[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: We also have another group that just a few weeks ago was down at the East Point Church of Christ down in Florida. And it kind of hit me that we have a lot of ministries and a lot of things that are happening through the people here at Madison that, number one, a lot of people don't know about. And number two, that there's a lot of things that a lot of people are doing that nobody in leadership, no one asked them to do because they just simply saw a need and met a need. And that reminded me to do two things. Number one, I just want to thank those of you that are doing that. We had that group that was down at East Point. We have a group right now that's at Hemley Road. We have people right now working in foster care, trying to provide a house for them. We have people right now, they're doing stuff in our school systems. And basically what they had was they had a divine burden for something, saw a need and met it.
And so I want to thank you for that. But I also just want to kind of remind all of us that there are opportunities and moments of ministry everywhere, all the time.
And it doesn't even have to be a thing where someone asks you to do something. You just see that need and meet that need. And so I just wanted to remind us of that because I know as a larger congregation that there can be times where like, well, where do I fit in? Like, where do I serve? But there are so many things that we can step forward in and do and to serve those that are in our community. So thank you guys so much for that.
The lady on the screen behind me is from England.
Her name is Charlotte Elliot. And Charlotte was a lady that had been through a thing or two and experienced a thing or two.
She was very embittered and a very battle tested woman.
Earlier in her childhood and through her teenage years, she experienced a Lot of sickness. And she was one of those people. And you might know, people like this, they get bad news, they get a little bit of a break, then they get more bad news followed by more bad news, then more bad news. Like that was her life.
And so then because of some of the health difficulties that she had that difficulty and those bad news that she kept receiving over and over again ended up giving her this long term disability.
And so in the middle of her disability, in the middle of this bad news, one of the sentences that her family said, she asked was this.
Why God?
Why God would something like this keep happening to me?
And so her family was trying to help her navigate the bitterness and trying to help her navigate the pain that she had experienced. And so what they did is they invited a man to the house that was a local minister in town named Dr. Malan.
And their whole idea was, well, maybe they can have a conversation and it will help her and encourage her. So they invited him over. And this was in 1822.
They sat around their dining room table and Charlotte began to pick up on the fact that mom and dad invited this guy here to try to, you know, help me. And my friends were trying to help me. So they invited him to try to, you know, encourage me. But she actually got frustrated and angry about it. Charlotte, she chewed her family out, and then she chewed him out for being there. The family was so embarrassed, they left the table altogether.
And so just sitting at that table was Dr. Malan and Charlotte.
And so Dr. Malan turned to her and he said, I can tell that you are a very scared and angry person.
And he said, in your defense, I can't really blame you.
Because when you've been through what you've been through and experienced what you've experienced, sometimes that's all you have to cling to.
He said, but the other thing I want you to know, though, is that because you keep only clinging to that, it's made you a very bitter person.
Now, that's not exactly the easiest of sentences to hear.
And so this was her response.
Well, what's your cure?
To which he replied, the very faith that you're trying to despise.
She processed that statement, and then she said, well, if somebody like me wanted to become a Christian and to share in that same peace and joy that you are experiencing and you possess that, what would somebody like me do?
And Dr. Malan said this.
You would give yourself to God right now, just as you are with your fightings and your fears and your hate and love and pride.
And shame.
And this is what she said.
I would come to God just as I am.
Is that right?
Well, she ended up giving her life to Jesus Christ.
She got out a pen and paper and she began to write a poem.
She wrote a poem that began to circulate around England and then ended up moving its way all over Europe, then eventually the whole world. And now is one of the most popular hymnals.
Songs that we sing is oftentimes a song of invitation.
Just as I am.
And I don't know about you guys, but I have sung this song countless times.
But I don't really think about sometimes what I'm singing.
But I also don't let what I'm singing actually match up with what I'm practicing.
Do you think any of you are guilty of this like I am? Where I'll say something like, well, when I clean myself up, then I'll come to him.
And when I can present a better version of Andrew Itson, then I'll come to him.
Or maybe when I start to know a little bit more, or I get things in order, or when I get to this point, then I'll come to him.
Yet we read through scripture a Jesus that invites us in a completely different way to say, listen, I'm not gonna let you stay how you are, but I want to come to me as you are, with all your fears, with all your failings, with all your shame and so notice in this song. And we're going to come back to some of the lyrics. Look with me right now in verse three.
Just as I am.
I've been tossed about. I'm dealing with a lot of conflict and I'm dealing with a lot of doubt.
