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135: The Faith of a Foreign Woman
33 Plays1 month ago
As we continue our journey through “The Story”, Pastor Jim Mueller shared insights from the Book of Ruth, highlighting the remarkable story of Ruth and Naomi and what their faith and resilience can teach us today. Ruth's unwavering faith and loyalty shows us how faith can guide us through life's darkest moments, transforming bitterness into hope. Ruth's declaration, "Your people will be my people and your God, my God," challenges us to rethink our definitions of family and community. It encourages us to embrace those around us, fostering bonds that go beyond bloodlines and cultural differences. God works through our brokenness, using imperfect vessels to fulfill His perfect plan. Ruth's journey from widowhood to becoming part of Jesus's lineage illustrates that our past does not define our future with God!
If you’d like to dig deeper, check out these discussion questions. You can complete them on your own, with your Community Group, or with family and friends.
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Transcript
Introduction with Jill Devine
00:00:00
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The following podcast is a Jill dev Divine Media production.
00:00:19
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Welcome back to Normal Goes a Long Way. I'm your host, Jill
Chapter Nine of 'The Faith of a Foreign Woman'
00:00:23
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Devine. And in this week's episode, we will be covering chapter nine from the story, The Faith of a Foreign Woman. Well, this semester, we are walking through the entire Old Testament using the book, The Story.
00:00:38
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Again, the story is the Bible in more of a narrative form. It's easier to follow along with um because we believe that the greatest story ever told is more than a cliche.
00:00:50
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um It's filled with intrigue, drama, conflict, romance, redemption. The Bible has got all of that. It's not just a book of teachings. It's a book about the human condition.
00:01:03
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It's about you and I. And so we're inviting you to read along with us.
Jewish, Hebrew, and Israelite Synonymity Explained
00:01:08
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In each of those chapters, the New Testament, by the way, is going to come in the fall semester. So we'll do something different this summer.
00:01:15
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But we're going to look at the New Testament in the fall semester. But we're going to be in the Old Testament through the end of June. So stay with us. And of course, the Old Testament is the story of the Jewish people.
00:01:28
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And God works to redeem them and then to use them as a light to the rest of the world. Now, Chuck mentioned this last week. i'm going to go over it a little bit again. In the Bible, the terms
Engaging with God's Word Through Struggle
00:01:39
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Jewish and Hebrew and Israelite, they are really synonymous.
00:01:45
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ah Jewish refers to both their ethnicity as well as their religious affiliation. The word Hebrew both also refers to their ethnicity, but it but also their language, the language that they speak.
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And Israelite comes from a word in Hebrew that means to wrestle with God. So Israel is the name that God gave Jacob in the book of Genesis after the two of them had a wrestling match.
00:02:16
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You got to go back to Genesis to find that one. Now, of course, God won in the end, but how cool is it that God named him God-wrestler? And that the Jewish people now are known as God wrestlers. That's what it means to be Israel. That's what it means to be an Israelite.
00:02:35
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And which is cool if you think about it physically, but it's even cooler if you think about it spiritually. ah Because we come to God with questions, concerns.
The Gospel's Spread Amid Early Church Struggles
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ah We come to God with struggles.
00:02:47
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And God's saying he's not going to shy away from that. Wrestle with them spiritually. Wrestle with those things. um because that's what it is.
00:02:58
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That's what it means to get into God's word. When you get into God's word, you're not just nodding your head the whole time. A lot of times you're saying, wait a minute. And whenever you do that, you're wrestling with God just a little bit.
00:03:10
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You're allowing his spirit to to work on your heart, to work on your mind. um And that's a really, really good thing. Because none of us ever have it fully figured out.
00:03:21
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um Think about Peter. Even after the resurrection, Peter is still a mess. Thomas still has doubts. um The Jewish believers, they couldn't even figure out what to do with Gentile believers. Like, could they even be in? Like, that's how much they had missed the gospel.
00:03:42
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That's how much they still misunderstood.
Jesus' Genealogy and the Stories of Five Women
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And this went on for years after Jesus' resurrection until they finally kind of grasped like what Jesus was was telling them that he wanted from the church.
