FBC Morning Worship Service

Good morning, good to see you on this Lord's Day, beautiful day that we have today, the Lord's given us. We had a beautiful day in the morning yesterday. The sun was out, the sky was blue. It was warm if you went out walking.

Today, it's a different kind of beauty, I suppose, if you like snow. I was talking to someone earlier and said, I can't wait for summer. It's a little too early to start longing for summer, isn't it? Well, probably not.

Anyway, some announcements. Just a highlight from your bulletin. Please, those men who are on the finance committee, please note that we need to meet after the service this morning. So we'll get right at that meeting.

We'll meet in the third classroom on the end of the hallway and go over things we need to cover in that meeting. And note this date change. We were planning the annual meeting for next Sunday. We're gonna push that back a week to the 31st.

And the way we'll handle that day is have a morning service and then followed by a soup luncheon. And we'll handle that very COVID-friendly. Just so you know, I have a couple of different soup options and so forth.

But really, whether you're a member or not and gonna be in the annual meeting or not, I encourage you to stay, plan on staying for that soup luncheon together. And we'll have a time of socially distanced fellowship.

Just enjoy that opportunity once again. Haven't done something like that in almost a year. So it's time. So do that. And then note the tentative reopenings, if you would. The first Sunday of February, we're planning to resume Sunday school classes and as well as open, have the nursery opened once again with staffed personnel for the nursery.

And normally this time of year, we would do the morning service, a lunch and an afternoon service. So really the opportunity would be to be here for several hours together. And I'm not quite ready to do that yet.

So looking to resume that in March with the afternoon service and lunch. So please note that. We do want to have a baptismal service the end of February. That would be at the end of the morning service.

Some who have expressed some interest in being baptized. And so we're gonna put that on the calendar. If you have trusted Christ as your savior, but haven't yet followed him in baptism and need to be baptized, then I want to do so on the 28th.

And let me encourage you to let me know that and we'll get the process going for you to be baptized on that particular Lord's day. Well, on this Lord's day, we want to worship him, the God who actually gives us hope.

And when times seem so hopeless and we wanna praise him for that. Psalm 147, verse one begins, for it is good to sing praises to our God, for it is pleasant and a song of praise is fitting. And let's open with a psalm of praise, Jim.

And that is on page number 14. 14 on your hymnals worthy of praise. Sing both verses. Let's stand together, please. Please remain standing for prayer. Brother Edward O. Julius.

Father, we just thank you that you are a great God. We can know this in these uncertain times. And I've been thinking about how Jesus said that all power is given unto me in heaven and earth. And we know that since you have all power, Lord, that the forces of evil can have zero power unless you would allow it.

And we trust that you're steering the story, the events of the world for your glory, Lord. And today we pray that you would unite our hearts to worship you, worship you for your glory. And dear God, we pray that you may be blessed forever for thine is the greatness, the majesty, the victory, and the power.

And we just know that you are worthy and none else. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.

Please be seated.

Our psalm reading today, we want to turn to Psalm 46. If you can turn on the back of your bulletin to read that together. Psalm 46, or Psalm 42, verses one to six. Psalms 42 and three are actually companion psalms.

Some seem to think that at one time the two psalms were put together because of a repeated phrase or repeated verse. Shows up in this reading in verse five. Psalm 42, follow as I read verses one through six.

As the heart or the deer panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my meat day and night while they continually say unto me, where is thy God?

When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me for I had gone with the multitude. I went with them to the house of God with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holy day. Why art thou cast down, O my soul?

And why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. O my God, my soul is cast down within me. Therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan and of the Hermonites from the hill Mizar.

May the Lord add his blessing to the reading of his word today, Jim.

Next song we'll be singing is your handout sheet. That is your insert, come ye disconsolate. Does everybody have one of those? Anybody not have one, just raise your hand, we'll get one to you. Okay, seems like everybody has one, great.

Hey, come ye disconsolate. We'll sing all three verses together. Disconsolate, disconsolate love

As we pray together today, I want to remember Scott Williquette, our Missionary of the Week. Scott serves with PEP Ministries, Pastoral Enrichment Program Ministry. It's a ministry that ministers to pastors, teaches and trains pastors in third world countries.

That's the primary focus of his ministry. And what he does is a couple times a year, he'll go for at least two weeks at a time to teach and to train. Needless to say, because of the pandemic, hasn't been able to do that in the last year.

