March 27, 2022 • 66 mins
God is with you (even in your dark seasons). In “It Will Come Together,” we’re shown that, no matter what we’re going through, God can bring it together for good.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right, we're not holding hands. I don't know how
we are on the spectrum of being able to, but
can we at least touch the shoulder of the person
on either side of you? That'll work? Baby steps, Baby steps,
baby steps. Pray this out loud. Lord. The person I'm
(00:22):
touching needs you more than I do because they're a mess,
So bless them today in Jesus' name. Come on, give
God praise. How y'all doing? Welcome? Welcome? Just kidding. You're
(00:45):
a mess and you know it too. How many of
you think that you are the least spiritual person on
your row? Raise your hand? How many of y'all think
there's nobody in this room that read the Bible less
than I do this week? Raise your head? All right?
Oh man, such a weird icebreaker for me to say that,
(01:09):
isn't it. I'm just excited to be here. I told
the Lord after we weren't able to have public meetings
that I wouldn't take it for granted when we could
get back together. So if you'll notice, maybe you don't
like this, but I go longer now. I take my time,
(01:32):
and there's multiple reasons for that. One thing. I think
if you're going to spend three hundred and fifty dollars
filling your tank with gas to drive to church. I
ought to at least give you more than a little dabba,
do you? And the other reason for that is that
(01:53):
the Holy Spirit has really been doing a work in
my heart. And the natural overflow of that is I
just find myself less and less thinking of preaching like
a performance. And what I think now more is that
the Lord would make me a vessel. Tell him you'll
(02:13):
call him back that in about three hours when I
finish with this message, tell him you'll call him back
for me. Hey, won't take that long. But now I
think about myself, Lord, make me a vessel for what
you want to give your people. And I love that
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because it's not up to the box how good the
pizza tastes. So if I can just be a box
to get you what God wants you to eat today,
that'll be great. And yes, I just called the Bible
pizza because Jesus said I am the Bread of life,
and he didn't say what kind of bread. So anyway,
(02:57):
y'all remember book It used to get the personal pan
pizza for book It. It's gonna be a personal word
for you today. All right, I'm in a good mood.
That's bad news for the devil. I'm happy and ready
to drink. Hey, real quick check if you would and
(03:17):
see if we're coming to a city near you. Elevation
Nights dot com. It'll be cities such ass but not
limited to, Indianapolis, Chicago, Boston, Newark, Columbus, Grand Rapids. Why
did you say that so loud? Grand Rapids? You're from there,
You're coming over in a couple of weeks. Good, you
(03:38):
got your ticket. It's not free. You can't just show up.
It's not like just regular church night because the arena's
not free, so we got to pay for it. So
but you'll be there all right. Great, and you're here
today from Michigan, God bless you Michigan. All right, that's
gonna be that's going to be awesome. I loved it
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so much last year. I really needed it after ministering
in an empty room for so long through COVID, to
get out and see the way that people have been
impacted by our church and see it firsthand. I needed it.
I felt like it. I was like something just came
alive inside of me, like it needed to be watered
(04:23):
and after we came back, I was just fired up
and full of life. So that's why I'm going back
selfishly just to do ministry because I get more out
of it than I could ever give. And I wish
you could all come, but anyway, you get to come
every week. So what are you worried about? And I
wish we could have this conversation just one on one
(04:44):
from the Word of God today. That would be ideal
because I could walk you through it a little different.
But we'll have to do the best we can with
just all of us. And I want to take you
to the Book of Ruth, chapter four, verse nine through seventeen.
(05:06):
I want to say what's up to Taylor Shidel at
Elevation Columbia. He texted me before I got up that
he was praying for me while I was preaching, And
that's why I'm shouting him out. I'm reciprocating. I appreciate
your prayers too, as I preached today that I would
be effective, that I would be effective for who God
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wants me to reach. Never preached a sermon from Ruth before.
Hollywalked by the other day and saw my Bible open
to Ruth. She said Ooh, Ruth. And my reluctance to
preach on Ruth isn't just because it's a book about
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a woman. I'm not a sexist. I think it's one
of those stories that just to give you a sliver
or one scene of the story, like it doesn't do
justice to the beauty of the whole thing. But still
God directed me here and just sucked me in. And
(06:09):
so I'm going to do my best today just from
not trying to be cute. But I just want to
show you one truth from the book of Ruth. I guess,
but let's look at this together. Ruth Chapter four, verse nine.
Then Boaz announced to the elders and all the people today,
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you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all
the property of Alimelech, Killion and Maylon. I have also
acquired Ruth the Moabi Meylon's widow as my wife, in
order to maintain the name of the dead with his property,
so that his name will not disappear from among his
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family or from his hometown. Today, you are witnesses verse eleven.
Then the elders and all the people at the gate said,
we are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who
is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who
together built up the family of Israel. May you have
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standing in Ephratha and be famous in Bethlehem through the
offspring the Lord gives you by this young woman. May
your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore
to Judah. That's a blessing right there. That's a blessing
right here. Tell somebody next to you, I'm stepping into
a blessing. I'm stepping into a blessing. I'm stepping in.
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Tell them give me some room because I'm stepping into
a blessing. I need six feet because I'm stepping all right,
all right, But that's not the word. That's not the
word today, because we need to read the next verses.
So Boas took Ruth, and she became his wife. When
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he made love to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive,
and she gave birth to a son. The women said
to Naomi, Praise be to the Lord, who this day
has not left you without a guardian redeemer. May he
become famous throughout Israel. He will renew your life and
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sustain you in your old age. For your daughter in law,
who loves you, and who is better to you than
seven sons has given him birth. Then Naomi took the
child in her arms and cared for him. The women
living there said, Naomi has a son. Naomi has a son.
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You're never gonna believe it. But she who was gone
for over ten years because of the famine and came
back bitter, is holding a son. And they named him Obed.
And who's the father of Jesse see the father of David.
And this is what the Lord told me to tell
you today as our message, it will come together. Who
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felt that when I said it? It might be online?
Put it in the chat, put it in the comments
right now. Or tell your six foot three neighbor it
will come together. Tell your five foot four whoever's standing
next to you. I'm trying to say, just make the declaration.
It will come together. In Jesus' name. You may be seated.
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It will come together. Kind of one of those cliches
that I don't like when people say stuff like that
to me, it'll come together. I'll be stressed about a
sermon and Hollio say it'll come together. I'll be like, yeah,
that sounds good. I mean, that's that's that's just a
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millimeter better than when life gives you lemons or lemon Yeah,
how does it go? Make lemonade? Cliches? Cliches? And yet
I don't mean it in that trite way because it
could sound like that, I know you lost your job.
It'll come together. Could you tell the power company that
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for me? Oh, I know you're single. Their friends are married.
Don't worry. The Lord has a bow as for you.
I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it.
I'm not gonna do I'm not gonna do it. I'm
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not gonna do it. She wants me to do it,
I'm not gonna do it. There's an old thing online
that says, while you're waiting for your bow, ass, don't
settle for brogue as poor as all that. I'm not
gonna do it. Temptresses. It's the whole thing. It's a
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whole thing. In Christianity, the Book of Ruth is usually
identified by chapter one, verse sixteen, and it's always into
King James at a wedding. This is the famous verse
of Ruth. All right, you're gonna know it. When I
say it, You're like, huh, what's it about? You'll know
when you see it. Put it on screen. This the
King James, where it says whither thou goest I will go?
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You got to get the wether in there for the
marriage vows. Then that sounded like a wedding. Whither thou goest?
You never said whither in your life. But now you're
about to commit your whole self to somebody, and you
breaking out words you never use, whether thou goest I
will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge? People
shall be my people, By God, my God, I'm not
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making fun of that verse. That verse in itself is
a sermon in itself. It is a sermon in itself.
That one verse shows you that when you decide who,
you decide where, when you decide, Now, this is not
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how we think we think I need to decide where
I'm going to college. No, no, no, that's not as
important as who you hang out with when you get
to college, wherever you go to college, right. I teach
that all the time, that because who will ultimately identify
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not only where you end up physically, Like Holly wouldn't
be in Charlotte if she had married me, because she
wouldn't have been a pastor's wife, or if she had
maybe the guy JJ she was talking to, he ends
up somewhere else. And when when you say yes to someone,
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you say yes to something that you don't know about
at the time. I'm the same with God. When you
say yes to God, He'll take you places that you
never thought you would go when you say yes to Him.
Who you say yes to who you say no to
is very important, really important. Tell somebody it will come together. Now.
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I want you to get that in your mind so
we can get it passed your mind into your spirit
so that you hear it differently. When I finish in
a few minutes, then you hear it right now. Because
we are all standing in a space in our life
where we are needing clarity on some things. And maybe
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you're not in the same situation as Naomi and Ruth,
both of them being widows, were completely dependent on the
kindness of someone else. And maybe it's not that bad
in your life. Ruth not only lost her husband when
she lost her Maelon, but Naomi lost her son. Naomi
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had already lost her husband, a Limelech, and they were
already in a strange place. Now I want to talk
to you about this, because when you read a Bible
verse in isolation, it's almost impossible to really make sense
out of it. And I want you to have that
app on your phone where they give you the verse
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every day. But I don't want you to always read
the scriptures in isolation, because if you just take it
in isolation, sometimes we don't even read the whole verson
we quote it, and then we think that it didn't work.
It's not that Romans eight twenty eight isn't true. All
things work together for the good. You just stopped in
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the middle of the verse. Is said all things work
together for the good of them that love God and
are called according to His purpose. Means that God doesn't
decide what is good in your life based on your preference,
but his purpose. So then you go through something and
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this isn't good. This isn't good. How can this be good?
God isn't God is good, and this isn't good. What's
going on? I thought it was all good? God didn't
say that. In the Bible. God didn't say that. He
said all things work together for the good of those
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who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose.
So his purpose comes first, not my preference, go ready.
His purpose comes first, not my plan. What happens to
us is we get addicted to a plan, and if
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it doesn't fit the plan, we want to throw it
back to God and say fix this. But God doesn't
start with the picture called your plan when he is
building the pieces of your life. He's God. He's God.
