Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / July 29, 2018 | Game Changing Moves - Teenage Girl, Game Changer

Transcript

July 29, 2018 | Game Changing Moves - Teenage Girl, Game Changer · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hey, how are you doing?
0:02
SPEAKER_00: Good to see you.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: We're in a summer series called Game Changing Moves, and you better enjoy that rapid fire beat.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: This is week seven out of ten.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: We're in the seventh episode this morning, and uh we're talking about uh decisions that you make in life that change everything, okay?
0:23
SPEAKER_00: And they're called in sports game changing moves.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: In the movie, uh, the family man, Jack Campbell, and his girlfriend Kate are saying goodbye to each other at the airport.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: I think it's JFK, because Campbell has uh gotten a job offer.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: He's going to London to work in banking.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: It's a great job Jack's gonna get.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: And Kate has been accepted to like Columbia Law School or something.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: So she has a bright future, but she's scared.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: He is too that, you know, saying goodbye for a couple of years is gonna mess up their relationship.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: And he's assuring her that, hey, just a few years apart, then they get back together, no problem.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: But she's admittedly nervous, and she tells him she doesn't want them to make the choice to separate.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: She wants them to make the choice to stay together.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: And then in a shocking move, the game-changing moment in the movie, she says, Listen, I've changed my mind.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm gonna go with you to London.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: I choose us.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: And it's really a moving moment, and it reminds me, that scene does, of how important our choices are in life, no matter where you are, and the whole sovereignty versus a free will debate and so forth.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: We all acknowledge that we have meaningful human choices, and the choices we make turn around and then oftentimes make us for better or for worse.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: And that's the episode I want to talk to you about this morning.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: The title of my message.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: I've changed it from something like Teen Girl Game Changer, which sounds like you know, Saturday afternoon matinee, to um game changing choice.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: So if you have a Bible, if you have an app, if you have a Bible app on your phone, whatever, turn to the eighth book, the little book uh in the Bible.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: It's called Ruth, the Book of Ruth, just 85 verses in four chapters, called uh oftentimes uh by scholars, the perfect short story.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: I've told this story here before, but I'm gonna tell it a little bit differently uh today, and then I'm gonna apply it according to game-changing moves.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: I think you'll like it.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but all you have to do is get to the first six words of this story, Ruth 1-1, to sort of shudder and realize that you are in a dystopia.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: You are in a world that is broken and fractured during the time of the judges, because we know this is the darkest day in all of Israel's history.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: The previous sentence, the last sentence of the book of Judges, explains.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: In those days it says there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: And that sentence is found a couple of times in Judges, and it's meant to express this.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, it didn't matter.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: God be damned, the law be damned, friends be damned, I'm gonna do whatever is it right in my own eyes, whatever I want to do, you know, I'm living for me, myself, and I.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: I don't care about you, I don't care about anybody else.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: And so as a result, relationships had broken down broken down.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: It seemed like everybody was feuding with everyone else.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: Loyalty was lost, faithfulness was forgotten during this time, and you say to me, uh, Jim, it sounds a little bit like the world we live in.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: And I say, Well, yeah, it does.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: And you say, Well, no, I mean it really sounds like the America we live in that is so divided.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: And I say again, yeah, you're right.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: Every major network, every major magazine has in the last nine months done a special of some kind entitled, Why is America So Divided?
4:06
SPEAKER_00: And historians agree.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: And looking at all of American history today, the time we're in right now is rated up there with 1860s Civil War, 1968 Vietnam War, is one of the three most divided times in our country that we have ever had in our history.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: We are no longer talking about the State of the Union, we're talking about the state of our disunion.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: There are 325 million Americans, and just to make a sweeping generalization, and this isn't new with me, you have the interior of America is one America.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: It's red state America, it's conservative America, it's more traditional America, it's religious America.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: And then you have another America, and that other America primarily centered on the coast, about the same amount of people and so forth, centered primarily in cities, the Progressive America, the liberal America, the Blue State America, and these two Americas read different books, very different books, and listen to very different music and watch very different TV programs, the surveys show, and increasingly live very different lives, especially as it relates to God and religion, secularism, and so forth.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: And so we are in a position today when everybody feels like we are so divided, and there's something sad in us, and we go, will we ever have a united states again?
