A Mom Obtains Deliverance for Her Daughter

Last Sunday, we finished our study of John 3 and 4, and we ended in chapter 4 by looking at a man, a royal official, who, came to Jesus and interceded with Jesus on behalf of his, on behalf of his son who was dying. And he obtained from Jesus, a healing for his, son. And so we tried to learn some things about just this man as a dad interceding on behalf of this child that he loved. In the sermon last week, we made reference to the story in Matthew 15 of the Syro Phoenician woman, who also came to Jesus on behalf of her daughter, And sought to obtain healing from Jesus on her behalf.

We made quick reference to that, and made a few quick points. And then we moved on. What I want to do today is I want to spend the entirety of our time together in the word inside of this story of this woman who came to Jesus on behalf of her, her daughter. and I'm not sure what we're going to do for Father's Day, but it's possible for Father's Day, we're going to look at the story of the centurion who came to Jesus on behalf of a beloved servant in the household, and try to fit all of those together, just the theme of pleading with God, pleading with Jesus on behalf of those whom we love.

We have a number of People in our church whose hearts are heavy, whose hearts are breaking as they intercede with God on behalf of those whom they love, be it a parent or a spouse, or in many cases pleading with God on behalf of their children who do not know the Lord or who are away from the Lord and rebellion against Him. And a number of our people have been praying for months and even years, and I think by looking at these stories in the gospel accounts there's a lot of encouragement and a lot of perspective that we can gain from these incidences as we find them in the Gospels.

So for today we're going to look at Matthew 15:21 to 28, and if you want to give a title to the message, it would be A Mom obtains deliverance for her daughter. A mom obtains deliverance for her daughter.

Let me begin reading this in verse 21. And Jesus went away from there and withdrew into the district of Tyre and Sidon, and a Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, saying, Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David. My daughter is cruelly demon possessed. But he did not answer her a word, and his disciples came and implored him, saying, Send her away because she keeps shouting at us.

But he answered and said, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But she came and began to bow down before him, saying, Lord, help me. And he answered and said, It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. But she said, Yes, Lord, but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their master's table.

Then Jesus said to her, Oh woman, your faith is great. It shall be done for you as you wish. And her daughter was healed at once. This is the word of God, and may God help us all to understand and receive what he is saying to us through his word this morning.

The woman that we're going to meet, In this story is a scrappy woman. We use the word scrappy sometimes to describe someone, right? It speaks of someone who is feisty and determined. We've got some scrappy people here in this church.

They are people who will fight tooth and claw for anything that they can get that they see that they need, and they will stop at nothing in their attempt to get it. This is a great quality. In our passage this morning, we're going to meet a scrappy mom who literally, in the most literal sense of the term, is going to plead for and take for herself scraps that fall from the table of God's children. This woman is feisty.

She is determined, and she loves her daughter. And she is a force to be reckoned with in the presence of Jesus, and she intercedes with Jesus on behalf of her daughter. Let's, let's introduce her to us. Just a few things that we can observe about her in the passage.

this morning, we observed that she was a Canaanite. Matthew describes her as a Canaanite woman. Interestingly, in Mark's account of this story, Mark describes her as a Hellenist or a Greek woman of the Syrophoenician race. Matthew though is writing to a Jewish audience, and he wants to hit his audience with maximum impact, so he describes her as a Canaanite woman.

This is a racially loaded description. It's code for someone who is a descendant of the people who were once living in the Land of Promise in the Old Testament whom God commanded Israel to utterly destroy, wipe out, and drive from the land in the Old Testament. This woman descends from one of those ancient Canaanites who was not utterly destroyed. In the Old Testament we know she lived in the district of Tyre and Sidon, which if you're talking about the modern day map, she's living in the region of southern Lebanon.

She's within the borders of ancient Israel, but she is beyond the borders of what in her own day was considered to be the land. Of Israel at that time. We also know that this woman, amazingly, was a believer in Jesus as the Messiah. In Mark chapter 7, verse 25, and Mark's account of this incident, he says that this woman heard of him.

