tonight before we begin. Brianna Wolf, if you weren't with us this morning, they had to take her to Children's Hospital Liberty Campus. She had had what they thought was a seizure at the time, so she went through some tests this afternoon. I think they ruled out at this point a seizure, but they're not quite sure what's going on when she kind of passes out like that. There's something else that's taking place and they're not quite sure what, so she's probably going to have some more tests to follow up with. I don't know if they've got anything scheduled for sure on that yet, but we definitely want to pray for Brianna and Brad and Charlie. That's a scary situation there. Anytime something like that happens and you kind of leave still without all the answers you'd like to have. So let's keep them in our prayers. And also I wanted to mention tonight Kathy Ramsey, I think a lot of you know Kathy, her dad who attends from time to time, he's got two, I think it was compound fractures in his back. And so not going to be any surgery or anything going on there, but they are going to go see a specialist to kind of try to figure out what to do with him next. So Andy is his name. So keep him in your prayers as well. And thank you for all of you that came and got baby bottles. We have a few left still if you'd like to get another or if you didn't get one. These all go to help support the Oxford Women's Center. We've done some things with them in the past. We're going to do a lot more with them in the future. I'd like to bring in, they have a new director since the last time that she, Cora Lee, was here a few years ago and spoke, and they have a new director now named Kim, and I'm going to try to get her in here soon to kind of share with you some of the testimonies and stories of what exactly they do up there and how you can help in other ways, too, if maybe you'd like to volunteer up there sometime or take up collections for diapers and different things. So there's a lot of ways that they need help, but definitely thank you for supporting them the way that you did this morning. I really was encouraged by that. If you would like to turn with me tonight to the gospel of Mark, we're going to pick up in our series there, kind of switch gears this morning, and we'll go to Mark tonight. Mark chapter 7 is where we'll be. We'll finish up chapter 7 tonight. And actually, we'll do something a little bit different tonight. Once you find your place in Mark 7, just kind of flip back two Gospels to Matthew as well, and find Matthew 15, because we're going to look at this story tonight, but we're going to look at it in both of those accounts, because there's some things that Matthew reveals that Mark doesn't, and I want you to get the full picture of this story. We'll be in Mark 7 primarily, and we'll look at Mark 15 as well to kind of get the big picture of this story tonight that we're going to look at. So, before we begin, I'm going to ask you some questions, and you can participate if you'd like to tonight. How many of you that are here this evening grew up with at least one other brother or sister in the household? Alright, quite a few. Now here's where it gets a little tougher, I'll see if you'll be honest tonight. How many of you will admit that you were your parents' favorite? Man, Brittany was quick on that one, no question. Some of you, not too sure, Chad was late on that one, I don't believe it. Alright, now here, raise your hand if you're certain that your brother or sister was the favorite. That was easier, wasn't it? That was a lot easier. Time Magazine wrote an article a few years ago about what I'd say most of us know, and that's that parents play favorites. Like it or not, we all at times, or a lot of the times, have a favorite, or at least lean, have a tendency towards favoring one child. It's not that we love one more than the other, I hope not, but we just kind of show favoritism in one way or another. And as I thought tonight, if you weren't the favorite, it's a lot easier to tell everybody that. You can say, I always got the short end of the stick, brother and sister always got everything, and I was the one that had to, you know, get the hand-me-downs or, you know, walk uphill five miles to school and all that stuff in the snow. And if you are the favorite, you kind of want to keep that hush-hush. You don't want people to know that you were babied and that they took care of you better. But the message that I want you to see tonight that we'll look at is God favors faith, not people. He's not a respecter of persons, the Bible says. And so while we have a tendency sometimes to look at people and favor them one way or another, not so much with God. And it was amazing as I sat in Sunday school this morning, Bob, when you were talking about your lesson, I know Jeff says this a lot, how the lesson from Sunday school ties in so much with the message. You are so much on tune with this message that it was almost eerie the way that you talked about some of the stuff of favoritism and how we need to reach out to all different kinds of people. So that's what we'll look at tonight in Mark chapter 7 beginning verse 24 there's not many verses in this particular story so I'm gonna just read to you tonight and then we'll go back and look at it verse 24 of chapter 7 says and from