As you are turning to the little book of Ruth this morning, it follows Judges written, or at least took place during the time of the Judges. We learned a few weeks ago from verses 1 through 5. I want to draw your attention to a wonderful truth that is given us in that hymn from the Word of God. The reason that we can always trust in God is because He never changes. It's what theologians call his immutability. He also doesn't have passions like we have passions. It's what the theologians call his impassibility. He's not fickle and everything from without him changes him. There is no change with our great and mighty God. And that's why we would...shows his grace. She's faithful to him. In fact, throughout the rest of the book, we see Naomi's faithfulness. And we also see this morning why she went through what she did to serve God's purposes of the gospel. So I invite you to read along. We're going to complete chapter one of Ruth this morning, beginning in verse six, and I'll read through the end of the chapter. Then she rose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab. For she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. 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. But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, go, return each of you to your mother's house. May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant you that you may 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 they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me. Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah, it's Orpah, not Oprah, I remind you, Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. And she said, see, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Return after your sister-in-law. But Ruth said, do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go, I will go. 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 will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more, if anything but death parts me from you." And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more. So the two of them went out until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, is this Naomi? And she said to them, do not call me Naomi. Call me Mara. For the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me? So Naomi returned and Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, with her, who returned from the country of Moab, and they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. Let's pray. Father, I pray today that we would see the love of a woman for you. It caused another led to another to come to faith. May our love for you be so demonstrated for others around us. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen. As I mentioned in the introduction to the book, in the opening verses, there's no shortage of ironies that we see in this little book. The name Bethlehem means house of bread, and yet house of bread had no bread. That's the reason that Elimelech and his sons, he leads his family to leave Bethlehem, and not only leave Bethlehem, but leave the promised land altogether. which was the source of his sin, the reason that he sinned. You see, there was no bread in Israel at that time because they were in between the time of judges and there was a famine in the land. And you remember we said, as long as there was a judge in Israel, they lived according to the laws of God and they lived in the blessings of the Lord. But as soon as that judge died, They reverted right back to every man doing that which was right in his own eyes. And they fell under the judgment of God. And I believe this particular time happens during the time of Gideon through his time of judging when the Midianites are bringing famine into the land of Israel. And so they are under the divine discipline of God in the land for their disobedience. And Elimelech, wanting to satisfy himself and his family, go to Moab. Now, the problem is Moab could not be any more different from Israel than any other nation on the earth, and perhaps Egypt. Moab was next to Israel. In fact, Moab was so close to Israel, it was in Moab that Moses was led up on the mountain to see the promised land that he was not able to enter because of his sin against God. So they're that close. It's a picture of almost being in the land, but yet being in the world. And so Elimelech takes his family to satisfy his earthly needs in a worldly manner. rather than remaining with all of the other people, and this isn't to suggest that others didn't leave as well, we just have his story, until God's discipline was released because they had repented of their sins. Elimelech didn't intend to stay in Moab very long, and he dies. Indications are fairly early upon entering into the land of Moab. and he never saw the promised land again. What's interesting is Elimelech's name, you'll recall, means God is king. That's what his name literally means, and yet he lives totally contrary to what his name means. In fact, the theme that runs through the book of Judges is, in those days there was no king in Israel. Now, don't read that as if God had somehow left the scene. God is always sovereign. He's always on the throne. There was never a microsecond when God was not their king and ruler. But they did not acknowledge him as such, and there was no earthly king until we follow the time of the judges. As long as they had rule, they were fine. So here you have a limeleck, another irony, whose name means God is