Now today... as people are still coming in, we want to look at the book of Ruth. And you may say to me, why are we looking at the book of Ruth? We were just studying the book of Judges. So why today have we switched to this new book? Well, the clue is in the first verse of the book of Ruth. It says, it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled. So the book of Ruth, the context of it, was the days of the judges. That's when these incidents occurred that we read about in the book of Ruth. So it's good for you and I to study this little book at the same time as we have been studying the book of Judges. Now, unlike the book of Judges, which is not particularly heartwarming, this is a particularly heartwarming story that's found in the book of Ruth but it's so much more than that judges reminds us that God cares about a nation Ruth or the book of Ruth reminds us that God cares about individuals and families and husbands and wives and children God cares about our relationships one with the other. God cares about our choices. God cares about who we marry and who we don't marry. All of these things are dealt with in this book of Ruth. And it's a book that reminds us that even though the time of the judges, which is 350 years, was a time of backsliding, a time of failure in the nation of Israel, a time of darkness by and large over much of the land, that in that darkness and in that time of backsliding, not everybody fell away, not everybody backslid. not everybody was lost and you're going to discover as we go through the book of Ruth that God has his own jewels his own stars that will shine brightly in those darkest of dark days for the nation of Israel and of course that's true in the physical but also in the spiritual that the light always shines brighter doesn't it in the midst of great darkness And Christians who walk with God always shine brighter in the darkest of days. We could go through the Bible and pick out example after example. How bright was Daniel down in Babylon? Wasn't he a great light there? How bright was Joseph down in Egypt? What a great light for God he was in that dark place. So in the darkest of places, you'll discover God will always preserve himself a witness. Do you know today that Christianity is growing faster in places where it's much darker for Christians? Countries like North Korea, countries like Iran, countries like Nepal, Christianity... almost any other corner of the earth. And yet, those places are not exactly fertile soil, you would think, for Christianity. and some of the best Christians are found in those places because in the darkest and most difficult of circumstances the light will shine brighter now the book of Ruth is more than simply a story it is a book that's full of lessons to you and I about choices and consequences from choices you'll discover that some of the actors in this story this drama make good choices You'll also discover that some make bad choices and there'll be consequences for both the good and the bad. You'll discover as you read the book of Ruth that behind all everything is the hand of God leading, guiding, directing, intervening. in the circumstances of these people's lives. And they will acknowledge it. They will see it. Even Naomi, when God judges her, she says, the Lord hath dealt bitterly with me. She knows God's at work. in her life and you'll see in the book of Ruth that God works in the ordinary people's lives you know sometimes when we read the stories of the Bible we read of King David and Goliath the giant and we see this little boy taking the sling and defeating the giant and then going on to lead the nation and becoming a great general and a great king of the nation and we look at him and we say well I couldn't be him That's way above me. That's someone I can't really identify with. Well, when you come to the book of Ruth, everybody's ordinary. Everybody is what we call the 5'8", 5'8 person. Nobody is big or small in the book of Ruth. Everybody is just ordinary. And as you read the book of Ruth, you'll see God at work in the lives of very ordinary people. God touching their lives, God changing their lives, God leading them, God guiding them, God intervening when they go wrong, God blessing when they do right. You'll see all of this unfold in the story of the Book of Ruth. So let's begin in verse 1 today with the first verse where it says, it came to pass. Now, when you read this, now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled. That is not simply a date stamp. That's telling you something about the period of time, the theological period of time, the spiritual era that this book is founded. Now, what were the days when the judges ruled. If you have your Bible, just go back in the same page as you see Ruth chapter 1, you'll see the last verse of the book of Judges. Judges chapter 21 and verse 25. This little verse summarizes the period of the judges. In those days, there was no king in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes. So the book of Ruth is in the context of a period in the history of Israel where everybody did whatever they wanted to do. If they wanted to worship a false god, they just did it. If they wanted to have a mistress, we saw that the Levite had his own mistress, he just took her. If he wanted to kill her, he just killed her. If they wanted to steal from one another, they just did it. They had no fear of God. Every man decided what's right and wrong. Nevermind what God said. He decides or she