Well, if you want to read along, we're going to be in Mark chapter 7, which is an interesting section of scripture. Of course, every passage of scripture is interesting, but this is where Jesus goes into Gentile territory and ministers there. And there's two stories about that ministry. One is to the Syro-Phoenician woman, and then the other is the healing of a man in Decapolis. Decapolis, it just means the 10 cities. And if you have a Bible map, you'll see it's over to the east. But this is Gentile territory, and the Lord is ministering. It foreshadows, really, what would come later with the birth of the church and the expansion of the church. So I always find this very fascinating. Let me pray for the word and then we'll read some of it. Our Father and our God, we pause before the reading of your word that we could just remind ourselves that we're handling reverently the very word of God. So Lord, we know your word is powerful, but Lord, we need your help. So I pray that you would just open our ears to hear, our minds to understand, our hearts to receive. And Lord, we thank you for that blessing. In Jesus' name, amen. So let me read Mark 7 down from 24 to 30. And I also want to look at this same story as recorded in Matthew. And we'll just kind of pick a verse here and a verse there. So this is Mark 7, beginning in verse 24. It says, from there he arose and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon, and he entered a house and wanted no one to know it, but he could not be hidden. For a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him, and she came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she kept asking him to cast the demon out of her daughter. But Jesus said to her, let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs. And she answered and said to him, yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children's crumbs. Then he said to her, for this saying, go your way, the demon has gone out of your daughter. And when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out and her daughter lying on the bed. I love this story. I absolutely love this story. You know, I've preached on it before and I've taught it in Sunday school, but it's one of my favorite stories in the Bible for a couple reasons. One, I didn't understand. I remember reading this when I was first coming to Christ and I didn't understand the story. And I read it probably 50 times and I asked the Lord to open my mind to understand this over and over again. I would pray, Lord, I still don't get this right. And then I got it. And I knew the Lord just had opened my mind to understand His word. It was such a thrilling moment for me that I could understand what was going on here. And it's funny, now I look at it and think, how did I not understand this? It's so plain of the text. But I was blind to it. So Jesus had just, you know, as we're marching through Mark, and it's the same pattern in Matthew, he had just finished teaching with his disciples. They're learning about these outward things that were the traditions of men, like the ceremonial washing and all this that was outward. And Jesus was teaching that that doesn't make you unclean before God. It's what's down inside of you. The defilement's a heart issue. Remember him teaching that? And it's interesting to me that right after he teaches that, that he takes his disciples and goes into Gentile territory. And that's really what he does. I'll read you a couple passages to remind you. But like Matthew 15.2, why do your disciples, they say, transgress the tradition of the elders? They do not wash their hands when they eat the bread. And then in Matthew 15.17, Jesus says, do you not understand whatever enters the mouth, goes to the stomach, and then is eliminated? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart. They defile a man. Jesus says, why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? And he nails them at that level. They didn't hold the word of God up. It was these traditions. And then Jesus teaches, for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts and murders and adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man. But to eat with unwashed hands, and he means ceremonially, unwashed hands, it does not defile. And so Jesus takes his disciples, almost immediately after that, into what the Jew would say is unkosher territory. He takes them where really the Jews wouldn't want to go. And yet there he is in Tyre, the region of Tyre and Sidon. Those regions in particular, as you go through, especially the Old Testament, were deeply pagan. deeply idolatrous, bail worshipers, is who these people were. There's a lot of passages I could take you to, but just for time's sake I'll read you two. So Ezekiel 28, It says, the word of the Lord came to me again saying, son of man, say to the prince of Tyre. Now here you got the leader of Tyre. Thus says the Lord God, because your heart is lifted up and you say, I am a God. I sit in the seat of God's in the midst of the seas. Yet you are a man and not a god, though you set your heart as the heart of a god." What a wicked person, the leader of this nation who believes they're deity. Because they're on the sea, it's a main hub, there's commerce, there's wealth. And so this leader puts himself at the level of deity before the people. And then you remember these these characters from the Old Testament. 