Shavuot 2026: Ruth Is the 50-Day Countdown You Never Noticed

Automated transcript, lightly edited for readability. Scripture appears as spoken; the video is the authoritative teaching.

Well, shabbat shalom everybody. So today we have our celebration of Shavuot. It's good to come together. Shavuot, as I was explaining, is a harvest festival in the Torah. It comes 50 days after Passover week—first fruits. And 1,500 years later, after the first Shavuot, on the very same day in Jerusalem, as recorded in Acts chapter 2 in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit showed up.

And again, as a reminder, Shavuot is one of the three pilgrimage feasts in the Bible—the three feasts where the men of Israel, with their families, were instructed to come up to Jerusalem. Passover in the spring, and in the fall we have Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, and in the middle we have Shavuot, which is 50 days after Passover. And this is something that Yeshua kept, Paul kept, the disciples kept. It's the reason why thousands of Jews were in Jerusalem in Acts chapter 2 when the Spirit fell.

Now, Exodus 19 puts Sinai—when Israel came to Sinai—their arrival in the third month after Egypt. It's the same season as Shavuot. So tradition has always called this day Sinai's birthday. And the assumption is that this is the day when God gave His Torah to Israel. And so it's a festival harvest feast. It's the day when God gave His word from Mount Sinai, the Ten Commandments in the Torah, and it's the day when the Holy Spirit fell on the believers in Jerusalem.

And in synagogues and some churches all over the world this morning, communities are reading one specific book on this exact day: the book of Ruth. Now, why Ruth? Why this little four-chapter story about a widow and a Moabite woman tucked between Judges and Samuel? Why on Shavuot?

The Design of Ruth

Well, because the book of Ruth is a Shavuot story. It's how it was designed. And there's a lot in this itty-bitty book, and you struggle to just take one thing out of it because it was designed to pack a punch. It was designed to be really nerdy and really emotional, just like me. And so I'm excited to share that with you today. But before we get into the Shavuot connection that we'll see, we need to build a foundation for the book because we're going to traverse through it and hope it's going to be edifying. I believe it will. Because we need to go over what happens in chapter 1 to really set the stage for everything that's going to escalate throughout the book and the point of why it was written.

And so, Ruth 1:1 says, "In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land." So the book opens with bad news, right? Two pieces of bad news. The judges—in the Bible, this means there was no king and everyone kind of did what was right in their own eyes. It was not the highest moral point in Israel's history. It was a low point. And they had famine. So they had no food, and that's a big problem in the ancient world.

And so a man named Elimelech, his wife Naomi—not Naomi from The Matrix, but Naomi—and their two sons, they leave Bethlehem and go to Moab. Now, Moab sounds like a pretty nice place. Well, Moab is the worst possible destination on the map for the Israelites. In Deuteronomy 23, it explicitly says that Moabites cannot enter the assembly of Yahweh. The Moabites are the descendants of Lot and his daughters through incest. They worship a pagan god named Chemosh, Komish. And they are the people that you do not marry into according to the Bible. And this Israelite family decides to go there for their groceries. And here's what happens.

Three Widows Left Behind

Elimelech, the husband, the father, he dies. Naomi is now a widow in a foreign country with two sons. And she raises those sons there, and when they grow up, they marry two Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. And then both sons die. We don't know why. We don't know how. The author just keeps moving. That's the world that the book of Ruth starts in.

You have three women that are left right after these few sentences. One is an Israelite and two are Moabite. There are no men, there's no income, there's no protection, there's no future for this group. Especially in a foreign country, with gods they don't worship and a people who aren't going to take her in.

And so Naomi gets word that the famine has ended back in Bethlehem, and she decides to go home. And here is where the story really starts to get going. She turns to her two Moabite daughters-in-law, whom she has a relationship with, and tries to send them back. Three times she tries. Go back. Go back to your mom's house. Go back to your family. Go back to your gods. Find new husbands. Have a life. Don't tie yourself down to me. The hand of the Lord has gone against me.