So she's not even in the land of Israel, technically, she's on the outskirts, she's on the border. And news about Jesus has reached these outer regions. Jesus comes into this area at this particular time, and he's wanting to get away. He's wanting people to not know that he is there.

But He cannot. The text in Mark says escape notice. Word gets out that he's there. This woman, maybe she had heard about him before, or she's hearing about him for the first time right now, but she hears scraps of information about Jesus.

And this woman basically taking these scraps of information about Jesus, she's able to cobble them together into a certain knowledge of Jesus to where we're going to see in our passage today, she knows that he's the Lord. And she's concluded that he's the Son of David. He's the Messiah, which is amazing. People in the land of Israel itself are seeing Jesus do miracles, and they're hearing him teach and they're not even believing in him as the Messiah.

Here's a woman picking up scraps of information outside of the boundaries of Israel at that time. And she's like, he's the Lord, and he's the son of David. Already we know this is a pretty amazing woman who can do much with scraps of information. Also we observed that this woman had a daughter.

A daughter Who was demon possessed. And not just demon possessed but severely demon possessed. in the text, she describes her daughter as being cruelly demon possessed. And that word cruelly is the Greek word that, that just means bad.

So I just want you to think about this as parents, like, what is your worst nightmare as a parent? Imagine what's the worst thing that can happen to your child. I know as a parent I think about that sometimes, like, oh man, that'd be my worst nightmare if my child did this or if this happened to my child. I've never even thought about demon possession.

I, I put that as like the worst thing that can happen to my child to be under the power of a spiritual personage that is evil and that is powerful and hell bent on my child's destruction. And that demon comes and goes at its own choosing and it just wields damaging power over my child. That's like a parent's worst nightmare, right? And then as far as demon possessions go, we even see in Scripture that there's various levels of severity, and this woman's daughter is not just demon possessed, but quite literally she has a bad case.

of demon possession. And the mind of this mom, her daughter is not just possessed but severely. possessed of a demon. So our worst nightmare is this woman's reality.

And she hears the news that Jesus is in town. Maybe someone said he's in town, but he's trying to get away. He doesn't want anyone to know. She doesn't care that he may be there to rest.

She's going to this one who is Lord, the son of David to get help for her daughter. And what we're going to observe this morning in our passage is 7 things that this woman does in her journey to obtain from Jesus the deliverance that her daughter most needed at this particular point in time. Again, look at verse 22, says, and a Canaanite woman from that region came out. She came out.

And began to cry out, saying, Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David, my daughter is cruelly demon. possessed, first of all, just for the fun of it, notice. That the let's see if it's on here. Oh, it's missing.

Oh, no, OK, so that's. 1. Have I already showed you that? OK, so there's 0.1.

She cries out to Jesus on behalf of her daughter. That's the first thing that she does. She goes out, cries out to Jesus on behalf of her, her daughter. but notice in the text in verse 22, it says that a Canaanite woman from that region came out.

She came out, we're going to see that she came out for one reason, and that is in order to confess her brokenness, the brokenness of her home situation to Jesus and to get his help. I just want to ponder that phrase for just maybe 60 seconds nowadays when people come out. Right? They come out of the closet in order to boldly confess who they are and to say, this is who I am, and I'm proud of it, and it is good.

True courage is what this woman does. She comes out of the closet of her brokenness in order to confess her brokenness publicly. And to cry out to Jesus for help. We can have the same courage to come out to Jesus, because we know that he loves us.

And he has the power to heal us and to transform us. And so this woman here, hears that he's in town, and she comes out, she finds where he is, and she comes out to Jesus, and is now open about the brokenness in her family and in her home. And she not only came out, but look what the text says, she began to cry out, literally, she was crying out. The verb itself means to speak loudly.

It means to speak desperately, and the tense of the verb denotes that this woman spoke. Persistently. She didn't just cry out, she was crying out. She was doing so repeatedly and persistently.