And the truth of the matter is, you can't really
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judge your life in isolation. You can't really know when
you're going through something, whether it's good or not. Don't
judge it just yet. One scripture says, judge nothing before
the appointed time. Judge nothing before the appointed time, when
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God will reveal hidden things and bring them to life,
and the secret things will be laid bare. Judge nothing,
no thing. All things work together for the good of
them that love the Lord. Now, if you love something
else more than you love the Lord Romans eight twenty eight,
is going to be hard for you, because if you
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love popularity more than you love God, when people leave you,
you will think that's not good. But if you love
the Lord's purpose more than you love popularity, sometimes you
will praise God not for who stays with you, but
for who leaves you. Because you believe that the Lord
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is leading my life. Wow, wow, Wow, it will come together.
We make the mistake of thinking that everyone who starts
with us will stay with us, and it doesn't happen
that way. This is not a sermon about abandonment or divorce,
but I do want to talk about those issues because well,
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in the Book of Ruth, you have this woman named
Naomi who goes to a place called Moab where there
is something to eat for her family, and through no
fault of her own, she watches her husband and her
sons ten years later die in front of her eyes.
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Her two daughters in law are committed to stay with her,
Ruth and Orpah. And there's a reason that this is
not called the Book of Orpa because she left. There
is a reason that I said turn in your bible
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to the Book of Ruth, because Ruth stay. Put this
in your heart. Whoever left you in your life, whoever
walked away from you in your life, was not part
of God's purpose for your current season. It doesn't mean
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they're bad, it doesn't mean they're evil. It doesn't mean
you need to make a voodoo dollins stick a pin
in they're left ear trying to get them to have
an earache. It doesn't mean anything. I don't mean you
need to talk crap about them. It doesn't mean that
you have to want them to fail. It doesn't mean
you have to go out and buy new car to
show him you made it and drive by their house
and they're not even home. It doesn't mean any of that.
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It just means, can I preach. God doesn't build my
life on people who left. So one thing I'm learning
to appreciate at the stage of my life is the
providence of God. The providence of God. The providence of God.
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The plans of man and the providence of God are
two totally different things. The man directs his steps in
his mind, God orders his steps in real life. And
so maybe I'm preaching to somebody today who is like Naomi.
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You know, when we walked into Ruth chapter four, it
looked like everything was going good, and on the surface,
it sounds like this is a moment to be happy,
and it is. It is if you look at it
in isolation. But understanding what led up to this moment,
I think gives me a greater appreciation for who God
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is and what he is able to do. Let's look
at it a little deeper, because even the Book of
Ruth is an interesting book. You have Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges,
and then Ruth first Samuel, second Samuel, first King's second Kings.
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What's Ruth doing between all those big books? Why is
there a book in the Bible about one woman from Moab?
Moab is not Bethlehem. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not Moab.
Moab was not even seen. I could do this real quick.
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Moab was like you went to school in Chapel Hill
and you are cheering in four coach. K You see
what I've said, That level of hatred right there. You
felt it coming through the room. And this is a
local illustration. Okay, I could use another one somewhere else.
What is a woman from Moab doing between the five
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covenants in the Bible? Write down the word covenant in
your notes, please. Covenant is a concept we would do
well to understand in our current contemporary society. We don't
understand it at all. We don't understand commitment at all.
We just understand convenience. Even when we say marriage vows,
we don't really mean half of what we're saying. We're saying,
as long as you make me happy, I'll be with you,
And we don't really mean what we're saying. And I'm
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not saying that to shame anybody. I'm just saying sometimes
we would do well to understand these verses in their context.
Because God made a covenant with Noah. He said, I
never fled the earth again. That's the first covenant. There
are five covenants. The Bible is structured around five covenants. Covenant,
I will never flood the earth again. It means there's
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going to be a limit on human evil. The Abrahamic Covenant,
which God said, I'm gonna make a nation out of you.
Count the stars if you can, count the sand if
you can, and Abraham goes one, two, three, four, five
to seven, eight nine. This is going to take a
long time, God, And God said, exactly, it's going to
take a long time for me to show you what
I'm going to do through you, and your descendants will
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be as numerous as the sand on the sea shore,
if you can believe it and receive it, even though
you are past child bearing years. I am gonna bring
forth a life out of your wife's dead wound. That
will bless the whole world, and I will bless you
and you will be a blessing. That's the Abrahamic Covenant.
Then you've got the Davidic Covenant, which God made with David,
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the second King israel head. You remember Saul, the one
that the people wanted, and then David, and he's like,
this is my guy right here, He's after my heart
and he said, I'm going to establish a throne from you.
Now you forgot about the Mosaic Covenant where God had
to bring his people out of Egypt, and then the
New Covenant. How many thank God for the blood of
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Jesus that lets me know that I can't keep the law,
and what the law was powerless to do in that
it was weakened by my flesh. God did by sending
his son Jesus, the son of David, to be a
sin offering in my place, and upon Jesus was placed
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all of my transgression and all of my shame. So
whatever shame I carried into church today as a child
of the New Covenant, I carried it illegally because Jesus
took it. And whatever he took he intends to keep
and deal with. So I've got to give it back
to him over and over and over. Because God has
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already made up his mind about me. He already made
up his mind about me. He's not looking to see
if I get it right or if I get it wrong.
He made a purpose for my life, and it will
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come together. Say it, it will come together. I feel
like preaching this like this cod Orange revival. But you
won't help me touch three people. Tell them it will
come together. It will, it will. I know it's taken
a while. I know it's been on layaway and delay,
and there's a shipping thing, and I know they can't
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get it to you like they were supposed to. And
I know your three years past the due date of
when you expected God to do it. But if Naomi
encourages me about one thing, it's that after she lost
everything she held, dear God still had something for I'm
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glad about it. I love that verse that they said
in the blessing. They said in verse eleven, Ruth four eleven,
this is the one that got me. We are witnesses.
May the Lord make the woman who is coming into
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your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up
the family of Israel, that sounds so nice. Rachel and Leah,
who together teamwork makes the dream work. They together built
up the House of Israel. And I remember they're saying
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this hundreds of years after it happened. They're saying this
after they have the benefit of seeing the blessing fully matured.
They are saying this like a parent who is ninety's
one years old and all their kids have kids now,
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and they have lived long enough to know, don't stress
about that. It's all right. Please, please don't worry yourself
that much about that. It's all right. See, we don't
get to live through that lens. We don't get to
live through the lens of knowing that Rachel and Leah
built up the House of Israel together. We don't get
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to live through the lens of Naomi knowing I'm gonna
hold a baby named Obed in my arms, even though
I'm gonna cry for years about my husband, only to
lose my sons. Because see, we don't taste life as
a meal. We experience the ingredients in isolation. In God's mind,
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your life is a meal. In God's life, your God's mind,
your life is Thanksgiving Day. What the y'all el on Thanksgiving.
I might come over put it in the chat. What
y'all got at Thanksgiving? Is? What do you like at Thanksgiving?
What do you have at Thanksgiving? Mac and cheese? I
might come? Can somebody do better than that? Mac and
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cheese and sweet potatoes? Now? Like sweet potatoes or a
sweet potato thing with marshmallows in it? Yeah? Because I
really just had the sweet potatoes are the middleman for me.
I just want the marshmallows on top of the sweet potatoes, honestly.
So yeah, that's good. That's good. I might come. What else?
What do y'all have at Thanksgiving? See? I don't know.
I'm making everybody hungry. I'm losing my audience. This is
really bad public speaking. What am I doing? You? You
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gotta understand the moment that Naomi is in her life
right now is a blessing. But it's a mixed blessing.
It's a mixed blessing. I noticed the room got happy
when I said you're stepping into a blessing. It's like, yes,
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I forgot to tell you it's a mixed blessing. I
forgot to tell you it is a mixed blessing. So
that means you need to prepare for the blessing as
it is actually going to be, or you might miss
the blessing because it's going to be mixed when you
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get it. In fact, Naomi was in so much pain
there in Moab where she went to escape from Bethlehem,
where there was a famine. It seems like she did
all right when she lost her husband, but when she
lost her sons two, she said, don't call me Naomi anymore.
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Call me Mara. Because Naomi has the connotation of pleasant,
Mara means bitter. And after what she's been through, can
you blame her? When somebody has been through something like this,
you don't tell them it'll come together. What will come together?
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How can you replace those boys? Even if God gave
me twenty more, it wouldn't replace them. That's how it
is sometimes in your life. Don't try to tell me
it's gonna get better. Call me bitter. When that kind
of bitterness hits your heart, you don't even want to
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hear about better from anybody, not from preachers, not from teachers,
not from pinterest. Don't tell me all things work together
for the good of those that love God, because when
you taste the ingredient in isolation. It would be lying
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to say that's delicious. It would be lying. I was
talking to a god in I think I think he
was in London. Yeah, he was in London. He said
he had to lay off forty of his two hundred employees.
He said, but you know what, it's a good thing.
I said, I understand what you're saying. But for them,
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I hope you didn't tell them that. He said, no,
I'm not telling them that. I'm just telling you that.
I said, well, make sure you don't tell them you
feel that way, because they probably don't see it like
that right now from your perspective. He said, you got
a good point. You got a good point, and it
is a good point when you are tasting it. Have
you ever walked in the kitchen and just use an example,
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I'm not a cook. Take a scoop of baking powder
and just down it. Did you ever do it? So?
Baking powder is bad? Anybody want a big heep in
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pile a baking powder for lunch today? Raise your hand?
Why are you messing up my illustration? Bro? Now this
is the message. You want the whole message in a moment.
This is a whole message. Is a whole message. This
is why you came from Michigan so God could tell you,
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this is why you tuned in online. Just because it
tastes bad in isolation doesn't mean it won't serve a
purpose in the finished product. I'm not saying that the
Bible said that after Naomi had gone so low that
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she said, this doesn't taste good. This doesn't taste good.
And honestly, I figured out why people in church often
look so sour when they're in church, because what you
went through this week didn't taste good, and you are
trying to praise God with a taste in your mouth
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of disappointment and fear? Am I preaching? Yet? I mean
it's hard to say Hallelujah when your mouth taste like hurt.
WHOA call me bitter? You might as well? You might
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as well. You might as well and taste good. And
yet what a strange blessing that they gave. Let me
give you a little bit more background so I can
make sure I'm not confusing. Graham's Graham's my guy. You know.
