[0:00] Mark chapter 7, after many miracles, some great teaching, many lives impacted, the critics caught up with Jesus.
[0:13] ! Pharisees and scribes had accused him of blasphemy for telling the paralytic that his sins were forgiven. They had questioned his feasting with tax collectors and sinners and told him that he should be fasting.
[0:32] They accused him of plucking grain on the Sabbath. That's harvesting in their minds. They saw him healing on the Sabbath. That is considered work as well.
[0:46] They even said that he was of the devil because he had power over the demons. Earlier in Mark chapter 7, they called him defiled. They called him unclean.
[1:01] It just keeps coming. Sometimes you just have to get away. That's what he does in our passage today. But yet, not really.
[1:17] Mark chapter 7, beginning in verse 24, it says, And from there, Jesus arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon.
[1:30] 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.
[1:46] Now, the woman was a Gentile, a Seraphonician 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.
[2:05] For it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. And she answered, Yes, Lord.
[2:20] Get even the dogs under the table, these children. And he said to her, For this statement you may go your way.
[2:30] The demon has left your daughter. And she went home and found the child lying in bed, and the demon gone. The devil to Tyre is about 40 miles from the area in which Christ had been before.
[2:48] It moves northward to the Mediterranean coast. Sidon is about another 20 miles north of that, further into Gentile land.
[3:03] This is the first time in the recorded ministry of Christ that he has been in this area full of Gentiles.
[3:16] But they hadn't seen him before. Word had gone out about him. Crowds that he fed for the 5,000.
[3:28] The crowds that surrounded him in the Galilean area. For people who had traveled from as far as that area to be near him.
[3:39] Because when he got there, they recognized him. Word had spread. Now the question is, why should he go so far from what seemed to be his strategic area of ministry?
[3:54] Mostly in that Galilean area. Well, I can give you several reasons why I believe he took this year. One is, he was tired.
[4:08] He needed some rest. He was never alone, and the people had gotten more aggressive to get close to him. They tried to force him to be king. You see throughout the Gospels that Jesus loved his time alone.
[4:23] He loved to be with the Father. And if you live a busy life, and if you're around people a lot, that does not surprise you. He was tired.
[4:35] He also wanted things to cool down. The religious leaders were back. They were more critical, and they would soon become more aggressive. And that had to, he had to, none of that had backed off.
[4:50] And Jesus didn't back off from his story. He didn't back off from his mission. He told them when they were wrong. He was not scared of them. However, he needed more time.
[5:04] I believe that the incarnate Christ came to earth for two reasons. One very primary reason, the other secondary. The primary reason Christ came to earth was to live a sinless life, and to die, shed his blood on the cross for our sins, and rise again and ascend to heaven and bear a place for us.
[5:25] That is the redemptive story that Christ came to share with us. But I believe the other reason he came was to train the twelve, to train the disciples to carry out his ministry when he no longer would be physically present with them.
[5:41] And you see the evidence of that in the book of Acts. As a matter of fact, the rest of the New Testament are letters that are written from the time of the book of Acts when it continued to spread.
[5:54] And if it wasn't for them, in planting that vision and that mission within those apostles, that continue to spread that, literally in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth.
[6:06] You can see like a rock in a pond with the ripples. You can see the great commission in the book of Acts start in Jerusalem in Acts chapter 2, spread to Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts.
[6:23] And thank God he came for that, because we're the uttermost parts. So he needed time to train the twelve. His ministry was only three and a half years.
[6:35] He needed time to train them, and he had to pull them away. Things needed to be cool. But the third reason I believe he traveled there is because he also was just living out what he was teaching.
[6:48] I want to focus on that. You'll notice in Mark verse 19 that we looked at last week, it says, Thus he declared all foods clean.
[7:05] Foods are a powerful symbol in the New Testament. As the Gospels broke down this, as the Apostle Paul put it in Ephesians, this dividing wall of hostility between the Jews and the Gentiles.
[7:21] In Acts chapter 10, the Lord uses food to explain to Peter that he was to reach out to the Gentiles, the heathens, the world.
[7:33] In a dream, Peter saw a blanket spread out of heaven with unclean food on it. He didn't eat such foods, and so he said when God told him to eat, take, eat, Peter responded with the greatest oxymoron in all of the New Testament.
[7:56] He said, Not so, Lord. He didn't say no to him, he called him Lord. And he didn't eat unclean animals, so he wasn't going to eat them.
[8:09] And the Lord told him he had made the foods clean to eat. That was an illustration to show Peter that he was to go to the Gentiles.