And when she cries out to Jesus, look at what she says. The first thing she says is, have mercy on me, have mercy on me. To show mercy to someone is to feel pity for them. To feel pity for someone who is experiencing dire need and to move toward them to address that need right away.

This woman is coming to Jesus and, and notice she's not pointing to any good or virtue in herself. all she's really pointing to is how pathetic her condition is. And she's saying to Jesus, look upon me and be moved with compassion, be moved with pity over my pitiable, miserable condition. Have mercy upon me.

And then she refers to him as Lord, son of David. Again, somehow she's heard the truth about Jesus and with a little bit of knowledge that she has, she has come to the conclusion that Jesus is Lord, that he's the Son of David, that he is the Messiah of Israel. There may be some understanding in her mind that when the Messiah comes, ultimately he would bring benefit to all the nations, and that would include her. But at the very least, she understands that Jesus is the Lord, or the Messiah, the long expected Messiah of the Jews, and so she's coming to him.

I'm coming to him for help with the situation with my daughter because he is the Lord, and he is the Messiah, and he's got the authority to deal with things like this. Notice what she says to him, As this unfolds, she says, My daughter is cruelly demon possessed. My daughter is cruelly demon possessed. She's explaining why she's in dire straits.

This woman is being honest with Jesus about the depth of her child's problems. She doesn't say, Hey Jesus, my daughter's having some psychological issues. My daughter is having some bad days. My daughter's a little rebellious at times.

No, she describes her daughter's condition and all the ugliness and the severity of what her daughter was experiencing. And amazingly, this woman recognizes the spiritual component of her daughter's condition. She recognizes that her daughter's problem is ultimately a spiritual problem. Her daughter is under the power of an evil entity that is wreaking havoc upon her daughter's life and her daughter's person, and this mom, to her credit, knows she cannot overpower this evil being, this demon, this evil entity.

She's out of her league, and she knows it. Maybe in the past she thought she could handle it and she tried different remedies. maybe she's gone to other people in town to try to get help for her daughter, whatever her prior attempts have been, nothing has worked, and her daughter is still severely demon possessed. And so this woman comes to Jesus.

And she comes out. Let me tell you, Jesus, what's going on in my home, my daughter, the girl who belongs to me is demon possessed, severely demon possessed, have mercy upon me. She cries out to Jesus. Jesus is the one she comes to.

Jesus is her only hope. At this point, Jesus is her only and last hope. how I know that? Because she won't leave him.

As you read the story, she's going nowhere. She's going to plead with Jesus on behalf of her daughter, until she obtains from him the deliverance that her daughter needs. In Mark chapter 6, verse 26, the text says she kept asking him to cast the demon out of her daughter, pleading on her behalf. here's, here's what's amazing to me.

No one would look at this daughter at this point in time. If someone were at the house looking upon this possessed girl, no one would ever look upon her and think she's fortunate, right? But she's very fortunate. why?

Because she has a mom that loves her, and a mom who's going to Jesus and interceding with Jesus on her behalf. Amen. We have so many young people. In our culture today, living in isolation and anonymity, they have demons.

Both literally and figuratively. They can't make sense of life and the brokenness that is in them, and they have no mom or dad who's going to Jesus, going to God and interceding with them. They have no one to plead for them. No one to plead for them.

This girl is very fortunate, possessed though she is. Her mom is with Jesus right now and she's interceding with Jesus on her behalf. There's a second thing that we observed that this mom does to get for her daughter the healing that she needs, and that is she persists in crying out in spite of no answer from Jesus. Look at verse 23, but he, Jesus, did not answer her a word.

He didn't answer her a word. And the same thing happened. I thought we had fixed it. She persists in crying out in spite of no answer from Jesus.

So I apologize that there was no answer. On the slide. That was not intentional, but it illustrates the point, so. There was no answer from Jesus.

So she comes to, she comes out and she comes to Jesus, she confesses her brokenness and her need. She's asking for him to have mercy and to help her. And what does she get? Not a word.

He did not answer her a word. He didn't say yes to her. He didn't say no to her. He said utterly nothing initially to her.