He told me the other day he was like, Dad,
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sometimes you got to slow down with these scriptures. You've
been looking at them all week and we're just waking up.
You got to slow down and break it down. So
even though I can't do it justice, the Book of
Ruth is beautiful and you could read it in the
time that you could watch half an episode of Ozark.
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And when we moved through it, we see Naomi a
Limelech Killion and Maelon Meylan's Ruth's husband orpa is married
to Killion, And both of those baby names are available,
by the way, if you want to have an original
name for your kid. But when they went to Moab,
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they went to a place that they didn't This is
important planned to go. This message is for somebody who
is in a place you didn't plan to go. And
I'm gonna take it further. Sometimes it's a place you
hate being there because they're from Bethlehem and they're in Moab.
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Kind of like when they went to Egypt. I mentioned
it earlier, when the Israelites went to Egypt. They didn't
go to Egypt because it was their dream to go
to Egypt. It wasn't on their bucket list to go
to Egypt. They went to Egypt to survive. And we've
talked about that a lot because I think a lot
of the sin cycles we get sucked into in our
life are out of survival mechanisms, and if we don't
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deal with it that way, we just put so much
shame on it. We can't help anybody get healed because
people won't come to Jesus because you don't understand the
power of his covenant with you. You think Jesus is
like other people and that there come a point where
he'll be ashamed of you, and he'll go, oh, well,
that's too far there. I was going to use you,
But really you did that. You don't understand the power
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of a covenant. But Ruth did because when Naomi said,
leave me, I've lost my husband's I've lost my boys.
I've heard there's bred in Bethlehem. We've been here ten years.
Naomi said, I'm not leaving. Make a covenant with you.
Whither thou goest I go. Your God become my god,
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and your God will often become the same god as
your friends. If you are around people who worship status
and stuff, it won't be long till you'll shear shackle
to the same things they are. But now to touch
somebody next to you and say you ought to hang
out with me a little while. You hang out with me,
(35:31):
You're gonna have strong faith. You hang out with me.
Come on, death leopard if you hang out with me.
So they go back together, and Naomi, in this this
honest moment, she says, call me bitter. I still got
the taste in my mouth. I'm going back to Bethlehem,
(35:53):
which means house of bread, which makes it that much
more depressing when there's a famine in Bethlehem, when there's
a famine in the place that is named after bread,
when the joy of the Lord is supposed to be
your strength, and you are a Christian and you're depressed,
and you are a Christian and you can't sleep, and
(36:15):
you are a Christian and you have addictions, and you
are a I am a C I am ah, I
am a c h R I S T I aad.
But I got a A D D A d hd
hey d D I C t I. Oh, I'm in
the house of bread, but a hawk grief. Call me Mara,
she said, real said, I was with you when I
(36:47):
wanted your son. Now you don't have a son to
give me, but I'm still with you. I wonder who
the Lord is saying that to you. I'm still with you.
I don't sell low and by high. God is not
Warren Buffett. God doesn't trade like that. God said, I'm
(37:12):
still with you because I made a covenant with you.
It's not the kind of covenant I made with Noah
that was limited. It's not the kind of covenant I
made with Abraham that was limited. It's not the covenant
I made with Moses that was limited. It's not the
covenant I made with David that was limited. This is
the covenant of my blood, made with the life of
(37:33):
my son. And I am worth you in your bitterness,
in your brokenness. God said, I'm with you, but I'm bitter.
(37:55):
But I'm with you, and I love the Lord because
he wrote the Bible, and he knew that the woman
who said I'm bitter and it's over in chapter one
would be holding a baby in chapter four. So he
(38:16):
gave her someone named Ruth the Moabide. He gave her
a Moabike, not somebody from Bethlehem, somebody from a place
that she never wanted to be. Remember, it's God's kitchen.
(38:40):
So if you walk around God's kitchen tasting stuff, I
don't like that. I don't like that you know how
you are some of y'all our faith footies you walk around. Hmmm, No,
(39:04):
I don't like that. See now, listen, you get to
tell God certain things that you want him to do. God,
I want you to grow me, mature me, bless me.
You can say all that to God is good. You
don't get to tell him how to do it. I'll
go step further. You get to tell God what you want.
(39:24):
You know. That's the first thing Jesus asked in the
New Testament. He turned around and people followed me. He said,
what do you want? Let's just get right to it,
cut to the chase, cut through all the niceties. I
don't need us a little equick. What do you want?
And so we want to see where you're staying. See,
you got to follow me to know me. And that
(39:47):
means that if you judge stuff while it's happening, you'll
call yourself by what you've been through. Are you with me?
I was in the kitchen the other day and Holly
was making breakfast, and I was trying to be helpful,
(40:10):
but I can't cook, but I wanted to help out
and she had just finished the sausage. So I was
taking the pan to pour out the grease from the sausage.
And I can tell who cooks in the room by
your reaction, because she said two things to me that
I'm going to preach to you. She said, leave the grease.
(40:34):
I'm about to use it. That's the first thing she said.
I'm out of the book of Ruth. I'm in. Second, Holly,
she said, leave the grease. She said, because I'm about
to make your eggs. And when I make your eggs,
(40:55):
I'm going to take these eggs and I'm gonna all
things work together. Now, the grease on its own is
not something that you want to eat. But if you'll
let me leave the right amount of grease for this recipe,
(41:17):
that I know, see, because if I make your eggs
without grease. She looked at me and said. The second thing,
she said, you need to get out of my kitchen.
And I hear God saying to somebody who's been telling
him what he can't do, what he shouldn't do. I
(41:38):
heard the voice of the Lord. I was praying about it,
and God said, hit your neighbors, say get out of
God's kitchen. Get out of God's kitchen. Get out of
God's kitchen. Stop asking God to bring people back who
were supposed to go. Get out the kitchen, stop at
(42:00):
to God to take thorns away that he left. So
you've been knowing, get out of the kitchen, Get out
of my kitchen. Let me mix this, because when I
get done mixing these eggs with this grease, when I
get finished mixing your pain with my charge, when I
(42:23):
get finished mixing your kit with your offer, get out
of my kitchen. What in my weakness? He is strong.
That's grease. That's grease. That weakness is grease. Stop trying
to get rid of it and let God mix it.
(42:54):
So I put something in a song two years ago.
It's gonna come out in the radio a couple of weeks,
and you might hear, well, not some of y'all, because
y'll want to listen to the Christian station. But it's
the rest of the song and it says, if it's
not good, then he's not done. Let me break it
(43:15):
all the way down. He hasn't mixed it yet. And
you keep walking over to the grease, going, mmm, God
can't cook judge no thing before the appointed time? Why
(43:36):
because all things work together? Did he say everything was good?
Or did he say that when Ruth meets Boass. When
the thing, because this is what had to happen for Ruth,
she goes back to Bethlehem. She's gleaning in a field.
A man sees her named Boass. This is not a
(44:00):
singles conference. Do not get a are you my bow
Ass t shirt made after this message. That's honestly quite
off putting, it really is. It attracts the crazy guys.
All right, don't wear that shirt be my bow ass.
Don't do it. I'm telling you, don't do it. It's
a bad idea. But he sees her while she's gleaning. Now,
(44:25):
you had to leave a certain portion of your feel
by biblical law for the foreigners and for the orphans,
of which Ruth was both. And because she made a
commitment to Naomi, she met a man named bos It's
called a kinsman redeemer, a kinsman redeemer, which ultimately, of
(44:47):
course points to Jesus. But in this situation it is
a real legal obligation because he is a relative of Naomi,
which makes him here's a word we don't hear much
today in today's society, responsible responsible to redeem this widow
(45:09):
named Naomi, who is this relative and along with her
comes Ruth and that is what helped me to understand
why they said, may the Lord make her like Rachel
and Leah, because that goes all the way back to Jacob.
Remember the covenant God made with Abraham, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David.
(45:29):
You you're in good company and you got a better
covenant because all theirs had conditions to it. All you
got to do is believe and receive and then obey
to be blessed. But you don't have to obey to
be his child. Amazing. I mean, you think Boaz is
(45:50):
something you have any idea what kind of acceptance and
resource you have in Christ? It is a picture right
why they said they give a blessing and this is
obviously something that they've said in this situation before. As
Boaz goes to redeem, take Ruthus his wife, take Naomi
(46:12):
in to purchase Alimelex's land, to care for the family
so that his name will not be blotted out. All
the stuff that I really don't have time to break
down for you, but maybe it'll wet your appetite to
read it this week, and that'd be awesome. All that
stuff leads up to this moment where they say, may
the Lord make this woman like Leah and Rachel. Now,
(46:36):
Leah and Rachel are not not exactly teammates, even though
they're sisters, because right here it makes it sound like
they just they just agree. Put the verse back up,
because this was really the verse that drew me to
the message. Can I go a little bit longer today?
(46:58):
I really want to, But I promise you I can
dismiss you right now. And we already heard a word
from God, but I would like to give you this
before we leave. Okay, all right, all right, May the
Lord make you like Rachel and Leah Ruth. Now the
(47:20):
reason that was strange to me was one when Jacob
was running talk about mixed blessings. He tricked his father
into blessing him, but then he had to run from
his brother. Is it really a blessing if you have
to run from it? Talk about mixed blessings. God called
him Israel, which means prince are prevalent with God, but
(47:43):
his name was Jacob, which meant deceiver. Don't we all
know what that feels like to wrestle with both sides
of ourselves? And he came out of the woomb wrestling.
Then when he gets to his uncle Laban's house. He
wants to marry this daughter named Rachel, and Rachel this
is not in the Hebrew. But she's hot, and then
(48:04):
her sister Leah is not hot. And the Bible says
that Laban tricked Jacob because it all catches up with
you eventually. The way you get blessed is the way
you have to stay blessed. So if you get stuff
by manipulating, don't be surprised when you're stressed out about
(48:26):
keeping it. But if you get it from God, it'll
be a whole different thing. Yet, yet these are the
two names that were mentioned in the blessing. So what's
what Laban did? He said, Okay, work for me seven years,
I'll give you Rachel. Jacob worked seven years on his
wedding night. He wakes up the next morning, and the
Bible says, something so crazy, there was Leah. Oh Lord,
(48:56):
just for a side Bible study, did you ever think
it was Rachel? But it turned out Leah. I'm not
talking about women, I'm talking about opportunities. Did you ever
wake up next to Leah went to bed with Rachel?