there he arose and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon and entered into a house and would have no man know it but he could not be hid for a certain woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell at his feet the woman was a Greek or she was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by nation or by birth. And she besought him that he would cast forth the demon or the devil out of her daughter. But Jesus said to her, Let the children first be filled, for it is not meat to take the children's bread and to cast it unto the dogs. And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord, yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. And he said unto her, For this saying, Go thy way. The devil is gone out of thy daughter. And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone and her daughter. laid upon the bed. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we thank you tonight for this opportunity to be in your word, God. And most of all, we thank you for the gospel message that no matter where we are in life, no matter what our background is, no matter what we've been through, no matter what the society labels us as, You love us equally. You love us abundantly, and you offer the grace and forgiveness that many of us so desperately, as Jeff said, are still seeking and searching for. And for those of us that has found that we have found a bottomless fountain that never, ever runs dry. And God remind us tonight how much you care for us. Restore the joy to those that have lost it in their salvation. Assure those that are struggling. God, comfort those that are weak and weary. And God, may your word just go forth with power and accomplish what only it can so that we would leave here changed, transformed, and challenged to be more than what we were when we came in. And we just thank you for the work of the Holy Spirit in this church. May he continue to have his way as we obediently follow him. In Jesus' name, amen. In this story, I want you to see several things that take place. And it's important that we look at the context of chapter 7. Last time we looked at Mark, you remember that it all centered around the Pharisees. Remember how they came along and they had a problem with Jesus, as they always did, because they saw that the disciples were eating with unwashed or unclean hands. And boy, that just ruffled their feathers because they had all this tradition, all this oral law that they had passed down from generation to generation. You had to hold your hands a certain way, the water had to run off a certain way, you know, repeat this lengthy process, and if anything didn't work out right, you had to repeat it, start all over and do it again. And so Jesus really begins to hit on them that it's not the externals that makes a man unclean. It's not the stuff on the outside that is really the problem. That's just the fruit of something much deeper. And he says the problem, where the evil comes from, is within, out of the heart, all of these things. And he lists several. back in the earlier chapters of Mark 7 that we looked at. And so he's driving this point across that it's not the religious rituals that are going to be able to save you. They're not going to be able to clean you up. It's not holding your hands right when you wash them that God is going to honor. God wants your heart washed and your heart clean and your life pure. And he does that from the inside out. And it's important that we remember that because now we're going to come into a situation where Jesus leaves the land of the Jewish people and goes north, right into the heart of Gentile territory. He's in the region of Tyre and Sidon, which is predominantly Gentile land. All right, and it says he goes there in verse 24 because he was trying to get away for a while for some rest. Many times we see Jesus, you know, going into the wilderness, sailing across the Sea of Galilee, trying to get away from the crowds for just a little bit of rest. But he's so popular by this time that crowds always seek him out. They're always looking for him. They always seem to find him, so he can't get any rest. But he goes into this Gentile territory, and the disciples are already on edge, and we'll see that they're not too happy about going here. But he went north to primarily get away from these religious people that were constantly on the prowl, looking to trip him up. Remember, they traveled 100 miles in the account we looked at last week just to go and question him. I mean, that's how serious they were about finding fault with Jesus, trying to trip him up so they could accuse him, and ultimately, kill him and get him out of the scene because he was exposing their religious hypocrisy for what it was. He came along preaching this gospel of grace and mercy to sinners outside of works, and their entire religious system was based on works. They had stuff that they could constantly boast about, 613 laws, that they constantly look back upon and said, we did this, we didn't do that, therefore God is honored by us, and you all need to get with the program because you're nowhere near as holy as we are. It was the self-righteous attitude that still is prevalent today, and Jesus exposes them, and they hate him for it, and they want him dead. And so he goes into this region