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(4/2) We are in week number four of our series following Jesus, walking through the gospels looking at some teachings of Jesus that are really foundational to the Christian life. And this is so important to us because we have the faith to believe, but then we’re all over the place with our expectations, or our level of commitment falls short of what it takes to sustain a rich vibrant spiritual life, our lives are just so much less than what God desires for us.

It’s kind of like the rich man who came running to Jesus, and fell on his knees with this flurry of emotion, wanting to know,

"Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Mark 10:17

And it was such a great start, he seemed to be sincere, the passion was there but there really wasn’t any substance. In other words, he didn’t come to Jesus saying, "I surrender all," but basically, "What is the minimum required of me?" And that’s the way many people approach Christianity. They want all the pleasures of the world as well as the promise of heaven. What is the minimum that I must do in order to be saved?

However, following Jesus goes much deeper than surface level, and this man in spite of making a good first impression, the Bible tells us that Jesus looked at him and loved him.

"Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me" (Mark 10:21).

You see, to come to Jesus and call him "Good teacher" is not nearly adequate, because Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. Not only did he declare that he had the power to forgive sins, but that he was the only way to heaven.

And so, for this man to endorse Jesus as a good man or a good teacher falls far short of the one who just chapters before had,

"Called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mark 8:34).

And so, when this man came running to Jesus, falling on his knees at his feet, the Holy Spirit wants us to understand that Jesus loves this man with an everlasting love. The Bible says,

"Jesus looked at him and loved him" (Mark 10:21).

But no matter how much you love someone, it doesn’t change the truth. It doesn’t change what’s necessary, it doesn’t change what’s required, it’s nonnegotiable, and so Jesus said,

"One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor" (Mark 10:21).

In other words, Jesus told him that you must surrender to God everything that is of worth to you, because the essence of idolatry is ascribing worth or great value to something other than God.

Now, this man was rich and it’s tempting to put your trust in money instead of putting your trust in God. It’s easy to believe the lie that what money offers is greater than what you’ll experience in a life fully devoted to God. And so, Jesus draws a proverbial line in the sand and speaking the truth in love, he said,

"Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me" (Mark 10:21).

"At this the man's face fell. He went away sad because he had great wealth" (Mark 10:22).

But honestly, I believe that in a biblical context there is a great difference between being rich and having great wealth, because being rich isn’t about money. Being rich is about the lessons you’ve learned, the relationships that you’ve built, because you have to have the infrastructure to sustain wealth. In other words, there are things that you learn from struggling, through tests and trials, because though Jesus was rich, for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9).

And yet, here in the gospel of Mark, this man turns away from true riches and went away sad because he had great wealth (Mark 10:22). Like Adam hid in the garden from God, this man walked away from the truth, because he loved darkness instead of light (John 3:19). And so, while you and I may have something that we’re hiding, our God has nothing to hide.

In fact, Jesus is God revealing himself, he is the manifest presence of God, and we’ve seen his glory,

"The glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).

And so, when Jesus taught, he often spoke in parables, but he wasn’t hiding truth as if God could hide from us. He spoke in parables to reveal truth while at the same time avoiding exposing himself prematurely, and so when Jesus said,

"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field" (Matthew 13:31).

It’s the Potter explaining the unexplainable to the jar of clay. Not hiding the kingdom of heaven but reducing it down to our level. And so, when Jesus says, "the kingdom of heaven is like," it’s God stooping down to our level so that we can understand. And in verse 32, he is giving us something that we can compare it to. He says,

"Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches" (Matthew 13:32).

In other words, the smallest thing that he could describe to them, the smallest thing that they could understand, was an appropriate illustration of the progress of the church and of the nature of faith. And so, that which would begin in obscurity, with such small beginnings, would grow rapidly into a large entity and culminate in glory.

And in the same way, the gospel we preach is intended to grow, to spread, so that eventually you might have great faith. Because faith itself, that mustard seed of faith, that faith of greater worth than gold, the faith we preach won’t just stay in one place. It won’t sit down and be quiet, because it’s not passive and indifferent. That’s why Jesus said,

"If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you" (Matthew 17:20-21).

