Great Faith Unleashes Great Power

Heavenly Father, we come to You not on the basis of our righteousness. We come to You not on the basis of our uprightness or our morality. We come to You on the basis of the blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Jesus, we thank You that You made a way for us to have a loving relationship with God the Father, a meaning to experience this Person, to experience His presence and to experience His power. And we thank You, Jesus, because of Your work on the cross, because of Your death, burial, resurrection, Your ascension and You sent us the Holy Spirit. You offer the Spirit of God to each person who humbly asks. I pray, Lord, today, that You do unleash Your great power in our lives, in our homes, in our households, in our families, in our church and in our city. We do believe in You that You are a great God and You long for people to come to know You. You long to adopt many into Your household, to make those who are not Your children, Your beloved children in whom You delight.

I pray, if anyone is far from You, far from the household of God today, give them the gift of repentance, give them the gift of faith and draw them to Yourself. And Lord, for the rest of us, I do pray that You embolden us to speak the gospel, give us opportunities to proclaim the gospel, unleash our tongues, to proclaim the gospel, the truth to the people around us. There's so many that don't know You and they haven't experienced Your presence and Your power and we believe on their behalf and we long to bring them to You, Lord. And I pray that You give us much grace in that. Lord, bless our time in the holy scriptures. Bless everyone who's here today. What a great way to start off the brand new year. And Lord, I pray that You prepare our hearts for holy communion, which we'll celebrate later. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning and welcome to Mosaic on this communion Sunday. We're continuing our sermon series through the incredible Gospel of Mark. We've called it Kingdom Come, the Gospel of Mark and the secret of God's kingdom. And in the gospel, Jesus is revealing, He's unveiling, He is regulating revelation. And those that do believe in Him, they take Him at His word. They begin to see that He really is who He is and His power is unleashed in their life. The title of the sermon today's Great Faith Unleashes Great Power. And what we've seen so far in the Gospel of Mark is that God, who created everything, the great God overall, He takes on flesh. The Son of God is sent by God the Father. He's anointed by God the Holy Spirit to establish the kingdom of God here on earth where God's presence and His peace reigns.

And how does Jesus Christ, the Son of God, establish the kingdom of God? He does so with a message. And this is the good news, the gospel. It's the gospel that changes hearts because the kingdom of God is an inside out kingdom. God changes our hearts when we believe in the good news. He changes our desires. We begin to desire prayer. We begin to desire fellowship with God's people. We begin to desire to do the will of God, to live in submission to God out of love for Him and love for neighbor. And what was the gospel that Jesus preached? It was very short. His very first sermon is documented and it went like this.

He says, "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. Repent and believe the good news that the King of the Universe has come to save us, save us from Satan, sin and death by laying down His life on a cross." And we are to repent and believe in Him, believe that He is God, believe that He is the King of the Universe. Now, how many people believed this message? During Jesus' three year ministry, how many people believed this message and how many people were saved? I think, statistically speaking, it was a very small percentage. If you look at First Corinthians 15, it says that the resurrected Christ appear to 500 people. 500 people, what a small percentage of all the people that He ministered to.

And who believed? Well, those who were seemingly crazy enough to take Jesus at His word. He spoke, they believed, and all of a sudden, they were saved and God's power was unleashed in their life when they really believed that He was the Great I Am when they humbly believed. Those people experienced the power of God. His family, Jesus' family, we read, they thought He was out of His mind. The good folks back home and His hometown mocked Him as, "Oh, you're just a carpenter. You're just the Son of Mary." And the Pharisees we read that they joined forces with the Herodians to kill Jesus. Some thought Jesus was John the Baptist come back from the dead. Herod Antipas believed that. Some thought He was Elijah even when He fed the 5,000 miraculously. They understood that He was presenting Himself as the Messianic King, but they didn't realize what kind of king He was, the king of people's hearts.

The religious establishment said that Jesus was demon-possessed, a sorcerer, a false teacher. And even the disciples we read who saw His power over and over and over had said that they were hardened in their hearts and they had trouble believing. Amazingly, the only ones that truly recognize Jesus for who He is all of the time are the demons. The demons understood. But the few who took Jesus at His word, they experienced His power and they experienced His salvation. And today, we come to such a woman. We come to a woman who amazed Jesus Christ with her faith. To her, Jesus said, "Oh, woman, great is your faith." And her great faith released great power in her life. And great faith does release great power. Why? Because God honors bold faith because bold faith honors God.

