Providence: The Cure For Despair - [Ruth 1:19-22]

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The world knows despair. Listen to a few quotes from popular writers about despair and despondency.
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My drunk soul is sadder than all the dead Christmas trees of the world. Despair is the price one pays for self -awareness.
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Look deeply into life and you'll always find despair. Sometimes you can cry until there's nothing wet in you.
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You can scream and curse to where your throat rebels and ruptures. It goes on with no sign as to when it might release you.
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And you know that if it ever did relent, it would not be because it cared. I wish
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I could tell you how lonely I am, how cold and harsh it is here. Everywhere there is conflict and unkindness.
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I think God has forsaken this place. I believe I have seen hell and it's white.
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It's snow white. There's even an online industry making a business out of despair, despair .com.
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Some of you have probably gone there. It says, at despair .com, I kid you not, we offer the cure for hope.
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Not finished. And for a surprisingly affordable price. We understand why the world despairs.
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We get it why the world is full of despondency. But what about Christians?
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Are we to despair? If we do, is there a cure for despairing? How do we navigate life?
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Are we just like the world and we're forced to live like this? Bitterness, lack of hope.
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Honestly, who wants to live like that? Especially in light of these words of Jesus.
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The thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy. I came that they may have life and have it what?
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Abundantly. I'm the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
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Elsewhere Jesus says, all things have been handed over to me by my Father. And no one knows the
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Son except the Father. And no one knows the Father except the Son. And anyone to whom the
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Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
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Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm gentle and lowly in heart. And you will find rest for your souls.
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For my yoke is easy, my burden is light. Why don't we open our Bibles this morning to Ruth chapter 1 as we delve into the sermon this morning, the cure for despair, despondency, and bitterness.
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Even Christians struggle with this melt -gone -bad view of life. I want to inform you this morning through the sermon and the message in God's Word that misery, desolation, anguish, gloom, dejection are not fruits of the
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Spirit. I want to repeat that. Misery, desolation, hopelessness, anguish, gloom, despondency, dejection are not fruits of the
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Holy Spirit. The question really is, how can
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I have joy in spite of their troubles, trials, illnesses, sufferings, war issues?
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How do I have joy in spite of all these things? I can't make them go away.
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How can I have hope even though? And there's two roads for the
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Christian. The road that says God's trying to get you, God's making all this happen and you're going to turn into Naomi, bitter, this self -pitying myopic.
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It's not even a fair fight because God is God and I am who I am. He's going to win every time, despondency.
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The other road is, there's more to the story than meets the eye and I'm going to trust in who
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God is and what He says. That's the issue, two roads. We're going to see those roads today.
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If I ask you the question, how does the world cure despair, what would you say? Well, I found quite a few things online.
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You just resign yourself to whatever happens, happens. Some people say, well, here's the cure, just have faith in faith.
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The object of your faith needs to be faith itself. Others say, find somebody who's got it worse than you do and then rejoice.
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Right, a Schadenfreude kind of thing. Is there somebody out there suffering more than I am? And when
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I typed in to the Google search engine, cure for despair, the number one article, psychology today, clinical despair, science, psychotherapy, and spirituality in the treatment of depression, written by Stephen Dimond, PhD, 2011.
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It was interesting because he even knows, whether he's a Christian man or not,
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I don't know, but he knows and he knows that the psychological world understands that somehow religion has to have a place.
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Carl Jung knew that if you've got a despondent patient, you've got to send that person back to their house of worship.
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And if they don't have a house of worship, well, their new worship needs to be psychotherapy. But he understood spirituality had something to do with this.
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Kierkegaard had the same thing. We need some kind of faith. At the end of the article,
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I thought it was interesting, the writer says, sometimes clinical despair, it seems, must simply be endured, patiently accepted, tolerated, and suffered through with a stabilizing and supportive presence and accompaniment of the compassionate psychotherapist until it eventually turns into something else.
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Courage, hope, joy, love, rage, passion, faith, our creativity.
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How am I going to live like that? We all suffer. We all have issues in our lives.
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What's our view? What's our outlook? Is there a better way? And the answer we're going to see in the book of Ruth is the way out is the way through as you cling within the white knuckle grip to the doctrine of God's sovereign care.
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God creates, God upholds, God directs, and God rules.
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It's the doctrine of providence. This whole morning, we're going to look at Ruth, and I want you to just see the world rightly through the lens of God's sovereign, gracious care.