5:32
SPEAKER_00: And the division between man and man, humans, is in a sense actually so much less important than the more important division in the sky, and that is the division of man and God.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: For once upon a time, God and man were in cahoots.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: They were buddy-buddy, they hung out together in the garden, and the man took the lower road away from God, and there was an irreparable breach, a break between earth and heaven, an alienation between the two, an anger between the two, an animosity and so forth that ravels fact that supersedes any kind of animosity that we find between man and man on earth.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Right?
6:12
SPEAKER_00: This breach, and because of that breach, in fact, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the famous author, Russian poet, Russian writer, Russian poet, when asked, What in the world do you see as the issue with Europe and America today?
6:23
SPEAKER_00: All this division and so forth, he said, people have forgotten God.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: He traced it all back to there, and so I think he may be right that this division in the sky between God and man is what has led to this incredible division between nations and between and within nations.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: Can I just stop for a second?
6:43
SPEAKER_00: Some uh, you know, I've taken a couple Marv and some others with me to one of my favorite countries, which is Sudan, which is the largest country in Africa.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: And uh half a dozen years ago, Sudan became the newest country in the world.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: South Sudan split off, got freedom from northern Sudan, the Muslim terrorists, and so forth.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: And South Sudan chose its national anthem, which is a more religious hymn than most of them in the hymnal, all about Jesus and God and so forth.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be great.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have a Christian nation and so forth.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: And where we are five, six years later, is last week, my brother has to flee for his life from Southern Sudan because once again, tribe is fighting tribe.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: They have absolutely no peace.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: There's incredible animosity, people slaughtering other people in South Sudan.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: It's just incredible how our world is fractious and fractured.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: Nations versus nations, ISIS now moving to Afghanistan and starting to murder people there.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just crazy, and the the uh and the whole Gaza and the Palestinian conflict is ratcheted up everywhere you look around the world, but then here in America and then in me, in even in families.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: Haven't you lately said to your wife or said to your husband or said to your friend, remember how we used to hang with that couple?
7:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, they're like our best friends who spent time everywhere, and see now after 20 years they're getting divorced?
8:00
SPEAKER_00: And it breaks your heart.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe it was a friendship, maybe it's a maybe it's a brother-sister thing, and you used to be so close to them.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: I know a lot about this because, well, then I'm sorting sort of running, helping run a family reunion in the state of Washington in one week, and and you know, as we look at the hundred and some who are gonna be there, and we go, wow, I mean, everybody used to be so tight, but now, of course, there's brother versus sister and sister versus sister, and I mean there's I mean, am I right?
8:26
SPEAKER_00: Am I right that there's division everywhere you look in the world?
8:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's not just me, I hope.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's that's I mean, there every everybody seems to be feuding, everybody seems to be dividing, and there are breaks everywhere.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the setting of our story.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Archaeologists call it the Iron Age.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about 1100 BC, uh, the Iron Age, and that's appropriate because people's hearts, I think, were as hard as iron, and so what God's looking for, what God wants is somebody to heal the breach, because God's made this world to be at peace with him and at peace with each other.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: So it's looking for someone to bring back love and loyalty.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: And the person that God finally found was not a person that you would choose, not a person that I would choose, not a, you know, a muscular hero out of Marvel comics, not a Jewish superman at all.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: In fact, not a man and not a Jew.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: This person didn't even live in the land of Israel.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: This person was young, this person was a girl, this person's name was Ruth, and she didn't even come from a rich or an important family.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: She didn't live in a city where she could influence a lot of people.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: In fact, her family didn't even worship the one true God.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: They were Gentiles.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: And they worshiped the pagan gods plural of Moab, for they lived in the land of Moab, southwest of the land of Israel, just across and south of the Dead Sea.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: And her gods were gods of magic and gods of anger, gods that had to be appeased with the blood of little babies, gods that made you scared at night, not kind gods that loved little boys and girls.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: And when we first meet Ruth, she's 14 years old.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh, maybe she's 13, maybe she's 15, but I think she's 14.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: But she's regardless, she's a teenage girl in a grown-up man's world, and she lives far away from any place where important decisions are made.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: How could she do anything important?