decides. That's the period of the book of Judges. That's the spirit that was in the air. Sounds like a bit like today, doesn't it? where people say, I live whatever way I want. You won't judge me. You won't tell me what to do. This God won't dictate to me how I should live my life. I will live it the way I want to. Well, that's the period, that's the spirit of the book of Judges. And it led to all kinds of problems in the life of Israel. And the first problem they ran into, you'll see in verse one, it says, there was a famine in the land. Here's a principle that you'll find all over the Bible. God never allows his people to sin successfully. Never. He always comes after them. He always catches up with you. Moses put it so eloquently when he said, be sure your sin will find you out. Now it may not find you out tomorrow. but God will catch up with you in his time, in his way. And here God puts his finger on the nation of Israel and strikes them down with a famine. Now you say to me, how do we know it's God's hand that the famine came? Well, if you go back to the book of Deuteronomy and I could quote a number of passages, but if you go to Deuteronomy chapter 11, before they ever went into the promised land remember Israel is a theocracy it's ruled directly by God it's to be a chosen nation to reflect the glory of God to all the other nations and because of that the physical land was very much tied to the spiritual state of the nation and the blessings that came on the physical land was tied to the spiritual state of the nation and here in Deuteronomy chapter 11 verse 13 Moses instructed them and warned them. It shall come to pass. If ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments, this is God speaking through Moses, which I command you this day to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, then I will give you the rain of your land in his Jewish season, the first rain, the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, thy wine, and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, and that thou mayest eat and be full. That's the nice side of it, that's the blessing. You honor God, God says I'll honor you, I'll take care of you. But then it says in verse 16, take heed to yourselves. What's another way of saying that? Don't kid yourself, don't fool yourself, God says. that your heart be not deceived, that ye turn aside and serve other gods and worship them. And then the Lord's wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, that the land yield not her fruit, and lest ye perish quickly from the good land which the Lord giveth you." So Israel were told right out front by God, if you turn away from my word, You turn to other gods. Expect me to come after you. And one of the judgments, it's not the only one, because I could list many other judgments that he mentions. One of the judgments God says is I'll touch the land. I'll send a famine. I'll send a drought. And I will afflict you physically. for your spiritual famine that is in your hearts and in your land. So, that's what's going on in Ruth chapter 1 verse 1. There's a physical famine because there's a spiritual famine. And there's a physical famine because God is punishing the nation of Israel because of their sin, because of their idolatry. Now, that's the background. Here's the first introduction to the people in the story. Verse one. And a certain man of Bethlehem, Judah, went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. Now we're then told the name of the man. The name of the man was Elimelech. The name of his wife, Naomi. The name of his two sons, Malon and Chilion, or Kilion, depends how you pronounce it. Now, Bethlehem is about 40 to 60 miles from the land of Moab. In fact, if you stand on the hills of Bethlehem, it's about 2,000 odd feet above sea level, you can see the land of Moab way in the distance. So every Jew living in Bethlehem, in the famine, can look 40-odd miles away and see in the distance the hills of Moab, the land of Moab. And they can see that there's a famine in Bethlehem, but there's not a famine in Moab. There's water in Moab. There's crops being grown in Moab. And every day, this couple, Elimelech and Naomi, dad and mom, with their two sons, Malon and Kilion, They look over towards Moab and they see there's food there. There's plenty there. There's rain there. There's crops growing there. And every day I'm sure there's a temptation. Why don't we emigrate? Why don't we move to the land of Moab? And we're told in verse 1 of Ruth chapter 1, They went to what? What's the word? Sojourn. It's an old English word. But what does the Hebrew word mean that's translated sojourn? It means they went there for a temporary stay. Some of you are here on temporary visas. You're hoping that this is not your lasting place on earth. You may have left your families. You've come here just for a year, just for six months, maybe for two years. And you've told yourself and you told your family, I'll be back. I'm just gone for a short term visit. A sojourn. And Elimelech may have told Naomi and his two sons, listen, the famine won't last forever in Bethlehem. we will just go and sojourn in Moab, just for a few months, maybe six months, maybe 12 months. But notice in verse four, at the end of verse four, it says they dwelled there about how long? 10 years. They only intended to go for a short time, But the short time, the months become a year, and the year becomes years. Eventually, before they know it, they're there a decade. And if