Amen. Well, if you would, open up to the book of Ruth. The book of Ruth. We will kind of bounce around all over. It's a short book, but we'll read here in chapter 1, starting in verse 6. We'll read through to verse 18. This is what the Word of God says. Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited His people and given them food. So she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. But Naomi said to her daughter's-in-law, Go, return each of you to her mother's house. May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband. Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. And they said to her, No, we will return with you to your people. But Naomi said, Turn back, my daughters. Why will you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters. Go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, would you therefore wait till they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter for me, to me, for your sake, that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me." Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. And she said, see, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Return after your sister-in-law. But Ruth said, do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts me from You." And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more. Let's pray one more time. Father, what a demonstration of loyalty that we see in this text. Lord, we want to focus on the godly virtue of loyalty, but Lord, what we need to see above all is Your loyalty to us. And so help us, Holy Spirit, to see all that You've accomplished for us in Your Son. And we pray that He would be worshiped. In Jesus' name, Amen. There are a few context issues that we must understand before we just start talking about loyalty. Because again, we want to be Christians who read and interpret the Old Testament well. Right? We want to be Christians who come to a story like this and not just say, Ruth and Boaz were loyal, so we need to try harder to be loyal. Right? That's legalism. At the same time, we don't want to ignore a story, a beautiful story, in which godly virtue is shown, in which God demonstrates His loyalty, His redemptive purposes in the text, just because we want to quote, unquote, see the Gospel. Right? So again, this is a review. We've said this a few times. But we want to come to the Old Testament with the overarching theme of Scripture in mind. And understand the overarching storyline of the Bible. Knowing that all the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms find their fulfillment and are ultimately about the Lord Jesus Christ. But we also need to understand that as Christians saved by the Gospel, we can come to a text like this in the Old Testament, and we can glean. Virtue. We can glean and understand and we can glean and we can mimic what we see. And we can grow in godly virtue as we read these stories in the Old Testament. So again, part of our goal in doing a sermon series like this is not only to talk about these virtues, but also to help us all to become better Bible readers. Amen. We want to be people, and it's why we did apocalyptic literature in the book of Daniel, to be able to have a congregation of Christians who can come to the Bible no matter where we are, whether we're in Ruth or whether we're in Daniel chapter 9 or whether we're in Revelation. And we want to be able to sit down in the morning with our cup of coffee and say, God, speak to me through the text. And we need to know how to understand and read the Bible in order to hear Him clearly. So, we get the setting for the events in the book of Ruth in chapter 1 verse 1. It says, in the days when the judges ruled. So the setting of these events are happening when the judges were ruling Israel. So during the events of what you see in the book of Judges, and if you've ever read the book of Judges, it's really discouraging what's going on in Israel at this time. I mean, the theme of the book of Judges is covenant unfaithfulness, unloyalty, disloyalty to the covenant. You know, it also says that there's a famine in the land. And we don't want to just jump over these details too quickly, because the author is trying to tell us something. What's wrong with that? There's not supposed to be a famine in Israel. Israel is supposed to be a land flowing with milk and honey. Israel is supposed to be a land of abundance. But there's a stipulation, as long as they are faithful, to the Lord, as long as they are faithful to the covenant, to follow Yahweh and to keep His Word. And some of the stories, especially the last few stories in the book of Judges, are absolutely awful. In fact, it's atrocious what is happening in Israel at this time. There's a story in Judges 19 that's very similar to Genesis 19, which is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. And if you read in Judges 19, you'll begin to very quickly realize, hey, this sounds just like Sodom and Gomorrah. And it is. And the author is doing that on purpose to say, look, it's as bad in Israel right now as it was in Sodom and Gomorrah. That's how evil the people have gotten. That's how wicked the nation of Israel has become. So that's the setting for the book of Ruth. And that is really important to keep in mind as we think about the theological meaning of this book and as we consider the virtue of loyalty, and also