So that brings us to Mark 7:24-37. Would you look at the text with me? "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 away and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

Then He returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee and the region of the Decapolis. And they brought to Him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment and they begged Him to lay His hand on him. And taking him aside from the crowd privately, He put His fingers into his ears, and after spitting, touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, He sighed and said to him, 'Ephphatha,' that is, 'Be opened.' And his ears were opened, his tongue was released and he spoke plainly. And Jesus charged to tell no one. But the more He charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure saying, 'He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.'

This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First, great faith is humble chutzpah before God. Second, great faith is humble hunger for God. And third, great faith is humble bringing and begging. First, great faith is humble chutzpah before God. Chutzpah, it's from the Yiddish. It means nerve. It means courage. It means impudence. It means confidence in action. I like that word. And it definitely perfectly characterizes this woman's posture of heart. She comes boldly with confidence, yet it's humble confidence. So this is point one, the great faith is humble chutzpah before God.

We saw the progression from chapter 7 verses 1 through 23 to this one, which is very logical where Jesus said, He called all food clean, meaning He removed the barrier between the Jews and the Gentiles, the barrier of the dietary laws that separated Jews socially from Gentiles. And now Jesus is positioned perfectly to enter Gentile territory, something a Jewish rabbi would have never done because they consider the Gentiles unclean. And Jesus said, "It's not what comes from the outside that makes you unclean. It's that which comes from the inside that makes you unclean and Jesus can cleanse all.

So now He comes into Gentile territory. This is verse 24. 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. The human, Jesus, God incarnate, He did grow tired at some points. He just had ministered to many people. He's exhausted and now He journeys into Gentile territory, tries to keep Himself hidden. He can't do it because His fame had already proceeded Him. Tyre had a long history of antagonism toward Israel. Josephus, the Jewish historian, he said, "The inhabitants of Tyre were notoriously our bitterest enemies." There was bad blood between these two groups of people, the Galileans and people from Tyre. So that's the context.

So this woman who is from the other people, she's from the other religions, she's from the other socioeconomic status, she's from the other-other everything, she comes to Jesus and she comes to Jesus boldly. Verse 25, "But immediately, a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of Him and came and fell down at His feet." The unclean spirit is a demon that's made clear in verses 29 and 30. So here, we meet a mother, a desperate mother. She comes to Christ. She's heard of His explosive power and she throws herself at His feet in an attitude, a posture of heart, of self-abasement and supplication. She prostrates herself before Him, which shows the level of her distress, her pain.

The pain of her child had brought her to Jesus Christ. The pain of her child had brought her to her knees. And she's interceding for her child. A mother is praying for her child. And whenever I see texts like this, just a reminder that we are to intercede for our loved ones. We are to intercede in prayer for our children and for our siblings and for our families and for our neighbors, and for our city. We are to pray. And when we intercede, God hears those prayers, especially when they're prayed with this posture of heart. The mother prayed for her child because the child couldn't pray for herself and the mother persisted until her prayer was granted.

We see that this woman is very similar to the woman that was suffering 12 years from a hemorrhage in chapter 5. The likeness has seen that they were both ritually impure. They both needed miraculous power from the Lord. And despite her impurity, the Syrophoenician, like the woman with the hemorrhage, comes boldly hoping for healing from Christ. Verse 26, "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.'"

The Matthew parallel calls her a Canaanite woman. The word for Gentile here, it's a word that means that she was Greek speaking or Hellenized. So she's a Greek-speaking pagan Gentile from Tyre and the woman hopes that Jesus is going to heal her. She asks, she begs, she pleads. And it seems like He says no. It seems like Jesus' response dashes her hopes in a very hard way. And what is Jesus doing here? Jesus is showing that He ... First of all, there was an order to the salvation process. There was an order to the revelation that, first of all, He came to the children of Israel. Romans 1:16 says, "For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile, but it's for anyone who believes."

Or 1 Corinthians 1:22, "For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God." Why the Jews first? Because the Jews became the first rebellious children of God. He chose them as His people. They rebelled against Him. He sends His Son into this vineyard, so to speak, to then save them, save the elect from Israel. And Isaiah 1:2-3 explains or opens, reveals the Father's heart, "Hear, O heavens and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against Me. The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know. My people do not understand."