God hadn't intervened, they may have stayed there for the rest of their lives. Now you said to me, what was wrong with them running to Moab to escape the famine? Why was it a sin? Is it a sin to emigrate from Singapore to Australia? Would that be a sin? So if that's not a sin, why is it a sin for them to leave Israel, the land of promise, and go to the land of Moab? Well, it was a sin for this reason. God had given them this land, the land of Israel. It's called the promised land. And they were to take that land and live in that land. And they were to be a separate people from all the other nations around them. And they were told in Exodus 23, God says, I will set thy bounds, I will draw the line and you're not to go out of that line. They were forbidden to leave the promised land. And furthermore, they were forbidden to go and mix with the other nations. Particularly the wicked nations like Moab. What should they have done? Elimelech and Naomi. They should have waited. They should have sought God's help in their difficulties. And you'll notice as you read this first verse of the book of Ruth, and you'll find a lot of Christians like this today. They make all kinds of decisions for their families, for their own lives, and they'll do exactly what Elimelech does. What does he not do? He never once seeks God's will. You notice that? He never prays. He never seeks counsel from the high priest or the leaders of the nation or the judges that were ruling at that time under God. No, Elimelech, he decides he's going to move his family to that wicked place called Moab, that forbidden place, because he felt like doing it. He made the decision from his own wisdom. Now, here's the great irony in this story. Elimelech's name means this, my God is king. Melech or lech in Hebrew means king and Elimelech, El, where you get Samuel, asked of God, Elijah, my God is Jehovah, El in the Hebrew, God. Elimelech, elech means king, his name means this, my God is king, or Jehovah is king. And here's a guy whose name means my God is king, and what does he do? He just ignores God and goes off and does his own thing. And heads off to Moab with his wife and his two sons. Now remember what's the spirit of the days of the judges? Every man does what was right in his own eyes. Elimelech is just living like everybody around him. He decides, well, I'll just do what I feel like doing. I'll do what's economically best for me, what makes me feel most comfortable, what offers me the best opportunities. Never mind what God thinks. Never mind what spiritual effect it'll have on my family. That doesn't bother me, Lemelek says. I'm only interested in having a big stomach full of food. Now, before you think I'm being a little bit harsh, and say to me afterwards, but it's his children, they're gonna starve. As we read the book of Ruth, we'll discover that many people who were contemporaries of Naomi and Elimelech lived through the famine. Boaz lived through the famine, didn't he? We'll discover when Naomi returns back home to Bethlehem, they all recognize her. And who recognized her? All the people who had lived at the same time as her, all her contemporaries who survived the famine. Not everybody died. It wasn't that serious a famine. And furthermore, we'll discover as we read the book of Ruth that they had a close relative called Boaz who was a very rich man and a very generous man. and a very kind man. And there's no way I believe Boaz would have allowed Naomi and the Limelech and Malon and Killian to have starved in that famine. No way. It would be totally contrary to his character and his attitude that we read in this story. So their running to Moab was a decision that they didn't have to make that they weren't forced to make, that they made out of their own worldly reasoning, just to get a better job, just to get a bigger pay packet, just to get more money, just to get a better lifestyle. And you'll discover there's a lot of Christians like that. And they'll read the story and they'll say, oh, that Illuminate guy, bad guy, wrong. And they'll do the same thing. They'll act the same way. They'll make the same decisions. using the same reasoning. They'll set God aside and they'll say, I decide because what suits me, not what God wants in my life. And they'll discover there'll be consequences for their choices. Now, when trouble comes to your life and my life, there are three reactions that you can make. Here are the three. Number one, And they're all E's, three E's, easy to remember. I borrowed this from a commentator, so it's not my original thoughts. Here's the first one. You can endure it, you can escape it, or you can enlist it, with an E, E-N-L-I-S-T. What do I mean by that? You can endure it. In other words, you can grit your teeth and say, I'm just going to hold on. I don't care what happens. And I'll get through this problem. Now, the difficulty with that is that if we try to endure it, close our eyes, put our fingers in our ears, we tend to let the problems master us. And eventually, we tend to become bitter in the trial, in the problem. If we try to escape it, then we'll miss the purpose of God in the trial, in the problem. And we end up making things worse, like this family is going to discover. However, if we try to enlist our trials, and let the trial become our servant, not our master, and say, I don't know what God's doing here, but God wants me to get through this with his grace, and God wants me to learn from this. If you enlist the trial, into your