And so, faith is radical, it will break through barriers, it will break the rules, it will push its way through crowds of people and climb a tree like Zacchaeus. Because true faith, genuine faith, mustard seed faith, will do anything to get to Jesus.

When you start believing God, trusting God, and taking the brakes off, nothing will be impossible for you. When you start to believe God to do not just some things, not just things that you expect him to do, or things that you’ve seen him do, but great things, mighty things, powerful things will begin to happen. And so, genuine faith does not stay on the right side of town, it doesn’t stay on the right side of the tracks, because it will do anything to experience the presence of Jesus.

If you would turn to Matthew chapter 15, I want to show you an example. The context of this passage is that Jesus has just left Gennesaret, just left the area of Galilee, where he had been preaching the gospel among the Jews; among the people who expected the Messiah; among those who have been praying for him to come. And so, he came to his own, but they did not receive him.

And in Matthew chapter 15, verse 21, Matthew tells us that Jesus,

"Leaving that place… withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon" (Matthew 15:21).

In other words, not only did Jesus tell the disciples to go into all the world, but he himself was willing to go. And so, this was an unfamiliar place, a people who were deeply entrenched in false ideology, not knowing either God the Father nor Christ the son, and yet Jesus came up the coast to see them. He was willing to go to these idol worshipers even though he knew he would be more controversial there than he’d been in Jerusalem among his own people.

And so, he didn’t just hang out with people that were easy, people that agreed with his ideology, but instead he went up the coast to the region of Tyre and Sidon. In other words, he went to the cities that the prophets had cursed, and even though they had rejected the prophets, Jesus went to give them another chance. Not because he was expecting a great harvest of souls, not because it would be fruitful, but because…

"God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

And so, Jesus offered himself as bread from heaven, the rock in the wilderness, the ancient of days, Immanuel, God dwelling with us, but his own did not receive him.

Jesus knew what it was to have doors slammed in his face, to be mocked and scorned, and he kept on walking because at least he knew that he gave them a chance. And grace will always give you a chance, like it or not, receive it or not, but the people did not receive Jesus.

"He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised…" (Isaiah 53:3).

And so, they missed their opportunity because he withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. The Lord, God incarnate, the Word in the flesh, God tabernacling with us, turned his back. He started walking away just like he told his disciples,

"If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town" (Matthew 10:14).

And so, he’s leaving that place, walking away from those who had rejected him, when a Gentile woman,

"A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me" (Matthew 15:22).

I love that because most of the time we see Jesus coming to us, but some of the greatest miracles in the Bible occur when we come to him. In other words, to get the kind of breakthrough that you need you may have to travel to get it, you may have to take a step of faith to get it. You know, kind of like the woman at the well, in John chapter 4 where it says,

"Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well… When a Samaritan woman came to draw water" (John 4:6-7).

In other words, Jesus wasn’t looking for her, he wasn’t headed in her direction, but she came to where he was.

And in the same way, this Canaanite woman comes to Jesus, believing that if she could just get to Jesus, it would be worth it. And sometimes you’ve got to put a little effort into it, and so she went out of her way, and by faith she traveled the distance to get to Jesus. You see, faith will give you the confidence to ignore what you have heard, to step away from what you have learned, and to walk away from your vain and meaningless traditions.

Faith will make a woman who has been subject to bleeding for 12 years, push her way through the crowd, so that she can come up behind Jesus and touch the edge of his cloak believing that she would be healed (Luke 8:43-44). You see, sometimes you’ve got to be radical, and push the norms of your culture and your community. Sometimes you’ve got to cross the line, you’ve got to go out of your way, because faith will make a woman who had been with five men and the one she was with now wasn’t her husband; but her faith made her say,

"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did" (John 4:29).

And so, religion may let you sit still, it’ll let you attend, and be a spectator, but if you’ve got genuine faith you’ve got to do something.