The word first is used in our text proton. It's always used in order to explain that in the eschatological timeline of God's revelation, there is progress. The coming of Elijah was supposed to come before the Messiah. The binding of Satan needs to happen before despoiling of His house. Jesus' ministry to His fellow Jews was first, but He's in Gentile territory, meaning He's there to bring home the elect as well. Jesus expands His gospel ministry beyond Israel even when He was here. Only after these events have occurred in their divinely ordered sequence can the end come. As Mark says in chapter 4, "First a shoot, then an ear, then full grain in the year." There's a pattern here.

The word proton and the thought behind it are similar to those of Paul in Romans 1 and Romans 11. Jesus did come for the Jew first but also for the Gentile. And here, it seems very derogatory if you think about it. He's calling her a dog. He's like, "I'm going to feed the children first and then you don't feed the dogs before the children." And you read the commentaries and they're like, "Well, it's not that offensive. It's the diminutive. He's calling her a little dog." No, that's offensive. You call anyone a little dog in that ... In our context, we love dogs. Dogs are domesticated. I have a daughter that prays on just as persistently as a Syrophoenician woman for a dog and ... Long story.

But in our context, we love the dogs. People even consider themselves dog parents. Back then, they didn't domesticate dogs. Dogs were wild. Dogs lived outside of cities. Dogs were considered unclean and the New Testament continues this negative attitude. St. Paul says, "Beware of the dogs." In Philippians, Jesus says, "Don't throw what is holy to the dogs or the pigs." In Revelation 22:15, "The dog is an outsider to the community of God's grace." So using the terminology dog, he's calling her a dog, is an insult. That's what's happening. He's insulting her so to speak.

And the question really is, how is she going to respond? Is she going to say, "No, I reject your verdict. I reject your bad news. I don't want your good news because I reject your bad news about my current state"? She doesn't do any of that. She hears it and she desperately continues in her persistence. Despite Jesus' seeming cool indifference and silence, she got His no. And she's like, "Okay, great, but I still ask for Your yes." Matthew 15 in the parallel context, in Matthew 15:22, "And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, 'Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David. My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.' But He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and begged Him saying, 'Send her away, for she is crying out after us.' He answered, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' But she came and knelt before Him saying, 'Lord, help me.' But He answered, 'It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.'"

You'd expect her to get angry. You'd expect her to call Jesus all of the isms and call him all of the ist names, but she doesn't get all huffy. She's not too proud to accept the verdict. She doesn't say, "How dare You? How dare You mock me? How dare You belittle me?" She could have said, "I didn't choose to be a Gentile. I didn't choose to be born here. I didn't choose to have a daughter that suffers. I'm not even asking for myself, Jesus. Do You know how much we've suffered together? We deserve something from You." She doesn't do any of that. She realizes that she cannot stand before Jesus, before Christ, before the Son of God, before God Himself on her rights, on her moral record.

Even on the basis of her own suffering, she understands that God owes her nothing. She understands who she is in relation to the God of the universe. She remains humble. Even when she hears really hard words from Jesus, she gets a really hard no, but she continues asking. She continues believing, humbly believing, humbly understanding that she has absolutely zero grounds upon which to claim His favor. She says, "Yes, I am a dog. In relation to God, I am a dog. I'm unfit for the Father's favor. I have transgressed commandments. I have lived as though God does not exist. I have broken the first commandment, it's because I've broken the first one, I've broken them all. The first commandment is, 'Thou shall have no other gods before me.' I haven't worshiped Yahweh. Yes, I am a dog. Yes, I'm outside, but, but I see Your house is big enough even for me, but I see that there's enough bread on Your table even for a dog like me." That's her posture of heart.

And when we present the gospel, we say, "Look, it starts with the bad news." The bad news is we have broken God's sovereign law. Whenever you break any law, there are to be consequences for the breaking of the law, especially when it comes to God. Whoever transgresses even one law deserves death. The word of God says, "Deserves eternal damnation." The word of God says, "That's the bad news. Apart from God, we are not children. Apart from God, we are sinners." "And yes, Lord, I am a sinner. I am a filthy, wretched dog. I am a dog. Can I be Your dog? I hear You're a good master." That's what she's saying. That's why I use the word for chutzpah, it's nerve, it's brass, it's confidence and actions gall. It's audacity.

And this brings us to point two, great faith is humble hunger for God. And you see this, you see what she's doing. She's not just asking for the miracle. She's relating to Jesus. She's conversing with Jesus. She wants more of God in her life. She's hungry for God. Verse 28, "But she answered Him, 'Yes Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.'" The Syrophoenician woman, she's like, "Yes, I am a dog," but all of a sudden, she's so smart, she switches everything. She puts the dog in the house. I don't know if you notice this. She's like, "I am a dog, but I'm a dog in Your house under Your table." That's what she's doing.

