A Beautiful Redemption Ruth 4

Tue, Jan 14, 2025 8:41AM • 34:03

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Christmas celebration, Bethlehem famine, Naomi's journey, Ruth's loyalty, Boaz's kindness, redemption process, family restoration, Obed's birth, David's lineage, God's providence, Ruth's conception, Naomi's redemption, Boaz's selflessness, Ruth and Boaz's union, Naomi's transformation

SPEAKERS

Josh Slater

Amen, Father, we are so grateful for the life that you have given us in Christ, Jesus, that the God of the universe stepped out of heaven to come and dwell amongst men, to show us that we can have forgiveness through His sacrifice, Lord, and that is why we celebrate this season of Christmas. We just hope that we and we pray that you continue to remind us of that truth, that you continue to remind us and point us back to the salvation that we have in Jesus and that Christmas is fun to celebrate the resurrection in Easters while we truly, truly celebrate We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen. Go ahead and have a seat. We're going to be closing out our Study in the book of Ruth this morning, but just kind of to help us to remember exactly what's happening so we're being Ruth, chapter four, verses one through 22 to kind of remind us where we've been and where and where we're going. The story of Ruth begins with a setting that says in the time of the judges, and in the time of the judges was a time where Israel with was without a king, and they didn't know how to live. They did what was ever whatever was right in their own eyes, because they weren't truly following the Lord, and they didn't have a man to lead them as well. And so we get this story about a famine that happens in a little town of Bethlehem has has significance. Right now. We just sang about a town of Bethlehem where Jesus was born. But in this town of Bethlehem, there was a famine, and there was a family. That is the the highlight of the book of Ruth and it begins with this man named Elimelek. And Elimelek has two sons, Malan and Killian, and he also has a wife named Naomi. And Malan Killian, Naomi and Elimelek Leave Bethlehem to go to the land of Moab. And in the land of Moab, the hope that they're going to find some food to eat, because the famine in Bethlehem has them hungry, but what they find instead is not food to fill their bellies. In fact, what they face is tragedy in Moab. So in Moab, what happens first is Elimelech, the father dies, and then his two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, they marry Moabite women, and when they marry these Moabite women, soon after that, or sometime after that, we're not really sure. The text isn't exactly clear how long they were married, but it seems to be that they were married for at least 10 years. They may Leon and Killian both die. And so now you've got three women who are widows, without any children, without any heirs, in area, a town, a country that they don't belong in, that is going to be hostile toward the toward Naomi, specifically, because she's not from there. So Naomi sees that there's nothing for them left in Moab. And so she decides, because she's heard through the grapevine that back in Bethlehem, there is a harvest happening, that the Lord has finally come back and given food to Bethlehem for them to harvest grain. So she hears about that, and she decides she's going to go back to Bethlehem. And she looks at her daughters in laws, Naomi or Ruth and Orpah, and she says, I'm going to go back. You stay here, and you find another husband. And Orpah is like, Okay, I will do that. And Naomi, or Ruth says, No, I'm not going to do that. I am going to go with you, Naomi, and wherever you go, I will go, wherever you live. I will live, wherever you die. I will die. Your God will be my God, and your people will be my people. That's what Ruth says. So she demonstrates the the steadfast love of God in in her own life by her love for Naomi. And so they go back to Bethlehem, and when they get back to Bethlehem, they still don't have food. They still don't have any security. And so Ruth decides she's going to go to help find some food for them to eat. And so when she goes to find a field to glean from. She happens to come into this field of this guy named Boaz. Now this is significant because Boaz is a relative of Naomi. Boaz is a we'll find out later, a kinsman redeemer, and it says that she happened to so as luck would have it, that's kind of what the text is telling us where what we understand is, it's not luck that has it. It's that God has providentially arranged for Ruth to go into this field. And when she goes into the field, she meets Boaz. Boaz is a stand up guy. He has a integrity, he has love, he has compassion. He is He is a light in the darkness of Israel at this time. And through that, she is able to meet him, and she comes back. And when she comes back from gleaning in the field, she brings back some 50 pounds of wheat. And Naomi goes, Hey, where did you get all this food? And she goes, Well, I went to this field. And the guy's name is Boaz, and Naomi starts to get excited about this new prospects. So in chapter three, which we looked at last week, she Naomi gave Ruth instructions on how to approach Boaz. And so she approaches Boaz as they're threshing out the wheat, which basically means they're separating the wheat from everything else. And that night, she goes to him, and she essentially proposes to him and