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You know I love to talk about the sovereignty of God, and as R .C. Sproul said, it's God's favorite topic, so God likes to hear about it as well.
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And R .C. went on to say, if you were God, it'd be your favorite subject as well, the sovereign control of God.
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Let's go to Ruth chapter 1 and to focus in this morning on verses 19 through 22 to finish up the chapter.
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I think the best way to review, especially since it's a narrative and it's not meant to be broken up into sections necessarily,
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I'm just going to read the first 18 verses to catch us up so that we can understand what's happening in the story.
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Some of you have missed a week or two here or there. Maybe you're just visiting this morning. And I'm going to read
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Ruth chapter 1, verses 1 to 18, and I want you to remember this morning that God cares, and rules, and provides, and controls the world and everything in it.
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Ruth chapter 1, verse 1, ESV says, in the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land.
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A man of Bethlehem and Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.
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The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife, Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Malon and Shilion.
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They were Ephrathites, and they're from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there.
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But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took
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Moabite wives. The name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other, Ruth. They lived there about 10 years, and both
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Malon and Shilion died so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. Then she arose with her daughters -in -law to return to the country or from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the
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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.
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But Naomi said to her two daughters -in -law, go, return each of you to her mother's house. May the
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Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. Verse 9, the
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Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband.
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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.
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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?
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Turn back, my daughters. Go your way, for I am 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?
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Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me, for your sake, that the hand of the
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Lord has gone out against me. Then they lifted up their voices and wept again, and Orpah kissed her mother -in -law, but Ruth clung to her.
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And she said, see, your sister -in -law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Return after your sister -in -law.
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But Ruth said, do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you, for where you go,
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I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your
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God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.
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May the Lord do so to me and more also, if anything but death parts me from you.
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And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said, no more.
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Let's look at verses 19 through 22 and then talk about the doctrine of providence so that you don't despair.
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Verse 19, so the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem.
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When they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. There's a commotion. There's a buzz, literally, a hum.
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It's very onomatopoetic. Everybody's talking. And the women said, is this
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Naomi? Here's a picture of her homecoming, and now everybody's talking.
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They knew who she was, and now they begin to talk about it. This same buzz about town word is used in 1
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Samuel 4. As the ark of the covenant of the Lord came to the camp, all Israel shouted with a great shout so that the earth resounded.
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There's so much talk going on, it's like the earth is moving. The city is in an uproar.
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They left Moab, they get to Bethlehem, takes maybe seven, ten days.
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And they see Naomi and they see hardship. They see a woman who's worn, her appearance must have been changed.
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Here's the journey of ten days that's rough on her, but more than that, the last ten years, one man said, it suggests that they remembered
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Naomi and that she had experienced an observable change, obviously, for the worse.
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Is this Naomi? And what don't I see as I look at this?
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It's like there's some covert op going on where you're not supposed to mention the
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Moabite. You're not supposed to mention Ruth. It's like the community knows, here's
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Naomi, welcome Naomi. Naomi looks a little rough, she looks a little haggard. Nobody's talking about Ruth, don't mention her name.
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Verse 20, she, Naomi, said to them, don't call me pleasant, that's what
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Naomi means, call me bitter. The Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.
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And again, it's not even a fair fight because it's the Almighty, the all -powerful El Shaddai. What He does,
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I can't control and He has been harsh on me. Not any talk of, we shouldn't have gone down to Moab, we shouldn't have stayed in Moab, there shouldn't have been any marriage to Moab women.
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God has done this to me. Now, see, she knows in the sovereignty of God, but she doesn't understand it properly.
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Self -pitying here, just call me bitterness. This makes the reader think, yeah, remember back in the wilderness where Israel didn't have any water and they're all mad at God and they grumbled, what shall we drink?
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That was a place called Marah as well. Naomi's had it rough, we would all grant that.
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Husband, she buries. Her sons, they marry the foreign women.
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The two sons, her sons -in -law, they bury. Infertility. She's no longer the same woman.
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God did this to me. Very fatalistic. And what don't you hear?
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What don't you see? You don't hear Ruth saying any of that? You don't hear Ruth complaining?
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You don't hear Ruth do anything? We've only seen Ruth move out in faith.
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And by the grace of God, trust in who Naomi's God was. Verse 21,
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Naomi actually calls God Yahweh, or Lord, this covenantal name. A God who's faithful.