And when you put the clauses together, basically what the text is saying is, she was repeatedly crying out to Jesus, but he did not answer her a word. So she cries out. He doesn't reply. She cries out again.

He doesn't reply. She keeps crying out and all the while he doesn't answer her a single word. This is a painful silence that many a parent and many a prayer warrior has. Experienced.

Jesus has what this woman needs. He has what this daughter needs, and yet he answers her not a word. On this very verse, Chrysostom, the church father says, the word has no word. The fountain is sealed.

The physician holds back his remedy. You ever feel this way? You ever feel this way as a parent interceding on behalf of your children? You ever feel this way when you come to God in prayer again and again, interceding on behalf of someone that you love, be it a parent, a sibling, A relative, a friend, a coworker, or a child, and you cry out and cry out and Receive no word.

And reply, What do you do? When that happens. Do you give up? Do you take God's silence as his final answer.

Do you grow despondent? And discouraged? Do you get angry with God? Do you stop praying?

Notice what this woman does. She keeps praying. She keeps persisting and crying out. To him Now why, why does Jesus not answer this woman a single word?

Let me give you three reasons why that. Different commentators have speculated on, I think all three of these reasons are valid and are a part of the picture. first of all, I think Jesus is, he's, he always thinks of everything, right? We've come to know that about him.

He's always thinking about everything, and he's always doing a million things. Jesus is serving the disciples here. He wants them to see the greatness of this woman's faith. And so he's going to behave in a certain way toward this woman in a way that draws Out the greatness of his faith, her faith for the disciples to see.

Secondly, Jesus is serving the woman here. MacArthur, John MacArthur explains this well. Listen to this, this is beautiful. He, Jesus wanted to test the woman's faith, to bring it to full flower.

He put up barriers not to keep her away, but to draw her closer. We're gonna find she's not as close right now to Jesus as she's going to be in just a moment. He's putting up barriers not to keep her away but to draw her ever closer to himself. He erected barriers that only genuine persistent faith could hurtle.

This is so true. This is the first barrier, the barrier of silence that he puts up, and what? There's going to be 3 more barriers put up between him and this woman, and she's going to climb over all of them to get the scraps of Jesus' goodness that she needs. A third reason I think Jesus is answering her not a word is Jesus is serving all of us in this.

We can all be grateful that Jesus responded to this woman in this way, because it provided a way for the greatness of this woman's faith to be put on display for us to observe and admire and be challenged by 2000 years later. If Jesus had answered her request the very first time, we would have never known how amazing this woman's faith really was. And we would have never known how great of a faith is actually possible for us. As we intercede with God on behalf of those whom we love.

That leads to a third thing that this woman does. She persists in crying out in spite of opposition from Jesus' disciples. Verse 23, and his disciples came and implored him, saying, send her away because she keeps shouting at us. Up to this point we didn't know the disciples were in the story, but as the camera backs up, we now see that they're in the narrative here.

They're on this scene or in it, and this woman is coming to Jesus and she's crying out to Him. She's begging him. The disciples turn into beggars themselves. Imagine the scene.

This woman is crying out and begging Jesus to help her and her daughter. The disciples become beggars also, and they're pleading incessantly with Jesus to send her away. And their reason, look at this theologically profound reason. Because she keeps shouting at us.

Literally, the statement reads, she keeps shouting. From behind us. And what that indicates. Their backs were to her.

Their backs were to her. They weren't interested in helping this woman. And now they're irritated by the fact that she's shouting from behind us. If you don't like someone shouting from behind you, turn around and face them.

So that at least they're shouting in front of you now. But she's shouting from behind us. This indicates that their general disposition is not to help this woman. They want her to go away.

She's crying out to Jesus. The picture is that the disciples are between her and Jesus. Their backs are to her and they're interceding on her behalf. But what they're saying is, Jesus, tell her to go away.

Tell her to go away. She's bothering us. She's shouting. And we don't want this to happen.

