Alright brethren, let's turn
in our Bibles to Ruth chapter 1. Ruth chapter 1. I want to
read the first 7 verses. 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 sojourn in the country
of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. And the name of
the man was Elimelech, in the name of his wife Naomi, in the
name of his two sons Malon and Chilion. They were of the tribe
of Ephraim. They were Ephratites of Bethlehem,
Judah. This is where our Savior was
born, Bethlehem. And they came into the country
of Moab and continued there. And Elimelech, Naomi's husband,
died, and she was left and her two sons. And they took them
wives of the women of Moab. The name of the one was Orpah,
and the name of the other Ruth. And they dwelled there about
ten years. And Malon and Chilion died, also
both of them. and the woman was left of her
two sons and her husband. Then she arose with her daughters-in-law
that she might return from the country of Moab, for she had
heard in the country of Moab how that the Lord had visited
His people in giving them bread. Wherefore, she went forth out
of that place where she was, and her two daughter-in-laws
with her, and they went on the way to return unto the land of
Judah. Now, God's church, His church
is Bethel. You're sitting here right now
in Bethel. It's the house of God. The house
of God. And God's house is the house
of bread. That's what it is. It's the house
of bread. And the reason God's house is
the house of bread is because Christ is our bread. He's the bread of life. When
we speak of bread, we're talking about life. He's the bread of
life. And He ministers this bread to
His children by His Word, through the preaching of the Gospel.
So we need to be in the house of bread under the ministry of
Christ the bread that we might partake of the bread and live.
This is of utmost importance. We must have it. It always is
somewhat telling to me that when people leave an assembly where
the gospel is preached, for however long they're gone away from that
gospel, Every morning, they wake up and they eat. At lunchtime,
they eat. At dinner, they eat. And they
don't stop. They keep eating. Every day,
they eat, they eat, they eat. Why? Because they know if they
don't have that bread, they will die. That bread is life to them. So they keep eating every day
and every day, every day, every day. Well, why do they do that
but they've left the house of bread and they're not feeding
in His house? Because it's not life to them.
It's not life to them. One of our greatest expressions
of faith in Christ, one of the greatest expressions of faith
in Christ and love to our brethren is to bear with one another's
errors. Somebody sometimes will say something
and it's just flat wrong. You bear with it. Because it's
not your place to teach them. You can't compel them to believe
what you believe. It's not your place to do that. It doesn't matter who they are.
If it's the preacher or if it's the people. It's not your place
or mine to compel them to believe. God has to give them that word.
So we have to bear with their error. That's an expression of
faith in Christ, trusting He can do the work. And it's an
expression of love to your brethren. We have to bear with one another's
slips and falls and shortcomings. We have to just bear with it.
You think how many times, I think of how many times sitting there
in a pew, listening to the Gospel preached, I think of how many
times my pastor would have walked out and had no reason
to fellowship with me anymore. if He had based it on me being
faithful and me not making mistakes and me not slipping and falling,
but He bore with it and kept preaching the Word to me. Why?
That's what I needed. That's what I needed. And that's
a great expression of faith and love to continue in the faithful
attendance and support of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And one
of the first steps to apostasy, to apostasy, to totally being
turned over and made known to be a reprobate, apostasy. One of the first steps to apostasy
is the neglect of assembling in the house of bread to hear
the gospel of Christ. It's always justified in a man's
mind when he stops doing it. He always justifies himself before
others. He's got some well-founded arguments,
he thinks, that he's saying, this is why I've done this. He always tries to justify. And it starts out usually to
be temporary. But it usually ends in death.
It ends in death. It's not justified. And everybody
he talks to trying to justify it knows it's not justified.
Everybody he talks to knows he's wrong. And that's just all there
is to it. Except the man that forsakes
the house of bread. Every believer has God's Word
and God's revelation. Now listen carefully. We have
God's Word and God's revelation. This is God's revelation. This
is His revealed will, right here. And He reveals this in the heart
of His child so that we understand what God's revealed will is.
And we're to use revelation, God's Word, the revelation God's
given us, we're to use revelation to interpret providence. That's a big lesson. So listen
and be sure to get it. We interpret providence by God's
Word, by God's revelation. And yet we tend to use providence
to interpret revelation. We use providence to determine
what we should do. We look at things going on in
our lives to determine what God would have us to do. And that's
wrong. It's just wrong. Human reason
interprets God's revelation by providence. Human reason looks
at things going on and interprets God's Word by providence, what's
happening around me. And that's wrong. Faith interprets
providence, what's going on around me, by God's Word. Now that's right. That's right.