[8:22] So Peter went to Cornelius, a Gentile's house. He ate with him. He brought him to Christ. A bridge was built there, and we see the evidence of that continuing to spread throughout the rest of the book of Acts.
[8:37] However, Jesus is building the foundation of that bridge that would come later years here by going to the land of the Gentiles. And listen to me, after a conversation in the previous part of Mark chapter 7 about unclean things and unclean people.
[8:56] He wanted to get away and take a break. However, when Jesus entered a house, he cannot be hidden. Notice, he says, when he went, he entered a house and did not want anyone to know it, yet he could not be hidden.
[9:13] Listen, when Jesus is present, you can't hide it. When he's present in someone's home, people hung through the windows to get a word from you.
[9:29] And when he's present in someone's life, it cannot be hidden. It should not be hidden. Not in our lives. Sometimes people tell me, well, pastor, I believe one's faith is private.
[9:43] There's a Greek word for that, baloney. There is no, that is not Christian biblical faith if it's private. There's nothing private about it.
[9:57] Romans 10, 10, 9 says, if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and it's not talking about in the privacy of your home. It's not talking about just with the preacher or just with your parents or just with your spouse.
[10:08] You take the context of that passage, he's talking about boldly proclaiming that Christ is Lord. There's nothing private about our faith. It's real.
[10:19] And if it's real, you can't hide it. But when you really know Christ and have a personal relationship with Him, He is not just in your heart. He's all over your life and the presence of Christ cannot be hidden.
[10:31] The presence of Christ in a home cannot be hidden. And it could not be hidden in that day and it still can't be. And in that atmosphere, He meets a woman with a daughter with an unclean spirit.
[10:42] That means she had a demon. If there are categories of people, and we tend to categorize people, I mean, I don't, and I know you don't, but I'm talking about other people.
[10:58] They do that. But if there are categories of people, this woman would be obviously not worthy.
[11:11] I mean, who is she to ask Christ for anything? She's an unclean Gentile. She's a Seraphonician, Canaanite woman. That means she lives in the most hideous, pagan, hardened, rough people around her.
[11:28] Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian, said that Tyre represented the most bitter enemy that the Jews had at the time. And quite honestly, nothing's really changed.
[11:39] That's modern day Lebanon today. Constantly fighting. And in the first century, it was filled with the worst kind of idolatry. some of the darkest places on the earth.
[11:51] Therefore, she is very unclean, very unworthy to approach Jesus. She has no covenant standing as an Israelite. She has demons in her home, even in her own daughter.
[12:02] She has no standing. She has no leverage here. She's completely desperate. She's a mother pleading for her child. And a mother's plea is the most earnest of any on earth.
[12:16] mothers fight for their children. And Mark tells us that she fell at his feet. Not only does that show her utmost respect for him, but she is pleading with Christ.
[12:33] Matthew writes about this man. And of course, Matthew gives us more details than Mark does. Because Mark writes like a man. He's in a hurry. And he gives us, Matthew gives us some details that we need.
[12:49] Matthew chapter 15 verse 22 says this, And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, Have mercy on me, son of David. My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.
[13:02] But Jesus did not answer her. And his disciples came and begged him saying, Send her away.
[13:25] For she's crying out after us. And he answered, I was sent only to the lost children house of the Lord. She came and knelt before him and said, Lord, help me.
[13:42] And he said, Let the children be. And she said, Lord, help me. Matthew tells us how Jesus responded.
[13:56] He didn't. Matthew 23 said he didn't answer her one. Eugene Peterson wrote a paraphrase of the New Testament called The Message.
[14:11] And in that paraphrase, Peterson says that Jesus ignored her. I believe Peterson was wrong. That's one of the dangers that you run into when you read a paraphrase of Scripture.
[14:28] Because a paraphrase has a lot of somebody's interpretation. And I'm not knocking the message over all. Sometimes it helps us to understand passages better. But you need to understand. It's not a translation, it's a paraphrase.
[14:40] And here he made an interpreted decision that I believe was wrong. And the reason why I think that partially is because of something that happened to me.
[14:53] one of the toughest assignments that I ever had in ministry. I had a dear member of my church that was a well-respected retired servant.
[15:08] I love judgment. When I first went to that church, I was preaching a prayer meeting one night on Matthew 24, a very tough controversial passage.
[15:20] scripture, he was sitting in the back at a table of the fellowship hall there. As I was finishing up, he raised his hand. And I was new to the church.
[15:32] I wasn't even honeymoving in. They were just getting them. And he raised his hand, and so I let him speak, and he asked me a question.