You thought that was such a good idea, such a
good investment. We've all had those moments. We have all
had those moments. Anyway, Laban said, oh no, no, no, no, no,
(49:26):
no no. The way it works here in our custom,
if you want Rachel, you've got to first marry her
older sister Leah. So if you give me seven more years,
you can have Rachel, but you still got to keep Leah.
And Jacob is like, oh God, And that's how I
(49:48):
know that Rachel was indeed attractive, because he did another
seven years for him. So she is not average by
my reason deductions or whatever like that. But she was beautiful.
But watch this. She was barren. She couldn't have kids.
(50:11):
Leah on the other hand, Leah the one that the
Bible said had weak eyes. I don't even know what
that means, y'all, but that doesn't sound good. The picture
that comes in my mind is not attractive. And but
she she wasn't attractive. Watch this, but she was productive.
(50:37):
She started having babies so quick. Boom Reuben boom, Simeon boom,
Levi boom. Judah is four to nothing. Rachel is not
even on the board. And Rachel's like, I gotta do
something about this. I heard what my grandma did Jacob,
(50:59):
you need to sleep with my maid servant, bill Ha.
So she gives bill Haw to Jacob to seem jacob'slake. Okay,
and so they got two more babies by the servant.
Now Leah, all of a sudden hits a period she
can't produce. Here's her servant, Zilpah. Now we're up to
eight kids. Here comes a daughter, here comes it's a car,
baby after baby after baby. And finally Rachel has Joseph.
(51:21):
And while she's dying, she has Benjamin. Why Stephen Ferdick,
did you slow down to tell us all of that?
Because it helped me to understand that number one, Every
Rachel comes with a Leah. Take it out of the
(51:44):
realm of people for a moment. Rachel was what Jacob
loved and what he wanted. What do you want? What
do you love? Everything you love is going to come
with something that you don't let that sink in You
got it everything you love? God? I want success cool.
(52:11):
It comes with stress, sleeplessness, and sacrifice. And just the
other day my family rekindled the campaign for a dog.
I thought we were through it. I thought I stood
my ground. Y'all think I'm lying The pressure they're putting
(52:35):
on me about this dog. It's been years. How many
of y'all have been in elevation long enough you've watched
this whole thing go down. Graham made the song about Look,
I brought something on my garage on my way out
of the garage. I don't even know why I left
this up. Graham made this sign years ago. So every
time I leave my garage, I gotta look at this
(52:56):
sign that says I want I've been looking at that
on my door for years now and standing strong too.
I't even remember this. At the same time, Abby made
one too. You can't really see it. That didn't even
(53:20):
spelled ride in his heartbreaking I wish you could see it.
Can y'all make it where you see it? No? Huh?
It says I w a g O D d og,
she wants God, she wants a dog, she wants everything.
And what happened? What happened? I watched this. I promise you.
I've got a point to this because they caught me
(53:43):
the other night. Elijah was out and I was all alone,
and it was three on one, and they took the opportunity.
Graham said, I'm a good kid, I'm a good kid.
I've never wanted anything but a dog to get here.
And if I died, If I died, you would spend
(54:10):
the rest of your life thinking why did not get
the boy a doll? I said, I know you want
to talk. You don't want what comes with it. Abby said,
(54:31):
but Dad, but Dad, but Dad, and you love us,
You love us. I know you give it to us
because you love us. You give us everything that we want.
(54:54):
I looked at Holly. I looked at Holly. I look
gave her a look too, I'll give didn't I? I
gave her a look. She said, what is that look?
I said, this is the look of me imagining the
reality because they don't. Graham said, it's different. I said,
you can't even clean your room, Graham, he said, he said,
that's different. My socks are not living things, which if
(55:19):
you check them fu fungal composition on those socks, you
might be wrong about that. But he said, he said
that the dog is a living thing, and there's no
way I would let a living thing suffer. You know,
I'll take care of a living thing. Dad. I'm a
good kid. And I said, but what about what comes
(55:41):
out of the living thing? But this is the point,
do you want what comes with it? Yeah? No, what
comes with it? And this is a good question to ask.
If you knew Leah came with it, would you still
want Rachel? If you knew that the bitterness came with Naomi?
(56:09):
Would you still want to be a part of a
Limelex family? Would you still want it if you knew
what came with it? So guess what. Nobody knows this,
But I'm getting your dog. I'm gonna do it. I'm
(56:31):
gonna do it. I know you're suspicious. Hey, hey, hey, hey,
this is not a trick. This is not a game.
Because they've been here many times before. I say I'm
gonna get your dog, and they'll say really, and I'll say, yeah,
you're a mustard relish. Catch up. I got jokes. I'm
(56:54):
gonna get the dog because of something that he said
that changed how I felt. He said, all right, I'm
willing to say it'll be my job. So now you
get a dog. You get a dog, and you get
(57:16):
a dog, but it's not my dog, and it's not
your dog. It's their dogs. Their stuff is your everybody.
Stretch your hand towards my family and say it's y'all's
dog toward these three right here, shad wrack me shaq,
I bet a go. It's yall's dog. Sit out. But
(57:43):
now we're gonna find out, Saints of God, do they
want what comes with it? Because I will give it
away a week from when we get it. If they doll,
I'm not cleaning up nothing, because we are about to
find out. Remember, Boas redeemed this family after another close
(58:06):
relative had the opportunity to but the other relative didn't
want it because it came with a mob bite. Boas said,
not only do I want the land, I'll take what
comes with it. And I got to show you this.
It's beautiful that while Leah and Rachel were having all
those babies really to compete with each other, really to
(58:29):
compete with each other. From their perspective, they were trying
to get Jacob to love them. But from God's perspective,
it was all coming together to make a nation. So
I need you to know, the dog comes with walking,
(58:52):
the patience comes with pain. It will come together. It'll
be a mixed blessing. It'll be Leah and Rachel, it
will be Naomi and Boas, it will be both. Because
I'm telling you this in case you are holding a
(59:13):
blessing but you don't recognize it. That baby's name was Obed.
His son's name was Jesse. His son's name was David.
David was the king through which came forth to somebody
that we're awfully fond of, name Jesus. But if you
(59:33):
go all the way back, it came from ten generations,
after ten years in Moab, from a man named Perez,
who came from a man named Judah, and who was
the mom of Judah. Leah, Leah, the one Jacob didn't
(59:54):
even what. You have no idea what you're holding. And
if you taste it in isolation, it might just be pain.
If you taste it in isolation, it might just be failure.
(01:00:16):
But let God mix it. Let God mix it. You
don't know who you're gonna meet next year. You don't
know what you're gonna learn. You don't know what God
might be protecting you from by getting you out of there.
Get out of the kitchen. You're a terrible cook. Get
(01:00:38):
out of the kitchen. That grease is there for a reason.
Get out of the kitchen. Leah is the one who
gave Jacob the baby that produced the king, that produced
your savior. So I want you to say this in
(01:01:03):
your heart. God. I mean I meant, I meant say
it out loud. I said it the opposite way. Say
this out loud. God. I want your will and I
want what comes with it, Because I'm gonna tell you
(01:01:32):
what comes with it. If you go through a trial,
you'll get grace with it. God will give you the
grace to stand up under. How many of you went
through something so dark you couldn't even explain how you
got through. But there was a grace. There was a grace,
wasn't there? And somebody would have told you could live
through that. You said, call me bitter, I can't make it.
It's over. You would have said that, But watch this.
(01:01:54):
When she was holding the baby, it wasn't Marra holding
the baby. That's the name she gave her, It said Naomi.
God still knew her, Nay. As we close today, I
want you to stand on every auditorium and in every
living room, if you're in a hospital room with somebody,
(01:02:17):
and you're standing next to somebody whose life has become
very bitter, if you're standing in need right now of
something that only God can give, or you're in a
desperate place called Moab, where you never thought that you
would be. This prayer is for you to just lift
your hands like this to God. Just like this to God.
Just like this to God, Just like this to God.
(01:02:40):
Naomi said, I went out full and I went down
the Moab and I went because I had to go,
and I lost when I can't replace. So I went
out full and I came back empty. And that would
(01:03:03):
be a summary of how some of us feel today. God,
But we want to see that reversed in our life,
that we would say I came in empty, but I'm
going out full believing that while Rachel and Leah were
fighting themselves, disliking themselves and proving things to one another,
(01:03:27):
that you were building a nation. Now, if that was
true for their blessing, if that was true for Ruth
and Naomi, maybe it's true for me too. For every
blessing there's a burden. It'll come together, but our focus
(01:03:49):
has chosen. So right now, Jesus in your name, I'm
asking you that you would put a baby in Naomi's
arms today, take the bitterness or the pain away, but
it'll give us something to look forward to. I'm sorry, y'all,
(01:04:09):
but I gotta obey the Lord. He said, you're holding
O bed O bed never would have been here without Moab.
Thank you what you're holding, what you're walking in, It
will come saying together, it will come together, Say that
(01:04:32):
it will come together. You gotta trust God in this part.
You gotta trust God in this moment, knowing it will
come together. Almighty God, Jehovah, Shah Loong, Prince of Peace,
Jehovah Rathha, our healer, Jehovah. And see our banner and victory,
(01:04:58):
Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, change
our name today. We came in holding bitterness, but we
believe that the baby held in Naomi's arms is representative
of the purpose that we are holding. And God, if
I preached it for one person today, then that's cool
(01:05:22):
with me, because if they get this, great things are
coming forth from their life that eyes have not seen
and ears have not heard, and it hasn't even entered
into their heart. But you know it and you spoke it,
and you can do it. It'll come together. If you
don't give up, it'll come together. If you don't mess
it up and manipulate it, it it will come together. I
(01:05:47):
speak the blessing of the Almighty over you today. May
the Lord make you like Rachel and Leah who together
built the house. All things work together. How many of
you love the Lord? How many of you are called
(01:06:13):
according to His purpose? Just if that's you, I'm called
according I'm not called according to my experience. I'm called
according to his purpose. Well, if you enjoyed today's podcast,
there are a couple of things I'd love for you
to do. Make sure to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast.
You can also help us reach others by investing today
(01:06:34):
at Elevation Church dot org, slash give and thanks again
for joining us on the Elevation Podcast.