primarily to consider God's loyalty to His people. And so it is very important for us to see that Ruth and Boaz, we'll talk about Boaz as well, demonstrate covenantal loyalty in a time when everyone around them is not demonstrating covenantal loyalty. They are faithful to the Lord when their people are not faithful. And this is what is so hopeful about this. In a time when godly virtue and godly loyalty is lost, God always has a remnant. He always has a people. Though it may be few, though they may be small, in any particular place in time, He has a people who will be loyal to Him and will be loyal to one another. And so we can take great hope in that. And as we think about loyalty as a virtue, what we notice is that loyalty transcends mere commitment and expresses itself tangibly. Loyalty is seen. It's felt. It can be verified. It's objective. It's not subjective. People can see loyalty when it's demonstrated. And we see that in Ruth when she remains loyal to Naomi and goes back with her to Israel rather than returning to Moab and to her former family and to her former gods. This is a beautiful picture of repentance, isn't it? Orpah, Naomi's other daughter-in-law, who is a widow, goes back to Moab. But Ruth, it says in verse 14, that Ruth clung to her. And it says, where you go, I will go. Where your people will be My people, and your God will be My God. And these aren't just words. This isn't an empty promise. She actually goes back to Israel with Naomi. And she stays there with Naomi. This is objective. This loyalty is shown by willful choices and actions. So, let me ask a question. How do you know if you have been loyal to God? How do you know if you are loyal to God? Well, at a basic level, it could be more than this, but at a raw level, it means that you have denounced your former way of life and your former gods and your idols, and you have made the Lord Jesus Christ your God, and you have denounced identification with your former people the people of this world, and you now identify yourself with the people of God. Right? When we ask ourselves, is this person repentant? Especially in the South, where everybody grew up a Christian. How do we know so-and-so is really repentant? Well, there's a lot of things to look for, but primarily we need to be at least looking for this. Has the person come out of idolatry? Is the Lord Jesus their God? And is that shown objectively? And has that person come out of the world and now identifying with the church of the Lord Jesus Christ? This is the heart of repentance. What God has your loyalty and what people have your loyalty? Orpah goes back to her gods and to her people in Moab. Ruth makes the decision to go to Israel with Naomi and to worship Yahweh. Why? Well, I don't think it was merely that Ruth loved Naomi more than Orpah did. I don't think it was merely because there was food in Israel. Or else Orpah would have gone as well. Those reasons are too superficial. But it was that Ruth saw with the eyes of her heart that Yahweh was infinitely greater and infinitely better and infinitely more worthy of worship than the gods of Moab. and Ruth could see with the eyes of her heart that Yahweh could provide for her and sustain her and keep her. And she saw that being in covenant with Him and His people was far worth forsaking her old gods and her old land and her old people." And we see this as the narrative progresses. Look at chapter 2 verse 10. Right over in chapter 2, verse 10, it says, Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and said to him, Why have I found favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me since I am a foreigner? But Boaz answered her, Ruth, All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me. And how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before. Yahweh repay you for what you have done and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel. And here it is, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. Boaz doesn't just see Ruth's loyalty to Naomi and commend that. Boaz sees that Ruth's loyalty to Naomi is really Ruth's loyalty to Yahweh. And he sees that and he praises her for it. He says, you've come to take refuge in Yahweh. Bless you for that. The Lord repay you for that. And he affirms her for coming out of Moab and coming in to covenantal loyalty with the Lord. And so this is a good place for me to speak to all the brothers in here and kind of piggyback off of what Pastor John Mark was saying last week. And it's interesting that there's one Hebrew tradition where in the Hebrew Bible, Ruth actually comes after Proverbs 31. in the way that they arrange it. So it's like Proverbs 31 is theologically the excellent wife, and then they put Ruth next in a sense to say this is what she looks like practically. And so Ruth is an excellent story and an excellent book to look at when we want to think about the excellent wife. But men, young men, grown men, and even young boys, If you have a mother, or a wife, or a sister, or a sister in Christ whose loyalty to Jesus is evident by her coming out of her former way of life, and evident by her loyalty to the family, and evident by her loyalty to the church, and evident by her loyalty to the Lord, praise her for that. Praise her for that. Praise her with God-focused affirmation that exalts God's work in her. I'm not talking about flattery. I'm