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A God who's faithful to His covenantal stipulations for Israel. And she invokes
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His name now. I went away full. Well, you say, yeah, but I thought she was starving when she went.
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No, I went away full like I had a husband. That's what she means there. I went away with a husband. He's brought me back.
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I'm a widow. Why call me Naomi when the Lord has testified against me?
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He's brought me to the bar of the courtroom, and He's put me on the trial stand, and there's no way
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I can stand up to Him. And the Almighty has brought calamity upon me.
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I have nothing. Now, the whole time this is happening, who's standing probably right next to Naomi?
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I've got nothing. God's been totally horrible to me. I've lost my wife.
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I've lost my... That's why we have two services usually. So then I make the corrections at halftime, and then come out for the second sermon.
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I've lost everything. And the whole time, Ruth is right here. Ruth is faithful companion, is faithful daughter -in -law.
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God's testified against me, and Ruth is probably having the look like, what am I, chopped goat liver?
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Right? I was pleasant, now
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I'm bitter. What would you tell Naomi? Let's say you're a woman in Bethlehem, and Naomi comes, and what would you say to her?
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I know you're angry. I know you're bitter. I know you know in the sovereignty of God.
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I know you know God's Almighty. I know that God's a covenant -keeping God. What would you tell her? What's the cure for despondency, despair, bitterness?
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I don't know what pastors did before the internet, but I looked on one website.
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Here's some cures for despondency. Aromatherapy.
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Naomi, you just need a little citrus oil. That's all you'll need. Just a little dab will do you.
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Naomi, get as much exercise as you can, because serotonin levels are down when you don't exercise, and you could probably deserve some exercise.
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Well, I guess you couldn't use this. She's just come up for a Moab. You need to spend more time outdoors.
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Sorry, that one didn't work. Watch your diet. When you eat the right things, you feel better about yourself.
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Make it your goal, Naomi, to laugh at least once every day. Have you laughed today,
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Naomi? The author says on this online prescription, don't hold your feelings in.
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Ask help if you need it. Look after yourself. Look for the positive. What's the answer?
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And now the author helps us see. Look at verse 22. God is in charge.
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God is working. God is guiding. God is caring. I don't care what it looks like.
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That's why we have to trust in the Word. A fool trusts his own heart. We can't trust ourselves.
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We see the world, don't believe your eyes. What does the Scripture say?
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So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite, her daughter -in -law with her, who returned from the country of Moab.
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I mean, it's almost like, okay, we know all that, just get to it. But the author is writing this, so you're like, okay, what's the point?
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What's the punchline? Naomi returned, Ruth the Moabite, her daughter -in -law.
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Yeah, I know, I know, who returned from the country of Moab. I get it. And they came to Bethlehem. Didn't you already say that?
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This is all literary perfection.
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And at the end of the verse, it says, at the beginning of barley harvest.
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This is so lucky. It says, I'm so glad she made it just at this time. Doesn't really have any food, and she just so stumbles into life, goes up to Bethlehem at that time of year, late
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April, early May, where there's a barley and wheat harvest, plenty of food.
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That is such a coincidence. See, the writer is setting it all up.
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Naomi is misreading providence. She doesn't see things rightly. But we, the readers, because the author is trying to let us know, look it,
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God's got everything in charge. You can't always go by what you see. You look at the world and you go,
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I'll tell you what I think. This world is not going to hell in a handbag. Handbasket?
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Handbasket? No, our handbags. Our fake Gucci bags. It's already gone.
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It's done. It's over. So now with the Word, I have to think, now wait a second.
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I see this, but what does God say? Naomi, you think you know, but what does
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God's Word say? And they stumble back to Israel, the eighth month of the agricultural calendar for Israel, and you are starting to get, as the reader, the understanding that there's going to be a reversal.
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There's going to be fortune. There's going to be favor, is a better word. Time will reveal the purposes of God.
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I don't want to fall into the Naomi trap, I'll call it. The Lord's gone out against me.
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You can just call me bitter. Sounds like Job's wife. He said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women speak.
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Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil? I don't want to be like Naomi.
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I don't want to be like Job's wife. I don't want to be like Jonah. The sun rose,
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God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint.
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He asked that he might die and said, it is better for me to die than to live. But God said to Jonah, you do well to be angry for the plant?
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He said, yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die. So let me give you several exhortations so that you see providence properly, so that you are not bitter, you are pleasant regarding these issues.
