Now we come in our service to our time of listening to God, so let's take our Bibles. If you have a Bible and turn with me to the book of Mark, Mark chapter seven. And if you don't have a Bible, there are some Bibles underneath chairs turned to page 1072, and you'll find our text this morning. Mark chapter seven, we're going to look at verses 24 through 30. And we're continuing our study of the book of Mark. It's a series that we've titled the Cross-shaped Life. We've been in Mark for some months, and we will continue to be in Mark for a while until we finish the book, walking through the journey in the ministry of Jesus Christ. Mark seven, verses 24 through 30. Listen as I read the text for us this morning. From there, he, that is Jesus, 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 sire of Phoenician 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's 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 word of the Lord. Let's pray, Father, use this passage to show us Jesus. Use this passage to make us more like Jesus. Use this passage we pray to cause us to be wrestlers. And not let go of you because you won't let go of us. I pray this in Jesus' name, Amen. I have a lot to talk about this morning, so let's dive right into the text. I see two things that really stick out in this text this morning. We're going to look at both of them. The first thing we see is the faith of this woman. And the second thing is the grace of Jesus. So let's start with the first point and spend much of our time there and then we'll end with the grace of Jesus. Because this is a story about faith, the faith of a sire of Phoenician woman. In Matthew's account, which you really should read to get a little bit of a different angle on the same story, Matthew gives us the same story but with some different details. And one of the things that Matthew tells us happens is what Jesus says after he's had mercy on her and healed her daughter. Jesus says to her, oh woman, great is your faith. Be it done for you as you desire. And it was after that that the little girl was healed instantly. But listen to those words, oh woman, great is your faith. That's why I say that this story is a story about faith. Just imagine what it was like for her to hear those words from the lips of Jesus. Wouldn't you love to hear him say that about you? Oh woman, great is your faith. Oh man, great is your faith. John, your faith is great. Harvey, your faith is great. Find that your faith is great. Jim, your faith, your man of great faith. Wouldn't it be great to hear Jesus presenting us before saints and angels and saying like he said to this, our Phoenician woman, you have great faith. You know, C.S. Lewis wrote a little essay called The Weight of Glory and in that essay he wrote that all of us need to hear God's recommendation like that. All of us need to be a real ingredient, he wrote, in the divine happiness, not merely pitied but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son. Now here in this story is a woman who was delighted in by Jesus. Her faith brought Jesus great joy. What was it that made her faith great? That's the question we need to answer. What was it that made her faith great and that received that commendation from Christ? And more personally, how do you, what do you need in order to have great faith? Three things. I'll tell you what they are and then we'll look at them one by one. Let's begin with desperation, humility and stubborn persistence. Let's begin with desperation, great faith requires desperation. I wish it weren't that way. I wish I could tell you that faith can grow in a soft, cushy, easy leather chair. I wish I could tell you that faith can just spring up out of nowhere, that you'll have all your prayers answered just the way you want, that you'll be rich and famous, that your marriage will be incredible, that your kids will be spiritual giants and people will read your books. I wish I could tell you that, but scripture and experience both agree that faith is born and bred in the fires of affliction. Let me show you what I mean. Verse 24, right there at the beginning of our text, says that Jesus was traveling in the region of Tyre and Sidon. Now those are cities way up in the northwest of Palestine on the Mediterranean coast. Here's a little map. You can barely see Tyre up there in the top left corner. Sidon is even further north. It's not even on that map. Why did Jesus go to Tyre and Sidon? That's not where he spent the bulk of his time. He was down lower in Palestine. Why did he go there? Maybe to get away from the crowds? Maybe to spend time with his disciples? Perhaps it was to rest up and get ready for what was going to be his next and final phase of ministry in and around Jerusalem. But whatever the case, the story tells us that a woman who had been born and raised in Syrian Phoenicia, Matthew, by the way, calls her a canonite. She comes to the house where Jesus was staying. Like others entire in Sidon, she had heard about Jesus. His fame had preceded him. The miracles that he performed, the healings that he had performed in and around Jerusalem had news about them, had reached the ears of people there in Tyre and Sidon. Many of them had even been firsthand eyewitnesses of those things and they came back and told their friends and neighbors. So this woman knew about Jesus. And verse 25 says that her little girl has an unclean spirit. It means that a demon is living inside her daughter. A demon is living inside her daughter controlling