talking about God-fearing and God-exalting affirmation. Because women in this culture especially deal with so many lies. So many attacks from the enemy, from the culture, from the media, from everywhere. And there's unwarranted shame and guilt And then the difficulties of motherhood and other various challenges. It's like there's just a cloud of shame and a cloud of failure just floating around women in this culture. And so brothers, we need to be the type of men who like Boaz will rise up And praise women for their loyalty to the Lord. And affirm that in them. And we need to be the men who see the grace of God in our sisters' lives and protect them from the lies of this evil culture. Amen? And ladies, Ruth's sphere of loyalty here I think is a great and simplified example of the spheres in which Scripture teaches that women should be loyal. Right? So Ruth is loyal to Naomi, or we could say the family. She's loyal to the covenant community. And she's loyal to Yahweh. So for us, under the new covenant, I think it's a responsible application along with the rest of the teaching of Scripture to say that God has called women primarily to be loyal in the familial realm, to the church, and to Christ. And that doesn't mean that there aren't more areas that women navigate in and work and do things. It doesn't mean that at all. But primarily, we're talking about loyalty. Where are your loyalties? And I know that the culture is screaming at you. about having all kinds of loyalties and commitments everywhere else. And it says, you need to stop being so loyal to your family. That's what's wrong. You need to come out of the family. You need to come out of that church where they're telling you you can't do this, that, and the other. And you need to explore your dreams and all this, that, and the other. But the Bible makes it very clear and very simple, His will for us And so, the loyalty that we see in the book of Ruth, again, is not simply commitment. It's not simply commitment. You know, there's a lot of talk about commitment today. And if you read really any social critic, any generational critic, they all will say that millennials and Gen Zers, people younger than millennials, lack commitment in everything. They don't want to get married. They don't want to stay in their jobs. They change degrees six and seven times. That's clear that there's a lack of commitment. And I don't disagree with that, but loyalty transcends commitment. You can be committed to something and not be loyal to it. You can get into an agreement with something for a period of time for some sort of gain, and you could break that commitment. Or you could just fulfill it and move on and not really be loyal to that commitment. But when we talk about loyalty, we're talking about allegiances. Right? We're talking about affections. Talking about desires. Wants. We hear people say, I'm loyal to this company because I agree with their values. Right? So the idea is that loyalty shows us what we value. And this illustration makes sense because of where we are geographically, but we live You know, take college football for an example. We live right in the middle of maybe two of the biggest rivalries in college football, right? You have Auburn and Alabama over here to the west, and then you have Florida State and Florida over here to the east. And if you interact even superficially with these rivalries, you know that there are people who, depending on which team is good, will kind of change which team they like. We call those bandwagon fans. So if one team is good, they'll like this team. And then if the other team is good in the next few years, they'll start liking that team. But then you have some fans who will say, no, even though my team is losing, I'm still going to be loyal. to that team, or to that college. Maybe that person went to that university. Maybe there's more at stake. There's more of a loyalty. There's more affection. There's more desire. And that's a generic loyalty that we see from the people of this world. But as Christians, we are mostly concerned about our loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen? And according to Christ, our loyalty to Him must transcend our loyalty to everything else. It must. It's not optional. Even if it costs us everything. Luke 14.26, Jesus says, if anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." And then later in verse 33, "'So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.'" Guys, we must see this, brothers and sisters. Loyalty to Jesus Christ. Allegiance to Jesus Christ is at the very heart of the Christian faith. It's at the very heart of the religion that we are in. Loyalty to Jesus. And so the question arises, well, how do we know who has been loyal to Jesus and who hasn't? Jesus said in John 14, 15, if you love Me, You will keep My commandments." So being loyal to Jesus means being loyal to His teaching and obeying it, even in the midst of a culture that hates this teaching. We see this illustrated in Boaz. Flip over to chapter 2. Boaz in chapter 2 shows faithfulness to God's law by allowing Ruth, a foreigner, to glean in his fields. So in Israel, at the time of harvest, at the time of a barley harvest or a wheat harvest, the law in Leviticus 19, 9-10 commanded owners of a field not to reap up to the edge of the field. And not to go back and take up the gleanings, what