Page 6 - BACK TO BETHLEHEM

to Bethlehem.

When she came back after ten years, she said: “I went out full,
but the LORD has brought me back empty.” When she left ten
years earlier she did not say, “I am leaving full.” When she left
ten years earlier she said, “I am leaving empty.” I am leaving
because there is no bread in the House of Bread. There is a
famine here. But after ten years she discovered that she had left
full at the beginning.
You see, Bethlehem is a picture of Christ, the House of Bread;
the place of fullness. And sometimes, even though we all start
out in Bethlehem, when famine comes or things get a little
tough, we leave fullness (of course, we think it is emptiness) to
find fullness. When you leave fullness to find fullness, you only
find emptiness. God instructed this family for ten years in that
truth that there is only emptiness outside the House of Bread.
In the House of Bread, famine is fullness. Outside the House
of Bread, abundance is poverty.

There is no fullness outside the House of Bread. Fullness is in
Christ. It is not in Moab. It is not in Christian service and it is
not in Christian fellowship. Those things are wonderful in their
place, but they are not fullness. If you look for fullness in
Christian or spiritual gifts, you will only find emptiness. If you
look for fullness in scholarship and academics or even Bible
knowledge, you will only find emptiness. Fullness is in
Bethlehem; it is in Christ; it is in the House of Bread. Until we
go back to Bethlehem, we cannot begin to have the union with
our heavenly Boaz that results in the production of the Lord
Jesus Christ. We need to go back to Bethlehem, and that is
where it all begins.
Now, I am emphasizing the word “back” in “Back to
Bethlehem”. I am making a big deal out of that because
Bethlehem is a picture of Christ, a picture of fullness, a picture
of abundance, and every Christian starts out where they started
out in Ruth chapter one. You are already in Bethlehem. You
start out in Bethlehem. Some Christians have a mistaken idea