There's fightings within and there's fear of being without. Oh lamb of God, I come, I come just as I am.
You will receive, you'll welcome me, you'll pardon me, you'll cleanse, you'll relieve.
Because your promise I believe. O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
The book of Ruth is a book that kind of reminds me of the life of Charlotte.
Because in the book of Ruth, in the very beginning, we're introduced to a lady named Naomi that, similar to Charlotte, was a very embittered and battle tested woman.
Naomi had been through a thing or two and she had seen a thing or two.
Her family had lost their farm, they had been going through a famine. And then she lost her family.
And living in a day as a widow where you have no body. And if you have no body, you were seen as like the lowest of society.
You are at every disadvantage in the world.
And she asked this question just like Charlotte did, right? Well, why am I going through this? Well, what you're gonna see in this text is that even though she has those why questions, she looks to God to take one step.
But you also notice that there's a person in this narrative named Ruth that steps alongside her.
And what I love so much about the text we're gonna look at over the next few weeks is this, that if you're a person that's in this audience or watching online and you are struggling right now with hope, because all you have to cling to is maybe bitterness, frustration, anger, or whatever it is, I want us to know that the hope we speak of when we open up Scripture and the hope we sing about when we praise God's name is not like, I hope.
Like, I'll think, well, I hope Florida State wins more than two games, and I hope they don't embarrass me this year.
Biblical hope in Christ, rooted hope is not like that.
It's not rooted in. I wonder if anything's going to happen. The thing with biblical hope, and when we hope in Christ, we don't know how it's going to turn out, but we know still he's going to do something. That's kind of the hope that we're going to see in this narrative.
But what I also love so much about this text is it's so easy to insert ourselves into this narrative, because when we ask those why questions, one of the most important things that we choose to do next is also ask this who in the middle of our why questions to ask who? Which is, who is God? Who is God going to be in this moment? And who will Christ be to help me through this? And. But I also want us to think about this from a relational perspective as the body of Christ, when we have people because we do, and when we have people because we will, that are asking their why questions, that one of the most important things that you and I can do, the most important posture, and the most urgent posture, is for us just to simply ask where.
Like, where do you need me?
Where do we need to go?
Where can we pray about this? Where can we talk? Where can I bring you a meal? Those are the most important questions when people are dealing with their why.
You know, it's kind of interesting, as a kid, you say a lot of times when your parents are around, well, why?
And by the way, as you answer those why questions, have you found yourself sometimes addressing Those amidst sentences that you never thought you would put together, like, don't try to balance the cereal bowl between your chest and the table.
Why?
Or doesn't your mom look nice? Why?
Like, no, that's not really a why statement. But then we get older, you know what happens? We don't outgrow this. We just ask it really at a deeper level will say, like, well, why me?
And why now? And why this?
So we ask why questions, but we just ask them at a different level. And what we're going to see is as we ask these questions, we will still see, just as Ruth did, just as Naomi did, the power and the presence of a very good and a very present God. So go with me to verse one. And in certain texts, you have to give the context, because the Bible does not give you the context. This is one of those texts. The Bible naturally provides the context in the first sentence. We can learn everything we need to know about the context in which we open this text. It says this, that in the days when the Judges ruled, there was a famine in the land.
You might remember a few years ago, Brandon and I did a series called Unlikely Heroes on the men and women that served as Judges. And when we went through that series, you might remember that there was a sentence that kept popping up on every page and through every chapter that sounded like this. And the people again did evil in the sight of the Lord. And the people again did evil in the sight of the Lord. And it's really easy to watch them and be like, what's their problem? Why do they keep falling in that pattern? Well, here was their pattern. They would be worshiping God, Then their eyes would be looking in different directions. They would find an idol to cling to. Then that idol, that thing that they thought would deliver it, then enslaved them. And then they asked for deliverance. And they worshiped God. And they were worshiping God for a while. Their eyes were looking in many different directions. They grabbed hold of that idol, that idol enslaved them. And round and round and round it went.
But we find ourselves in that same cycle, right?
Desiring for that cycle to be broken, wondering when God's going to deliver us. He finally does. And we keep our eyes looking. That's the period of time this was written in. In fact, if you notice, as your Bibles are open to Ruth, one, go back one page and look at the very last sentence of the Book of Judges. It says there was nobody leading the country, and everybody was doing right in their own eyes.
Moms and dads. Imagine for Just a second. You let your kids have run of the house, nobody leading, nobody doing anything, guess what happens? They're going to be doing right in their own eyes. Right? That's what was happening here in this text.