to get away. And the first thing I want you to see, by doing so, Jesus is breaking down barriers that have existed up until this time. in the religious community of the Jews. By him traveling into this region, he was already showing them the lesson that he had taught them last time about external things not making a man unclean. He goes to the Gentiles, who the Jews viewed as unclean just by their ethnicity, just by their birth, and he's going to show them, hey, salvation is of the Jews. But because I came into my own and my own received me not, the door swings open to the Gentiles so that anyone, Jew or Greek, bond or free, you may be saved. And so he's tearing down barriers here, and that's important for us to see, that he doesn't just welcome people that come to him. He crosses these barriers and goes to where there's a need. And like Jeff said just a little bit ago, we have got to understand that when we take the gospel message, it's not good enough for us to just wait for religious folks to stumble into the church. We've got to go to where the need is, and that's going to require us to tear down some barriers, some things that make us uncomfortable, communicating with people that we might not be communicating with. using methods that we may think are not so ordinary and normal. We've got to think outside of the box, so to speak, on how we communicate and get that message to people. Jesus was not afraid to do things that shook up the religious community. Matter of fact, he did that quite often. So he goes to Tyrone Sidon, he's trying to rest for a while, but it says in verse 25, a certain woman had a young daughter, very young child here, and she had an unclean spirit. And she had heard of him and came and fell at his feet. When you read that, you don't see the force of it like you do in the Greek. The Greek switches the wording around and it makes the command immediately definitive. That means it puts the emphasis on that. And so in the Greek it would say, but immediately having heard. And why that is important is as soon as she heard about Jesus, she went into action. Do you see? She heard about Jesus. And immediately her faith took feet and went. And that is very important for us because oftentimes we hear the message, but we don't put any feet. But we don't go. And so this woman, we see, hears it, and God has already been at work preparing things, orchestrating things. We call that the providence of God. He is working all things out according to the counsel of His knowledge. He's preparing things. He's doing things. Do you know that really the things that we see going on here at Freedom, I believe are just the results of things that God was doing already in the past. I don't know that we're doing so much different that has brought about the great change. I think that God has just been leading us providentially down a path that we have been obediently following and now we're seeing the fruit of what God has already been doing for quite some time. And so, the same situation takes place with this woman. She heard and springs into action. Now, back several months ago, when we were in Mark chapter 3, you probably don't remember this, but look at what it says in Mark 3 verse 8. It says, "...from Jerusalem, and from Edomaea, and from beyond Jordan, and they about..." Where? Tyrone Sidon, a great multitude, when they had heard what great things he did, came to him." You see that? Back several, almost a year and a half ago probably if we were to look at that account, The message was already going out to these people. Perhaps this lady had already heard Jesus personally, or at least heard the message of him several times before now. And so when she finds out he is on the scene, she says, I'm going to get to him. I'm going to go where Jesus is. In verse 26, it goes on and says that she was a Gentile, she was a Syrophoenician, a Syrian by birth, and she besought him. That means she cried out, she begged him that he would cast forth this demon out of her daughter. There was a need in this woman's life. There was a great, great problem that she couldn't solve and she had heard about Jesus and she recognized that he was the hope and she went to him. And isn't it the way that God works providentially that he begins to sow that word into our lives that someone at work takes an interest in us and starts to share the gospel. Maybe we start to listen to a radio program or a televangelist or somehow God puts the word in front of us and it starts to chisel away at our hearts a little bit. And then God orchestrates a need in your life. Now nobody likes trials. But the trials are necessary to bring you to the place where you either grow in faith or recognize your need of a savior. One of those two things are always usually the result of a trial. You're growing in your faith or you're being brought to a place of decision and recognizing your need for a savior. And that's what happened with this woman. this need comes about and he says, she says, I am going to go to the only place I can for help. Look at verses 27 and 28 because we all recognize at times needs in our lives when trials come, but isn't it also so common that when there's a need in our life, and we see Jesus in the distance, and we desire to get to him, then oftentimes it's not an easy road to achieve to get