king, and yet, because there was no king in Israel, He goes to Moab, in fact, fulfilling what we're told, doing what was right in his own eyes on that occasion. So he goes to Moab to relieve the famine, the hunger of his family, and he leaves out from under the discipline of God in Bethlehem, and he dies in judgment for his sin. His two sons and his wife Naomi were also with him. Now the rule of the home would have gone next to one of the sons. The sons now have a decision to make. Dad is dead. Do we stay in Moab or do we go back to Israel? Do we go back to Judah? Do we go back to Bethlehem? And not only do they decide to stay in Moab, But they sin even more greatly in marrying two Moabite women, which was directly against the covenant of God. They were not to marry the Ites. That was one of the biggies. Why? Because they would be drawn in to the idolatry and the worship of their gods, little G. So not only do the sons sin in not returning, Because as sons, they were being submissive to their father. Keep that in mind. As a wife, Naomi was being submissive to her husband in coming into the land. They faced the decision, now do we lead our family here or do we go back? They don't go back. They decide to stay there and take up residence in Moab. And they die under the judgment of God for their sin. And so this is where we pick up our story today. As we read the end of verse five, she was left without her two sons and her husband. Now Naomi has a decision to make because now she is said head of the household and she makes the right decision. She decides to go back. to the land of promise, to the land of her people, and to her God. And so what we see first in the bulk of this in verses 6 through 18 is trusting God's promises and the results then that come because Naomi trusted in the Lord. I can't imagine a more difficult place for a woman to be both in grief and in loneliness than where Naomi found herself on that day. Her husband had died probably nine to 10 years before this. Now both of her sons are gone, and she's left with her two daughters-in-law, grieving her husband and her son's deaths. Immediately, however, we see God at work. In verse 6, she arises with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab. Now, notice, we see here something of the intention of her heart. We see something of her fondness was always there. Because we see that the moment she heard in the fields of Moab, of all places, the moment she'd heard that there was again bread in the promised land, She decides to go home. Now you might say this morning, well, she had to wait until she knew that the bread was there. It's the means that God uses to draw his people back. She arose with her daughters-in-law, and the moment she heard in the fields of Loab that Yahweh had visited his people and given them food, she arises to go home. The hymn writer George Matheson penned words in a famous hymn this way. Oh love that wilt not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee. I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller be. This is what Naomi is doing. In this text, she is giving her life back to the one who had delivered her and her people out of bondage. And so, the first thing that we notice then is the return. And by the way, verses 6 through 18, there's three scenes in chapter one. The first scene goes from Bethlehem to Moab. The second scene goes, is on the road from Moab back to Bethlehem. And then the chapter ends with them back in Bethlehem. So now they're on the road back. And in this second scene, the story begins to take its decisive turn. There's some form of the Hebrew word, Shub, in chapter one no less than 10 times. And the Hebrew word shub means to return or to turn back or to be brought back. It's an Old Testament equivalent for repentance in the New Testament. It's a cognitive decision to turn back to God. That's what the word Shulb in Hebrew means. Sometimes it's a first time turning to God in repentance. Often it's just returning because they've been in a far country for a time. They've been away from the Lord for a time. Like a man named Jonah, you'll recall, who went the absolute opposite direction of what God told him to do. And when he repents, In the mouth of a big fish, he spit out onto dry land. And what does Jonah say? The Lord is my salvation. God sometimes uses great fish and an ocean. God sometimes uses a famine in the land and restoring the bread. God sometimes uses a prodigal sitting in a pigsty with nothing but pigs, and he wakes up and he remembers, my father's servants have more bread than I have. And so she arises, recognizing God's grace is now, even though it had never departed, was being shown again to his people. She didn't say, how could God do this? She didn't shake her fist in God's face and say, this is your fault. She returns with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab. And I would suggest she's able to do this because God had prepared her heart. She sees God at work in the midst of her storm, unlike her husband had and her sons earlier, as they responded in sin to their famine and turned their backs on their God. Sinclair Ferguson gives a wonderful analogy that demonstrates God's love and mercy through painful times. He says a sharp knife can be a destructive weapon in the hands of a murderer, but it can also be an instrument of healing in the hands of a surgeon. Everything depends on the hands that use it. In this case, God