Naomi is choosing exile to spare them. That's grace. She's trying to love them by cutting them off, by losing them. Because she knows what's waiting for her back in Bethlehem. Naomi knows that when she goes home as a widow with no sons—in a culture where a widow has no sons is just a beggar. That's her fate. There is no safety net. And she doesn't want these two young Moabite women carrying that burden.

Ruth's Covenant

Orpah kisses her, embraces her. And she returns home. But Ruth, verse 14 of chapter 1, shows that Ruth clung to her. And the Hebrew word there is davak—it's a cleave, an embrace hard. It's the same word that's used in Genesis , when it says that a man shall not leave his mother and father; he shall cleave to his wife. It's covenant language. It's until death language. And Naomi gives her one more chance to leave. Go back with your sister. You don't even know what you're doing.

And Ruth answers with one of the most beautiful sentences, which we'll see again later in the message. But hear it for the first time here. It's in Ruth -17. It says, "Do not urge me to leave you to return from following you. For where you go, I'm going to go. Where you lodge, I'm going to lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God shall be my God. Where you die, I will die and there I will be buried there. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you."

It's covenant language with a self-imposed curse. Does it sound familiar? It should. It's the same structure that Israel uses with God at Mount Sinai when they take the covenant with God. May God do so to me and more also. Ruth is binding herself to Naomi the way that Israel bound themselves to God. A Moabite woman in the Bible just spoke a Sinai-shaped vow to an Israelite widow on a road heading back to Bethlehem. You see what I mean? It's kind of cool. The book just gets really cool when you read it. I hope you guys will go back home and read it.

From Full to Empty

So they walked to Bethlehem together—verse 19. And when they came to Bethlehem, the women see them coming, they gather around, and the whole town was stirred because of them. The women said, "Is this Naomi?" The women of Bethlehem look at her, and they can't find her. They knew her from 10 years ago when she left—full. She had a husband and two sons, she had land, she had a future, and now she's back as a widow with one Moabite daughter-in-law and no plan.

And the women are asking, "Can we even recognize her anymore?" And Naomi answers them with this one line: "Don't call me Naomi. Call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me." Naomi means pleasant. It's a wordplay going on. Pleasant. Mara means bitter. She's saying my name doesn't fit me anymore. The name I had when I was full does not work in the body of who I am because I've come home empty. Don't call me by that. Call me by what I am right now—Mara.

And the women who asked "Is this Naomi?" at the gate are the same women at the end of chapter 4 that will look at her holding a baby and say, "A son has been born to Naomi." And they end up calling her real name again, and that's something that connects—it's a loop in the story. But it's going to take the entire book and a pretty neat narrative to get there, which we're about to explore. That's the setup. Naomi went out full, came home empty, Ruth made a covenant not to leave her, and the community at the gate did not know what to do with her yet.

The Omer Count

Now, how does this connect to Shavuot? The nerdy part. Well, the reason why this is seen as a Shavuot book is because of the chronology that's built into it. In verse 22, it says that they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. So when they came back home, it was Passover week. It was first fruits. It was the beginning of the counting of the Omer, the beginning of the barley harvest.

And when we read through the story, she kept close to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until, further in the narrative, the end of the barley harvest and the wheat harvest. That's code for what? That's when Shavuot starts. That's the kickoff of the wheat harvest and the ending of the barley harvest. So this is why this book is read at Shavuot—for this obvious reason.

So the book of Ruth is the Omer count in narrative form. 50 days from Passover to Shavuot—every Jewish person is counting the Omer, counting the days leading up to Shavuot.

In the story, they're counting the days that Ruth is gleaning the field of Boaz. So chapter two: Ruth goes out to glean the fields. And gleaning the fields is something the poor would do. They would have access to the outside of the fields. It was biblical welfare. You could go and glean certain aspects of the field for your own food and so on and so forth. It was charity. And the Bible tells us that she happened to start gleaning the land of a field that was owned by a man Boaz, who was a kinsman of her dead father-in-law, Elimelech. Boaz comes out, sees her, asks who she is, hears her story, and says something to her. And watch carefully.