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Number one, walk by faith and not by sight. Walk by faith and not by sight.
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Scripture says God has not abandoned the world. Scripture says that God created the world, upholds the world, governs the world.
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All right, let's make it more preaching now. Scripture says that God orchestrates everything in your life, your life.
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Everything that has gone on and will go on and will ever go on, God is sovereignly providential over.
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Say, well, it doesn't look like it. That's why we have a book like Ruth, because I can't trust my eyes,
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I can't trust myself. I can't see everything that God is doing. Why don't we turn our
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Bibles to Hebrews chapter one, and I want you to see how God does this and who in the
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Godhead is in fact doing it according to Hebrews chapter one.
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Trust and obey, I think, is a good way to think about this issue.
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God is working, as the Westminster Confession of Faith says, His immutable counsel of His own will.
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He is doing all this. And even though you look at the tea leaves of providence and you can't decipher them, you can trust in God's promises.
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Let me repeat that. You might not know what God is doing, but you can trust who God is.
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That's the whole sermon. That's the whole book of Ruth. That's the whole book of Esther. That's the whole book of Romans chapter eight.
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I don't understand it, but friends, you don't need to understand it. You need to understand who
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God is. I can't understand what He's doing, but I can understand
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Scripture and I can trust His promises. That is the essence of faith.
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You can't see something, but you trust in who God is. It's obvious in Ruth's life.
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It's obvious in Joseph's life. It's obvious in everybody else's life, Samuel's life.
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And it's obvious in your life, you just might not be able to see it. God upholding,
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God directing, God decreeing everything that will come to pass. Hebrews chapter one.
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I'm after verse three, but I can't just read that. Let me read the first few verses as well.
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Long ago, at many times and in many ways,
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God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days,
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He has spoken to us by His Son. Of course, we're talking about the
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Lord Jesus Christ, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also
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He created the world. He, Jesus, is the radiance of the glory of God, this effulgent glory, and the exact imprint of His nature.
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And here's what I'm after. And He, Jesus, in spite of what you think, in spite of what your eyes tell you, in spite of what the world is doing, in spite of how
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Naomi looks at the world, He upholds the universe by the word of His power.
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That's what the Bible says. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, this risen
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Savior. Look back at verse three. Upholds all things by the word of His power. Now, lots of times
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I think of that word holding. You just pick up. I'm holding something. This word means to pick up and move it someplace else.
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I don't know how good this analogy is, but it just popped in my mind. If you're on Juneau Beach and your buddy gets shot and he can't move, you don't just pick him up.
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You pick him up and then you take him someplace, safety. You move him someplace.
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This isn't holding the world on his back like Atlas. This is taking everything that he's created and then moving it towards the goal, moving it towards his purpose, moving it toward the end.
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This is Jesus, the risen Savior, the powerful Savior. Upholding all things by the word of His power.
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I mean all things. This is almost too easy to preach. Think about your life. All things, righteous things, sinful things, in -laws, outlaws, right?
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Every little thing. God takes it and He's moving it towards this goal.
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The Bible says this is happening. I have to submit my mind and my feelings, my heart, my soul, my emotions to this truth because if I let my eyes run out ahead of this scripture, then
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I got all kinds of stuff going on. I'm gonna start turning into Naomi in terms of reading
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Providence wrongly. He keeps,
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He's involved, He directs. Say, but my kids are out of control.
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My wife is an unbeliever. My dad's an unbeliever. There's all kinds of things that could go on in your mind.
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And the question is, do you believe that God is sovereign over everything or don't you? Yeah, but if I look at the tea leaves of my past, it doesn't seem like it.
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That's why we need to go with the sure word. Remember Peter, James, and John seeing
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Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. What must have that been like? Seeing Jesus.
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Hearing the Father. This is my beloved Son in whom I'm what? Well, please, listen to Him.
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And then Peter writes in 2 Peter 1 that there's something more sure than your eyes and your ears.
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And what's that? The Scriptures. I have to have faith in God's providential outworking of His divine providence.
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Colossians 1, and He is before all things and in Jesus all things hold together.
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Without this truth, and if I just go by what I see, I'm telling you it is helter -skelter mentally for me.
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Yes, but you say, I'd like an explanation of why all these things are happening in my life. I can't give you one.
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I'll give you something better. The promises of God are true. Yes, but I want to know why.