says, Boaz, you. Are of relative, I want you to save us. We're in a destitute state. There's no salvation outside of of you providing that for us, and if you provide that salvation for us, we would be really grateful. And Boaz looks at Ruth and she he goes, I will do as you say. But then there's a hiccup in the conversation, and the hiccup in the conversation is, yes, I am a redeemer. Boaz tells her, but I'm not the closest Redeemer. There's another one, and that is kind of where we've ended up here in Ruth chapter four. So in Ruth chapter four, it begins with, what would what happens after the night that Ruth and Boaz meet, and his begins, and we're going to be in verses one through six. And it says this, Boaz went to the gate of the town and sat down there. Soon, the family Redeemer had boa soon, the family Redeemer Boaz had spoken about came by. Soon, the family Redeemer Boaz had talked Sorry, guys. Soon the BOA the family Redeemer Boaz had spoken about came by. Boaz said, come over here and sit down. So he went over and sat down. Then Boaz took 10 men out of the town elders and said, Sit here. And they sat down. He said to the Redeemer Naomi, who has returned from the territory of Moab, is selling the portion of feel that belong to her brother, our brother, Elimelech. I thought I should inform you. Buy it back in the presence of those seated here and in the presence of the elders of my people. If you want to redeem it, do it. But if you do not want to redeem it, tell me, so that I will know, because there isn't anyone other than you to redeem it, and I am next after you. And he says, I want to redeem it. He answered. Then Boaz says, on the day that you buy the field from Naomi, you will acquire Ruth, the Moabites, the wife of the deceased, to perpetuate the man's name on his property. The Redeemer replied, I can't redeem it myself, or I will ruin my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption, because I can't redeem it. Okay? So culturally, we don't live in this time in Israel, so we see that things are a little bit different than how we would do transfers of property, right? We're going to see that a little bit later, but Boaz goes to the gate, and he goes to the gate, and this is where they would do business. This is kind of like their courthouse, so to speak. It's a a euphemism for a courthouse, and he gathers guys together, elders together, to sit there and they're going to talk about what's going to happen. And it tells us that soon the family Redeemer that Boaz had spoken about, the one that he has spoke about to Ruth, comes by now what's interesting is what we'll see in the last part of this chapter is that names play an important role in the story that the author is telling. But here we don't get the name of the guy who's going to redeem In fact, we get this weird phrase in Hebrew that doesn't really mean anything, okay? And this phrase is alone my oh no, Paloma, right? It's kind of like a saying, actually. It's funny, because Declan told me this this morning. I gave him a hug, and he goes, You gave me the heebie jeebies. Like, it's literally just nonsense. It doesn't mean anything. In fact, we would say, like, you know, Joe Schmo or mister so and so came by. So this guy, he he's important to the story, but he's not important enough for them to name, and the reason why is because he doesn't actually fit into the story in that he doesn't go and redeem boa or redeem Ruth and Naomi, right? His selfishness doesn't play a part in the role of what God is doing. We've seen that the selflessness of Boaz and of Ruth and of Naomi. In chapter three, we see the selflessness go in. And this guy is kind of a in literature of foil. He's He's there to highlight the selflessness of those other characters with the selfishness of his own character. That's kind of what's happening here. So he doesn't have a name, he's just there. And then they have this court, court thing. And I love how Boaz does this, because Boaz, he's brilliant. He goes, Hey, you know Naomi. You know Elimelech because he's heard of Naomi before. Remember when they got back to Bethlehem, everybody rejoiced that Naomi was back. And they're like, hey, Naomi, you're back. And she goes, Don't call me Naomi anymore, which means pleasantness. They she said, What? Call me Mara call me bitter. So her her bitterness and her anger and her frustration over the whole situation has rained throughout the town, and so this guy had known that Naomi was in town, but he didn't step up. He knew he was a redeemer, and he knew that she had come back, but he didn't want that, because what he knew is that when Naomi died, that land would become his because he was the next of kin. So rather than stepping in and actually stepping up and doing the right thing, he was just going to let her die and then inherit the land eventually, right? So he stands in stark contrast to Boaz. Boaz, on the other hand, was already wealthy. Boaz already had land. Boaz already had everything that he needed, and yet he wanted to step in and not just add to what he had, but he wanted to provide safety and security for. Those in need, for those who need it. And so we see this, Mister so and so and so. In fact, I love how the the King James Version persists is it says that he he saw the guy, and he goes, ho, such a one. That's what he called him. Such a one like again, no, no name needed for this man. And we see that he's just not that important. And then we see, when