"The Lord repay you for what you have done, and the full reward be given to you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge." The word wings there is important. In Hebrew, it's kanaph. Kanaph. The word for wing, kanaph. The wing of God who you are under. Boaz is using it metaphorically, the wings of God. That under the wing language shows up in the Bible elsewhere. It shows up in Psalm 91, right? "He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and buckler." Wing language is shelter language. It's protection language. It's God language. Boaz looks at Ruth in the field and says, "You have come under Yahweh's wings."

God's Shelter Made Physical

Now, we're going to put a pin in that word kanaph because it's coming in chapter three at the beautiful threshing floor scene. And when it comes back, you'll see how it kind of changes everything for the story and escalates what the author's trying to do. Now, when you turn to Ruth chapter three, when you go home and read the short book, it's the threshing floor incident. And I wasn't going to read this part and really go into it because it gets awkward because sometimes we forget that we're adults reading an adult book. Right? Uh-oh. Right, I know. Most of us grew up in Sunday school and the version of Ruth chapter 3 was the version where Ruth goes in and politely asks Boaz, this guy who's taken an interest in her and she's trying to figure things out, and politely asks Boaz to marry her on the threshing floor and Boaz politely says yes. And that's not really what the story is or what happened as we're about to read. But that's the version the English translators kind of built so we could read this story to our children. But we're adults, right? Okay.

Guys, I say this in every single message: the Bible's amazing. The thing that makes it boring is we were trained to read it in Sunday school. And we were never allowed to see something funny and laugh even though the authors obviously were trying to make us laugh because they were making themselves laugh. And we're allowed to see something that doesn't make sense and be like, that doesn't make sense, right? It's an adult book written by generations of people who preserved these stories driven by the Holy Spirit for the purpose of retelling their own story and their story of God. Okay? Look at this disclaimer.

So Ruth chapter 3 starts out with Naomi being a great mother-in-law. She pulls Ruth aside in verse 1 and she says, "Hey, my daughter, should I not seek rest for you? I need to take care of you. That it may not be well with you because you're here with me and you're a beggar, too, and I don't like that. We need to get this fixed." Basically, she's saying, "Girl, you need a husband." And Naomi has someone very specific in mind. Boaz, the kinsman, right? One of her closer relatives, and so could marry into. This is the man that has been viewing Ruth gleaning his field and saying that she can take a little bit extra if she wants. You know, if you want, right? He's the one that's telling the guys, "Don't mess with her." Right? Don't leave her alone. Kind of protect her. All right?

Naomi's Strategy

And Naomi, the good mother-in-law, has been watching this whole thing, and she has a strategy. So, what does she tell Ruth to do? "Go wash yourself up and put on some perfume. And I want you to get dressed in your nice clothes. You know the ones I'm talking about. And then I want you to go down to the threshing floor and don't let him know you are there until he's finished eating and drinking, and I don't mean water." So, hear what Naomi is telling Ruth, "Get yourself ready. And then, when he's fed and drunk, see where he passes out, and you go in quietly. Do I have the slide here? Yeah, when he lies down, watch where he lies down, and then I want you to go and uncover his feet and lay down, and then he's going to tell you what to do."

Adults, calm down. This is not a polite legal proposal that's happening. This is seduction. That is a mother-in-law coaching her daughter-in-law on how to close the deal on a guy who is obviously interested, but refuses to take that first move. And here's the part that the Hebrew authors—they were even a little embarrassed to try to—like they were blushing. And so, there are these things called euphemisms, and they're words that have word plays, and they can go either way. And guess what the word foot, rigel, rigel, is in Hebrew? It's a euphemism for genitals, private parts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a euphemism. It doesn't mean feet sometimes when they say feet. Isaiah 7 has it there. Ezekiel 16, the people are going and they keep whoring themselves by spreading their feet. Right? Exodus 4 with Moses and Zipporah and they're taking the circumcision and touching his feet. Samuel 11, David and Uriah. So, David has to get Uriah to go back home and sleep with his wife to fix his little situation that he messed up. And he tells him to go home and wash his feet. Right? So, we're good? Okay.

