From Identity Crisis to Unity in Christ

Hello and welcome to the Salt Church podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word, providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. So, it's actually funny. I'm doing a chronological read-through of the Bible, and I believe Tim Ritter might be the only other person who's actually still active in it with me. It has been eye-opening to say the least.

In fact, when I got to the book of Judges, which is where we're going to focus today, as I was reading through it, I kept thinking, and I think I said this at our small group, I have got to get through Judges because it is bringing me down. It is the, it is a horrific book. If you have never just sat and read straight through Judges, you should do it. You should do it, so that you can be down here with me. And I said, well, of course, I should talk about that at Salt.

So, luckily, it is 4th of July weekend. It's a lighter weekend, so Leon's probably thinking there are fewer people that I can offend. And, you know, so that's my goal today. So, instead of something bright and cheery, we are going to talk about a harrowing chronicle of identity crisis and national chaos. Who's ready?

Who's excited? Yeah! Okay, let's do this. So, Judges, the book of Judges. Now, just to orient you in time, we have just had Joshua lead Israel, God's people, into the chosen land.

Excuse me. Canaan. So, we've just had that happen. We're only one generation removed from Joshua at this point. However, when the Israelites entered the promised land, God gave them one directive.

He said, conquer it all. Destroy utterly all the people of Canaan. They did not do that. After Joshua died, there were still some tribal lands on the border that had not been dealt with. Israel did not obey God's command.

And the consequences were disastrous. When they came in, when they came into Canaan, they had a national identity. They had a purpose in the Lord. And God had given them his law and an ideal land. He had laid out for them this beautiful law, clothed in dignity, befitting people who were created by God of how to treat others, especially strangers and aliens in their land.

And they had it all at their fingertips. They had this perfect law. They had this ideal land to live in. And their national identity fizzled out so fast. Does it sound familiar?

Does that sound like anywhere you know? If it doesn't, it should. I won't spell it out because I believe everyone here is very intelligent and can infer things. So obedience to God was critical to Israel's continued success and prosperity as a nation. But by the climax of the book of Judges, what do we see?

We see a complete return to apostasy, immorality, to include rape, murder, slavery, theft, mob rule, the complete perversion of justice, and even civil war. Now, Judges, by the time we get to this climax, keep in mind we have gone through multiple cycles of God's people, the Israelites, turning from God, apostasy, sin, being punished, which usually took the form of famine or enslavement by other nations, crying out to God to deliver them. They always want help when they're, you know, in the valley. And then God continually raising up a judge, usually a military leader. This is pre-monarchy, okay, no kings yet.

A judge to help them throw off the yoke of oppression. Imagine, this cycle continued not one, not two, not three, but seven times over the course of a couple hundred years. Israel had a really hard time learning their lesson, clearly. Now, they really desperately needed help. They desperately needed help.

They needed a priest or a pastor who could help them learn and analyze and digest God's word. They needed a prophet to call them to repentance. And they needed a king, a righteous king, to rule them. And they eventually got it. That's the great news.

There is kind of a bright light at the end of the dark tale that is Judges. They got all those things in the form of Samuel, Eli, and even King David. But, as we all know, those were really imperfect people. They were broken saviors. They weren't the best.

So, at the end of the day, just restoring a national identity wasn't the answer. Nothing short of the perfect priest, prophet, king that is Jesus Christ was ever going to fix what was broken in Israel and in God's people. Nothing short of that could restore them to God. Now, Israel had a really hard time seeing that, and sometimes we, even today, have a really hard time seeing that. We desperately want the perfect president or the perfect Congress or the perfect law to fix things.

And you know what, though? It doesn't start there. It starts in here. It starts inside. It starts with your heart.

And it works out. And that's where change comes. You know, it's funny. I doubt Alec knew. I don't know.

Maybe he knew I was speaking today. And if he did, he picked my very favorite hymn in all the land. We were singing, and I said, oh, yes, this is my favorite hymn. But it is so, so true. It's so obvious.

Prone to wander. We are so prone to wander. Prone to leave the God we love in continuous cycles. And the answer to that is, here's my heart. Take and seal it.