This Canaanite woman stepped over their traditions, stepped over her religion, over her idolatry, because faith requires that you move, that you do something. That’s why Jesus told a man who said he wanted to get well,

"Get up! Pick up your mat and walk" (John 5:8-9).

Because faith makes you take action. It takes you out of your comfort zone, even if you’re ridiculed and gossiped about, because you have to have a personal experience with Jesus.

This woman came to Jesus crying out in verse 22,

"Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession" (Matthew 15:22).

And so, not only did she step over her religion, stepping over the demons behind her idols, but she stepped over Jesus’ religion. In other words, she stepped over the religion of Israel, because we learned from the Samaritan woman that the Jews don’t associate with those people (John 4:19). But in spite of her traditions, in spite of her background, she calls him Lord even though he’d never been that to her.

The fact that she called him Lord tells us that she had divine revelation that he was more than a good man, more than a good teacher, more than a prophet, but that he was the Lord, he was Adonai. And so, she is acknowledging who he is, ascribing to him honor and glory, acknowledging that he has power, and that she’s got the problem.

She said, "Lord, son of David, have mercy on me!"

And so, she was humble enough to say, "Help me," and discerning enough to call him "Lord." But watch this, the Bible says,

"Jesus did not answer a word..." (Matthew 15:23).

Have you ever been in a crisis, going through a time, when it seemed like God didn’t hear you? You know he did, because the arm of the Lord is not to short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear (Isaiah 59:1). But the silence is difficult, it makes you feel invisible, like you don’t matter. Jesus didn’t answer her, he didn’t say anything, but his silence didn’t mean that he didn’t hear her.

This woman was relentless, she wasn’t like those people who quit praying if the answer doesn’t come the next day. She persisted until finally the disciples went to Jesus urging him,

"Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us" (Matthew 15:23).

Now, the truth is that they didn’t have anything to do with it, she hadn’t come to see them, but who you associate with, who you hang around with can make you think that you’re something that you’re not. In other words, I can stand up here with Dawn or maybe you’re sitting beside someone who can sing, and they make you feel like you can sing even though you can’t.

And so, the disciples feel like they’re important; "She keeps crying out after us," but she was never crying out after them; she was crying out to Jesus. She said, "Lord, help me," but the disciples were surrounding Jesus, they were standing in the way of her miracle. And so, yeah, she kept crying out until the disciples complained.

Finally, Jesus said something, not to her but to his disciples, but she was not easily discouraged, because she knew that she’d gotten his attention.

"He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel" (Matthew 15:24).

And so, this woman who had traveled an unknown distance, leaving her sick daughter at home, to see a Jesus who wasn’t answering her calls, finally hears him say to his disciples that she’s not eligible to receive what she’s asking for. In other words, not that he’s not able, but that she’s exempt from the promises of God. He said, "You are not eligible," but she was persistent.

She didn’t care if she was parked in a no parking zone, she would not back down. Like those people who will stand in line for hours for the newest electronic device, she came for a miracle, and she didn’t care if she had to wear a mask or sit 6 feet apart. Even though he wasn’t speaking to her, she wasn’t going home without an answer. And so, like the rich man I talked about earlier, she came and knelt before Jesus. She wasn’t afraid to get on her knees in front of the crowd and for the second time she acknowledged who he is. "Lord, help me!" she said" (Matthew 15:25).

You see, she knew who she was, she knew she wasn’t Jewish, she knew she wasn’t a godly woman, she wasn’t even really spiritual, but she was relentless because she had a radical faith. Finally, Jesus broke it down for her, he spoke plainly to her, he gave it to her straight and he said,

"It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs" (Matthew 15:26).

In other words, in this context, in this instance, Jesus was calling divine healing the children’s bread. And he’s taking us all the way back to the book of Exodus, back to the desert when God sent manna from heaven to feed the people of Israel. He’s talking about God’s provision; this is the children’s bread. God’s got a blessing that is reserved just for you, it’s got your name on it, because it’s the children’s bread.

