The Three Widows

When I announce that we are going to study the little book of Ruth, the response or reaction may be varied. Some of the men folks may say, "Well, that that's a book about women." And it is. And some of the women folks may say, "Well, I don't want to hear about three widows." But you will. The nice thing about the book of Ruth is it has a happy ending. Not all stories have a happy ending.

But those of you who are serious Bible students may be asking yourself the question right now, why would the Wiersbes fly from Lincoln, Nebraska to Baltimore and then go through a terrible rainstorm to come to Sandy Cove to discuss the book of Ruth? And therefore I must defend my ministry by giving you five reasons why this book will be our focus of attention. But first let's read the first five verses of Ruth 1.

"Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem, Judah, went to dwell in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech. The name of his wife was Naomi, the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem, Judah.

And they went to the country of Moab and remained there. Then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died; and she was left, and her two sons. Now they took wives of the women of Moab: the name of the one was Orpah, the name of the other, Ruth. And they dwelt there about ten years. Then both Mahlon and Chilion also died; so the woman survived her two sons and her husband."

Most of you are familiar with the story of Ruth. Why study this book today? Right now, our government is concerned about the Mideast. You've been reading and hearing the news. Why go back so many thousand years and study this ancient book?

Well, first of all, because of what happened in this book. Well, you say, "What happened in this book?" God put people back together. There are in this world two forces. There's a force that's tearing everything apart. Satan is using sin to tear apart homes, marriages, parents and children, churches, ministries.

And Jesus Christ is in the business of putting things together. And this book starts off with emptiness, it ends with fullness. Starts with three funerals, it ends with the birth of a baby. Starts with weeping, it ends with a wedding march. And in the course of this little story, God puts lives back together.

There are people here tonight who are falling apart. The mail that I get, phone calls I receive, personal contacts I make, I'm discovering people are falling apart. We're living at a at a time in history when the pressure is so great. The enemy knows his time is short, and he has stoked up the furnace. That's why we're studying Ruth, because of what happened. What happened? God put lives back together.

We're studying the Book of Ruth for a second reason, not only because of what happened, but because of when it happened. You notice when it happened? There are two time dates given to us, two identification points in history. "Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled." The Book of Ruth takes place during the period of the judges. You say, "Well, so what?" Well, you know that during the period of the judges, it wasn't safe to walk the streets.

Judges 17, Judges 17:6. Look at it. "In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." Judges 18:1: "In those days, there was no king in Israel." Judges 19:1: "And it came to pass in those days when there was no king in Israel." You get to the end of Judges 21:25: "In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes."

Now, we're living in those days. There is no king in Israel. There should be. But they said, "We will not have this man to reign over us. We have no king but Caesar." And so, there's no king in Israel. And there will be no peace in this world until there is a king in Israel.

Judges is the book of no king. That's where we're living today. And every man's doing that which is right in his own eyes. The educators do what is right in their eyes, and the scientists, and the psychologists, and the bankers. Our taxes will go up because some bankers have decided to do what they want to do. And we have to pay for it. Even religious people.

They're saying, "Well, we don't care what the Bible says. We don't care what the preacher says or the church says. We're going to do what we want to do." That's the world we're living in. And yet, the Book of Ruth takes place in that period.

Judges is the book of no kings. Now, First Samuel is the book of man's king. They said to Samuel, "Make us a king like the other nations." And God said, "All right, Samuel. I'll give them a king they'll never forget." And he gave them Saul.

Now Saul was never meant to be the king of Israel. You know why? He came from the wrong tribe. Saul was from Benjamin, and God had decreed, in Genesis 49, that the king was going to come from Judah. He said, "I'll give you a king. You'll wish you never had him." He gave them their request, and he sent leanness to their soul. So First Samuel is the book of man's king.

Now today, we're living in the book of no king, but the next thing on the agenda is man's king. Things are going to get into such a mess, they're going to say, "Give us a king," and the devil will say, "I've got one already for you."

Second Samuel is the book of God's king. After Saul had wrecked everything, David comes on the scene, and David is anointed the king of the whole land. He's God's king. And one of these days, our David is going to return, and he's going to establish peace on this earth.

