Good morning. It was really cool seeing my son there on the on the video. It just struck me in that moment as I was watching that bumper video and I might regret saying this, Aaron actually advised me not to mention it, but I am acutely aware that there’s a picture of my torso hovering over my head.

So hopefully that won’t be too distracting for y’all today but it is great to be here. Uh, good morning friends. How are you doing today?

I had to jump back into that cause I knew that they were sitting at the edge of their seats being like, come on. Did he just miss it?

I’m glad that you are all fantastic. If you’re visiting here, my name is Alex. I’m one of the pastors here. I’m joking. Actually, my name is Sean. I work with our student ministry here. Thank you. Thank you so much. I work with our student ministry here and I just really always wanted to open a sermon that way.

So I’m sorry. I thought about doing it in a British accent but I knew that you would roast me like terribly when you, once you heard it. So I decided to not do that. I’m also just amazed by the worship that we just got to experience here as a body. How cool was that, right? To have our students and Megan on our serve team worship.

It was, Such a blessing. I was over here tearing up. I’m like, I got to compose myself before I get on stage, but to be with the students and to have my son and his friend jumping with us, it was just incredible. That’s him. All right. So without further ado today, I have the pleasure of wrapping up our series on community, the importance of it and how we go about building it.

And to begin this series, Alex gave us a couple of helpful thoughts as it pertains to community to anchor us in what it is and what it is not. The first being that there is no life without community. I think that if any of us have experienced a season where we lack community, or maybe we had to move away from community.

Or perhaps that community moved away without us. That we get this sense of feeling untethered, that there’s something missing, that there’s this essential piece of our lives that is gone. Because community brings with it encouragement. When we’re questioning our skills or our talents or giftings, it brings with it care when we’re down and out, or when we’re struggling or when we’re hurting.

Community brings with it a security and a sense of belonging when we need to fulfill those deepest needs to feel seen, known, and loved. In short, it’s bigger than ourselves and it’s an incredibly important thing. Alex also gave us the distinct, or the distinction between the word community and uniformity.

I want to reemphasize this piece for us because so often we can fall into the trap that community is uniformity, that a community is made up of like minded people with the exact same belief structures, the same opinions, the same likes and dislikes that I hold, but that is not what community is at all.

And I think if we actually look in at what community is and we think that it’s uniformity, that’s going to unravel really quickly. I don’t know about you guys, but if I found a group of people that acted exactly like me, thought exactly like me, wanted the exact same things that I wanted, it would be terrible.

Anyone who knows me and all my little idiosyncrasies would probably agree we do not need that community. I don’t want to find it, and I don’t think you would either. But a couple of times Alex gave me, gave a comment during the opening of this series that really struck me. And it’s this one. That the church is the only organization that exists for its non members.

This rea, this one really got to me because I was reading in a recent study of young, of Gen Alpha, Gen Z, young millennials. that 84 percent of them would say that they know someone who describes themselves as a strong Christian. But when asked how many of those people actually live their lives a different way, they would only 14 percent reported yes.

We need to be a church that is existing for its non members that they see us and they would answer yes to that question that they see something different. a group of people, individuals that are different than what they see around them in the rest of the world. It’s a seemingly simple yet profound statement as it articulates Jesus’s calls for us.

First, that we love our neighbor as ourself. This is one of the greatest commandments when Jesus was asked which is the most important of them. And then it also aligns with therefore and go make disciples. or apprentices of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And it perfectly articulates Alex’s imagery that he shared with us last week, that if South is a river, then we need more streams. We need more streams if we’re going to change the percentages the next time that they do that study. And it also calls into question what then is mine to do. This is where we left off last week.

What mine is then to do, and it’s a question that I want to help unpack for us today. But before we do I’m going to open us in a word of prayer. Father God, thank you for this morning. Thank you for this time of worship and the group that you have brought here today. I pray that you would give us the eyes to see, that you would give us the ears to hear, That you would give us open hearts to step into this rich community and that in doing so we would be willing to put aside some of our own selfish ambitions or things that we hold too closely so that we can become streams in that river of life that will demonstrate your love and your goodness to those that encounter it.

Amen.