her. No doubt this demon is making this little girl very sick. This demon is tormenting this little girl day and night. He's throwing her into convulsions, I suspect. She's having nightmares. She can't sleep. She can't eat. She's acting in all sorts of bizarre ways. Nobody wants to spend any time or be anywhere near this little girl. Nobody wants to help her. But this mom loves this daughter very, very much. So when she heard that Jesus was in town, she instantly felt a sense of urgency. She believes Jesus can do something for her little girl. Verse 25 says immediately she comes to the house where Jesus is staying and she falls down at his feet. What is she? She is desperate. She is desperate for help. Verse 26 says that she begs Jesus to cast this demon out of her daughter. Now that Greek word for begged is in the imperfect tense. We've talked about that before. It means that it's continuous action. Over and over again, she begs Jesus to help her little girl. And it's an intense word. This word begged is the same word that Jesus uses in Luke 16 where he's talking about the rich man in hell begging Father Abraham to sin Lazarus to warn his family about that place of torment. That's how intense this word begged is. The woman is not just asking Jesus to heal her daughter. She is screaming at him to heal her daughter. She is pleading at the top of her lungs over and over and over again. So much so that according to Matthew's account, the disciples step in and tell Jesus to send her away. She's bothering everybody so much. But Jesus is her only hope. Who knows how many years the daughter has been demon possessed. Maybe this woman has no other kids. This little girl is her only child. Maybe this woman is a widow. She has nobody else, but this little girl to care for and to care for her in life. She's tried every other remedy and nothing has worked. She's at the end of her rope. Maybe you can relate a little bit to this mom. I remember so well. I was about 12 years ago. I was actually teaching a class at RTS and I got a phone call from the ER at Florida East Hospital. My son David was a student at UCF at the time. And the only thing the nurse could tell me on the other end of the phone was that it was very serious and that I should be there at the hospital as soon as possible. The only thing on my mind was getting there to the emergency room and seeing what in the world had happened to my son. Now this woman in this story is even more desperate than that. She's been putting up with this for who knows how long. You see, when it's one of your kids that's in trouble, you go crazy. Some of you know that very, very well. When it's your kid, you're desperate to see them made hole again. I ask you, what is distressing you this morning? What are you desperate about? Maybe it's not a kid. You might not even be married. You might not have children at all. But you've got something in your life about which you're in great distress. What's been waking you up in the middle of the night? Is it your kid? Is it your marriage? Is it your money? Maybe it's your health. Maybe it's your sin. Maybe it's the mistakes of your past or some problem that you're facing in the present. Or some worry you have about the future. Whatever it is, whatever it is, can you believe that God is using that very situation to create a kind of faith that doesn't depend on everything going well? Is it possible that this trial that you're dealing with right now is itself, the crucible for a kind of faith that brings Jesus great joy? That's a whole other way to look at trials, isn't it? Maybe your suffering is what God is using to build faith into your life. So that you will hear the same words, the sire Phoenician woman heard, oh man, oh woman, oh boy, oh girl, great is your faith. Maybe God is in the process of bringing you, preparing you for that very experience through your trial. We talk here at UPC about making disciples, that's our mission. And part of our making of disciples is helping people experience gospel transformation. If you were here last week, you heard Michael talking about that. Paul in Romans 8 says that we are to be transformed into the image of Christ. So isn't it likely that your trial is a form of discipleship? Jesus is discipling you through pain, conforming you to the image of the one who suffered far more than any of us ever will? Count it all joy. The apostle James says in James chapter 1, count it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. The first ingredient of great faith then is desperation. Let's talk about the second one. The second one is humility. If you would have great faith, you must also have humility. You should have noticed how this woman approaches Jesus in verse 25. It says that she fell down at his feet. What is that? That is the posture of worship. It's the posture of humility. And in verse 28, she calls Jesus Lord. It's the Greek word kuryas. It's the word that often is simply a title like sir or master, but at other times it's actually a name of God, kuryas Lord. And I think it's likely that that's the sense in which this woman is using it as she speaks to Jesus. She says Lord. And I say that partially because if you read Matthew's account, she doesn't just call in Lord. She calls him son of David, son of David. So in some sense this woman gets him. She gets him. She may not understand all there is to know about Jesus of Nazareth but she definitely has some awareness that this is no ordinary human being that she's kneeling in front