God's revelation in His Word teaches me what I'm to do. No
matter what God puts before me in providence, this Word teaches
me what I'm to do. Providence doesn't teach me what
I'm to do. This Word teaches me what I'm to do. But I should
never interpret God's revealed will by providence. That's the
mistake Elimelech makes. Alright, first of all, we see
the trial that God gave in Providence. Now, it came to pass, verse 1,
it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was
a famine in the land. God did that. It came to pass
because God did it. God's absolutely in control of
everything and if it comes to pass, that's Providence. If it comes to pass, God did
it. God's doing it. Providence, He's God's sovereign
hand at work. And sometimes God brings a famine.
He brings a famine. In Bethlehem, Judah, there was
a famine in the land. Sometimes He brings a famine.
That famine may take the form, it could be a problem that you're
having somehow in your health or something going on with you. It could be a problem between
you and another brother. It could be a problem between
you being pulled away for some worldly reason. It could be any
number of things. We're talking about a trial here.
This trial was a famine. But that trial could be in many
different forms. And God sends those. And then
at the same time, God sends something else. An open door. That will
make it easy. Very easy. to get out of that
trial, and to get out of that suffering, make it very easy. At the same time as there was
a famine in the land of Bethlehem, Judah, there was plenty in Moab,
just right down the road. There was plenty. And so what
happens when we use human reason to interpret God's revealed will,
looking at providence, is this. This is what happens when we
use providence to interpret God's Word, and to interpret, try to
figure out what God would have me to do, using providence to
figure that out, rather than the Word. Here's what reason
does. Bethlehem, Judah's got a famine here. I mean, look,
look, honey, look. Our cupboards are absolutely
bare. The meal in the barrel is gone. I got a family to feed. I got mouths to feed. I gotta
make a living. Look at this. And look how fruitful
Moab is. They're not starving there. They
got plenty there. And everything's going well there.
I can feed my family with ease. And we gotta be religious about
this. You know, we gotta always justify this somehow religiously. And you know what we could do,
honey? God's opened that door for us so we can go down there
and we can make us some money and get some bread and we can
send it back and provide it for our brethren. We can still bring
an offering. We'll just be in Moab. We can
give an offering and we can do that for our brethren. Instead
of suffering with our brethren, we'll provide for our brethren.
Oh, we won't be with them. We won't be there suffering with
them. But we'll provide for them. So interpreting God's will by
providence is wrong. That's wrong. Reason says when
he looks at that, he says, well, it must be God's will for us
to go to Moab. God's done it. He's opened His
door for us. He's showing us this is His will for us to go
to Moab. And we're not forsaking the house
of the Lord. This is just going to be temporary. We're just going
there. We're going to sojourn there until we can get everything
in order, and then we'll be in the house of the Lord somewhere.
It's just temporary. That's all it is. And God's done. He's opened this door for us.
And then when it's easier, and we see we can come back, we'll
come back. Something along those lines is what Elimelech did. And verse 1 says there, And so this certain man of Bethlehem,
Judah, went to sojourn in the country of Moab. He and his wife
and his two sons, and the name of the man was Elimelech, and
the name of his wife, Naomi, and the name of her sons, Malon,
Chilion, Ephetites of Bethlehem, Judah. But now this is how faith
interprets providence by God's Word. Now let's look at the flip
side of that. This is how faith interprets that providence by
God's Word. by what we know God has said
and taught us. God's word said Moab is the place
where God's curse is on it. His curse is on that place. God
said that. And it's outside the land of
promise. It's outside the house of bread. And there's nothing but idolatry
there and God's not even bothering to chasten them or put judgment
on them. Because they're not His and He's
got no sheep there and He don't care about what they do. They're under the curse. Faith
hears God's Word that Bethlehem Judah is in God's land of promise. That's what we hear. Faith hears
it. Faith looks at God's Word and
hears God's Word and knows this Bethlehem Judah is in the land
of promise. God said that. And this house
of bread is that where God's planted us. He could have put
us anywhere else, but He put us in this house of bread. That's
where He put us, right here. And Bethlehem is God's house
of bread. Faith looks at this. He knows
this by God's Word. God has established His place
of worship here. This is where God promises to
meet with His people. Faith looks at God's Word and
knows this. Faith looks at God's revealed will and knows the God
who cannot lie promised He will provide for His people. This
famine might be severe, but God's promised He will provide for
His people. That's God's Word. God has revealed
by His Word that He will not meet us anywhere else but this
one place. Over the mercy seat. In the blood
of a lamb. in the high priest of God's choosing.