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Well, friends, I could say it two ways. You will know why maybe one day in the future and you look back at the past and you say, yeah,
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I see how God worked that out. Or you might know in glory and you could say, yes, if I could go back, okay, let's put it this way.
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Let's make the rub happen. I bet some of you now don't want to listen to what
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I'm going to say. I got a letter a week ago. I'm a modern pastor. I'm some kind of modernist pastor.
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I compromise her. And since I didn't answer the mail, it's now on the internet.
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This big, long three -page letter against the modern pastor, Mike Abendron. How do
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I read that providentially? If you're in heaven and were asked the question, do you wish
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God would have done anything differently in your life? I'm talking anything. Stop you from marrying, stop this baby from being conceived, stop this sickness from happening, healed here instead of allowing to suffer.
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I mean anything. You would say, God, everything you did was perfect in this world except that one thing and yes,
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I would change it. Would you? Of course you wouldn't.
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You'd say, God upholds everything by His mighty power. He created and He sustains and He moved towards the end and He does it for His glory and He does it for my good.
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And now I used to have to see God by faith. Now I see Him by sight.
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I don't even need faith in heaven anymore because I see Jesus. And you did everything perfectly well.
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Everything you did was well. It's well with my soul. And see what's happening with providence in this doctrine, the world just keeps bombarding us with deism, evolution.
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The world hates providence because they know that God not only creates and sustains, but if He creates and sustains, then
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He judges and people cannot stand the judgment of God. Someone else is in charge.
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The world and its sinful thinking rebels. The author of Anne of Green Gables, L .M.
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Montgomery, said, my life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes. Lucy Maude.
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Anne Rice said, the prince is never going to come. Everyone knows that and maybe even
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Sleeping Beauty's dead. That's why when the world is pushing and promoting and selling its wares ideologically, methodologically, we've got to stand up against the world's input.
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That's why Bible reading, simple, regular Bible reading is so important because we need to have our minds what?
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Captured like a POW to the world? Are thinking rightly by the renewing of your what?
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I praise God for Bethlehem Bible Church because you want the Bible. And the minute we don't give you the Bible, I'm sure you're gone.
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The first thing that you can do when it comes to providence so you don't turn into Naomi is to walk by faith and not by sight.
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Secondly, when you think of providence, think present tense. Think all the time.
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If you go back to Hebrews chapter one, that is the tense there. He's always upholding.
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If you're not careful, you'll be tempted to say, I know God was sovereign over Ruth and the
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Moabitess. I know that. I know He's sovereign over His second coming. And when Jesus returns and sovereign over the eternal state,
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I know He's sovereign in the Bible days, but I want you to think sovereign today.
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I love Jesus's words after He healed at the pool on the
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Sabbath. And it's classic. It's the best. Think about present tense for a minute.
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Jesus answered them saying, my father is working until now and I am working.
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I'm currently working. Psalm 103 says
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His sovereignty rules over all. Jane Welsh Carlyle said something that made my day.
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We cannot be robbed of God's providence. You can't be robbed of God's providence because God is present tense always doing this very thing.
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Think of all the things they could steal. When's the last time somebody broke in your house and stole something or stole something from your car?
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I mean, do you like that feeling? I remember when our car got broken into a couple years ago. It's just like, you just have that kind of like,
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I'll say it, you feel violated, don't you? You can't be robbed of God's providence.
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The character of God is at stake. B .B. Warfield said, it is because we cannot be robbed of God's providence that we know amid whatever encircling gloom that all things shall work together for good to those that love
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Him. It is because we cannot be robbed of God's providence that we know that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, not tribulation, nor anguish, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword.
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Behold, the Lord keeps Israel and He will neither slumber nor sleep.
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Number three, number three, instead of trying to read providence, focus on what you do know.
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Instead of trying to read providence, focus on what you do know.
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Please turn your Bibles to 1 Timothy 6. If you're not a pastor, you'll still like these verses, but if you are a pastor, an elder, a deacon, a leader, someone who is in one of those categories, you're gonna love this.
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It seems like ministry is chaos. Seems like ministry is,
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I'll tell you what it's like. In my life, here's what I like. I used to work for the phone company, Northwestern Bell.
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The young people have no idea what Bell is. And my job was to go fix telephones.
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And back in those days, if you didn't know how to fix the phone, I mean, some fixes were easy.