Alright my family and I have been coming to South for almost a year. And over, actually a little more than a year. And over the course of that year, I think that I’ve begun to gain a little bit of a reputation around these parts. And community is incredibly important to me and to our family.

It’s core to how we function. We want to be with people on a whim or host events at our house all over the time, but it comes at a cost because I am a neat freak. And I just first want to say to any one of you out there that happens to come to my house, please know that this is my burden to bear. I understand this about myself.

I know that I am crazy. And I don’t put that on you. But I don’t think I’m very good at hiding that I’m crazy, because I’ve started to hear rumblings From people about my tidiness, about how clean the house always is, and at the end of events I’ve watched people be a little bit more careful about maybe cleaning up things that they probably wouldn’t have cleaned up at a not so crazy person’s house which I’m incredibly appreciative of but yeah, it’s like kind of crazy.

I would imagine that 12 to 15 percent or 12 to 15 people in this room have actually seen me with a vacuum in my hand, which is wild. That is a strange thing to be known for. And it is something that I am known for. And I think it’s probably a silly example, but it speaks to the question. Of what is mine to do?

And I think that when we reflect on this question, we have to couple it with another question. And that question is, what am I willing to sacrifice to do it? What am I willing to sacrifice? I can feel some of us squirming in our chairs right now, that word sacrifice. What does this sacrifice look like? You might be asking.

It’s an act of slaughtering an animal or surrendering a possession as an offering to God or to a divine or supernatural figure. So we can, we all got that covered, right? I’m sorry. Actually, interesting fact, if you Google the word sacrifice, this is indeed the first result that will come up. But I was looking for a different definition that I have for you here.

It’s an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy. More important or worthy. Sacrifice is central to the greater needs of the community. It’s essential to those things of prioritizing what is worthy, what is bigger than myself, and how can I be a part of it.

So as Alex is talking about what we have to bring to the table and what percentage of us are involved here, and we ask these questions, what then is mine to do, I would encourage us to also ask, what do I need to sacrifice in order to do it? As we see here in this next video clip that I found while prepping this last week.

Cool story, isn’t it? To see the way that the team reacted at the end there. They were so happy for Zach and they were so inspired by what it was that, oops, sorry,

thought I had a blank slide. They were so inspired by by his actions because he knew that having Zach on the team, Was more important to the community and he was able to make the sacrifice to make it happen. I think it’s particularly relevant because it’s coming up on football season. So I wanted to incorporate that in.

And maybe I was reminded of it because we just had our South Staff fantasy football draft this week. If you want to know who was ranked number one after the draft, and who was ranked number two after the draft, or who was ranked number four after the draft, you can ask Alex and Nathan after the sermon.

But I think about this example, and it resonates with me that all of the best examples that I have in community have this element of sacrifice underpinning it. We see it all the time. And the mentor who gives it their time to help us wade through a difficult decision, or we see it through a benevolence fund that is funded by this community that comes to an aid of a single mom.

Who’s trying to keep a roof over her children’s heads. Or we see it in the example of a man who was calling out to his neighbors as they drove away. Hey, let me know if you need any help. Call if you need any help. And then they do call from the middle of nowhere, Utah. And then that man goes to the auto shop, gets an obscure part that’s not found in the rural areas, and drives it overnight so that they could finish out their journey.

If that one seems oddly specific, it’s actually because it was a story of my father and the types of things that he would do for his community. This element of sacrifice. Oh, sorry.

It’s central for the greater need of the community.

And today we’re going to look at an even more powerful example of sacrifice found here in the book of Ruth.

To begin I’ll just set the scene for you a little bit. The Book of Ruth is set back during the time of Judges. And it begins with a man Elimelech, and his wife Naomi, and their two sons having to leave Judah because of a great famine, and go to a foreign land, which is Moab so that they could make ends meet.

They were there for approximately ten years, and over the course of those ten years, a lot happened. Elimelech unfortunately dies, And then Naomi’s sons do get married to some Moabite women and then those sons die as well. I can’t imagine the the pain that Naomi must have been feeling in those moments.

