Ruth 2

Thank you, friends. You may be seated. Most of you know my name is Dave Gibson. I am

the interim pastor here. Last Sunday, Steve Walker, one of our elders, commissioned me by

saying I can't remember if he said I want you to be boringly predictable or predictably boring. So

I'm going to get some clarity from him on that and then move forward after I understand exactly

what he wanted me to be. So a couple of updates. We're going to look at Ruth Chapter 2. The

1st update is that we are. Already working very hard with the Center Consulting Group. I've

been in multiple conversations with them this week. We have already sent to them all of our

documents because they will review our documents to see. Exactly what we do by way of

church governance, by way of elder’s making decisions, rule? How we choose elders, all of that

stuff very important for church health. We are also gathering 34 names of people who will be

personally interviewed to talk to them so they can get some background on us.

And then in addition to that, I have the first video call with their three consultants this coming

Thursday. So we are diving into that and I'm taking great courage with the work that's already

begun. I really trust and appreciate these people, solid Christian people. And they're going to

help us.

So that said, we're going to Ruth Chapter 2 today. There's an outline in your bulletin if you would

like to follow on that. Very happy to have you do that. And before we look at that.

I want to give a brief review of what we said last week. So last week we said this book

was set in the time of the Judges, so sometime around maybe 1360 to 1050 BC. Obviously after

the Exodus, before the kings that came in with Saul and David and Solomon. But there was no

king in Israel. They're ruled by regional rulers. Last verse in the book of Judges.

Judges 21:25 “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in their

own eyes.”

Which of course was a colossal mess. Spiritually, socially, and everything else, when everyone

in any society does what's right in their own eyes, the outcome is a colossal mess. We may be a

little familiar with that personally in our lives, in our nation. So here's the book of Ruth they are

talking about. The possibility of honoring Christ ridiculously in the midst of a mess. We looked

last week at Ruth, chapter one, basically this family, Elimelech, Naomi, Mahlon, Chilion. They go

down to Moab to sojourn because there's a famine in Israel. They get down there, the two boys

get married, the husband dies, the two boys die,

Then Naomi comes back. To Bethlehem, her hometown, with her, with her daughter-in-law in

tow, this Moabite woman named Ruth. She comes back to try a new life, a restart. She gets

back and says, don't call me Naomi, (pleasant). Call me Mara, (bitter) because the hand of the

Almighty has been against me. God himself has chosen to hammer me. This is her perspective.

I said last week, let's take it easy on this woman. She's been through a lot. I've been in that

heart and frame of mind for far less than losing all three of my family members. And she is a

good and recovering woman. It is a joy to watch her recovery.

Last week I said here's the core idea. What if there is an all powerful, almighty, all

compassionate, all knowing God working behind the scenes in our lives? What if it's more

important to trust Him. To trust Him than constantly say, is my life full or empty? What if he's

about to do something amazing? These are all the realities of Ruth's life, all the realities of

Naomi's life. God is about to do something amazing. And the first part of that we are going to

see today, what if?

We are really pretty bad at discerning what God's up to. God doesn't counsel us on what he’s up

to, friends. Which is flatly brilliant on his part. You know, I think I'll go ask Dave what I should do.

That's crazy.

Ruth chapter 2. Please, if you have a Bible, let me read this to us. Ruth chapter 2.

Here's what happens now.

“Naomi had a kinsman of her husband, a man of great wealth of the family of Elimelech, whose

name was Boaz. And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, Please let me go to the field, and glean

among the ears of grain, after one of those in whose sight I may find favor. And she said to her,

Go, my daughter. (3)So she departed and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers. And

she happened to come to the portion of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of

Elimelech. (4) Now behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said to the reapers, In other words,

He comes from Bethlehem and goes out to the field. And he says to his workers, he says

to the reapers, may the Lord be with you. And they said to him, May the Lord bless you. Then

boys said to his servants, who was his servant? Who was in charge of the reapers? Whose

young woman is this? So he sees Ruth there, and he doesn't recognize her. He doesn't know

her. Who's gleaning here? It's a small town. He said. The man in charge of the reapers said she

is the young Moabite woman who returned with Naomi from the land of Moab. And she said,

please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves. Thus she came and has

remained from morning until now. She has been sitting in the house for a little while.”