That's where God's going to meet with us. And faith in our day
knows God's Word is where I've built up my church, planted my
preacher, planted you there, giving you the gospel of Christ
the Lamb, Christ the High Priest, Christ the Mercy Seeker. This
is the place where I will meet with my people. And so, faith
looks at all of the stuff going on around, and all the trial
going on around, and by knowing what God's Word is, faith says,
I'm responsible to teach my family to obey God's Word, God's revelation. I'm responsible to have them
under the gospel. I'm responsible to have... king and priest of
my house, and I'm responsible to have them there where they
can hear the gospel. So I don't care what God's done in this
providence. That open door right there is
an opportunity. God's showing me this is an opportunity
for me to obey Him rather than obey my fleshly reasoning. And
that's just what it is. When God gives you a trial, and
makes a severe trial in your life, and then He opens up a
door that would make it so much easier? If that going through
that door to make it easier is not what's revealed in this Word,
then what God has done for you is He's given you an opportunity
as a child of God to deny yourself and follow Him. That's what it
is. It's an opportunity. God's trials
in providence and God's open doors of prosperity are opportunities
for the believer to deny himself. Opportunities. Opportunity to
teach all in this house that nothing is as important as obeying
God's Word. Opportunity to teach our family
that nothing is as important as being in God's house where
God has established His worship. Opportunity to teach family and
friends that it's better to trust the Lord than to use providence
and lean to our own understanding. These are opportunities. You
see what I mean when I say faith interprets providence by God's
Word? Faith interprets what's going
on in the world around me, what this open door means and whether
I should go through it or not. Faith interprets that by going
to the Word of God. That's what God means when He
says, Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not
unto thine own understanding. Those two things are opposite. Trusting in the Lord and leaning
to your understanding are opposite things. They're opposite things.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge
Him. Go to Him. See what His revealed
will is. See what He would have me to
do. And He shall direct your paths. You will not be the worst
for doing it. But be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord. You see, the man
that can leave the house of bread and can leave his the gospel,
and leave the place, and leave... Every time a person leaves a
place, God's put them. Especially if it's a small congregation.
They're injuring that congregation. They're injuring that congregation.
The big congregation is not going to miss you if you come or if
you go. Because God took a little small group and built that congregation
and gave them faith to bear all the trials and built it up to
where it's at now. And they're the reason that place
is what it is now. Because He gave them grace not
to injure that congregation. Not to lean to their own understanding.
Not to be wise in their own eyes. But the man who who will injure
a small congregation and who will look out for himself and
who will have his way. Oh, he's going to always make
it sound like it's according to God's Word. But all it is,
is a man being wise in his own eyes and not fearing the Lord.
Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from
evil. You want to depart from some
place? Depart from your own understanding. Depart from your own way. that
way that would be a forsaking of God's house and a forsaking
of His people and an injury to the gospel of God and the good
of His people. Forsake that if you want to forsake
something. Depart from evil. And it will be health to your
navel and marrow to your bones. That's so. Now secondly, We see
that if we err and depart from the house of bread, God will,
if we're His child, God will remove every obstacle. He'll
remove every obstacle. Verse 2, it says, and the end there says,
They came into the country of Moab, and they continued there. Look back up at the end of verse
1. It says, they went to sojourn
in the country of Moab. That's temporary. They went to
sojourn there. But then you come to verse 2
and it says, and they came into the country of Moab and they
continued there. They were just going to sojourn,
but they continued there. Now, there's a famine mentioned
in Judges that lasted seven years. And more than likely, that's
the famine we're talking about right here. It lasted seven years. And if you look in verse four,
it says at the end, they dwelled there about ten years. So they're
already there three years past the famine being over. The famine's
over now. They could have went back. The
famine's over. But they kind of enjoyed Moab. It had some
good things to offer. And they were getting prosperous
there, so they stayed there. They stayed there. But Naomi
is God's child. That's God's elect child. He
loved her from everlasting. And Christ is her surety, her
redeemer. He's not going to let her stay
away from the house of bread. That's just not going to happen.