1 Kings chapter 16 says, now Ahab, remember old King Ahab and his wonderful wife Jezebel. So it says, now Ahab, the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him. And it came to pass as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, that he took as wife This is like a condemnation against the king. "...that he took as wife Jezebel, the son of Ethbaal..." Do you notice their names are connected to the Baal worship? "...the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians." She was from Sidon. And he married her. And then it says, and he went and served Baal, and he worshipped him. He worshipped Baal. So Jezebel carried his heart away to Baal worship. So this is a pagan, idolatrous region that Jesus decides to take his disciples to. And the thing that's interesting is they must have had some conversations that we aren't privy to, that I would love to know what they thought about that. Because they must have had some hesitancy to be going into that region with Jesus, trusting Jesus all the while. And it could be, some of the commentators believe, and I'll read you William Barclay, that maybe Jesus did this because he knew the crowds wouldn't follow him into that region. And he finally could get some rest with his disciples. Remember, he was going to do that before. He was going to take them to a deserted place, but the crowds followed him. He ends up feeding the 5,000 men there. But William Barclay says this. There was no place in Palestine where he could be sure of privacy. Wherever he went, the crowds would find him. So he went right north through Galilee until he came to the land of Tyre and Sidon where the Phoenicians dwelt. There, at least for a time, he would be safe from the malignant hostility of the scribes and the Pharisees, and from the dangerous popularity of the people, for no Jew would be likely to follow him into that Gentile territory." The scribes and Pharisees, for sure, they would not go there, so he was able to get away for a little bit. J.D. Jones, and I'll quote him a couple times if you permit me today, I just love that guy's commentary, But J.D. Jones says, the people of that country were the descendants of the ancient Canaanites, whom the Israelites had dispossessed on their entry into the land of promise. They had once been the foremost maritime people of the world, though now fallen from their highest state. But to the Jew, the land was an unclean and a bored land because of the loathsome licentious idolatry practiced by its inhabitants. To this country, Jesus now bends his steps. It's very loathsomeness to the Jew seemed to promise to him the quietness and retirement that he desired. He went away into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, hoping to be able to sojourn there unrecognized and undisturbed. But once again, The rest had to be set aside. He entered a house, wanted no one to know it, but he could not be hidden, the Bible says. It's amazing. It's just an amazing story. So the beginning, I believe, here of the breaking down of the barriers that the book of Ephesians teaches us about the wall of division, that both Jew and Gentile coming together to form one church through Jesus Christ, that Ephesians elaborates on. The church isn't going to really fully get this for a while. You'll see them struggle if you study through the book of Acts. They're surprised. They're God-saving Gentiles. It's amazing when you look at the book of Acts. So here's this woman, her family line. The reason why I'm laboring this is because this is so shocking to a Jew to think God would send his Messiah who would go into this territory and then work a good blessing on behalf of this woman. But she's a Canaanite. Matthew says in 1522, And behold, a woman of Canaan came from that region, and cried out to him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David, my daughter is severely demon-possessed. So Mark says in 726 that the woman was a Greek, a Syro-Phoenician by birth. So she didn't move there as a Jew. Everybody wants us to know who this woman is. She's a Canaanite. She's Greek. She's Syro-Phoenician from birth. And so clearly, this is a Gentile woman. Isaiah 49.6 says, and this is one of my favorite verses in Isaiah, the Lord speaking here about Messiah, who's to come. And it says, indeed, he says, it is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel. Too small. He says, I will also give you as a light to the Gentiles, that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth. Not just to Israel, but to the ends of the earth. And even though this is all tucked away in the Old Testament, it was still a real difficult thing for the early church to understand that it was too small a thing. That God was advancing the kingdom around the globe. It's just an amazing fact. So this lesson is being taught here to the disciples. It's a lesson they'll learn slowly. In Acts chapter 8, persecution breaks out. Philip ends up going to Samaria. OK, well, I'll preach in Samaria. They're half-Jew. So he goes to Samaria in the book of Acts. And then you get Acts chapter 10, where Peter's told to go and witness to Cornelius, who's a God-fearer. He's a Gentile, but at least he's a God-fearer. And he goes, and the whole household is saved. And then you finally get to Acts chapter 15, where the church, the fledgling church, is trying to figure out what God's doing. What do we do with all these Gentiles? So many Gentiles are coming to faith in Christ, they don't know what to do. So they have a council, the Jerusalem Council, in Acts 15, and they're deciding, do these Gentiles have to be Jewish converts, and then they can come to