he hears about the land, he's like, Yeah, I'll buy back the land. He's fine with buying back the land, because he knows that Boaz wants it. But then he hears about Naomi or Ruth, and he goes, Oh, no. What's this cost me something once this actually is going to bear on me something. What's going to happen when he marries Ruth? If he married Ruth, what would happen is he would be expected to have a child with Ruth. And when he had a child with Ruth, that land that he had bought, that land that he had purchased, would not go to his children. It would go to Ruth's child. And so when he looks at it and he goes, That is too much of a hairy situation for me to get involved in, because I want the land for myself, and if I have to pass it on to an air that I may have, that that I've put all this time, I put all this energy, I put all this effort into it, and it's not even going to be mine again. The selfishness is highlighted in this man. So he's he hears about Ruth, and he goes, nope, I don't want to marry her. So if I do marry her, it's going to ruin my own inheritance, it's going to ruin my life. It's going to ruin everything that I've attained. So you know what? Go ahead, Boaz, you can have her. You can have it. And Boaz. I can just imagine, at this moment when he hears that, the excitement welling up in his soul. I can have her. I can save this family. I can redeem this family, not from selfishness, but because he wants to see this family do well. He wants to love this family. I'm sure, as he was looking in the field, he was watching Ruth, and he was like, Man, she's probably she's young, she's attractive, but it's not that that's not his heart. His heart isn't that he just wants her because she's young and attractive. His heart is that he wants to love this family well, he wants to demonstrate the love that he has received from God to this family. And that's the running theme throughout all of this story. So we see, after he hears about it, that that the other Redeemer doesn't want to have Ruth. We see in verse seven, it says this, there's an interruption here, which is such a weird interruption, but we'll talk about that in a second. He says, at an earlier period in Israel, a man removed his sandal and gave it to each gave it to the other party in order to make any matter legally binding concerning the right of redemption or the exchange of property. This was a method of legally binding a transaction in Israel. So the Redeemer removed his sandal and he gave it to Boaz to buy back the property. Boaz said to the elders and to all the people you are witnesses today that I am buying from Naomi everything that belonged to Elimelech, Killian and Malan. I have also acquired Ruth, the Moabites, Milan's widow as my wife to perpetuate the deceased man's name on his property, so that his name will not disappear from among his relatives or from the gate of his hometown, You are witnesses today, and the people who were at the city gate, including the elders, said, We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is entering your house like Rachel and Leah who together built the house of Israel? May you be powerful in ephratath and your name be well known in Bethlehem, may your house become like the house of Perez, the son Tamar bore to Judah because of the offspring the Lord will give you by this young woman. So let's first talk about this whole removal of the sandal thing. We all have weird customs that we're not really sure where they come from. And this is kind of what's happening here. So the author of the book of Judges has to put in the side note in verse seven, it says, This is why he took off a sandal. Is because that was a legally binding thing. So when I was thinking about this, I was like, what kind of weird things do we do that we really don't know where they come from? And like the handshake. The handshake is something that we do to seal a deal, right? We shake hands. Not anymore. You can't take a man's word at anything, but we shake hands, right? That's what it used to happen. And that was actually an old, old thing that was used to check for weapons. So you wouldn't actually shake the hands. He would shake the arms to make sure that they're not hiding any daggers or any any weapons to to stab you in the back, so to speak. So the sandal thing is kind of like, from what I understand, from what I the research I did was an old Egyptian tradition, and basically it was like the sandal represented the land you would walk on. And so with you handing it to somebody else, saying, This is now your land, right? So it's a beautiful picture of I'm giving over my Well, I'm giving over my right to this land, and now this land belongs to you. So we can look at these weird cultures in the. Or the weird things that happen in the Bible, we can go. We don't know where that comes from. We don't really need to know it. What the important thing is, the author tells us, and he says that this man didn't want the land, so he gave it to to Boaz, and Boaz gets to keep the land because he is the one who is going to redeem it. But I want us to see this. What is his motivation? What is Boaz is motivation for this redemption. And it's not again, it's not selfish. It's actually selfless. He tells us, in verse 11, he says, or 10, I've required acquired Ruth, the Moabites Milan's widow, to perpetuate the deceased man's name on his property, so that his name will not disappear among his relatives or from the gate of