My heart. Right? That's where it starts. Inside our heart. Not with our behavior.

Not with special laws. But within our hearts. So that's where we're going today. So to give you some background as we get going in the book of Judges to see where we are, the thematic refrain of the book of Judges is self-determination. And, of course, that begs the question, what is the problem with that?

What is wrong with a little autonomy? Well, according to Judges 2.10, after that generation died, Joshua's generation, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel. Later, we also find that in that day there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

This was a society of complete moral relativism. It was every man to himself. Every man was the law unto himself. Each person decided what was right. Now, keep in mind, we still had a lot of cultural religion.

This was not a godless society. There were plenty of religious people. But that didn't matter. It was purely cultural. There was no real relationship going on.

Now, the climax of this self-determination, this nation of everyone doing what was right in their own eyes, I think it really comes in chapter 19. Now, to give you a little background in chapter 19 of Judges, we have a Levite. Now, the Levites, of course, were inherited positions. These were basically another tribe of Israel, but they didn't get land. They didn't get to own land.

So this was an inherited holy position. You can already see the problem with that. Within Herod. A holy position. And they were responsible for taking on certain sacred tasks within the temple.

So at the very beginning of chapter 19, we have a Levite who takes a woman from Judah to be his concubine. So that was his second wife. That was a legal wife in those times. She had absolute legal status. But of course, as we know, God's standard was monogamy.

So already this Levite is breaking God's law. Now after some undisclosed marital difficulties, different versions say different things. Some versions say that she was unfaithful and played the harlot. Other versions say she was simply angry with him. She goes off and she returns to live with her father.

Now the Levite, after four months, so clearly he wasn't eager to get her back, finally goes after her. Four months! Four months! That would hurt my feelings. I think if I ran off and he waited four months.

To retrieve her, he finally goes and he gets her. So they decide when they're traveling back, they're gonna stop. And they're gonna stop in... Okay, Google was really letting me down on how to pronounce this place. I got three different pronunciations.

I got Gibeah, I got Jibia, and I got Jib... I'm not really sure. So we're gonna go with Gibeah because that is what it looks like to me. They decide to stop in Gibeah. Now this is a town in the territory of Benjamin.

This is important because what we also learn right here in this story is that they could have stopped in Jebus. But the Levites said, nah, I'm not stopping anywhere that's not populated by Israelites. So that was unwise because apparently he thought that goodness and mercy and kindness is inherited and was only in possession of the Israelites. It's a little xenophobic there. And we'll also see that's a really, really, really, really bad decision.

So they stay in Gibeah instead. Now when they get there, Judges 19, 15 says they sat down in the open square of the city, for no one took them into his house to spend the night. Now in the ancient Near East, this would have been shocking to pretty much anyone, but this would be especially shocking in Israel, where hospitality was so crucial and so critical. This reveals a huge, huge disintegration that had infected the very heart of their community, the fact that no one took them in. This would have been absolutely shocking.

People were refusing to open their doors, even to their own countrymen. Well, eventually an old man sees them sitting out in the square, and he invites the Levite and the concubine in, and that's where we will pick up with the scripture, and you can read along on the slides, starting with verse 22. While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him. The owner of the house went outside and said to them, No, my friends, don't be so vile.

This man is my guest. Don't do this outrageous thing. Look, here is my virgin daughter, and here's his concubine, his wife. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But as for this man, don't do such an outrageous thing.

But the men would not listen to him. So the man, the Levite, took his concubine and sent her outside to them. And they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak, the woman went back into the house where her master, not husband, I think that's interesting verbiage, was staying. She fell down at the door, and she lay there until daylight.

When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, was he just going to leave and not check to see what had happened to her? That kind of blows my mind that it says he was just on his way. And there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house with her hands on the threshold. What an image. He said to her, get up, let's go.

But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home. When he reached home, he took a knife and he cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into 12 parts, and sent them into all the areas of Israel. Now, one can only hope she was already dead, but it doesn't say that. So we don't know.

Everyone who saw it was saying to one another, such a thing has never been seen or done. Not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Just imagine, we must do something. So speak up. So upon hearing the Levite story, which, by the way, he relates in a way that absolves him of any wrongdoing, the Israelites finally band together for the first time in the book of Judges.