He's not going to let her perish. No, sir. He's going to do whatever
it takes to bring her back to His house and correct her. And even if it means removing
everything that is hindering her, everything that's standing
in her way and keeping her from coming back, He's going to take
it away. So look at verse 3. And Elimelech, Naomi's husband,
died. You know why? God killed him, that's why. God
made him to die because he's in her way. He's in her way. He's got to be taken away. And
she was left and her two sons, and Malon and, verse 5, verse
5 says, Malon and Chilion died also, both of them. And the woman
was left of her two sons and her husband. Elimelech, his name
means, My God is King. That's what his parents believed
when they named him Elimelech. Well, Elimelech didn't believe
it. He didn't believe it or he'd stayed where he's at. But God
showed by taking him away and removing him from being an obstacle
to His child. God showed He is the King. He
is the King. He will remove whatever gets
in the way of His child. And melon means weakness and
sickness and chileon means consumption. And that's what both these boys
would have continued to be if God had left them in Naomi's
way. And so He took them too. It doesn't matter what it is
that's standing in the way of God's child. That job might look
so good and so sweet and everything that was promised to you was
great and wonderful and you thought this was going to be it right
here. I'm going to get the brass ring now. Before long, guess
what's going to happen? it's going to turn bitter. God's
going to make it to where, nope, that's not going to be your provision.
It doesn't matter what it is. If you're God's child, now, if
you're not His and He lets you stay there, that's bad. That's bad. He'll leave you alone.
So, whatever it is, it might be bitter, it might be painful,
it might hurt, and it will, because God's chasing it. You know, when
you correct a child, if you don't hurt that child, you haven't
done a thing. All this, oh, don't do it again now, or I'm going
to do so and so. Yeah, OK. You said that the past
25 times. I'm going to keep on doing it. Let me take something away from
you to hurt you. And you take something away from them that
they ain't played with or cared about in 10 years. OK, big deal. It's got to hurt them. It's got
to hurt them. You've got to bring them down.
You've got to break them. And God's going to make sure He hurts
His child. He's going to chase them. He's
not doing it in anger because He's put away the fierce fury
of His anger in Christ our Redeemer. He's doing it in love because
He loves His child. But He's going to correct His
child. A man who won't correct his child and stop his child
from going headlong into a cursed land with a cursed people don't love the child. So what do we learn from Elimelech
and his two sons? If we lean to our own understanding,
using providence to justify our rebellion instead of walking
by faith in God's revelation, when we attempt to save our lives
that way, we're going to lose it. That's what happened to Elimelech.
He tried to save his life and he lost it. Turn to Luke 9.22. The Lord said here, the Son of
Man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders,
and chief priests, and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the
third day. And He said to them all, if any
man will come after Me. You see, if you go after Him
and follow Him, everything He just said He endured, to a lesser
degree, you're going to have to endure that too. You're going
to have to suffer many things. You're going to have to be rejected.
You're going to have to be slain. But He'll raise you. That's why
He says this, If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself
and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whosoever will
save his life shall lose it. But whosoever will lose his life
for My sake, If we try to save ourselves that suffering and
that rejection and we take that easy way like Elimelech did,
we're going to lose it. We're going to lose our life.
But if we're His, He's going to see to it that we're brought
back. And He's going to make you deny
yourself and suffer. He's not going to allow you to
provide for your people. He's going to make you suffer
with His people. and provide by suffering with
his people. Moses, he was the grandson of
Pharaoh and was heir to the throne and all the riches of Egypt.
Providence would have said, Moses, look what you can do for God's
people. But he was willing rather to forsake all that and deny
himself all that and suffer with God's people. That's how He provided
for them. That's how He ministered to them.
That's how He showed them what's more important is trusting God and
following the Lord rather than your ease. Christ suffered for
His people. Christ was rejected for His people.