Some of you today are going through something and you need the provision of God, you need a healing, you need a breakthrough, and God calls it the children’s bread. Whatever it is that you’ve been praying about is bread and the Lord wanted you to know that he has the bread. When he taught his followers to pray, he said,

"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread" (Matthew 6:9-11).

And so, that’s what we want, that’s what we’re looking for, give us today our daily bread. But the Old Testament law said that this woman is not eligible for the bread. She was a Canaanite woman, coming from the region of Tyre and Sidon, looking for Jesus, chasing after Jesus, prepared to go wherever he is, because she needed some bread, but is she eligible?

She knew that this seemed to be a problem, but she was willing to climb over her traditions, her religion, even Jesus’ silence and objections because she had something that she needed. And so, she replied, "Yes Lord, I’m a dog," because she understood that he wasn’t referring to a breed of canines, but it meant to be without a covenant with the Lord. And so, she agreed saying, I know you don’t have to do this for me, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table" (Matthew 15:27).

In other words, she’s like, I know I’m a Canaanite, I know I come from a heathen idolatrous background, but all I need is a crumb. Lord, I’ll settle for a crumb, just let me be like one of those dogs under the master’s table. I might not know the Law or celebrate the Feasts of Israel, but I don’t mind waiting to catch the crumbs that fall.

"Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted" (Matthew 15:28).

I love the fact that God changed his mind because of the persistent, because of the radical faith of this woman who had never served him or worshiped him. But he granted her request because he said, "You have great faith!" In other words, you may not have anything else going for you, but I can’t deny your faith. You may have been born on the wrong side of town, serving the wrong God, but now you’ve got a faith that I wish my children had.

There are some of you here who have done things that you’re not proud of. And yet, in spite of your mistakes you heard that Jesus was coming into your region, and you came out to meet with him this morning because you’ve got that kind of radical faith. You know the kind of faith I’m talking about, the kind of faith that does that which is improper, will step over traditions, that’s willing to break the rules, and so you’re not his child but you’re about to be. And so, you’ve got your hands in the air and tears running down your cheeks because God is about to restore the years that the enemy stole. He’s about to give it back to you, giving you the children’s bread, because of your great faith, your radical faith.

Today you are seeking him, you are persisting, you are getting in his way like this woman did. And like Jacob said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me" (Genesis 32:26). This woman stayed there, she didn’t care what the disciples said, she didn’t care if it took all night, because she needed some bread. She is kneeling there, begging to get her daughter back, and God is getting ready to break the rules. Jesus said,

"Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour" (Matthew 15:28).

In other words, your blessing is on the way. We’re at the table and he’s getting ready to bless you. By the time you turn around, before you get back home, your crumb is falling.

Somebody needs to open their mouth and give God a praise because a crumb is about to fall in your mouth. Is there anybody in here who believes, anybody who has great faith, would you catch a crumb this morning? Right now, this is your moment for that kind of radical faith, he said at that very hour.

In other words, everything that was on her daughter broke loose. This was her deliverance, this was her breakthrough, not that she made progress, but she was healed. She was freed and she was made whole at that very moment. Jesus said,

"Woman, you have great faith. Your request is granted" (Matthew 15:28).

You see, just one word from God can turn your life around. This very hour God can take that thing that you have learned to live with and move it completely out of your life.

Do you have that kind of faith today, that radical faith, the kind of faith that Jesus would call great faith? This very hour God can turn your life around. God is going to give you the bread and your daughter is going to be made well. Are you prepared to receive the crumbs that are falling from the Masters’ table? Things that have been on your heart and on your mind are about to be resolved at this very hour. Today, I stand in agreement with you, would you open up your mouth and give God some praise for what he’s about to do in your life? Tell him,

"Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table" (Matthew 15:27).

This Canaanite woman walked for miles to get what she needed. The prodigal son came to his senses and went back to his father’s house, so he got up and went to his father. There are some of you listening and at this hour things are breaking, things are changing, this is your moment. Respond to God in faith, this is that hour, that moment when the yoke is broken over your life. All of you, would you open your mouth and give him some praise?

Read past sermons by Pastor John Talcott