Before this, they really only banded together to kind of fight oppression, and that's in groups. Now they're all together. And they want to demand that the tribe of Benjamin give up the abusers. Benjamin refuses. So apparently they are also united in protecting their rapists and not giving them up.

Well, we heard that. In the course of these ensuing battles, the militia of Israel ultimately decimates Benjamin, down to about 600 male survivors, and that's it. In chapter 21, we have yet more civil war as an attempt, this time to totally annihilate Benjamin, in an attack against Jabesh Gilead, and everyone is destroyed except for 400 virgins. So Benjamin's like, what are we going to do? We're about to be completely exterminated.

Let's take these 400 virgins and start repopulating things again. But there's only 400. Well, where are they going to get the 200 more? Because there's 200 guys left over without wives, right? So they're like, oh, look, there's all these little young virgins dancing out in Shiloh.

They're having a festival. Well, just go take them. And they do. They just go grab them. The last two verses in the book of Judges, the last words we get say this.

The sons of Israel departed from there at that time. Every man to his own tribe and his own family. Each one of them went out from there to his own inheritance. In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

The end. What a lovely book. I'm so glad we could all share that together. Now, a few passages in the Bible are as disgusting as this one. The callousness, the abuse, the selfishness.

They should elicit horror. When you read it, you should be utterly horrified. Not the least of which is the absolute callousness with which a husband treats his wife, who he clearly hates. The complete lack of hospitality. The explicit sexual violence that apparently was the norm of the day.

But we also have this great call to action at the end that results in the people rallying around a common cause that leads to just more bloodshed. And more evil. And more atrocity. And more brutality. But this is what the text is designed to do.

This is what you're supposed to feel. You are supposed to feel horror. You are supposed to feel outrage. Because God is saying, this is what happens when you turn from me. This is what happens when you do what you think is best.

This is what happens when every man says, I'm an island. I'll do what I want. It's not about my community. It's about me. It's about my family.

It's about my wealth. It's about my job. It's about my destiny. It's about my life. It's about my life.

It's about my life. It's about my life. It's about my life. It's about my life. God says, it is not about you.

It is not about you. And when you make it about you, as Seth Doherty said before the service started, it's Game of Thrones up in here. I can't even watch that show because I'm so horrified by what goes on. But you know what? That's judges.

That's what was going on in real life history, in the real world. And we should be horrified of it. And you know what? Do you know, as of today, today's statistics, as of this morning, did you know that in America, every 92 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted? Every nine minutes, that person who's assaulted is a child.

90% of those who are assaulted are women. The vast majority take place at home or near the home. That's going on right here. Why are we so scared to talk about this stuff? God did not shy away from this.

He did not cover it up. He did not say, don't talk about it. It's shameful. He laid it out in black and white, white guys. He laid it right out there.

This idea of this explicit sexual violence, which is hard to talk about. Not to mention the shades of human trafficking. And if you didn't pick up on that, that's absolutely what's happening there. We're talking about people who have no agency. These women don't have names.

They're treated as property. You notice that she speaks of her husband as her master. Women in the hundreds are stolen away from their families. What have we learned? It's going on now.

Do you know, just last night, as I was studying and finalizing this, my CNN ticker came across on my computer and it mentioned, what's his name? Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey, just last night, billionaire. You don't know who he is. Billionaire who for over a decade has gotten away with unbelievable abuses and sexual evil and trafficking of children in the United States.

This is not somewhere else, guys. It's here. Just last night. He got a slap on the wrist about 15 years ago. But he's a billionaire, so he can buy his way out of it.

He's finally, an indictment came down last night. And I think he's finally going to go to prison for it. But how many people has he brutalized in the years where no one cared, where the authorities said we don't care because you have enough money to buy us off? You think judges is far away? No, it's not.

It's here. It's now. And that's what happens when we live in our wonderful, cushy American bubbles where things are wonderful and great for most of us. But one in six women in this room will be raped or a rape will be attempted on her. That's what the statistics say.

And those are probably based on reports. Who knows what's not being reported? That's real. We got to talk about it, guys. If we don't talk about it, we don't make it visible, nothing gets fixed.