Christ was slain for His people. That's what He did in the place
of His people. By Him losing His life for His people, He saved
our life. That's what He did. He saved
our life. And now He calls us to rest in
Him, and to suffer for Him, and be rejected for Him, and be slain
for Him, and He promises us, but if you lose your life for
My sake, I'll save you. I'll save your life. I'll save
your life. You never You're never going
to go wrong trusting the Lord and following the Lord. No matter
how much suffering you have to endure in this life. Because
Christ will have no one and no thing competing for His affection. Nothing. And let me tell you
this. You can have some well-founded
arguments and you can sound like you justify yourself to men and
maybe you even convince other men that what you're doing is
just or whatever. Listen to me. God looks on the
heart, and you can't fool God. So don't be trying to pull the
wool over mom and daddy's eyes, or sister brother's eyes, or
preacher's eyes. God looks on the heart. Get honest
with God, and wait on the Lord, and follow the Lord. That's what
He's telling us to do. And He will provide. Alright? Thirdly, lastly, When
he does this chastening work, he took all that away from Naomi
and he's able to work repentance in his people and make us willing
to return to God's house of bread. He's able to work repentance
and make us return to God's house of bread. Now, even in our rebellion,
this is how sovereign our king is. Even in our rebellion, he's
able to bring his will to pass to accomplish what He will, what
He purposed from eternity, even in our rebellion. I couldn't
begin to try to explain that to you. You know, because you
think, you get to looking at Providence and how everything
works, and then how your rebellion plays into it, and yet it's real
rebellion, and yet God's working it to bring His will to pass
that He determined before to be done. Look at this, verse
4. And they, Naomi's sons, took them wives of the women of Moab.
The name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other was
Ruth. And they dwelled there about ten years. You see, not
only was Naomi a chosen child of God, so was Ruth. This is
the first place we begin to see that God has an elect people
among the Gentiles, just like He does among the Jews. And Naomi,
Elimelech was not one of those children, as far as we can tell.
Neither was Malon or Chilion. They were in Israel, but they
weren't those children chosen of God. But Naomi was, and here's
Ruth, a Moabite girl, and she was a chosen child of God. How's
God going to get her to the house of bread? Takes his hand off
Elimelech, and Elimelech rebels. Goes to the place that's easy,
down there in Moab, where he can be prosperous and not do
without anything. And it was rebellion. It was
out and out rebellion against God. But God worked it, because
He's going to bring this girl Ruth to Him. And His two sons
are down there, and it's out and out total rebellion. It's
against God's Word to marry somebody that's not a believer. And they
go, and there's these Moabite girls. Never heard the Gospel. Don't know a thing about God.
And they went and married them. They went and married them. Rebellion.
That's all it was. Rebellion against God. God's
in total control of every bit of it. Because one of those girls
is Ruth, the Moabite. And she's a chosen child of God. And God's going to bring her
back. You see what I'm saying? God will overrule even your... That
doesn't say now, oh, let me just sin then because God's going
to bring to pass His will in it. You may prove yourself to
be an Elimelech and just killed and put out of the way. But yes,
God's going to bring His will to pass even in the rebellion
of sinners. So now Naomi's left alone and
she's got these two daughter-in-laws. She's got no place to worship
the Lord. She's got no brethren to help her. She's got no way
to provide for herself. And the sweetness of Moab is
now bitter. All she can do now is trust the
Lord. And you know that's really the only time we do. When we
can't do anything else. When God's made it so you can't
do anything else. I know people that went to a
church that was a popular, known church. A gospel church, a faithful
church. It was a known church. Been around
a long, long time. I won't name it because I don't
want to do that. But they went to this church. Moved their family
to this church. There's other places they could
have went. But it would have been a suffering thing. It would have been a building
thing. They'd had to put out chairs and they'd had to suffer
and they'd had to sacrifice and it would have been a tough thing.
But this place looked like it'd be so much easier. They went
there. And about six months after they went there, the whole thing
broke up. This big church, established,
couldn't possibly anything happen to it. And it broke up. And there they were. Done committed
to this, moved there, stuck there, there they are. God takes everything away, everything
you trust in, everything. I told a brother one time, I
said, I believe if our congregation was somewhere centrally located
where all the other churches around are, somewhere around
Kentucky, Tennessee. I've had so many young couples
and young starting out, you know, their families and stuff. They
told me, Clay, if we would come and settle your ministry in a
heartbeat if it just wasn't in New Jersey. And I told that to
a faithful pastor and he said, Clay, you don't want them sitting
under your ministry. If it's a matter of convenience
and ease, you don't want them there. You want those God's giving
the heart to be committed. You want those God's giving the
heart to stay in the house of bread and suffer and deny themselves
and be there because they can't do anything but trust Him. That's
who you want. So now this woman's got everything
stripped from her. So what's going to happen now?
