We're going to read from God's Word now. I think you have the New King James in your bulletin. I'll be reading out of the English Standard Version, but we're going to read from Psalm 87 first and then Mark 7, 24 to 30. Let's stand together as we hear and listen to God's Word. I'm going to read Psalm 87 and Mark 7, 24 to 30. This is God's holy and inspired, infallible word. The Psalm of the sons of Korah, a song. On the holy mount stands the city he founded. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God. Among those who know me, I mention Rahab and Babylon. Behold, Philistia and Tyre with Cush, This one was born there, they say. And of Zion, it shall be said, this one and that one were born in her, for the Most High himself will establish her. The Lord records as he registers the peoples, this one was born there. Singers and dancers alike say, all my springs are in you. Now Mark chapter seven, that's second gospel. Mark 7 verses 24 to 30, here again God's word. And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he said to her, let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. But she answered him, yes, Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs. And he said to her, for this statement, you may go your way. The demon has left your daughter. And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone. The grass withers, the flower fades. God's word endures forever. Amen. Our God in heaven, we are weak and we are a foolish people. And Lord, we need you to bless the preaching of your word to us. And as Moses said, unless you go with us, Lord, we don't want to go from here. We pray that you'd be in our midst now. Bless now the preaching of your word, we pray. Attend it with the spirit of power. Lord, we pray that you would bless all those you hear, that we would hear and receive the good things of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you would humble us before you, that you'd make us to know something of his glory and of his grace. We ask it in His name, amen. Amen. Well, since Dr. McGraw introduced me earlier, I didn't get a chance to greet you and say good morning. I am grateful to the session for approving this little pulpit swap. I want you to know that I spent years in this congregation when perhaps just the front left section here was the size of the congregation. And so it was it is a wonderful blessing to see this congregation thriving and prospering. We hold you in our hearts there in Royston. We love you and are very thankful also for Peter Vanduurd's labors. He was on the provisional session there and we're grateful to see the Lord's continued work here. And we pray that he will continue to do so. I'm going to be opening up God's word for Mark 7, 24 to 30 this morning. A couple of years ago, I had the great delight of preaching through the book of Revelation, and as I came to the letter that the Lord Jesus dictated to the church in Laodicea, I was doing some broader reading and came across a term by a woman named Anne Sukunov. I think she's the one who coined this. She coined this term affluenza. And affluenza is, as she defines it, the following, isolation, boredom, passivity, and lack of motivation produced in adults, teenagers, I don't remember if teenagers was emphasized in the original, and children by the possession of great wealth. One of the great dangers that I do believe faces Americans, Christians here in the West or in other places where there's not institutionalized persecution or the constant threat of deprivation is this condition that this woman coined as affluenza. We can have much at our disposal and as we have much, we can begin to forget that not only are we actually inherently very weak and very poor, but we don't deserve a scrap of it. And some of you may look out at the ills of our society and rightly identify one of those things as being that entitlement mentality that is so destructive, and rightly so. However, I wonder, is an entitlement mentality to the privileges of God's grace, something that is welling up or creeping into your own soul. Do you think that God owes you anything? That the Lord Jesus Christ gives you things because you could possibly even begin to deserve those things? Sometimes when we are faced with the goodness, the lavish nature of his grace, we can forget just how desperately we need it and how much we don't deserve it. And I find this often in my own home, this kind of perplexing situation where in this place, in this land, we have such abundance. We're able to have much food stored up in our homes for maybe several weeks, or maybe some of you for a month or two. And even in that, or in that situation now, the great trial is not that I'm trying to find food for my children, but make them eat the food that they're given. And probably some of you know that exact same struggle. You need to tell your children, finish your plate, eat those things. And it's a remarkable thing that they can look at the food on their plate as a burden when there actually are people who don't have even that and who would view even the scraps that your children might callously leave over as a great feast. And it is in the latter sense that we need to think about the gospel grace. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ as he comes and actually gives good things, kind things, even himself to a world completely undeserving of it. We're gonna look at this morning from Mark chapter seven is a story about a woman who recognized that very reality by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Or she would come to him pleading, begging, desiring something good and finds not an immediate answer, but finds actually some hindrances thrown in her way from the very one from whom she was seeking help. It's very, very instructive for us as we study this today. What we're gonna consider this morning is this major theme, that to be received by the grace of Jesus Christ. To be received by the grace of Jesus Christ is the most humbling of privileges. To be received by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is the most humbling of privileges. Now, sometimes we don't think of those two words to go together, something given to you that you don't deserve. It is a privilege, but it is something that actually puts us, from the Lord Jesus' perspective, into a position of humility and great need, in fact. We're gonna look at this through several different points. I want us to introduce us here first to the context. Mark chapter seven, it's very interesting. Jesus has just engaged in a clash with the Pharisees, with his enemies. There's a growing animosity and intensity between him and them. And they have just engaged in a great debate about those things so important. like hand-washing after going to the marketplace. They were very upset with the Lord Jesus Christ because He didn't make His disciples ceremonially cleanse their hands when they came back because they might have touched something undefiled or defiled. And He turns to them and He tells them of their hypocrisy and of their wickedness. As He leaves from there, He gives His disciples a lesson about true defilement. It's not outward appearance. It's not ceremonialism, it's not hand-washing, but actually what defiles a person is what comes from their hearts. And so these people who outwardly looked absolutely religiously pristine were inwardly absolutely wretched. And it is this very story that's set in contrast to this woman. A woman who was not clean, a woman who did not have standing, a woman who did not have clout or religious authority, but a woman who really had nothing, no claims, and was actually in a position of enmity, categorically speaking, with the people of God. I wanna show you first a stranger's desperate request here as we look at this text. A stranger's desperate request, what this woman does, I'm sorry, what the Lord Jesus does is He's left after this controversy with the Pharisees, He's moved up into a region northwest, for you that would be this way, northwest of Jerusalem and Judea, walking there. Perhaps He's going there to follow up more with His disciples, seeking some more solitude. One thing to keep in mind, however, as you read through the Gospels, is that the Lord Jesus Christ took no steps randomly. He took no steps accidentally. And so while He may have had a motive of going here to speak with His disciples and seek some seclusion with them, just as He was walking and as Mark is recording these events for us, there was a providential arrangement about to occur. Well, there he is in the region of Tyre and Sidon, seeking to remain hidden, and yet he is exposed and a woman comes to him. Now, how do you think a woman from Tyre and Sidon, far away, a pure-blooded, true-born Gentile, hears of Christ? Well, his fame had gone before him, and if you look back at Mark chapter three in verse eight, it says that a great crowd was following Jesus from Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and Edomia and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. almost certainly somebody had seen Jesus doing his great miracle, someone had heard him teaching those glorious truths of the gospel of the kingdom, and they had told and she had heard, and she has a great desperate situation. Her daughter, His demon possessed, her daughter is possessed by an unclean spirit. And this is that first element that sets this woman and her circumstance in graphic contrast with the Pharisees. She has a little daughter filled with an unclean spirit, a wide and frequent occurrence, especially in the days of Christ. There was no one who could help her. She had exhausted her options perhaps and said, I'm going to find this Jesus. I'm going to find him for help. Well, what Mark provides us here in verse 26 is a brief little biography of this stranger. He tells us a little bit about her, that she was, verse 26, a woman who was a Gentile and a Syrophoenician by birth. She was a woman. In those days, some writers say that a woman would not openly approach a rabbi, but actually was in a very low situation in those times. I actually read some years ago by a rabbi a prayer that he offered, certainly in the Pharisaic tradition. He thanked God that he was born not outside of the promised land. He thanked God that he was not born a Gentile, and he thanked God that he was not born a woman. So highly did he think of himself. Well, this woman, a stranger, one in a lower social status, is also a pure-blooded Gentile, a stranger, a foreigner. And not only that, but a Syrophoenician by birth. Matthew tells us that this means she was of Canaanite descent. This is putting her into a category of people that, for the sake of God's covenant people, would have been viewed with great disgust, and actually with great enmity. If you want to find the embodiment of someone who actually looks like what Paul writes in Ephesians 2, someone who is a stranger to the commonwealth of Israel, who is without God and without hope in the world, it would be this woman seeking out the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet in her persistence, she follows after him, begging him, pleading with him, asking him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And any of you would understand this. If any of you had the same situation and you had no other way to help this precious child that God had given you, you would go to, you would stop at nothing to find help for this little one. And so this is what she does, pleading with the Lord Jesus. This is the stranger's desperate request. I wanna look secondly here at a Savior's, listen now, the Savior's demeaning response. I want you to put yourself in her shoes, her sandals. I want you to think of her desperation, of her status, of her condition. and she's pleading with the only one that she can find who might be able to help her daughter, and he does two things that might shock you. First we learn is that he ignores her. This is implied here in Mark, the sense of the verb there, as she begged him to cast out the demon, that is, she was begging and continued to do so for some time. Matthew tells us in a parallel text that she continued asking him over and over and over again, such that his disciples were wearied with her and said, Jesus, can you send her away? Get rid of this woman, she's annoying us. Jesus doesn't even respond to the cries of this woman. How does this jive with his statements when he says, come to me, all of you who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest. How do these things go together? Well, if that's difficult for you, listen not only to what he does, but then listen to what he says. As he looked at this desperate, desperate woman, after ignoring her, finally when she gets his attention, he says, verse 27, let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. Not only does Jesus ignore her, but it almost seems like Jesus insults her. Let's analyze this statement. Now, I want to say here at the beginning that some critical scholars who have agendas and they're ungodly ones actually believe that Jesus is being disrespectful, even sinful here. You can get that completely out of your mind. It's a blasphemy. The Lord Jesus Christ is perfect, righteous, sinless, holy, undefiled. What is he doing? Well, let's analyze his words. First of all, he says, let the children first be fed. Let the children be fed first. Who are the children? Well, most particularly in the closest circle of Jesus' ministry there, he's talking about his disciples. He's talking about those that he has called to himself, that he has been leading and building up so that he might build upon them the church that he's going to build. More broadly speaking, the children would be those people who are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, those who are not strangers to the commonwealth of Israel, but those who belong there. These are the children of whom the Syrophoenician woman was not. What's the bread? What's the children's bread? Well, it's the good things that he's given them. It's the message of the gospel. It's the blessings that are attending to them, the miracles, the signs and the wonders that he's been exercising for their sake. Who's the little dog? Who's the dog? I wanna be clear here that we need to make a distinction. Paul talks about, for example, in Philippians chapter three, when he says, beware of the dogs, beware the mutilation. It's a different word. The word there, you could think of it more as those stray dogs that would run around the neighborhood that you wanna keep your children from. The word that Jesus uses here is more, it's something called a diminutive form of the word. Little dogs, think house pets, think those who would be in your home. Not to the status, and do not call your dogs children, they're not your children, they're animals, but not to the status of a child, but still a demeaning status. Who's the little dog? What's the woman's daughter? And the woman herself? Now I want you to think again about this. Here we have a desperate woman with a helpless daughter pleading with this man, the only one who can help her, asking for help, and after he stops ignoring her, he turns and it seems like he insults her. Now can you imagine, can you imagine if he said those things to you, what would you do? Can you imagine if there were hot mics around him today and they picked up on this sound? What would the media say about Jesus? This would be the headline in tomorrow's, well they don't do newspapers anymore, on whatever the internet ones are gonna be. Misogynist Messiah. Listen to how he speaks of women. Xenophobic Christ. Look how he treats foreigners. They would take offense. And I wonder if Jesus told you this, would you take offense? Would you be blown back by him saying that you're something other than someone who deserves the good things that he has? Well, what is Jesus doing? Jesus is wisely, graciously, wondrously holding this woman at arm's length to teach her and us something absolutely vital about the gospel and about grace. We've looked at a stranger's desperate request and a Savior's demeaning response. I want to look at, thirdly, before some applications, faith's willing embrace. The woman doesn't go to Twitter and try to bring a Twitter mob down on this man who so allegedly demeaned her, but she looks at him and she says, yes. Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs. What does this show us about this woman's faith? What does this show us about the Lord Jesus Himself? Well, this first statement, she says, yes, she speaks with understanding. And again, in a text where there are contrasts between this unclean woman and the ceremonial clean, but spiritually unclean Pharisees. Also there's a contrast here between her, the last person who approached Jesus and fall down his feet was Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue. These things are all in contrast here before us. And also with the disciples, look back at chapter 7, look in verse 17. Jesus was speaking to his disciples about this teaching about true defilement. In verse 17 it says, when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, then are you also without understanding? They didn't get it. But this woman listens to Jesus and she gets it. And she says, yes. You're talking about little dogs. You're talking about me. And not only does she not become offended at such a statement, she not only says yes in understanding, but then she says yes, Lord, in humility and in submission to His righteous statement. Yes, Lord. I'm not angry. I am fully embracing the fact that you have told me where I belong, who I really am. I have no claims here. Isn't that what grace is, dear saints? Isn't that what grace is, offended sinner? It's a statement that there are good things that you don't deserve. And if God does show them to you, He does so for no reason in you, for nothing done by you, but simply because it is His good and gracious will to do so. And this woman, instead of being offended, says, yes, Lord, in understanding, in humility, in submission, but then she presses on in humble persistence and says, but, or yet, Look at what she says. Yes, Lord, I know you're talking about me. I fully own that I have no rights here. But even the little dogs eat the bread, eat the crumbs under the children's table. You see, Jesus leaves a little door cracked open for her. He does. And where is it? Look back at Jesus' words in verse 27. Look at what he says. Let the children be fed first. He doesn't say, I'm only going to feed these children, but he says, first, and she takes that little opening, she takes that little word, she clings to it, and she runs with it, and she says, yes, Lord, but even so, after the children have had their food, I just want some crumbs. Can you just let some of those things fall off of the table that I might take them? Because I know, I know, and this is the key, it's more than I could possibly deserve. I know it's more than I deserve. And one writer says that when this woman said so, that she was no longer under the table, but had sat down at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and was a partaker of the children's bread. This is faith's willing embrace, willing to embrace the demeaning things that the Bible says about you, willing to say, yes, call me what you will, but I just want a crumb of your mercy. Well, the Savior responds to this in grace and in glory, granting her request, granting it not because she deserved it, but because she has humbly learned her lesson before the Lord of glory, and He does then at that very moment cast the demon out of this little girl for this statement He says, verse 29, go your way, the demon has left your daughter, and she went home and found the children lying in bed and the demon gone. Don't lose sight of the glory here of the Lord Jesus Christ. who didn't need to see this little girl, who didn't need to walk to her home, but simply at the movement of His glorious, sovereign will said, let this demon be gone. And it was gone, and she was restored. This is the kind of Jesus that sinners must approach. This is the kind of Jesus you must approach. Well, I want to come back to some of these things as we make several here applications. But let me begin with a very particular one. And that is an encouragement to prayer and particularly an encouragement to you wives and mothers. J.C. Ryle commenting on this text says this about the little girl. Hopeless and desperate as her case appeared, she had a praying mother. And where there is a praying mother, there is always hope. There is a threat to the church in our day, and lots of cultural confusion, and feminism is part of that threat, to be absolutely sure. There is a threat to turn over all of the institutions that God has ordained, church, family, and state, absolutely, there is. And in a desire to maintain that order, we must not overcorrect and think that it's just barrel-chested men who can do everything, and we lose sight of you lose sight of the God-ordained place and powerful, exceedingly powerful place of godly women in Christ's kingdom. I want to encourage you moms in particular not to cease praying, to persist, because it just may be as you plead with God for days, for weeks, for months, for years, that God may be holding you at arm's length for a time to teach you that you don't deserve those good things for which you ask. And you must humbly, humbly submit to his good and gracious will. Charles Bridges, as he commented on Proverbs 31, which was that proverb that King Lemuel received, if you remember. Do you remember where King Lemuel received that proverb? It was an oracle that his mother taught him. And Charles Bridges says, all that we know of Lemuel is that he was endowed, like many of God's people, with the invaluable blessing of a godly mother, who, like Deborah of old, was honored of God to be the author of a chapter of the sacred volume. And he goes on to say, if there were more Hannas, would there not be more Samuels? If thou wouldst have Christian mother, thy child a Samuel or an Augustine, be thyself a Hannah or