life, into your thinking and say Romans 8 20 it is true all things work together for good then that trial, that problem can become a blessing to you that problem can work for God's glory in your life and every test that God sends is an opportunity for you and I to trust God let me make a simple statement We cannot control our circumstances by and large, can we? What can we control? Our reaction to our circumstances. That's the choice that we make. We can't control our circumstances, but we can control how we react. Now Elimelech and Naomi found themselves in this famine with their two sons. They couldn't control that. That was sent by God. But they could control how they react to that famine. What choices they would make. And what choice did they make? They said, well, I don't care what God thinks. I'm going to do what we want to do. And they get, no doubt, on a donkey or a horse. And they head the 40-odd miles down to Moab. And I'm sure they told themselves on the way, we're only going for a short time, just to sojourn. just until the famine's over, just until the problem has been solved. Now, why was Moab in particular such a bad place? Who was Moab? Where did Moab come from? The Moabites were a nation that were related to the Israelites. Now, how were they related? Abraham had a nephew called Lot. Do you remember him? And Lot engaged in an immoral relationship, incestuous relationship with one of his daughters when he was drunk and produced a son called Moab. And he had this bizarre situation where he was the grandfather and the father of this boy called Moab. And the Moabites came from that ungodly union. All the descendants of Moab were from that family. And like the beginning of their nation, so they continued in this gross immorality and the Moabites were famous for their immoral lifestyles. When Balaam wanted to destroy the men of Israel, who did he bring? The immoral Moabite women into the land of Israel to draw them into immorality. And the Moabites down through the centuries were famous, or I should say infamous, for their wickedness, for their idolatry, and particularly for their immorality. So here we have a Limelech and Naomi. Now think about it. They have two young sons. Where's the worst place to bring two young men to live? into a place full of ungodly women, immoral women. And of course, we're going to discover in the story, you put them in a place where there's ungodly women, they'll find two ungodly women to marry, and they do. Well, we'll find that out. That'll flow from that choice. But before we get there, notice what happens. Verse three. And Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died. And she was left and her two sons. You know, at first, when they got there, it appeared they made the right choice, didn't it? Because when they arrived at Moab, there was no famine. They found food. They found a place to stay. And here's something you'll discover about the devil. If you go down a path of sin, the devil will roll out the red carpet to welcome you. He'll make it easy. He'll have the right people at the right place to be there to welcome you in. And when they got to Moab, you notice they're welcome. They're treated well. They get food. They don't die in the famine or of a famine or starvation. And initially it appears they've made the right choice. Maybe Elimelech was sitting talking to Naomi and he felt a little bit guilty, but he says, you know, it's turned out all right. You know, we made the right choice. All those silly folk, relatives of us, they stayed in Bethlehem where there's not enough food. And look at us. We're doing so well here. We're smart. We're having a good life. But you see, I said at the beginning of this message, God never allows his children to sin successfully. He loves you too much to let you continue on down such a path. And God comes after this family. And what God is trying to do, he's not trying to destroy this home, he's trying to get this family to come back home to where they should be in Bethlehem. And the first thing he does, and notice it's grace here, because God could have struck the whole family down dead, couldn't he? They deserved it. God puts his finger on Elimelech, the one who brought them down, the head of the home, the one who bears the most responsibility. And God puts his finger on Elimelech and he says, I'm taking you out. And here's the great irony. Elimelech ran to Moab to escape death. But he didn't escape death, did he? He ran to Moab to save his life, but it cost him his life. And when you run away from God, expect unexpected consequences. Expect God to start to deal with your family, start to deal with you. Start to make life uncomfortable. And God begins to do that with Naomi and with her family. And we're told she's left with her two sons. Now Naomi has a decision. Does she go back home? Or does she stay? Does she look at what's happened and say, you know, God has dealt with us as a family. God has chastised us, punished us for our bad choice in running to Moab. Now I need to repent. And like the prodigal son, make my way back home. That's what she should have done, isn't that right? And the tragic thing is, if she had done this at this point, she may have saved the life of her two sons. But what choice does Naomi make? I'll stay on. I'll stay on. And often, that's what happens when we go down into a path of backsliding and sin. Even when God starts to deal with us, we just keep ignoring. We just keep absorbing the pain, the rebuke, the