Suffering such great loss so quickly in both her husbands and both of her sons. So I want to pause there and think about the humanity of it. Because it’s represented in scripture in two quick verses, but I think sometimes we can gloss over what that actually means to the characters in the story. For my mother, this last year has been one that’s been very difficult.

She lost her father, her mother, her brother, and her best friend, all over the course of a couple of months. And I watched her grieve through this process. The tears that she shed over them were countless. And similarly, we hear this in Naomi’s voice as we enter the story here in verse 6. When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of His people by providing food for them, she and her daughters in law prepared to return home from there.

With her two daughters in law, she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah. Then Naomi said to her two daughters in law, Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me.

May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband. Then she kissed them goodbye, and they wept aloud and said to her, No, we will go back with you to your people.

Sorry. The suffering is on full display here, isn’t it? They’re weeping as they’re having this conversation. I can only imagine what was going through Naomi’s head at this time. She has just lost her husband. She’s lost her two sons. Her two daughters in law have lost their husbands. And she knew that during this time and that during this culture, that being an unmarried woman meant that life was going to be incredibly difficult.

There was no way for them to make money. There was no way for them to have opportunity or to provide for themselves outside of the provision of a husband. And so Ruth on the road with her two daughters in law has all of these realities come crashing down on her. And she says, there’s no way I can give you what you need.

You should just go back. Go back to your homes. Go back to your mom and dads. At least they’ll love you. You’re young. Maybe you’ll have an opportunity, as slim as it might be, to find a new husband back where you came from. But Naomi said, Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have more sons who would become your husbands?

Return home, my daughters. I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought that there was still hope for me. Even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to you. To sons, would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No. My daughters, it is more bitter for me than you because the Lord’s hand has turned against me at this.

They all wept aloud again than APA kissed her mother and in-law goodbye. But Ruth clung to her. So you see, Naomi knows that they’re in a bad spot, that there’s nothing that she can actually give to her daughters. That she’s not going to have any more sons. They’re not going to be able to take care of her.

And Orpah, no one can blame her, but she recognized that this was the case as well. So she does go home. But we see here that despite everything, Ruth clings to her. Ruth clings to her. And there’s a lot that we can take away from the way that she Conducted herself in this moment because she was actually feeling the exact same pain as Naomi in that moment.

She was grieving the loss of her husband. She was grieving the loss of her life. She thought that things were gonna go just as badly as Naomi was setting up for them, but she knew and said that there was this opportunity to sacrifice everything for Naomi. And part of that sacrifice came in her understanding and her knowledge of God’s goodness and God’s faithfulness.

She recognized that within her sacrifice that it would be rooted in God’s plan and what he had for them. Look, said Naomi, your sister in law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her. But Ruth replied, don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back with you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay.

Your people will be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, even if death separates you and me. When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. So we see that statement there.

Where you go, I will go and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. We know that Ruth must have learned of God of Yahweh from Naomi. We see that even in Naomi’s words. She’s go back to your people, go back to your gods. But her understanding of the Almighty is what is giving her the ability to do this.

It was her trust in God that was key to her willingness to sacrifice.

Sorry. All right, so that is scene one. And I apologize if it looked like I got a little off there. I did. Because I wanted to mention that the book of Ruth is a is the entire story of the Bible in four scenes with three characters. We just saw scene one with the introduction of Naomi and Ruth. It’s a story of a grieving widow, a loyal daughter in law, and a generous farmer.

But more than that, Woven into the story is the picture of God’s goodness and his redemption for his chosen people, and ultimately the promise that he is going to keep to all of humanity. Bringing us back, that was scene one. Thank you for that. But on to scene two. So Ruth is doing everything that she can for herself and Naomi.

And that includes going out into the fields to do what is called gleaning. And gleaning is when you follow behind the harvesters to pick up anything that they might have missed or that they had dropped. Probably a pretty uncomfortable feeling. She’s a Moabite woman in a foreign land. And now she’s going behind a whole bunch of people who don’t know her and picking things up.

So they obviously know that she’s in a tough situation, but lucky for her, there was actually a law for this at the time that we see in Leviticus 19. It told landowners that when you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen.

Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner. I am the Lord your God. It’s a pretty cool rule, right? I have a lot to say about this, and I think that it could be pretty beneficial in today’s society, but that’s probably another sermon for another day, and I’ll let Alex or Aaron do it. But that’s what Ruth is doing here in scene two of this play.

And she’s about to meet Boaz, who is a long lost relative, actually, of Naomi. Now that they’re back in Naomi’s homeland, she’s about to meet Boaz. And Boaz is the landowner and he sees Ruth out in the field following behind the harvesters. And he asks who she is. And some of the people tell him her story.

So when they actually engage, he knows a little bit about Ruth and says this to her. So Boaz said to Ruth, my daughter, listen to me. Do not go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with the women who work for me. Watch the field where the men are harvesting and follow along after the women.

I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. And wherever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars that the men have filled. So Boaz is welcoming Ruth into his situation, onto his land. He recognizes that she is in need. And even though there is this law of the time, I think that we can pick up on this, that it wasn’t really well received.

Maybe like we would actually see it here today. He’s warning her, don’t go and glean in another field. Don’t go away from here. Stay here. I’ve instructed the men to keep you safe. I’ve told them that everything is okay. Boaz then invites Ruth to eat lunch with him and after she’s had her fill and even has some leftovers as she’s Going back to work.

He gives this directed or sorry at this she bowed down with her face to the ground She asked him why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me a foreigner Ruth is confused She knows that this is strange and Boaz replied I have been told all about what you have done for your mother in law since the death of your husband How you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with all the people you did not know before.

May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord. Hold on to that statement. We’re going to end up coming back to it. The God of Israel under whose wings we have come to take refuge. So that’s their meeting. They have lunch and as she was leaving, she got up and Boaz gave orders to his men.

Let her gather among the sheaves and do not reprimand her. Even pull out some stocks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up and do not rebuke her. So Boaz is going along with the law of the land, but you can see here that he’s actually sacrificing so much more. He’s not just doing what he’s obligated to do.

Out of his kindness, out of his generous heart, he’s seeing Ruth, he feels sorry for her, and he’s giving her everything that she needs, even more than what he is required to give her as he asked his harvesters to take bundles and leave them for her to pick up. Now we’re going to actually go through or speed through.

Scene three, a little bit here, which is probably for the best because it’s a little bit PG 13, to be honest. But I will say Boaz is quite the gentlemen. But just so you know, what’s going on here, Naomi, Ruth comes back with all of that she has gained from Boaz. And she says to herself, man, this could be.

Our guardian redeemer, which is a long lost relative that has the opportunity to make things right, restore things for them, an individual that could buy the land that was once Elimelech’s and help, redeem them and give them a place to live. So she advises Ruth to go and pursue Boaz the final evening of the harvest to basically cozy up to him and say, Hey, you Would you be interested in being our guardian redeemer and redeeming our situation?

And so they have this conversation and we’re on to scene four and Boaz essentially agrees to this plan. Through his kindness and through his generosity he sees the needs of Ruth and Naomi and he welcomes them into that community. But before he can actually Go and do these things. There’s some nuances that he has to sort through first.

The first is that there’s another guardian redeemer in the area. Who’s a closer relative and first in line to help redeem Ruth and Naomi by redeeming the property and keeping it in the family. And then they would also have to marry a childish widow to continue the family line, which is going to become important.

So Boaz brings all the elders. He brings the other guardian redeemer to the city gates and explains to him the situation. And he gives them the, this guardian redeemer, the opportunity to step up and to care for Ruth and Naomi. Then Boaz said, on the day you buy the land from Naomi, you also require Ruth Moabite, the dead man’s widow, in order to maintain the name of the dead.

with his property. At this, the guardian redeemer said, then I cannot redeem it because I might endanger my own estate. You redeem it yourself. I cannot do it. So this individual has the opportunity to redeem the land. But in order to do he has to marry Ruth, who is a Moabite foreigner, who is from a strange land, a land that, by the way, wasn’t very popular in Judah because they were at one time a pretty staunch oppressor of the people in Israel.

And so this individual declines it. Why? Because it would be a huge sacrifice. He declines it because it would put his own reputation at risk. It would put his own estate at risk. But Boaz actually steps up. He does the exact opposite. for the sake of Naomi, for the sake of Ruth, without even blinking an eye, he says, okay, then I can be a guardian redeemer.