of. She is humbling herself before the Lord, submitting to his authority, his rule, his word, and his power. Now we need to talk about verses 27 and 28. I'm sure that when I read those verses, some of you were perhaps very troubled by those words. What in the world is going on in verse 27? Here is this deeply troubled woman who comes to Jesus and asks him to heal her demon possessed daughter. And here's what he says to her in verse 27, let the children be fed first for it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. This sounds kind of off-putting, doesn't it? You know atheists and liberal scholars have a field day with that verse. They say, look how intolerant Jesus was. Jesus is calling this woman a dog. That's what Jews called Gentiles. That is a racial slur. Jesus was a racist, they say. I read something that Christopher Bryan wrote. He's a former Catholic professor of New Testament who wrote the book The Resurrection of the Messiah. And here's what he said about this verse, he said, at one time Jesus was a racist. There's no getting around it. Jesus was a product of his times. He was always learning and growing. At times he made mistakes and this is one of them. Later he grew up and would not have made this racist remark. That is not true. This was not a racist. He was not using this as a racial slur. Now it is true that Jesus is drawing a contrast between Jews and Gentiles. He's telling this woman that the initial focus of his earthly ministry was the Jewish people. In Matthew's account it's even more explicit. Matthew says that Jesus told her, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Later on his followers would throw the gospel door wide open to the ends of the earth, but right now Jesus is saying that the Jews were his priority. Even Paul the Apostle in Romans 1 says that the gospel is the power of God for salvation, for all who believe, for the Jew first, but also to the Greek. So this is not a racial slur. Jesus is not insulting Gentiles in general or this woman in particular. In fact think about the word dog. You know there are two ways you and I can speak of dogs. We can talk about a halm dog, a street dog, a wild dog, or we can talk about a house dog, a pet, a puppy. And it would appear that that's the sense in which Jesus is using the word dog. To be sure, sometimes in the New Testament the word dog does have a negative moral connotation. But here I think Jesus is talking about pet dogs, puppies. One scholar said, doggies, beat that as it may, I want you to notice the woman's response. She understands what Jesus is saying. She's not offended. She gets it. She understands that salvation is from the Jews and that Jesus came for the Jews. But here's what she learned about her. She's willing to be compared to a little puppy waiting patiently by the chair of a child at the dinner table, just hoping that a scrap or a crumb will fall from the child's spoon to the floor. Some of you have dogs, you know what I'm talking about. When we had our little dog dabbo, anytime we were eating dinner, he'd be sitting patiently at someone's chair just staring at the floor, waiting for a crumb, waiting for a scrap, waiting for a bit of food to fall to the floor so he'd scoop it right up. This woman is saying to Jesus, am I being compared to a puppy dog? Okay, I gladly accept that and I not only accept it, I rejoice because of it. I don't deserve any of the master's food, but if you can spare a crumb or two, Jesus, I'll be eternally grateful. It's the very opposite, isn't it, of the attitude of entitlement that you might hear people have sometimes. Perhaps you've even thought it yourself. You owe me, Lord. You owe me. Why don't I have better than this? I don't deserve what I'm going through. Why can't I have what other people have? I'm a good person, Lord. Some people even think that salvation is something you can earn. Like one day you'll stand before God and there'll be a scale and your good deeds will be on one side and your bad deeds on the other. And if your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds, God will look at you and say, come on into heaven so that salvation is something you earn by your good life. I've been a pretty good person, you might say. I've stayed out of trouble, I've gone to church, surely I've met God's requirements for getting into heaven. That's a spirit of entitlement. That's not Christianity. It might be religion, but it's not how Christianity works. And the Sorrow of Phoenician woman knows it. Instead of feeling entitled, this woman says, Lord, I don't deserve anything at all. In fact I've messed up pretty badly throughout my life. I know who I am, she says, I'm a debtor to mercy alone. I'd understand if you overlooked me entirely. I only deserve judgment and if my daughter is going to be healed it will be completely because of your grace. That Lord could I have some of that grace? Could I have a scrap? Could I have a crumb of your grace? Grace you see only flows one direction, downhill. Do you know that? Grace only flows downhill. The way up is down. The Apostle James again to quote him says that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. If you want to be a person of great faith you need to remember that apart from the mercy of God you are a lost and guilty sinner that all your righteousness is as filthy rags and that in your sin if it were only left up to you in your sin you would deserve only the wrath and judgment of God. See it is with that attitude that the Sorrow of Phoenician