(8)”Then Boaz said to Ruth, Listen carefully, my daughter, do not go and glean in another field.

Furthermore, do not go from this one, but stay here with my maids. Let your eyes be on the field

which they reap, and go after them. Indeed, I have commanded the servants not to touch you.

When you are thirsty, go to the water jars and drink from what is drawn by the servants. Then

she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and she said to him. Why have I found favor in your

sight that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner? Boaz replied to her. All that you

have done for your mother-in-law after the death of her husband has been fully reported to me,

and how you left your father and your mother in the land of your birth and came to the people

that you did not previously know. May the Lord reward your work and your wages be full from

the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge.”

Verse 13, “Then she said, I have found favor in your sight, my Lord, for you have comforted

me. And indeed you have spoken kindly to your maidservant, though I'm not like one of your

maidservants.”

I'll talk about this a little more in a bit, but Ruth's understanding of who she is, in Boaz's

understanding of who she is, are pretty well separated here. I mean, Boaz thinks a lot higher of

her than she's kind of thinking, because I'm a Moabite, I'm outside the covenant. How do you

even know me? And she's in shock that this man is treating her with such kindness. But he has

reason to:

#1 he's a follower of God and

#2 He knows the character of this woman, so he has reason to treat her with kindness.

Verse 14.

“In the meantime, Boaz said to her, Come, come here, that you may eat of the bread, and dip

your piece of bread in the vinegar. So she sat beside the reapers, and he served her roasted

grain, and she ate, and was satisfied, and had some left. And when she rose to glean, Boaz

commanded his servants, saying, let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not, do not

insult her. Also you shall purposely pull out for her some grain from the bundles, and leave it,

that she may glean, and do not rebuke her. So she gleaned in the field until evening. Then she

beat out what she had gleaned and it was about an ephah of barley. She took it up and went to

the city and her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. So all she also took it out and gave

Naomi what she had left after she had been satisfied.”

In other words, she brought it to go box the rest of her lunch. Couldn't even eat all that.

“Her mother-in-law then said to her, Where did you glean today? Where did you work? May he

who took notice of you be blessed. So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked,

and said, The name of the man with whom I work today is Boaz. Then Naomi said to her

daughter-in-law, May he be blessed by the Lord, who has not withdrawn his kindness to the

living and the dead. And Naomi said to her, The man is our relative, he is one of our closest

relatives. Then Ruth the Moabite said, “Besides he said to me. You should stay close to my

servants until they have finished all my harvest. Then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. It is

good, my daughter. That you go out with his maids so that others do not fall upon you in another

field. So she stayed close to the maids of Boaz in order to glean until the end of the barley

harvest and the end of the wheat harvest, and she lived with her mother-in-law.

I want to pray for us one second, my friend. And I want to do that by reading one particular

prayer from the apostle Paul in the book of Ephesians. 1:17-19 “We pray that the Lord our God,

our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give to us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the

knowledge of Him. Having the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened so that we will know

what is the hope of our calling, What are the riches of the glory of your inheritance? God in us,

your Saints in what is the surpassing greatness of your power toward us who believe?” We pray

in Christ's name, Amen.

We live below the tapestry–but one day we will see the top side.

Problem: Periodically we make a very bad assessment about how our life is going.

Friends, there are many households, especially in the Middle East, where a father or a mother,

a husband or wife will create tapestries. They have a frame in their own home that will be

their business place. And on this big frame, they will have all of the fabric stretched across it.