Maybe legitimately they were concerned. Jesus didn't want people to know he was in the area. We got to silence her, Jesus, send her away or everyone's going to know that you're here before we know it, there's going to be thousands of people here. Whatever their motive, they weren't interested in helping this woman, and now they're begging Jesus to send this woman away.

But now that we have a fuller picture of what's going on, we see that this woman obviously does not care. That the whole world knows about her dire need. She's not just coming to Jesus privately. There are men that are around Jesus, and she doesn't care if all these men that are around Jesus hear her begging Jesus for mercy, and hear her explaining the brokenness of what was going on in her home with her daughter.

If she's bothering these disciples with her prayers, and she can obviously see that she is, she doesn't care. So Jesus at this moment is being pleaded with by the woman to help her daughter, and she's being pleaded with by the disciples, who are begging him to make her go away. She's too loud, too noisy. But I want us just for a moment to think of this situation from the perspective of the glass.

Half empty and half full, this woman. You just got to know she was a glass half full person. So she comes to Jesus and she's crying out to Him. Jesus doesn't answer a word.

The disciples are saying, Send her away. A glass half empty person would say, I've come out of my way to come to Jesus. I've asked Him for help. He's not answering me.

His disciples are telling Him to send me away. This is a bad situation. I'm not going to get any help. I'm out of here, and I'm upset, right?

This woman was a glass half full person. She comes to Jesus and she's repeatedly begging. He's not answering a word, and her thought is, He's not saying anything to me, which means he's not sending me away. And the disciples are repeatedly saying send her away, but he's not giving in and sending me away.

So that's my opening. I'm going to, I'm going to stay and I'm going to Continue pleading. She would know just by watching Jesus. I don't know why he's not answering me, but he's OK with me being here.

Just an encouragement for you praying parents, for all you prayer warriors who have been praying for a long time, prayers that have not yet been answered, when you come into God's presence and you plead incessantly with Him on behalf of those you love, rejoice in the fact that God Let you stay in his presence and plead. Enjoy being there. Enjoy the fact that he doesn't send you away. Yes, he may not be responding to your prayers as quickly as you desire, but he's not sending you away from his presence either, and you are welcome in his presence to come and pray.

And plead when you're in the presence of God, praying, your conscience may be condemning you and telling you, you better get out of here. You don't deserve to be in God's presence. The devil, the accuser of the brethren, may be accusing you to your own conscience and telling you that you don't deserve to be in God's presence. The devil may be accusing you to God.

And saying, God, look at this child of yours, send them away. They don't deserve to be in your presence. Others may look down on you and think that you're not entitled to be in the presence of God. But no matter what your conscience or the devil or anyone else thinks, God is not sending you away.

He welcomes you in his presence, enjoy being in his presence, and enjoy the fact that he's not sending you away. And we all know the only reason we have the right to be in His presence is not because our own goodness, but because of Jesus dying for our sins so that we would have forgiveness and be brought into relationship with God and have the freedom to come into His presence. There's a 4th thing that this woman does in her journey to get from Jesus what her daughter most needed.

And that is she persists in crying out in spite of Jesus saying that he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.

This is yet a third barrier. Jesus is going to finally speak. And he's basically going to say you're not in the ethnic group. That I was first sent to help.

What, what happens in the following verses, given our racially sensitive culture, like we're so careful about the language that we use and rightly so. I think it's great, but to read this story is jarring, given our, our racial sensitivities, and then it makes all the more amazing how this woman is able to take that and actually move towards Jesus. Jesus answered and said, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. what Jesus is doing here?

This is like an act of sheer genius. The disciples are saying, make her go away, make her go away, make her go away. Jesus, to a degree is like, what, OK. I'm going to grant your request.

I'm going to make an attempt to send her away and watch what will happen. This woman is going nowhere. And I already know that, but I want you disciples to see that this woman will not go away. And so he says to the woman, I was only sent to help the lost sheep of Israel.

This is true enough at this point. Jesus primarily came to his own people. He ministered and taught to his own people, and yeah, he healed some Gentiles here and there, was in the region of Samaria. On one occasion we saw that in John chapter 4, but primarily his focus was ministering to the Jews first.