So his focus has been on other projects, very important projects. And yet there are some hopes and plans to go later in this year to resume those training times for pastors. So pray for Scott and his leadership with that program, as well as he also leads, Baptism in Missions has what they call the School of Church Planters.

And those are more local or United States church planters. And so there's training involved in that. So pray regarding that. Earlier this week, actually last, when was that, last Sunday, asked you to pray for Priscilla Knapp.

Priscilla had gone in the hospital the day before and was in very serious condition in the intensive care unit and was there for better part of this week. In fact, last Sunday, weren't even sure if she was going to survive.

Well, she has, she's doing a lot better and should be going home either today or hopefully tomorrow. So continue to pray for Priscilla and for her recovery. Also pray for Bob, he did have chemo last Monday and pray for him to continue to regain strength and for God's will to be accomplished with his cancer.

And then of course, all of us are certainly distressed and terribly disturbed to see images of our nation's capital and the National Guard in place there and all of the barricades and everything like that.

This is horrible situation in our country. And it is an image of our time and we want to pray for our nation in this time of a terrible unrest. And yet I think we also need to acknowledge, we as believers in Christ, who understand the righteousness of God and the holiness of God and His standards for life, His principles for life and how we as a nation have really snubbed our nose at God's righteousness and His holiness.

And there are consequences for that. We long for mercy, we long for grace and we pray for it. But at the same time, when God finally says, okay, this is what you want, you're going to reap what you sow.

Those are certainly seems to be some of the things that are going on in our country right now. We're reaping what we're sowing. On the cover of your bulletin is the image of the child and the baby and reminder that today, National Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, the baby bottles available there for fundraising for the Hope Life Center.

And that is a stark reminder of what our nation has done and has come to stand for among so many. We have a new administration supposed to take office later this week, and that administration has made it very clear.

President-elect and his supporters have made it very, very clear that all of the gains in restricting abortion in our nation in the last few years are going to be reversed and probably abortion expanded if they have their way.

So let's pray, shall we? Let's look to the Lord in prayer. Our Father and our God, when we look at our time in which we're living, the circumstances in which we live, we look at the conflict, the unrest, the uncertainty, we look at the health crisis, real or created to whatever extent, so much of that we do not know.

There's so much that's going on in the dark, in the darkness, behind the scenes. We hear so many conflicting things and what is said in public often masks what is reality under the surface. And all of this can lead us to a great sense of despair and a sense of anxiety and fear and perhaps even hopelessness.

But our Father, we thank you that you are our Father. And even as Ed prayed earlier, we praise you and thank you that you, to you, belongs all authority in heaven and in earth. So there is nothing that's happening on this planet and even in our own nation that is outside the scope of your power and authority, your control.

And that causes us to wonder what is going on in our nation, our world today. We cannot help but come to some conclusions that the unrest, the conflict, the national angst is certainly due to the moral and spiritual corruption of our day.

We are guilty in this nation, as a nation, of this scourge of abortion, where literally millions of children have been, their lives have been snuffed out for whatever reason and done so with a full, a full authority and approval of our government.

Father, these things ought not so to be. This is a travesty. And Father, we, as a nation, deserve to reap what we have sown. Certainly, Father, we pray for mercy. We pray for grace. We pray that in your grace, you would overturn and overrule the intentions of those leaders and authority, whether on a national or a state or local level, that would want to even expand those abortion so-called rights.

And Father, we pray that rather than allowing such things to happen, that in your grace and in your mercy, you would bring further restriction upon it. I pray that more importantly, you would bring a change of heart to our nation, where this behavior, this action of the murdering of innocent children would be seen as abhorrent as it actually is.

Father, do a work, a spiritual work of awakening and revival in our land. Father, we pray for Scott Williquette today, and we thank you for his faithfulness and his ministry, his diligence in the work.

And I pray that you would use him with the Pastoral Enrichment Program, as well as the School of Church Planting. Bless his leadership, give him insight and wisdom in the preparation of materials and in the presentation of them as well.

We pray for Priscilla, that you'd continue to heal her body and raise her back up. I do pray that she would be able to be home soon and be in the comfort of her home with her family. Just bless her, we pray.

Continue to bless Bob and give him strength, especially from the effects of the chemotherapy. Bless Jerry and her care for him. We pray for Kathy and ask for encouragement and strengthening of her as well.