is working not as a murderer, but as a skilled surgeon. The painful surgery is part of a healing process. Thus, chastened by sore providence, Naomi seems to have been prepared by God to respond positively to the news she hears. The Lord has come to help his people by providing for them. Again, Bethlehem means house of bread, and bread had been restored. He goes on. Covenant blessings have returned. There is a supply of food for the needy. The Lord opens Naomi's heart and she graciously brings her back through bitter experiences to his blessing. Naomi returns and he suggests, and I agree, she repents. Naomi understood that God's famines are not permanent. God had always helped in the past and she believed that he would help again. Chastening is not forever, but it only lasts for a moment. It's not easy. The author of Hebrews tells us that. The divine discipline of God towards his children shows his love for us. But that doesn't mean that it's easy. But we're in the midst of it. The moment she hears that God was again favoring his people, Shub, she returns. She repents. She turns to home and goes to Judah, to her people, to her land, and to her God. Just like the prodigal that I mentioned a moment ago, when he remembers how his father's servants had more bread than he did, what did he do? He returns home. We see this repentance over and over again in the word of God. The testimony of the psalmist in 119, verse 67, where he wrote, before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. That was the heart that Naomi now had in returning home to her people, her land, and her God. And it's what we see play out through the rest of the book in Naomi's life. But notice the cost of covenant blessings, the cost of following Jesus and God. Faith, real faith, at some point shows itself. People know that you have faith. As one writer suggests, here we have Naomi's faith show itself in active love towards her daughter's in-law. At some point in the journey home, we're not certain when, she turns to both of them and begins to speak to them, and it becomes a turning point in their lives as well. She says, looking at her two daughters-in-law, in verse 8, go, return each of you to your mother's house. I don't know why she didn't say father's house. I just don't know. I couldn't find anybody that really addressed that. But it seems interesting to me, probably what she's indicating here is, I'm a mother to you. You have a mother in your homeland. Return back there. Go back to your mother's house. And undergirding this, we'll see in a moment, in Orpah's return, and to their gods. That's your house. Where I'm going, she's beginning to lay out for them both, is stunningly different than anything that you've ever seen in your life. True, you've heard about my Yahweh. You've heard about my God. You've experienced even his comforts and some elements and levels of his love, even in protecting you and allowing you to live and move and have your being. He provided for you when we were in famine. Same story as we encounter in Egypt, right? When Joseph is sent over all of Egypt, there was famine in all of the land and all of the places in the earth. Jacob sends his sons, you remember, during the famine to receive their grains and so on and so forth. And again, you may ask the question, well, why was it wrong for Elimelech to do that and not for Jacob? You remember when we looked at this text a few weeks ago, I said it's because Jacob and his sons had not entered the promised land. That covenant had not come to fulfillment. They had not been delivered over into land where God said, I will be your God and you will be my people. I will provide for you every step of the way. So Elimelech was in sin because he left that land that Jacob had never entered. Even though he was under a promise, Abraham would be the father of many nations. Which by the way, Ruth is a fulfillment of that promise. We'll see as we go through. So she turns to them, go to your mother's house. May the Lord deal kindly with you. And you can read there, continue to deal kindly with you. As you've dealt with the dead, that means in the passing of my husband and my sons and with me. She's saying, you've gone over and above your love for me, your kindness for me, but I'm going back to my own people now. She's grateful, she's thankful, but she understands there are different worldviews, there are different religions. One loves Yahweh, the other loves many gods, but not Yahweh. The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband, That's an important line because we'll see in chapter 2 and then into 3, when Ruth encounters the man named Boaz, the word rest is used alongside husband. So her prayer for Ruth, we know, is fulfilled in Bethlehem, in Judah. We don't know about Orpah. Then she kissed them. They lifted up their voices and wept. You see how Naomi's heart's changed. She's more concerned about the things of the Lord, the things of Yahweh. And both daughters-in-law initially agreed to return with Naomi. But then Naomi brings in some biological truth here, some reality. Okay, let's wake up to what's going on here. I'm kind of getting up in years. Yeah, I know that Sarah and Abraham story, and I know that there have been others. But even if I was able to remarry and have sons that, according to law, would be marriageable for you, are you going to wait around 13, 15 years, whatever the case may be on them? This is not necessary, she said. Go