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um Paul, think about St. Paul. He kept landing in hot water mess after hot water mess um everywhere he went. But here's the point. The gospel kept spreading.
00:04:08
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The gospel kept going. People kept coming to faith, and the church grew and grew and grew. Now, I talked a couple weeks ago about Jesus' genealogy, ah which is at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew.
00:04:26
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And what's surprising about Jesus' genealogy, as you kind of read through this list of names, is that it actually names five women in it. And at that time, genealogy usually would just be a list of grandfathers and great-grandfathers, but course, it was a patriarchal society.
00:04:42
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um But there's not only are there five women mentioned in Jesus' genealogy, each of those five women is really surprising that they would be the ones mentioned. Let's go to Matthew 1,
Tamar's Story and Judah's Complex Family Ties
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verse 1.
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This is the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was...
00:05:10
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Tamar. um going to stop there. Tamar is not only Judah's daughter-in-law, she was also the mother of his twin sons.
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Interesting, huh? Here's how it went down. His son died leaving Tamar without a husband. So he asked his other son to take Tamar in and as his wife,
00:05:39
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so that she could conceive and that his brother's line would continue. But the brother refused to do this. He didn't want to ah honor the father's, ah the the brother's line.
00:05:51
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And in the end, what he really wanted is he wanted both his inheritance and his brother's inheritance all for himself. Well, then that brother dies as well.
00:06:03
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And so again, Tamar is left without a husband. Now, Judah, his wife dies, and he decides to visit a prostitute who was really his daughter-in-law, Tamar, in disguise.
Gentile Women in Jesus' Lineage
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Now, here's where I stop for a second, and I point a finger at all of you. This is a Bible story where you're supposed to learn from people's mistakes and not make them yourselves.
00:06:28
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Okay? I don't know why Judah, the head of one of the 12 tribes of Israel, is sleeping with prostitutes. I don't know why he does that.
00:06:39
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God never tells him he can do that. God tells him repeatedly, all the Jewish people, don't do stuff like that. Okay? But the result of his decision is that his grandsons are also his sons.
00:06:56
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Insert joke here. right, let's continue. Matthew 1, verse 5. Let's leave those verses up there for a
00:07:09
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ruth and obed the father of jesse and jesse the father of king david david was the father of solomon whose mother had been uriahs wife let's leave those verses up there just for a second We talked about Rahab last week.
00:07:23
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She is the Gentile prostitute who helps the Jewish spies and then becomes a part of Israel. Her son Boaz then marries Ruth, who was also a Gentile.
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We'll be walking through her story today in just a little bit. And then there's Bathsheba, whom David desires. So David had her husband sent to the front line so that he would be killed.
00:07:45
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And that way David could steal his wife. And she gave birth to King Solomon. Now, Matthew was so embarrassed by David's story. that he doesn't mention her name as Bathsheba. He calls her Uriah's wife, as if to say, David, she was never really your wife.
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you You don't deserve to call her wife.
Jesus' Family Tree: Broken Vessels and Redemption
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You know who that is. That's Uriah's wife. That's her real husband. And then we're going to jump to the end of the genealogy. We're going to get to the good part.
00:08:16
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um Let's go to verse 16. And Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who was called the the Messiah. Thus there were 14 generations in all from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the exile to Babylon, and 14 from the exile to the Messiah. Amen.
00:08:39
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The fifth woman mentioned in Jesus' family tree is Mary. And let me remind you about Christmas. She was an unmarried virgin who becomes pregnant by the Holy Spirit.
00:08:52
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Jesus is the Son of God. He's the Savior of the world. And his family tree, his list of grandmothers includes Tamar, who slept with her father-in-law,
00:09:08
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Rahab, a Gentile prostitute. Ruth, another Gentile woman. Bathsheba, a murdered man's wife. And Mary, who is an unmarried, pregnant virgin.
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And you thought your family was weird.
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If you were making up a religion, you wouldn't put this in, would you?
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You wouldn't make the Messiah's family tree so messy if you were making it up. See, those details are too embarrassing.