Father, we pray for our shut-ins and those who are isolated and feeling lonely, those unable to get out. Lord, encourage each one, we pray. May they sense your presence even as they, in their seclusion, open your word and spend time communing with you, even on this Lord's Day.

Bless them, we pray. Our Father, we pray that through the remainder of this service, as we even consider the potential for hopelessness, we would come to the conclusion that as God's people, there is hope, there's hope to be found in you.

This we pray in Jesus' name.

Jim?

Thank you, Pastor. It's on page number 336, 336 in your hymnals. My hope is in the Lord, verses one, two, and four. Let's all stand together, please. Verses one, two, and four of 336. And sell for me.

And pay the price of all my sin. And can't suppress Only hope is found in Jesus. Verse four, I encourage you to turn in your Bibles.

To Ruth chapter one. Your scripture reading this morning, Ruth chapter one. I'm gonna read beginning in verse 11 through the end of the chapter. Ruth one, verses 11 through 22. Follow along in your copy of scripture as you read beginning in verse 11.

This picks up the story, as you remember earlier in the chapter, where Naomi, along with her husband and her sons, have left her homeland of Bethlehem. They've gone to sojourn in Moab, and after that sojourning, while sojourning in Moab, Naomi's husband, Elimelech, dies, and sons marry, but then the sons die.

And finally, Naomi says it's time to go home. She wants to go back to Bethlehem. So in verse 11, Naomi, speaking to her daughters-in-law, says, turn again, my daughters. Why will you go with me? Are there yet any more sons in my womb that they may be your husbands?

Turn again, my daughters. Go your way. For I am too old to have a husband. If I should say, I have hope, if I should have a husband also tonight and should also bear sons, would you tarry for them till they were grown?

Would you stay for them from having husbands? Nay, my daughters, for it grieveth me much for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me. And they lifted up their voice and they wept again.

And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clave unto her. And she, Naomi, said, behold, thy sister-in-law has gone back unto her people and unto her gods. Return now after thy sister-in-law. And Ruth said, and treat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee.

For whither thou goest, I will go. And where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people and thy God, my God. Where thou diest, I will die and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.

When she saw that she was steadfastly minded to go with her, then she left speaking unto her. So they too went until they came to Bethlehem. And it came to pass when they were come to Bethlehem that all the city was moved about them.

And they said, is this Naomi? And she said unto them, call me not Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. And I went out full and the Lord hath brought me home again empty.

Why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me and the Almighty hath afflicted me? So Naomi returned and Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law with her, which returned out of the country of Moab.

And they came to Bethlehem in the beginning of the barley harvest.

Brief prayer.

So our Father, I pray from this dark chapter in Naomi's life and the hopelessness that she experiences, we may learn how hope dies. We may learn to look where hope may be found. As we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

In your bulletin on the little points to ponder list, one of the points was hope, the sweetest and pleasantest companion that ever traveled with sojourners upon earth. But what if in the lives of those sojourners, that hope dies?

When we look only at our circumstances without the eyes of faith, that can easily lead to the death of hope. Let me say that again. When we look only at our circumstances without the eyes of faith, that can very easily lead to the death of hope.

Now, that is sadly very clearly the case even in our own contemporary situation. According to a government report from the nation of Japan, more people have died in the last year from suicide than from COVID.

And most of those who died by suicide have been women. According to our own nation's CDC, Centers for Disease Control, I know. Anyway, according to the CDC during late June, late June of last year, 40 of US adults reported struggling with mental health or substance abuse.

That is 40 of those who admitted it reported struggling with mental health or substance abuse. In that number, 31 experienced anxiety and depression. 13 started or increased substance abuse. 26 showed symptoms of trauma or some stress-related disorder.

And 11 seriously considered suicide. And as you well know, you've heard the reports, a large number, a greater number of people in this last year have committed suicide in our nation than in previous years.

Family counselors, those who meet with individuals and families and families together have acknowledged that they are seeing more suicides in nearly every age group. One of those counselors said, our elderly population has a huge number in the suicide rate.

So again, looking only at your circumstances without the eyes of faith can very easily lead to the death of hope. Now, when it comes to this book of Ruth and particularly in this first chapter and zeroing in on the person of Naomi.

Naomi, for Naomi and her family, hope would be found in three areas and would actually encompass these three areas together. Hope is found in place, in permanence or posterity, for example, children and purpose.

