Now, we always give some clues to identify our mystery person. Tonight will not be a difficult one. I'm going to skip the first clue because I gave it to Mary Lou and she got it right off the bat. So I'm going to skip down the line and maybe I can wait and give the first clue last because if it's that easy, I don't want to give it first. Now, clue number one. We're looking for the name of a person who proposed marriage to a man at midnight and he accepted. Maybe you'll get it on that one, I don't know. You don't have too many folks in the Bible, women who propose marriage to anybody, you know, but this one did. Number two, she was spoken of by some other women as being of more value than seven sons. That's a pretty invaluable woman, actually better than seven men. Next, Ten men once prayed to God that He would make this woman like Rachel and Leah. Fifth, this woman herself referred to herself as a stranger in the land of Israel. Sixth, or fifth, I'm sorry, this woman made a living by taking the role of a gleaner in a field. This sixth, she is listed in the Bible as the great-grandmother of David. And last of all, which is the first clue, this woman was purchased by the removal of a man's shoe. Who is it? Rudy. All right, that wasn't hard, was it? I don't know which clue gave you the answer, but that's the person we're looking at tonight. I think everybody understands, without any difficulty, what it means to give something away. If you came up tonight and I said, I'm going to give you my wristwatch, I don't think anybody would be puzzled of what I said. And if I handed it to you, I would understand it's your wristwatch. I gave it to you. It's no longer mine. You can do what you want to with it. You can stomp on it. You can sell it. You can paint it pink, purple, and green. I mean, you can take the hands off. You can try to do something about it. Whatever you want to do with it. Because when I give it away, it's no longer my property. Now, I understand that when it comes to giving things away. Not only that, but you sometimes give away things you don't want anymore. Other folks call these antiques, and you give them away, and you may want them back. And you say, I sure wish I'd have kept that a while. I'd like to have it back. And they say, well, I'm sorry, but you gave it away. It's mine now. And then you understand that you have no claim on it. Then sometimes we give away things that are broken and we just don't want to spend the money to fix them up and somebody else takes them and for a little bit of money they fix them up and whether it's a dryer or a lawnmower or something else and we understand it's theirs now. We can't go over and say, hey, I want that back now that it's running. No, it's theirs now because you gave it away. Now, when it comes to giving away items of property, We understand full well what all is involved. We forfeit our rights. We have no say say over what is to be done with it. And we cannot get it back unless they want to sell it to us or they want to give it back to us. Now while this kind of giveaway is easily understood, when you talk about giving yourself away, Confusion comes into our minds. We don't understand that too well. You're not often asked to do this. Maybe some of you have never been asked to do this outside of the church. I think in the Bible there are three occasions when it's asked of people to give themselves away. First of all, there was the case of a slave. Now, if you will look at Exodus, the book of Exodus, and the 21st chapter, verse 2 and 5 and 6. If you buy a Hebrew servant, that is, you make a Hebrew a slave, he'll serve you for 6 years, but on the 7th year, you have to let him go. You can own him 6 years, but you have to free him on that 7th year. Now, he has an option. That's verse 5 and 6. But if that servant plainly or willingly or voluntarily says, now notice, voluntarily says, I love my master. And he's gotten married now, and he says, I love my wife and I love my children. I willingly will not leave you, nor go away from you. I'm going to give myself away to you, not for six more years, but from this day forward you shall own me. That was quite a step to take. If the man did that on his own accord, verse 6, then the master would bring him to the judges. Let them all know this guy was making this voluntarily. And then they shall bring him to the door, or to a door post, and the master would bore a hole through his ear with an awl, which meaning this man would be branded a voluntary giveaway servant to this man for the rest of his life. Now that's the first instance in the Bible where somebody gives their life away. And that's what he did. He gave his rights, he gave his freedom, he gave everything away voluntarily. But that's still hard for us to quietly get in there, huh? Man. The second case of giving yourself away concerns marriage. Look, if you will, at Genesis 2.24. It doesn't say the same thing as we did with the slave, The implication is there. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and I might add, so should a woman leave her father and her mother, and the two shall come together as main wife, and they shall become one person. You can't become one person unless each of you give each other away. In other words, I must give myself away, the wife must give herself away, and the two put together make one. I lose my freedom. It's not 50-50, as some folks say. It's just 100, period. Not 100-100, not 60-40, it's just 100. And we become one person only if I'm willing to give myself away. If it's not, then it's 100 and the other person is zero. You see? It's all what I want for me and nothing for that person what they want. In other words, the girl can give her life to me, but she better be sure I'm going to give my life to her or she's in for problems. If she gives her life to me and I don't give my life to her, then I have absolute control over her. She becomes my slave. And a lot of men see marriage as this way. She's a slave. That's not the way the Bible pictures marriage. And I'm afraid a lot of young folks who get married have never quite been taught what it means to become one. What it means to give themselves away to another person. They've never learned this. And they don't do this after the vows are said and the marriage comes upon them. As long as you're single, you're your own boss. You can go your own way, you can do your own thing, buy what you want, give away what you want, do what you want. I mean, you have no one to account to. You have nobody you have to please. You have nobody you have to satisfy. You're footloose and fancy free. But if you get married, that all goes down the drain. A lot of folks have never learned that. And that's why the marriage goes down the drain. Now, the third occasion in the Bible where you're asked to give yourself away, and I know of no other illustrations in the Bible, are really even in line. And the one about the slave, I think, is pretty well passé. It's gone. We don't have slaves today. Nobody has a knoll knocked in the ear because they've given their life away. You may wear earrings if you're a woman, but that's not why you wear them. You see, it's not the sign the man owns you. Some men may think that. But anyway, the point is, there's a third illustration in the Bible of giving yourself away, and it's found in 2 Corinthians 8, 5. You notice, the middle of the verse that says, of the Corinthians, they first gave their own selves to the Lord. They first gave themselves to the Lord. Conversions to Christianity always require of the one being converted that they give their life away. A lot of folks who claim to be Christians have never been told this either. Have never quite comprehended what they have done and the concept that is being taught in the Bible. A jailer one time asked Paul, what must I do to be saved? And of course you know the answer that Paul gave. You must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. But I want to add that Paul gave some other instructions regarding what it takes to be saved besides what he told the jailer. And that's in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 19 and 20. And I think you have to put the two things together. Paul says, Do you not know? Has anybody ever told you that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which now lives within you, which you have received from God? And then he states this. And don't you know that you are not your own? You are not your own anymore, for you have been bought with the price Therefore, glorify God in your body and your spirit, which now belongs to God. How did that happen? Folks, nothing I have belongs to you unless either I sell it to you or I give it to you. There's a car in my driveway. It doesn't even belong to me. It belongs to the leasing company. But if it belonged to me, it can't be yours unless you either steal it, I sell it to you, or I give it to you. How on earth did I get to belong to God? How did my body ever get to be His possession? What happened here? Well, at some point, Paul says, whether you realize it or not, to become converted to Christianity and become a child of God and to become a member of God's family, you had to give God your life. And part of your life is your body. I had to give it to him or he wouldn't have it. He wouldn't have a right to claim it. And so that becomes a requirement for salvation. When I witness to people, this is the number one thing I zero in on. Neither do you believe in God. Neither are you a good person. But are you willing to give yourself away? And I find most people, when you say that, they say, I don't know what you're talking about. That doesn't make any sense to me. What do you mean, give myself away? Well, I'm going to tell you this tonight, what it means to give yourself away. And it's important for us to understand this, because people today are still supposedly getting converted. But they don't really understand that the requirement of conversion is to give themselves lock, stock and barrel, as the statement goes, to the Lord. And you may wonder, what's all this got to do with Ruth? Because Ruth in the Bible is the best illustration that we have of anyone who stipulates what it means to give your life away. She is a perfect example of what is involved in giving your life away. She did this to become a convert to the Jewish religion and to the Hebrew God Jehovah. Of course, that was not her God at this time. Let me give you a little brief background to Ruth's story, if you don't already know it by heart. To begin with, you remember there was a Jewish couple in Israel, living in Bethlehem, by the way, where Jesus was born. And there was a