10:12
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's where these 85 verses answer our question.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: One day what happened is that her life changed because a family moved into the village, a family of foreigners.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: They'd come from what seemed like far away in those days, from across the river from the land of Israel, from a place where nobody ever came.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: No one ever left the land of Israel.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: You didn't, because that was the land of promise.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: That was the land of blessing.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: That was the land where, you know, God took care of you and where your property was yours, no matter how poor you got, even if you sold it, you would get it back.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: It was yours.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: Nobody ever left Israel, but here they were.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: The mother's name was Naomi, her name meant cheerful.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: Her husband's name was Elimelech, his name meant my God is king, or like God is number one to me, something like that.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: And two boys, whose names unfortunately were appropriate, Malon and Kileon, their names meant sickly and pining away, and they were wimpy.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: So what were they doing here in Moab, everybody asked?
11:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, their answer was that they had left Israel because there was a famine over in Israel.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: There was no rain, and the crops had withered up and the fields had died.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: And then that's the first verse during the time of the judges, this dystopian world, there was a famine in the land.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: Now, when you see that word famine associated with Israel, you're supposed to think, they were supposed to think, but they'd been told very often, when there's a famine, that's a phone call from the front desk.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: That's a personal call from me, God said.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: Take a wake-up call, reminding you that you can't continue to keep completely ignore me and go your own way and do whatever you want and expect me to continue sending you rain and blessing and growing your crops.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: And Elimelech knew this.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Certainly his parents were devout.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: They'd given him a name which meant, I put God first.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: Basically, his name meant I put God first.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: My God is king.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: But you know, a lot of parents have high hopes and dreams spiritually for their kids, and then their kids grow up and their kids go their own way.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: And Elimelech had done that.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: Elimelech should have been a leader in Bethlehem.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: He was one of the oldest families in Bethlehem.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: It's called an Ephraithite.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: Bethlehem used to be called Ephraith, and he was an Ephraith, one of the oldest blue bloods in Bethlehem.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: He should have been leading his community back to God.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: God said, You know what?
12:34
SPEAKER_00: If there's a famine, it's a wake-up call for you to pray and repent, and then I'll send rain again.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: He should have been praying and repenting, but instead he was sitting at the front door.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: He was passive.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: He was looking 50 miles across the Dead Sea at those, at that billboard, at those beautiful greenish-blue mountains and hills of Moab, which were like a sign saying, Y'all come, y'all come.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: Nobody would have ever thought of going, but he did.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: He thought about it.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: One day he snapped and he said to his wife and his two 10-year-old boys, or 12-year-old or 14-year-old boys, whatever they were, he said, Pack up, we're leaving, we're out of here.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: And the decision shocked them, and it shocked the whole town.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: What are you doing?
13:17
SPEAKER_00: They cried.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: Get off my back, he said to them.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: Isn't our town called Bethlehem, House of Bread, Breadtown?
13:22
SPEAKER_00: And we have no bread.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: That makes no sense.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: So I'm leaving.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: It won't be permanent, he said.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: But sure enough, he got up and he took them on that hundred-mile trip roundabout, all the way down to Moab, and that's when they appeared in that town where Ruth lived.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: That's verses one through three during the time of the judges, the famine in the land, man left Bethlehem and Judah with his wife and two sons to live in the land of Moab for a while.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: Notice that, notice that, notice what he told everybody.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: People tell you this, don't they?
13:53
SPEAKER_00: They say, I'm just moving for a little while.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: I'll just be out of your life for a little while, right?