So for Naomi to have hope as a Jewish woman, she needs to feel a strong sense of place. She needs to have some sense of permanence through her children, through posterity, and she has to have a sense of purpose.

And all three of these are vital. So even look at verse 12, what we just read, Naomi is heading back to the place that God had given to the Jewish people, the Israelite Hebrew people, the land of Canaan, Bethlehem, her home.

She's heading back to her place where she belongs, but she still admits in verse 12 that she doesn't have any hope. She says, if I should say I have hope, what she's saying there is, I don't. I don't have hope.

So all three of these things are vital. And she has no hope, even though she's returning back to her place. Now, you contrast where Naomi is in verse 12 with where she was at the beginning of this chapter.

She was in Bethlehem, Judah. She was married to Elimelech, and she had a couple of sons. And with that dynamic, she therefore had purpose. And her purpose was to give birth to these sons and to see to it that these sons of hers got wives themselves so that they could have children, they could have sons, and that the family could be perpetuated.

She had the hope of place, of permanence, and of purpose. But now, after a decade in Moab, all of this has been stripped away. Well, I would suggest to you that what was true for Naomi is also true for us, that we have hope, and our hope is connected to the anticipation of place, permanence, and purpose.

Now, think about it. Think of the epidemic of hopelessness that exists in our own society, in our culture. There is an epidemic of hopelessness these days because of a lack of those three things, place, permanence, purpose.

In other words, the rootlessness of our society and people in it, the loneliness that people experience, even having people all around them, there's still a sense, a great sense of loneliness on the part of so many people.

And all of this leads to a feeling of futility, like, what's it all for?

What's it all for?

What's it all about? I want to go through this chapter and see the death of hope, and see how it happens. And notice in these first few verses of the chapter, we kind of focused more on these last time, last Lord's Day, but notice in these first few verses of the chapter how hope decays, hope decays, in our desperate attempt to just hang on in difficult circumstances.

The time is certainly difficult, and as this chapter, as this book begins, telling us it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled. This was a time that was particularly difficult. I pointed out last Lord's Day, if you heard that message, that Ruth is the third in the Bethlehem trilogy of Bethlehem stories.

The first one is back in, the first of those stories is back in Judges 17 and 18, and that's all about the spiritual despair of the times. A Levite, one who is supposed to be a spiritual leader, is selling himself to the highest bidder, if you will, to lead just a tribe, a clan in spiritual things.

The next, the last three chapters of the book of Judges, which is the second Bethlehem story, is about a Levite who took as a concubine a woman from Bethlehem. And so in the first story, there was a Levite from Bethlehem and in the second, there is a Levite who takes a concubine from Bethlehem, and those three chapters are just, I mean, they disturb your mind when you read them, and you ask yourself, what in the world, how in the world can this kind of stuff go on?

Especially among those who are supposed to know better, like the Levites, what in the world is happening here? The moral, the moral despair of Israel is on full display in Judges 19 through 21. Well, then the third Bethlehem story, that of the story of Naomi in chapter one of the book of Ruth speaks of personal despair.

So you take those three stories together, this is a time of spiritual, moral, and personal despair. Now, again, let's not restrict ourselves to something that happened thousands of years ago. Let's realize that even the times in which we live, there are many people, maybe someone here, maybe several here, who are experiencing all three of those things.

You, because of the spiritual decay in our nation and the moral decay of our culture, are also experiencing personal despair. You are in despair because of it all. So the time is difficult, and so are the circumstances.

Verse one tells us that there was a famine in the land, a famine in the land of Bethlehem, in the region of Bethlehem, Judah. And it's very possible that that famine is the result of the spiritual and moral decay.

In other words, it could be a form of punishment because of the sins of the people. In fact, look back in Deuteronomy 28. Would you turn back there with me? Deuteronomy chapter 28. And look at verse 15, and then a couple other verses a little later on.

Deuteronomy 28, verse 15. The Lord is warning the people of Israel before they ever go into the land of promise. So they're on the eastern side of the Jordan River. They're about to cross the Jordan River, take possession of the land of Canaan, and then the land that has been promised will be theirs.

And the Lord warns the people, and he says in verse 15, it shall come to pass if thou will not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day, that all these curses shall come upon thee and overtake thee.

Well, like what? What kind? Look at verse 23. One of the consequences for the sin of disobedience and rejecting God's commandments, he says, is that the heaven that is over your head shall be brass, and the earth that is under you shall be iron.