But right now, we're not living in Second Samuel, God's king. We're not yet living in First Samuel, man's king. We're living in Judges, no king. But I'm not living in the book of Judges. I'm living in Ruth, because Ruth is a love story that's going on during a time of apostasy, apathy, and anarchy. Those of us who know Jesus Christ as our savior, our Lord, are living in the Book of Ruth. Here's this beautiful story going on during the book of Judges, when there's no king.

We're studying this book because of what happened. God put people back together again. And because of when it happened, during the book of Judges, and during a famine, and afterward, "that there was a famine in the land." Well, you say, "That doesn't apply to us. We have plenty of food." This is true. I've seen very few people on these grounds who look undernourished. We can thank God for that. There are places we could be in this world where we would face a famine. When you prayed this morning, "Give us this day our daily bread," I hope you meant it.

But there's another kind of famine in our land today, it's a famine that Amos talked about over in Amos 8:11, when he said there's a famine of the hearing of the word of God. "Oh," you say, "you can turn the radio on and hear preaching." Listen closely. Are you hearing the word of God?

I have sat in meetings and wondered why the preacher had his Bible in the pulpit. This has not happened in our home church, thank God for that. We're living in a day when there's a famine of the word of God. People are not hearing the word of God. People want entertainment. They don't want the word of God. That's why I give thanks for some of our Bible conferences that are still Bible conferences.

We're studying the Book of Ruth because of when it happened, during the Book of Judges, during a famine. And we're studying it because of why it happened. Why did Almighty God arrange for Ruth, not Orpah, to come back with Naomi to Bethlehem, Judah?

Why did he arrange that Boaz be in the field just when Ruth was there in his field? Why did he arrange that Boaz fall in love with this lovely girl, who was an outsider and a foreigner, marry her? Well, the answer is found in the last word of the book: David. This little book is in the scriptures because of David.

When you read the genealogy of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 1, you discover four women are named there. Unusual, because the Jewish people did not put the women's names in their genealogies. But Matthew did, of the Lord Jesus. Tamar is there, Judah's daughter-in-law, by whom he had children. Ruth is there, a foreigner. Rahab is there, a prostitute. Mary is there, that virgin whom God called to be the mother of our Lord.

And Ruth is in the Bible because God was working out a promise he had made to Abraham. Some of you folks have the idea that foreign missions, missionary outreach begins with the Great Commission in Matthew 28. It does not. Do you know where missionary outreach begins in the Bible? In Genesis 12, when God said to Abraham, "Through you, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed."

And God was working out a plan to bring his own son into the world to die for lost sinners. And his channel was the Jewish nation, and he narrowed it down to a tribe, Judah. Then he narrowed it down to a family, David. And then he narrowed it down to a woman, Mary. But there could not have been a Jesus born had Ruth not been on the scene.

It's interesting to note that the Book of Ruth is one of 14 books in the Old Testament that starts with the word, "and." We translate it often in the English translation, "now." But in the Hebrew text, it's just an "and." Now, if I sent a manuscript to one of my publishers and chapter one began, "and," they'd send it back.

But the Holy Spirit knew what he was doing, because the Book of Ruth is a part of a great continued story. God gets a new book and says, "and." What do you say "and" for? Oh, because it's a part of the previous one. And, and, and. We're studying Ruth because of why it happened. You and I would not be here tonight were it not for Ruth.

There's another reason why we're studying it, because of who made it happen: the Lord. Now, the interesting thing is this: there are no miracles in Ruth. Oh, there are providential miracles, where God works in and through people to accomplish certain things. But there are no miracles.

There are no burning bushes, no multiplying of loaves and fishes, no raising of the dead. Just ordinary everyday working people, common people, with heartaches and joys, with some of their dashed hopes, ordinary people making decisions, and yet God is at work, ruling and overruling to make things happen.

Ordinary people. I fear that in our evangelical world today, there is developing a fan club mentality, a celebrity complex, and when you see your friends in the fall you say, "What conference were you at? Who did you hear?" "Oh, we've heard him, but have you heard?" Oh, and we get this celebrity, and people come to meetings and say, "Oh, my. We aren't important, we're just ordinary people."

Occasionally, I get phone calls from pastors and they usually start out by saying, "Brother Wiersbe, I'm the pastor of a small church." I stop them. I say, "There are no small churches." And I go on to say, "And there are no big preachers. We're all just ordinary people. And God works in the lives of ordinary people."