chastisement, and we go deeper and deeper and deeper into this situation. Now, I want you to see that Naomi knows that this is God's hand upon her. She's not writing this off as bad luck. Well, you know, a limolex not being in good health, and this is just a coincidence that all these things are on my family, because you'll discover in verse 21, when she returns home to Bethlehem, eventually, she says, I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty. She knows God was coming after her in Moab and her family. And she says, why then call ye me Naomi? The word Naomi means pleasant, sweet. Don't call me sweet, she says. She says, call me Mara. Why? Verse 20. Call me Mara, for the Almighty have dealt very bitterly with me. The word Mara means bitter or sour. It'd be like you saying, don't call me sugar or honey, call me vinegar. Why? Because I feel so bitter. Now, why is she feeling better? She says, for God, the almighty. Has put his finger on me. Has put his finger on my family. It's not coincidence. Naomi knows. It's not bad luck. She knows this is God coming after her, chasing after her. And she admits this is the hand of God, but yet she stays on. And Moab, how foolish. Now, maybe you're sitting here reading this story and you're thinking to yourself, what a silly woman this Naomi is. Well, before you look down your spiritual nose too quickly, is that not what you do as well? So often? Remember old Einstein? He said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Well, here she is. Continue on. God chastises me for being a Moab. I lose my husband. What do I do? Stay on. Keep hanging on there. Keep being too proud to admit my mistake. And tragically, she will stay on until she comes to a point where she admits in verse 21 of Ruth chapter 1, I'm now empty. I've lost everything. I'm a bitter woman. And there are a lot of silly Christians doing the same. Continuing on in their sin. In their backslidden ways. And their heart is empty. Their soul is empty. Their life is empty. And what do they keep on doing? Keep on going the same way. Instead of change. That's Naomi. And this family. And notice what happens in verse 4, before she comes home. It says, And they took them wives. Who's the they? The two sons, Malon and Kilian. And where did they get their wives from? Of the women of Moab. Exactly what God says. In the Old Testament, they're not to do. God said to them, don't go down to the heathen nations, don't fraternize the heathen nations, because in the end, your young men will marry their young women and their young women will marry your young men. Don't do it. It'll compromise your faith. But Elimelech and Naomi were more interested with how many cents and dollars they could make, how big their stomach was. than the spiritual state of their sons. And the consequence was, the first consequence, God removes the limelight, the big obstacle, the big failure in this family. And then the next problem comes, the two sons, they go out and they marry these two heathen women, these two pagans. This is going to be a big crisis because the next generation of this family are going to be pagan. They're not going to be Jews. They're going to grow up in Moab. The grandchildren are going to be Moabites. They're going to throw off the God of Israel, the faith of their fathers. And what does Naomi say and do? Nothing. Nothing. But frankly speaking, what could she say? Well, Malon, Kilion, I don't think you should marry these ungodly women, these unsaved women, these unbelievers. Because God is against it. Really mom? Is God not against you coming to Moab and you came to Moab? What are you talking about? If you are so keen on God's word, how come you and dad threw it aside to come here in the first place? Naomi can say nothing because the moment she opens her mouth, she's exposed as what? A hypocrite. And when you lose your testimony as a parent, expect your children to go the same way. In fact, expect your children to go worse. Now, Naomi, I'm sure, she never foresaw this when they first left. Bethlehem. She probably agreed with the limelight, well let's just go down to Sodom there and then we'll get back to Bethlehem and we'll find some good Jewish believing wives for Malon and Killian. But of course it didn't work out that way. The devil never tells you what's going to be at the end of the chain when he offers you the first link to pull. And now here is Naomi having lost her husband She's left with two sons who are married to two unbelieving Moabite women, strangers and foreigners, living in the land of strangers and foreigners. There's no temple there. There's no tabernacle there. There's no place to worship God there. And she's alone. Sons have left home, married these wives. And the sons have gone down the same path as dad and mom went. And not just gone down the path, they've gone worse. Because now they've set up homes with ungodly women. What does that tell us about the path of sin and compromise? That tells us that the path of sin and compromise is not static. One step down leads to what? Another step down for this family. And then another step leads to another step. And they're there for 10 years. Verse 4 tells us at the end of it, they're now there a decade. Having gone there just to sojourn, they're now there permanently. They're now married to the locals. And from a human perspective, this family is finished. From a Christian perspective, from a spiritual perspective. unless God intervenes again. Let me show you something