And there was more to his calling than this, but at this point, Jesus is simply giving voice to the part of the truth that the disciples would have agreed with at this point. And so he says that to this woman, and what a blow this must have been. I was only sent. to the lost sheep of Israel.

What does this woman do? Verse 25. She came, in other words, she moved closer to Jesus and began to bow down before him, saying, Lord, help me. She moves even closer to Jesus than she was before.

She knows she's not an Israelite. She knows there's nothing at all in her or in her pedigree that or in her life that would commend her to Jesus. There's nothing she can point to and say, How dare you talk to me. This way, look at the person I am, and all the righteous things that I have done.

She doesn't point to anything. She just moves toward Jesus, collapses at his feet, and bows down. Literally, the word here is the word for worship. She just worships him.

She worships him. And in the context of her worship, her heart cry is expressed, and she says, Lord, help me, help me. You have to help me. It's interesting that she says, Lord, help me, when in fact she's wanting the Lord to help her daughter, right?

But she's so intertwined in her heart with her daughter, that the help she wants is help my daughter and deliver her. And so doing, you're helping me. Every parent would identify with this. Her daughter's problem is every bit her problem as much as it is her daughter's problem.

You see, there's only one thing as bad as being demon possessed. Only one thing, and that is being the parent of someone who's demon possessed. There's only one thing as bad as having Being a child who is in spiritual bondage ravaged by the evil one, and that is being the parent. Of a child that is in spiritual bondage.

This woman's heart is broken. She's exhausted. Every means of deliverance has been attempted, has failed. He's the Lord, and as Lord he has authority to cast demons out.

He's the Messiah. He's the ruling one, and I'm coming to Jesus, and what, I'm going nowhere. I will beg and plead till I'm blue in the face, and until I obtain from Him what only He can give. Help me, Lord.

Help me My daughter has been overcome by a spiritual entity, and I can't help her. I'm no match for this evil power that has taken control of my daughter. But you, Jesus, can. My daughter is possessed.

And I refuse to accept. Her possession as fate. I refuse to accept my daughter's condition as the way things just have to be. I refuse to accept that some supernatural entity is having control over my daughter.

This is not my destiny. This doesn't have to be this way. I reject it. I won't accept it.

I'm here in the presence of Jesus pleading with Him to change that and to deliver my daughter. There's a 5th thing that she does, and that is she persists in crying out in spite of Jesus' 2nd protest, which in fact now is the 4th barrier that is put between this woman and getting the healing that she needs for her daughter. First, it was silence, not a word. Second, it was the disciples between Jesus and her with their backs to her telling Jesus, send her away.

And third is Jesus saying, I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. And now, Jesus delivers yet one more protest. He answered and said, it's not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. It's not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

Jesus is speaking to this woman in the form of a parable, and this parable, the Jews are the children at the table, and she is one of the dogs. on the surface this is incredibly insulting. If this woman were inclined to take offense, she could have easily taken offense. Looking at the text a little more closely helps soften it just a little bit, but not by a lot.

Back in this day, the Jews thought of Gentiles as dogs, wild dogs. Most dogs, when people back in this day thought of a dog, they thought of a wild dog, a dog living in the wild, a disgusting scavenger, dangerous creature. When we think of dogs today, we think of puppies and, pets that are in our home. How many of you have a dog?

In your home, OK, how many of you have a dog that you allow inside the house? How many of you have a dog that you allow into your dining room? OK, the numbers get less and less. We used to have a boxer named Roxy that came and went as she pleased, in and out, and whenever we were in the dining room eating, she was in the dining room with us.

And she was under the table and receiving scraps that accidentally or purposefully fell from. The table, depending on whether or not our children liked the food that had been prepared. but that happened back then. People had pets and the dogs were allowed to eat from the crumbs that fell from the table, and Jesus doesn't necessarily the form of the word for a wild dog.