Now, they didn't know God was at work. When Ruth went out to the field to glean, there was no sign that said, "This way to Boaz's field." That's where she ended up. When Boaz came to check on his workers and bless them, wouldn't it be nice to have a boss come in and bless you instead of curse you? "The Lord be with you." And no sooner had he pronounced that benediction, he saw this lovely girl standing there, said, "Who does she belong to?" That wasn't just an accident.

Don't ever wake up in the morning and say, "God's not paying any attention to me," because he is. He knows the thoughts that he thinks toward you. He thinks about you. He knows you, he knows your name. He's numbered the hairs on your head. He knows every heartache, every burden, every problem, every fear. He knows all about it.

The things you won't tell other people, he knows all about, and you're important to him. That's why this book is in the Bible. The Holy Spirit is saying, "Don't get discouraged. Don't feel like you're just a nobody in the midst of a great big world. You are somebody and God cares about you."

There's another reason why I want us to look at Ruth and that's this: because of what God is doing today. What God did in the Book of Ruth he's doing today. I want to underscore that. Some of you read your Bibles like ancient history, and you shouldn't, because the Holy Spirit who wrote this book is in the world today. The only person in the world today when all of this happened is the Holy Spirit. And why is he here? To make it happen again.

Now, what does God do in the Book of Ruth? Same thing he's doing today. Number one, he's reaping a harvest. This book about harvest. Two whole chapters are devoted to a harvest. Boaz was the Lord of the harvest. And the turning point in the book comes when Ruth puts herself at the feet of the Lord of the harvest. And then things start to happen. By the way, I hope some of us come to that turning point. You say, "Well, my life needs to be put back together." Just put yourself at the feet of the Lord of the harvest, he'll do the rest.

What's going on today? He's reaping a harvest. Are you a part of that harvest? There's a harvest today the like of which the Church has never seen. But one of the problems is Christians are using the sickles on each other instead of on the harvest. I have a suspicion, I can't prove this, it's just an intuition I have, but I have a suspicion that God is moving the center of gravity for missions out of the United States to the third world. We're seeing more and more missionaries coming from Brazil, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, India. Are you a part of the harvest?

What else is God doing in the book of Ruth? Well, he's reaping a harvest. He's claiming a bride. That's what God's doing today. He's claiming a bride. If you're saved through faith in Jesus Christ, which is the only way to be saved, you're a part of the bride.

That amazes me that God Almighty should want me to live with him forever. I have some Christian acquaintances I wouldn't want to spend 1 week's vacation with them. Now, I love them. I love them, but I can't say I want to spend a week's vacation with them. And yet, Almighty God wants to spend eternity with me, and not just with me, he wants to call me by his son's name, the bride of the Lamb. I'll be Mrs. Lamb. That's remarkable. Now, if you've lost the wonder of that, get it back.

What's God doing today? Reaping a harvest, claiming a bride. Book of Ruth. Something else he's doing, he's building a family. See, in chapter 4, a baby is born, and then there's a list of 10 names there and all of these begats, he's building a family. What's God doing today? Building a family. Are you in that family?

Now, if you're not, you're not a part of the bride. And if you're not, you can't help in the harvest. He's building a family. "As many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the children of God, even to those that believe in his name, which are born." That's the only way to get into God's family, born through the Spirit of God.

There's something else God is doing. It's in the book of Ruth. God is reaping a harvest, and God is claiming a bride, and God is building a family, and God is securing an inheritance. This book has a lot to say about inheritance. We're going to find out that there was one man there who said, "Oh no, I can't marry Ruth because I would jeopardize my own inheritance." Boaz said, "I'll do it, and I'll make her a part of my inheritance." That's what God did for me.

That's one thing for me to have my inheritance in Jesus Christ. "That we're born again unto a living hope," wrote Peter. Not a dead hope, a living hope "by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead unto an inheritance that's incorruptible and undefiled, doesn't fade away, reserved in heaven for us who are kept by the power of God through faith."