his hometown. You are witnesses today. Boaz is motivation for redeeming Ruth for redeeming Naomi is so that this man's name does not die off, so that he can continue to have family, so he can continue to have land, so he can continue to be a presence in the town of Bethlehem. This is going to be significant as we look through this when we think about ancient Israelite history, land is a big part of it. God gave the promised land to his people, and when he gave it to his people, he designated where certain tribes, where certain peoples would live when this land is a gift of God. And so Boaz looks at this loss that Naomi and Ruth has had, the loss of Elimelech, the loss of Malon, and he sees it. And he sees this tragedy that has happened at the hand of the natural state of the world through death and destruction. And he looks at it, and he says, I don't want this man to die. I want my family member to live on. And so I'm going to redeem Ruth. And his child is going to be the child that is going to cause that redemption to go on. And so he also isn't just saving Ruth out of this, he's saving Naomi. He's providing for both of them. They were in destitution. They were hopeless, and Boaz steps in and shows them a great love. And then what happens after he does this? The guys don't just go, good job, Boaz. They actually celebrate and they worship God in this Did you see that in verses 11 and 12, it says, at all the people were at the city, city gate, including the elders, and they said, We are witnesses. May the Lord make this woman who is entering your house, like Rachel and Leah who together built the house of Israel, may you be powerful in epithet and that your name be well known in Bethlehem, may your house become like the house of Perez, the son of Tamar, excuse me, the son Tamar board to Judah, because of the offspring the Lord will give you by this young woman. So they're saying you are doing a good thing, and because of that, we want the Lord to bless you. We want the Lord to shine his face upon you. We want him to show you His goodness and His mercy and how he we want him to do that is he? We want him to make your name great, like the name of Rachel and Leah, if you don't remember, Ruth, is much like Rachel and Leah in that she was barren for the 10 years or so that she was she was married to maylon. She didn't have any offspring, and we see later on that she the Lord opens her womb, but she was barren. Rachel and Leah were barren. Now, Rachel and Leah play an important part in the history of Israel as well. Right? Rachel and Leah were the the mothers of the tribes of Judah, or the tribes of Israel, Judah and Reuben and Dan and all these tribes came from them. So when they say We want your name to be great like that, they're saying that we want your name to carry on for generations. We want to see that the Lord blesses you and that you become such a big part of the history of Israel that you are never forgotten because of the loving kindness that you have shown to Ruth and to Naomi. That is what they're hoping for. And and out, spoiler alert, that's what happens. That's what happens is that the Lord blesses Boaz, the Lord blesses Ruth, the Lord blesses and restores Naomi. And so Rachel and Leah were the mothers of the guys that who were named after the tribe of Israel. And then we get this hint at verse 12 about Perez, the son of Tamar. Now, the this is an interesting story that I want to communicate, but I want to do it as PG as possible. I don't know how well I'll do because it's not a PG story. So in Genesis 38 I think it is. We're introduced, we're, we're, we're introduced to this lady named Tamar before this. And Tamar was the was the husband, the wife of one of Judah's sons. And Tamar gets this live right marriage. She her her husband dies, and so she's married off to one of Judah's other sons. Jesus and Judah. Judah's other son doesn't want to come to fully commit to Tamar. He wants what he can get from her, but he doesn't want to give her offspring. And so he he doesn't do that, and the Lord punishes him for that. And then Tamar is promised another son of Judah, and Judah said, eventually, just kind of doesn't follow through with his promise. And so what Tamar does is Tamar dresses like up like a prostitute, and she's at a temple, and Judah comes by the temple, and he ends up sleeping with her, and she gets pregnant, and then she has the son, Perez. And Perez is in the the redemption of Tamar. He's in the redemption of Ruth and Boaz and she he's also in the line of Jesus, but this is a sticky situation that God uses in order to show how great his name is, that those who don't have a royal name, those who don't come from the purest of lines, are still used for the glory of God and for the movement of His scriptures for his purposes. And so that's who Tamar is. You can do some more research. She's actually going to come up and or just in a moment as well. But anyway, so after there's a celebration at the gate for Boaz is love. His has said, Remember, that's the word for loving, kindness and love that we see throughout the scriptures that pertains to God, but also people can show we see in verse 13, Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. He slept with her, and the Lord granted conception to her, and she gave birth to a son. The women said to Naomi, Blessed be the Lord who has not left you without family. Redeemer today may his name become well known in