All right, we're not holding hands. I don't know how
we are on the spectrum of being able to, but
can we at least touch the shoulder of the person
on either side of you? That'll work? Baby steps, Baby steps,
baby steps. Pray this out loud. Lord. The person I'm
(00:22):
touching needs you more than I do because they're a mess,
So bless them today in Jesus' name. Come on, give
God praise. How y'all doing? Welcome? Welcome? Just kidding. You're
(00:45):
a mess and you know it too. How many of
you think that you are the least spiritual person on
your row? Raise your hand? How many of y'all think
there's nobody in this room that read the Bible less
than I do this week? Raise your head? All right?
Oh man, such a weird icebreaker for me to say that,
(01:09):
isn't it. I'm just excited to be here. I told
the Lord after we weren't able to have public meetings
that I wouldn't take it for granted when we could
get back together. So if you'll notice, maybe you don't
like this, but I go longer now. I take my time,
(01:32):
and there's multiple reasons for that. One thing. I think
if you're going to spend three hundred and fifty dollars
filling your tank with gas to drive to church. I
ought to at least give you more than a little dabba,
do you? And the other reason for that is that
(01:53):
the Holy Spirit has really been doing a work in
my heart. And the natural overflow of that is I
just find myself less and less thinking of preaching like
a performance. And what I think now more is that
the Lord would make me a vessel. Tell him you'll
(02:13):
call him back that in about three hours when I
finish with this message, tell him you'll call him back
for me. Hey, won't take that long. But now I
think about myself, Lord, make me a vessel for what
you want to give your people. And I love that
(02:36):
because it's not up to the box how good the
pizza tastes. So if I can just be a box
to get you what God wants you to eat today,
that'll be great. And yes, I just called the Bible
pizza because Jesus said I am the Bread of life,
and he didn't say what kind of bread. So anyway,
(02:57):
y'all remember book It used to get the personal pan
pizza for book It. It's gonna be a personal word
for you today. All right, I'm in a good mood.
That's bad news for the devil. I'm happy and ready
to drink. Hey, real quick check if you would and
(03:17):
see if we're coming to a city near you. Elevation
Nights dot com. It'll be cities such ass but not
limited to, Indianapolis, Chicago, Boston, Newark, Columbus, Grand Rapids. Why
did you say that so loud? Grand Rapids? You're from there,
You're coming over in a couple of weeks. Good, you
(03:38):
got your ticket. It's not free. You can't just show up.
It's not like just regular church night because the arena's
not free, so we got to pay for it. So
but you'll be there all right. Great, and you're here
today from Michigan, God bless you Michigan. All right, that's
gonna be that's going to be awesome. I loved it
(04:02):
so much last year. I really needed it after ministering
in an empty room for so long through COVID, to
get out and see the way that people have been
impacted by our church and see it firsthand. I needed it.
I felt like it. I was like something just came
alive inside of me, like it needed to be watered
(04:23):
and after we came back, I was just fired up
and full of life. So that's why I'm going back
selfishly just to do ministry because I get more out
of it than I could ever give. And I wish
you could all come, but anyway, you get to come
every week. So what are you worried about? And I
wish we could have this conversation just one on one
(04:44):
from the Word of God today. That would be ideal
because I could walk you through it a little different.
But we'll have to do the best we can with
just all of us. And I want to take you
to the Book of Ruth, chapter four, verse nine through seventeen.
(05:06):
I want to say what's up to Taylor Shidel at
Elevation Columbia. He texted me before I got up that
he was praying for me while I was preaching, And
that's why I'm shouting him out. I'm reciprocating. I appreciate
your prayers too, as I preached today that I would
be effective, that I would be effective for who God
(05:27):
wants me to reach. Never preached a sermon from Ruth before.
Hollywalked by the other day and saw my Bible open
to Ruth. She said Ooh, Ruth. And my reluctance to
preach on Ruth isn't just because it's a book about
(05:47):
a woman. I'm not a sexist. I think it's one
of those stories that just to give you a sliver
or one scene of the story, like it doesn't do
justice to the beauty of the whole thing. But still
God directed me here and just sucked me in. And
(06:09):
so I'm going to do my best today just from
not trying to be cute. But I just want to
show you one truth from the book of Ruth. I guess,
but let's look at this together. Ruth Chapter four, verse nine.
Then Boaz announced to the elders and all the people today,
(06:33):
you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all
the property of Alimelech, Killion and Maylon. I have also
acquired Ruth the Moabi Meylon's widow as my wife, in
order to maintain the name of the dead with his property,
so that his name will not disappear from among his
(06:56):
family or from his hometown. Today, you are witnesses verse eleven.
Then the elders and all the people at the gate said,
we are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who
is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who
together built up the family of Israel. May you have
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standing in Ephratha and be famous in Bethlehem through the
offspring the Lord gives you by this young woman. May
your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore
to Judah. That's a blessing right there. That's a blessing
right here. Tell somebody next to you, I'm stepping into
a blessing. I'm stepping into a blessing. I'm stepping in.
(07:44):
Tell them give me some room because I'm stepping into
a blessing. I need six feet because I'm stepping all right,
all right, But that's not the word. That's not the
word today, because we need to read the next verses.
So Boas took Ruth, and she became his wife. When
(08:04):
he made love to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive,
and she gave birth to a son. The women said
to Naomi, Praise be to the Lord, who this day
has not left you without a guardian redeemer. May he
become famous throughout Israel. He will renew your life and
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sustain you in your old age. For your daughter in law,
who loves you, and who is better to you than
seven sons has given him birth. Then Naomi took the
child in her arms and cared for him. The women
living there said, Naomi has a son. Naomi has a son.
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You're never gonna believe it. But she who was gone
for over ten years because of the famine and came
back bitter, is holding a son. And they named him Obed.
And who's the father of Jesse see the father of David.
And this is what the Lord told me to tell
you today as our message, it will come together. Who
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felt that when I said it? It might be online?
Put it in the chat, put it in the comments
right now. Or tell your six foot three neighbor it
will come together. Tell your five foot four whoever's standing
next to you. I'm trying to say, just make the declaration.
It will come together. In Jesus' name. You may be seated.
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It will come together. Kind of one of those cliches
that I don't like when people say stuff like that
to me, it'll come together. I'll be stressed about a
sermon and Hollio say it'll come together. I'll be like, yeah,
that sounds good. I mean, that's that's that's just a
(10:01):
millimeter better than when life gives you lemons or lemon Yeah,
how does it go? Make lemonade? Cliches? Cliches? And yet
I don't mean it in that trite way because it
could sound like that, I know you lost your job.
It'll come together. Could you tell the power company that
(10:23):
for me? Oh, I know you're single. Their friends are married.
Don't worry. The Lord has a bow as for you.
I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it.
I'm not gonna do I'm not gonna do it. I'm
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not gonna do it. She wants me to do it,
I'm not gonna do it. There's an old thing online
that says, while you're waiting for your bow, ass, don't
settle for brogue as poor as all that. I'm not
gonna do it. Temptresses. It's the whole thing. It's a
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whole thing. In Christianity, the Book of Ruth is usually
identified by chapter one, verse sixteen, and it's always into
King James at a wedding. This is the famous verse
of Ruth. All right, you're gonna know it. When I
say it, You're like, huh, what's it about? You'll know
when you see it. Put it on screen. This the
King James, where it says whither thou goest I will go?
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You got to get the wether in there for the
marriage vows. Then that sounded like a wedding. Whither thou goest?
You never said whither in your life. But now you're
about to commit your whole self to somebody, and you
breaking out words you never use, whether thou goest I
will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge? People
shall be my people, By God, my God, I'm not
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making fun of that verse. That verse in itself is
a sermon in itself. It is a sermon in itself.
That one verse shows you that when you decide who,
you decide where, when you decide, Now, this is not
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how we think we think I need to decide where
I'm going to college. No, no, no, that's not as
important as who you hang out with when you get
to college, wherever you go to college, right. I teach
that all the time, that because who will ultimately identify
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not only where you end up physically, Like Holly wouldn't
be in Charlotte if she had married me, because she
wouldn't have been a pastor's wife, or if she had
maybe the guy JJ she was talking to, he ends
up somewhere else. And when when you say yes to someone,
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you say yes to something that you don't know about
at the time. I'm the same with God. When you
say yes to God, He'll take you places that you
never thought you would go when you say yes to Him.
Who you say yes to who you say no to
is very important, really important. Tell somebody it will come together. Now.
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I want you to get that in your mind so
we can get it passed your mind into your spirit
so that you hear it differently. When I finish in
a few minutes, then you hear it right now. Because
we are all standing in a space in our life
where we are needing clarity on some things. And maybe
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you're not in the same situation as Naomi and Ruth,
both of them being widows, were completely dependent on the
kindness of someone else. And maybe it's not that bad
in your life. Ruth not only lost her husband when
she lost her Maelon, but Naomi lost her son. Naomi
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had already lost her husband, a Limelech, and they were
already in a strange place. Now I want to talk
to you about this, because when you read a Bible
verse in isolation, it's almost impossible to really make sense
out of it. And I want you to have that
app on your phone where they give you the verse
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every day. But I don't want you to always read
the scriptures in isolation, because if you just take it
in isolation, sometimes we don't even read the whole verson
we quote it, and then we think that it didn't work.
It's not that Romans eight twenty eight isn't true. All
things work together for the good. You just stopped in
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the middle of the verse. Is said all things work
together for the good of them that love God and
are called according to His purpose. Means that God doesn't
decide what is good in your life based on your preference,
but his purpose. So then you go through something and
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this isn't good. This isn't good. How can this be good?
God isn't God is good, and this isn't good. What's
going on? I thought it was all good? God didn't
say that. In the Bible. God didn't say that. He
said all things work together for the good of those
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who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose.
So his purpose comes first, not my preference, go ready.
His purpose comes first, not my plan. What happens to
us is we get addicted to a plan, and if
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it doesn't fit the plan, we want to throw it
back to God and say fix this. But God doesn't
start with the picture called your plan when he is
building the pieces of your life. He's God. He's God.