And so here's a neat thing to notice, though, that when it says here that the Judges were ruling and that there was a famine in the land, please understand there's a direct connection between the fact that this is the time of the Judges and a famine.
Because if you look at Israel's history, they were supposed to be experiencing feast.
This was supposed to be the time where the land was flowing with what, milk and honey. They were supposed to be enjoying all of the goodness that God provided physically and spiritually, yet they found themselves falling after those idols. And so now, as a consequence of that, they're experiencing a famine.
And so this is one of those times. Again, we've been there, we thought we would be here, but now we're here.
And in this text, we're introduced to the characters before Ruth, and it says this. There was a man named Elimelech, and he had a wife named Naomi, and he had two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, and they were Ephraites from Bethlehem in Judah, and they went to the country of Moab and remained there. So Elimelech, the dad says, all right, let's do this. Let's load up the donkey, let's hop in the car. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a drive all the way from Bethlehem to Moab.
And I don't always give us the meaning behind names in scripture, because sometimes it doesn't really change anything about the text.
But this is one of those instances where we have to dig into the meaning of people's names because it impacts this whole narrative.
Elimelech's name means God is king.
And during this day, they gave you names based on what people believed about you.
And so what people were doing when they would see this guy, they're like, hey, that's Elimelech, man. That guy. You can just tell God is king of his life.
Well, he ends up meeting a lady named Naomi. Her name means sweet and pleasant. So God as king meets sweet and pleasant. He likes her, she likes him, and vice versa. And you think, well, these two people, one's sweet and pleasant, one has God as king. What in the world could possibly go wrong? Well, then we meet their kids, and they have two kids. When they go out into public, like, who are these two? Well, this is sick, and this is tired now, what's interesting about that is they lived in a day that you would name your kids, often what you wanted them to be. So these were more than likely, according to most Hebrew scholars, not their original names.
Most people believe their original names could have been something like strength and promise.
But over time, maybe mom or dad or both got sick and tired and saw, this is sick and this is tired. We don't know. And some of y' all are like, I'm gonna change the name of my kids.
But the more we dig into this narrative, we actually start to understand that the reason why they're called this is not necessarily because of the way that they handled themselves, but really what life had dealt them.
And part of the reason why I want to bring up the meaning of these names is because remember what it said dad did?
Dad loaded them all up and said, hey, we're heading to Moab.
Now, I don't want to hate too much on him. And maybe it's partly because I've done the same thing where sometimes we're in a desperate situation and we want to lead our families. Well. We're experiencing famine, we're experiencing drought, and we want to make a decision.
But sometimes, if we're not careful, we will make a decision that is more based on economic provision than spiritual protection.
We choose the God of ease or comfort.
Opportunity, we might think.
And so this man that by title was God is my King, has now led his family to a place called Moab.
Now, you might think, well, what's the problem with Moab? There's food there. Like, I would do the same thing if I'm in his shoes and we're experiencing a famine. I'm going to hightail it to the next place that I can get a job. I'm going to hightail it next to the place where I can get a bunch of food.
But see, God had forbid his people to go to Moab, and here's why.
Do y' all remember back in the Book of Genesis when Lot had those two daughters and his daughters got him drunk, and they end up having a child with their father.
One of those children's names was Moab, where we get the Moabites. The other one was Ammonites.
And the Moabites were so evil that one of the things that they would do is their false God.
They would sacrifice their own children to Moab because they thought it would please the gods.
That's where God did not want them to go to.
But again, times are difficult, and it makes me think, do you Think sometimes that when moments get difficult, times are hard, and it feels like there's nothing in Bethlehem, that Moab looks really tempting.
Do you think sometimes we compromise thinking that this will help somebody else?
I think sometimes I've done that when trying to reach somebody.
You think sometimes we think compromise is going to help them come to know Christ. Let me tell you, you might be, and I might be sincere, but we're also mistaken.
Compromise is never going to lead somebody to Christ.
And so dad leads them there.
And it made me think, all right, well, what am I choosing when times get difficult?
Am I going to be faithful where God has planted me, or am I just going to leave and go to Moab?
But the other thing that I was thinking about is this dad, even if it was partly unintentional, he is leading his family into a very idolatrous place.
And could it be maybe as dads, sometimes as leaders of our home, if we're not careful, we can choose really good things that come eventually to be lowercase G God. Things become idols and unintentionally lead our family sometimes in the wrong direction out of convenience, out of what we want or wish what we had.
And think about this guy for just a second. If you introduced other people to him, you're like, man, this guy, God is king of his life, but yet he's kept apart back.