Israel, He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. Indeed, your daughter in law, who loves you is better than you. To you than seven sons, has given birth to him. Naomi took the child, placed him on her lap and became a mother to him. Though neighbor women said a son has been born to Naomi. They named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David. So through the whole story, from verse six of chapter one until just verse 13 of chapter four, we've all been in anticipation of this wedding between Ruth and Boaz, of this union, of this redemption, and the way that the author of Ruth sums this up is in one verse, in verse 13, where it says that Boaz married Ruth, and then he slept with her and she gained conception. And then there's a shift that happens. Did you see that shift that happens in verse 14? No longer is a story about Ruth and Boaz. The story is about Naomi. In fact, Ruth and Boaz, other than being in the genealogy that Boaz is in later, aren't mentioned again in the rest of the chapter. It's almost as if this whole story of what God is doing wasn't about Ruth and wasn't about Boaz, but it was about Naomi going from being empty to being full about God redeeming Naomi, because remember, in chapter one, verse 21 she said this. She said, the hand of the Lord is against me. The Lord has hated me. That was her heart, and that's why she was bitter. She believed that God hated her, and then we see that God restores her through Ruth and through Boaz with this child at the end of chapter four. And it's a beautiful picture of though we don't know how God is working. God is always working when we look at the scriptures. When we look at the story of the Bible, we don't always understand everything that is happening. We don't always have all the answers to the question. But I want to tell you that the story of the scriptures is a story about God's providence. We talked about in week one, that Providence is God's governing over the all of His creation, that he is ruling and reigning over all his creation. He has a hand in everything that happens in his creation, and in that, we see God working and moving, and we see that in the story of Ruth and Naomi, that God takes what is broken and he fixes it. That God takes those who are hurting and he loves them. That God has compassion on his creation. That's a beautiful picture that we see in all of the scriptures. In fact, this reason the scriptures were given to us were to show us God's guiding hand in all of history, leading to the perfect child that was born in Bethlehem, Jesus Christ, that everything that happens in the Old Testament is pointing towards and leading to the incarnation of Christ. And in that incarnation, when God becomes man and dwells among us, he goes to the cross to die for us, everything is leading up to that resurrection point. And then out of that we learn how to live like Christ, and we die to ourselves like Christ, so that we can. Be the people of God to the world that is lost and hurting. There are a lot of people in our lives and in our world who feel like Naomi. They have lost someone. They have they are mourning over the fact that things aren't the way that they feel like they should be. And it's our job to be kind of like Ruth and Boaz, to show the love of God to them, to tell them that there is hope, and that hope has a name, and his name is Jesus Christ, that He is the one who satisfies our soul. He is the one who takes us from being empty to giving us full. So Jesus tells us that He came to give us life and to have a life of abundance, and that abundance is abundance of joy, that life is an abundance of grace, a life that is abundance of satisfaction. In Him, we sometimes feel empty, but I will tell you this today, that the only one that makes us feel full is the Lord. The only one who can satisfy that longing is the Lord, and that's what he does for Naomi. For Naomi, the one who feels like she was left out, the one who felt like she was disregarded by God. God has seen her. He had heard her, and he comforted her, comforted her through this trial, through this time. I love how the author of Ruth puts this that the Lord granted Ruth conception, that he allowed her. So we see this in the Old Testament, that the Lord opened the womb of this woman. He opened the womb of Leah, he opened the womb of Rachel, he opened the womb of Ruth, and Ruth was able to conceive. This is a divine intervention by the God who sees us, by the God who knows us, by the God who loves us. In fact, there's only two times in the scripture in Ruth where we see that the Lord is directly involved in what is happening. And the first is in chapter one, verse six, where it tells us that the Lord heard the Christ of the people and he granted them a harvest in this time, where we see that the Lord granted and opened up the womb of Ruth. So this beautiful picture, that the that, though we may feel like God is far away. He's not far away. He is with us. He hears us and He sees us. Then we get this picture of these women. So the shift from Ruth to Naomi happens with these women who say, Blessed be the Lord who has not left you without a family. Redeemer today may his name become well known in Israel. He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. Indeed, your daughter in law, who loves you is better than the seven, than seven sons has given birth to him. The Redeemer for Naomi wasn't Boaz. The Redeemer for Naomi was his child that she has