a Monica. Now do you know who Monica was? Monica was the mother of Augustine before there were helicopters. Maybe we could think that she was a spiritual helicopter mom over Augustine. She hounded that man during his profligate season. She followed him across the Mediterranean Sea. She pleaded with God time after time after time after time that he might be converted. And the fruit of her prayers is the most influential non-apostle in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ in the first thousand years of the church. Bridget says that the child of thy prayers, of thy vows, and of thy tears will be in the Lord's best time the child of thy praises, thy rejoicings, and thy richest consolation. It's not just for mothers, fathers as well, not just for people with children, but any of you with loved ones who are wandering from the faith, who are lost, living even now in darkness. Pray. Seek God's face. Do not cease. And do so remembering that God owes you nothing. And so you humbly submit to his hand and wait in hope. I wanna show you a second thing from this text, and that is the humiliating grace of the gospel. The humiliating grace of the gospel. I wonder if you came to Jesus and you approached him and you asked him for something and he responded to you the way he responded to this woman, I wonder how you would respond to those words. And you say, how dare you? How dare you speak to me like that? I'm a Presbyterian. I'm an American. Well, the gospel, it's not for the clean. It's not for the righteous. It's not for those who are. It's not for the noble. It's not for the wise. The gospel's for the defiled. The gospel's for the unrighteous. The Lord Jesus Christ came not to call the righteous to repentance, but the unrighteous. And you know, there's really only one great barrier for sinners to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, and you know what it is? It's not your sins. It's not your uncleanness. It's not your history. It's not your baggage. It's your pride. It's your pride where you think so much of your sins that you think little of the Savior. You think, oh, my condition is so great that Jesus cannot forgive me of those things. My sins, because they're mine, are so great that Jesus could never wash these things away. Oh, that's just a lopsided, inverted, twisted form of pride, dear friend. But the Lord Jesus says, come. And the gospel says, you come, you sinner. As John Newt would say, come you wretch. As Jesus says, come you little dog. And what you need to say is if the gospel insults me, let it insult me. If the gospel demeans me, let it demean me. If the gospel belittles me, let it belittle me. Because I am nothing, I'm worse than nothing. I'm a sinner, I'm a wretch, I'm a worm. I was talking to a brother after the 9 a.m. service this morning and reminded me of this text. You know what God does with worms? Isaiah 41 says this. Fear not, you worm, Jacob. You men of Israel, I am the one who helps you, declares the Lord. Your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. Behold, I make of you a threshing sledge, new, sharp, and having teeth. You shall thresh the mountains and crush them. You shall make the hills like chaff. This is what God does with the lowly, with the nobodies, is He turns them out from worms, and He makes them those who can level the plains, level the mountains, and bring them down to the dust, all for the glory of His great and holy name. Dear congregation, dear friends, be willing to be humbled by the gospel, because you are owed nothing. And you need to be willing to recognize that. And not only are you owed nothing, you deserve condemnation. Well, another another wonderful application from this text is Jesus' mercy to the nations. You know, this woman comes from a place that was a place of hostility toward the gospel and God's promises in Christ Jesus were never actually intended to be restricted to the nation of Israel. This is one of the great sins of those people. The Bible even says in Isaiah 49, he says, it's too light a thing. It's too small a thing that you, my servant, will be a light only to the tribes of Judah. He says, I'm going to make you a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth. And this text is just another one of those little beams of grace flowing out from the gospel to the nations. The nations will be coming, and they have been coming, and they will continue coming even to the end of the age. And what you must understand is where we sit, we can lose sight of this, if maybe you're from a Christian home, or maybe you're a third, fourth, sixth, eighth generation Christian, you can lose sight of this fact that we are sitting right now, right now, in a place that could be considered the ends of the earth from where the gospel began. You understand this, God has lifted up Jesus to be a light to the nations, and this Syrophoenician woman who responds in faith is one of the first fruits of that, as God is continuing to build His kingdom throughout the world and shall until the day of Christ's return. This is what it looks like, dear saints and dear sinners, that those who are far off have been brought near. by the blood of Christ, that Christ came and preached peace to those who are near, and peace to those who are far away. This is why I read Psalm 87 earlier. You know, it's a great text, it's a wonderful psalm, as you see all these different nations being named and listed here, and he's saying, among those who know me, I mention Rahab, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, Cush, He