I've been very much exercised
by Galatians and by the Gospels in terms of the Lord's providential
dealings and His comings and goings. I've been struggling
all day really after speaking to Peter Meany this morning because
I asked what had happened to the little church there, because
they had a fellow who had preached, so Peter left there a couple
of weeks ago. The church is closed. It's an
extraordinary thing, isn't it? The Gospel is like the light,
isn't it? The Gospel and the candlestick
are both movable items, aren't they? twenty-something years of faithful
witness by one of the fellows who's preaching and understanding
of the Scriptures and the Gospel is, I think we've all come to
appreciate enormously. And yet the Lord has snuffed
out the Gospel witness in that community there. It's an extraordinary
thing to think of the of the comings and goings of the Lord
in mercy and in judgement. I'd like us to have a look at
Matthew Chapter 15. I wanted to speak just briefly
about the remarkable story of the Canaanite woman's faith.
But as you no doubt see and we see with some more poignancy,
I trust, as we go through Galatians, that the Lord The Gospel comes
and the witness of the Gospel comes, and like the parable of
the soils, it takes root and bears extraordinary fruit in
places of the Lord's sowing and where He blesses it. But He just
leaves. He leaves people with the most
remarkable witness of who He is, the clearest testimony of
the fact that He is God, He is Emmanuel, He is God with us. He leaves in these Gospels the
most extraordinary witness to the fact that people's damnation
is 100% their fault and salvation is 100% the grace of God. It's a good thing to hold together.
But there are these words in Matthew 15, Matthew 15, 21, I'll just read
this story and I'll just try and fit it into something of
the context again, but it's good to think of the story and what
I've been saying last week as well, that the Gospels were written
after the events of the Judaizers. And so in these Gospel narratives
and in these simple, simple stories, we have a very, very clear picture,
I believe, of salvation by grace. the deceitfulness, deceivableness
of unrighteousness, of legalism. It's a shocking word, isn't it?
Jesus, in chapter 15, is having these discussions with the scribes
and the Pharisees. In verse 7 he calls them hypocrites. And in verse 9, He says, in vain
do they worship me, teaching for doctrines and commandments
of men. And in verse 8, this is a shocking,
shocking judgement, isn't it? This people draws nigh unto me
with their mouth and honoureth me with their lips, but their
heart is far from me. He goes on to talk about what
real defilement is, real defilement. For out of the heart, verse 19,
proceed evil thoughts and murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts,
false witnesses and blasphemies. These are the things which defile
a man, but to eat with unwashed hands defileth not a man." The
best religion can ever do is reach to the surface and look
at things. But true Gospel work is the heart
work, isn't it? God searches the hearts and knows
the hearts. Let's read this story. It's a
remarkable story. Twice in the Gospels, the Lord
Jesus speaks, gives us instances of great faith. Then Jesus went
thence, and departed into the coast of Tyre and Sidon. And
behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coast, and cried
unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David! My daughter is grievously vexed
with the devil. But he answered her not a word.
And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away, for
she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am
not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then
came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he
answered and said, It is not meet, it is not right. Take the
children's bread and cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth,
Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their
master's table. Then Jesus answered and said
unto her, A woman, great is thy faith, and be it unto thee even
as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole
from that very hour. Our Lord is with us and he searches
our hearts. I wonder what your wish is. What do you wish for? What do
I wish for? What do you come to the throne
of grace on your own behalf for? What causes us anxiety before
the Lord? It's remarkable, isn't it? The
prayers of a righteous man availeth much. We have many prayers, and
after hearing Peter's news today about that church, I've been much exercised, as
I have often, is that the Lord might preserve his witness amongst
us, that he might cause it to be something about which we pray
with passion and we plead with him. We've seen in 2 Thessalonians
that God sends a powerful delusion to those who refuse to have a
love of the truth. There are things in this world
which are incredibly precious, aren't they? I often pray that
the Lord would not set the world in my heart. I don't want to
become so attached to this world and the things of this world
that I turn away from Him We have, I believe, received much
and we have so much to be thankful for. I do like that prayer. I believe, Lord, help thou my
unbelief. We live in a world where God
has, in this past few weeks, removed a candlestick. And we have evidence from the
scriptures and evidence that the scriptures are confirmed
in their truthfulness around us that this world, this religious
world, is held in a bondage, a satanic, dark bondage. And well might we cry, O Lord
in wrath, remember me. We have family and friends that
we love, and we may, along with this Canaanite woman, cry out,
O Lord, thou son of David, my daughter, is grievously vexed
with a devil. The Lord encourages prayer and
He commands prayer and He promises blessings of prayer. I love what
Isaiah 45.11 says, He says, Concerning my sons, concerning the work
of my hand, command ye me. Isn't that a remarkable request
from God? He calls on us to come before
Him with importunity. to pray and not cease from praying,
to be thankful for the mercies that we have around us and to
be mindful of this world. This world is a deceitful world. The riches and the entrapments
of this world are extraordinarily attractive and deceitful. So
I just thought I'd look through this passage briefly with you
quickly. Obviously there's an extraordinary
contrast. If you go back three or four
chapters and read through again, you'll see this extraordinary
contrast between those who came to judge the Lord, those for
whom the evidence that we see before us in the scriptures is
that the seed was scattered and it fell on a path or it was sown
on shallow ground and it looked for all the world as if it was
going to produce a bumper crop and soon as trials and persecutions
come along it withered away. There is just this remarkable
revealing of our Lord and in this particular story we have
the contrast of men who stand in judgement of God and our God.