And this reminds us, this whole encounter with a Gentile woman, a Gentile woman's daughter, it reminds us of Elijah. Elijah the prophet was sent to the people of Israel, but the people of Israel didn't obey. They didn't believe in God. So then he goes to the Gentiles. And Jesus, when He started His ministry in His hometown, He goes to the synagogue and He reminded them of that story. He said, "Look, I've come here to the children of Israel, but the children of Israel refuse to believe. So I'm going to the Gentiles, just like Elijah was sent to the Gentiles," Luke 4:24, "And he said, 'Truly I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the heavens were shut up three years and six months and a great famine came over the land. And Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath and the land of Sidon to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elijah and none of them was cleansed, but only Namaan the Syrian.

When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath and they rose up and drove Him out of the town and brought Him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, so that they could throw Him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, He went away." And you say, "Why did they get so mad? Why do they get so angry?" They got so angry because He reminded them that God loves Gentiles as well. And it's not your birth, it's not your DNA, it's not your ethnicity that makes you right with God. It's your humility. It's your humble repentance where you say, "God, I don't deserve to be Your child. God, I don't deserve a relationship. God, I don't deserve cleansing in Your power, but I'm going to ask anyway."

After His rejection at Nazareth, Jesus gives a clear warning of the coming mission to the Gentiles that He's going to the Gentiles. And it is in light of this background that we must read the initial response to this woman. He went to the children of Israel who said, "We don't want You. Jesus, we don't need You. We're children of Israel by birth." And Jesus said, "No one's a child of God by birth. You can't be born into the Family of God physically, only spiritually. You need to be born again." And they didn't want to hear that. They didn't want to hear that they needed to repent, that they needed to follow God.

And yet this woman, she's told, "You're not a child of God. You're a dog," and she doesn't get huffy. She continues the conversation. She calls Him Lord, "Yes, Lord. Even the dogs on the table eat the children's crumbs." She says, "Yes, Lord, but there's plenty on that table even for me." She lays hold of Christ's word and bases her plea upon Him. The woman's response transforms the dog of Jesus metaphor into a domestic dog in the house. She, here in the stories, part of the household of faith. One translation says, "Since then, I am a dog. I'm not a stranger. I'm not outside." Another translation, she says, "Let me be a dog. I'll accept that I am, but even a dog has his day or her day. Yes, I'm a little dog, but can I still have some crumbs from the table? Yes, I'm a little dog, but I'm Your dog and You're my master."

She calls him, "Lord, I am a humble part of the household. I don't deserve to be here, but I'm just asking for a crumb. I'm just asking for a little bit of your grace." And Jesus hears that. Jesus hears her plea and her plea is actually based on a promise from the Old Testament, a promise that God gave to Abraham. When He blesses Abraham, He says, "I'm going to extend the blessings I'm giving you to the rest of the world." Genesis 12:3, "I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. All of the families. All of the families shall be blessed. All of the families, all of the people that come to God and say, "God, I don't have any rights to assert, that I'm coming to You with a right less assertiveness. I'm not coming to You on the basis of my goodness. I'm coming to You on the basis of Your goodness and Your generosity."

Thomas Cranmer, in The Book of Common Prayer, he says, "We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table, but thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy." Jesus hears her and He likes her response. In verse 29, He said to her, "For this statement," another translation says, "Good answer. Good answer." I wish I was there to see the twinkle in His eye, "Good answer." "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.

In response to the woman's audacity, her impudent faith, She wrestles a blessing from Christ. And in this, she reminds us of someone else's scripture. She reminds us of Jacob. Jacob, when he wrestled with God, when he took hold of God, and most likely, that was a Christophany because it says that he wrestled with God and it said that he wrestled with a Man. It was a Man God, the God Man, Jesus Christ. This woman is much like Jacob in her persistence, her refusal to take no for an answer. She's content to get the no, "Yes, I am a dog," but she still keeps asking for the yes.

And Jacob did the same thing. Jacob in Genesis 32, he was a man in need. The next morning, he was going to meet his brother, Esau, his estranged brother, Esau, and he thought he was going to meet Esau with murderous intent, that Esau wanted to kill him. He feared for his own life, Jacob did. He feared for the lives of his wives and children. So he prays. He sends them ahead and he prays with God. And the Lord appears to him as a man and wrestled with him through the night. And of course, the Lord was play wrestling. He's not really wrestling with Jacob. Jacob thought He was wrestling. Jesus was playing.

