you have to release.

If you have lost, if you've lost your job, it's over.

If you've had a financial setback, it's okay.

Find a good place to go weep, go scream.

You're not meant to bottle up all of that, cry, do what you gotta do, but understand this my strength, the Bible says, is made perfect in your weakness.

Don't deny weakness.

His grace is sufficient, the Bible says.

God can build on broken.

In fact, he says, I love a broken and contrite heart.

The problem with so many is we think we have to be the rock.

You hear this at every funeral.

I just want to be the rock for my family.

There's nowhere in scripture where anybody calls you to be a rock.

God is our rock in our defense.

He is a very present help in a time of trouble.

We are not to be some rock.

It is okay for you to get sad.

It is okay to weep.

What is not okay is bottling all up and keeping it for somebody to get an explosion in two months.

You're not superhuman, you're just human.

God can't build on your delusion that you're a rock.

And by the way, stop looking for someone to blame for what happened.

Don't shift your grief to anger.

I've seen this.

Satan wants to mess with a family at every funeral.

Oh, if it just gets you fighting, then you'll miss the whole point.

If you just point fingers, he wants for you to lose people and tear apart families.

Don't bottle things up and become Mara.

She said, Oh, bitter.

Mara, let it out.

God is a rock, He can take it, He can take you.

He can take your anguish, so release your anguish.

Does anything or anyone have the right to rename you?

She said, I'm Mara.

Are you living under Mara?

Has this thing in your life enraptured you?

Every time you see that person, you can't help but think it and you get Mara?

Has this thing in life, when you drive past that place, it's got a hold of you, and you can't do nothing but Mara comes out?

Every time the conversation turns and that person or that thing comes up, Mara?

The Bible says there's a root of bitterness that needs plucked up.

Don't let something rename you.

What circumstance has renamed you?

That's what's happened with Naomi.

And here, hear me, I set it up the way I felt it.

It's not some light circumstance.

She's been through it.

And I don't think she's wrong for having feelings.

But what she does is a step in the right direction.

When Mara has you, when bitterness has had you, she made a step that should have happened long ago with her husband.

By the way, husbands, maybe it takes you having a conversation.

Wives, maybe it takes you having a conversation.

Hey, you're acting like something that you haven't been before.

Are you okay?

Are we okay?

Well, she returns at harvest season.

There's a surprise twist in this story.

The return when she came back, the timing of God's provision and the way that he rewit rewrites rewrites a story starts here.

Look at the third thing this morning, a time with deep commitment.

Ruth 1, verse 14 through 17.

Ruth 1:14–17

Naomi bids them to go to their families.

She says, It grieves me, then verse 14.

Then they lifted up their voices and wept again.

And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law.

But Ruth clung to her.

And she said, Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods.

Return after your sister-in-law.

But Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave you or to turn back from following after you.

For wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge.

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

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

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

Talk about a commitment.

Letter A is a time for resolve.

Church, when you're facing famine, franticness, when you're facing difficulty, there's two responses here.

Two responses to suffering.

Orpah walks away.

Not trying to give Orpah a bad press, but Orpah walks away.

And it seems probably the most logical thing to do.

Hear me.

In Orpah's circumstances, Naomi tells her to go.

She says, This is going to be better for you.

What have I to give you?

But Orpah walks away in the midst of suffering.

Now, look at the two.

Compare.

Orpah and Ruth both weep.

Both of them are sad at the whole scenario.

They both were sad.

But emotion isn't the difference in the story, direction is.

I'm going to say that again.

Emotion isn't the difference in the story, direction is.

Orpah kissed Naomi and walked.

Judas kissed Jesus and walked.

Affection is not the same as allegiance.

Are you with me?

You can be hugged and kissed and be betrayed.

I don't think Orpah is a villain, but I think she chooses comfort over covenant.

Not everyone, church, who starts the journey stays for the story.

That's a hard and harsh reality, but it's the truth.

Not everyone who starts the journey with you stays for the story.

And the pressure of this situation reveals commitments.

Orpah's decision, in contrast to Ruth's, I think the path Orpa takes to her makes sense.

She was in a tough position.

But she walked away.

Orpa walked away loved.

Ruth walked with loyal.

They both were loved.

But Ruth walked ahead loyal.

Orpah walked away.

You see, it says that Ruth clung.

Ruth balks at the idea.

She clung to her.

That word for clung, we hear it in Genesis, to leave and to cleave.

It's the same word.

The Hebrew is debak, and it means cleaved.

It's used in Scripture for covenantal language.

In Deuteronomy 10, verse 20, it says, Fear the Lord your God and serve him.

Deuteronomy 10:20

When that word Lord your God is used, it's the covenantal God, Yahweh.

And it's the same wording that's used here.