Our God, as Cole reminded Dawson in Ezekiel 34 on Sunday morning,
Our God searches, He goes over hills and dales, He knows where
His sheep are, He will find them, He will search them out. You
see, people might say that she came to Him, but verse 21 in
our text makes it very clear that Jesus went from them. He just left the religious people. He gave them clear evidence of
who he is. He took upon himself all of their
insults and he returned it with truth, extraordinary truth. He challenged them about what
they really were and then he just left. Again and again we
read in the scriptures that he just left. He didn't stay to
debate and argue with them. He just left. What a shocking
thing. What a shocking thing to think.
But he who has the words of life, he who has the words of eternal
life just leaves. And he departed into the coasts
of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a woman of Canaan
came out of the same coast. So he comes to her, he comes
to her region, and then in his providential care of her, she
is brought to him by the most trying of circumstances. Behold,
a woman of Canaan came out of the same coast and cried unto
him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David." Isn't
it remarkable? She just so openly and clearly
professes who he is, and these other people are calling him
Beelzebub in the previous chapters. O Lord, thou son of David, she
acknowledges that he is both God and he is both God and man
together. Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou
Son of David. My daughter is grievously vexed
with the devil. I've got to remember that the
devils are under the control, under the sovereign control of
God. But he answered her not a word,
and his disciples came and besought him. saying, send her away for
she crieth after us. She wasn't really crying after
them, she was crying after him. But how often, brothers and sisters,
have we felt just like her. He answered her, not a word. We have cried and it seems as
if the heavens are brass and nothing reaches the throne of
grace. It is not the way it is with
our God. It's not the way it is. But he
answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the
house of Israel. The Lord Jesus answered and spoke
to her for the first time, I'm not sent, but unto the lost sheep
of the house of Israel." The lost sheep of the house of Israel,
or the lost sheep of that spiritual house of Israel, the children,
the spiritual children of Abraham, the real Jews, the real circumcision. But her response is remarkable
in verse 25. Then she came. and worshipped him. She bowed
down before him. Even though he had ignored her
and then reminded her that he'd come for Israel, she kept pleading. She said, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, it
is not meat to take the children's bread and cast it to their dogs. Firstly he ignores her, then
he reminds her that she's a Canaanite. And then he refers to her as one of the dogs, and how does
she respond? It's a remarkable response, isn't
it? Truth, your Lord. Yet the dogs
eat the crumbs, eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's
table. She knows, has been taught of
the Lord, to know that people like Rahab and Ruth and many
others, Naaman the Syrian and others, had eaten of the crumbs
which fall from the Master's table, the banquet of Israel
and the Gospel. And then Jesus answered and said
unto her, O woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee even as
thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole
from that very hour. I just want to look at a few
lessons the Lord might lay on our hearts, and I trust the Lord
would lay more on yours. Firstly, as I said earlier, a
good shepherd will seek and find his lost sheep. The Lord Jesus
departed, didn't he? He departed from hypocrites,
he departed from the vain worship, he departed from the blind. But
he didn't depart until he told them exactly what was in their
hearts and exactly where they were going. unless the Lord was
gracious to them. They were left with an absolute
clarity about who He was and who they were. I love the Lord's
travels, don't they? In John chapter 4, he must need
to go through Samaria. Why must he go through Samaria? There are plenty of other ways
to go. In fact, Samaria was the one place you wouldn't go as
a pious Jew if you were going from Jerusalem to Galilee. There
were plenty of other ways to go. But he must, John chapter
4, he must need to go through Samaria. Why? was there. This one is under
the awful activities of Satan. The other one was just as captive
and the strong man has come and he's defeated Satan. He's come
to rescue his own. What a blessed thing it is, brothers
and sisters. to know that He's come to you. And He comes to people today
in only one way, according to the scriptures. He comes in the
gospel. He comes in the preaching of
the gospel to seek and save that was lost. He always knows where
they are. That's why I love what Isaiah
65 says, and it shall come to pass that before they call, I
will answer. And while they are yet speaking,
I will hear. The Son of God was manifested
that he might destroy the works of the devil. He destroys the
works of the devil and brings his people to a place where they
are in love with him. We love him because he first
loved us. It's love that drove him and
draws him and continues this mighty work of salvation. One day, brothers and sisters,
there will just be one thing that matters in all of this world.