woman comes to Jesus. And that's why she was a woman of great faith. Desperation, humility and in the third place great faith requires stubborn persistence. Now a moment ago I said that Jesus was not insulting this woman but listen he was definitely putting her off. He was definitely putting a discouragement in her path. Matthew tells us again to refer to his account of the same story. Matthew tells us that for a little while he was just completely silent. It says that he answered her not a word. Think about that. What if you were to come to me or one of your super compassionate pastors and you unfolded your heart to us. You laid out before us some deep and earnest problem you were having and we just stood there without saying a thing. We just sort of blindly stared at you or maybe even stared past you. You know suppose you came to me and you're just crying your eyes out and saying over and over again Mike what am I going to do. Please help me and I just stare back at you like a bump on a log. When I do speak and when I do speak I say I'm sorry but I didn't come here to UPC for your kind of people. Somebody should take me out and shoot me. Not that that's at all what Jesus is doing here of course but what is he doing? What is Jesus doing? What is he thinking? The more I looked at this passage the more it dawned on me that he's inviting this woman into faith. What looks like an insult is actually an invitation. What looks at first glance like a rebuff is really a challenge. I think Jesus is saying come on Sire Phoenician woman let me see what you got. Step it up. You believe on the son of David? Prove it. Put me to the test and that's exactly what the woman did. She got in the ring with Jesus. That's why I call her the wrestler. She heard that little word in verse 27 the word is first. Jesus said let the children be fed first. She heard that word and it gave her hope. And she figured all right there first let me be second. I want to be second Jesus. She wrestled with him. He gave her an inch and she took a mile. And Jesus wasn't mad at her. He commended her for her faith. She refused to take no for an answer even though he ignored her for a little while. Even though when he did speak he didn't seem to give her a sign of hope. She kept begging, she kept asking, she kept arguing with him. See here's what she knew that sometimes we don't. Jesus's silence was always intentional. The silence of God is always intentional. There's always purpose when God is silent. Some of you feel that way today. God's been silent. You've been praying. You've been asking. You've been pleading with him about something. It seems that he's not listening. It seems that he's not there. It seems that he doesn't care. I want you to know that the silence of God always has a purpose. God is inviting you into faith. He is challenging you to wrestle with him. I love what the Puritan Richard Sibb says. It's here on the screen but I'll read it for you. Richard Sibb's one said, God always hears, though he seems not to hear sometimes, to increase our opportunity. Do you know what opportunity is? It means our sense of need, our sense of desire, our fervency. He seems not to hear sometimes to increase our opportunity. Christ heard the woman of Canaan at first, but to increase her opportunity, he gave her the repulse and denial and with it inward strength to wrestle with him. God seems not to hear because he delights in the music of his children's prayers. Oh, how he loves to hear the voice of his children. As a father to hear the language of his child, though it be none of the best, so it is sweet music in God's ear to hear the prayer of his children. God is teaching us this morning that to pray is to struggle with God. To pray means to struggle with God. And if that concept is foreign to you, if you've never been told that sometimes the Christian life is one of struggle and striving, Paul in Romans 15 asks his believer, friends in Rome, to struggle together with him in prayer for his ministry. And that word for struggle or strive is soon agonizzo mai, soon agonizzo mai. What do you hear in there, agony, agonizing. Sometimes the Christian life is one of agonizing with God. The Bible is full of stories of people who wrestled and who agonized with God and prevailed. Think of Abraham praying for God to spare Sodom. Think of Isaac who cried out for maybe 20 years over the beariness of his wife Rebecca. Think of Jacob in Genesis 32 who wrestled with God all night long, even though he had his hip out of joint. Think of Moses telling the Lord, what will the Egyptians say? Lord, if you give us up, what will they say, what will the watching world think? Don't do it, God. He wrestled with God. Think of Hannah in 1 Samuel, chapter 1, who prayed year after year for a child. I could go on, Daniel, Nehemiah, Ezra, Job, all these people struggled with God over things they cared deeply about. They were desperate. They were humble. And by faith, they would not let God go until he blessed them. The Syrophonician woman joined their ranks. She like they was stubbornly persistent, a person of great faith. Now when I began, I said that I had two things to talk about. One was a woman of faith, but the other was a savior of grace. See, this story is not just about a woman who had great faith, it's a story about a great savior who gives grace. And if you don't see that, you miss the full import of the story. See, faith doesn't exist in a vacuum. It must have a basis. You know, unless we're talking about