back to your people. and rest in your homes. Find husbands in Moab. And Orpah hears her. She hears the biological truth and chooses to return to Moab, her people, and their gods in verse 14. But Ruth holds on. She clings, she clings to Ruth. And she says, no matter what, I'm gonna stay with you. And Naomi again presses her to return with Orpah. Why is Naomi then so persistent in urging Orpah and Ruth to return to their people and their gods? Because she now understood that repentance, returning to God, following God, comes with demands. There's a cost to discipleship. to borrow from the title of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's famous work on the Beatitudes. There's a cost to discipleship. And Naomi's not sure that either one of them would truly be willing to count the cost. And so she lays the cost out before them. And one decides not to follow after Yahweh, to no longer pursue Ruth or Naomi. Ruth, however, decides to stay. Orpah looks at it as, let's see, Yahweh plus nothing in Bethlehem, which would be an overstatement, or everything that I have at home minus Yahweh and Moab. And she chooses to go back to Moab and leave. She chooses Moab and their gods. But notice what Ruth's response is. Do not urge me to leave you, in verse 16, or return from you, from following me. From where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Now, if we just stop there, we could read something that would be necessary for us to think. Well, she just really loves Naomi. And she's got a really close relationship with an earthly person. And she wants to serve Naomi. And she wants to be with Naomi. And it's a fondness that is indescribable. But she's not just following Naomi. She goes a step further. Not only does she say, I want to follow you wherever you go, wherever you lodge, I'll lodge. Your people shall be my people. That's going a little step further. That I love you, Naomi. You've taken good care of us. We've tried to provide for you, so on and so forth. Your people will be my people. And your God, your God, will be my God. Where you die, I will die. There I'll be buried. May the Lord Yahweh do so to me and more, if anything but death parts me from you. That's covenantal language. It's covenantal language in what Ruth says to Naomi in an earthly covenant. Much like what Jonathan and David had on this earth. But more than that, it reveals the old covenant. God's name for himself. was I am. I will be whatever I will be for my people. And he reminds them all along the way, there was a time when you were not my people, but you are now called my people. There was a time when I was not your God, but I am now your God. That's the covenant. And what does she say? Your people shall be my people. Your God shall be my God. I want to be part of that covenant. I will renounce everything over there. I don't want to die in Moab. I don't want to worship the little G gods. They've not done anything for me anyway. I see what God is doing for you. Don't urge me to leave you. And so Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, and she said no more. All that had been said could be said, all that could be done had been done. It was more than just an undying love for her mother-in-law. It was a testimony. She was willing to serve God, to be faithful to him. Now before we move on to the final scene, we need to understand Naomi's place in the Book of Ruth. If we just had chapter one, we might think that the book ought to be called Naomi. because all of chapter one is about God and his mercy and providence all along the way, but it's a lot of Naomi and not much of Ruth. Well, we'll see enough of Ruth in the chapters that follow. However, Ruth and her testimony serve as the crown jewel of the entire book, and Naomi's as well. In Naomi's bitter providence, And in her turning back to God, she, along with her difficult circumstances, show that God meant all of this to bring Ruth to faith in Him. That may not have been all the purposes. Remember, I've told you before, when we're going through difficult times, we don't need to say, God, what is your purpose in this? He may have purposes that are beyond number, that will go on for years, even after we're no longer here. But we know that one of his purposes, if not the overall overarching purpose, is that he promised Abraham he'd be the father of many nations, and now we have a Gentile, a Moabite. Even though it's born out of sin, she should not have been married to an Israelite. He sinned, and yet God uses it all for the purposes of a family tree that would lead to Jesus Christ. Have you ever noticed the women that are mentioned in the family tree? We're gonna see this, I'm gonna come back to this over and over and over. Ruth the Moabitess is in the family tree. Rahab the prostitute is in the family tree. We wouldn't have done it this way. We would have left those types out, right? And yet we see this happens to bring, to draw Ruth to faith in God. She turns with Naomi and goes to Bethlehem. Sinclair Ferguson again notes, Ruth's conversion is part of the explanation for Naomi's pain. The story of Naomi is about Ruth, or more accurately, it's about God bringing Ruth to himself and positioning her life and the unfolding purposes for the world. We'll see those unfolding purposes in chapters 2, 3, and 4. Here we should see, and we should be reminded, that our trials and tribulations, regardless of how they come about, whether it's the divine