Now, I rejoice that he is giving me his inheritance, but Ephesians 1:18 goes one step further and says, "I am a part of his inheritance." He took me, a piece of junk, and said, "You are valuable. I'm going to make you a part of my inheritance." What's God doing today? He's securing an inheritance. That inheritance is in Jesus Christ. Now, if you are not in Jesus Christ, you have no hope. You're poor and you will be poor throughout all eternity when you could be rich. That's why we're studying Ruth.

Now, some of you are great outliners, especially if you mark your Bibles. I hope your Bibles mark you, and I think they do. If you want to give names to these four chapters, it's very simple. Chapter 1, you have sorrow, Ruth weeping. Chapter 2, you have service, Ruth working. Chapter 3, you have submission, Ruth waiting. I have an easier time working than I do waiting. In chapter 4, satisfaction, Ruth wedding. Here's a girl who starts off as a poverty-stricken foreigner who's a widow, and she ends up the wife of one of the finest men in town, one of the wealthiest, completely satisfied.

Now, let's look at Ruth 1:1-5. I want to scan the whole chapter first and then talk with you about problems, the problems of life. In chapter 1, you find a lot of weeping. You get three women together, there can be some weeping, and they had every right to weep. Here, here's a family, Elimelech, which means "my God is king." Isn't that interesting? Judges, no king. ==1 Samuel, man's king. 2 Samuel, God's king. Ruth, my God is king.

That's the only way you can live in the book of Judges. When every man is doing that which is right in his own eyes, the only way you and I are going to make it is to be able to say, "My God is king."

In recent months, the Lord has been rebuking me and dealing with me concerning being honest in my singing. It's so easy to stand in church with a hymnal and sing "King of my life I crown thee now," but you stop and say, "Wait a minute, is he king of my life? Is he king of my time? Do I give him the time he's supposed to have? Is he king of my budget? Is he king of my strength? Is he king of my friendships?" Elimelech, my God is king.

The trouble was his God wasn't king, because what happens here is they face a problem, it's a problem of survival. And in order to solve this problem of survival, they run. There's a famine in the land, and so Elimelech and Naomi and Mahlon and Chilion pack up and go 50 or 60 miles down to Moab.

Now, if you want to mess up your life, there's the first step to take: run away from your problems. That's the first step. I'll guarantee you'll be well on your way to disaster. Run away from your problems. That's Ruth 1:1-5.

Now, it gets worse. They ran away from their problems. And, of course, they get to Moab, and Elimelech dies. Isn't that interesting? He left Bethlehem because he might die. There's a famine in the land. "I'll go to Moab so I can live." He went to Moab and died. A change in geography doesn't necessarily solve problems. Ran away from their problems. Now, Elimelech dies. Then Mahlon dies, and then Chilion dies. And here are the three widows. "What shall we do next?"

Well, in Ruth 1:6-18, the, the bulk of this chapter, there's a second mistake that is made. First, they ran away from their problems. Now, Naomi tries to cover up her problems. I preached along this line on the radio some years ago and got some nasty mail from some people who thought I was too hard on Naomi.

Somehow, they had made Naomi into some sort of a plaster saint. She says to her two daughters-in-law, "Go back home." Can you imagine a Jewess who knows the true God telling her daughters-in-law to go back and worship Chemosh, the god of the Moabites? I can't conceive of such a thing.

Now, I'll tell you why she wanted it. She planned to go back to Bethlehem and start all over again. She didn't want to take those two girls with her for two reasons: one, she couldn't afford to support them, and two, she did not want the people back at Bethlehem to know that her two sons had married women from Moab. She's trying to cover up her mistakes. Step one, if you want to get in trouble, run away from your problems. Step two, try to cover up.

Step three, Ruth 1:19-22, here's her third mistake. She got bitter against God. When she got back to Bethlehem, the women and they looked at her and said, "Can this be Naomi?" She didn't look like the Naomi they knew. She'd been away for over 10 years. She'd been through three funerals. She'd been through awful heartache and problems, and she didn't look like the Naomi that they knew.

You know, there are three stages in life: childhood, youth, and "My, you're looking good!" They didn't look at Naomi and say, "My, you're looking good." They were thinking to themselves, "What happened? What happened?" And, "Who is this?" "This is my daughter-in-law." "Oh. Oh, you mean that one of your boys married a Moabitess? I mean in spite of what Deuteronomy says, 'An Ammonite and a Moabite shall not enter the congregation of the Lord unto the tenth generation.'" "Yeah. Yeah."