He uses what's called the diminutive form of the word that speaks of a puppy or a pet. OK, so this is an animal, a dog that would pretty much live in the house as a pet, loved and cared for by the family, and would even be allowed in the dining area, allowed to eat the crumbs. But even though the family may have loved that dog and cared for that dog and appreciated the dog, the dogs ate differently than the humans did, right? The dog did not have a seat at the table like the humans did.

The dogs ate different food and the dogs would simply eat the crumbs. They would eat 2. They would eat leftovers, the crumbs that fell from their owner's table. That's actually the spirit of what Jesus is pointing out here in Mark's account of this conversation.

Jesus says, Let the children first be fed. Let them first be fed, since it is not good to take bread out of the children's mouths and throw it to the dogs. So Jesus is saying there are blessings that will come to you Gentiles, but let the children first be fed, and then at a later point in time there will be blessings that you as a Gentile can enjoy under my messianic reign. So Jesus is saying the focus of my ministry right now is on the Jews.

Afterwards it'll come to all the nations, and it's not good to take food out of the mouths of children and to throw it to the dogs. So when you understand it in that way, it softens it a little bit, but the truth is, It's still offensive. None of you would be, oh, the fact that you've referred to me as a puppy or a house pet, that really, makes me feel good and fuzzy inside. No, it still would have been a blow to this, this woman.

She could have grown despondent and given up. She could have gotten angry and said, some loving savior you are, and turned around and walked off in a huff, realizing he is not going to help me at all. But instead of responding in any of these ways, here's what this woman does. She hears Jesus saying it's not good to take food out of the mouths of children and throw it to the dogs, and she's like, He just told a parable, and I think I found myself in the parable.

I'm a dog, the dog in the parable, and at least the dogs get the crumbs. Timothy Keller says this parable by Jesus is a combination of a challenge and an offer, and she gets it. One writer says she's actually the first person, at least in Mark's Gospel, that understands a parable that Jesus told. First one, she's like, I get it.

I know who the children are. That's the children of Israel. I know who the dogs are. That's me, a Gentile.

But you just said Jesus, that even the dogs can eat the crumbs. Wow. She is answering Jesus from within the parable that he has just told. And in a sense, she catches Jesus in his own words.

What faith? Martin Luther says this, Listen to this. Faith takes Christ captive in his word. The woman responds, I am a dog.

Let it be. I will gladly be a dog. Now give me the consideration that you give a dog. I am not a child, nor am I of Abraham's seed, but you are a rich lord and set a lavish table.

Give your children the bread and a place at the table. I do not wish that. Let me, merely like a dog, pick up the crumbs under the table, allowing me that which the children don't need or even miss the crumbs, and I will be content therewith. And so she catches Christ the Lord in His own words, and with that she wins not only the right of a dog but also that of the children.

Jesus let himself be made captive. Be sure of this. That's what he most deeply desires. Oh, you caught me.

And it's what I wanted all along. It's what I wanted all along. this woman is a very assertive woman. But it's a different type of assertiveness than what we have in our culture today.

Timothy Keller calls this a rightless assertiveness. Nowadays we're assertive, give me this because I deserve it. It's my right. I have it coming to me and I'm going to be.

I'm going to be angry. I'm going to be loud. I'm going to be obnoxious until I get what it is that I have the right to. That's the assertiveness that we have in our culture today.

This woman is assertive, but it's different. She's like, what, I know I don't have a right to this. I don't deserve this. There's nothing I'm going to point to that says I'm entitled to this.

The only thing I can point to Jesus, is your goodness. Give me what I don't deserve. And I'm going to keep asking until you give me that thing that I don't deserve. That leads to a 6th thing that this woman does, and it's more actually something that she hears or that is done to her, and that is she hears Jesus pronounce her faith great.

Then Jesus said to her, Oh woman, your faith is great, and he said it loud enough for the disciples to hear. Oh woman, Your faith is great. And now we realize what Jesus has been up to all along. We can all be glad he responded to her the way he did, putting up the barriers that he did, because it drew out of this woman and put on full display the nature and the size of her faith.