The Threshing Floor

Every Hebrew reader knows exactly what rigel was doing in this passage. And the narrator, the author of Ruth, strategically uses it four times for this purpose. And makes it ambiguous even. Just so that there's deniability. So, when Naomi tells Ruth to uncover the rigel, the feet, and lie down, she's not telling her to pull the covers off his ankles. What does Ruth say? Like the great heroine she is, she said, "Okay." That's Ruth chapter 3, verse 5. "All that you say I will do." And she doesn't push back. She's just like, bet. I'm going. Let's go. And so she goes down to the threshing floor. She watches him eat and drink. And verse seven says that his heart was merry. That's biblical language for drunk. And she waits until he lies down and she goes in quiet and then she uncovers him and she lies down with him. And verse eight says that it was at midnight. The man was startled and turned and behold, a woman is messing with my feet.

Right? So, the English says that he was startled and he turned, or he sat up and saw her, right? The Hebrew word there shows up three times in the Old Testament. And the most famous passage for he turned is in Judges 16 with Samuel when he grasped the two pillars to push them away. Has arms around them to tremble, okay? He grabs hold. The word that's used here for when Boaz looks up—he didn't just gently roll over. He gasped and he grabbed her. He clutched her because she was there, okay? So, he grabs her and he's seeing what she's doing or what she's not doing or what's going on. She's doing something that's uncomfortable. And she's not supposed to be there. And he says, "Who are you? What are you doing?" And Ruth's first words are pretty bold.

First thing, she's been caught. "I am Ruth your servant. Spread your wings over me your servant. For you are my redeemer." Spread your wings—that's not sexual. You can stop that now. It's the same word canaph that's used in chapter two. Boaz blessed her in the field when he said that she had come under the wings of Yahweh, the wings of God. Now Ruth is throwing it back at him. She says, "Okay then, if I've come under God's wing, then God's wing has to take physical form somewhere, and you said I'm under God's wing, then now I want you to spread yours. You are the redeemer. The wing of God shows up through you, sir.

So, cover me. Marry me so that I can be safe." And that we went through all that awkwardness, and this is the reward. That's the thing. The wing of God in chapter two becomes the wing of Boaz in chapter three. God's shelter takes physical form through a member of the community. The shelter of God shows up as a cloak of a man wrapping it around her. That's the marriage proposal. With her body already there in the bed, she is invoking the kinsman redeemer law on the threshing floor at midnight with a semi-drunk guy holding her in the dark. And now listen what Boaz does next.

Boaz's Answer

Because this is the Ruth sermon. This is Ruth chapter three starting at 10. "May you be blessed by the Lord, my daughter. You have made this kindness greater than the first in that you have not gone after young men, rather rich or poor. And now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do all that you have asked. For all my fellow townsmen know that you are a worthy woman. That's the woman of virtue, by the way. For you are a woman of virtue. And now it is true that I am a redeemer. Yet, there is someone who is related to you closer than I.

There's another redeemer that should be marrying you according to our law. So remain here tonight, and in the morning, if he will not redeem you, tove, good. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it instead. But if he will not redeem you, then as the Lord lives, I will redeem you. So lie down here until morning. Stay here.

He Blessed Her

Look at what Boaz did not do. He did not push her away. It's a very dramatic scene in the story if it was a movie. Oh, snap, what's happening? He didn't push her away. He didn't scold her. He didn't tell her to leave. He blessed her. And look what he's blessing her for. You've made this last hesed—it's the Hebrew word for grace. Greater than the first, and that you have not gone after young men, poor men, rich men.

What gift did she bring him? What is he thanking her for? He's not thanking her for showing up at midnight. He's not thanking her for the beautiful perfume and the dress that she picked out. He's thanking her for who she chose. She chose him.

The Gift She Brought

Ruth could have picked anyone. She was young, she was beautiful, she was loyal—working in the fields for weeks. The men noticed. Half the men in Bethlehem would have taken her. They were already talking about her—younger men, richer men. And she said no to all of them. Because Ruth did not come down to the threshing floor for pleasure. Ruth didn't come there for security alone. She came there for a redeemer.

She chose Boaz because Boaz was the kinsman redeemer—the man in Bethlehem who could take her dead husband's name and carry it forward. The one man who could redeem Naomi out of her bitterness. The one man who could bring the land of Elimelech back to the family, because it had been lost at that point. That's what a redeemer does. When you marry back in, you get it back.

That is the gift she brought—not her body, but her choice. She chose the older kinsman who could redeem her dead family over a young man who could give her pleasure and riches. She chose grace over comfort. And Boaz hears it. And Boaz is just undone by it. He blesses her. He calls her the virtuous woman. And the whole town knows it. And then he says he's going to do it. I'm going to redeem you. But there's a closer relative, as I said—it's a closer relative. So we got to do this in the right order. And by the way, this is not the right order.

Grace Under Restraint

So if we go any further tonight, that is grace under pressure. The grace of restraint is not "I do not want you." The grace under restraint is that I want you so much that I'm willing to wait for you and do this right.

And then look at verse 14 and 15. It says, "So she lay at his feet until morning, but arose before one could recognize another, and he said, 'Let it not be known that a woman came to the threshing floor.' And he said, 'Bring the garment you are wearing and hold it out.' And I'll put six measures of—He put six measures of barley of grain in it. So that when she walks home it looks like she just came there for grain. She's innocent, right? That was not a man who was scandalized by Ruth. That's a man who was overwhelmed by her. And again, who loved her enough to wait one more day.

Both of them chose covenant over this early consummation, and that's why the lineage of Messiah comes through this scene right here—and not through some back alley scandal at midnight. But again, that word: chesed, grace.

The Grace That Stays

It's a word that's connected throughout the book of Ruth. It means kindness. It means steadfast love. It means loyalty. It means covenant faithfulness. It means all of that. Chesed is what happens when somebody who owes you nothing refuses to leave you. Famous Old Testament scholar Daniel Block in his commentary on Ruth says that chesed is loyalty when there's no obligation. It is the staying when leaving would be more reasonable, when it would cost you less to just leave.

And the book of Ruth uses this three times throughout it in the form of the English word kindly: "Deal graceful with me, whose grace has not forsaken [snorts] the living. Made this last grace greater than the first. Chesed, chesed, chesed." Ruth had every right at the beginning of this book to go back to Moab. Boaz had every right to let the lesser kinsman handle it and walk away. This isn't my problem. The women of Bethlehem had every right to ignore Naomi when she came back as bitter. Nobody in this book owes anybody anything. But everybody stays anyway.

Shavuot: The Community That Refuses to Leave

That's how we celebrate Shavuot. Because when God gave the Torah at Sinai, he was making a chesed, a grace covenant with Israel. And when the spirit fell at Pentecost, he was extending that grace covenant to every single nation. Shavuot is the day that God shows up and says, "I'm not going to go anywhere. I am the God who does not leave you, no matter the circumstances." And the book of Ruth is, kind of, a more human-sized reflection of that. Ruth refuses to leave Naomi. Boaz refuses to leave Ruth unredeemed. And the community refuses to leave Naomi as Mara, as we'll see.

And we're about to jump into the last chapter, and we're going to see something. We're going to see that the cure, the answer for bitterness is grace. Now, I quoted these verses very early on when we started the message. And we're going to read them again because by the time we have walked through the wing and the threshing floor and the grace, I want you to see how these words become a little bit bigger.

Where You Go, I Will Go

When Ruth looks to Naomi and says, "Do not urge me to leave you or return from following you. For where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people are going to be my people, and your God is going to be my God. And where I die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord do so to me, more also, if anything but death parts me from you."

She's not telling Naomi, when Naomi's bitter, that she's going to fix it. She's not saying, "Naomi, God's going to restore your husband and your sons." She's not saying, "Your bitterness is going to go away one day, and you just need to have a little bit more faith." She's saying, "I'm not going to leave you in this. Where you go, I will go. Your people mine. Where you die, I die." None of this is restorative language. It's staying language. Ruth does not promise Naomi her old life back. Ruth promises that whatever life Naomi has from here on out, Ruth is going to be there beside her no matter what. That's the gospel of the book.

Because at Sinai, God did not promise Israel a life without wilderness. He promised that he would be in the wilderness with them. At Pentecost, the spirit did not promise the disciples a life without persecution or loss. The spirit promised that whatever life comes next, the spirit would be there. Where you go, I will go. The God of Shavuot is the God who refuses to leave. And the way that God refuses to leave is by becoming a community that refuses to leave.

Redemption and Renaming

In chapter four, Boaz has indeed come to the point where he has redeemed Ruth at the gate. And they're married. And Ruth has a son. And the women of Bethlehem come to Naomi and they say something: "Blessed be the Lord who has not left you this day without a redeemer. And may his name be renowned in Israel. He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him."

The women of Bethlehem do not say, "Naomi, look, you got a grandson. Your story is fixed." They say your daughter-in-law who loves you and refused to leave you is more to you than seven sons. The redemption in this book is not the baby at the end. The redemption is the daughter-in-law who stuck around.

And then in verse 17, the women renamed the baby. And in renaming the baby, they rename Naomi. And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, "A son has been born to Naomi," and they named him Obed. Who was Obed? He was the father of Jesse, the father of King David, the greatest king of all of Israel, save Yeshua. A son has been born to Naomi. Not a grandson—the community names him Naomi's son. You notice that? And in the same breath, do you notice something else? They stopped calling her Mara. What are they calling her now? She has been renamed back to Naomi. They're calling her Naomi again.

The Bitter Does Not Get the Last Word

The renaming is not because the grief got fixed. Lord knows, Naomi still buried her husband. She still buried both of her sons. The grief does not go away, and anyone who has ever touched that knows that. But the bitter does not get the last word. And the reason that the bitter does not get the last word is that the community did not let her stay alone in it. Ruth did not leave. Boaz didn't leave. The women of Bethlehem renamed her back. And the son of Ruth becomes the grandfather of David, and from David comes Jesus Christ. Staying. Enduring.

At Sinai, again, God shows up on a mountain and he gave Israel the Torah and he cut a covenant with the people that were not yet a people, and he was saying, "I'm not going anywhere. I'm the grace God. I'm the hesed." And we see the same thing in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit fell. Not to give them a different Torah, but to give them the same hesed in a new type of form. Shavuot is the day when God says, "I'm not going to go anywhere." And the way that the spirit, the Holy Spirit makes good on that in Acts chapter 2 is by building a community that says the same thing to one another.

The Grace of Community

That's the point of the book. That's in Acts chapter 2, that community, when we read about them, it says they have all things in common. They were devoted to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, the breaking of bread. They had glad and generous hearts with one another. That's the grace people scaled up. Like, that is Ruth's vow turned into an entire community. And that's what we are supposed to be this very day. As founded in truth is not a congregation of people who have it all together, if you haven't noticed. We are a diverse people in all of our problems and all the stuff we're going through. Every one of us walked in here this morning carrying something we have not maybe said out loud. Something that we're trying to pretend is fine. Honestly, some of us probably walked here with something we were hoping that awesome worship music would fix.

And the work of this community is to do the work of Ruth. To refuse to leave each other in whatever we're carrying. To be the wing of God taking physical form through brothers and sisters who will not walk away. To call each other by our real names when we have started answering to the wrong ones. We are not promising each other a fix. We're not promising each other that other hard things will get easier on some type of timeline and one day it'll be better. Please. We're just promising that whatever your life looks like next, we're going to be in it together. Where you go, I will go. That is the grace of the body of Messiah.

Permission to Be Bitter

And so, you do not have to call yourself pleasant. You do not have to call yourself okay. You do not have to perform some type of restoration that has not happened yet. Naomi was allowed to be named bitter. She walked into Bethlehem and said, "Do not call me Naomi, call me Mara. The Almighty has dealt bitter with me." And the text does not rebuke her for that. God doesn't strike her down for that. The narrator doesn't correct her theology and tries to fix it. He just tells us the women of Bethlehem heard her and went and stood with her anyway.

If you're bitter this morning, you are in extremely good biblical company. Because Job was bitter and David was bitter in many of his Psalms. And Jeremiah was bitter. Naomi was bitter. And none of them got rebuked for it. They got companions to walk with them. That is what grace is and I hope that we will embody what that means every day with everyone and give it liberally.

The Wing of God

So, may this Shavuot be the morning the wing of God comes through this very room and community. And may it land on you and cover you. And may it stay there. And may you walk out of here today knowing that whatever your name is this week, the community of Yeshua is going to call you by your real name until you answer it again. Because that is what we celebrate in the unity of Yeshua. So, Hag Sameach and happy Shavuot.

And if you would join me in standing, we're going to conclude services with worship. And we have a prayer team on either side of the stage. And I invite you if you need prayer today, if you need someone to give you a hug and lift you up before the Father, that's what this team does. Step out, walk up, and receive it. If you brought something in today that maybe you've been carrying for too long of a time and maybe you've made a decision that it's time to set it down. Guys, there's an altar right here. It's just part of the stage. And we've kind of dedicated it as a symbolic altar where you can come up, kneel down, and place something and you can leave it there. You can leave it there knowing God's honoring it.

So, please join me in prayer. Avinu Malkeinu, our Father and our King. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to come before you this day. We thank you for the words of the Book of Ruth to know that your grace flows through a community and that you would enable us to be that community to the people who need it most. Father, I ask that the Holy Spirit that you say is within us right now would give us wisdom and guidance to be the people of God. To be the wing of Yahweh as we cover others and shelter others and say I'm here to stay no matter what. And that you would give us a spirit of shalom in all we encounter. In the name of Yeshua we pray. Amen.

Worship

Awaken my soul. Come awake. To hunger, to see, and to thirst. Awaken first love. Come awake. And do as you did at first. Spirit of the living God, come fall fresh on me. Come and wake me from my sleep. And blow through the caverns of my soul. Pour in me to overflow. To overflow. Awaken my soul. Come away. To worship with all your strength. Spirit of the living God, come fall afresh on me. Come and wake me from my sleep. And blow through the caverns of my soul, pouring me to overflow. Overflow. Spirit come and fill this place. Let your glory flow in this place. Spirit come and fill this place. Let your glory reign now in this place.

Spirit come and fill this place. Let your glory reign now in this place. Spirit come and fill this place. Let your glory reign now in this place. Fill us up. Let your glory reign now in this place. Fill us up. Spirit of the living God, come fall afresh on me. Come and wake me from my sleep. Flow through the caverns of my soul, pour in me to overflow. Spirit of the living God, come fall afresh on me. Come and wake me from my sleep. Flow through the caverns of my soul. Pour in me to overflow. Pour in us to overflow. Pour in us to overflow.

Yeshua, lover of my soul. I will never let you go. You've taken me from the miry clay. You've set my feet upon a rock, and now I know. Let's sing it again. Yeshua, lover of my soul. I will never let you go. You've taken me from the miry clay. You've set my feet upon a rock, and now I know. We're going to sing that again. Yeshua, lover of my soul. I will never let you go. You taking me from the murky clay. You set my feet upon a rock, and now I know. I love you. I need you. Though my world may fall, I'll never let you go. My savior, my closest friend. I will worship you until the very end. Sing it again. I love you. I love you. Though my world may fall, I will worship you until the very end. We worship you. We worship you. In our pain, we worship you. Lover of our souls. You never let us go. Never let us go.

Feel Every Feeling

Sometimes you have to just encourage your heart in it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like you don't feel it. You might even doubt it. Question it. So mad you could spit. Right? But sometimes you just have to declare what is true even when it doesn't feel that it's true. Like the road rising up to meet you kind of a situation. Seasons where we don't understand. Where there's no real rhyme or reason. You know? But the Father is in it with you. Father is in it with you. He is your ever-present help in time of trouble. He is the source from which, if you choose to plug in, he will strengthen you and he will propel you forward through the hard. Through the depth. Through whatever. Whatever. He is the only source of life. There is no other. There is no other way to be satisfied. But through him. Nothing. Nothing. That you try to use to cope will help apart from him. He is the only source of hope. He is the only source of hope. And that's real important when you get stuck down in the muck.

And a lot of us in the room right now, rightly so, feel every feeling. Can I just encourage you? Feel every feeling you're feeling right now. Feel it. Feel it deep. Feel it loud. That's why we roared at the beginning of the service because, you know what? Sometimes you just got to have a barbaric yelp to be okay. Right? You got to let it out. It's got to go somewhere. Amen? So, feel it. Release it. Praise through it. And don't give the enemy any more ground. Amen? Don't do it. Declare what is true over your life. Declare clear what is true over the situation. But look up. Look up. Take heart. Though the sorrow may last for the night, what does it say? Joy comes in the morning.

If you're right now in the night, praise him in the night. Hallelujah. Praise him in the night. He created night and day. Praise him in the night. But no. I'm feeling a little preachy. Sorry. No. Joy is coming. Don't despise the hard place. Praise him in the midst. And trust him to move you forward, but you got to be connected to move forward. You got to be connected to him.

Connected to Him

So, here's your call. If you're not connected, get connected to him. Yeshua is the way, the truth, and the life, and there is no way to come to the Father except through him. If you are not connected to him this morning, there is an altar before us. And I feel compelled to invite you.

Make It Right with the Almighty

Make it right with the Almighty. Make it right. He loves you. He loves you. He loves you. He loves you. He loves you. Okay. Don't leave this place. Don't leave this place. Right now, if your ears are itching and your throat is itching and your body's jigging because you know I'm speaking to you, do not leave this place without making it right. And there are people in this room that can sit with you and walk you in and walk you through and be overjoyed to do it.

Prayer and Thanksgiving

Thank you, Father. Thank you for your sovereignty. Thank you for your great love for us. Your hesed. Your overwhelming kindness and grace to us. Your mercies are new every morning, and great is your faithfulness, Father. We just thank you that our hope is in you, Yeshua. That our destiny, our eternity is tied to you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That we do not grieve as those without hope, but we grieve as those with hope knowing of your eternal promises to us. Thank you, Father. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you that you are with us. Thank you that you are for us. And thank you that you are intentioned for our good, your glory, and the salvation of many going forward. Thank you for life and health. Thank you, Father, for your goodness. We bless you. We thank you for all the things that you are accomplishing in our midst in these days. In Yeshua's mighty name we pray. Amen and amen.

The Priestly Blessing

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Blessed is the name of his glorious kingdom for all eternity. And may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance toward you and give you peace. In the name of our Sar Shalom, the only one who is perfect peace, Yeshua Hamashiach, we pray. Amen and amen. Shabbat Shalom, family.