And I know that's all a little, it's a little dark. And we all need something lighthearted. So guess what? I do have good stuff for you. Unless you're Lisa Marie who loves judges.

And she's in her happy place right now. She's like, yes, this is all the good stories in the Bible. She's a psychologist, though. So she's probably coming at it from that side. And I just, you know, really need some of Gann's special home brewed beer or something to make everything better.

So we do have a bright spot. And we're moving on to the happy part of today's message, which is the epilogue of Judges. And that's the book of Ruth. And this is really going to help us, guys. This is going to shed some light on things.

This is going to show us what God can do in the middle of national chaos, in a crisis of identity. Incidentally, this is a way better epilogue than the Harry Potter epilogue. I was thinking about that as I was reading it. I was like, man, JK, you could have taken some lessons. Because this epilogue is good.

This is how to do it. So if you don't know, and again, I would definitely advise reading through the Bible chronologically. It has just opened my eyes to everything. It's so, I'm going to have to do it again immediately because there's so much. I just can't get it all in there.

Anyway, judges and Ruth are really best discussed as a duo. First, because Ruth's story occurs during the time of the judges. The very first verse says, during the time when judges ruled. Thank you, writer of Ruth, for setting this in context for us. We also know that it was probably during a punishment phase.

Remember the seven cycles? Sin, punishment, repentance, deliverance. Probably during punishment, which is important to know because this is during hard times, not the good times. Because there was a famine, and that's what precipitates the events of the story. So there was a famine.

Also, it's great to discuss them together because of the incredible contrast they set up. Judges is a tale of social chaos, apostasy, rebellion. Ruth is a tale of love, devotion, faithfulness, despite hard times and ongoing chaos. Chaos is still there. You don't have to descend into it.

In short, it's a one, it's a four chapter, one family snapshot that occurs during this cycle of judges. And interestingly, it's all about the ladies. Ruth is all about the ladies. The one bright spot that God gives us is all about the women in this tale, man, which is awesome. That should just galvanize us, ladies, that God thinks enough of us to say, despite the chaos that is reigning over my people at this point, there are these faithful women who follow the Lord and turn nations around because that's what happened.

This was a turning point in history, literally, literally. Isn't that incredible? Women, you are so important in the story of God. So important. And God won't let you forget it.

Society may not want to say it, but God sure does. He will remind you. And I just love that. So this book starts with a woman by the name of Naomi who moves from Judah to Moab because of a famine. She and her husband move there with their two sons who marry Moabite women.

Tragically, her husband and her sons die. And it's over a pretty short period of time. So Naomi is experiencing a lot of tragedy and sorrow here. Well, she decides to move back to Bethlehem because she heard that God was providing food there. Well, her daughter-in-law, Ruth, comes with her.

She also lost her husband. Now keep in mind that Ruth was a foreigner. She was a Moabite. And she was now moving with her mother-in-law to Judah as a foreigner. This was a big deal in their culture.

I mean, we've already talked about the fact that the Israelites had a little problem with how they were treating strangers at this point and foreigners. And they'd really lost a lot of that hospitality, and they had become very ethnocentric. Shocking, I know, because we've never repeated that again in history. Now her words were, don't ask me, Naomi, to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go.

Wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. You've probably, if you know nothing about the Bible, you've probably still heard those words because they're so famous at this point that they've even been woven into marriage vows because that's how beautiful they are. They really transcend relationships. Now to support her mother-in-law and herself, Ruth goes into the fields to glean.

The field that she went into, keep in mind, we're back in Bethlehem. She's decided to leave her entire life behind, her country, and be a foreigner. Well, the field that she gleans in just happens to belong to a man named Boaz. Do you know who Boaz is? Do you remember my last message on Rahab the prostitute?

I like to talk about the ladies. Boaz is Rahab's son. Rahab, another foreigner, also not in Israel. And a prostitute. Just thought I'd mention that.

Well, this field belongs to Boaz. He offers Ruth safety and grain from his field. She asks, why are you being so kind to me? Keep in mind the story we've just heard about the Levite and his concubine. You'll see these huge contrasts.