Christ, or can they go directly to Christ by faith? And they decide that, you know, we couldn't even carry the burden of the law. And they decided that, no, these Gentiles can go directly to Christ through faith. And they lay out a few codes for them, because the church has to get along. And they have a few rules in place, but not much. Not much. And that came out of that council, and you can read that in Acts chapter 15. So it's an amazing thing. And here are the beginnings of it, if you will, in the Gospel, where Jesus is paving the way, so to speak. So the conversation, the woman begins. She's the one that finds Jesus, and she begins the conversation. And again, in Matthew's rendering of this, Behold, a woman of Canaan came from that region and cried out to him, saying, Have mercy on me." And then she uses some messianic terms here. She says, Oh Lord, son of David, because my daughter is severely demon-possessed. Her posture is recorded in Mark chapter 7. It says, verse 25, I believe that is, for a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him and she came and fell at his feet. She fell at his feet. Mark chapter 7 verse 26 says she kept asking him, this persistence. She didn't just ask him one time to do this. And you'll find out in a second here Jesus isn't even answering her. He's ignoring her. It's really quite a story. So she keeps asking him, and asking him, please cast the demon out of my daughter. And she says, basically, have mercy on me. In other words, I know I'm a Gentile. I understand that. I'm asking for mercy here. Please give me mercy. And her perception of him is obviously, somehow she has some idea that this is the Messiah. You're the son of David, she says. She calls him Lord. Jesus' response in Matthew, it's almost shocking when you see in Matthew 15, 23, where it says, but he answered her, not a word. Not a word. She's pleading and begging for mercy. He doesn't answer her a word. James Montgomery Boyce offers four possibilities, and there might be ten more beyond that. Why would he do that? What's he doing? Because Jesus doesn't do anything randomly. There's a reason why he doesn't answer her a word. He lets her plead and all that she's doing. He says, one, Jesus was not sent to the Gentiles. That's why he doesn't answer her a word. John 4.22, you know, you worship what you do not know, we know what we worship, Jesus had said. For salvation is of the Jews. Is that why Jesus doesn't answer our word? I don't think so. People suggest that. Secondly, Jesus is testing the woman's faith. Will she just give up and go away? Will she continue to plead? Third, Jesus is strengthening the woman's faith because the idea that if I just immediately responded to her and took care of things, her faith wouldn't really be gelled, if you will. And then fourth possibility, Jesus is highlighting what he will do for emphasis. I think that might be it. This whole story is building to a climax. And I think Jesus is doing that on purpose. The disciples' response in Matthew is interesting. She's pleading and pleading and pleading, and they're trying to get some rest. So they say in Matthew 15, 23, after he doesn't answer her a word, it says, his disciples came and urged him, saying, send her away, for she cries out after us. And I don't know if the disciples were saying, just make her go, or were they saying, just give her what she's asking for. She'll leave. You don't see a lot of compassion in the hearts of the disciples here. And then Jesus' teaching begins. And Jesus begins to teach in 1524 of Matthew, where he says to her, I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. There's your answer, right? And it's not going to end there, and you know. And then her reaction, when he says that, the very next verse in Matthew says, she came and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. She came and worshipped him. Now, that word we translate in the New King James to worship just basically means she fell prostrate before him. But it certainly sounds like the position of worship to me. And she says, Lord, help me. J.D. Jones says, there was an old Scottish saint who had, for a crest, a palm tree with weights, depending from its branches. And beneath the crest, these words written, subponder cresco, which translates, I grow beneath the burden. There was a belief that the weighted palm grew straightest and fairest, and the old saint had discovered that character grows most fair when it too has loads to bear and griefs to carry. And I can readily believe that this woman's character developed and grew beneath her heavy burden, the burden of her daughter's sickness. Isn't that true, though? I mean, when you look at your own life, didn't you grow the most in the Lord when you were burdened by something? I mean, there's times, I mean, it's wonderful, you know, we love the Lord, and you have a great day, and I'm not saying you don't thank Him at the end of the day, or maybe throughout the day, but there's something about being burdened by something. It just seems to put us on the fast track of spiritual growth, you know, and just think of this woman. Would she have ever sought out the Messiah in that pagan territory? Maybe she grew up knee deep in idolatry. Would she have ever sought out Jesus and fell at his feet and worshipped if she didn't have the burden of the sickness of her own daughter? And the Lord permits these things for a million reasons that I'll never understand. But, you know, just looking at my own life, and you can look at