from the book of Genesis. Go to Genesis 13. Because here's one thing the devil never tells you. When he offers you the forbidden fruit of compromise and sin, he never tells you that when you eat the fruit it will turn sour in your stomach. He never tells you that. And Lot were told in Genesis 13 verse 11, chose him all the plain of Jordan and journeyed east, verse 12. And Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent toward where? Sodom. Is he in Sodom? No. Is he even beside Sodom yet? No. He's simply pitching his tent towards that city called Sodom and his sister city Gomorrah. And verse 13 says, but the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners exceedingly. But then in chapter 14 of the book of Genesis, we're told there's a war. Verse 11 says, and they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, these invading armies, and all their vittles, and went their way. And then it says, and they took Lot, Abraham's brother's son, who dwelt where? In Sodom. Now he didn't begin in Sodom. He began by pitching his tent towards Sodom. But once you make a step in compromise in your faith, the next step is easier to go down. And then the next step is easier and you go down, down, down, down, down. And before you know it, you'll be living in Sodom. And in Genesis 19, the next time we run into Lot, he's not just living in Sodom. He's married a woman there. His two daughters are married to two Sodomite men. And Lot has become an elder of the city, basically an MP, member of parliament, equivalent in those days. He's become a big shot. He's become a leading light in Sodom. Now, Lot didn't start off thinking that one day I'll become a leading man in Sodom and my two daughters will be married to two Sodomites. That's not how he began. He began by pitching his tent towards Sodom. Flirting with it. And Elimelech and Ruth did the same thing. They went to Moab to sojourn. They told themselves, it's just for a short time. It's just a small sin. It's not a big issue. I mean, we're just refugees. That's a big word today, isn't it? We're just there for a little while, just to get some food, make a little money, and then we'll come back home and bring the boys up in a better place. But it did not work out that way. The two boys grew up. in the ungodly environment of Moab and the two boys married to Moabites and dad and mom could do nothing because they were already compromised themselves but then read on in the book of Ruth because although God had put his finger on this family in removing the limeleck Naomi wouldn't listen Naomi wouldn't waken up. So what will God do if you won't listen to strike one? God will send strike two. And he does. What does verse five say? And Malon and Killian died also, both of them. And the Holy Spirit puts it this way. And the woman was left of her two sons and her husband. She lost them all. God took them all out. Now, remember, these are the days when there's no welfare system. How do How does a husband and a wife or a father and mother, how do they take care of themselves in old age in the Middle East at this time? Well, the way you did is you had children. And the children would take over the farm when you got too old. And the children would then take care of dad and mom when dad and mom couldn't work anymore. That was the typical Middle Eastern family. There was no government help. There was no handouts if you're a widow or if you're an orphan. There was no one to take care of you in the society beyond your immediate family. So here's Naomi in Moab, a strange country. She's lost her husband. That's bad enough. But maybe she thinks to herself, well at least I got the two boys. The two sons can take care of me when I get older. They can provide for me. They can lead my home when I get sick and elderly. And now God removes the two sons. And here she is alone in a foreign country. She has no relatives there that she can turn to. She has no Boaz. that she can turn to, to get her out of her problems, to feed her. And her world has come crashing down, isn't it? And three graves now have been erected in Moab as a symbol of the stupidity and foolishness of Naomi's choice. in leaving where God had placed her in Bethlehem. Isn't that right? And do you know what must be doubly hard for her? I mean, it's hard enough having the pain and the fears of having lost all of your family members. But what must have made it doubly hard was knowing that it was your choices that caused their deaths. It was your bad decisions that caused God to put his finger on your family. That must have been doubly hard for her to take. She must have felt very hopeless, very helpless, as she looks at these three graves. As I said, forbidden fruit always looks sweet, always. If it didn't look sweet, we would never take it, isn't that right? but with all the devil's apples when you open them up they've got worms inside looks nice on the outside but when you bite into it it's not sweet it's not pleasant it's bitter and you know there's an old saying it says he who chooses the beginning of a road, chooses the place it leads to. Isn't that right? If you go out heading east from Changi Airport and hoping to get to London, will you ever get there? I've got a pilot here in the front row who can help you if you're stuck. Where will you get? Some island off the Philippines. If you're intending to get along, why? Because you're going the wrong direction. Come to the wrong place. And if you start out by making a choice to go in the