there. There's a lot of obstacles that lie in the way. And it was no different for this lady. She faced some difficult obstacles in getting to Jesus. Let me read to you what John MacArthur said about faith here. He says, great faith does not give up. Great faith does not give up. It is not deterred by obstacles, setbacks, or disappointments. Now that's hard, because it's very easy to get sidetracked and distracted and discouraged by obstacles, which is why the devil puts so many in your path. But he says, great faith does not give up. And Jesus, he says, therefore tested the faith of this woman by setting up a series of barriers. Some people have to struggle against strong doubts before they come to fully trust Christ for salvation. Others have to struggle against the objections and arguments of friends and family. Still others struggle to believe because they have never heard the gospel clearly presented or because they see inconsistencies in the lives of the Christians they know. But this woman, however, had barriers placed in her way by the Savior himself. You see that? There were barriers put there that the Lord Jesus himself allowed to be such. And it wasn't because he was uncaring or unloving or cruel, but he was bringing her down this path providentially. He had already been at work. She heard of him. and also there was a great need in her life so that she recognized where her help would come from. And so it seems like God is bringing her closer and he's bringing her closer and all this stuff is going to work out and we're going to have a great and happy ending, which we do, but not without the obstacles in the way first. And so in your journey of faith, You are going to see times where you grow, where the Word is abundant and clear in your life, and you're bearing fruit, and things are going well, and then perhaps a need will arise. And those trials can often be difficult as we grow and try to figure out why God is leading us this way. What is He doing? I'm not sure, but I know that I need to exercise faith. Those are the seasons where you grow. But ultimately, what really pushes you to the next plane in your faith is when the obstacles come and you have to continue to endure through those obstacles to get to Jesus. And that's what you see with this woman. Let me show you a couple of those things. Flip over, hold your spot in Mark and flip over to Matthew with me, Matthew 15. I want you to see some of the things that he says there that Mark doesn't. In verse 22, this is the same account, just with a little more details. It says, And behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coast and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David. My daughter is grievously vexed with the devil. But look at verse 23. He answered her, not a word. How many times have you felt that same response from God? Do you see what happened? Here comes this woman. She cried out to him. She begs him for mercy. Son of David, my daughter is demon possessed. Help. I need you. I need you, Jesus. And he doesn't answer. Have you been there? Have you been there? Have you prayed and heard silence from God? It doesn't mean he doesn't love you. It doesn't mean that he doesn't care. It doesn't mean that he's not working in that situation. He is working in his time. I heard a commentator speak about this, and it was a beautiful description of what happened here. He called it the pause of love. The pause of love and he likened it to have you ever taught a child to ride a bike, for example. And you know how you do it. At first, you kind of hold on to the seat and you run alongside of them and you steady them and build up their confidence. They know that you're there. They know that you're holding on. They're not going to fall. And as they get confident, you continue to run along with them, but you kind of just take your hand off the seat. It's close, but it's not holding on. But they think it is. And so they pedal with confidence. They don't get shaky and all wobbly. And they keep going. And when they do, you grab back a hold and let them steady themselves again. But when they get to that place where they're really starting to do better, and you let go of the seat, and you're running alongside of them, and maybe for the first time they realize, uh-oh, mom and dad aren't holding on to the seat. And they start to shake and wobble. And we want to grab the seat, right? We want to grab it because we know what's coming, skinned up knees and banged up elbows and lots of tears, right? But at some point, rather than always grabbing the seat, You've got to give them that extra little time to ride it out. Maybe you do grab them before they crash, or maybe you just let them crash a little bit so that they can eventually get to a place where they'll go on their own. But regardless, there's a pause in between the time where they recognize, uh-oh, they're not holding on to me. This is not going to end good. and you want to grab them, but you let them go a little bit. That's the pause of love. That is the thing that happens here that Jesus is teaching this woman. She says, Jesus, I need you. And it's not that he doesn't recognize her need, and it's not that he isn't going to answer, but the in between. Just as the child riding the bike starts to wobble and shake, he's going to let her go a