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But what you're going to find out today is nothing is too embarrassing for God. God knows his word is true.
00:09:59
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God knows that he is doing something good, even though he uses broken vessels. And that's what Jesus's genealogy is. That's what his family tree is. That's what your family trees are as well.
Naomi and Ruth's Return to Bethlehem
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Just broken vessels that God wants to work through. And so I want to turn to the story of Ruth. This is Ruth chapter one, verse one. By the way, Ruth is my mother's name. So she's watching at home, howdy mom in Texas. Have a good time.
00:10:26
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In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem and Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab.
00:10:38
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Now remember back to last week when Pastor Schlee talked about the time of the judges. ah We are still in the time of the judges. The book of Ruth is set during the time of the judges. Israel left Egypt.
00:10:51
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They're now in the promised land, but they're not yet a kingdom. They're a group of tribes. They're a group of tribes that are that are named after the sons of Jacob.
00:11:02
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And when things get really messy, God sends a deliverer, a judge, to rescue them. He mentioned Gideon. He mentioned Samson, Deborah. And this is the time when the story of Ruth happens.
00:11:16
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So the Israelites, they're one people in a way, ah but each tribe also operated independently individually. And they would get into their own conflicts, or sometimes they would have war with neighbors, or sometimes they'd even have war with each other between tribes and between villages.
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um So it's kind of a mess. I mean, they're one people, but they're are real messy people. Now, Moab, Moab is a separate country altogether, and it's on the other side of the Dead Sea, on the eastern side.
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um Now, they had a very bad relationship with most of the tribes, but for some reason, they had a good relationship with the people that came from Bethlehem.
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And that's where this family is coming from. They're coming from Bethlehem. So this is Naomi and her husband, Eli Melech, and their two sons. Let's go to verse 3.
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Now, Eli Melech, Naomi's husband, died, and she was left with her two sons, and And they married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth.
00:12:22
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And after they had lived there about 10 years, both Malan and Killian also died. And Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
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Stop for a second. Think about poor Naomi. Her family had to find work and food. They had to move to Moab to find it because of a famine. And now her husband dies.
00:12:46
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And then 10 years later, both her sons die. Now it's only her and her two daughters-in-law, and they're both Moabites. So it's like Naomi kind of doesn't belong there, but they don't like really belong back with her people either.
00:13:02
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This is the worst situation these women can be in. They can't own land. They can't get jobs because of the society they lived in.
00:13:14
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And so now Naomi realizes her only option is to go back to Israel, to go back to Bethlehem, and to beg her own people, her relatives, for help. She doesn't have a husband to provide for her. She doesn't have sons to provide for her.
Naomi's Bitterness and Theological Struggles
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So her only option is to do that, find a relative who might be willing to take her in, a cousin or or an uncle or something. Now the girls, she says, they're still young.
00:13:39
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They're still cute. They can go back to Moab and live with their parents and they'll probably find a husband. Their fathers are still alive. They'll take care of them. They'll find husbands. So she tells them to do this. And Orpah, one of the girls, she's filled with tears.
00:13:55
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But she finally decides that she'll do exactly that. She says goodbye to her mother-in-law and we never hear about her story again. No more information. By the way, ah Oprah Winfrey,
00:14:09
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Her name on her birth certificate is Orpah because she was named after the biblical figure in the book of Ruth. But people kept mispronouncing it all the time. And so finally, she just went by Oprah.
00:14:23
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um And now she's worth $3 billion. dollars And you get a car and you get a car and you get a um Yeah, so Orpah, she went back to her family.
00:14:34
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but Ruth... Did not. This is verse 16. She says to her mother-in-law, where you go, i will go. And where you stay, i will stay. Your people will be my people and your God, my God. Where you die, i will die.
00:14:49
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And there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely. If even death separates you and me.
00:14:59
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I have read this at a lot of weddings. A lot of weddings. Now, here's the thing with Ruth.
00:15:07
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Now that her husband is dead, the two of them, Naomi and Ruth, aren't really related. But Ruth has a new definition of family.
00:15:19
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It's not defined by blood. It's not defined by who you're married to. Naomi is not merely her mother-in-law because of who she marries.