The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust. From heaven shall it come down upon thee until thou be destroyed. In other words, what the Lord is warning about, and pronouncing a curse upon the people for it, is if you disobey, if you reject and ignore my commands and go your own way, then one of the consequences will be drought, which is what's behind famine.

What's going on in Ruth 1, verse 1? Famine. That's bad enough. But think of this. Where do Elimelech and Naomi and their two sons live? They live in Bethlehem. And again, as I mentioned last week, the town, the name, Bethlehem means house of bread.

And then think about how just that very fact that here I'm living in the house of bread and there is no bread. Think about how the name of the town in which they live, the community that they're living in, would only magnify the sense of despair.

There's no bread in the house of bread. It's kind of like the images we saw last summer, after all the rioting and the pillaging and the looting and the destruction that took place in downtown Chicago, along the Magnificent Mile.

You remember those pictures, those videos that you saw of someone going down the street on Michigan Avenue in Chicago along the Magnificent Mile, and they'd pan back and forth from one side of the street to the other.

And all of these stores, these exclusive high-end stores, have windows broken out or they're boarded up along the, along the what? Along the Magnificent Mile. The irony there only magnifies the intensity of the destruction.

So the time is difficult, the circumstances are difficult, and the decisions that have to be made under these circumstances are also difficult. And they come out, those decisions come out in verses one and two.

And then in verse four, in verses one and two, there's the decision to leave our place. We live in the house of bread, there is no bread, so what are we going to do? Well, let's leave. Let's leave. And I'm sure if you were to ask Elimelech, why are you leading your family away from your home?

He'd throw his hands up and say, well, what choice do I have? What am I supposed to do? There's no bread. You need to go somewhere to eat. What a difficult decision this would be. This is where, this was his home.

This is where his family was. Yet he left, he made the decision to leave. But then there's also in verse four, this further difficult decision about ensuring, remember the three, the three necessities for hope for a Jewish woman?

She needed to have a sense of place, permanence, and purpose. So here she is out of place in Moab. She has two sons, but one of her purposes is to ensure that her sons have wives so that they can perpetuate the family, they can continue the family.

If those two sons die with no children, the family dies. So here we are, the boys are getting old. They need wives.

What do we do?

We're here in the land of Moab. Well, let's get them a couple of wives. Well, should we go back to Bethlehem and get them a couple of wives? No, that'd be too inconvenient. Let's just get them a couple of Moabite women.

So that's what they do. They make this difficult decision to ensure, to try to guarantee their permanence, their posterity. And they get these two Moabite women. Again, if you asked Elimelech and Naomi, why did you do this?

Why are you getting these Moabite women? They should be marrying Hebrew women. Well, what choice do we have? There aren't any Hebrew women to be found. Well, how about repentance? How about returning to the place where you belong?

How about faith in Yahweh, the Lord God of Israel? Well, the decisions are certainly difficult. And then what's also difficult in these circumstances is the outcome of it all. In verse three, says Elimelech, Naomi's husband died.

And she was left, she and her two sons. The outcome is difficult because now Naomi is a widow. And this is, is it not? Is it not a literal illustration of Proverbs 14, 12? Proverbs 14, 12 says, there's a way that seems right to a man.

As Elimelech thinks through, what do I need to do? What should I do? I know what I need to do. I need to take my family and relocate to Moab. We need to go sojourn in Moab. And they went there and they stayed there.

But the way that seems right to a man, its end is the way to death. Here he is. This seemed like the way to go. He goes, he gets there and he dies. And that leads to greater isolation and certainly despair on the part of Naomi.

It definitely means insecurity for this Hebrew widow. Now the times are difficult and hope decays in our desperate attempts to hang on, just to hang on in those difficult times. It decays. But as you continue in the story, notice how that hope, that decaying hope, dissipates as time marches on.

So as time marches on, time passes, day after day goes by, month after month turns into year after year. And that sense of place grows more and more distant. It's fading, fading into the background of the memory.

So in verse one, they intended to go to Moab and sojourn there. That means to stay for a little while, just till the difficulty gets passed and then we'll go home. They went to sojourn. Verse two tells us that they continued there at the end of the verse.

They remained there. And verse four, verse four at the end of the verse says they dwelled there. They lived there. Now there is an intention behind those three words that the author of this, the writer of this story is intending for us to get.