You see what Naomi was trying to do was to keep these girls away from Bethlehem so that there wouldn't be evidence that she'd been out of fellowship with God. Her two sons were out of fellowship with God. They'd gone to Moab to solve their problems and ended up with worse problems. But she couldn't keep Ruth from coming.

So in chapter 1, we learn of three mistakes we must not make. 1: Running away from your problems. 2: Trying to cover up your problems. 3: Getting bitter against God because of them. In over 40 years of ministry, I have met miserable saints who are mad at God. They're carrying grudges against God. They're poisoned. They're poisoning churches. They're poisoning committee meetings. They're poisoning board meetings. They're poisoning family. They're bitter against God. And Naomi had to learn how to be happy again.

Now, focusing on Ruth 1:1-5, let's just look quickly. Why would Elimelech, a Jew, Naomi, a Jew, and Mahlon and Chilion, sons in a Jewish family, leave Jewish territory to go to enemy territory? You know where the Moabites and the Ammonites came from. They were born because of the incest that Lot committed with his two daughters after the explosion and destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. They were the avowed enemies of God and of the Jews. Now, what caused this Jewish family to leave God's country and go to enemy country? The same thing that causes you and me to try to run away from our problems.

Number one, they were walking by sight and not by faith. They looked at the fields around Bethlehem and saw no food. That's interesting, Bethlehem: house of bread, there was none. Ephrathah: fruitful, there was no fruit. Judah: praise, no praise. They looked around and said, "If we stay here we're not going to survive. We better go someplace else." They were walking by sight and not by faith, trying to run away from their problems.

Now, if you've ever done this, and I guess at one time or another we've all done it, we get it honest. We learned it from our parents. Adam and Eve, when they had sinned against the Lord, they ran away, tried to hide. God caught them.

Abraham tried the same thing. Abraham follows God from Ur of the Chaldees, goes to the promised land, and there he is in the promised land, says, "Well, we can, we can retire now, it's going to be easy." No, a famine comes. That ever happened to you? You obeyed the will of God, and then a famine came.

See, the media preachers, some of them say if you obey God's will, you will always have health and wealth and prosperity. Oh really? Abraham obeyed God's will and walked right smack into a famine. But instead of staying there and saying, "Lord, I believe that the will of God, that the grace of God can keep me where the will of God has led me," instead of saying that, he ran off to Egypt, got in hot water.

A lot of people in the Bible tried to run away from their problems. Sometimes I sympathize with David when he wrote Psalm 55 and said, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove, that I could fly away and be at rest until this storm is over." I felt like that, especially after reading mail. In every one of us is that desire for comfort, for peace, for security. We're made this way.

But we don't grow by sitting on a cushion. We don't grow by being spectators at a battle. We don't grow by buying a ticket and watching people wrestle. We grow by wrestling, and battling, and carrying burdens. God never said the Christian life would be easy. Some of you have read Scott Peck's book, The Road Less Traveled. He opens that book, he's a psychiatrist, he opens his book and says, "Life is difficult, and when you accept that fact, it gets easier." It does.

They were walking by sight and not by faith. It's rather interesting that Bethlehem wasn't living up to its name, there was no bread. Judah wasn't living up to its name, there was no praise. Ephrathah wasn't living up to its name, no fruitfulness. Elimelech wasn't living up to his name, God was not king. He didn't get the family together and say, "Let's have a prayer meeting. Let's find out what God wants us to do." "Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful." When you start walking by sight instead of by faith, watch out.

The second cause of their mistake was they were living for the temporary and not the eternal. Now I know we have to have food. God knows that. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, "Your Father in heaven knows you need these things." What, food, clothing? He knows it. Elimelech had a wife to feed and two sons to feed, and he said, "I can't do a good job here, I'm going to go someplace else."

That's the temptation that Satan laid before Jesus. It went, it went something like this: "I heard a few weeks ago from heaven, your father said, 'This is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased.' Now if he's pleased with you, and he loves you so much, why are you hungry?"

Ever heard that? "If God loves you so much, why'd the baby die? If God loves you so much, why'd you lose your job? If God loves you so much, why was there that auto accident? If God loves you so much, why are you being moved?" As though the love of God protects us from the burdens of life.