discipline of God because of our sin, whether it's discipline that's indirectly related to some other one's sin, like it was the case with Naomi, whether it's just people on this earth that don't understand us and persecute us, whether it's God testing our faith along the way, wherever we find ourselves in these times, Are we going to respond as if I remember God's promises? God is faithful. I don't see it right here. God, I'm hurting. I don't understand why my husband and my sons are gone. I don't understand why they married these women. I don't, but she came to an understanding. We may or may not, but just trust in the God who says, I will be what I will be. for my children. William Cooper, the hemrider, understood this on some level. You're not feeling Cowper or Cooper, depending on where you live, what side of the tracks you grew up on. He struggled mightily with spiritual depression, mental depression, agonizing at times. His dear friend John Newton was there to lead him through times of despair and and depression, and many of the hymns, or some of the hymns that we find from John Newton's pen are written for William Cooper. In William Cooper's hymn, he penned these words, God moves in a mysterious way his glorious wonders to perform. Another said, behind a frowning providence, lies the God of that providence. You see, the bitter providences of Naomi's life serve both to restore her faith and also the glorious wonder of bringing Ruth to faith in God. So when you're in the midst of storms in your life, trust in God's promises and then look for his glorious purposes, both for yourself and for those around you as well. I would suggest that's what Naomi did. She had their best interest at heart. It would have been better for them to go home. And yet because Ruth saw something in Naomi and her God along the way that attracted her, she didn't want to leave. Then very quickly, the second part of this is receiving God's covenant promises. The third scenes bring us back to Bethlehem. And of course, much had changed in those 10 years while they were gone. where the land was in the midst of judgment at the beginning, they left the land with no bread, they returned in the time of harvest. The very last verse, verse 22. And just as the physical famine marked the time of spiritual famine in the land, so too the physical harvest marked the time of spiritual harvest in the land. And they returned. And notice what happens. It's a bunch of people out and about, and a group of women come. One writer calls them all the gossips. I can point you to him. I wouldn't say that, but not all women are, but he said the women come and they say, is that Naomi? Is that Naomi that left with the limelight that many years ago? And she doesn't just say yes, it's me. Here she's even trying to point them to her great God. She says, why do you call me Naomi? Don't call me that. Now, some people misunderstand here. They read this to say that God was angry. It was a righteous anger with Naomi, and she was bitter towards God. I don't think that's what's happening here. She says, do not call me Naomi, which means pleasant. That's what her name meant, but call me Mara. What does Mara mean? Bitterness. That's what we saw in Exodus 15. And this is the name that she chooses on this occasion. Don't call me pleasant. Call me bitter. And here's why. The Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. She doesn't mean by that I don't like Him anymore. I'm not going to serve Him anymore. She's saying it was justified. that God was right in dealing with her and her family in the way that he did. Yes, she was just getting the indirect consequences of what happened to her husband and her sons by righteous judgment of God. She came to it in submitting rightly to her husband. And yet, what did she get? And here's how we know that she's not talking about physical things of this earth. She said, I went out full, but the Lord's brought me back empty. See, if you just read that, you think, wait a minute, that doesn't make sense because they left Judah, they left Bethlehem because they were empty. They didn't have any breath. And now she's coming back. They've been full over there for a long time. So that's not what it can mean. It can't mean the bread of the land. No, what she's saying is, I went out full. I had my family. I had my husband. I had my sons. We had our household. We went out full. Lord, he's emptied me. That's the bitterness, the grief, if you will, that she's experienced. It's not an anger with God, it's just the reality of the grief that she faced, that she was left with when her husband and her sons died. Why do you call me Naomi or Pleasant? Since the Lord is witness against me and the Almighty has afflicted me. Now again, her testimony is not that she's bitter or angry with God, but the path she has been on, the path that she's taken has been full of bitterness. It's been full of grief. She did go out full with her family, not with bread, and now she's returning with plenty of bread and to plenty of bread, but no family. They all died in Moab. But her testimony, again, is not against God. He dealt rightly with us, even though it was bitter. He dealt justly in calling calamity upon us, even though it was difficult for us. Her afflictions, she says, were warranted. Again, a direct consequence of her husband's disobedience. Her pain was justified, but notice what she says. The Lord, she says, brought me back. There