And they will sit and work on it and put the thread in and out and build amazing designs,

beautiful things, all the colors, coordinated, clearly designed, clearly intentional pictures,

whatever scene they are making. And if that couple has a 2 year old child who's running around

the house while mom or dad works, they might be lying underneath that frame and looking up at

the bottom. When you lie under the A-frame of a tapestry and look up from the bottom, you see

a mess. Color chaos, threads hanging down randomly. There's no picture, there's no design.

There's chaos. And so the child looking at the bottom just sees a mess, but the artisan looking

from the top sees a developing beautiful picture.

We are people who are lying on the floor on our back looking at the bottom of God's tapestry.

It can look like a mess, no color that we can see, no design, no beauty, no intention, just strings,

loose strings hanging all over the place. A lot of our lives feels like a child under a tapestry with

a huge amount of loose strings, and therefore we will periodically make a very bad assessment

about how the pictures come together.

God knows how it's coming together. He sees it, he's designing it, he's intentional, he's making a

thing of beauty. He's very good. He's very good at what he does. But we're seeing the bottom

side of the tapestry.

So I said that to say maybe we need to reassess how the tapestry looks to us personally, and

Naomi is in the slow process of reassessing her tapestry. She looked at the bottom of it. She

was hurt, she was angry, she was bitter. She decided God was against her. But now she's going

to come into a slow process of reassessment and we're going to watch her on this slow path of

renewal.

So Ruth chapter 2 is dealing with a good woman by the name of Ruth, a good man by the name

of Boaz, a good and slowly recovering woman by the name of Naomi, and an extremely good

God by the name of Yahweh. These are the four main actors as we come in to chapter 2.

Act one: A good woman takes initiative to address her and her families” needs. (vv 1-7)

A good woman, that is Ruth, takes initiative to meet the needs of herself and her family. Ruth is

a person of sacrifice, compassion, and she takes initiative to help. Amazing character, amazing

loyalty, a remarkable woman.

As I said last week, Naomi comes back to town with a woman who is now a follower of God,

who is committed to her, who is about to put her in the line of the Messiah, who is about to give

her a child and grandchildren, who's going to provide for her whole life.

Naomi comes back to town full. She is in terrific shape. And so Ruth is a sounding woman who's

a Moabite. She's not a Jew by birth. She's not in a covenant by birth, but she comes into the

covenant relationship of God by faith, leaves her own country, leaves her own people, leaves

her God's small G, leaves her best chance of getting married, sacrifices all of that, and comes to

be in the land of the Jews.

What does she get for her sacrifice? What does Ruth get for her sacrifice? Well. In the process,

she gets a covenant relationship with God. In the process of that, she ends up in the line of the

Messiah. In the process of that, she has her story told in a book of the Bible that's recorded

forever, and in the process of that she has a book of the Bible named after her. The word of God

is eternal forever. That's quite, quite an exchange. Amazing exchange as CS Lewis had a quote

in which he says. Put First things first and we get second things thrown in. Put second things

first and we lose both first and second things.

Or Jesus said it this way, you must lose your life to save it. It's easy to see from three millennia

ago, Oh yeah, that all lines up. But here we are today making our own choices. Would I be

willing to lose my life to save it? That's what Ruth did in this situation.

Verse one. “Now Naomi had a kinsman of her husband, a man of great wealth of the family of

Elimelech, whose name was Boaz.”

This word now and this first verse is the literary device called attendant circumstance. So the

author is telling us a story and then he says to us, oh, by the way, here's an attendant

circumstance. Something that's true and also exists is going to be extremely important in the

story going down the road. We don't know. We don't know yet, but it's going to be extremely

important. The attendant circumstances, there's a man in Bethlehem whose name is Boaz. He's

a very close relative of Elimelech.

He's a person who's going to be important. If you're watching a movie at the very beginning, you

kind of figure out, you know, who the protagonist is, who the hero is and and the camera could

be scanning along and there's a bunch of people standing there. And then it stops for a second,

stops for a second on a kind of a dark looking man at the back of the crowd and then moves on.