13:57
SPEAKER_00: Just taken off for a little while.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: He told them, he said, This is just for a little while.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: I'll be back, three months, six months.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: Whenever the rain starts falling, I'll be back.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: He never came back.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: He was wrong.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: He was wrong.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: He would never see them again.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it interesting how you make these choices and they turn around and make you?
14:22
SPEAKER_00: If you're a fan of country music, and maybe even if you aren't, you know George Jones.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: King George, they call him.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: He's no longer with us, but he's one of the greatest country singers of all time.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: And it was no secret that George had a drinking problem.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: But still, everybody was shocked in 1999 when George, you know, got so drunk he drove his Lexus at night into a bridge abutment down in Nashville, and they nearly put him in a pine box.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: It took him to ER, and he was in critical care and so forth, and thankfully he recovered.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: And right after that, he put out a new album.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: The new album was called Cold Hard Truth.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: And the hit song on that album was the hit song Choices.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: That's our theme this morning, isn't it, boys and girls?
15:06
SPEAKER_00: And the hit song Choices key line had this key line, which I've told the whole story to get to this key line.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm living, George sang, I'm living and dying with the choices I've made.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: And we all are, aren't we?
15:20
SPEAKER_00: You're living and you're dying with the choices you made.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: Elimelech was living and dying.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: He'd made a choice.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: He made a choice that he was gonna leave.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: He'd said, Yeah, I'm just gonna leave for a little while.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: But then he moves to Moab and he doesn't he doesn't take a week-long condo.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: He he settles down, gets property.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: We find out in the next verse.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: Ten years pass.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: It's astounding.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: It happens today, doesn't it?
15:48
SPEAKER_00: Someone moves away, it's just gonna be temporary, they'll be back.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: But weeks turn into months, and then if you're like us, you're looking at Facebook once and you see this name, you see this story pop up, and you look at your wife.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: I do this sometimes.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: I go, wow, remember back when we used to like get together every week with them?
16:07
SPEAKER_00: That ever happened to anybody else, and you go, and ah, it's just, I mean, like we're probably still friends, but they just drift out of your life.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: That isn't that weird how that happens.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's just us.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm so.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: But nearly every important relationship is in danger of breaking down, and every important relationship had broken down for Elimelech, his relationship with God, his relationship with his extended family, his relationship with God's land, the promised land.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: So what's gonna happen now?
16:36
SPEAKER_00: Well, he gets there, and uh and what happens is he dies there.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: Naomi's husband Elimelech dies.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't say how long, had to be a year or two at least.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: And she's now a widow and she's left with her two sons.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: So her sons take Moabite women as their wives.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: Naomi had to help arrange that.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: One was named Orpah, the second was named Ruth.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: So put yourself in Ruth's place for just a moment.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: 14-year-old girl, she had to have cried.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: She had to be a little freaked out when her mom dad said, We've arranged with this woman Naomi, you know, that foreigner family.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: Across town, we've arranged for you to marry, you know, their boy.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: He's 16, 17.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: She had to have cried.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: She had to be scared that 16, 17, 18-year-old boy spoke a different language.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: He was from a different country, different tribe.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: He worshipped a different god.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: So, um, my goodness.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: But Naomi, she's probably thinking, oh well, you know, my husband's dead.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna finally have grandchildren, I'm gonna have have some bright faces in my home, but I lost my husband and so forth by gotten them married off.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: Now I have little kids running around the home.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: Because it was a custom in those days.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: The brides go live with his family.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: So Ruth moved across town, Orpa moved across town.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: So there's now five of them in the house.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: But it was not to be the little children, no happy faces, because they're sickly, they pick up every disease, they're feeble, the boys are, and they can't have children.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: Ten years later, ten years later, they're still just looking at each other, one middle-aged widow, and ten years later, two couples in their twenties, no happy little faces, and then Ruth's gotta be going, wow, this family lives under a curse.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: The dad of Limelech has already died, and now the kids can't have any babies, and then all of a sudden in ten years both of them die, and Naomi's left without her two children and without her husband.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: And Ruth is left with her stepsister and her mother-in-law, and she is a young widow with no hope, no future, no prospects.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: Who is ever going to marry her?