Her faith was great. And now it's visible, and the delay and the barriers help to make that visible. And Jesus now pronounces this woman's faith to be great. This woman, think about it, guys, this woman was coming to Jesus persistently asking for a miracle for her daughter.

Little did this woman know. That she, the woman, the mom, already was a miracle. And Jesus responded the way he did in order to put her miraculous faith on display. Think about it.

That the mightiness of the faith within her was something God produced in her. This is a work of God. This woman's faith is just as great of a miracle. As whatever miracle she was asking on behalf of her daughter.

And so Jesus is like, my father's done a great miracle of faith in this woman's heart, and I want that miracle to be visible. And so all these barriers and the delays helped to manifest the texture of that miracle. He's saying to this woman, You come to me asking for a miracle. Dear woman, you already are one of my miracles, and I want the greatness of the faith that my Father has produced in you to be put on display before my disciples, before my own eyes, before the principalities and powers, and before thousands of readers, millions of readers of this story for the next 2000 years or so.

Thank you, Jesus. You've served us well in the way that you have been toward this woman. You always think of everything. You're always doing a million things, and you're Jesus doing something in us today through what you did 2000 years ago.

In responding to this woman the way you did. Finally, this woman, 7, receives what she desired from Jesus. Then Jesus said to her, a woman, your faith is great, it shall be done for you as you wish. And her daughter was healed at once.

Instantly See, there was a delay. She made the request. It didn't happen at once, but what, when it did happen, it happened at once. She was healed.

There was some physical dimension of what was going on. She experienced healing and Mark's Gospel, Jesus says to her, for that answer that you just gave, be on your way, the demon has come out of your daughter. Demon's gone. It's come out And Matthew 7:30 says, and going back to her home, she found the child lying on the bed, the demon.

Having departed. This woman wrestled hard with Jesus. She took the revelation Jesus spoke to her, and she found the opening that she needed, and she wrestled hard to obtain. What her daughter most needed.

As parents One of our roles as parents is to go before God and to be obtainers of blessings for our children. God wants to give good things to our children, and he has so structured his economy that, that he gives certain blessings to our children in response to the parents having come to him and asked him. For those blessings. I just want to encourage you as parents, keep praying for your children.

Keep pleading for your children, keep pleading for your loved ones, be it a husband, a wife, a father, a mother, some other loved one, or friend or coworker, intercede with God on their behalf. And even though there may seem to be silence, Enjoy the fact that you're welcome in his presence and he's not sending you away. Be encouraged and keep praying. You have a sovereign God who hears every word you're saying.

In fact, more than you probably realize as you plead, and the burden of your heart is being unloaded in prayer, you're actually expressing the very heart of God Himself. That burden you feel, that's a burden from him. And it's being expressed back to himself. For those of us And this body who know of others whose hearts are breaking as they're pleading for their children and others, let's come alongside of them and maybe what they need is not a lecture.

They just need brothers and sisters to come beside them and say, Hey, I'm going to pray with you. I'm going to pray with you. Prayer is powerful. It produces changes in us, and it also obtains mighty blessings on behalf of those for whom we pray.

Let's look to God in prayer and ask Him to help us to live this out. Lord, you're a good God. You, you, you think of everything. I pray if there's any here today who have, who have never come out, really come out, Come out of the closet in your presence and said, Lord, behold my brokenness, be my savior and transform me.

I pray that you would by your love and your grace, draw them out of their closet and help them to come into the light and, and experience your saving grace. That's all we are here at Cornerstone. We're no better than anybody else. We're just a bunch of broken people who've all come out.

We've all come out and we've come out to a great savior. Make us a praying people. Help us to have perspective when we pray. For one another, we pray for those that we love.

Sometimes you answer our prayers instantly. Sometimes it's many, many years, but we know that you're a God who thinks of everything and you're doing things, a million things that we can't even comprehend. We just say we trust you. We trust you.

We thank you for this opportunity to give of our offerings to you, Lord, and we ask that you would receive these funds and do much with every penny that is given for the glory of Jesus, in whose name we pray, and all God's people said,