This is Genesis 32:24, "Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. And when the man saw that He did not prevail against Jacob, He touched his hip socket and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as He wrestled with him. Then he said, 'Let me go for, the day has broken.' But Jacob said, 'I will not let You go unless You bless me.' And He said to him, 'What is your name?' He said, 'Jacob.' Then He said, 'Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.' Then Jacob asked Him, 'Please tell me Your name.' And He said, 'Why is it that you asked My name?' And there, He blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, 'For I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been delivered.'"

And you say, "Why did Jesus tell a woman no in the beginning? What is He doing? Did she change His mind from a silent indifference to helping her?" I don't think that's what's happening. When He says for this statement, He's not saying, "Because you have said this or because you have changed My mind," He's saying, "Because you've passed the test." He was testing her. He said, "No," to test her. "Is she going to persist? Is she going to continue asking?" It was a ploy designed to evoke even greater levels of faith on her part. Martin Luther commenting on this text, he said, "Christians need to persist in trusting God even when He seems to turn His back on them. We must learn to see the yes hidden in His no."

I think that's really powerful, especially if you meditate on or you apply it to your life. We must work to see His yes and His no. If He says no, now He has a better yes for us. So we keep asking, we keep asking, we keep asking, and obviously, in all the Lord's will. Matthew 15:28, "Then Jesus answered her, "O woman, great is your faith. Be it done for you as you desire. And her daughter was healed instantly." Her faith delighted Jesus Christ. My daughter, sometimes they come to me and they test me to see how strict I am regarding grades. And they're like, "Yeah, but if I get an A-, is that okay?" "Oh, yeah, that's fine."

"What if I get a B+?" "You're pushing it. You're pushing it." "What if I get a B ..." And my conversation is, "Look, I don't care about your GPA honestly. I can't tell you that I just did, but I really don't care. I don't care. I do. Do your best in your sports. Do your best. I care about your soul above all else. I care about your faith. I care that you grow in your relationship with the Lord. I care about you growing in wisdom." And Jesus is in the same way. He's delighted by this woman's faith. May your faith and may my faith delight the Lord in the same way. She took Christ at His word, and when He said, "You're dog," and then He blesses her like a child.

And this is really how God speaks of salvation, that when we repent of our sins and turn to Christ, we get regenerated, we get a new heart, but we also get a new identity. We become a child of God. God adopts us into His family. God says, "You are not My children, but I'm going to make you My children," and it's all because of His Son, Jesus Christ. Hebrews 11:6, "And without faith, it is impossible to please Him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him." He rewards those who seek Him. Do you seek Him with the same posture of heart persistently, "Lord, I want more of You. Lord, I want more of Your presence. Lord, I want more of Your power."

And that's why Jesus is called the Bread of Life, and we are to hunger, our souls are to hunger for Jesus as the Bread of Life. "Lord, I'm starving. I am famished for You." What do you do when you're hungry? You can't stop thinking about food. You're just salivating. You're thinking about that next meal that's coming and this is ... What is humility? It's recognizing, "Lord, apart from You, I'm starving. My soul is starving. Lord, I seek you." And the word of God says, "Whoever seeks God will be found. He will be found by them." Her faith is dramatically contrasted with the heartened unbelief of the Pharisees who were Jewish. They consider themselves children of God, but they weren't because they had no faith in Christ. And her faith even outshines the understanding of the disciples whose hearts were hardened at times. And God loves persistent pursuit of Him and He rewards this lavishly.

Matthew 11:12, "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and the violent take it by force." What does that mean? He's talking about John the Baptist. John the Baptist, he sacrificed everything to proclaim that Jesus Christ is God, to proclaim that, "Jesus Christ is here. He's willing to save people." John the Baptist sacrificed everything for the kingdom of God to expand. The violent, he took it by force. It took effort. It took work on his part and the same way, if you pursue God, if you sacrifice to pursue God. And yes, this does take sacrifice like, "Rain, snow, whatever, I'm going to church." That's who you are. I commend all of you. You're here at first service. Praise be to God.

I had a phone call from a pastor and he's like, "Are you guys canceling church?" I was like, "This isn't public school. We don't believe in snow days. Forget that. We're going to church." Yeah, we'll get a little wet. That's fine. We do close church if the tea's not running. That's because of the temple situation. But what I'm saying is, yes, it does take effort. You want to experience more of God? It takes effort to wake up just to study the scriptures. It takes effort to pray. It takes effort to pursue the Lord. Like the paralytic friends, remember that the house is full, they couldn't get through to Christ. They climb into the roof. They break through 18 inches of sod and branches in the roof lowering the man and the man is healed and Jesus forgives him of his sins as well.