19:00
SPEAKER_00: That's where we are at the beginning of the story, and things could not be more grim for this girl.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: She's living with these two women that she doesn't have all that much in common with.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: And if this is the first time you've heard this story, you wonder how in the world things could ever improve.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: Here we are at verse 5.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's no income and there's no hope.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, and in fact, you have Naomi, your mother-in-law, has just turned very unpleasant.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: She's now saying, Don't call me Naomi, cheerful, call me Mara, bitter, she answered, for the Almighty has made my life very bitter.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: It's really fun being around you now.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: You know?
19:37
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: Take a positive mental attitude course, mama.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: But so you can imagine how she feels, and it's a sad story.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: Now, whenever I'm reading, I don't know about you and everybody, I read a lot, and when I'm I'm reading a book and it's all depressing, depressing, depressing for the first 50 pages.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: I confess to you that not wanting to be depressed for the next week or two, I skip to the end of the book.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: Find out if there's anything happy.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: So let's do that with Ruth.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: And when we turn to the final chapter, final paragraphs of the book of Ruth, Ruth 4, 13 to 17, we suddenly read this.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: Boaz, who's he, don't know him, nice strong name though, took Ruth into his home and she became his wife.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: What?
20:13
SPEAKER_00: Are you kidding me?
20:14
SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: When he slept with her, the Lord enabled her to become pregnant.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: She gave birth to a son.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: So she gets to have a little boy.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: Then the women of the town said to Naomi, her mother-in-law, praise the Lord, hallelujah, who's now provided a redeemer for your family.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: May this child be famous in Israel.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: May he restore your youth.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: I almost feel like we should be singing it.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: May he restore you.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: Care for you in your old age.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: For he's the son of your daughter-in-law who loves you, and he's and she's been better to you than seven sons.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: So Naomi took the baby in her arms and cared for them.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: And the neighbor women said, now at last Naomi has a son again, and they named him Obed, and he became the father of Jesse and the grandfather of what?
21:05
SPEAKER_00: The grandfather of the greatest king Israel ever had, the king who united the nation and brought everybody back together?
21:12
SPEAKER_00: You're telling me that Ruth, this little Gentile girl who worshipped false gods, gets to marry after all?
21:19
SPEAKER_00: A Hebrew guy married her?
21:22
SPEAKER_00: And her grandson's name Jesse, and he's the father of the greatest king ever, of David?
21:27
SPEAKER_00: And in his down line is, hold it, Jesus?
21:31
SPEAKER_00: So Ruth is Jesus' great-great-great great whatever grandma?
21:38
SPEAKER_00: How in the world did that ever come to be?
21:43
SPEAKER_00: The answer is carried.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: Hidden, I guess, in Robert Frost's famous American poem, Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I couldn't travel both.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: Long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Where it bent in the undergrowth.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: And then I took the other.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: This is just as fair and having perhaps the better claim because it was grassy and wanted or lacked wear.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: In other words, it was the road less traveled.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: That's Ruth's story.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: On the most important day of her life, when she came to the most important choice of her life, when she came to that fork in the wood, she made a brave choice that made all the difference.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: Back to chapter one.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at that choice.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: Naomi had heard in Moab that the Lord had blessed his people in Judah by giving them good crops again.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: So she and her daughters-in-law got ready to leave Moab to return to her homeland.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: With the two daughters-in-law, she set up from the place where she'd be living.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: They took the road that would lead them back to Judah.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: Now she gets to where the road dips out of that high table land, and she stops and she says to her two daughters-in-law, Go back to your mother's homes, and may the Lord reward you for your kindness to your husbands and to me.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord bless you with the security of another marriage.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: Then she kissed them goodbye, and they all broke down and wept.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: They did the nice thing, they did the polite thing.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: They said, No, we want to go with you to your people.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: She said, Why?