was left over. So you see this, if you're ever over in Alabama, in the fall, you see these cotton fields. Right? Anybody ever been through there? And you see these enormous cotton fields everywhere. Well, after they come and reap the cotton, there's still a lot left. And in theory, if somebody really wanted to, they could go back through and they could take the gleanings of what was left and you could get a lot of cotton. So the law in Leviticus commanded owners of fields not to go back a second time and get what was left, but rather to leave it for the foreigner and to the poor and to those who didn't have land. They were to leave that. And they were to trust the Lord to provide for them. But you can imagine if someone were greedy, if the owner of the land were greedy, he would just go back and reap through it again, and take what was left. And we know that people aren't obeying the law at this point. And we also know from other places in Scripture that Israel was not being faithful to give the land a Sabbath rest, that they were every seventh year. They were not faithful to the Jubilee. And so they were just getting whatever they could from the land. They were breaking the law. They weren't being faithful to God's commands. And especially in a time of famine, you can imagine that the temptation not to leave the gleanings for the sojourner and the poor was even higher. Yet, Boaz here is faithful to keep the law and to allow Ruth to glean. And it even says in verse 16, and also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her." So Boaz demonstrates covenantal loyalty by leaving gleanings for Ruth and also by taking what was rightfully his and leaving it for her to come behind and to take for her and for Naomi. So guys, we must see this. Boaz's loyalty to Yahweh is shown through his loyalty to be faithful to Yahweh's commands. His faithfulness to keep the law shows his loyalty to the Lord. And so we can answer that question. How do we know if we have been loyal to the Lord Jesus Christ? Are we loyal to keep his teaching? Are we obeying his teaching? And we can apply that. What we just saw in Boaz, we can apply that in a million different ways today, can't we? Where in your life is there a temptation to not be loyal to God's commands? Is it your job? Is it your friends? Your family? Possibly. But for most of us, let's be honest, it's much more subtle. It's the way we speak to our spouse. It's the way we treat our children. It's clinging to bad habits and thinking patterns rather than doing the hard work of putting off and putting on. Does your presence in the home or in the workplace reflect your loyalty to God? Can people see your loyalty to Christ the way that we can see Boaz's loyalty to Yahweh? Again, this is subtle. It's probably not for most of us adultery. It's probably not using the company card to buy what we want for ourselves. We're probably not doing those types of things. It's not that blatant. But it's allowing little deviations, little compromises from God's Word to creep in. I've thought about this this week. Most of us as parents would give our lives for our kids. We would fight an intruder to the death. We work hard for our kids. We put food on the table. We spend ourselves to care for them, to provide for them what they need, to protect them. We are loyal to them in that way, as we should be. But will we rise early to wrestle with God for their salvation? Will we do the hard work of keeping Satan out of our homes by denying anger toward our spouse? By forgiving, by overlooking an offense, by covering it with love, by denying self Will we create a place of forgiveness and peace and gentleness in our homes? You know, you guys, it's easy to buy a security system for our homes. Or a weapon. It's easy to open up a savings account for college. And we should do all those things. We should. I'm not saying we shouldn't, but will we do the hard work of sanctification? Will we put off ungodly behavior Will we love those who we don't think deserve to be loved? Men, will we humble ourselves and love the way that Jesus loved? Will we serve? Will we lay our lives down? Will we deny ourselves when we're not treated rightly? And love and serve and show mercy? It's a lot harder to do this, because that requires the denial of the flesh. and our flesh hates everything to do with godly loyalty. Brothers and sisters, our actions and our words reveal our loyalties. They do. And our faithfulness to Christ's Word reveals where our hearts are truly loyal and where they are not. What about in the church? Does your time, your spending, your attitude reveal loyalty to God and to His people? Or is your loyalty ultimately to self? These are hard questions, but they're questions we certainly should ponder. Now, this is where we come in every one of these sermons. If we were to stop now and go home, we would all go home discouraged. We would all go home ashamed at our lack of loyalty. We can't stop here. What is the story of Ruth ultimately about? What is Ruth's contribution to God's story of redemption in the Bible? Why is it here? Is it a nice story about romance? Is it a story about how God uses bad things for good? Is it about persevering through tough times? Is it about a happily ever after? It has all those elements. But ultimately, the book of Ruth is not so much about Ruth's loyalty to God