The director is signaling us and attendant circumstance. This guy is going to be important. Not

necessarily good, but important. Or it might be panning along and it stops for a second. On this

woman who's one of the three attorneys in the deal, and then it moves on and the director is

saying this woman's going to be important and attendant circumstance. This man is going to be

important. Boaz is a relative, but he's not a distant uncle. He's an extremely close relative.

And in fact, in this book, he is the kinsman Redeemer. How many of you know that concept, the

kinsman Redeemer? A bunch of you do. All right, here's what that means. In this time in the

nation of Israel, if a man died with no children. The expectation was that a close relative would

marry his widow and raise children to his name. And he's a kinsman. He's very close and he's a

Redeemer. He's redeeming the line of this man who has passed away. So the responsibilities of

a kinsman Redeemer are very well spelled out. This man, Boaz, is single. He's wealthy, he's a

relative. He has the power to buy the field, He's willing to buy the field, and he is a type of Jesus

Christ. What that means is he is teaching us who Jesus is and what he's going to be like.

The four characteristics of a kinsman Redeemer are that he he had to be a person who was:

#1 A very close relative. And Jesus calls himself our brother. He had to be a person

#2 who had no personal debt. Boaz wasn't in debt. He and Jesus himself had no sin.

He was not in debt. He had to be a person

#3 who had the means to redeem the field. He had to have the money to buy it. Jesus had His

precious blood to pay for us. And He had to be a person

#4 who was willing to redeem the field. And Jesus said, I am willing to give my life, to pour out

my life and my bread on the cross for all of these people. I am willing. He was the

kinsman Redeemer to us.

Now there is a hilarious One of the funniest things in the Bible is.

Up in Ruth chapter 4 around the concept of kinsman Redeemer. I find it purely hilarious. I'm not

going to tell you what it is. Obviously you've got to come back in two weeks to find out what it is,

but there's a hilarious reality about another kinsman Redeemer in this situation. So basically the

plot is thickening. We know now there's an attendant circumstance. The camera has stopped for

a moment on Boaz. We're going to figure out what he's up to.

So Naomi verse two or Ruth rather verse two goes in. She begins to glean. She's a very diligent

woman. She was gathering the sheaves that were left over because in Israel they had a concept

called gleaning. You could go in a field that belonged to somebody else and the stuff that wasn't

gleaned, you could have, and they would intentionally leave the corners with the grain, with the

grain unclean for the poor and you could pick it up. We and Idaho Falls, we had a gleaning

system. We were allowed to go into potato farmers fields. After they had picked up the potatoes

and there were all kinds of potatoes there, we'd pick them up and take them to the food bank.

This is a system to help the poor. And in fact, Kathy and I were so motivated that we put a line

item in our monthly budget simply labeled the poor. And we have an amount of money that we

just say to each other every month who needs it this month and every month somebody needs

it. And it's just a joy to be a part of helping in that. This is what's happening here.

Verse three critical issues. Ruth happened to stop at the field of Boaz. The very kinsman

Redeemer happened. Happenstance is random. Except it wasn't random. Except there was an

intention of the God of the universe behind it. Since he's always good, he's always up to

something. Nothing happens to us as believers by accident. There's intention in all of this and

this woman happens to stop in this particular field.

Kathy and I were graduating seminary. We we didn't know what we're going to do. We signed up

to host a missions night at our home in Duncanville, TX. And what that meant is they're going to

the seminary and would send someone to represent some mission and explain to the 12 of us

gathered there what they do. We happened to be assigned to Send International out of Detroit

and they sent a man named Ed Randall. I still remember him. He must have passed away by

now. 6 foot 8, A gentle giant who loved Jesus ridiculously. And because they happened to send

Send International and Ed Randall to our home, we ended up serving for nine years with Alaska

Bible College. Because of that happening, it was clearly God's intention to me, to Kathy and me.