Jesus delights in persistent faith like that of this woman. Another example is Luke 18 and Luke 18, there's a woman who keeps returning to a judge, pleading her case over and over and over. And verse 4 of Luke 18 says, "For a while, he refused, but afterward, he said to himself, 'Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.'" And this is a comparison, opposites of course, that God, He wants to give us mercy, He wants to give us justice, He wants to pour out His power in our life, but do we keep coming to him persistently, doggedly, voraciously, yet humbly like this woman does?

She depended on Christ's goodness, not her own, so she finally understood grace. She understood grace. "It's not because of anything in me, Lord. I plead Your mercy. I plead Your grace. And faith is such a picture. It's not this bloodless, flaccid, distracted, half-hearted acceptance of certain propositions or theorems of theology about God. No, you realize that God is a person and that God does bless those who pursue Him. Faith is driven. It's determined. It's an unyielding grip upon God Himself and that's why hunger is such a good metaphor. Psalm 51:17, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise."

Matthew 5:3-6, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." And we continue the text, point three is great faith, humble bringing and begging. And verse 31, "Then He returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee and the region of the Decapolis. And they brought to Him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment and they begged Him to lay His hand on him." Who are these people that brought this man that needed healing to Jesus? We're not told. We just know that these people heard about Christ. They heard that Christ has power to help, so they bring their friend and they beg God on behalf. They beg Christ on behalf of their friend.

"Lord, just Your hand, one hand touch our friend. Heal him." Verse 33, "And taking him aside from the crowd privately, He put His fingers into his ears, and after spitting, touched his tongue." Why does Jesus do this? I think the simplest explanation is probably the best one. He's speaking with this man, communicating with this man in the only language the man can understand. He puts His finger in his ears as though He's saying, "I'm going to do something to your hearing. I'm going to do something with your tongue, with your speech." Jesus is entering the man's world, the Great King of heaven, the Great Creator of heavens and the earth. The Sinless Lamb of God is coming down. He's identifying with this man and his condition and all of its wretchedness and all of its agony and angst. Jesus is coming right down to where the man is.

Verse 34, "Looking up to heaven, He sighed and said to him, 'Ephphatha,' which is an Aramaic, "that is, 'Be opened.'" He looks up to heaven, so he's invoking God's power. He sighs. Why does Jesus sigh? And this is a sign of His deep feeling, His compassion for the sufferer. If you remember when He comes to Lazarus' tomb, He knows He's about to resurrect Lazarus, but before He does, He reveals His emotion in John 11:33, "When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in His spirit and greatly troubled. And He said, 'Where have you laid him?' And they said to Him, 'Lord, come and see,' and Jesus swept." So the Jews said, "See how He loved him."

The phrase for deeply moved or greatly troubled, that phrase is a word used in another context to describe a horse snorting. One translation says, "He gave way to such distress of spirit, has made His body tremble." One commentator says, "This great sigh came out of His wounded heart." So what's happening? Jesus is moved by Lazarus' condition. He's moved by this man's condition. It offends Him, "This is not the way the world was supposed to be. The world was created and it was perfect and we were supposed to live in perfect harmony, perfect shalom, but we rebelled against God and sin entered the world and the ravages of sin, the consequences of sin are felt by each one of us." And when Jesus dies, He knows, this isn't the way it's supposed to be and everyone knows this.

If you ask even an unbeliever, someone that doesn't believe in God, you ask them, "Is the world the way it ought to be? Are you the way you ought to be?" And everyone says, "No, because everyone knows deep down inside there's something wrong, something wrong with us, something wrong with the world." Where does that knowledge come from? The knowledge of a perfect reality and knowledge of a perfect world. It's written on our hearts. This is not how creation was meant to be in all of its beauty and all of its glory and now it's marred with sin.

This man was made to reflect the image of God, the glory of God, and here, he's a poor wretch of a man suffering and Jesus is moved by that. He sighs and he says, "Be opened," and this is called a divine passive. He says, "Be opened by whom? By God." That's what he's saying. He's invoking the power of God. In verse 35, "His ears were opened, his tongue was released and he spoke plainly." The ears were opened. That's another divine passive. His tongue was released by whom? By God. His tongue was unshackled, so to speak. The bond of his tongue was released.