famine in the land, and this couple, consisting of Naomi, Elimelech, and two sons, fled the famine and went to the neighboring country of Moab. While living in Moab, Elimelech dies. The two sons, though, marry two Moabite girls. These marriages last for 10 years but produce no children. The way the story reads, both of Naomi's two sons died after 10 years living in Moab. Then you have in the story three widows. Naomi, one widow was Ruth, and the other was Arpah. And there were three widows alone in the land of Moab. The two girls were requested by Naomi to go back home to their own mothers and daddies in Moab and find new husbands. At first, both girls refused and said, we want to go with you. Because Naomi had decided to go back to the land of Israel. No longer was there a famine there. And so, she insisted again that the girls return to their own land, to their own homes, to their own people. She even said to their own gods. Because while they had been living in that home with the Limelech and her two sons, they had worshipped Jehovah. One of the girls, Arpah, decided she would go home. The other girl, Ruth, refused. and pleaded with Naomi to allow her to accompany her back to the land of Israel. She'd never been there. And by the way, Moabites were outlawed in the land of Israel. There had been a vow God made the Israelites make concerning the Moabites and that was they would never help them and they would never bless them in any way. So really when Ruth was asking to go back to the land of Israel, she was really asking something difficult upon herself. She had no guarantee she would ever be accepted. And they were kind of hated by the Israelites, the Moabites were. Now, to persuade Naomi to allow her to accompany her home, Ruth gives her life away. She gives her life away to Naomi. Now, this is a strange case, and I don't know of very many people, I don't know of anybody who has ever done this outside of marriage or outside of conversion to Christ. I've never known this to happen to some individual to another individual like it was between Ruth and Naomi. But Ruth gives herself away to Naomi. And she spells out to Naomi exactly what she means. by giving herself away. She makes it very clear what Naomi can expect from her in this gift of herself to her. Now, to begin with, it's always done voluntarily. If you ask somebody to become a Christian and you say you're going to have to give your life to Christ, that's going to have to be done voluntarily. No one can force or coerce you to do it. No one should manipulate you through trickery or sad sick stories. I mean, if you want to do it, you do it of your own free will. But if you do it, it's just like giving anything else away. It's permanent. It's real. And it's very costly. If I want to give my car away, And once it's done, it's permanent. And it's costly. But it's done. But I don't have to do it. I can keep it. But if I want to, I can do it. If I own the home and I want to give it away, I could do it. Once done, I can have it back. It's too late. You think before you give. Naomi was going to get something from Ruth that was more valuable than a home or a car or anything else. She was going to get another person's life given to her. When you really stop and think about it, when you give yourself away to a person, you're even willing to die for them. All right? Now, let's go to chapter 1 of the book of Ruth real quickly now. Verse 16 and verse 17 are the commitments that Ruth made in giving her life away. They are the same commitments that you and I are required to make to Jesus Christ if we're willing to give our life to Him. Ruth, the first chapter, verse 16 and 17. And Ruth said, to begin with, don't ask me again, I'm paraphrasing this, to leave you, Naomi. Don't ask me again to return from following you. Go back home. Commitment number one. Here's where she begins to give her life away. Where thou goest, you all heard this, I will go. And where thou lodgest, I will lodge. And thy people shall be my people, and thy God shall be my God. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried. Now that's the commitment. involved in giving your life away. Now, quickly at these, look at these separately. First thing, where thou goest, I will go. How often are you ever asked, where are you going? You know what, really? The answer ought to be, I don't know. You ask Christ. I don't have much say so anymore about that. I gave him the right to tell me where to go. And that's exactly, folks, in one sense why I'm here tonight. He told me where to go. And I gave away my freedom. I said, well, I don't want to go there. If I didn't want to go here tonight, I should not have given him my line. You don't do that. I don't tell you how to drive my car if I give it to you. I don't have to give it to you. But I lose the right to criticize you or change my mind if I give it to you. I gave my life to Christ. And so I'm here tonight. Because I believe that's where He would want me to go. And that's why. You say, well, don't you have any other place to go? Sure. I can go and watch television. I can go to a movie. I can go driving. I can go to a restaurant. I mean, I can go to a ball game. I can go to a lot of places. But no, I don't have that right anymore. You say, why not? I gave it away. Well, you're stupid. Maybe I'm stupid, but I got