She says, Your God, Yahweh will be my God.

You see, Ruth's action is covenantal.

She says, I'm not going.

I'm with you.

It's a covenant.

But not just covenantal, this is interesting.

I think we can make a case for it's covenantal and conversional.

I think you can make a case that this is where Ruth gives her life to Christ or to God, to Yahweh, because she says, Your God will be my God.

That means no more Moabite gods, no more idolatry from how I grew up, the way that I knew my living, but your God.

I see something in a way that you are, and the way that you interact with your God, and I want that God.

Why do you think it's so important that you serve the living God, church?

People see your God at work.

Now we find out in the New Testament, in Galatians 3, 28 and 29, when Jesus comes, he says, there's no Jew, no Greek, no slave, no free, no female, no male.

All are one in Jesus Christ.

God is for everyone.

But consider Ruth.

What does Naomi have to gain out of having Ruth?

And what do they have for one another?

Ruth is a foreign widow.

I mean, not too many signing up for that as a mother-in-law.

A foreign widow who has very low social capital.

Her choice to cling is costly.

Her choice to stay there is costly.

But Ruth is directed by decisions and not feelings.

She was directed by covenant and not convenience.

You know, we call the members of CCW covenant members.

We have a front and back, articles of faith, covenant of membership.

And when you become a member at CCW, you sign a covenant.

What does covenant mean to you?

When you entered your marriage contract with your husband or wife, you signed a covenant.

What does that mean to you?

This is what it meant to Ruth.

She says, Ruth says, May the Lord deal with me as he deals with you.

May Yahweh, that's covenant language, because she says, Yahweh, this is important to note.

She's not just committing to Naomi.

She's committing to Yahweh.

Understand that in making this decision, Ruth can no longer, listen, she can no longer carry Moab around with her and be an Israelite.

She can no longer carry the history of her past.

She can't hold on to Moab and be with Naomi.

Ruth decided to give up whatever she was used to, whatever she used to be, in order to follow God.

Many here today to have the resolve to do the things that you feel God is maybe moving you to do, you may have to let go of something.

You had a plan, you had an idea, and you thought this thing was going to be the path, and it just isn't working.

And it takes a removal of pride to say, I gotta let go.

It may take some forgiveness today for some people to get to a different place, to follow God fully.

Something's been holding you back.

I want to tell you, you can't have Moab and Bethlehem.

It doesn't work.

Something has to move.

And Ruth, it was a time for resolve.

Let her be.

It wasn't just resolve, it was a time of reckoning.

A time of reckoning.

Look at verse 18.

This is Naomi.

When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she stopped speaking to her.

She quit about it.

She saw her determination and decided this has been a reckoning with Ruth.

Ruth saw that this was more than just suffering.

This is a life change and a path change.

She is going to be with me.

This was a reckoning in my favorite movie, Tombstone.

If you're a godly person, you need to watch it.

Tombstone.

Story about Wyatt Earp.

If you look in that row, my son right there, he's got a good name.

Okay.

But there's this line in the movie where Doc Holiday is talking to Wyatt Herb, and he says, make no mistake, it's not revenge he's after.

It's a reckoning.

It's a settlement of accounts that he's after, a need for finality and for justice and everything to be righted.

Now, for Wyatt Herb, he was protecting his family and friends.

But I believe for Ruth, she saw this as a way to protect, a way to step in, and this was right.

They've lost their loved ones, and in this moment, and she has seen something about Naomi's God, and she said, No, I'm gonna be right here with her.

This is about more than just a decision.

This was a time of reckoning to make things right and stay right.

And her decision, as you read these next few chapters and we go week by week, you're gonna see how it impacts the whole rest of the story.

But John 15, 13, church, the Bible says, this greater love hath no man than to lay down one's life for his friends.

Ruth lays down her future, her safety, her identity for Naomi.

But it's a foreshadowing, it's a picture, sacrificial friendship pointing towards future redemption.

In Matthew 28, 20, Jesus says something not too far different from what Ruth said.

She said, Wherever you go, I will go.

I'm not gonna leave.

And Jesus in Matthew 28, 20, he says, I am always with you.

I will be with you always.

Ruth is making a statement that we understand.

She didn't have to follow Naomi.

And the cost for Ruth to remain loyal to Naomi is great.

But this bold statement, this foreshadowing, think about the things she did.

Ruth left her homeland for the sake of another.

Ruth left her home and one family.

The foreshadowing of Jesus who would leave heaven for all families, church.

Jesus left heaven's glory for the sake of all families.

Ruth attached herself in this moment to a broken, messy situation that looked hopeless and wanted nothing in return.

Can you see the picture of Jesus Christ who left all of heaven's glory and went to a cruel cross, and his obedience would lead to the redemption of all men with nothing in return.

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