00:15:29
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She treats her as her mother. She is her family now. Their bond is also defined by their common faith. remember Remember what she said. Even though she comes from Moab, she says, your God has become my God.
00:15:45
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like Like, I'm in this with you. See, they don't stop being family just because her husband died. And so the two of them, they return to Bethlehem.
00:15:57
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It says when they return to Bethlehem that everyone recognized Naomi. But when they try to talk to her, she refuses to answer to her name. She keeps saying, don't call me Naomi anymore. Don't call me Naomi.
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ah By the way, the word Naomi, the name Naomi means pleasant in Hebrew. And basically what she's saying is I'm not pleasant anymore. I don't feel good anymore.
00:16:20
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I feel terrible. um her faith right then is defined by her circumstances. She has lost her husband. She has lost her two sons. She says, call me Mara, which means bitter.
00:16:36
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Call me bitter woman because that's what I am. Her life is bitter. And so she wants to be known as bitter because her life's over. This is a terrible place to be.
00:16:51
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a terrible place for your faith to be. She thinks God did this to her. She believes it. And so not only is her purpose over, now her faith is in the tank.
00:17:08
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Which personally, i just want you to know, i think this is bad theology. It's bad theology to define your faith by your circumstances. And we fall in the trap all the time too.
00:17:20
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We blame God for the car accident. We blame God for the cancer. We blame God for the missed opportunities. We blame God some for some reason about the breakup. As if God is a puppeteer orchestrating everything that happens.
00:17:36
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No, no. You have a lot of agency over your life as well. The mistakes you make, you make. And God the whole time is saying, don't do it.
00:17:48
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But we do it. We got to look in the mirror. We got to stop pointing the finger up to heaven. It doesn't belong there. God is not a puppeteer. You have free will.
00:18:01
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I don't think God distracts drivers with text messages. Stop texting when you drive. I don't think that's God.
Personal Agency and Faith Beyond Circumstances
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i think that's us. I don't think God forces someone to smoke two packs a day. That's not God.
00:18:16
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That's us. I don't think God forces companies to downsize. i don't think God is causing a lack of communication in your relationship. These things happen because we're broken and because the world is broken.
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God never wanted the world to be broken. He created it but but It says it over and over again in Genesis. It is good. it is good. it is good. He created the world good.
00:18:45
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But this is where we are, right? This is where we find ourselves.
00:18:51
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If your faith is only driven by your circumstances, you will have a very bad view of God. Because spouses will die.
00:19:06
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And jobs won't last forever. And even your body is going to break down. And every single one of us is going to have a deathbed.
00:19:19
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Because the world is broken and we're broken.
00:19:25
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I choose to focus on the ways that God is helping me navigate through this mess. And I choose to focus on the end that he's promised me, namely eternal life, which is a free gift.
Salvation Through Jesus and Eternal Life
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I don't earn it. I don't have to earn it. Neither do you. My salvation was won by Jesus's cross. And he offers that same cross to you, the same gift of salvation to all who receive it.
00:19:57
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Just don't turn them down. Don't turn them down. Hell gets too full, more full every single day. Amen.
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Every day. We want more people to be saved and so does God.
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And when you're reborn, Jesus offers this promise as well. You are going to have a life where there's no more tears and no more crying and no more pain. But in this life right now,
00:20:32
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Sometimes circumstances will stink.
Christian Life's Spiritual Support Amid Challenges
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Jesus even promises that sometimes it's going to stink. This is what he says in John 16. He says, in this world, you will have trouble. But take heart.
00:20:50
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I've overcome the world. Don't become a Christian because your life is going to be awesome all the time. That's called the prosperity gospel. Health and wealth.
00:21:02
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I'm sorry to tell you, it doesn't work that way. If it does work that way for you and you have health and wealth, then by all means, write a bigger check to church. Thank you.
00:21:16
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But in this life, you're gonna have trouble. He isn't promising you an easy life. He isn't promising you that it, that um he is promising you that it can't overcome you.