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They tell you does not ring. DNR does not ring. You go in and you go, hmm,
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I bet you if I just go outside and open up this phone, about 50 cockroaches are gonna come out because the bell is warm and they like to get in by the bell.
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And I think I probably better open this up outside instead of inside. And you fix it.
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You put in a new phone and you just go, done. You move forward. Just done, fixed.
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Don't you like everything in your life just to be fixed? Just done? And then in a family, everything might be fixed in your life, but then you have a wife and kids and they have all their issues and you have your own issues.
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And then ministry. I don't know what people do with churches of 1 ,000 and 2 ,000.
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There's always something going on. And then when one problem's solved in one person's life, then there's someone else's problem and then there's my problem.
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Repeat. What would you say to Naomi as she tries to read her life?
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What would you say to a pastor? Timothy. He struggles. He's not perfect.
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He's probably a little timid and he doesn't have it all figured out. How do you end on a note? What do you tell him?
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Everything will be all right. Que sera, sera. Stoics have it right. Epicureans maybe have it right.
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1 Timothy 6, verse 11. What a great thing for a pastor to hear.
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What do pastors need to be reminded of? 1 Timothy 6, 11. But as for you,
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O man of God, preacher, that's what that means, O preacher, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.
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Fight the good fight of faith, of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
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Now he amps it up. Rare language, solemn language, courtroom language.
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I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our
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Lord Jesus Christ which he will display at the proper time. Now here's where I want you to hone in, right here.
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He who is the blessed and only sovereign King of Kings and Lord of Lords who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light whom no one has ever seen or can see, to him be honor and eternal dominion, amen.
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Now go back to verse 15. He is the blessed. He who is the blessed.
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When that word blessed describes God, here's what it describes.
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God is never frustrated. God is never unhappy.
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God is never biting his fingernails with anxiety because of what's happening in West Boylston.
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He's blessed. He's always content, always satisfied. God is always content.
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How can God be content? Because he's sovereign and he's moving everything that he's created to a purpose.
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And there's not one atom, not one molecule, not one child, not one parent, not one spouse, not one job, not one cancer cell that he's not in charge of.
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Pastor, pastor's wife, pastor's friends, congregation, church, there's all this stuff going on in the world, the fall, our own sin.
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And everything in between. And yet God is at peace. God's at peace.
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He's fulfilled, perfectly happy, perfectly joyful.
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No frustration. One man writes, this describes the perfection of bliss enjoyed by the first person of the
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Trinity. See, everything's going on target. Everything's moving properly.
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Nothing's happened that shouldn't have happened. You say, yeah, but what about human responsibility and all that?
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I get all that. For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.
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What if your view of God was some Pelagian, semi -Pelagian,
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Arminian view of God that he was so concerned about people's freedom and their autonomy and all this other stuff that he was just this hands -off
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God? He couldn't do anything until you asked him, until you let him, until you permitted him to do it. I think
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God wouldn't be the blessed anymore. I think he wouldn't be frustrated, full of anxiety.
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I just sure hope that happens. I sure hope this happens. I sure hope that happens. If you're a pastor, if you're an elder, if you're a deacon, if you're a congregant,
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God is blessed. He's content. He's happy. Because everything is on target.
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Everything is the exact way it should be in the sense of his providential control, even taking sinful things and working them together for good.
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When you struggle in your life with how could God let this happen or what's going on in my life, you say,
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I have to walk by faith and I also have to say to myself, I have to go with what I do know. And what I do know is God's sovereign,
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God's faithful. I do know that if you start saying, well, how can
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God really love me in the middle of all this? Could there be a better illustration of the love of the sovereign
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God than where it costs God His Son? See, we want explanations.
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Job. Job's wife. Remember later in Job 38, 39, 40, 41, you should probably, if you're struggling with something that's going on in your life and you're tempted to question
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God, read those chapters because you're going to quickly find out you have a lot of questions for God.
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God has a few questions for you. And then it just silences you.
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Then it makes you think, okay, He's a father as well. And a father, a good father, would just grab his child and say, the child's in a panic and wakes up all sweaty and cold and just holds that child tightly and could just say, be still and know.
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Except better in Psalm 46, be still and know that I am the Lord. See, what we don't understand with the book of Ruth, if we read only through Naomi's eyes, is the
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King is going to come out of all this. The King David and the King Jesus. There's more to the story than meets the eye.