your own, but the Lord permits it, and I'm sure there's all kinds of reasons why He does, but certainly one of them is because we grow. We know we can't fix it. Lord, this is outside of my ability. Lord, I can't even begin to understand what to do. I don't have human strength to deal with this. I don't have the wisdom to deal with this. And what do we do? We turn to the Lord, like James says, and we ask for the wisdom. We turn to the Lord and we ask for the strength. It's not until we're burdened like this I found this little poem. It says, is it raining, little flower? Be glad of rain. Too much sun would wither thee. Till shine again, the sky is very black, tis true, but just behind it shines the blue. Art thou weary, tender heart? Be glad of pain. In sorrow, sweetest things will grow, as flowers in rain. God watches, and thou wilt have sun, when clouds their perfect work have done. Isn't that true? When you look back at your own life, our kids, when we're raising children, they would every once in a while be eating like crazy. And we always said the same thing, right? They're going through a growth spurt. And we do that in our Christian walk as well. We go through growth spurts. And sometimes we get a little too comfortable, I think, and the Lord's got to take us out of our comfort zone. And this woman certainly was burdened. So Jesus teaches her with a parable. Mark 7.27, Jesus says to her, let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs. Now remember, you'd have to go over to John's gospel to see this, John chapter 6, that in the feeding of the 5,000, the crowd follows him. He teaches a tremendous teaching that he is the true bread that came down from heaven. He's the bread. And that's caught up in this parable. It's not good. The bread's for the children. It's for the Jew. It's not good that I would give it to the little dog. Don't get that wrong because there's different terminology. He's not talking about wild street dogs that you see in some countries. I did street ministry in Jamaica a couple times and their dogs are disgusting. And they eat the garbage. That's what they kind of do. Nobody owns them. They sleep underneath the cars because it's so hot. They're just gross looking animals. He's talking about a little pet dog. that somebody maybe got a little puppy and raised it as a pet. That's the terminology Jesus is using. So it's not quite as shocking when you look at it that way. So he speaks in a parable to her, and the amazing thing is that she enters into that parable and finishes it. That's the thing that's amazing. That's why I love this story so much. I alluded to Ephesians. Let me read that to you. Ephesians chapter two, beginning in verse 11 says, And we could take this to heart. I'm sure everybody in here is probably a Gentile. If not, you can hear it for me. But it says, therefore, remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, made in the flesh by hands, that at that time you were without Christ. And listen to the implications of that, that we were at one time without Christ. He says, being aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. That's who you were. That's where this woman is when she comes desperately pleading for mercy. She's cut off from the commonwealth of Israel. She's a stranger from the covenant of promise. She has no hope. She's hopeless. And she's without God in the world. And she turns to the Messiah in desperation. And she says to the Lord, Yes, Lord, Yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children's crumbs." Is that amazing? Hendrickson, the commentator, says, she transforms impending defeat into jubilant victory. She is saying, as it were, quote, I am being compared with a house dog. I accept what is implied in this comparison. I not only accept it, I rejoice because of it, for certainly, Certainly good masters do not allow their pet dogs to starve to death. They permit them to eat the crumbs that fall from the table." And Jesus' response, in Mark 7.29, he says, for this saying, go your way, the demon has gone out of your daughter. If you want a little more of what Jesus said, read Matthew's Gospel, where Jesus says, Oh, woman. Don't call her a dog now. Oh, woman, great is your faith. Great is your faith. Let it be to you as you desire. And it says, and her daughter was healed from that very hour. In other words, that moment, her daughter was healed. And you get that beautiful happy ending, right? Mark 7 30. And when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out and her daughter lying on the bed. You know me, I'm always playing the gospel movie in my brain. And I was like, when Jesus said that, hey, she's healed. You've demonstrated faith in me. She's healed. Did she floor it to get back to the house? Did her countenance change? Did she have a look of awe? I've got to get to my daughter. And what did her daughter look like before that? We don't know. We don't know what went on. We don't know that the demon was throwing her down like you see in other stories in the Gospel. We don't know, but it must have been horrible. It must have been horrible. It's almost like the man that, you know, what's-your-name, legion of where were many, and all of a sudden he's there clothed in his rape mind. Have that in mind when she comes home and sees her daughter just quietly, probably hadn't ever done that, quietly, just laying on the bed, recouping, right, from all of her experience. What a great story. So we go from that to Jesus ministering in the Decapolis. which is