positive thinking, which is not faith, faith, you've got to have faith in something or in someone who has credibility, someone whom you believe to be trustworthy. And this Syrophonician woman had faith because she saw something in Jesus Christ that made her say, here is a savior I can wrestle with. I'm not going to let go of him because he is not going to let go of me. What did she see? What did she see in Jesus? She saw a divine person who cares about Gentiles, who cares about undeserving, unclean, smelly people, pagans, outcasts, outsiders. You see, Tyre and Sidon was Gentile territory. That's where pagans lived. Jews were supposed to hate Gentiles. Tyre was the place where centuries before Israel was introduced to bail worship. These were pagan people with a pagan history. The Jews called them unclean. But if you were here last week, you heard the sermon last week from Michael. You heard about Jesus in verses 14 through 23 who did something radical. He dismantled the Jewish notion of clean verses unclean. He declared it says in verse 19, all foods clean. Now if Jesus is going to say that there are no unclean foods, don't be surprised if he goes to places where there are unclean people. And that's exactly what we see him doing in this text. Some of you know that my wife and I just got back from a vacation in California. We went to Central and Northern California. We stayed for most of the time in the San Francisco Bay area. Little did we know that we selected the same weekend as the Bay to Breaker's race, which takes place every year the third Sunday of May in San Francisco. It's the oldest consecutively run annual foot race in the world. It's 12K race that has happened ever since May 1912. It happened the weekend we were there. 40,000 extra people swarmed into San Francisco Bay. The race starts on the east side near the Embarcadero. It ends on the west side at the Pacific Ocean near Golden Gate Park. And they don't just run the race, they party the race. If you know about this, they dress up in all these wild and crazy costumes or they wear nothing at all. And that's true. And they party. They drink, they get high, they trash the place. And that's right, that's the day Susie and I decide to go to the hate ashberry district where the race was to end. So yes, that's where we were, big mistake. Here we were walking down hate street in San Francisco, the sights and the sounds and the smells of the biggest party of the year in San Francisco were everywhere. And here we were, there I am, wearing my Clemson Tiger ball cap and Susie's wearing her outfit from the loft or whatever. I mean, we get off the bus, it looks like we're from Mayberry, North Carolina. Not a single member of a PCA church anywhere to be seen, but the thought occurred to me if Jesus were around today. That's probably exactly where he'd be, because Jesus loved Gentiles. Jesus loved pagans. Jesus loved undeserving, smelly, not conservative people. Think of the demon possessed man we learned about in Mark 5, he was a Gentile. Think of the Roman centurion in Matthew 8, he was a Gentile. Jesus said about him, not even in Israel have I found such faith. Think of the Samaritan woman in John 4, she was a Gentile, he changed her life. And by the way, do you know why Jesus cleansed the temple of the money changers? He cleansed the temple to cleanse the court of the Gentiles, to clear people out so Gentiles could gather to pray. He loved Gentiles. Jesus ministry to this Syrophonician woman and to her daughter was a foretaste of the advance of the gospel beyond the borders of Israel, into all the nations of the world, into the darkest of places, people Jesus cares deeply about, because Jesus loves the little children. He loves the little children of the world, bread and yellow, black and white, Jesus loves all the little children. See far from being exclusive, the kingdom of God is radically inclusive, all are welcome, all are invited who will put their trust in Jesus Christ. He invites all to come and wrestle with Him. See we can wrestle with Jesus because Jesus wrestled with the powers of darkness on our behalf and one. We can prevail in prayer because Jesus, our prophet, priest and king, prevailed in a toning for our sins. We can refuse to take no for an answer because Jesus refused to say no to the cross. So in the words of John Newton, the hymn writer, I would encourage you, come, my soul, thy suit prepare, Jesus loves to answer prayer. He himself has bid thee pray, therefore will not save the nay. Thou art coming to a king, large petitions with thee bring, for his grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much. Let's go wrestle with God. Let's pray. Jesus, every single one of us this morning is like this, our Phoenician woman, we're desperate for you. We're utterly dependent on your grace. Thank you for coming to us. Thank you for coming for us. Thank you for saying yes to the cross. Thank you for dying for undeserving, unclean people like us. Thank you that even when you're silent, you're listening to us and inviting us to greater faith, Holy Spirit, we want you to build us into men and women and boys and girls of great faith, empower us to run to Jesus instead of trying to handle things in our own. Help us to remember that the way up is down and when we're tempted to give up, help us keep praying, keep hoping, keep dreaming of that day when everything's sad will come untrue and we will be forever with the Lord. We ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.