The reason why I mention that is when times get difficult, all of us that will hold that title, that God is the king of our life. Do you think sometimes when it is difficult or we're not getting the answer we want is to kind of keep a part back for ourselves? Maybe for some of you, as you've navigated something difficult, you resorted to a substance.
As you resorted to that substance, you thought, well, here's the thing, because I'm doing well with all of these things, but because of this, I feel justified in this.
Or maybe as you're a younger person growing up and what happens is you're faithful to God in so many parts of your life, but then you see other people having the relationship that you want, and so you decide to compromise in a little area, thinking it's not that big of a deal, because after all, I mean, I've made all these other good choices. I'll give God my life, but just not this part.
And let me tell you, it doesn't stop when you're young, as you grow older, maybe it's in your giving.
It's easy to say, man, God is God of my life, but I'm going to keep a little bit of this for myself.
See, that's the struggle he had. And really, it's a struggle that we all have is to have that title. But I want to. To remind us about what Jesus Christ has called us to do. Y' all remember that guy that was like, hey, Jesus, like, wherever you go, that's where I want to go. He's like, oh, man, that's great. That's exactly what we want to hear. All right, so come on. He said, well, okay, first let me go. Go talk to my mama and go tell my daddy. He's like, nope, you're not fit for the kingdom. They're like, wait, what?
And this one guy was like, listen, I want to follow you wherever you go.
Do you really?
Because you know what that entails, right? Like birds of the air, they have a nest. Like, a place they know they can go to. They know is what is next.
Foxes, they have holes. They have a place to go lie down. They know and are certain you know what's next.
But, like, for me, I don't even know what's next. I don't know where I'm going to go next. Are you? And they're like, okay, I'm out.
Another man came up to him and said, listen, I want to go with you. I want to follow you.
He said, unless you hate your own father and mother, you can have no part in me. And he says this.
Unless you take up your cross, that doesn't mean to them what it means to us. It wasn't a piece of jewelry around a neck. It meant literal death.
But if you're willing to do that, then you can come to me.
So I think we all have to ask. I know I do. Is. Am I saying God is king of my life, but I'm only giving him part of it?
Because if that's the case, God is not king of my life.
One of the most false theologies of a bumper sticker is that one that says, God is my co pilot.
God is co nothing.
He wants you in the backseat, and he wants to take the wheel.
That's what he wants. He wants complete control of your life. Because, like me, you've noticed when you're in the control center, how does life go?
We need him, and we need the spirit to help guide us. He doesn't want part. He wants all.
So Imalek, the husband of Naomi, he died. And so she was left then with two sons, these two Moabite wives they ended up meeting. And the two sons and the Name of one was Orpah. Not Orpah, Oprah, Orpah. And the name of the other was Ruth. They lived there about 10 years, but Mahlon and Chilion died. So Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
This was devastating, yes, on a family level, but it was also devastating on a social level.
During this day, if you had no family, you had no prospects.
People believed of hope.
You were at every disadvantage in the world. There was no Social Security, there was no welfare.
You were dependent solely upon yourself. And then on top of that, your family had no expected responsibility to care for you.
This is her lot. This is her situation.
And so in the middle of this, it says this. And if you are an underliner in your Bibles, I want you to underline these two words.
Then she arose. Underline that she arose might seem like a small detail, but it's not. When you're in a situation like her. It says she arose with her daughters in law to return from the country of Moab.
For she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people.
He had given them food. So she set out from that place where she was with her two daughters in law and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah.
In the middle of a devastating situation, she made a life altering choice that I'm telling you, is not just gonna bless them, but as we get to the end of this series, here's what we're gonna find out.
It's gonna bless us.
And that brings me to this.
When we go through difficult times, we have to have two things. We have to one, have a time to grieve.
But we also have a moment where we eventually have to do something.
It's not just the faith of knowing. Faith is also doing.
It's understanding. All right, sometimes I get to a point where I got to get up.
I got to stop just reading about it, talking about it, believing about it.
And so she arose.
And so Naomi said to the two daughters in law, listen, I want each of you just to go back to your mother's house.
And may the Lord deal kindly with you, just as you've dealt with me. The Lord grant you to find rest each of you in the house of her own husband. She kissed them. It says they wept and they lifted their voices.
She doesn't just make them cry once, by the way, if you keep reading, they cry about her twice. Some of y' all cry about your mother in law's, but that's not for this reason.
But I want you to notice in this text when it says deal kindly.