[15:46] Now, to be honest with you folks, I ain't going to take questions today. I'm going to tell you everything I got in my bag, and that's it. I ain't got a high key. I ain't taking questions. Didn't plan on doing it that night.
[15:58] But I answered his question to the best of my ability, and I moved on. Nobody raised his hand again, and I said, Judge, this ain't your courtroom. I said that, knowing at the time, either I'd be looking for a job next day, or either be a judge and hit it on.
[16:19] And I figured if he's a retired circuit judge, he's got to be tough enough to understand that. He's one of the respect I've ever met in my life.
[16:34] I made rounds here in Sunday school to speak to folks, and when I got into his class, I'd sit down and listen to him teach. coach. He's an inductive teacher. He taught like a man who fights with a roundhouse kick.
[16:49] You don't see him coming. You just get kicked in the back of the head all of a sudden. That's the way he taught. He'd start out, and you'd think, man, what is he talking about? He didn't even study. He don't know what he's talking about. And by the time he got done, man, he had landed in my head.
[17:02] His wife came to me one day, and she said, how's he doing teaching? Because he's struggling at home.
[17:19] And I don't want to do embarrassing to him. And I said, I haven't picked up on it. I said, I never know where he's going until he gets there anyway, so I haven't really picked up on it yet.
[17:32] You know, but I'll watch out for him. So I hung out a little longer in that class, and I began to see him that. There was another class of the same aged men.
[17:48] There was a class that he taught, and everybody was in there because he was teaching it, and there was another class that was over there because he wasn't teaching it. They needed a teacher.
[18:01] I couldn't find one. so because of his wife's plea to me, for it to keep his dignity, I want you to house one.
[18:15] hard thing to do. I sat down and I said, Judge, this other class needs a teacher, and I can't find one.
[18:31] I really need to combine their small class with yours. And I'm just wondering to make that transition smooth. If you wouldn't mind me teaching it.
[18:43] The judge had a trait about him that I highly respect, but I sure don't like.
[18:54] he had a trait of long pause. And I'll tell you what was different about this man than me or most of us, is that he thought before he spoke.
[19:06] That's a novel concept. most of us just open our mouth and hope we catch up with it, you know. And he paused.
[19:20] And I've been prone sometimes in those pauses to repeat myself. When I was about to do that, he said, passion.
[19:37] I never talked to him. I loved him until he died. But I believe the pause that Jesus did was that he was trying to to gather his thoughts.
[20:07] to get together her. But even more than that, he was wanting those disciples together things.
[20:22] What filtering his thoughts? He was letting the woman and the apostle filter things. And he then says something shocking.
[20:33] he said to her, he said to her, let the children be fed first.
[20:46] It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. did he call her a dog? I mean, we're not talking about a pampered household pet here.
[21:02] They didn't have those. Nor is it in a couple terms of dogs in Greek. Nor is it the harsher term of a scavenger dog like a coyote kind of concept where they come in and tear and you're scared of them.
[21:17] It's really more of the kind of dog that we inherited one day when I came home from a late meeting and there was a dog laying right by my back door in a pile of, among a couple of bags of clothes we were going to give away.
[21:34] That dog was nestled up there trying to stay warm and I when my family could look, I kind of shooed the dog off, you know, and when I came back the next day that dog was there, you know, and the rest of that's where I get time to tell him, I'm more tired than you are, I promise.
[21:57] We're leaving for spring break. I went in and fed the dog. We're gone for a week. The dog got to find a meal somewhere else. The girls wanted that dog so bad. And I said, if the dogs ever get back to the dog, I didn't know.
[22:10] They have been in the family. My family, my rascals, they got somebody to feed that dog at my house. But he's not talking about a little dog.
[22:29] He's talking about a softer term for a little dog. He kind of wonders the harsher term for dog was used by Jews to support Gentiles like the Canaanites.
[22:45] So why did he say that? I hope you sense this morning the awkwardness and the tension because you should. That's what Mark wants.
[22:59] That's what Jesus wants. after all the talk of the Pharisees and the scribes about what's clean and what's not, Jesus purposely goes to an unclean area, is approached by an unclean woman with a demon in her home begging and the apostles just want her to go away and Jesus just wants it all to play out.
[23:25] There are people that are obviously not worthy. She was one of them. Then there are others who are observed as worthy and the Jews sure thought they were.
[23:46] There's a saying and I don't know that it was original with it but I heard Adrian Rogers say it years ago. A text without a context is a pretext. This passage can be easily misunderstood if you ignore the context.
[24:02] Several years ago a feminist scholar said that Jesus was insensitive in this passage that he was harsh and that he was so severe to the lady that he demeaned her in a chauvinistic fashion and by doing so he crossed the borders of courtesy and slandered her and that means he sinned therefore he cannot be sinless.