23:33
SPEAKER_00: Why would you go on with me?
23:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, can I still give birth to other sons who could grow up to be your husbands?
23:39
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what chance do you ever have of getting married?
23:43
SPEAKER_00: What Hebrew guy will take a foreign widow?
23:46
SPEAKER_00: No, my daughters, return to your parents' homes, for I'm too old to marry again.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: Even if it were possible, now she tells, sort of with black humor, she tells, if if by some gynecological miracle I could have a baby at my age, she said, even if it were possible, and I were to get married tonight and bear sons, then what?
24:01
SPEAKER_00: Would you wait for them to grow up and refuse to marry someone else?
24:03
SPEAKER_00: No.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: By the time you walked the aisle, you'd be ready for the retirement home if they were that age.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: No.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: No, things are far more bitter for me than for you because the Lord Himself has raised his fist against me.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you are so pleasant.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: And again they wept together, and Orpa kissed her mother-in-law goodbye.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: But Ruth hung on, hung on, clung tightly to Naomi.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: And she had the most important decision of her life facing her.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: She had this incredible choice.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: Choice number one, Ruth stays in the life that she knows, the life she's comfortable with, with her extended family, with the god she knew, with the safe.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: Always option number two is to leave, to go with Naomi into this brand new life, into this strange new world.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: It's the hardest choice of her life to go with Naomi again means leaving her own family, leaving her own friends, leaving her own religion to go with Naomi means probably life with no husband, no children for what Hebrew man's gonna ever look at.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: Or to go with Naomi means going to an unknown land with unknown customs and a brand new language.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: Most important, to go with Naomi means forever leaving, forever leaving the gods of her people and making the God of Israel her God.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: This is a huge choice.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: Look, says Naomi, your sister-in-law is going back to her people and notice, and her gods.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: Go back with her.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: But I think that over those ten years, though, where it's never gotten children, she has been sort of listening to her husband and her mother-in-law talk about the one true God.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: Not many gods, not gods of magic and anger, blood and terror, but one God, a God of kindness and compassion, a God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, a God of Moses, who brought his people out of Israel, did miracles, a God who loves his children, his people.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm wondering if that God had seemed like the God she wanted, because she replied, in words that we use at weddings even today, entreat me not to leave you or to turn back from following after you.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: For wherever you go, I will go.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: Wherever you lodge, I will lodge.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: Your people shall be my people.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: And get this starting at this very moment, and your God, my God.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, she says, I'm not coming back here, not ever.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: Wherever you die, I will die, and there will I be buried.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: In her moment of choice, Ruth takes the road less traveled by, and she comes out with one of the most famous statements in all of history.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: She makes the choice to go.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: She makes the choice to choose God and to choose Naomi.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: So that's what she does.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: She chooses God, the one true God, and she chooses Naomi.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: No legal obligation get this to take care of Naomi for the rest of her life.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: And if you think that somehow there was an attractiveness about Naomi that made her, oh, I love you so much.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: We're so good.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: I kind of doubt that.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: This is a bitter woman.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: But Ruth, who's get this, whose name means friend, shows us the loyalty of true friendships.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: And it changes everything for her.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: Everything.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: One more verse that I'll show you, and then I'm done with the book of Ruth.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: In the next chapter, we see the turning point in her life, now that she's made this choice, in Bethlehem.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: They're hungry, so Ruth goes to the fields, following behind the harvesters, gathering up little pieces of grain they leave behind.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: And it just so happened.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: Laugh with me, it just so happened.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: That phrase is used three or four times in the Bible, and every time it's like wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: That's the way people looked at it.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: It just so happened, but nothing is ever.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: It just so happened.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: This is God working behind the scenes.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: And it just so happened that the field belonged to a guy named Boaz.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: And that's where the story gets really like one of those Sunday night movies.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
28:20
SPEAKER_00: Mushy.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: So, so what's the application?