This is one of the deepest, most powerful words in the Hebrew.
It comes from the word hesed.
She is giving them what God gave David after David had put Uriah on the front lines and after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. The Bible says in Psalms that David had experienced chesed from God. It's covenant love.
So think about what she's telling her daughters in law that have no responsibility to her and vice versa. She says, listen, here's what I want you to do. I want you to experience God's love at the deepest level. Oh, and on top of that, go get remarried.
She just lost her two sons.
And y', all, if I could go back and re preach on Ruth, I would.
Because as I've been going through this this week, I'm like, I kind of missed it.
I framed Naomi wrong. I kind of framed the whole situation wrong. I mean, this is incredible that she says something like this. No wonder they're weeping and crying. And they said to her, no, we are going to go back with you to your people. Naomi said, no, turn back. Why are you going to go with me? She's next saying, you have nothing that you can gain from me and I have nothing to give you.
So, so go. You have so much to enjoy in life. And so they cried and they wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother in law. That was her saying, okay, I'm going to go back.
But then you see Ruth, it says Ruth clung to her.
That does speak to me a little bit about the connection Ruth felt with her.
It wasn't just, hey, I'm in this family because of your son. I think she felt, I'm in this family also because of the way you make me feel.
Isn't that the unique thing about family?
You see it when two people get married, you have two different families. And man, at times there can be some friction in the beginning and throughout.
But over time, you begin to learn to love. And then as you learn to love, which is love beyond comfort, you experience connection in a deep way. We experience that right with the body of Christ.
So many different people with so many different backgrounds, with so many different viewpoints all coming together. And we, when we do, there is times of difficulty, there is times of strength, but at the same time, what brings us together is us choosing love beyond our own comfort.
And so she said, see, like your sister in law, she's gone back and she's gone to her gods. Why don't you Just return after her. And one of the most popular verses in scripture, it says this, do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you.
Where you go, I'm going to go.
And where you lodge, that's where I'm going to lodge. Your people are going to be my people, and your God will be my God. This is way more than just a change of address.
This is a change of a lifestyle.
And everything she's known, she's saying, I'm abandoning the gods that I've followed. I'm leaving what's comfortable to me to go follow you, to experience the same chesed that you talk about. I want to experience that, too. Remember when I told you, compromise will never work.
Love will. And so she loved. She experienced that love. And she's like, I want to be a part of it.
I'm going to abandon everything I've known before and let your gods be my gods.
And so now we get to the step that Ruth took. Naomi arose. Now, what you see Ruth doing is making a decision. I'm telling y', all, you're going to find out at the end of this narrative that doesn't just impact her family, but also impacted us.
The legacy of people's important decisions, not to just sit there in the middle of a difficult time, but to get up and to do something.
She arose, and it helped now Ruth to arise.
But I think about for us, too, don't you think that sometimes we've had kind of like Ruth to make a very difficult decision to walk away from something?
Like, to walk away from the wrong place in order to get to the right one?
So the two of them, they went on and they got to Bethlehem and they came back to Bethlehem. The whole town was stirred because of them.
And the women said, is that Naomi?
That's how I read it. And the reason why I read it like that is because as you dig into the text, one of the things that scholars point out is that their response was like, last time Naomi was here, she didn't look like that.
That lady's been through something.
I mean, she's got some more gray hair. She's got a lot of wrinkles, but yet those wrinkles and that hair tells a story.
Like, is that really her?
And so as people are talking about what she's obviously been through and the stress she's experienced, you know what she says?
She's like, yeah, I am Naomi, but don't call me that. I want you to call me Mara, which means bitter.
Oh, and here's why Because God has dealt very bitterly with me.
Now, how do you think the people around her receive that?
Okay, let's make it a little more personal.
How would you receive that?
Oh, look, it's my friend, so and so God's dealt very bitterly with me.
Okay, what would you do now again to make it even more personal? I want us to think about this for a second. Every single Sunday night at five, we gather together for one of my favorite times, which is our time with our connect group groups.
And when we get together in that time, one of the things that I know that happens in every connect group that is so important, but we might have missed it. Sometimes it's the prayer time and that's when the connect group leader will say something like, alright, is there something that we can pray for for, you know, different people in this room?
And if we're not careful, here's what it'll look like.
Anybody got any prayer requests? Okay, no, let's pray. God, we just pray that you and so there's two things that sometimes we might feel like, can we share something like that? But then on the other side of the coin, we might also think, should we allot time for that?