Jesus is creating a new world. That's what bringing the kingdom of God into the world means, that He's recreating things from the inside out and it starts with the message of the good news and it transforms our hearts from the inside. And then everything in the world, little by little, becomes transformed. Verse 36, "And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more He charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure saying, "He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. He has done all things well."

And this echoes Genesis 1:31 where God creates, He sees everything He's made and he says, "It is good." They say, "He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak," and that's an illusion to Isaiah 35, talking about the Messianic kingdom, verse 5 of Isaiah 35, "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped and shall the lame man leap like a deer and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert." Of course, Jesus' miracles weren't just miracles for miracle's sake. His miracles were always a sign, a sign of a deeper reality, a sign of who Jesus is, a sign of what Jesus has come to accomplish, which is to redeem people, to redeem the world, to save souls. And this motif of the opened ear is a symbol for revelation.

Same people hear the same message and someone's ears are opened and they believe and they know that this is the truest truth in the universe. This is the truth beyond any truth, underneath every single truth. And some people, they hear the same message and they walk away and they're like, "That was nice. That was a good message. What's for lunch?" The opening of the man's ear is meant to be understood as a symbol of the way in which a person is made receptive. So this is the miracle, the greater miracle. It is a great miracle that the woman's child is freed from the demon. It is a miracle that this man is healed of his deafness and his muteness, but the greater miracle is the miracle that these are pointing to and that's the miracle of the ears being opened and you hear the good news, "Oh, yes, I am a sinner. Oh yes, I have transgressed the law of God. Yes, I am guilty as charge. Yes, I accept that verdict, and yes, Jesus Christ is the only one who could save me."

The problem was that Jesus wasn't clear in His teaching. You say, "Why didn't more people get saved?" The problem wasn't that His message was confused or complicated. The problem was that these people's ears were not receptive to the message. That's why Jesus often said, "If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear." He means that there was a kind of supernatural hearing or understanding that many people are incapable of. The unbeliever certainly hears the words physically spoken, certainly maybe even understands them to an extent. They're perfectly ordinary words. We have done wrong. A great deal of wrong. We do need forgiveness and God will forgive you for all of the sins that you have ever committed only if you believe in His Son who is sent into this world to die on a cross precisely to secure forgiveness for those who trust in Him. Those who are in Christ will go to heaven when they die and only those.

Nothing in those English sentences is difficult to understand, but the unbeliever does not understand them not in a way that saves them. Why? Because the unbeliever doesn't understand that they cannot come to God whenever they want. They can't come to God on their own timetable. It happens as a miracle. When you hear the Holy Spirit speaking to your heart, when you hear the Holy Spirit saying, "Repent of your sin. Come to Christ," at that moment, do not stop up your ears. At that moment, say, "Yes, Lord, I believe. Yes, Lord, I repent. Yes, Lord, save me."

Therefore, it's important for us, for those who have been given ears to hear to bring people to Christ. We're not the ones that can save. Just like the friends that brought the deaf person to Jesus, they brought Him, they begged Him, but it's Jesus that does the work, not them. Verse 32, "They brought to Him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment and they begged Him to lay His hand on him." And that's our job as believers. We are to bring people to Christ. We are to have gospel conversations with people. Any opportunity I have to speak about the Lord, I am going to use, I'm going to take. That's our job, but I can't transform a heart. I can't give ears to hear. Only the Lord can do that.

In the same way that this man's tongue was unshackled, in the same way that this man's ears were opened, that's what the Lord has done for believers. Some of you have had your ears opened. You understand the gospel, you love the gospel and you love sermons, you love church, but your tongue is still shackled when it comes to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. You've heard it, you understand it, but you can't really speak about it. And I'm telling you why, because you feel a little ashamed. There's just a shame like, "I don't want them to think I'm a believer Christian like those Christians."

I pray that the Lord unshackle our ... You know how Jesus tells these people, they saw the miracle and he's like, "Don't tell anyone," and then they go and they tell the whole world? And now I'm like, "Jesus, why do You do it? Is it like reverse psychology?" It's like in the great commission, Jesus went to us and said, "Do not go and make disciples of all the nations. Do not do that. We'd be making so many more disciples." Whatever it takes, this is our job. We are to unshackle. We are to speak. We are to bring people to church. We are to bring people to community. We have to bring people to read scripture together. We are to bring people to have conversations about the Lord. We are to pray for people.