it is. He brought me back. In spite of all of this, in all of the things that we've been through, because of what my husband did and my sons did, and all the bitterness and all the grief, He brought me back. And so she wants her outward testimony to be, even with her name, is to show how God delivered her from bitterness. She wants people to say, I was once that way. But the reality now is, look at the grace and the blessings that are mine. in God. She wanted her name to serve as a picture of the deliverance from the bondage of sin and the consequences of sin and those bitter experiences that she'd associated with God, who is divine and gracious and loving in His discipline. And further, it was in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvests. We'll pick up there next week, Lord willing, because That's irony again. We call it God's providence. This barley harvest time of season takes up the rest of the book. God's divine timing in their return to the land. So I want to close with a couple of thoughts. First, I want to go back to Ruth, chapter 1, verse 13, where she says, no, my daughters is exceedingly bitter for me. That word in the Hebrew can mean, and is translated in the King James, grieves me. For it's exceedingly grieving to me for your sake. My grief is for you. My time of bitterness is for your sake. And that comes from the hand of the Lord that's gone out against me. She understood that she was going through this for them. Did you catch that? I couldn't help but think when I saw the Hebrew word and how it can be grieving, although it's a different Hebrew word, the idea is the same when we consider Isaiah 53 verse 10. Isaiah prophesying Christ says, it was the will of the Lord to crush him. Who? His son, Jesus. It was the will of the Lord to crush him. It was the will of the Lord to crush Naomi. Not in the same way as the cross, but that was her cross. That was the cross that she bore for God on that occasion. It was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief. Grief. Why was Jesus grieving? Why was Jesus put to grief? When we read in Isaiah 53, 5, He was pierced for our transgression. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement. Upon Him was the discipline that brought us peace. And by His wounds we are healed. Do you see that? Just like Naomi. suffered because of others, so did Jesus. The consequences on Him were much more than she ever went through, but the cross she bore was for others. Jesus says, I was crushed for you. You could put Him here. It was exceedingly bitter to Him for our sake. At the hand of God the Father, He was crushed. in our place and his iniquity was placed on him. Why? To fulfill the purposes of God. A bitter providence for his own son so that we might have life eternal. God's sovereign in all circumstances of life. We wouldn't have written the gospel story the way that it's written. We would not give up our only son, and not only would not only give him up, we would not crush him. It's more than just allowing it to happen. The Father was involved in it. The same is true for your difficulties as well. And then secondly, you may be far from God this morning. You may be out of the land. You may have never been in the land, you may have never professed faith in Jesus Christ, and you know without a shadow of a doubt that if you were to die today, eternity's not yours. You're out of the land. But you could be a professing believer and walking through a time of dryness. You're not hungering and thirsting for the Lord. You've gone out of the promised land for a time, just like Elimelech did. Again, he didn't intend to stay there. But you admit this morning that you're not walking with the Lord, that the circumstances of life have overwhelmed you, or you don't feel like God has been there for you, or things aren't working out, whatever the case may be, and you're far from him and you know it. You've got one thing to do. Shub. Repent and return to God. It might be the first time you've ever repented. You might say, Pastor Todd, I don't know how to repent. Then come and see me. Just know that your sin separates you from God for all eternity. And you are under the wrath of God already, dead in trespasses and sins. You're not going to die. Physically you will, but you're already dead. And the other way to have life is to believe that Christ died in your place, that He willingly accepted the crushing of the Father and all of our iniquities being poured out on Him and His righteousness put on us. And then if you've done that before in your life and you're wandering, you are still a sheep astray, repent. Repent and return to Him like Naomi did. And folks, some might look at your life either as a pagan turning to God for the first time or a wanderer returning again and say, I want to follow your God. I want to be in the land of your people. I want your God to be my God. That's the beauty of Naomi's life. She took a lot to get her there for the purpose of salvation being made for all men. Let's pray. Father, we are grateful today for all of your word. This is certainly a love story in the midst of all sorts of darkness in the nation of Israel. And yet, we see your grace and your mercy of salvation proclaimed. So Father, I pray as we work our way through that we see the Redeemer that's provided, an earthly Redeemer for Ruth, Because she's already been faithful to a heavenly redeemer in Christ. It's in the name of Christ we pray.