It was just the luck of the draw. Who are they going to send here? That's what's going on in this

situation. She showed up in a field. God is always good. He's always up to something. We have

to pay attention to what he's up to.

Verse four, he comes in may the Lord be with you and they say may the Lord bless you.

Here's a man who's bringing his faith into the workplace. It's a lot easier to bring faith into the

workplace when you own the thing and then when you work for Micron. I understand that, but

still we are responsible to bring our faith into the workplace and the leader. The supervisor said

this is Ruth, she is a Moabite woman who came back here with Naomi. The interesting part with

Ruth to me is that Boaz paid attention. Who was there? He knew what was going on in his own

field. And so she's identified as a Moabite and not a Jew. And therefore, generally speaking, she

will be an outcast, generally speaking. Now, friends, I want to walk on some very thin ice for one

second. That is this God is the champion of the widow, the orphan, the downcast, the poor, and

the foreigner. God is the champion of people who can't help themselves because of his towering

compassion. We need to be the champion of people who can't help himself, including

foreigners. Now, I am a person who believes wholeheartedly in vetting people who come into

our country. I lock the doors of my house at night. Why? I want to vet the people who come in.

You know, if it's my granddaughter showing up, come on in. If it's a guy with a mask and a pistol,

no thank you. I want to vet people who come in.

I think we should vet people who come in. This is my first week and I'm probably about to get

fired now. I don't know. But God is the champion of these people, and we need to be the

champion of the people who have come in, preferably vetted.

This man, Boaz, is a champion like God of a woman who is down and out. So Ruth takes

initiative to deal with the problem.

I have a poster in my office that said, Dave, what have you done about this problem? In other

words, have I taken initiative on this problem or am I just grousing about it? Dave, what have

you done about this problem? This woman said we're poor. Neither one of us have a job. We

don't have any food. I know what, I'll go out and do something. And she did. Huge respect for

this woman.

Act Two: A good man takes initiative to provide for the needs of others. (vv.8 - 16)

Verse 8 and verses 9, Boaz shows up. I want to read those to you again real quickly

to see his perspective and his response to what's happening here.

Verse 8 Then Boaz said to Ruth, :Now listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or

leave this one, but keep close to my young women. Let your eyes be on the field which they

reap and go after them. Indeed, I have commanded the servants not to touch you and when you

are thirsty, you can go to the. Water jar and drink from the water that the servants are drawing.”

So he is saying to her, hey, stay here. I want you to be provided for here. I want you to be safe

here. This is a dangerous place for a woman, a foreign woman, to be harvesting in a field with

field workers.

I spent a summer on a wheat harvest crew when I was 16. There were some people in that

wheat harvest. Now I was 16. I was 6 foot 3. I wasn't a woman. I mean, it was different for me,

but there were some people on the wheat harvest crew who were not safe people.

And that's the same situation going on here. They are not safe people. So stay with my people.

Boaz says, and then falling on her face, she says, why are you doing this? Why are you doing

this? I'm a foreigner, verse 10. I'm not among your people. I don't understand this. I mean, I'm

grateful. I have no idea why you would be doing this. And Boaz says to her versus 11 and 12.

I know about you. I know about the kindness you showed to your mother-in-law. I know the

character of your life. In essence, I respect you, I appreciate you, I want to be a help to you and

Naomi. Boaz gives her this powerful blessing. May the Lord reward your work and your wages.

Be full from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge. He

gives her a verbal blessing. It is so important to give people a verbal blessing.

My very first mentor in ministry, a man named Norm Foss. Gave me a verbal blessing on my

second day of work that I remember today. It put wind in my sails those years ago and it puts

winds in my sails today. A few months ago, I heard a guy speak at another church, a very young

man. He had been signed to a very difficult passage. I'm reading the passage before speaking,

saying, oh, good luck buddy. And he did a beautiful job with it, biblical, truthful, courageous,

kind. I went up to him and afterwards and I said to him, that was masterfully done. He needed to

hear that he had done well on that. We need to give each other verbal blessings.