00:21:31
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So take heart, he says. God doesn't orchestrate all the circumstances, but he will be with you through them all. And he is also winning the gift of heaven for you.
00:21:43
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That's the gospel.
Ruth's Royalty and Connection to King David
00:21:44
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That's the good news. Naomi is writing the last chapter of her life before it's even over. the only thing she is is bitter but ruth bruce's not done with her yet and god's not done with her yet ruth asks her if she can go to the fields of the family of eli mellli her father-in-law
00:22:10
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perhaps someone there will have mercy on me she says to her motherin-law and give us some food and naomi agrees she even thinks maybe cute little ruth will catch the eye of someone you never know well that's exactly what happens she catches the eye of the owner of the field boaz this is one of eli mellli's relatives and he lets her gather grain wherever she wants and then later on gives her even more
00:22:42
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he's smitten she's smitten and ruth and no naomi are no longer poor they're no longer hungry they have plenty to eat and the plan worked but it gets even better than that and that's why we got to let god write the last chapter that's why we can't assume that it's always written
00:23:04
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boaz and naomi end up getting married they have a son you saw it in jesus genealogy his name is obbed and this son becomes the grandfather of none other than king david the future king of israel when it becomes a kingdom so in a way now ruth is not husbandless she's not a widow anymore now ruth is royalty
00:23:34
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and
Naomi's New Purpose and Joy in Her Grandson
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this future king of israel when it becomes a kingdom we're actually going to talk about that story next week we're goingnna start getting into the stories of king saul and king david and the kingdom of israel so come back next week ah but today i just want to finish the story of naomi a little bit this is a wife who's lost her husband she's lost her sons she's a woman who's losing her faith that god even cares about her that's what naomi thinks about her life it's a bitter life and she has bitter faith
00:24:07
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but the end of the book of ruth is so much better than the beginning of the book of ruth because ruth didn't give up on her and god didn't give up on her and in the last scene in the book ruth is bringing her son and placing him in the arms of his grandmother her former mother-in-law
00:24:27
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and she remained her family despite their circumstances and this is what it says in verse sixteen naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him and the women living there said naomi has a son
00:24:43
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i might suggest they don't call our naomi anymore and they shouldn't color her bitter anymore
00:24:52
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now she should be known as grandma or grammy or gigi or whatever you call your grandmother i don't know
00:25:03
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naomi has lost everything but now she has a son again a grandson see god takes the mess and he does something completely unexpected with the circumstances that ruth and naomi foundd themselves in instead of life being bitter he shows them that he can make it better and so my last question for you are you a bitter person or a better one with the circumstances that you find yoursels in
Growth Through Adversity in Ruth's Story
00:25:35
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none of us have perfect lives we all have blessings and burdens but i suggest that your circumstances don't have to define you what will define you is whether you let them make you bitter or you'll strive to get better
00:25:54
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adversity has a way of making lots of hurting people turn into really really strong amazing people adversity can do that it certainly did for ruth and it's for that reason that she finds her name in the family tree of jesus the savior of the world because she refused to give up ah gentile woman from moab who has lost her husband but she refused to lose her mother-in- law as well
00:26:26
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and i want to finish with one last thing that naomi's naomi's friends said to her i love this this is in verse fifteen talking about this grandson they said he will renew your life and sustain you in your old age for your daughter-in-law who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons
00:26:48
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has given him birth
00:26:51
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in other words naomi your life isn't over just beginning your family isn't over it's right here in your arms grandma in fact his grandson's probably going to keep you young cause you're gonna be chasing me around
00:27:09
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and like other grannies you're probably goingnna spoil him that's what grandmas do
00:27:17
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and it'll be then that you realize that god was with you the whole time
00:27:23
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ah he's a
Encouragement to Explore Deeper Questions
00:27:24
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savior who takes away the broken pieces of your life and he puts them back together
00:27:30
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and all you have to do has received the gift of salvation that he wants to give you thank you for listening and if you feel as if you are ready to go a little bit deeper into this week's episode head to normalgoalong way dot com we have some questions for you to go through either by yourself or with a friend or your community group and join us this coming thursday as miss hannah and miss april present this week's episode in kids form