And the truth of the matter is, you can't really
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judge your life in isolation. You can't really know when
you're going through something, whether it's good or not. Don't
judge it just yet. One scripture says, judge nothing before
the appointed time. Judge nothing before the appointed time, when
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God will reveal hidden things and bring them to life,
and the secret things will be laid bare. Judge nothing,
no thing. All things work together for the good of
them that love the Lord. Now, if you love something
else more than you love the Lord Romans eight twenty eight,
is going to be hard for you, because if you
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love popularity more than you love God, when people leave you,
you will think that's not good. But if you love
the Lord's purpose more than you love popularity, sometimes you
will praise God not for who stays with you, but
for who leaves you. Because you believe that the Lord
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is leading my life. Wow, wow, Wow, it will come together.
We make the mistake of thinking that everyone who starts
with us will stay with us, and it doesn't happen
that way. This is not a sermon about abandonment or divorce,
but I do want to talk about those issues because well,
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in the Book of Ruth, you have this woman named
Naomi who goes to a place called Moab where there
is something to eat for her family, and through no
fault of her own, she watches her husband and her
sons ten years later die in front of her eyes.
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Her two daughters in law are committed to stay with her,
Ruth and Orpah. And there's a reason that this is
not called the Book of Orpa because she left. There
is a reason that I said turn in your bible
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to the Book of Ruth, because Ruth stay. Put this
in your heart. Whoever left you in your life, whoever
walked away from you in your life, was not part
of God's purpose for your current season. It doesn't mean
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they're bad, it doesn't mean they're evil. It doesn't mean
you need to make a voodoo dollins stick a pin
in they're left ear trying to get them to have
an earache. It doesn't mean anything. I don't mean you
need to talk crap about them. It doesn't mean that
you have to want them to fail. It doesn't mean
you have to go out and buy new car to
show him you made it and drive by their house
and they're not even home. It doesn't mean any of that.
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It just means, can I preach. God doesn't build my
life on people who left. So one thing I'm learning
to appreciate at the stage of my life is the
providence of God. The providence of God. The providence of God.
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The plans of man and the providence of God are
two totally different things. The man directs his steps in
his mind, God orders his steps in real life. And
so maybe I'm preaching to somebody today who is like Naomi.
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You know, when we walked into Ruth chapter four, it
looked like everything was going good, and on the surface,
it sounds like this is a moment to be happy,
and it is. It is if you look at it
in isolation. But understanding what led up to this moment,
I think gives me a greater appreciation for who God
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is and what he is able to do. Let's look
at it a little deeper, because even the Book of
Ruth is an interesting book. You have Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges,
and then Ruth first Samuel, second Samuel, first King's second Kings.
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What's Ruth doing between all those big books? Why is
there a book in the Bible about one woman from Moab?
Moab is not Bethlehem. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not Moab.
Moab was not even seen. I could do this real quick.
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Moab was like you went to school in Chapel Hill
and you are cheering in four coach. K You see
what I've said, That level of hatred right there. You
felt it coming through the room. And this is a
local illustration. Okay, I could use another one somewhere else.
What is a woman from Moab doing between the five
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covenants in the Bible? Write down the word covenant in
your notes, please. Covenant is a concept we would do
well to understand in our current contemporary society. We don't
understand it at all. We don't understand commitment at all.
We just understand convenience. Even when we say marriage vows,
we don't really mean half of what we're saying. We're saying,
as long as you make me happy, I'll be with you,
And we don't really mean what we're saying. And I'm
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not saying that to shame anybody. I'm just saying sometimes
we would do well to understand these verses in their context.
Because God made a covenant with Noah. He said, I
never fled the earth again. That's the first covenant. There
are five covenants. The Bible is structured around five covenants. Covenant,
I will never flood the earth again. It means there's
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going to be a limit on human evil. The Abrahamic Covenant,
which God said, I'm gonna make a nation out of you.
Count the stars if you can, count the sand if
you can, and Abraham goes one, two, three, four, five
to seven, eight nine. This is going to take a
long time, God, And God said, exactly, it's going to
take a long time for me to show you what
I'm going to do through you, and your descendants will
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be as numerous as the sand on the sea shore,
if you can believe it and receive it, even though
you are past child bearing years. I am gonna bring
forth a life out of your wife's dead wound. That
will bless the whole world, and I will bless you
and you will be a blessing. That's the Abrahamic Covenant.
Then you've got the Davidic Covenant, which God made with David,
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the second King israel head. You remember Saul, the one
that the people wanted, and then David, and he's like,
this is my guy right here, He's after my heart
and he said, I'm going to establish a throne from you.
Now you forgot about the Mosaic Covenant where God had
to bring his people out of Egypt, and then the
New Covenant. How many thank God for the blood of
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Jesus that lets me know that I can't keep the law,
and what the law was powerless to do in that
it was weakened by my flesh. God did by sending
his son Jesus, the son of David, to be a
sin offering in my place, and upon Jesus was placed
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all of my transgression and all of my shame. So
whatever shame I carried into church today as a child
of the New Covenant, I carried it illegally because Jesus
took it. And whatever he took he intends to keep
and deal with. So I've got to give it back
to him over and over and over. Because God has
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already made up his mind about me. He already made
up his mind about me. He's not looking to see
if I get it right or if I get it wrong.
He made a purpose for my life, and it will
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come together. Say it, it will come together. I feel
like preaching this like this cod Orange revival. But you
won't help me touch three people. Tell them it will
come together. It will, it will. I know it's taken
a while. I know it's been on layaway and delay,
and there's a shipping thing, and I know they can't
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get it to you like they were supposed to. And
I know your three years past the due date of
when you expected God to do it. But if Naomi
encourages me about one thing, it's that after she lost
everything she held, dear God still had something for I'm
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glad about it. I love that verse that they said
in the blessing. They said in verse eleven, Ruth four eleven,
this is the one that got me. We are witnesses.
May the Lord make the woman who is coming into
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your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up
the family of Israel, that sounds so nice. Rachel and Leah,
who together teamwork makes the dream work. They together built
up the House of Israel. And I remember they're saying
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this hundreds of years after it happened. They're saying this
after they have the benefit of seeing the blessing fully matured.
They are saying this like a parent who is ninety's
one years old and all their kids have kids now,
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and they have lived long enough to know, don't stress
about that. It's all right. Please, please don't worry yourself
that much about that. It's all right. See, we don't
get to live through that lens. We don't get to
live through the lens of knowing that Rachel and Leah
built up the House of Israel together. We don't get
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to live through the lens of Naomi knowing I'm gonna
hold a baby named Obed in my arms, even though
I'm gonna cry for years about my husband, only to
lose my sons. Because see, we don't taste life as
a meal. We experience the ingredients in isolation. In God's mind,
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your life is a meal. In God's life, your God's mind,
your life is Thanksgiving Day. What the y'all el on Thanksgiving.
I might come over put it in the chat. What
y'all got at Thanksgiving? Is? What do you like at Thanksgiving?
What do you have at Thanksgiving? Mac and cheese? I
might come? Can somebody do better than that? Mac and
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cheese and sweet potatoes? Now? Like sweet potatoes or a
sweet potato thing with marshmallows in it? Yeah? Because I
really just had the sweet potatoes are the middleman for me.
I just want the marshmallows on top of the sweet potatoes, honestly.
So yeah, that's good. That's good. I might come. What else?
What do y'all have at Thanksgiving? See? I don't know.
I'm making everybody hungry. I'm losing my audience. This is
really bad public speaking. What am I doing? You? You
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gotta understand the moment that Naomi is in her life
right now is a blessing. But it's a mixed blessing.
It's a mixed blessing. I noticed the room got happy
when I said you're stepping into a blessing. It's like, yes,
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I forgot to tell you it's a mixed blessing. I
forgot to tell you it is a mixed blessing. So
that means you need to prepare for the blessing as
it is actually going to be, or you might miss
the blessing because it's going to be mixed when you
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get it. In fact, Naomi was in so much pain
there in Moab where she went to escape from Bethlehem,
where there was a famine. It seems like she did
all right when she lost her husband, but when she
lost her sons two, she said, don't call me Naomi anymore.
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Call me Mara. Because Naomi has the connotation of pleasant,
Mara means bitter. And after what she's been through, can
you blame her? When somebody has been through something like this,
you don't tell them it'll come together. What will come together?
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How can you replace those boys? Even if God gave
me twenty more, it wouldn't replace them. That's how it
is sometimes in your life. Don't try to tell me
it's gonna get better. Call me bitter. When that kind
of bitterness hits your heart, you don't even want to
(29:28):
hear about better from anybody, not from preachers, not from teachers,
not from pinterest. Don't tell me all things work together
for the good of those that love God, because when
you taste the ingredient in isolation. It would be lying
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to say that's delicious. It would be lying. I was
talking to a god in I think I think he
was in London. Yeah, he was in London. He said
he had to lay off forty of his two hundred employees.
He said, but you know what, it's a good thing.
I said, I understand what you're saying. But for them,
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I hope you didn't tell them that. He said, no,
I'm not telling them that. I'm just telling you that.
I said, well, make sure you don't tell them you
feel that way, because they probably don't see it like
that right now from your perspective. He said, you got
a good point. You got a good point, and it
is a good point when you are tasting it. Have
you ever walked in the kitchen and just use an example,
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I'm not a cook. Take a scoop of baking powder
and just down it. Did you ever do it? So?
Baking powder is bad? Anybody want a big heep in
(30:58):
pile a baking powder for lunch today? Raise your hand?
Why are you messing up my illustration? Bro? Now this
is the message. You want the whole message in a moment.
This is a whole message. Is a whole message. This
is why you came from Michigan so God could tell you,
(31:18):
this is why you tuned in online. Just because it
tastes bad in isolation doesn't mean it won't serve a
purpose in the finished product. I'm not saying that the
Bible said that after Naomi had gone so low that
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she said, this doesn't taste good. This doesn't taste good.
And honestly, I figured out why people in church often
look so sour when they're in church, because what you
went through this week didn't taste good, and you are
trying to praise God with a taste in your mouth
(32:05):
of disappointment and fear? Am I preaching? Yet? I mean
it's hard to say Hallelujah when your mouth taste like hurt.
WHOA call me bitter? You might as well? You might
(32:27):
as well. You might as well and taste good. And
yet what a strange blessing that they gave. Let me
give you a little bit more background so I can
make sure I'm not confusing. Graham's Graham's my guy. You know.