verses 31 to 37, and let me just read that. Again, departing from the region of Tyre and Sidon, he came through the midst of the region of Decapolis to the Sea of Galilee. Then they brought to him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they begged him to put his hands on him. And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers in his ears, and spat, and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed, and said to him, Ephphatha, that is, be opened. Immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly. Then he commanded them that they should tell no one. But the more he commanded them, the more widely they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, He has done all things well. He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak. So they, interestingly, in Matthew's giving this story, and Matthew doesn't go into the detail that Mark does. Mark gives us this one example, this one individual, and he kind of lays out what Jesus does and what the reaction was. But in Matthew, you get these verses. Same story. It says, Then great multitudes came to him, having with them the lame, the blind, the mute, the maimed, and many others. They laid them down at Jesus' feet, and he healed them. So the multitude marveled when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed made whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing, and they glorified the God of Israel. And these are Gentiles. These are Gentile cities. They glorified the God of Israel. And you wonder to yourself, how do they know who Jesus is? Now, some of the crowds that have been following Jesus came out of the Decapolis. But why are they so primed and ready to have Jesus come and minister to them at that level? And it might not be exactly this, but I think it very well might be because Jesus has sent a preacher into the Decapolis. Do you remember that? Back when this man who had the legion of demons is healed, he wanted to get on the boat with Jesus. And Jesus says, no, no, no, you can't come with me. What you think? He sent him as a preacher. And it says, go home to your friends, Jesus tells them. Tell them what great things the Lord has done for you and how he's had compassion on you. And it says, and he departed and began to proclaim in Decapolis all that Jesus had done for him and all marveled. That was the dude's whole sermon. You don't know who I was. I got caught up in this stuff and ended up getting demons. I thought I'm the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm not the man I used to be. He's going around to the cities teaching this and preaching this. I think he might have had some influence on what's happening here in Mark 7.31. the praises of the Gentiles for the God of Israel. I'm going to read you a passage, you guys already know, but it's good to hear it here, in the book of Revelation, where they sing a new song. And they sing to the Lord Jesus Christ, and they say, You are worthy to take the scroll to open its seals, for you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. and have made us kings and priests to our God, and we shall reign on the earth. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power be to him who sits on the throne, and to the lamb forever and ever. Then the four living creatures said, Amen. And the 24 elders fell down and worshiped him, who lives forever and ever." We're not as astonished as the early church would have been that the Lord is so gracious that he would send the gospel to the nations and make them priests to the God of Israel. That's what the Bible says. And it's almost as if the Lord says at one point in the word, I'm about to do something so marvelous that you wouldn't believe it even if I told you. I think of that with our own individual walks with the Lord. There's a times where, you know, God's got something in store down the road. You're like, oh, you wouldn't even believe if I told you now. I mean, think of where you are in your walk with the Lord now when you're a little kid. If the Lord ever said, let me tell you all that you're going to end up doing in your life for me. And then he starts to lay it out, you'd be like, oh, that's never going to happen. There's no way. There's a ministry. No, no, that'll never happen. They asked him, they begged him, Jesus, to lay hands on him. Now, they thought they knew the right mode. They've heard that story. Jesus lays hands and the people are healed. The next one coming up, he lays hands, the people are healed. But what does he do? He doesn't do that. He sticks his fingers in his ears, saliva on his tongue. Why is that? Nobody knows. But I think, I really believe this, I think that man knew. Whatever it was, why Jesus did that the way he did it, I think the one being ministered to knew. Just like he knows how to minister to every one of you and me on an individual basis. Like when you go to church sometimes or you're visiting somewhere and you hear a sermon and God is speaking some word right to you, and you know it. And you know it. And nobody would even understand if you said, did you hear when the pastor said such and such? I didn't hear him say such and such. That's because God was dealing with you as an individual. And I think God's dealing with this person as an individual here. I just want to add this story because this is just a wonderful little connecting story in John and the prologue of John. It's kind of like John's over and then all of a sudden you get this last little story. And Jesus in John 21, 18 