"Why don't you use your divine power," says the evil one, "and turn stones into bread." Our Lord's first temptation was to live for the present and not for the eternal, to live for the temporary and not for the permanent. He said, "No, I'm not going to do that." Esau did it. He sold his birthright for a bowl of soup.

They were walking by sight, not by faith. They were living for the temporary and not for the eternal. We used to sing a chorus in our youth rallies years ago, you don't hear much of it anymore. "With Eternity's Values in View." Didn't Al Smith write that? I think he did. "With eternity's values in view, Lord, with eternity's values in view. Let me live each day, let me do each day's work for Jesus, with eternity's values in view." You've made some decisions today. Were they in the light of time or eternity?

Third cause was they were living by human wisdom, not by divine wisdom. James warns about that in James 3. He says, "There is a wisdom from above, and there's a wisdom that is earthly, sensual, and devilish." Earthly, the world. Sensual, the flesh. Devilish, the devil. And all their neighbors said, "Well, you probably ought to stay here in Bethlehem. You belong here. This is where God put us. And if God sent the famine, God can also send us the food."

Elimelech said, "No, the smart thing is to go to Moab and we won't stay long." There's a change in verbs here. In Ruth 1:1 they were just going to dwell for a short time, but Ruth 1:2 tells us they remained there. "Oh, we're just doing this temporarily. We're going to come back." They never did come back except two of the widows.

They made three bad decisions, didn't they? They left Bethlehem, that's bad. They went to Moab, that's worse. Then they allowed, Naomi allowed the boys to marry Moabite women, that's even worse. Three funerals, heartache, tears. Why? Because they were walking by sight, not by faith.

You walk by faith when you obey God's word and claim God's promise in spite of the consequences. The three Hebrew children said, "Our God's able to deliver us. But even if he doesn't, we're not going to bow down to your idol." They did not know what God was going to do. They could see themselves as cinders. God delivered them.

They walked by sight, not by faith. They lived for the temporary, not the eternal. And they lived by man's wisdom, not by God's wisdom. And did you notice something? They tried to run away from their problem, and things got worse. They tried to run away from their problem, but they couldn't, because you know what the biggest problem is? Not the famine on the outside, the problem on the inside.

Folks, the heart of every problem is the problem in the heart. We can blame in-laws and outlaws. We can blame Democrats and Republicans. We can blame all sorts of people and situations, but let's face it. If we're not walking by faith, if we're not living for the eternal, if we're not going by God's wisdom, we are our own problem. I don't care where you run. You can cross every border. It won't change your heart. Emerson used to say, "A change in geography never overcomes a flaw in character," and it doesn't.

Well, we're ending on a rather negative note, aren't we? I'm sorry about that, because in our next study, I want to pick up that second section, where Naomi tries to hide her mistakes. And you know who saves the day? Ruth, the foreigner, Ruth, the outsider, Ruth, the reject. She saves the day. You know why? She has faith in God.

I don't know what our problems are tonight. We all face them. I don't know what your burdens are. We all have them. Oh, you say, "There are times I wake up in the middle of the night and I can't sleep." I know what you're talking about. "Oh, there are times I hate to have the phone ring. I don't know what's going to come." I know what you're talking about.

But I know this much, in this book, Almighty God takes ordinary people who made a mess out of things, and he said, "I'm going to rewrite that script. I'm going to replace sobbing with singing. I'm going to replace corpses with a little baby. And I'm going to take these two heartbroken widows, and make them two of the happiest people on the face of the earth." God does this for ordinary people who will put themselves at the feet of the Lord of the harvest.

Gracious Father, who are we that you should listen to us, look upon us, work on our behalf? We did nothing before we were saved to merit it. We've done nothing since to deserve it. And yet, in your grace and mercy, you care for us. And you have written that we should cast all of our care upon you, because you care for us. And you have written that if you did not spare your own Son, but gave him up for us all, how much more will you give us all things? Our needs are different tonight, but we come to the same God. And we pray, Lord, help us not to run away. Help us not to cover up. Help us not to get bitter. Help us to come to the feet of the Lord Jesus, the Lord of the harvest. This is our prayer through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.