little bit to build that faith to build that trust to authenticate the faith that she seems to have because she approaches him. Look at verse 22 of Matthew's account. She approaches him. With the title. son of David. She calls him the son of David. That's important to understand because this is a Gentile woman addressing Jesus by his Jewish title. The son of David was who the Jews looked for as their Messiah to come down and sit on the throne of David to establish his rule and reign. And it identified him as the Jewish Messiah. And this Gentile woman had no hold to the promises of the Jews. And so Jesus wants her to recognize her position. in the order of God's redemptive plan. It's not that she has no value. It's simply that God wants her to assume and recognize the position in the place of what he's doing. And so when she addresses Jesus in this way, he doesn't answer. He doesn't immediately answer her. And it goes on And it says in verse 23, answer it or not a word. And listen, here's the second obstacle. Not only was there silence from God, but there were uncaring people along the way with it. Look at the disciples. His disciples came and besought him saying, send her away for she cries after us. They said, man, this lady we are here. We traveled all the way into this region that we don't want to really be in to go into this house to get some rest. And now we've got this shrieking, wailing woman that is absolutely driving us crazy. Will you send her away so we can rest? So you have Jesus silent. You have the disciples uncaring for her. And then let's go on and look what else she encounters. He answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So she addresses him by his Jewish title, son of David. And he affirms that by saying, I have come to the house of Israel. That's who I've been sent to. Verse 25, she says, then came she and worshiped him saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, it is not meat, or it is not good to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs. And she said, truth, or that's true, Lord. Yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table. There's a lot in that. There is a lot in those verses. And so Jesus, remember when we started the sermon tonight, I asked you about if your parents showed favoritism. And we said that God doesn't. But when you read this verse, when you look at this account, it almost seems as though Jesus is favoring one over another. And so there's a tendency for us to think, well, maybe Jesus is impartial, or he shows partiality towards some and not others in this account. But as we look at this, the Jews used two words for dogs. There was a mangy, scoundrel kind of dog that ran and roamed the streets. They were unclean and the Jews had nothing to do with. Then there was a second word that meant little puppies and the children would bring these little puppies in and they would take them as pets and they would sit under the table and when crumbs would fall or as you know children do they would slip something under the table to the dog to feed them. And that is the word that Jesus is using when he talks to this woman. So at first on the surface, it sounds like, oh, my goodness, he's been silent to this woman. They're trying to run her off. Then she then he basically calls her a dog. No. He's trying to show her that in God's plan, she has value. But the mission was first that Christ came to his people. God chose the nation of Israel to bring the Messiah through. And it was his mission and redemptive plan to begin in Israel. And the door then springs open to the Gentiles. And so. He is humbling this woman. In a nutshell, He is humbling her because look at her answer. This is amazing. Verse 27, True Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table. How offended would we be if someone used that kind of language towards us and seemingly belittled us by calling us less than or appearing to call us less than someone else. Our pride would elevate to such an extreme. We would defend ourself. We would attack that claim. We would be on the defensive immediately because our flesh wants to boast in itself. It wants to puff itself up. It wants to take the place of highest honor. And Jesus said in James 4, 6 that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. If you want grace, you've got to show humility in your life. If you want God to be generous with you and bountiful to you, then you can't elevate yourself to a place of pride. Satan did that. And how did it work for him? He was cast out of heaven for his pride. But Jesus said, whoever is least in the kingdom of God will be greatest. because he elevates the humble and he takes this woman down a path of obstacles and he brings her to a place where she can either be boasting and prideful and puffed up or humble and seeking scraps from the master's hand. And she's satisfied with that. She said, if all I gets crumbs, if it's from Christ, it's good enough. And in that humility, her prayers, are answered. Look at what he says in verse 28 to her. Then Jesus answered and said to her, O woman, great is your faith. Be it unto thee even as you will. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour. In Mark's account, verse 30 says, when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out and her daughter was laying again upon the bed. All of the turmoil and whatever was going on in this little girl was gone. She was peaceful. She was resting again on her bed. And he tells this woman only two times in all of the Gospels does Jesus tell anyone that they had great faith. This woman and the Roman centurion, and they were both Gentiles. Isn't that strange that the Jews who fought so much against Christ and his mission, yet it was the Gentiles that exercised the faith that even stunned Jesus to the point where he called it a great faith. And so as we close this account out, I want you to see that it seems offensive to us on the surface because we don't want anyone, especially God, to show partiality. But we know in the human realm that that happens quite often. And my question to you tonight is, how often is it you yourself that show partiality? How often do we neglect certain needs, that we avoid certain people, that we sidestep certain situations because we aren't too comfortable to go to that person, to be in that place, to give up our time to reach out to them, If God doesn't play favorites, then neither should His people. Neither should His people. So I want you to see several points as we close from this woman's account. There's something to be learned and gained from recognizing our unworthiness. As long as you and your mind think that you are worthy of every good gift that you ask for, as long as you think that you are owed something from God and you don't recognize your position as a sinner and a beggar before a holy God in need of grace and mercy for everything to exist. You will never take the proper position in the kingdom of God because he wants to bring us to a place of humility so that we can glory in his greatness and he will exalt us in due time. Number two, I want you to see that the focus of this woman and her faith was always Christ. And how many times have we talked about that? Faith often seems to fail because faith, when we really dig to the bottom of it, like Jesus did, the faith was not in the right person. It really wasn't in Christ. It was in a church. It was in a pastor. It was in a spouse, a friend, a doctrine. It was in all sorts of things. But it wasn't rooted and grounded in Jesus Christ. the foundation of what we believe and the faith that we have must be in him alone. And this lady never wavered from Christ being the obstacle of her faith. Even when the situation seemed trying, even when the obstacles seemed overbearing, she never wavered from continuing to fall at the feet of Christ and asking for mercy. And it got an answer for her. Number three, there are blessings in the obstacles. It is so easy for us to pray and desire deliverance from our circumstances rather than praying to grow in our circumstances. Our prayer is always, Lord, this is uncomfortable. I don't like it. Remove the obstacles so that things can be easy again. Rather, how would our lives be changed and how quickly would we learn the lesson if we looked for God's hand in the trial? If when the storm came, we saw him walking across the water and recognized him in the midst of the trial as being with us. If we recognize that in every storm, he's there in the boat with us. How would we pray? How would we look at situations? How would we walk in trials if we recognize that those trials are actually blessings and not curses? And number four, the power of salvation. It broke down barriers. It crossed lines. It saw no ethnicity. It saw no nationality. It didn't see a gender. It just saw a person in need and it went to that. Christ went to where the need was. It overcame the obstacles. Whatever was put in its place, it overcame them and it gave the deliverance that was sought. That was the power of Christ at work in this lady's life. And so Jeff, I'm going to ask that you would come tonight. Because if God doesn't show partiality to anyone, where in our own lives do we need to remove biases? so that we are willing to receive people as they are and that we are willing to meet them where they are. Now, again, don't take me wrong. If someone is in sin, I'm not justifying that sin and say, well, we just leave them where they are. But we meet sinners as Christ met sinners in that place so that we can lead them to the cross where they can find mercy and grace. We don't clean them up first and then introduce them to Jesus. We introduce them to Jesus so He can clean them up and change their life. And we can't show partiality when we have that message on our lips. Because if you recognize that Christ is going to do the changing and the cleaning, then everybody has to come to the same fountain to be washed. If you're worried about cleaning them up first, then yeah, you're going to show partiality and say, I don't want to get my hands dirty with that mess. There's a lot of baggage over there. I'm avoiding that one. You know, we've all got that baggage. We've all got the stain of sin. And when we recognize that we've got to get him to Christ so that he can cleanse him because he shows no partiality. Why should we? So tonight, as we stand and as we sing, God is able to meet your need. Maybe you're traveling down that road in the opposite. Pass me not, O gentle Savior, Hear my humble cry, While on others Thou art calling, Do not pass me by. my humble cry. While on others thou art calling, do not pass me