says, it doesn't matter where you're born. Because here what he's doing is he's not handing out birth certificates, but new birth certificates. He's handing out supernaturalization papers. He's saying it doesn't matter if you were born in India. It doesn't matter if you were born in Canada. It doesn't matter if you were born in Rahab or in Egypt. If you were born in Zion, this, this is my people. This is how I'm gathering the nations to me for my glory. Well, one more application here, and that is about the lavish grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Made much of the fact, and I hope you're taking with you this morning. That we all of us sit here this morning deserving absolutely nothing in the way of goodness and absolutely everything in the way of God's judgment, condemnation, and wrath for our sins, for your sins. And if we would recognize along with this woman, Lord, I don't even deserve the crumbs, but can I have some after the children have eaten? If we humble ourselves before Him by faith and come to Him saying, Lord, give me those things, please, I know I don't deserve them, the Lord Jesus Christ then does not make us settle for crumbs. He actually gives everything. You know, Ephesians 1, one of those great chapters of the grace of God in the Bible, He says this, that in Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he, he doesn't parse it out in crumbs, but he lavishes it upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to the purpose which he set forth in the Lord Jesus Christ. God, the father gives Jesus to people who come to Him in faith, and we don't eat crumbs, we don't take little sips of water, but God gives us Jesus, whose flesh is meat indeed, and whose blood is drink indeed. He spreads a table for us in the presence of our enemies. Psalm 36 tells us that we will feast on the abundance of His house, and drink from the river of His delights. If you're a sinner here this morning, and that includes every single one of you, know this, you deserve nothing. But in Christ, we don't receive merely crumbs that fall off the table incidentally. But we are given Christ, the great feast. We are given him, we are given everything that we can possibly, everlastingly need. And what this does is it not drives you to pride and a spiritual entitlement mentality. It actually heightens the intensity of your debt of gratitude and love. That's what Robert Murray McShane says, wonderful line in his hymn, 545, when this passing world was, and he says, he says, when I stand before the throne, clothed in beauty, not my own. He says later, chosen not for good in me, wakened up, From wrath to flee? Why? Why would this occur? Only because the goodness of God embodied and carried out in the Lord Jesus Christ. Are you offended? Are you offended by the humiliating grace of the gospel? Are you offended if the gospel comes to you and says, you are a little dog that deserves nothing from the children's table? If that offends you, let me tell you this. Here's how filthy you are. It takes the divine blood of Jesus Christ to wash your sins away. If you're not willing to beg for crumbs, you're not gonna be willing to be bathed in the blood of Jesus Christ. This is what Jesus calls sinners to do. Sinners who are wretched, sinners in Laodicea, even to the church that wrote, you say you're rich, you say you need nothing, he says you are poor, you're pitiable, you're blind, and you're naked. He says, come to me, come to me, and I'll give you salve to anoint your eyes so you won't be blind. Come to me, I'll give you garments to cover your nakedness. Come to me, I'll give you gold refined by fire. This is what Isaiah says is what I say to you today. Come to him, all of you who thirst, come to the waters. Come and buy bread, come and buy wine without money. This is the call of the gospel. And Jesus said, Paul says, Jesus says, yes, it's more blessed to give than to receive. But I tell you this also, it's more humbling to receive than it is to give, especially when you can give nothing and ought to give nothing in return. The Lord Jesus Christ would call you this morning, sinner, to repent of your pride. The Lord Jesus would call you this morning, Christian, if you've been walking with Christ for many years, to repent of your entitlement mentality. God owes you nothing. And I would call you also to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ by faith. Embrace the insults of the gospel. and live feasting not on the crumbs that fall off the table, but feasting by faith on the Lord Jesus Christ. And I promise you, He has promised, do these things, believe in me, repent of your sins, walk with me, and I will feed you with the heritage of your father Jacob, and you will lack nothing, for Christ has given Himself. Amen. Let's pray. Our God in heaven, how we thank you for the abundance of your mercy. Lord, how we pray that you would help us never to fall into the trap of thinking that we could possibly deserve anything from your hand. We thank you for the mercy that you showed to this woman many, many years ago. And we pray that you would continue to remind us of these things, that we would walk humbly before you, thinking little of ourselves and much of Christ. Lord, how we pray that you would draw sinners to yourself and be willing, that would be willing to be demeaned, that we might be transformed by the grace of the gospel. And we thank you for free grace in Jesus Christ and for his blood and righteousness. We pray in his name, amen.