28:23
SPEAKER_00: And and and frankly, the application is gonna be really simple.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: It's stuff that you already know.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: Just two things, just two things.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna bore you to death, okay?
28:29
SPEAKER_00: Here's the application.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: Number one, number one, make the game-changing choice to believe in the one true God.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Choose God.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: Ruth made that game-changing choice.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: She chose the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: Listen to me very carefully.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: If you're ever gonna find peace with God, if you're ever gonna heal over that breach between heaven and earth, then you need to cross over on the bridge of God and his son Jesus Christ.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: You need to give up the stuff you've worshipped in the past, whether it's pleasure, power, or possessions, you need to accept the one true God who loved you so much that he gave his son to bridge over the gap by dying for your sins to bring you to himself.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: When you do that, that's a great game-changing move.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: It's a game-changing move that 10 days ago, one of the great college football coaches in America, one of the top three college football programs in America, his name is pronounced Dabbo Sweeney, and he's the coach of Clemson, which won the national title two years ago, is always in the top five, will be in the top three or four again this year.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: And Dabbo Sweeney, ten days ago at the ACC Media Day, said this.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: He had heard about Topeka Bible Church doing a game-changing series, and so he said, I didn't have a relationship with Christ until I was 16.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: It was a game changer for me.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Dabble.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Dabbo.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: It was again, it's a game-changing decision for anybody who makes that choice.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: And friends, listen, you don't have, I'm not gonna be Billy Graham here, but you don't have forever to make that choice.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: You've come to a fork in the road today if you haven't made that choice.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even an Oxford professor sounds like Billy Graham, but he puts it that way very bluntly.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: He says, when the author walks onto the stage, the play's over.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: God's gonna invade all right, but what's the good of saying you're on his side then?
30:18
SPEAKER_00: When you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else, something it never entered your head to conceive, comes crashing in.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: Something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have, get it, any choice left.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: For this time it will be God without disguise, something so overwhelming that'll strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: And it will be, get this, too late then to choose your side.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: There's no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: That will not be the time for choosing.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: It will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: Now, today, this moment is our chance to choose the right side.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: Do choose the right side.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: If you have loved ones, impress upon them the importance of choosing the right side, of choosing the one true God.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: The other application, just as simple, is choose friends.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: Make the game-changing choice to choose to be a forever friend to um three people.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: Psychologists and scientists differ as to how many close, intimate confidants that you can have.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: Science magazine says three to five.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Psychologists point out that 25 years ago, the average American, when asked how many close, intimate confidants you have, said three.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: Now the average is just over two, 2.04, something like that.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: We're losing friends, we're getting more alienated.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: I like the number three because Jesus had three intimate friends, Peter, James, and John.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: He had the 12, he had crowds and so forth, but he had three BFFs.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: He had three close friends.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: And I like the idea if God's given you a husband or a wife, that that would be one of the three, of course.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: Better be, right?
32:11
SPEAKER_00: And then two others of the same sex.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: I would urge you to make the game-changing choice to be a forever friend to three people.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that either you or they has to be really cool.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, a true friend is someone who thinks you're a good egg, even though they know you're slightly cracked, right?
32:31
SPEAKER_00: So maybe you just walk up.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: Somebody came up to me last hour and said, I have no true friend.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: And I said, hey, one out of eight people in America have not even one.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: Tell psychologists on the surveys they don't even have one.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: Crow close friend.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: So you're one out of eight.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: What do I do?
32:47
SPEAKER_00: She said.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: I said, she didn't either.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: I said, you find someone, you walk up to them, and you say, I find you to be mentally unstable and emotionally disturbed with a highly questionable sense of humor.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: Just so happens these are all qualities I look for in a friend.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: Right?
33:08
SPEAKER_00: And then you commit yourself.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: You say, I choose you.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: There's an old old Brothers Grimm story, a story of two little girls running for their lives from very evil people, hiding behind trees, hiding in bushes, and trembling with fear to give each other courage.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: When they're hiding, one of them will look at each other and say, Don't forsake me, and I'll never forsake you.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: And the other one looks back and says, I will never forsake you as long as I live.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that beautiful?