He told me the other day he was like, Dad,
(32:49):
sometimes you got to slow down with these scriptures. You've
been looking at them all week and we're just waking up.
You got to slow down and break it down. So
even though I can't do it justice, the Book of
Ruth is beautiful and you could read it in the
time that you could watch half an episode of Ozark.
(33:14):
And when we moved through it, we see Naomi a
Limelech Killion and Maelon Meylan's Ruth's husband orpa is married
to Killion, And both of those baby names are available,
by the way, if you want to have an original
name for your kid. But when they went to Moab,
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they went to a place that they didn't This is
important planned to go. This message is for somebody who
is in a place you didn't plan to go. And
I'm gonna take it further. Sometimes it's a place you
hate being there because they're from Bethlehem and they're in Moab.
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Kind of like when they went to Egypt. I mentioned
it earlier, when the Israelites went to Egypt. They didn't
go to Egypt because it was their dream to go
to Egypt. It wasn't on their bucket list to go
to Egypt. They went to Egypt to survive. And we've
talked about that a lot because I think a lot
of the sin cycles we get sucked into in our
life are out of survival mechanisms, and if we don't
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deal with it that way, we just put so much
shame on it. We can't help anybody get healed because
people won't come to Jesus because you don't understand the
power of his covenant with you. You think Jesus is
like other people and that there come a point where
he'll be ashamed of you, and he'll go, oh, well,
that's too far there. I was going to use you,
But really you did that. You don't understand the power
(34:44):
of a covenant. But Ruth did because when Naomi said,
leave me, I've lost my husband's I've lost my boys.
I've heard there's bred in Bethlehem. We've been here ten years.
Naomi said, I'm not leaving. Make a covenant with you.
Whither thou goest I go. Your God become my god,
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and your God will often become the same god as
your friends. If you are around people who worship status
and stuff, it won't be long till you'll shear shackle
to the same things they are. But now to touch
somebody next to you and say you ought to hang
out with me a little while. You hang out with me,
(35:31):
You're gonna have strong faith. You hang out with me.
Come on, death leopard if you hang out with me.
So they go back together, and Naomi, in this this
honest moment, she says, call me bitter. I still got
the taste in my mouth. I'm going back to Bethlehem,
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which means house of bread, which makes it that much
more depressing when there's a famine in Bethlehem, when there's
a famine in the place that is named after bread,
when the joy of the Lord is supposed to be
your strength, and you are a Christian and you're depressed,
and you are a Christian and you can't sleep, and
(36:15):
you are a Christian and you have addictions, and you
are a I am a C I am ah, I
am a c h R I S T I aad.
But I got a A D D A d hd
hey d D I C t I. Oh, I'm in
the house of bread, but a hawk grief. Call me Mara,
she said, real said, I was with you when I
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wanted your son. Now you don't have a son to
give me, but I'm still with you. I wonder who
the Lord is saying that to you. I'm still with you.
I don't sell low and by high. God is not
Warren Buffett. God doesn't trade like that. God said, I'm
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still with you because I made a covenant with you.
It's not the kind of covenant I made with Noah
that was limited. It's not the kind of covenant I
made with Abraham that was limited. It's not the covenant
I made with Moses that was limited. It's not the
covenant I made with David that was limited. This is
the covenant of my blood, made with the life of
(37:33):
my son. And I am worth you in your bitterness,
in your brokenness. God said, I'm with you, but I'm bitter.
(37:55):
But I'm with you, and I love the Lord because
he wrote the Bible, and he knew that the woman
who said I'm bitter and it's over in chapter one
would be holding a baby in chapter four. So he
(38:16):
gave her someone named Ruth the Moabide. He gave her
a Moabike, not somebody from Bethlehem, somebody from a place
that she never wanted to be. Remember, it's God's kitchen.
(38:40):
So if you walk around God's kitchen tasting stuff, I
don't like that. I don't like that you know how
you are some of y'all our faith footies you walk around. Hmmm, No,
(39:04):
I don't like that. See now, listen, you get to
tell God certain things that you want him to do. God,
I want you to grow me, mature me, bless me.
You can say all that to God is good. You
don't get to tell him how to do it. I'll
go step further. You get to tell God what you want.
(39:24):
You know. That's the first thing Jesus asked in the
New Testament. He turned around and people followed me. He said,
what do you want? Let's just get right to it,
cut to the chase, cut through all the niceties. I
don't need us a little equick. What do you want?
And so we want to see where you're staying. See,
you got to follow me to know me. And that
(39:47):
means that if you judge stuff while it's happening, you'll
call yourself by what you've been through. Are you with me?
I was in the kitchen the other day and Holly
was making breakfast, and I was trying to be helpful,
(40:10):
but I can't cook, but I wanted to help out
and she had just finished the sausage. So I was
taking the pan to pour out the grease from the sausage.
And I can tell who cooks in the room by
your reaction, because she said two things to me that
I'm going to preach to you. She said, leave the grease.
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I'm about to use it. That's the first thing she said.
I'm out of the book of Ruth. I'm in. Second, Holly,
she said, leave the grease. She said, because I'm about
to make your eggs. And when I make your eggs,
(40:55):
I'm going to take these eggs and I'm gonna all
things work together. Now, the grease on its own is
not something that you want to eat. But if you'll
let me leave the right amount of grease for this recipe,
(41:17):
that I know, see, because if I make your eggs
without grease. She looked at me and said. The second thing,
she said, you need to get out of my kitchen.
And I hear God saying to somebody who's been telling
him what he can't do, what he shouldn't do. I
(41:38):
heard the voice of the Lord. I was praying about it,
and God said, hit your neighbors, say get out of
God's kitchen. Get out of God's kitchen. Get out of
God's kitchen. Stop asking God to bring people back who
were supposed to go. Get out the kitchen, stop at
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to God to take thorns away that he left. So
you've been knowing, get out of the kitchen, Get out
of my kitchen. Let me mix this, because when I
get done mixing these eggs with this grease, when I
get finished mixing your pain with my charge, when I
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get finished mixing your kit with your offer, get out
of my kitchen. What in my weakness? He is strong.
That's grease. That's grease. That weakness is grease. Stop trying
to get rid of it and let God mix it.
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So I put something in a song two years ago.
It's gonna come out in the radio a couple of weeks,
and you might hear, well, not some of y'all, because
y'll want to listen to the Christian station. But it's
the rest of the song and it says, if it's
not good, then he's not done. Let me break it
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all the way down. He hasn't mixed it yet. And
you keep walking over to the grease, going, mmm, God
can't cook judge no thing before the appointed time? Why
(43:36):
because all things work together? Did he say everything was good?
Or did he say that when Ruth meets Boass. When
the thing, because this is what had to happen for Ruth,
she goes back to Bethlehem. She's gleaning in a field.
A man sees her named Boass. This is not a
(44:00):
singles conference. Do not get a are you my bow
Ass t shirt made after this message. That's honestly quite
off putting, it really is. It attracts the crazy guys.
All right, don't wear that shirt be my bow ass.
Don't do it. I'm telling you, don't do it. It's
a bad idea. But he sees her while she's gleaning. Now,
(44:25):
you had to leave a certain portion of your feel
by biblical law for the foreigners and for the orphans,
of which Ruth was both. And because she made a
commitment to Naomi, she met a man named bos It's
called a kinsman redeemer, a kinsman redeemer, which ultimately, of
(44:47):
course points to Jesus. But in this situation it is
a real legal obligation because he is a relative of Naomi,
which makes him here's a word we don't hear much
today in today's society, responsible responsible to redeem this widow
(45:09):
named Naomi, who is this relative and along with her
comes Ruth and that is what helped me to understand
why they said, may the Lord make her like Rachel
and Leah, because that goes all the way back to Jacob.
Remember the covenant God made with Abraham, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David.
(45:29):
You you're in good company and you got a better
covenant because all theirs had conditions to it. All you
got to do is believe and receive and then obey
to be blessed. But you don't have to obey to
be his child. Amazing. I mean, you think Boaz is
(45:50):
something you have any idea what kind of acceptance and
resource you have in Christ? It is a picture right
why they said they give a blessing and this is
obviously something that they've said in this situation before. As
Boaz goes to redeem, take Ruthus his wife, take Naomi
(46:12):
in to purchase Alimelex's land, to care for the family
so that his name will not be blotted out. All
the stuff that I really don't have time to break
down for you, but maybe it'll wet your appetite to
read it this week, and that'd be awesome. All that
stuff leads up to this moment where they say, may
the Lord make this woman like Leah and Rachel. Now,
(46:36):
Leah and Rachel are not not exactly teammates, even though
they're sisters, because right here it makes it sound like
they just they just agree. Put the verse back up,
because this was really the verse that drew me to
the message. Can I go a little bit longer today?
(46:58):
I really want to, But I promise you I can
dismiss you right now. And we already heard a word
from God, but I would like to give you this
before we leave. Okay, all right, all right, May the
Lord make you like Rachel and Leah Ruth. Now the
(47:20):
reason that was strange to me was one when Jacob
was running talk about mixed blessings. He tricked his father
into blessing him, but then he had to run from
his brother. Is it really a blessing if you have
to run from it? Talk about mixed blessings. God called
him Israel, which means prince are prevalent with God, but
(47:43):
his name was Jacob, which meant deceiver. Don't we all
know what that feels like to wrestle with both sides
of ourselves? And he came out of the woomb wrestling.
Then when he gets to his uncle Laban's house. He
wants to marry this daughter named Rachel, and Rachel this
is not in the Hebrew. But she's hot, and then
(48:04):
her sister Leah is not hot. And the Bible says
that Laban tricked Jacob because it all catches up with
you eventually. The way you get blessed is the way
you have to stay blessed. So if you get stuff
by manipulating, don't be surprised when you're stressed out about
(48:26):
keeping it. But if you get it from God, it'll
be a whole different thing. Yet, yet these are the
two names that were mentioned in the blessing. So what's
what Laban did? He said, Okay, work for me seven years,
I'll give you Rachel. Jacob worked seven years on his
wedding night. He wakes up the next morning, and the
Bible says, something so crazy, there was Leah. Oh Lord,
(48:56):
just for a side Bible study, did you ever think
it was Rachel? But it turned out Leah. I'm not
talking about women, I'm talking about opportunities. Did you ever
wake up next to Leah went to bed with Rachel?