given the one who is restoring her heart, restoring her soul, and he is redeemed her. And then the women do something that doesn't happen often. I think this is actually the only time it happens in the Scriptures where the women name the child and not the family members. They named him Obed, which means servant. It's a short form of Obadiah, servant of the Lord. And Obed becomes a servant of the Lord. He serves Naomi, and he serves the Lord, and he becomes the grandfather of this man named David, the great king in Israel. So that prayer, or that praise that was saying by the men at the gates that Boaz his name would be carried on throughout history is fulfilled in this child, Obed, that he is a grandfather of David. In fact, we get a genealogy at the end of the book, in verse 18 through 20. It says this. Now these are the family records of Perez. Perez fathered hezron. Hezron fathered ram, ram fathered a memedab, a memedab, father, nation, nation. Father, salmon, salmon. Father, Boaz, Boaz father Obed, Obed, Father Jesse and Jesse father David. Why is it important that we see that God is working in this so we began at verse one of chapter one, hearing that we are in the days of the judges, where there was no king in Israel, and we, in chapter four, looking forward to the great king of Israel, David. And why is that important? It's important because David is a forerunner and a foreshadow of Christ. In fact, God makes a promise to David in Second Samuel, chapter seven, verse 16, that says this, your house and your kingdom will endure before me forever, and your throne will be established forever. Then we look forward and we're like, what does that mean? Because David's throne isn't established forever. He has a son, Solomon, who reigns on the throne for a little while, and then. Eventually all the thrones of Israel kind of wipe away. But what is this? We see that Jesus is the Son of David. That is through the line of Jesse or Obed that we get David, and it's through the line of David that we get to Jesus. Jesus is always working in his world, the Lord is always working in his world to get us to the point of redemption in Christ. So we get this little picture here of this beautiful story of this lady who was empty when she left Bethlehem and she returned, and God filled her up with this history, with this life in this legacy of David, who leads us to Jesus, and it's just a beautiful picture of understanding that God is always working. He's even working in our pain. He's even working in our heartache. He's working in all the the ways that we don't know He's working. He's working, and it's all working towards drawing us closer to the Lord Himself, the future redemption. There are 10 names listed in this genealogy, and the two most important names are Boaz and David. Boaz the redeemer of Ruth and David, the Redeemer of Israel, that points to Jesus, the redeemer of all mankind. That is the line, that is the history. And we can never forget that this legacy of this woman points us to this season, this time, the time where God steps out of heaven to put on flesh, to dwell with us, to be the perfect sacrifice for our sins to be the ultimate Redeemer, the one who would die and be rose again, so that we could have new life, so that we would not be spiritually wandering around the world, but that we would be renewed and brought into a relationship with the beautiful Creator of the universe. So even in this woman's pain, even in this woman's heartache, God is still working. I want to tell you that even in your pain, even in your heartache, God is working. In your struggles, God is working. All we have to do is we have to pray and cry out to God that he would show us how he's working in our lives. And one of the beautiful things that God gives us is he gives us this thing called hindsight, right where we can always look back and we can see the character of God in our lives. I can only imagine that as Naomi is bouncing little Obed on her knee, cherishing this gift of God, she's looking at him and she's thinking about all the things that she's gone through and how God has redeemed it. And we get the opportunity to look back on how God has used people in our lives, how God has used our life, and we can see the beauty of how God has worked through that. And we also get these stories of these men and women that we can look back on and see that God is not done, ever, until he's done. Finally, he's continuing to move. He's continuing to work. So when things feel hopeless, when things feel like they're not going the way that we we feel they should, we can look at God and go, I don't know what you're doing, but I know that you're doing it. I know that you're working. Thank you, Lord, let's pray Father God, thank you so much for working in our hearts and in our lives. Thank you for loving us and cherishing us. Thank you for seeing us and hearing us. And I pray, Lord, that if there's somebody who hasn't given their lives to you, I pray that this morning, they would do that, that they would see the beauty of salvation in Jesus Christ. They would see the love and the compassion that you have on us. We, thank you for your word. We, thank you for your aim to make Jesus known in the world through us. Lord, I pray that we would participate in that, that we would continue to walk forward in the beauty of your salvation, telling others about the Lord that we serve. We'll pray all this in Jesus name. Amen. Alright, let's.