Verse 13.

Ruth said to Boaz, you have comforted me even though I'm not like any of your maidservants.

As I said briefly in reading this, she sees herself as a lowly person, a maidservant, a foreigner.

She's amazed that this man is showing her kindness. She's grateful. She's shocked. Verse 14,

Boaz says come and eat lunch with the workers and she ate so she had so much. He gave her

so much, she had to go. The kindness just keeps going on verse 15 and 16, he says. Let this

woman glean among the sheaves, even the standing wheat. Allow her to glean even where the

poor people are not supposed to be gleaning. Let her walk right out in the standing wheat and

get what she wants. Amazing generosity being shown to her continually. Now, friends, it seems

to me that Boaz is going way above and beyond with this woman. Let me read to you what he's

done so far. He said glean only in this field. I commanded the men not to harass you and give

you access to the water jar. He gives her a huge lunch. He generously gives her so much

roasted grain from his own hand. He let her reap in the standing grain, and he gave her a verbal

blessing. Why is he doing this? He loves God and he cares about people.

I think there's something additional going on. Personally. I know of a story years ago where a

man in Missoula Mt was building his own house and a college kid whom he knew from church

had a pickup and he asked this kid to come over one Saturday and haul

some stuff to the dump. The kid came over hauled at the dump the next Saturday without being

asked. The kid was back helping haul it to the dump. The next Saturday was back and this man

is going man this. This is a very servant hearted college kid. And then the light went on. He said,

oh, I also have a very beautiful daughter his same age in college. And I and that beautiful

daughter have been married for 50 years because there was something else going on besides a

servant hearted college kid. I think maybe I'm a misguided romantic. Maybe I'm being, maybe

I'm interpreting by my own heart rather than by what the book says. But put it in a hopper. Think

to yourself what's going on here?

Act Three: A good (and slowly recovering) woman begins to hope again. (vv. 17 - 23)

She's gone down, lost her whole family, comes back with her daughter-in-law. She's embittered.

She's out of hope. If I had to move to Russia because of economic failure here, and I get to

Russia and my entire family dies. I'm going to feel hammered. That's what she felt. But she is

slowly on the path to recovery. She is a woman who is still with God. She's going to recover.

And so verses 17 to 23 she's in a state of sadness and loss. But there's beginning to be a

glimmer of hope coming in. Psychiatrists tell us that we have to be able to project ourselves into

a meaningful, happy future in order to go on. To some degree, we have. Meaningful happy

future in order to go on and this woman was starting to see that she was a woman who had

thought I'm not going to have any children. I'm not going to have any grandchildren, not going

to have any glorious family gatherings. I'm not going to have any security in my old age. And

yet there's a glimmer of hope that this might happen.

Verse 17. Ruth thrashes out the grain she got. It's an ephah of barley. The lowest estimate by

scholars is it was 30 lbs. The highest estimate by scholars is 50 lbs. In either case, it is a lot of

grain to bring home for one day of reaping. She lugs it home to her mother-in-law along with it to

go box and Naomi is in shock. This is like your neighbor saying, hey, we've got some tomatoes

leftover. I put them in a box on the porch. We want them. Sure, I'll come get them. You come

over there and there's like 50 lbs of tomatoes. You're going. That is a box of tomatoes. I didn't

quite realize I was getting this much. That's what's going on with Naomi. As she looks at this,

she gives a verbal blessing. May the man who took notice of you be blessed. May he be

blessed by the Lord who has not withdrawn his kindness from the living and from the dead.

There's a flicker of hope coming in verse 19. Ruth reveals it was Boaz who has done this for

her. And verse 20, the narrator says. Of Boaz. He is a relative of ours. He is one of our closest

relatives. The wheels are spinning in Naomi's head. She's very familiar with Kinsman

Redeemer. She's very familiar and she's thinking to herself, maybe something will happen.