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So what do I do in life? I have to go with what I know. I solve theological problems by going with what
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I know. Number... What number am
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I on? Four. Thank you. So happy for that. It took me 15 years of gospel ministry to figure out
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I shouldn't tell you I have eight things to tell you. Because if I only get through six, because of time, then
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I'll have two people meet me at the door. One will say you're a modernist pastor. And the other one will tell me, what were those other two points?
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I'm going to save those. Fourthly, and probably finally, don't forget
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God's sovereign, not just over the big things, but the small things. In other words, remember the degree of God's providence.
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I want you not just to think about big, huge world events, but small things.
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You might be tempted to say, well, you know, God's sovereign over the crucifixion of Jesus, and making
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Israel a nation, and bringing Israel up out of Egypt. But what about the small things going on in my life?
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I'm not on the world stage. I'm just a mother. I'm just a father.
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Turn to Matthew chapter 10, last passage for today. I want you to see the detail, the exquisite, praise -evoking detail of God's sovereign control.
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Sovereign over the crop, sovereign over weather, sovereign over travel, sovereign over barley, sovereign over Naomi, sovereign over you.
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God's sovereign over you. And what if He wasn't sovereign over things that were bad in your life, or even your own sins?
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What if He wasn't sovereign over that? But He is. Every little detail. I know you know the passage well, but I just want you to just let it sink in.
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I know God's sovereign over big, but He's also sovereign over small. Matthew chapter 10, verse 29.
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Again, very familiar passage. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?
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Give me these sparrows that they're not very valuable, and neither is a penny.
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And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.
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I mean, think of that. These little, tiny, significant events.
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Creatures or hair. The hair's numbered.
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Sovereign over small things as well. Or few things as well. Fear not, therefore.
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Verse 31. You are of more value than many sparrows.
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So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men,
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I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I've come to bring peace on earth.
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I've not come to bring peace, but a sword. God is sovereign over the most insignificant events in our minds.
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Hairs of our head. Small things. Everything in the natural world. Everything in the created world.
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Everything in the animal world. Everything God is sovereign over. I'm happy for that.
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Accident, fate, chance, luck, serendipity. John Calvin said,
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God's providence is a special care toward us. Which yields, listen, an incredible freedom from worry about the future.
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If I'm not careful, I could look at the future and feel like my chest cavity is in some straitjacket, some kind of anaconda -like fear that every time
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I breathe in, I lose a little more breath because I know this world's corrupt. I know this world's wicked.
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I know what sin does. I know I'm going to die. My wife's going to die. My children are going to die.
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You're going to die. Merry Christmas. Sick.
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That's why word, faith, heretic, line, dog, false teachers, they play to people's greed and they play to young people who are healthy.
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What do we do when we suffer? What do we do? What do you go tell Johnny Erickson Tata?
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Quadriplegic. What's the answer? She knows the answer. There's an appointed time for everything and there's a time for every purpose under heaven,
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Ecclesiastes 3. And what Ruth is going to do is instead of seeing now only, you've got to see with the eyes of faith,
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I see what God is going to do. I see the flow. I watch what's happening with Ruth and it starts off barren land, barren woman, the
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Messiah. I watch Jonah and Jonah does everything the wrong way. God providentially and sovereignly sends all kinds of things and then people get saved at the end.
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I see that now through Scripture, that there's a purpose and an end. I don't know how people who have a low view of God's sovereignty make it.
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I am confident of this very thing, that He began a good work in you, will perfect it under the day of Christ Jesus because He is sovereign.
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Please, beloved, don't act this week or ever in your suffering as if God were not sovereign.
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Let's pray. Father in heaven, we are thankful that you're a God who looks to His children, sees us.
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I think of what Spurgeon said, we're so dear to you that you can't take your eyes off of us. And not just to look, but to uphold and to move toward that goal for us of Christ's righteousness,
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Christ's likeness rather, and for glorification. Father, would you increase our faith.
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Father, would you help us this week to be in the Scriptures and to be resting in you.
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You know exactly what you're doing. You've always done everything perfectly. You're omniscient, so you see every angle.
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You're omnipresent, so you can be there to sovereignly orchestrate every molecule.
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You're omnipotent, so you have the power to do that very thing. And you're good.
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You're a good Father, looking out for us, caring for us, knowing us.
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We're thankful for that. Father, help Bethlehem Bible Church be anchored in the
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Scriptures so that we can walk by faith. In Jesus' name,