I am going to restore your land. And he takes Ruth as his bride and spoil alert. But this movie is several thousand years old, so I don’t feel bad. They have a son. And the women said to Naomi, praise be to the Lord who this day has not left you without a guardian redeemer. May he become famous throughout all of Israel.

He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter in law who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons has given him birth.

Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. The woman living there said, Naomi has a son and they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David. It’s interesting there, right? The women coming together and saying, Naomi has a son. It is Ruth’s son, but what’s going on in the story here is Naomi’s redemptive story.

Her redemption. Just three chapters ago, everything looked pretty bleak for her. She thought her life was ruined. And it’s a redemptive story for Ruth as well, because she similarly has been redeemed and restored and is going to have a much better life for it. But did we catch what happens here at the end of this?

And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David. The story has weighty implications that go far beyond the story of Ruth and Boaz and Naomi. It has significant implications on so much more. I said at the beginning that the story of Ruth is the entire story of the Bible. And we see here woven into it is a key component of that.

When Ruth and Boaz have a son named Obed, who is the father of Jesse, the father of David, this is the line that Jesus comes from. This is the line that God is going to continue his redemptive work, his redemptive story for all of humanity. Not just Ruth, not just Naomi. This impacts every single one of us.

So these decisions made by Ruth and Boaz, the story that we see is one that, that we have a downstream result of our own Messiah, our own Savior, our own Redemption.

So when we ask the question, what is mine to do? That question is often followed. What am I willing to sacrifice to do it? But I don’t think that we should stop there. What we see in the story is that we can actually delight in this sacrifice because just as Boaz foreshadowed earlier, may the Lord repay you for what you have done.

May you be richly rewarded by the Lord. We see that the sacrifice bears redemption and a far greater blessing than anything that we have given up. That is the story that we see here with Ruth and Boaz. It is a much greater blessing, isn’t it? I can’t think of a single time that I’ve sacrificed something or had to vacuum my living room or whatever the, it might be, that I, doing that in the heart of Jesus and the way of Jesus, that I’ve regretted it.

But I have seen so so many examples when the sacrifice. was far overshadowed by the blessing that came from it, by the impact that it had in the community, in my own life or the lives around me. So my invitation to each of us here today is to contemplate this story when answering the next two questions.

How essential is community in the life of an apprentice of Jesus? That’s what we’ve been talking about the last four weeks, the importance of community and how we build it. But for yourself, ask that question, how essential is it? to you? How essential is it to you to become a stream that flows into the river that impacts everything around it?

What time, what skills, what gifts, what finances do you have that you can contribute to this? And that leads us to our final conclusion of what is my role in community, but how much greater will the blessing be than the sacrifice? Because when we answer that question, then we have the ability to step into that community in amazing ways, in the ways that God has called us to do we have the ability to impact the lives around us and be a flowing river that brings God’s glory and his life and goodness to it.

As we do this, I would encourage us all to think about the question of is it even really a sacrifice? when the result of the blessing is far greater than anything that I could have ever imagined. When it’s a part of a miraculous and redemptive story that God is weaving. Will I even miss it when it’s compared to God’s glory?

No, I don’t think that we will. So as we close our time together, Aaron’s gonna come up and lead us in a song that kind of symbolizes the greatest sacrifice that we have. in Jesus. And as he leads us in this song, I would ask us to turn our hearts to the story that’s been running parallel over this story of Ruth the entire time.

I said in the beginning that Ruth is the story of the entire Bible culminating in the redemption that we have in Jesus Christ, who made the ultimate sacrifice for me and for you and for every one of us here today. We’re going to take some time to remember that ultimate sacrifice. Before Jesus went to the cross, he gathered with his disciples and he handed them bread and said, this is my body broken for you.

He then took the cup and he said, this is my blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in remembrance of me. So let’s take a moment and listen and reflect on the greatest sacrifice. but also the significance of the blessing that comes with that great sacrifice. So Aaron’s going to play. I would invite you to pray, take some time to reflect on it.

And when you’re ready, come to the table and the grace that Jesus has

given us.