You thought that was such a good idea, such a
good investment. We've all had those moments. We have all
had those moments. Anyway, Laban said, oh no, no, no, no, no,
(49:26):
no no. The way it works here in our custom,
if you want Rachel, you've got to first marry her
older sister Leah. So if you give me seven more years,
you can have Rachel, but you still got to keep Leah.
And Jacob is like, oh God, And that's how I
(49:48):
know that Rachel was indeed attractive, because he did another
seven years for him. So she is not average by
my reason deductions or whatever like that. But she was beautiful.
But watch this. She was barren. She couldn't have kids.
(50:11):
Leah on the other hand, Leah the one that the
Bible said had weak eyes. I don't even know what
that means, y'all, but that doesn't sound good. The picture
that comes in my mind is not attractive. And but
she she wasn't attractive. Watch this, but she was productive.
(50:37):
She started having babies so quick. Boom Reuben boom, Simeon boom,
Levi boom. Judah is four to nothing. Rachel is not
even on the board. And Rachel's like, I gotta do
something about this. I heard what my grandma did Jacob,
(50:59):
you need to sleep with my maid servant, bill Ha.
So she gives bill Haw to Jacob to seem jacob'slake. Okay,
and so they got two more babies by the servant.
Now Leah, all of a sudden hits a period she
can't produce. Here's her servant, Zilpah. Now we're up to
eight kids. Here comes a daughter, here comes it's a car,
baby after baby after baby. And finally Rachel has Joseph.
(51:21):
And while she's dying, she has Benjamin. Why Stephen Ferdick,
did you slow down to tell us all of that?
Because it helped me to understand that number one, Every
Rachel comes with a Leah. Take it out of the
(51:44):
realm of people for a moment. Rachel was what Jacob
loved and what he wanted. What do you want? What
do you love? Everything you love is going to come
with something that you don't let that sink in You
got it everything you love? God? I want success cool.
(52:11):
It comes with stress, sleeplessness, and sacrifice. And just the
other day my family rekindled the campaign for a dog.
I thought we were through it. I thought I stood
my ground. Y'all think I'm lying The pressure they're putting
(52:35):
on me about this dog. It's been years. How many
of y'all have been in elevation long enough you've watched
this whole thing go down. Graham made the song about Look,
I brought something on my garage on my way out
of the garage. I don't even know why I left
this up. Graham made this sign years ago. So every
time I leave my garage, I gotta look at this
(52:56):
sign that says I want I've been looking at that
on my door for years now and standing strong too.
I't even remember this. At the same time, Abby made
one too. You can't really see it. That didn't even
(53:20):
spelled ride in his heartbreaking I wish you could see it.
Can y'all make it where you see it? No? Huh?
It says I w a g O D d og,
she wants God, she wants a dog, she wants everything.
And what happened? What happened? I watched this. I promise you.
I've got a point to this because they caught me
(53:43):
the other night. Elijah was out and I was all alone,
and it was three on one, and they took the opportunity.
Graham said, I'm a good kid, I'm a good kid.
I've never wanted anything but a dog to get here.
And if I died, If I died, you would spend
(54:10):
the rest of your life thinking why did not get
the boy a doll? I said, I know you want
to talk. You don't want what comes with it. Abby said,
(54:31):
but Dad, but Dad, but Dad, and you love us,
You love us. I know you give it to us
because you love us. You give us everything that we want.
(54:54):
I looked at Holly. I looked at Holly. I look
gave her a look too, I'll give didn't I? I
gave her a look. She said, what is that look?
I said, this is the look of me imagining the
reality because they don't. Graham said, it's different. I said,
you can't even clean your room, Graham, he said, he said,
that's different. My socks are not living things, which if
(55:19):
you check them fu fungal composition on those socks, you
might be wrong about that. But he said, he said
that the dog is a living thing, and there's no
way I would let a living thing suffer. You know,
I'll take care of a living thing. Dad. I'm a
good kid. And I said, but what about what comes
(55:41):
out of the living thing? But this is the point,
do you want what comes with it? Yeah? No, what
comes with it? And this is a good question to ask.
If you knew Leah came with it, would you still
want Rachel? If you knew that the bitterness came with Naomi?
(56:09):
Would you still want to be a part of a
Limelex family? Would you still want it if you knew
what came with it? So guess what. Nobody knows this,
But I'm getting your dog. I'm gonna do it. I'm
(56:31):
gonna do it. I know you're suspicious. Hey, hey, hey, hey,
this is not a trick. This is not a game.
Because they've been here many times before. I say I'm
gonna get your dog, and they'll say really, and I'll say, yeah,
you're a mustard relish. Catch up. I got jokes. I'm
(56:54):
gonna get the dog because of something that he said
that changed how I felt. He said, all right, I'm
willing to say it'll be my job. So now you
get a dog. You get a dog, and you get
(57:16):
a dog, but it's not my dog, and it's not
your dog. It's their dogs. Their stuff is your everybody.
Stretch your hand towards my family and say it's y'all's
dog toward these three right here, shad wrack me shaq,
I bet a go. It's yall's dog. Sit out. But
(57:43):
now we're gonna find out, Saints of God, do they
want what comes with it? Because I will give it
away a week from when we get it. If they doll,
I'm not cleaning up nothing, because we are about to
find out. Remember, Boas redeemed this family after another close
(58:06):
relative had the opportunity to but the other relative didn't
want it because it came with a mob bite. Boas said,
not only do I want the land, I'll take what
comes with it. And I got to show you this.
It's beautiful that while Leah and Rachel were having all
those babies really to compete with each other, really to
(58:29):
compete with each other. From their perspective, they were trying
to get Jacob to love them. But from God's perspective,
it was all coming together to make a nation. So
I need you to know, the dog comes with walking,
(58:52):
the patience comes with pain. It will come together. It'll
be a mixed blessing. It'll be Leah and Rachel, it
will be Naomi and Boas, it will be both. Because
I'm telling you this in case you are holding a
(59:13):
blessing but you don't recognize it. That baby's name was Obed.
His son's name was Jesse. His son's name was David.
David was the king through which came forth to somebody
that we're awfully fond of, name Jesus. But if you
(59:33):
go all the way back, it came from ten generations,
after ten years in Moab, from a man named Perez,
who came from a man named Judah, and who was
the mom of Judah. Leah, Leah, the one Jacob didn't
(59:54):
even what. You have no idea what you're holding. And
if you taste it in isolation, it might just be pain.
If you taste it in isolation, it might just be failure.
(01:00:16):
But let God mix it. Let God mix it. You
don't know who you're gonna meet next year. You don't
know what you're gonna learn. You don't know what God
might be protecting you from by getting you out of there.
Get out of the kitchen. You're a terrible cook. Get
(01:00:38):
out of the kitchen. That grease is there for a reason.
Get out of the kitchen. Leah is the one who
gave Jacob the baby that produced the king, that produced
your savior. So I want you to say this in
(01:01:03):
your heart. God. I mean I meant, I meant say
it out loud. I said it the opposite way. Say
this out loud. God. I want your will and I
want what comes with it, Because I'm gonna tell you
(01:01:32):
what comes with it. If you go through a trial,
you'll get grace with it. God will give you the
grace to stand up under. How many of you went
through something so dark you couldn't even explain how you
got through. But there was a grace. There was a grace,
wasn't there? And somebody would have told you could live
through that. You said, call me bitter, I can't make it.
It's over. You would have said that, But watch this.
(01:01:54):
When she was holding the baby, it wasn't Marra holding
the baby. That's the name she gave her, It said Naomi.
God still knew her, Nay. As we close today, I
want you to stand on every auditorium and in every
living room, if you're in a hospital room with somebody,
(01:02:17):
and you're standing next to somebody whose life has become
very bitter, if you're standing in need right now of
something that only God can give, or you're in a
desperate place called Moab, where you never thought that you
would be. This prayer is for you to just lift
your hands like this to God. Just like this to God.
Just like this to God, Just like this to God.
(01:02:40):
Naomi said, I went out full and I went down
the Moab and I went because I had to go,
and I lost when I can't replace. So I went
out full and I came back empty. And that would
(01:03:03):
be a summary of how some of us feel today. God,
But we want to see that reversed in our life,
that we would say I came in empty, but I'm
going out full believing that while Rachel and Leah were
fighting themselves, disliking themselves and proving things to one another,
(01:03:27):
that you were building a nation. Now, if that was
true for their blessing, if that was true for Ruth
and Naomi, maybe it's true for me too. For every
blessing there's a burden. It'll come together, but our focus
(01:03:49):
has chosen. So right now, Jesus in your name, I'm
asking you that you would put a baby in Naomi's
arms today, take the bitterness or the pain away, but
it'll give us something to look forward to. I'm sorry, y'all,
(01:04:09):
but I gotta obey the Lord. He said, you're holding
O bed O bed never would have been here without Moab.
Thank you what you're holding, what you're walking in, It
will come saying together, it will come together, Say that
(01:04:32):
it will come together. You gotta trust God in this part.
You gotta trust God in this moment, knowing it will
come together. Almighty God, Jehovah, Shah Loong, Prince of Peace,
Jehovah Rathha, our healer, Jehovah. And see our banner and victory,
(01:04:58):
Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, change
our name today. We came in holding bitterness, but we
believe that the baby held in Naomi's arms is representative
of the purpose that we are holding. And God, if
I preached it for one person today, then that's cool
(01:05:22):
with me, because if they get this, great things are
coming forth from their life that eyes have not seen
and ears have not heard, and it hasn't even entered
into their heart. But you know it and you spoke it,
and you can do it. It'll come together. If you
don't give up, it'll come together. If you don't mess
it up and manipulate it, it it will come together. I
(01:05:47):
speak the blessing of the Almighty over you today. May
the Lord make you like Rachel and Leah who together
built the house. All things work together. How many of
you love the Lord? How many of you are called
(01:06:13):
according to His purpose? Just if that's you, I'm called
according I'm not called according to my experience. I'm called
according to his purpose. Well, if you enjoyed today's podcast,
there are a couple of things I'd love for you
to do. Make sure to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast.
You can also help us reach others by investing today
(01:06:34):
at Elevation Church dot org, slash give and thanks again
for joining us on the Elevation Podcast.
Host
Steven Furtick
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