salvation for it. A lot of folks don't understand this who claim to be Christians. Where do thou goest? Where are you going, Jesus? He said, I don't need to tell you that. You just come on and go. He said, disciples, follow me. Well, they said, well, just a minute. We got fish nets and we got things planned for the day. Where are you going? In a real sense, Peter asked this, what are you going to do about, what are you going to do about John? And he said, it's none of your business. You just do what I told you to. That's all you got to do. Now, what right does he have to tell me that? None. If I don't give him my, did you know the Lord cannot tell a sinner what to do? He'll go to hell for it, but I mean, he can't command him what to do because he has no right. I gave Christ the right to command me. Where thou goest, I shall go. In other words, Ruth said, Naomi, you can now tell me wherever you want me to go. And by the way, when Jesus said, follow me, I will make you fishers of men. Where you go, there will always be something to do. You and I sometimes say in response to the question, where are you going? Oh, I don't know. Wherever I go. I don't have anything really planned, no particular spot. I'm just going somewhere. My folks, every Sunday evening, when we go driving, I say, where are you going to go? Well, just point the car in one direction, just keep on going. And I say, well, where are you going? No place in particular. Let me say, folks, God always leads us to a certain place to do a certain thing. There's always a job connected with the going with the Lord. Always. There's a purpose in going. And he said to the disciples, follow me, and I've got something for you to do when you get there. You can fish for me. Always. There will be something to do when you go with the Lord. Where thou goest, I will go. And you read the story, the going wasn't so easy for Ruth. When she got back to Israel, Bethlehem, there wasn't any food on the table. And they didn't have food stamps. And they always said, Ruth, I believe you're going to have to go out in that old hot field. And you're going to have to go out there and pick up the scrap wheat that's left behind on the corners of the field and walk through the old mud and let the skeeters bite you. I mean, but you go. Now, folks, I couldn't tell you today to go out and do something for me, could I? And command it. Why? Because you hadn't given your life to me. But if you have given your life to me, if I own no horse, and I say, horse, you pull this plow or else, that's my horse, you see. Your horse, I couldn't tell that to. I can tell my horse that. Now, Naomi, you see, had the right to command Ruth where she could go and what she could do. And Ruth had given her life to her, and Ruth, with no complaint, went to the field. and glean food to bring back to Naomi so they both could eat. Sometimes in the going and the doing, it's not easy and it's not pleasant. There are a lot of things Ruth would rather have done than that. A lot of times we say, well, I don't want to do that. You don't have the right, folks. I don't have the right. Well, I say it. I don't have the right. I don't have the right. It's like me saying, I don't want you driving that car. Like that. And you could say, listen, preacher. That's not your car, so shut up. It's my car. I don't have any comeback to you. That's right. That's right. Second thing in the commitment of Ruth was she said, whether thou lodgest, I will lodge. It's one thing to go with somebody and something else to do something for somebody. But it's another thing to say, I'm going to live with you. I'm going to live with you. That's what Ruth was saying, Naomi, you might as well open up your house because I'm going to camp with you. Where you lodge, I'm going to lodge. Where you settle down, I'm going to settle down. But implied in that is, I promise you this, Naomi, that I will be a congenial and a compatible companion to you. I won't give you any trouble. I won't cause you any sorrow. And I will be a true friend to you And I want to be with you wherever you go. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, I want to be a compatible companion. I don't want to bother you. I do want to cheer you, though. I do want to encourage you. I do want to bless you. I do want to bring you pleasure, like this morning. I want to do those things for you, Naomi, and I'm going to give my life away to do it. There won't be enough time for me to do all the things for myself and for you too, but I am so concerned about your welfare and your happiness and your joy and your delight and your pleasure that I'm going to devote my life to you. Folks, that's an awful big statement to make. I've only made that statement to two people in my life, my wife and the Lord. That's about it. I won't make anybody else. Because I wouldn't do it. I just wouldn't do it. I don't want to do it. I've seen some children devote their entire life to their invalid parents. I admire them. But that's what they've done. They have given up marriage. They have given up children. They have given up a life of their own to take care of their parents. That's a tremendous reward. That's a tremendous sacrifice, people. But I've seen some children do it, to give up their entire life, their all their future, for their parents. That's a tremendous