Why are you being so kind to me, a foreigner? He tells her, I know what you did for Naomi. I know what you did for your mother-in-law. And everyone here knows of your virtue. Don't worry.

I'm going to keep you safe. I'm going to protect you. And I'm going to give you food to take back for your family. Well, we also discover soon that Boaz, not only does that happen to be his field, he happens to be related to Ruth's dead husband. Of course, we know that God is not a God of coincidence.

And this is an incredible, incredible thing he's working here. What's remarkable is that he qualified as a kinsman redeemer. Basically, that means they had a cultural custom that said, when a relative of a man is qualified to marry a widow, he must and perpetuate his lineage. So at the end of the story, we have Boaz being in a place where he can marry Ruth, although he really doesn't get anything out of this, but he jumps at the chance. He absolutely jumps at the chance.

He marries Ruth, he redeems Elimelech's field, and he continues that line that would have been snuffed out, just like the tribe of Benjamin was going to be snuffed out. You see the similarities here? It's like a tiny little microcosm of what happened with the Levite and the concubine, and then the civil war with Benjamin. Boaz was facing the same thing, the snuffing out of this line. But he responded with social responsibility.

He responded by following God's laws. He knew God's laws. And marrying Ruth. And of course, as we know, the end of that story, Ruth and Boaz marry. They have a son, Obed, who then has a son, Jesse.

And of course, Jesse's son is King David. So Ruth, of course, much like Rahab, is placed in the direct lineage of Jesus Christ, the redeemer of all humankind. Isn't that incredible? Right in the midst of this cesspool of evil that is this period in history with the book of Judges, we've got this one family. You think you can't make a difference because you're one person.

And you think, I can't do anything. I'm nothing. I'm just a widow. I don't even have enough money to eat. I'm literally going behind and just picking up the dregs of what's left over so that we survive.

And because of her faithfulness and because of Boaz's faithfulness and because of his righteousness and the way he followed the God of Israel and his laws and his precepts, and he treated her, a foreigner, a stranger, as more precious than gold, we have history changing. We have history being made. We have the line of Christ being established, the Davidic line. Isn't that incredible? Well, this story is not put here on accident.

Now, what can we learn from Judges? We always need some application. Well, let's talk about this. First and foremost, Judges teaches us that obedience is not a genetic trait. Now, this is key, guys.

Salvation is not genetic. You're not born into it. You're not born into obedience to the Lord. We are not morally superior on account of being in America. We are incredibly blessed here.

I love being an American. I love it. But just because I'm born here doesn't make me better. And it doesn't, you know, it doesn't mean I'm going to be automatically kind and treat people with love. You have to teach each generation how to follow the Lord.

We cannot assume our children will know God unless we teach them. That's what stopped. That's what went wrong. They did not teach their children the ways of the Lord. They did not pattern.

They did not give them a pattern to follow. They followed their own ways. They did whatever was right in their own eyes. So when you do things like when you come and you don't forsake the assembly of the believers and you put your kids back there with Mr. Tim and Ms.

Angie and Ms. Christy and Ms. Kim and all those people who are just filling them with biblical truth and the love of Jesus Christ and they learn how to talk to the Lord and how to get their hearts right, that's what you're doing. You're teaching, you're teaching your children to follow the ways of the Lord. We have to do that.

Judges, the people of Judges did not. Another important thing to remember is that God did place an objective standard in the conscience of all people. So, even in the midst of Judges and everything that was going wrong, what did we see? We see Ruth and Boaz and Naomi still following God. I mean, Ruth really didn't even know.

She came from a totally different culture. She didn't have the law memorized. You know, she didn't know this stuff. But we know from Romans, God tells us, since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and his divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, the creation, so that people are without excuse for their behavior. For although they knew God, think Israel, they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God.

They had become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things, but they also approve of those who practice them. That's what was going on. Another thing we can learn from Judges, and this is probably the most important thing, is that when we don't know who we are, we don't know how to act. But Judges is a tale of misplaced identity.

It is an absolute crisis of identity. If you don't know who you are, and specifically if you don't know who you are in the Lord, you do not and you cannot know how to act. Ephesians 2 says, But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away, have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. For through him, we both have access to the Father by one spirit.

Consequently, you were no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. That's who we are. That's who we are. It goes so beyond your ethnic background, your political background, you know, what country you're from. It's way more than that.

Because we are bonded together as believers by something that's so much bigger. It's the blood of Jesus Christ. But if you don't know that, if you live as a law unto yourself, that's when you get those situations like we have in Judges. That's what happens. That's the disaster that results.

Now, what can we learn from Ruth? The exact opposite. Following God's rule, instead of living for yourself, leads to blessings and peace. Not war, not infighting, but peace. Now in the final chapters of the book of Judges, Israelites repeatedly perform acts that seem moral to them on the surface.

But it leads to theft, murder, rape, civil war. But in Ruth, we have a lot of the same actions being performed, but it goes way beyond the surface. These are people who are looking on the inside. They're looking at the heart. They're acting out of a desire for virtue.

For instance, in Ruth, I don't know about you guys, but if you know the story of Ruth, what she does is she actually goes in, and it's kind of a bizarre thing. But Ruth goes in, Naomi tells her what to do, and sleeps at Boaz's feet, basically. Now this is not someone she knows super well, I'm guessing. So I know me, I would be a little nervous about going into some random guy's house, and just sleeping on the floor, like in front of his bed. That would make me nervous, just as a woman.

I'm just telling you now. But she does. And, you know, when he wakes up in the middle of the night, not only does he not assault her or do anything untoward, he is very good to her. He protects her. She isn't even his wife yet.

And Boaz treats her the way that God intends all men to treat all women. He protects her. The problem here, guys, the problem in Judges was not this, like, patriarchal society. That was not the problem. The problem was that these men did not behave the way Christ would have us behave.

They did not act in a sense that they did not love out of a sense of sacrifice. They were not ready to sacrifice their own comfort and their own position for their household, for their wives, for the people under their care. That's what Jesus did. That's what godly men do. And that's what Boaz did.

He protects Ruth. He provides for her. She's safe with him. It's such a beautiful just picture of safety, this whole story of Boaz and Ruth. And that's how all of these relationships should be.

That's how all our relationships should be one with another, with our friends, with our family. It should be one of safety and protection and provision and kindness and love. Boaz, when he performs that ritual of redeeming the field, and then he marries Ruth, he turns the story of Judges on its head. Instead of using slaughter, wholesale slaughter, to stop what was going on, he acts out of love and responsibility and kindness. And it leads to redemption and new life, the birth of a son.

So when we live as a law unto ourselves, it leads only to the perversion of justice and near extermination, at times, of nations. But when we're faithful to God's law, we find peace, blessing, inheritance, the fulfillment of prophecy, even unto the birth of our Savior. I would choose the latter. I want that one. That's the one I want.

Another point from Ruth, God is an equal opportunity redeemer. Now, sometimes when we read the Old Testament, we make the mistake of thinking that God loved and saved only one race during ancient times. This is absolutely not true. Ruth is just one illustration in the Old Testament that the accessibility of God's grace was open to all individuals, Gentiles as well as Jews. As I said before, Ruth's husband, Boaz, was the son of Rahab the prostitute, who was not an Israelite.

She was from Jericho. Romans also tells us later that knowledge of God, which the Jews of the New Testament certainly would have had, isn't enough. Romans 1 tells us, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God to give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

On the other hand, we have in Ruth, Boaz saying, I've been told, Ruth, 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 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, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. Sometimes it's the people who seem the farthest away from God, the foreigners, the strangers, the people we don't understand, who know God's heart the best.

Sometimes it's people who maybe we think aren't living right. The people that we see and say, man, I'm glad I'm not that person. I may be doing bad, but I'm not doing that. You never know. You have no idea what's in their heart.

You can have all the head knowledge of God you want, but what's in your heart? Do you have love for your neighbor in your heart? Now, together, Judges and Ruth, they foretell of the global scope of the redeeming work of Jesus. That's what's incredible about this story. That as awful as things get, there is a point, there is a purpose.

And God is saying, I am bringing you a priest, prophet, king, a redeemer, who is so much better than anything that you can provide. And he is for everyone. The Gentile, the Greek, all of us here. I would even argue that the ultimate goal of even Judges is to see and glorify the unending and immeasurable scope of the grace of God. A God of Israel who welcomes into his kingdom and even lifts up into fame Gentiles just like all of us in this room.

So there are some discussion questions in your notes that I would encourage all of you to look at this week and later. That's more of the application portion. Maybe in your small groups. Because these are hard questions. When we bring up things like moral relativism and we say we can't be a law unto ourselves, well, that begs the question, whose morality are you asking me to live by?

And that's a valid question. And I guarantee almost everybody here has a different answer as to what they think should be the basis for those laws. But what you've got to do is get together and discuss those in love and in peace. And you've got to talk about the bigger thing that ties us together, which is unity in the body of Christ. Because that transcends all of our other divisions, all of our other differences.

So I would really encourage you to do that this week and talk about it. Talk about the culture. Talk about influences of the culture. Talk about whose law you really are living by. But I do have one question I'd like to ask.

Because we have been talking about identity today. And that's just asking today if you know who you are. Do you know who you are? I mean, it seems obvious. I know who I am.

I'm Miranda. But there's this bigger question than that. Do you know who you are? If somebody asks you right now, who are you? What would be your answer?

Do you have one? Is it ready? If someone comes up to you today, if a foreigner who knows nothing about this culture or Jesus or anybody came up today and said, who are you? What are you going to say? Because we are living in a crisis of identity, even in this nation.

Most of us don't know who we are. We got social media telling us who we should be. We got the news telling us who we should be. We got teachers and schools and all this stuff and books telling us who we should be, but who does Jesus Christ say you are? Who are you?

Who are you? Have you been grafted and adopted into the family of God? Because if you have not, if that seal has not been placed upon your heart, if you don't know who you are, you won't know how to act. If you don't know who you are, that just leads to disaster and chaos. And remember, it's not just about you.

When you don't know who you are, that affects everyone around you. You have a responsibility to know who you are. Because remember what Romans said, God put it in your heart at creation, you have no excuse. You got to figure out who you are. So if you don't know who you are, talk to somebody, talk to Keisha, talk to Pastor Leon, talk to Seth.

If you need prayer, you say, I don't know who I am. And if you want to know who you are, and you want to be a part of this incredible story that God is telling, and that's still, he's still telling, it's ongoing, please do that. Because he can change your life today. He can turn it around. If you're living in chaos, are you, if you're living in one of these cycles, are you stuck in sin, punishment, desperately calling out for God, finding deliverance just for like a month or two or a year, and then you fall back into it again?

Are you in one of those cycles? You will never get out of it if you don't reach up and let God rescue you. Another line from that song, you're to rescue me from danger. He's the only one who can do it. You can't get yourself out of it.

You cannot break out of this cycle on your own. If that's you today and you want to, I just want you to pray this with me. Can we all just pray together? Oh, God, thank you. Thank you, God, that you created me and that you created every person in this room.

And you placed into us a dignity that is so incredible. You made us your sons and your daughters and your love and your mercy are unending. Thank you, God, that I know who I am in you before anything else, before my knowledge of who I am as a woman and a wife and a mother and a sister and a friend. I know who I am as your child and your daughter, protected, valued, loved, provided for, safe. And if there's anybody here, God, who does not feel that, who is not just a wash in your love and your mercy, God, we ask that right now they would turn to you.

They would reach out and say, God, I want that. I want to find ultimate repentance. I want to turn away from this old life and I want to make Jesus Christ the absolute Lord and Savior of my entire life. Everything that I do, everything that I am. And if there's anybody here who needs that, God, I ask that they would just open up their hearts and they would have the courage to say it and ask for it right now in Jesus' name and that you would do it, that you would save them, that you would do it right now.

You would reach down, you would rescue them, you would pull them away out of the chaos and give them an identity that cannot be tarnished, that cannot be changed, that cannot be corrupted, no matter what. Thank you, God, for doing that. Thank you that your mercy is just incomprehensible. We love you so much and we ask all of this in the precious name of your son, Jesus. Amen.