as much as it is about God's loyalty to His people. That's what we see in the book of Ruth. We see God's loyalty to fulfill His promises. the book of Ruth is interested in showing us the lineage of David. It's really the purpose of it, right? And it ends with David's genealogy. So if you look over at chapter 4, verse 12, this is sort of an obscure verse, but it says these are the people that just saw Boaz buy Naomi's property and receive Ruth as his wife. And they say to Boaz, and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this woman. It's really been interesting how the Lord has done this in me over the last few weeks. But a few weeks ago, when I was studying the Joseph narrative to preach about self-control in Joseph. There's this really sort of obscure chapter in Genesis 38 that breaks the flow of the Joseph narrative. And it's about Judah. And it's this kind of odd interruption. And in the story, Judah has sons who die, and he has a daughter-in-law who is a widow, and he promises to give her one of his younger sons, and he doesn't. And so Tamar, the daughter-in-law, dresses herself like a prostitute in order to get Judah, her father-in-law, to sleep with her and to impregnate her. And the son is Perez. And Perez ends up in this lineage. The lineage of David. Well, that sort of took me to Matthew's genealogy in Matthew 1. And in Matthew's genealogy, there are five women named in that genealogy. So there's all kinds of men named. So there's more than five women, but there's only five women named in Matthew's genealogy. Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and then ultimately, Mary. And so, I begin to think about this. What is all this about? And you think about these five women. Who are the five women that Matthew chooses to put in the lineage of Jesus Christ? You have Tamar who dresses herself like a prostitute in order to sleep with her father-in-law. You have Rahab, a foreign prostitute, who's a part of a people that Israel is supposed to wipe off the face of the earth. You have Ruth, a Moabite, a foreigner. If you read the book of Numbers, you see that Israel and Moab have all kinds of tension. They're at war with each other constantly. And then, it's really interesting, Matthew does not call Bathsheba Bathsheba in the genealogy. He refers to her as the wife of Uriah. And if you remember back to that story in 2 Samuel 11, David is supposed to be out at war with his troops. Instead of being at war, he's on his roof lusting after Bathsheba, who is married to Uriah, while Uriah is at war fighting for him and for his people. He brings Bathsheba to his house, sleeps with her, commits adultery with her, impregnates her, And when they find out she's pregnant, he brings Uriah back, tries to get Uriah drunk so that he will go home and sleep with his wife so that he can pass the baby off on Uriah. Uriah has too much integrity to do that because he says, if my Lord Joab and all my brothers are fighting out on the field, how am I going to go back to my wife? He has too much integrity to go back home, so David writes a letter to Joab to say, put Uriah the Hittite, another foreigner, in the front of the battle so that he will be killed. And then he wraps that letter up and gives it to Uriah to take back to Joab. And then Uriah dies in battle, and David gets what he wants. Uriah's gone, and now he can marry Bathsheba. Utter wickedness. Utter evil. Atrocity. The type of evil that David commits. And this is the person that Matthew wants us to think back to. And he's saying, look at what Yahweh has been doing. despite of all the evil, all the wickedness, all that the enemy has wanted to use for evil, God has been using it for good. He's been using prostitutes. He's been using foreigners. He's been using murder. He's been using people who have been stolen away from their husbands to bring about the promise, to show His loyalty to His people. And then obviously, Mary is that fifth woman, and she gives birth to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so Matthew is saying, here is God's loyalty to you, Israel. He's been faithful to you throughout all these thousands of years of your rebellion, your wickedness. God has been faithful to bring about the promise He goes faithful all the way back to 2 Samuel 7 when he promised David that one of his sons would sit on his throne forever. And then it goes all the way back to Genesis 15 when God says to Abraham, you will have an offspring, and in him, all the families of the earth will be blessed. And it even goes all the way back to Genesis 3 when God says to Eve, you will have an offspring. And that serpent that led you to sin, he'll bruise his heel. but this offspring will bruise His head." And Matthew is saying, this is the offspring. God has been faithful to bring Him about, and it is the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what the genealogy in Matthew is all about, and that's what the book of Ruth is all about. God's covenantal faithfulness to His people and His faithfulness to you, brothers and sisters. God's loyalty climaxes in the sending of His own Son to live a perfect life and to die in our place so that we could enter into the Kingdom of God. So I want to close by telling a story that I haven't really shared publicly. I haven't shared really with many people at all. but I prayed about it and I thought through this and I really thought that the Lord may use it to bless someone and to perhaps help someone. About a year ago, last April, so just over a year ago, right at the beginning of the COVID-19, the beginning of COVID-19, when that all really began to ramp up and everything was getting shut down and all we know is Mainstream media is telling us people are dying. Millions of people are going to die. It's spreading like crazy. We need to shut everything down. Things are being shut down and we don't really know much. Around April, it was right around my birthday, so in April, I began to feel ill. And I began to have a raised temperature, and headaches, and drowsiness, and just fatigue. And very, very not normal for me. I rarely feel that way. And so at first I thought, you know, maybe I just got sun poisoning. I've been out in the sun too much. But it persisted over three or four days, over even a week. And the thought occurred to me, I think I have COVID-19. Because I rarely ever have fevers. I just don't. I rarely ever feel ill like this. And so again, we don't know anything at this point. All we know is that people are dying and people are going to die. That's all we're hearing. And this is before everybody was kind of getting tested left and right. And so the test was like, they're shoving this big stick up into your brain. And I didn't want to do that. So all these things are surfacing kind of in my heart and in my mind. And then my daughter comes down with a fever as well. And so I remember one night, I was laying with her until she fell asleep. And I'm thinking about all this stuff, right? I'm thinking about COVID-19. I'm thinking, should I get tested? Can you even go to a hospital right now? I heard they shut everything down. And then other people were sending me stuff and saying things. And I've never been huge on the hospital anyway. I've never been huge on getting shots. I'm always the guy that gets queasy and like passes out. So I'm thinking through all this stuff. My heart is just overloaded with thoughts of what's going to happen to me and to my family and what do I need to do? And so I remember beginning to feel queasy, and I could feel myself about to faint, about to pass out. And so my first reaction was, I need to get out of this bed and get to my wife, who was in our bedroom. And so as I got up, I took a few steps and I crashed. And my momentum took me face first into our kitchen floor. And I I regained some consciousness, and my head is spinning, and all I can see is blood spilling out of my head, where my eye bone had cut my skin open. And I put my hand on my face, and there's blood everywhere. And in that moment, I said to myself, and I'm halfway conscious, but I said to myself, I am going to die. This is it for me. I have COVID-19. I'm bleeding from my face. I'm face down on the ground. And I'm about to stand before Jesus. I'm dying. And obviously, that didn't happen. But even in that moment, it's as if I could sense, not mystically, but through the years of renewing my mind in the promises of God, I am with you. Laying down face first on the floor, I am with you. I see you. And I will hold you up. And as I've reflected on that over the past few weeks, I think back to that psalm, Psalm 139, where the psalmist is saying, where can I run from Your presence? Where can I flee from You? I cannot hide from You. If I descend up to the highest mountain, You're with me. If I go into the lowest of the ocean, if I go to Sheol, there You are with me. And in that moment, I knew that Yahweh's loyalty to me was realer. than the perspective of me dying, or going to the hospital, or leaving my kids behind and my wife. His faithfulness to me was nearer and realer than any fear. And so church, brothers and sisters, Jesus does demand our loyalty. He does demand our allegiance. He does. And we cannot follow Him unless we give Him our allegiance and our loyalty. But what we must understand is this, no matter how strong our loyalty is or is not, God's loyalty to you is perfect and will never fail. It will never waver. It will never wane. His loyalty to you is demonstrated perfectly. And the story of Ruth proves that God will be loyal to His people. But more than the story of Ruth, the scars on the hands and on the feet and in the side of His Son Jesus proves His loyalty to you. Will you rest in that loyalty? Will you receive that loyalty? Will you receive His faithfulness for you? And rest in that. God has been loyal to His people. Rest in His loyalty. Let's pray. Father, we just are so thankful. We are so thankful for Your kindness, for Your faithfulness. We are thankful that through thousands of years of sin and destruction and unfaithfulness, You sustained a remnant. You sustained a line. And that line has come to a climax. And Your Son has come. And He has lived perfectly and He has died in our place and accomplished everything that we needed Him to accomplish. And He is at the right hand as the Davidic King forever. You have been faithful. You have been loyal to us. And so as we see that, as we meditate on it, Lord, we pray that we could be loyal to You and to one another. And so produce that loyalty in us, but help us to remember Your loyalty to us. And I pray that as we come to the supper, that that would be on our minds and on our hearts. And I pray all that in Jesus' mighty name, Amen.