thing. But they've given away their love. That was voluntarily done by them. Now, there will be always a desire on Ruth's part to bring happiness to Naomi. And she said, for me to do that, Naomi, I got to be with you all the time. There's no telling when you're going to need me. Need to cheer you. Need to encourage you. I'm going to be there. I'm going to be there. What did she just say? We ought to be together. He lives with us. He walks with us. He's our constant companion. Quickly now, the third thing involved in giving herself away. She said, Thy people shall be my people. Ruth was leaving all her friends. She knew no one in Israel besides Naomi. No one. And Naomi said, when we get back home, Ruth, there are folks there that I'm akin to. They're my friends. They're my relatives. They're my neighbors. And I'm going to want you to be their friends. I'm going to want them to be your friends. I'm going to want them to be your neighbors. I'm going to want you to treat them like I treat them. The Bible speaks a lot about we have to adopt the brothers and sisters in Christ. We have to take the Lord's children and make them our friends. And the Bible says, I mean, it says to us that we should abandon the unsaved and the unclean and come out from among them and be separate to the Lord. Walk not in the counsel of the ungodly. So I have to, if I'm going to give my life away, I have to cut out the friends that don't like my Christ. Cut out the people that would pull me away from my Christ. Make my commitment or make me break my commitment to Christ. Pull me away from my promises that I've made. And so, I'm going to have to adopt some new friends. I'm going to have to love them. That's one of the hardest things to do, you know. Christ is pretty easy to love, but I mean, some of His children are pretty ornery. But yet, I've got to make them my friends. Jesus said, You shall know My disciples because of their love one for another. So I have to be concerned about Christ's friends, the other people who call themselves the children of God. The fourth thing is involved in the commitment of giving herself away is, she said, Thy God shall be my God. And before this time and before she met her son, she worshipped the God Timosh. She said, I'm willing to forsake my God. And I want to worship your God. You give your life to Jesus Christ. He tells you who you can worship. You worship the Father. You worship Him and the Holy Spirit. He tells you that. And you're not going to be able to give your life away and worship any other God. You see? Any other God. Anything that comes between you and the Lord. Anything that you might prefer to Him as a God. He says, no, if you give your life to Me, I'm not going to allow you to worship any other God. Well, I can worship who I want to. No, you can't. Not if you give yourself away. And then fifthly and lastly, She said, where thou diest I will die and there I will be buried. Here in a sense she says, I am willing to share your same fate. Whatever happens to you. No matter what the cause of death is, I'm willing to share. Peter one time said that too. All disciples sort of shared the same thought with Jesus. He said, I'm going to be dead. They said, well we'll die too. That's what Ruth in a sense was saying. Let me quickly add this. Jesus was crucified. Did you know that you and I have shared His faith? We will share it. Look in your will at Romans 6, 6. Romans 6, 6. This will be our last verse tonight. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified, I'm willing to share the same faith that Christ shared. He was crucified. It says here that the old man is crucified with Christ. that the body of sin might be destroyed, and that henceforth we should no longer serve sin. The old man has to be crucified. And I say to the Lord, I want to give you my life, and if you want to crucify the old man, you go ahead. I'll experience the same fate. And sure enough, folks, the old man is crucified. I don't have time to talk about that tonight. Then where you're buried, I will be buried. That to me is a desire that she's going to spend an eternity with Naomi. That's quite a desire. And you know that there is in the Christian, in giving our life to him, a hope. It's called the resurrection hope, and that I'm going to experience the same resurrection that he experienced, and that in the resurrection, I'm going to spend my eternity with him, wherever it might be. Giving yourself away is not a trivial thing. It's really not. It places you in a state of continual self-denial. It also cancels out your freedom to put yourself first. It also obligates you to promote the interests and the pleasures and the welfare of another person. And the giveaway is permanent. And yet that's what the Bible says is required of those who want to become converted to Christianity. And they first gave themselves to Christ. Father, we're thankful this night for the illustration of giving ourself away found in Ruth. We pray as we think about this tonight that we ask the question truly, have I given my life to Christ? Have I taken that step that causes me to place him in control and ownership over me? Knowing the question is more important for us to answer than that one, because that's the true way to be converted to Christianity. We pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen.