Some years after the Israelites arrived in the Promised Land, there was a famine in the land. Some of the Israelites went to the nearby country called Moab. Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, and their two sons were among the Israelites who went to Moab. While they were in Moab, Naomi’s two sons married Moabite women. Eventually, Naomi’s husband and both of her sons died.
One of Naomi’s son’s wives was named Ruth. Even though Ruth was a Moabite, she loved God and she wanted to stay with Naomi even when she returned to Israel.
God’s love is available to people from every nation. Anyone who trusts in Jesus, the only Son of God, can become a child of God, whether they are an Israelite, a Moabite, an American or a Russian. God judges us by our heart of faith, not by the color of our skin or what language we speak.
God led Ruth to work in the fields of one of Naomi’s relatives named Boaz. Ruth worked diligently in Boaz’s fields. Boaz saw that Ruth was a kind, loving, hard-working woman. He wanted to marry Ruth and save the land of Naomi’s family.
God blessed Boaz and Ruth with a son, Obed, who became the father of Jesse, who became the father of David. David grew up to be the King of Israel and the ancestor of the King of Kings, Jesus. We will read more about King David in tomorrow’s story.
God always has a purpose and a plan. Even when life looks hard, we can trust that God is working to bring about good.
Today is a perfect day to trust in Jesus, the King of Kings, the promised child of God.
Do you remember some of the promises that God made to Abraham and Jacob? One of those promises was that God would give the land of Canaan to their descendants. Sometimes Israel is called “The Promised Land” because God had made this promise.
Has anyone ever broken a promise to you? Have you ever broken a promise you made to someone else? Unfortunately, we, as humans, sometimes break our promises. Sometimes something unexpected happens, so we can’t keep a promise we made. Sometimes we get sick or our car breaks down or it’s raining.
But God is not like us. God will always keep His promises. God never gets sick. God is never too tired. God is all-powerful and all-knowing, so He never makes a promise He can’t keep. We can always trust God. Always.
When the Israelites arrived at the Promised Land, God told Moses to send twelve men to spy out the land. After spending forty days in the land and seeing how wonderful the land was, you’d think the people would be eager to go into the land, but ten of the spies said they should not go into the land. They thought the people there were too powerful, but two of them, Joshua and Caleb, encouraged the Israelites to trust God and to have faith in God’s promises. Are any people more powerful than God?
Faith is believing that what God says is true, even when you can’t see it. God had helped His people again and again — passing over their firstborn sons, rescuing them from Egypt through the Red Sea, giving them manna from Heaven — yet the people doubted God’s power and God’s goodness. Because of their lack of faith, they had to wander in the desert for forty years before they could enter the Promised Land.
God had a special purpose for this special land. God’s Son, Jesus, was born there, in the promised land of Israel. Jesus was from the family line of Judah, one of Jacob’s twelve sons, born in the town of Bethlehem in the Promised Land.
Today is a perfect day to trust in God, being sure of what you hope for, being fully convinced of what you cannot see, trusting that Jesus is the promised Savior of the world.
After miraculously saving the Israelites’ firstborn sons, God had more miracles to come. God parted the Red Sea so that all of His people could walk through on dry ground on their way to the very land that God had promised hundreds of years before to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God is faithful to keep His promises in His perfect timing.
Again and again, the Israelites saw God work miracles for them and provide for their needs. Not only did God lead them through the Red Sea, but God gave them water out of a rock and fed them with manna and quail from heaven, yet still the Israelites complained. They struggled to trust and follow God.
God wanted the people to know what pleased Him, so He gave them ten special rules, what we call today, “The Ten Commandments.” These rules are good for us today, too.
The Ten Commandments teach us how to honor God and how to honor one another. Can you name all ten of the Ten Commandments?
God wants us to know Him and to know what pleases Him, so we will not sin, yet God also knows that no one can keep His laws perfectly. Everyone has sinned against God and broken His commands. Everyone. Your mom, your dad, your teacher, your pastor. Everyone has sinned against God and broken His commands. God also gave us the Ten Commandments so we would see our need for a Savior.
That Savior is Jesus. God sent Jesus to earth to live a perfect and sinless life. Jesus is the only one who could keep all of God’s laws perfectly, because Jesus is 100% God and 100% man.
The Israelites were saved by faith, trusting in God’s goodness and believing that God would one day send a savior. Today we, too, are saved by faith, trusting in God’s goodness and believing that Jesus is that promised Savior. At Christmas we look back at the Savior who was born as a baby in the little town of Bethlehem in that promised land of Israel.
Today is a perfect day to thank God for giving us His laws and for giving us a Savior, Jesus. Remember … Christmas is all about Jesus.
Joseph’s brothers stayed in Egypt and raised their families there. The descendants of Jacob came to be known as the Israelites. The Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves and would not allow them to worship God. The Israelites cried out to God to save them and He did!
God called Moses to deliver them. Moses had actually grown up in the Egyptian pharaoh’s house but had fled to the desert as a young man. While Moses was out taking care of his sheep, God spoke to him out of a burning bush. God told Moses that He was going to use Moses to lead His people out of Egypt.
God told Moses and his brother Aaron to tell Pharaoh, “Let my people go that they may worship me.” Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites go, even when God sent a series of plagues on his land. First, the water was turned to blood, then the land was covered with frogs, then gnats, and then flies! Then, God struck the livestock with a deadly plague, then the people and animals broke out in boils! Then, the land was struck by hail and then by locusts and finally darkness fell over the land. But every time, Pharaoh refused to release the Israelites to go worship God. God wants and deserves worship, and His people should be free to worship Him.
The final plague was on the firstborn son of every family, yet God had a plan to rescue the Israelites from this plague. God commanded each family to kill a lamb and put the lamb’s blood on the doorposts of their home. In any home without the blood, the firstborn would die, but in any home with the blood, the firstborn would be safe for that home would be “passed over.”
God was teaching a lesson to this land that He separates those who trust and obey Him, rescuing them from his just judgment by their faith.
God was faithful to keep His promises, both to the Egyptians and to the Israelites. God saved His people that night and God told the Israelites to celebrate a Passover feast every year to remember when God delivered them. The story of Passover also teaches us about Jesus. Jesus is that perfect, spotless Lamb of God whose blood saves us when it is applied to our hearts. When we trust and obey Jesus, we become His special people and are given eternal life as a gift. God will pass over us for judgment because Jesus was judged in our place.
Today is a perfect day to thank God for His saving grace through Jesus Christ our Lord.
God has a special purpose for each and every person that He makes. God blessed Jacob with 12 sons, each with a special purpose. Jacob had been his mother’s favorite child, then Jacob had a favorite wife (Rachel) and now Jacob chose one of his sons, Joseph, the first son of Rachel, as his favorite child.
In James 2:1, we read that Christians should not show favoritism. In Jeremiah 9:23-24, we read that we should not boast in our own wisdom or power or wealth. Jacob’s favoritism toward Joseph and Joseph’s dreams about his coming superiority over his brothers, caused division and jealousy between Joseph and his brothers. Joseph’s brothers sold him off to some traders on their way to Egypt, where Joseph became a valuable servant in Potiphar’s household.
Eventually Joseph was thrown into prison after being falsely accused of a crime against Potiphar’s wife. Have you ever been falsely accused of something that you didn’t do?
God was always with Joseph, even during his years in prison, giving Joseph favor with the prison leaders. After Joseph correctly interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams, Joseph was released from prison and became Pharaoh’s “right hand man.”
God gave Joseph wisdom, so that the Egyptians would save up food for seven years because a famine was coming. When the famine came, just as God had said, the Egyptians had food stored up. Guess who came to Egypt to buy food? Joseph’s brothers. Those very same brothers who had sold Joseph off! Yet, Joseph had grace and mercy toward his brothers. Like we are told in 1 Thessalonians 5:15, Joseph did not repay “evil for evil,” but he sought to “do good to one another and to everyone.”
Joseph’s life reminds us of Jesus. Jesus had grace, mercy, and love for us while we were still His enemies. Jesus, too, was treated unfairly and falsely accused, yet He repaid evil with good. God worked through both Joseph’s and Jesus’s trials to bring about blessing as a result of painful circumstances.
Today is the perfect day to thank God for working all things together for GOOD for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes.
Isaac grew up and got married. His wife, Rebekah, had twin sons. They named their sons Esau and Jacob. Before Esau and Jacob were born, God had told Rebekah that her sons would be rivals and that the older son would serve the younger son.
One day when Jacob was on his way to stay with his uncle Laban, he stopped to camp for the night. As he slept, Jacob dreamed of a ladder that reached from earth all the way to heaven. Jacob saw angels of God going up and down that ladder. The Lord, standing at the top of the ladder, repeated to Jacob many of the same promises that He had given to Abraham.
Look at Genesis 28:13-15 and list these promises. God promised to give Jacob and his descendants this land, that Jacob would have countless descendants (as many as the dust of the earth – can you count all the flecks of dust on earth???) and that these descendants would spread to all places on earth. God promised that all the families of the earth would be blessed through Jacob and his descendants. God promised to be with Jacob, to protect him wherever he went and to bring him back to this very land one day. God promised to never leave him and to be faithful to keep all of his promises.
WOW! Our God is always faithful. He is faithful to keep all His promises. We can trust Him.
God appeared to Jacob from the top of a ladder. God is so holy and perfect that we cannot reach Him by our own human efforts.
Ladders connect us with things that are beyond our human reach. I often need to use a ladder to change a light bulb or to reach a dish kept up in a high cabinet.
Jesus is our spiritual ladder, our way to reach the holy, perfect God. In the beginning of Jesus’s ministry on earth, Jesus told Nathanael, “You will all see heaven open and the angels of God going up and down on the son of Man, the one who is the stairway between heaven and earth.” (John 1:51 NLT) Our sin has separated us from God, but Jesus, the son of God and the son of Man, came to pay the price for our sin, so we can be reunited with God.
Today is the perfect day to trust in Jesus, the only way to the Father.
As Abram knew God more, his faith grew stronger. God gave Abram a new name, Abraham, which means “Father of many.” This was an unexpected name because Abraham and his wife, Sarah, hadn’t had any children together and they were very old.
At just the right time, as God had promised, Sarah gave birth to a son and they named him Isaac, but one day God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as an offering. Even though this was an unthinkable request, Abraham trusted God and prepared to do what God had told him. Abraham built an altar and placed Isaac on it, and at just the right time, God provided a ram to take Isaac’s place on the altar. God often grows our faith as we wait for Him to the very last minute!
I can only imagine how excited Abraham was to see that ram. Abraham had trusted God and God kept His promises to Abraham.
Just like God provided a ram to die in Isaac’s place, God provided Jesus to die in our place. In Romans 6:23, we read that “The wages of sin is death.” This means that our sinful deeds deserve death. We earn death by our sin. But Romans 6:23 goes on to say, “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” When Jesus died on the cross, He paid for our sin with His death. Jesus is called “The Lamb of God,” because He was the perfect sacrifice for mankind’s sin. We can receive eternal life and forgiveness of our sin when we trust in Jesus Christ to be our Lord.
Thank you, God, for providing Jesus to take my place and to pay for my sins.
Have you ever had to move to a new town? We did. We had to leave our house, our friends and our family when we moved to a new state 5 ½ hours away. Moving can be a scary experience. You have to leave behind what you’re used to and go to a new, unknown place full of new, unknown people
About 4000 years ago God told a man named Abram to go to a new place, but He didn’t even tell him exactly where to go! God told Abram to go to a place that He would show him, and Abram trusted and obeyed God.
Look again in Genesis 12 and see what God promised Abram He would do in this new land.
God promised to make Abram a great nation, to bless Abram, to make Abram’s name great, to bless those who blessed Abram and curse those who cursed Abram. God promised that all of the families of earth would be blessed because of Abram.
WOW! That’s a lot of promises! Abram obeyed God because he trusted God. He believed that God would keep his promises. Abram had faith like Noah.
How about you? Do you trust God? Are you willing to obey whatever God tells you because you believe His words? God has graciously given us the Bible, so we can know Him and know how to obey Him. Do you read your Bible? Reading the Bible is how you, too, can know and trust God.
Remember that promise that God made that all the families of the earth would be blessed through Abram. Matthew 1:1 tells us how that happened. Matthew 1:1 tells us about the family tree of Jesus. Can you find Abram’s name there? Abram had a lot of descendants, but the most important one was Jesus, the Savior of the world.
All the families of the world have been blessed through Abram because Jesus came to earth. Every single person who trusts in Jesus for salvation can receive forgiveness and a place in heaven with Him. Have you received Jesus’s gift of salvation and forgiveness? You can trust Him today!
About a thousand years after God created Adam, Noah was born. Noah was the great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson of Adam, but people back then lived a long, long time. Adam had only died about a hundred years before Noah was born, because Adam lived for over 900 years!
By the time Noah was born, everyone on earth had turned against God. Everyone’s hearts had grown wicked, but Noah remained faithful to God. Noah was different than the people around him. Noah obeyed God even when no one else did.
God knew that Noah would obey, so He gave Noah a very big job. God told Noah to build a huge boat called an ark, because God was going to send a flood to cover the whole earth. God told Noah exactly how to build the ark and Noah did it just as he was told.
God is faithful to His promises and the flood came just as He said. Before the flood came, God sent many animals to get on the ark to be saved. Anyone who trusted God could have been saved by entering the ark, but Noah and his family were the only people who got on board.
After the waters went down, God sent a rainbow as a sign of His promise to never flood the earth again. Ever since then, whenever we see a rainbow, we can be reminded of God’s faithfulness to keep His promises.
Do you know what the greatest promise is that God ever made … and kept? God promised hundreds of years before Jesus was born that He would send a Savior into the world to save His people – and God did, just as He said. In fact, that promised Son was a descendent of that faithful man, Noah. We can trust God to always keep His promises because He is always faithful and trustworthy. He is faithful to keep His promises to both the faithful and the wicked.
Jesus is the greatest gift we can ever receive. Have you trusted in Jesus to save you?
This is my lesson for this week. May it bless many and bear fruit to the glory of Jesus.
I am the younger of two children. I have only one sister. She is older than me. Her name is Kristan.
Growing up, I was always competing with Kristan. I never felt like I was as good as her. She was a quiet girl who didn’t cause much trouble. I always thought she was prettier than me. She was taller than me – and she still is. She was an excellent piano player while I struggled through my piano lessons.
Because I felt like she was better than me in so many ways, I tried to be better than her in other ways. I showed off by being talkative, friendly, outspoken, and loud. I earned awards in science fairs and debate competitions. I went to a special school for the top students in my city, yet I still felt like I was in her shadow.
Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever compared yourself to someone else and felt like you weren’t as good, as smart, or as pretty as them?
Last week we talked about what people like to share on social media like WeChat and Facebook.
I think one reason why people like sharing on social media is because they want people to praise them. We all want people to think we’re smart, beautiful, kind, and good. We all want people’s praise.
Now that I am an adult, I still find myself comparing my strengths to others’ weaknesses. I like to share the highlights of my week when my family did something special. I don’t share the moments when I got mad at my husband. I don’t share when my house was a mess and I served frozen pizzas for dinner. I don’t share when I spent 2 hours scrolling mindlessly through Facebook. I want to show the good things my kids or my husband or I did. I still want so much for people to praise and value me. This is still a struggle for me.
How about you?
I want to show you a short video of a young man with Down Syndrome speaking at a meeting for some American government leaders. While you’re watching this video, I want you to think about how you feel watching this young man and how you would feel if he was your son.
If you were this young man’s mom, would you be proud to call him your son? Why? Why not?
Now let’s think about our own families. If you had a son, would you value him more if he was the top student in his Chinese class? What if he won a track meet or an English competition? What would he have to do to make you proud?
What about God? What does God value? What makes God proud? To find an answer, let’s consider the story of the shepherd boy David who grew up to be the King of Israel. The first king of Israel, King Saul, had disobeyed God and God was looking for a new man to be king of Israel. God sent His prophet Samuel to a man named Jesse to find a new king from one of Jesse’s sons. When Jesse’s first son arrived, Samuel thought, “Surely this is the Lord’s anointed,” but Samuel was wrong.
“But the LORD said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”” (1 Samuel 16:7 NLT)
Let’s try reciting this verse together. First, you can listen to me say it. Then, we will say it together. Finally, I’d like a few sisters to try it by themselves.
God had chosen Jesse’s youngest son who was out in the field caring for the sheep. As we are told in Acts 13:22, God had chosen David, the son of Jesse, because he was a man after God’s own heart who would do everything God wanted him to do.
Does that mean that David never sinned? Does that mean that David never broke God’s laws? No, it doesn’t. In fact, David committed adultery with a married woman and had her husband killed. Yet, David was repentant over his sin. David grieved over his sin and turned to God for forgiveness. David held fast to God and had faith in God even when life was very hard.
So, what exactly is in a man’s heart which makes God value him?
What do you think, sisters? What makes a person worthy to be called God’s child?
God created each and every person in His very own image. Every single person ever made was created in the image of God – no matter their skin color, no matter their wealth, no matter their intelligence or ability level, no matter how much money they have. Every single person has value in the sight of God because every single person is created in the image of God.
But not everyone is God’s child.
Jesus “came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn–not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.” (John 1:10-13)
The only thing that can make you God’s child is faith, faith in Jesus Christ, the only Son of our Heavenly Father God. This alone is what makes you worthy. Faith is the greatest value.
And even this faith is a gift, as we read in Ephesians 2:8, “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.”
As you trust in God, then He will strengthen you and guide you to do great things for Him. He will change you, grow you and make you more like His Son as you trust in Him.
Like I once worked so hard to be better than my sister, when I became a Christian, I worked so hard to earn God’s love. But I was wrong. There was nothing I could do to deserve God’s love.
“Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 9:23-24) 耶和华这样说：“智慧人不可夸耀自己的智慧，勇士不可夸耀自己的勇力，财主不可夸耀自己的财富。 夸口的却要因了解我，认识我而夸口；认识我是耶和华，我在地上施行慈爱、 公正、公义；因为我喜悦这些事。”这是耶和华的宣告。
Let’s try reciting this verse together. First, you can listen to me say it. Then, we will say it together. Finally, I’d like a few sisters to try it by themselves.
God delights in steadfast love, justice and righteousness. Yes, He does. And He wants us to do these things, too, but He wants us to do them by faith. He wants us to obey Him by faith.
Jesus chose the intellectual Paul, a Jewish Pharisee and a persecutor of Christians, to share the good news of salvation with the lost. But Jesus also chose four common fishermen like Peter to spread the gospel. Does Jesus love the intellectual Paul more than simple Peter? No.
As Paul wrote in the beginning of his letter to the church in Corinth,
“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-29)
Do you think if your child got better grades or your husband had a better job, then God would love you more?
Do you think that if you were prettier or smarter or richer, then God would love you?
What if you memorized more Bible verses or prayed more or went to church more often, then would you be worthy of God’s love?
What if you gave all you owned to the poor or gave up your life as a martyr for Christ, then would you finally be valuable to God? (See 1 Corinthians 13 for more on this!)
Look at these pictures of my husband and my son in our backyard. My husband is much taller than my son when you look at them up close, but when you compare either of them to the height of the trees, they are both so tiny.
We may like to compare ourselves to one other, but when we compare ourselves to God, then we see how short we truly are. None of us are perfectly good, wise or holy. Only God. God loves you because He is God. He is your Creator, and He wants to be your Father. There is nothing you can say or do or think to make yourself worthy of His love.
In your own power, you are unworthy and undeserving, but in Christ Jesus you have infinite worth.
I don’t know whether you need to hear this because you need to be reminded not to show favoritism to your children or your coworkers or your friends, or because you need the reminder that you can’t earn God’s love, but I know that you need to hear this.
When you place your trust in Jesus Christ, God’s Holy Spirit comes to live inside of you. When God looks at you, He sees His Son, Jesus Christ, in your heart. Jesus Christ is who makes you worthy and valuable, completely worthy and infinitely valuable, and Jesus Christ is the truly the only one truly worthy of praise.
Let me encourage you to share this good news with someone else this week.
Teach What is Good 
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