wrong direction for you and your family, expect to come to the wrong place. It's not right. It's just common sense. And Elimelech and Naomi made the wrong choices. And they came to the wrong place. And they got the wrong consequence, not what they were hoping for. Now why has God come after this family? Why didn't God just say, just go on ahead, do what you like? Do you know why? If you have a child here in this room, you will know exactly what I'm saying. If a parent really loves the child, the parent will not abandon the child to fall into worse problems, is that right? If your child's crossing the road, you don't stand back and say, go ahead, learn from your mistake. Get knocked down a few times, it'll teach you a lesson. It's your problem. No, what will the parent do? They'll reach out and grab the child. And if they have to, they'll discipline the child and teach the child, don't do it. Don't do it. And that's what God is doing with this family because He loves Naomi too much to let her go. It's actually because of His love He's coming after her, as much as His justice and judgment. And He's chasing after this woman. Not because He wants to destroy her, because He wants to bring her back home. That's all. And as soon as God gets her back home to Bethlehem, you notice nobody else dies in the family. You notice this? It was only enough judgment. And by the way, he touches the family one at a time. First it's Elimelech, she won't listen. Then it's Malon, she won't listen. And then it's Chilion, she won't listen. And each time God is just doing enough, the minimum, to get her to waken up. That's because of his love for her. And you know, although it looks here, as she says, I'm empty, I'm at the bottom of the barrel, Naomi's going to discover that as a Christian, as a child of God, when you get to the bottom of the barrel, there's always grace at the bottom of the barrel. Remember the story of the prodigal? He's lying in the far country, sitting amongst the pigs, desiring to eat the food of the pigs. And the Bible says suddenly he comes to his right mind. And he says, I know there is a way back. Let's go back home. Go back to my father. And when he walks on the way back, who's waiting for him? The father. And Naomi has to make the choice. She's not without hope. Because you're never without hope when there's God. And there's a little verse, and with this verse I close in Romans chapter 5 verse 20. Put it up on the screen. And this verse is as true for you as it is for me, as it is for Naomi. And it's the last part of this verse. It says, but where sin abounded. Where sin is exploding. What happens? Grace did much more abound. What's greater than your sin? God's grace. What's greater than your compromise? God's grace. What can turn your life around even when you've made a mess of it? God's grace. What can restore you when you don't deserve it? God's grace. The prodigal found it. Lying in the pigsty. And sometimes we have to be lying in the pigsty to learn this. Left there to rot with the pigs. And Naomi is at the bottom of the barrel, metaphorically speaking. She's lost everything. Her prospects for the future look hopeless. But she's just about to discover that instead of looking this direction, horizontally, she only has to look up. And she'll discover there's grace from the God of grace. She may have lost a lot, but she hasn't lost God. And I say this to you today. If you're here and you've been wandering from God, if you've been making bad choice after bad choice after bad choice, and you've been facing consequence after consequence after consequence, here's the time to change direction. God's grace is willing to forgive and to restore you. And who knows? what God can do in your life if you're willing to say, I am wrong. No, those are the hardest words to say. Even for a child, you notice? Say to the child, say you're sorry. And it's only when you say it, if you don't say, if you don't say, and blah, blah, blah. And it's the last thing a child will do, they'll say, okay, sorry. It's our human nature, isn't it? We're so proud. We won't admit we're wrong. And Naomi here, she refuses to admit she's wrong until God has to take everything from her. And now we're going to discover in two weeks time, she will find grace from God. at the bottom of the barrel let us pray father we thank thee for this thy word what a wonderful story of God's love and mercy how he came after this family because he loved them too much to let them destroy themselves and how he came after this family and put his finger on them tried to draw them back to where he wanted them to be. And Father, as we've read this story, we see ourselves in it. We see our families in it. And we see all the bad choices and all the bad consequences that we have made. And Lord, we say, forgive us where we have let you down. Forgive us where we have not gone your way. And now we want to come back home. We want to leave the past in the past. and move on in God's work, in God's plan for our lives. Help us not to listen to the voice of the devil who will tell us it's all hopeless, it's all wasted, it's all gone. Because even Naomi will discover that bitterness can turn to sweetness when you give it to the Lord. Be with us in this service. We think of any sinner that may be here outside of Christ that you would speak to them, that you would convict them, that they need God's grace just as much as the backslider. Bless us now in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.