[24:23] And that my friend is a false reasoning and a pretext. It's also heresy and it also demeans Christ. Be careful about such things.
[24:34] I'm firmly convinced that Jesus had left an altercation with the Jewish establishment that his disciples had witnessed. He had pulled them away for a ministerial retreat and now what seemed like an interruption was really a divine appointment, was really a life lesson, was really an illustration, was really a walking parable before their eyes.
[24:59] They had just been with people that were seen as worthy. The Pharisees and the scribes were descendants of Abraham. Those who knew the law, they observed proper traditions, they washed ritually, they attended synagogues, they tithed, they fasted, they separated themselves.
[25:20] The Pharisees, the word is a participle that means the separated ones. That's what they thrived off of. Anyone that saw them just knew that they were worthy.
[25:31] They thought it themselves. A Seraphonician woman in Tyre was far from worthy. Good church leaders, they had to be worthy.
[25:46] Jesus amplified that thought to the apostles. more than to the lady, I believe, to let it sink in and to sink in heart and in that pause, my breath.
[26:05] Those people that appear obviously not worthy. We look down on such people as well. Then there are those that are observed as worthy.
[26:19] we think a lot of them. We think a lot more of them than we should. The reality is the only type of believer that there really is, what we call a Christian today, is one that is made worthy.
[26:43] Notice what he says. In Mark chapter 7 verse 27, he said to her, let the children be fed first for it's not right to take the children's bread and throw up the dog.
[26:55] But she answered him, yes, Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's clothes. And he said to her, for this statement, you may go your way.
[27:05] The demon has left your daughter. God went home and found the child lying in the man and the demon would go. Matthew 15 verse 28 says, then Jesus answered her, O woman, great is your faith, be it done for you as you desire.
[27:25] And her daughter was healed instantly. she didn't respond with offense. She didn't respond with worthiness.
[27:38] She didn't respond with anger. She didn't respond with entitlement. She didn't respond with bitterness. She knew she was not worthy and she responded humbly.
[27:52] Somewhere in her heart, she had become convinced that Jesus was God. That he had enough power, that he had enough mercy, that he had enough grace to change her life, to change the life of her family.
[28:12] And even when she felt small, she knew Jesus is sufficient. His mercy overflows every border or boundary that we could ever come up with.
[28:25] Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Romans 8.38 His grace reaches all. His power changes eternity. I doubt she knew because she was a Gentile Seraphonician woman, Canaanite.
[28:43] I doubt she knew Psalm 51 17, the sacrifice of God are broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart of God.
[28:54] He is not a spirit. Not being raised around the word of God. I doubt she knew Isaiah 66 verse 6 that says but this is the one who is allowed to him.
[29:08] He is humble and contrite his fear and trembles at the heart. But God gave her the insight to have a faith in Christ great enough to trust him, to submit to him and to ask him.
[29:38] And Romans 10 13 tells us for everyone who calls for him shall be saved. I called her theology, bred from theology.
[29:58] And that's the right type of theology. She wasn't worthy. Neither am I, neither are you.
[30:12] But thank God through his grace and mercy through Christ. He'll make us one when we send to our sins.
[30:23] Thank you. With every head bowed and every eye closed, I want you to hear me today. The person who's been in church all their life, the person who's been led in church for years, is not worthy.
[30:45] If you think that will cover you, you're wrong. Hopefully that church loyalty and that church leadership has had a beginning that had a lot to do with a broken and contrite heart before the Lord.
[31:05] we surrender our lives to Christ and allow him to make us work. I want to be clear today, none of us are worthy, but all of us have opportunity.
[31:24] And if you've never given your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ, I want you to know receive you as you are. Any function within you to come to him didn't come from you and came to him.
[31:39] It's a divine appointment. You need not leave here without giving your life a throne. We'll stand and we'll sing in just a moment.
[31:50] And when we do, I encourage you to step out immediately and come and pass right in the seat. Maybe you're here this morning and you are but you haven't it's just been a private faith.
[32:06] It's been a non-biblical faith. You need to make that public. Like those that we baptized last Sunday, you need to make money. Maybe you're here and it's just a point of obedience for you.
[32:19] You just need to do what God tells you to do God may be! telling you to because of what Christ did for us on the cross.
[32:58] A humble broken spirit can be healed by such mouth. We bring your brokenness to you.
[33:10] Heavenly Father, I love you. And I thank you for the hard lessons that you teach us. Sometimes not exactly the way we wish you would. Help us on God.
[33:23] Take you. Take Take Take you.