Here's why I mentioned that is what if tonight, 5 o', clock, your connect group, somebody says, hey, does anybody have anything in here that we can pray for?
And someone pipes up in your connect group and says, well, God has dealt very bitterly with me.
What are you going to do?
The reason why I bring that up, I was thinking about one of my favorite Sunday nights from I guess it's been this past year.
Y' all know, every few weeks we have what are called shepherd prayer nights where our shepherds will go to all the different care connect groups and just say, hey, what can we pray for? And we just want to give you this time and opportunity to share whatever's going on in your life, whatever.
And I don't know if you guys have experienced this like we did that night, but I remember Robert Bobo opened ours and got it started and said, hey, we're about to have a time of prayer together and whatever it is, it doesn't matter. You might think it's insignificant. It's not. You might think it's little. It's not.
Whatever you're dealing with in your family, in your personal life, we want to pray for that right now.
And y', all, it was incredible. We had people moving seats, moving rows. You don't move rows today, right? People were moving rows to go find somebody and put an arm around Them.
So what if somebody in our connect group said that?
Well, what you're going to see is the posture of Ruth is when someone is asking their why, like, where? Tell me where you need me.
Where can I serve?
What about this question?
What if in the middle of connect group, someone pipes up and says, well, I'm really struggling with my faith. Okay, Like a Charlotte, where she said something like this, I'm dealing with conflict and many a doubt.
Someone pipes up and says, I have my doubts.
Can we say where? Like, where do you need me?
What about this one?
We have so much brokenness in our family right now.
Like, I don't even know where to start.
When people go through the why, which they will, and when people go through the why, which right now they do, when we are that where, like, where do you need me? Where can I serve?
It will help point them to the who.
But while we're in the middle of asking our why questions, it's also important for us to understand that we need to bring our whole bring the hurt before him. Because like those moments we have on Sunday nights where we can share what's on our heart, what we've been dealing with, where we've been struggling.
I'm not saying that it's going to eliminate everything that you're going through, but when you bring your why before the who, it does give you a different perspective.
What I'm saying is there's a role for both of us.
The one to have the courage to ask for help, but then the other person to give the atmosphere, the warmth and the wear to receive it.
And then there was this verse and I almost just skipped over it.
But yet then you start to remember that these people came from a time of famine.
And so it says in verse 21, they got to Bethlehem at the very beginning of the harvest because Naomi, in the middle of her grief and her pain, decided to take a step.
And because Ruth saw this woman dealing with her why, but looking to the who, she said, where?
And these two experienced harvest.
I want us to come back to this song because maybe you feel a little bit like Naomi. You're looking for hope.
Maybe you feel like Ruth, that you're wondering what step you need to go and take next. And you think, well, here's my issue.
Like, for me right now to come before God, it would be kind of tough because I'm dealing with this. And this may be when I clean myself up. Maybe when it's a better version of Me 2.0, then I'll come forward. Then I'll ask for help. Then I'll walk to one of the shepherds in the back. I want us to go through this song for just a second.
It says, just as I am, without one plea but that your blood was shed for me.
And so you bid me to come, to come to the. O Lamb of God, I come.
So just as I am and I'm waiting not to rid my soul of one dark blot to thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot. O Lamb of God, I come, Just as I am. I'm tossed about with many a conflict and many a doubt.
There's fightings within and there's fear of being without. O Lamb of God, I come.
And just as I am, you will receive.
You'll welcome me, you'll pardon me, you'll cleanse me and you'll leave.
Because your promise I believe.
O Lamb of God, I come.
Just as I am thy love unknown. You've broken every barrier down now to be thine, yea, thine alone. O Lamb of God, I come.
If you're here today and you know you need to walk away from something, it's not just that you're walking away from something, please understand, as the song beautifully illustrates, it's not you're just walking away from something. You're walking to someone with all your conflict, with all your doubt. Don't dare let Satan convince you that you need to clean yourself up just to come as you are.
But maybe there's some of you right now that you feel like there's this barrier, and part of the reason is the barrier. You've never given your life to Jesus Christ. You've been in the control center that you never made that decision to go into the watery grave to have your sins forgiven, but to have him, the Holy Spirit, at the control center of your life. Don't dare let Satan make you, like the song says, wait.
Don't let him make you think that you got to do it next week, the next day. Whatever it is, come to him right now just as you are.
So whatever need that you're dealing with, if we can pray for you right here, we can pray for you at one of the exits with one of our shepherds. We would love to do so. Whatever you're dealing with, whatever doubt it is, please come while we stand and we sing this song.