Here's the bedrock act, the final section. There is a good God who happens to send Ruth to the

field of Boaz. Happens to send Ruth. Ruth is taking refuge under the wings of God. She gave up

the God's small g of Moab for the God capital G of Israel. Yahweh, the God whom we serve as

well. We have to find a place of refuge in a hard world, friends. We can't deal with this

ourselves, we have to run somewhere.

You know the seven-year old who kicks over his brother's Lego tower that his brother has been

building for four hours. Where does he go? Either goes behind Mama or he locks himself in the

bathroom. He already has his place of refuge figured out. And he's got to find a refuge. Well, we

need to find refuge. And Ruth found refuge in the God of Israel.

Not, you know, we can go to God. We can go to money, we can go to drugs, we can go to

accomplishment. We can go to physical fitness. I mean, there's just a long list of stuff we can go

to. But she went to the wings of God. We are people who go under the wings of God for life and

for eternity. We say, I want the wings of Jesus Christ to cover my sin. I'm going under him for

eternity.

Happens to begin gleaning in the field of the Kinsman Redeemer. The text from

our side of it seems like there's no intention here. This happened to happen. There's huge

intention in what God is going on. What's going on here? This is not an accidental circumstance.

After, you know, Christ, there's no accidental stuff. There's intentional stuff. God is up to

something. We have to pay attention. What if?

What if this big idea in every circumstance, seeks refuge under the wings of God and wait to

see what will happen? Seek refuge under the wings of God and wait to see what will happen.

Part of this is I need to do what I would call a refuge audit. Where do we run when we're in

trouble? Where do we go when things are falling apart? Am I running under the wings of God, or

am I running somewhere else? And secondly, I would like to suggest that we do what I would

call a happenstance audit. A random accidental happenstance audit.

How many times in your life has something happened that you said that was random, that was

accidental, that was weird? Maybe God is intentionally doing something. Friends, I can tell you

so many stories of happening to sit next to a person on a plane, happening to move into a

neighborhood, happening to go to work for a company where God did something amazing. We

have a couple in our church who was flying. They didn't know each other. They were on.

Airplanes. They land in Seattle. Big storm, big problem. The airport closes down for like a day.

They met each other at the beginning of it, talked, ate supper together, spent the whole time

together. They're married. They go to our church today because there happened to be a storm

in Seattle.

Those kinds of things can happen so often in our lives. I think we need to pay attention to

the question of what's randomly happening in my life. Seven years ago, my friends, I was on an

evangelism trip in the Himalayas. We're doing a backpack evangelism trip. We hiked to the top

of a Ridge and then we started hopscotching down, stopping at random homes of nominal

Hindus. They have no streets, they have no addresses, they have no mail service, and they

have no neighbors. They're just living in the mountains. And we came around the corner of one

house, came into the back of the house, came around the corner, huge porch in the front

looking out over this valley and river. And there was a homeowner who was sitting on the porch.

And there was also a rug salesman from Nepal, a 19 year old kid who's from Nepal, who came

over to India because he was having so much trouble economically. And he's going door to door

on these random houses in the mountains selling rugs. He's got all his rugs laid out and this

guy's looking at him. So it happened that the homeowner was home. A kid from Nepal was

there. Two Texans walk around the corner of the house with a translator. And both men trusted

Christ. Both men trusted Christ because a guy accidentally was selling rugs on this porch. I'm

saying all that to say, friends, that God's up to something. In every circumstance, seek refuge

under God's wings and wait to see what will happen.

Pray with me please.

Father, thank you so much that you give us refuge. Thank you so much that there are no

accidents in our lives. The places we go, the places we live, the places we work, the people we

meet, you're up to something. And Father, we confess to you. We're not exactly sure what

you're up to now. But we are precisely sure that you're good. We're definitely sure that you're up

to something. We know for a fact that you love us. And so we take refuge under your wings,

same as Ruth did 3000 years ago. Help us in Christ's name, Amen.