She's at this place where everything that she thought was going to
be easy, everything they thought was going to be a smooth cakewalk,
now it's turned into just nothing but bitterness. Now what's going
to happen? The Lord sent somebody declaring
the good news to her, just like He did to you today. Verse 6,
it says there she heard, Ruth 1 verse 6, she heard Second part,
she heard in the country of Moab, the man sent the gospel down
there in the Moab, how that the Lord had visited his people and
giving them bread. Back up there at the house of
bread. Back up there at the house of bread. And so, that's the
news, that's the good news. God's visited his people and
given them bread. Christ is the bread. He said, your fathers
ate bread and man in the wilderness and they're dead. I'm the bread
that comes down from heaven that the man may eat thereof and not
die. I'm the living bread which came down from heaven. If any
man eat of this bread, he shall live forever. And the bread that
I give is my body. It's his body he voluntarily
gave up for his people. So that when He satisfied divine
justice, when He died, justice was satisfied. The wages were
paid so that now everybody He represented must be saved because
the law says justice is satisfied. And because God's purpose is
to show them mercy, mercy's got to be shown to them because God
can't charge them a second time. He cannot charge them a second
time. He cannot lay sin to their charge again because He did it
in Christ their substitute. So He's got to give them repentance.
He's got to give them faith. He's got to bring them into the
house of bread and He's got to keep them in the house of bread.
Even when we turn and run, He's going to take everything away
and grant you repentance and faith to bring you back to that
house of bread because God has given bread in His house and
He's going to have you in His house. And so, what happened? Verse 6 says, Then Naomi arose
with her daughters-in-law, that she might return from the country
of Moab. Verse 7 says, Wherefore she went
forth out of the place where she was. Oh, I love that. Now, this is a good departure.
This is a good forsaking. She went out of that place where
she was, that cursed Moab, and her two daughters-in-law with
her, and they went on their way to return to the land of Judah,
back to the line of the tribe of Judah, back to Christ. That's
where they went. One daughter-in-law went back. She wasn't a chosen
child of God, and when she was given the opportunity, you can
read on about it there in the next few verses, she went back.
She came out physically just for a little while, but she didn't
come out by grace. So she went back. But Ruth came
out. God brought Ruth out. So her
and Naomi went back to the house of the Lord. Now did the Lord
disappoint them when they got back to the house of the Lord?
Did He disappoint them? Does He ever disappoint His child
when they obey Him? Look at Ruth 4. Ruth chapter
4, verse 13. Boaz, the kinsman redeemer, Richard
Christ. He took Ruth, and she was his
wife. And when he went in unto her,
the Lord gave her conception, and she bare a son. And the women
said unto Naomi, Blessed be the Lord which hath not left thee
this day without a kinsman, that his name may be famous in Israel.
And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher
of thine old age. For thy daughter-in-law which
loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons, hath
borne him. And Naomi took the child and laid it in her bosom
and became nurse unto it. And the women, her neighbors,
gave it a name, saying, There's a son born to Naomi, and they
call his name Obed. He's the father of Jesse, the
father of David. Do you know who that was? Boaz,
the kinsman, redeemer, is the picture of Christ. He has this
son named Obed, who has a son named David, who later on has
a son named the Lord Jesus Christ. That came through that Moabite
woman named Ruth. See how God worked it all and
He said, He's going to be the restorer of your life. Everything
you need is in Him. Don't ever, ever, ever, ever,
ever leave Him. Ever. Alright, let's stand together. Father, we thank You and we pray
now You bless the Word. Make us truly, truly look to
Your Word and hear Your Word and know that this is how we
can determine everything we do in this life. Lord, keep us here. Make us to be faithful so that
we don't have to go through that suffering and that pain, chastening
and affliction. Lord, we thank You that You do,
that You won't leave us even when we err. Thank You, Lord,
for Your mercy and grace in Christ Jesus. In His name we pray, Amen.