says, most assuredly, and let me back up, he's talking to Peter. And he's telling Peter that Peter's going to be a martyr. That's what he's teaching him. You're going to go to your death serving me. But the way he says it is this, basically Peter, Most assuredly, I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished. But when you're old, you're going to stretch out your hands and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish. This he spoke, signifying by what death he would glorify God. When he had spoken this, he said to them, follow me." Now, that should have been the end of the story. But not with Peter. So Peter's a lot like us, right? We're a lot like Peter. It says, Then Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following, who had leaned on his breast at the supper, and said, Lord, who is the one who betrays you? It's John. John never mentions himself by name. But Peter turns around and he sees John. And Peter says, But Lord, what about this man? In other words, what's going to happen to John? I get it. I'm going to be led somewhere I don't want to go. You're kind of preparing me. I'm going to be a martyr. But what about John? What happens with John? And I'll give you my own translation. Jesus says, it's none of your business. It's none of your business. He says, actually, what he says is, if I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow me. And I just emphasize that story in connection with what we're looking at with Jesus kind of honing the way he's going to heal this man. to meet whatever the man needed to have happen because of that individual. He takes him away from the crowd. If you look back at the text, he takes him away from the crowd, kind of a private moment, and he does this bizarre way of healing him for the man. I think the man knows why. And sometimes God's dealing with somebody in a way that's really none of my business. Are you dealing with me pretty harsh? What about Terry? What are you doing with her? It's none of your business what I'm doing. You're going through this right now because I'm teaching you a lesson. You, he says what, you follow me. That's what your job is, right? So J.D. Jones, this is my last quote from J.D. Jones. He says, and why did he withdraw him from the crowd? Not to avoid observation, as some might suggest. Not that he himself might be the more free to pray, as others say. But as Archbishop Trench says, that the man himself might be more receptive of deep and lasting impressions. This leads me to say that Jesus takes us aside for the very same purpose still. In the din and clamor of the crowded street, Christ cannot speak to us. The rush and pressure of life are prone to obliterate and efface the impressions of religion. Indeed, often prevent any impression being made at all. And so, sometimes our Lord takes us aside into the sick room, into which the tumult of the world cannot come, into the loneliness and the solitude of bereavement, into the wilderness of sorrow, in order that He may speak His words of healing and life to us. And we shrink from being taken aside like that. But it is worthwhile being laid aside from the rush and the toil of life if our ears become opened to heavenly harmonies and we see the King in His beauty. Sorrow often leaves its blessing behind in a healed and saved soul. In the meantime, let us not wait for sickness or sorrow to draw us aside. Day by day, let us draw aside of our own accord that every day our souls may be refreshed so that renewed we may go from strength to strength. I'll end, and I'm not gonna read all this, but there's a great little book, some people don't like it, but I always thought it was a great little book, by Robert Munger. I don't know if you, I think it's called My Heart, Christ's Home. And he gives this whole allegory of inviting Christ into the home of his heart. And then he goes on and begins to talk about, well, I took Jesus into the dining room. And he tells this whole allegory. And he has one section called the living room. where Jesus says, you know what, this is great. You got a little hearth here, a little fireplace. Let's meet here every morning. And he says he was thrilled. He's like, yeah, let's meet every morning. And he goes, we'll have just our alone time, just me and you, get you ready for the day. And he eventually gets caught up in the hustle and bustle of life, and he hasn't gone into the living room in some time. And he finally looks in, and Jesus is sitting there by the fireplace. And he says, Jesus, have you been here every morning? He goes, every morning. I've been here every morning waiting for you. He says, you know, if you don't want to come here for any other reason, come here for me. Because I love to meet with you. And that's our Lord Jesus Christ. And we're the same way, guys. We get caught up in the hustle and bustle and the grandkids and everything else. Make sure you're setting aside for you your own quiet time. Just you and the Lord with your Bible. You know, we talk to God, and He talks to us back through the Bible. That's how God talks to us. But let me leave you with that, and I'll just close with prayer. Our Father and our God, we thank you for your word. Lord Jesus, thank you that it was too small a thing for you to come to save the household of Israel alone, but you were given as a light to the Gentiles. Father, help us to be forever thankful for that. In Jesus' name, amen. Receive the blessing, the benediction of the Lord. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.