33:38
SPEAKER_00: That's what Ruth said to Naomi.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: After she said to your husband or wife, if you're married.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: Forty years ago this afternoon, that's what Melody and I said to each other at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas, and treat me, stop urging me to leave you, Melody.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: It ain't gonna happen.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: Where you go, I will go.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: Where you lodge, I will lodge.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Your people should be my people, your God, my God.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: It was a muggy afternoon, and it wasn't uh really the high spot in our career.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: I remember after the wedding and standing there greeting all those people, and then my father-in-law came over to me.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: Where are you staying tonight?
34:19
SPEAKER_00: He says, You know, I've given you the Chevy Vega wedding gift, giving me a Chevy Vega to drive up to Estes Park.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: Where are you gonna stay on the way?
34:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd never rented, I'd never called, I'd never even, I didn't know much of how should I know at age 26 that you should call ahead of time and get a hotel room?
34:40
SPEAKER_00: What I said, well, I haven't actually reserved the place.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: He looks at me, and I know he's thinking now, I know he's thinking, I think I'll withdraw my blessing, but it is too late, isn't it?
34:51
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe he was thinking, your name's Jim, my name's Jim, but we have nothing in common at all.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: He said, What were you expecting to do?
34:58
SPEAKER_00: I said, I was just expecting to drive west through Fort Worth and up toward Colorado, and when we got tired, find a hotel and stopped.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: He looked at me, he said, Would you mind if I called a hotel and reserved you a room tonight?
35:20
SPEAKER_00: And he did.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: It's not that it was perfect.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: We left in the Chevy Vega about 9:30 that night or whatever, and it was really hot and the Vega didn't have any air conditioning.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: And by the time we got to the Hilton in Fort Worth, it was 11 o'clock.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: We were both hungry, and we'd thought about maybe eating a little bit of the wedding cake, the remainder of which was between us, sitting on the uh on the emergency brake.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: But by that time, with that air conditioning, it had melted all over the brake and the seats and the floor.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: Didn't start well.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: And then my father-in-law got his revenge.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: The next day the Chevy Vega broke down in the middle of nowhere.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: So no, it's but it's gotten better.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they I mean, Melanie caught me standing in the bathroom scale the other day, sucking in my stomach, and she laughed at me.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: She said, That's not gonna help.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Sure, it does.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: It's the only way I can see the numbers.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: This morning she came in the kitchen, she said, I'd lost it, but uh just before you leave, here's here's the 40th anniversary card, you know, that I got you.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: I really like it.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: Read this.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: And it had a picture of a wife hugging her husband on the front of it and saying to him, Thank you for arranging your dirty underwear on the floor to spell out I love you.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: Strange and wonderful relationship.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: We appreciate the little things about each other, but the main thing is, you know, you determine, you know, that you're gonna be loyal.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: Love and loyalty.
36:53
SPEAKER_00: Story of Ruth.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: I will go where you go.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: Your people shall be my people.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: How do you break down uh how do you how do you recover from the breakdown of civilization when the world is divided around you in a country, when families are all divided around you, what do you do?
37:11
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is that you choose God, you cross over that horrible division between heaven and earth, and then you go to one person and you say, I choose you.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: And then you go to a second person and you say, I choose you.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: You go to a third person and you say, I choose you, one at a time, one at a time.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: We build bridges, and we heal the division that exists in our world.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow morning we say, if you wake up and the sun doesn't appear, I will be here.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: I'll be true to the promise I made to you and the one who gave you to me.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: I choose God, I choose us.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
37:55
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for the example of Ruth, the sacrifice of your son Jesus Christ, who made it possible to do away with the alienation and the animosity and the anger and the division, all that stuff that separates us, and to restore love and loyalty, which we want so badly, so badly in our world and in our country, in our families, in our marriages.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming.