(Audio and Text Available)
Title: Parent’s Dreams for Their Children
Intro:
I’m not using the projector today, and I am speaking from the floor, in part today, because today’s message is not so much instructional as it is relational. I want to talk specifically to our parents and children today.
(If you are not one of these, there is still much for you in todays message, but for those of us who have watched children grow, todays passage should hit you like Steel Magnolias, or Beaches, or my wife’s favorite, Fried Green Tomatoes.)
Parents, what is the number one dream we have for our children? (Take answers)
Let me give you two examples, one involving each of my children.
Vaeh being three when I pushed her and asked for her forgiveness.
Me watching Silas play sports, Holy Spirit saying, “Which one is more Christ-like?”
(Read/Pray)
The Situation: Naomi was an old, barren woman, in a foreign country, with two alien and childless daughters-in-law. She seems an unlikely prospect for any role in the Lord’s covenantal history of redemption.
Essentially, these daughters must make a choice:
Option One: Allow Naomi to return to her homeland of Judah, stay in their home country of Moab, remain close to family, find a new husband, have children.
Option Two: Though nothing legally or morally binds them to their Mother-in-Law, remain with her, travel to Judah, be a foreigner, GREATLY reduce your prospects for a husband and children, live out their days as widows.
*Note: It wasn’t necessarily forbidden for Jewish men to marry Moabites, but, according to Deut. 23:3-6, any male descendants from a mixed marriage would not be allowed into the Temple. (The Irony, of course, is that an heir, and ancestor to King David, would come from one of these mixed marriages.)
Naomi’s Objection:
Like all good mothers, Naomi is more concerned with the well being of her daughters (even daughter-in-laws) than with herself.
She tells them, “Look, I love you, but you owe me nothing. I am going home to my family to live out my days. You have your entire lives in front of you. You are still young, still able to have children, don’t throw that away for my sake!
Go back to your parents, live in their homes, eat their food, accept their shelter. Where I am going, I can’t guarantee you any of that.
And, in time, you will find other capable men, you will remarry, you will have families of your own. Nothing would make me happier than that.”
She then kisses them, and we read in verse 9, that they weep.
And then they reply, “Surely, we will return with your people.”
Wow. Naomi MUST have been some amazing woman, amen? In the coming weeks we will see that truth play out in spades…let’s pray.