And that is this sense of place in the land of promise where Elimelech and Naomi and Mahlon and Hylian belonged is being further and further removed from their minds and their heart. Sojourning, staying, settling, dwelling, dwelling there.

Time passes and the place grows more and more distant. And as time passes, we come to verse four. Time passes and the second component of hope becomes less likely. Posterity, permanence. Because why? Because in verse four it says these two sons took wives of the women of Moab.

The name of the one was Orpah. The name of the other was Ruth. But in verse five, they died. These sons die. So as time passes and that posterity is less and less likely, 10 years go by. And what seemed to be so necessary, marriage for Mahlon and Hylian proves to be fruitless.

They married these women, but yet they bore no sons. They had no children. Now, it is not a universal truth, but going back to the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 28, when the Lord pronounced the curses for disobedience and for rejecting him, turning your back on him, in verse 15, one of the things he said in verse 18 is he says, cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the fruit of your land, the increase of your kind, your cows and the flocks of your sheep.

One of the consequences that the Lord said was going to come would be fruitlessness. You long for hope in your posterity? The Lord says, I'm going to take that away, that fruitfulness. Now, again, please don't misunderstand.

That is not a universalism, that just because somebody can't have children, that therefore they're under a curse of God. No, that's not a universal truth, but it is something that the Lord pronounced and warned Israel about, that this will be a consequence for you, Israel.

So time passes, time passes, and place grows more and more distant, and time passes, and the likelihood of posterity or permanence is reduced, it's less likely. And time passes, and you come to verse five, and grief and loneliness only increase as Mahlon and Hylion die.

It says at the end of verse five, when they died, that the woman, Naomi, was left of her two sons and her husband, left of. Literally, she's left without them. She is alone, remaining without husband and sons.

In his commentary on the book of Ruth, Leon Morris said, a childless widow was in a precarious position. She lacked security and stability, and she would, for the rest of her life, need the community help in order to survive.

By the way, in the New Testament, this is still true in the culture of that day, which is why James wrote what he did in chapter one, verse 27, when he said, pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, because of the reality of the culture of the time, that those who were without husbands and fathers were in a very precarious situation, very insecure situation, so they needed the help of the community.

Now, the point here is this, the point is this. For Naomi, all human basis for hope is gone. There are no more men in her family, and without any men in her family, there is no possibility of posterity, of permanence, and for this Hebrew woman, who is away from her place, and no hope of posterity or permanence, she has also lost her sense of purpose in life.

Her purpose in life as a Hebrew wife was to bring forth offspring that could perpetuate the family, and without the men, this family would be gone, no posterity, so hope, I say, dissipates as time marches on, but then hope all but disappears when we just give up.

When you just give up, hope all but disappears, and that's what happens in verses six through 18. Naomi is in a state of hopelessness, and that hopelessness is reflected in her decisions in verses six and seven.

She arises with her daughters-in-law. She's heard in the country of Moab that the Lord's given bread, and so she's going to leave the daughters-in-law behind, and she's going to go back to Bethlehem, go back to her former home, but get the sense of this.

She's leaving everything, whatever little she might have in Moab, she's leaving all of that, including the graves of her husband and her sons, for what?

For what?

What is she going back to? But isn't that also a symptom of hopelessness? Because she would just shrug her shoulders and say, well, what have I got to lose? I don't have anything here. I may not have anything there, so I might as well go back there.

Why not? A sense of hopelessness. Her sense of hopelessness is also expressed in the counsel that she offers in verses eight and nine. Look at this counsel. Naomi says to her daughters, her daughters-in-law, go, return each of you to your mother's house.

May the Lord deal kindly with you as you've dealt with the dead with me. May the Lord grant you that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband. She kissed them and they lifted up their voice and they wept.

She's saying to them, leave me alone. Leave me to go off alone. I can't provide for you. You need to find your hope and security somewhere else. And I hope that the Lord, the God of Israel, will give you that hope and security, but you're not going to find it with me.

You're not going to find it where I'm going. But what about encouraging them to find hope by expressing faith in the father of the fatherless? Let me show you what I mean by that. Back in Deuteronomy chapter 10, now remember that these are three widows, okay?

These three women are widows. And in Deuteronomy chapter 10, verse 18, the Lord says in verse 17, he says, for the Lord your God is God of gods. Now keep that in mind later when Naomi says something else to Ruth.