If you have unbelievers in your life and they have needs, ask if you can pray for them. So easy. So easy. And pray to Lord and like, "Lord, can You please flex? Lord, reveal Yourself to these people." And in the same way that these friends, anonymous, they drag their friend to Christ, the friend gets the miracle. We are to do the same here. We're meant to see the Lord's power to heal the spiritually deaf and He can give the chief of sinners even, that was what Paul called himself, a hearing ear. He can save absolutely anybody. When Jesus pours forth His Spirit, nothing is impossible and we must never despair of others. We must never regard our own hearts as too bad to be changed.

You are not too much of a sinner for Jesus. Every single one of us can receive grace, can receive the crumbs from the Lord's table. All we need to do is ask. All we need to do is what this woman did. Matthew 15:2, she comes to Jesus, gets on her knees and what does she say? "Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David." May that be the constant cry of our hearts, "Lord, have mercy on me." And if you pray that today, if you pray to Jesus Christ, "Lord Jesus, have mercy on me," the word of God says that you are saved, that you have received eternal life. Now, follow the Lord Jesus Christ the rest of your days.

This woman asked for a crumb from the Lord's table and she received what she received. She received power of God in her life. For the power of God to be unleashed in our lives, for the crumbs to fall from the Lord's table, what did Jesus Christ have to do? The Bread of Life had to come into this world and that His body was broken. And that's what today we're celebrating in the holy communion, we are remembering the suffering of Christ. His body was broken, so that we could get the crumbs from the Lord's table to be saved. His blood was shed in order to cleanse us, to redeem us, to ransom us from our sins.

With that said, I'm going to transition to holy communion. For whom is holy communion? It is for repentant believers in Jesus Christ. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, if you've repented of your sin, you are welcome to partake, even if today for the first time you repented and believe in Christ. If you do not believe in Christ, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service, or if you are living in unrepentant sin, also please refrain. I'm going to read 1 Corinthians 11:23-32, and while I do that, if you would like to partake and you haven't received the elements, please raise your hand and one of the ushers will bring them to you.

1 Corinthians 11:23, "For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, 'This is My body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.' In the same way also, He took the cup after supper saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of Me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup, for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died, but if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world."

Would you please pray with me over communion. Heavenly Father, we thank You that You, the Great God of the Universe did not leave us in our sins and trespasses and You sent Your Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus, we thank You that You live that perfect life. You obeyed the Father's will perfectly from the heart at all times, every second of Your incarnate life. And Lord, You were sacrificed. You sacrificed Yourself on the cross. You gave Your life in order to save us. We thank You that on the cross, You took our sin upon Yourself. You became our sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.

Lord Jesus, we thank You that You offer us mercy. You offer mercy to whoever would plead Your name, the name of Jesus Christ. Lord, have mercy on us and You extend it graciously, willingly. And I thank You, Holy Spirit, that You are with us and I pray that You help us meditate now in the suffering of Christ to remember that His body was broken and His blood was shed in order for us to be healed from the inside out and given new hearts in order for us to be cleansed from shame and guilt. Lord, bless our time in the holy communion now. We repent of any sins, known sins and unknown sins, and we come to You with complete contrition of heart, asking for mercy and grace as we remember Your sufferings in our behalf. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

If this is your first time taking communion with us, there's two lids. If you open the top one that opens the cup and then the bottom one opens the bread. On the night that Jesus Christ was betrayed, He took the bread, and after breaking it, He said, "This is My body broken for you. Take, eat and do this in remembrance of Me." He then proceeded to take the cup and he said, "This cup is the cup of the new covenant of My blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink and do this in remembrance of Me."

Lord Jesus, as we meditate on Your sufferings and we think of what a great miracle that was, the Son of God, Son of Man dying on our behalf, we also thank about the great miracle of the resurrection, incredible that You rose from the dead verifying everything that You taught to be true. And Lord, we think of our own conversions, our own regeneration, our own salvation. What a miracle that is, that we were given faith, we were given ears to hear. And we pray that we don't take that for granted, Lord, and we pray that You, in the same way that You've saved us, in the same way that You made the great miracle of our salvation, I pray that You save many around us. Save them miraculously. We believe in a great God. We believe in your great power.

And with our faith, Lord, we believe, help our own belief, but we pray that you pour out Your Spirit upon our city and upon this region, upon New England. Pour out Your Spirit in a way that the world has never seen, that I pray save hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands and more. And Lord, as this woman pleaded with You, we plead, Lord. We plead for our neighbors. We plead the blood for our loved ones. We plead the blood of Jesus Christ for our city. Lord, we thank You in advance for the great revival that is coming and we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.