Only one thing matters, knowing Him, being in relationship with
Him. And these lost sheep are often
in the most look most unlikely, don't they? There couldn't have
been a greater contrast between the religious righteousness of
the Pharisees that you read in these chapters and this Canaanite
woman. She came, as you can read in
Genesis 9, she came from a race that was cursed. Cainan was that
child of Noah cursed. She came as a pagan idolater. In the Jewish mind, nothing could
be further from salvation than a woman like this. She is in
reality a trophy of grace. They in Israel at that time had
the most extraordinary privileges that human beings on this planet
had ever witnessed. Thousands of years of prophecy,
thousands of years of God describing his son with clarity, with perfect
clarity about where he would be born, where he'd live, what
he would do, he was a walking, living, breathing, speaking,
fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies. And there he was
in the midst, and as we saw last week, he didn't hold back, he
declared right at the very beginning of his ministry, I am the Christ
of God. John the Baptist declared it,
God declared it from heaven, the prophets declared it, he declared it himself. They were left in that extraordinary
situation. They were privileged. The Gentiles,
like this lady, they were at that time, without Christ, being
aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the
covenant of promise, having no hope. and without God in the
world. Such was the state of this woman. She was so unlikely. God's trophies
of grace are extraordinarily unlikely, and the more religious
and the more privileged People are the less likely they are
to see them as what they are. Religion is blinding to men,
blinds them of who God is and blinds them of His grace and
blinds them of who His servants are. The other wonderful thing
we see in here is that the Lord, the Lord our Lord, is the Lord
of Providence. Everything in this universe is
under the direct and sovereign control of our God, and everything
in this universe is directly under His sovereign control for
the good of His people and for the glory of His name. She, like
so many of the Lord's people, had taken to a place of utter
despair. There's no mention of her husband.
This may have been her only child, and Satan's grip was upon her
in the most serious of ways, and she knew it. Even our afflictions, even our
trials, brothers and sisters, are part of God's ordaining.
One day we'll say with the psalmist in Psalm 119, 75, I know, O Lord,
that Thy judgments are right and that Thou in faithfulness
has afflicted me. As Job said, the Lord gives and
the Lord takes away. Praise be the name of the Lord.
There are trials, trials that draw us to Christ. The lost sheep
is often found by its bleating. These trials show us again that
no matter what we might have in this world, spiritual life
is absolutely vital and only God can bring it and only God
can reveal the depths of the lostness of ourselves and this
world around us until the Gospel comes. These trials send people
to the scriptures. Trials cause us to pray. May God cause us not to be at
ease in Zion. Trials will come in all sorts
of ways, but may they draw us, like this lady, draw us to God. And that's what she does, isn't
she? She comes and she says, have mercy on me, O Lord, thou
Son of David. She acknowledges, as I said earlier,
that He is Emmanuel. How was she taught that in that
place? God's children recognise who
the Lord Jesus is because they are taught of God. Only God's teaching will reveal
clearly to us who we are and what our state is and who the
Lord Jesus is and how perfectly suited Our Saviour is to those
who are the objects of His salvation. He takes His people to a place
where, like the disciples in John 6, they have nowhere else
to go. Nowhere else to go. May God burn our bridges and
hedge our ways with thorns, that we have nowhere else to go and
no place to find rest and company until we are at rest in His arms. This child is brought to Him,
and which is brought to acknowledge Him. We see something else in
these, in verse 23, which is a salutary lesson for us, isn't
it? He answered her not a word, and
His disciples came and besought Him. And what was their word
about this woman? These are blood-bought children
of God speaking here, aren't they? Peter, James and John. What do they say? Send her away. Send her away. There is in the Adam flesh that
is in us extraordinary prejudice. An extraordinary ability, just
like the Pharisees, this extraordinary ability to make judgments and
be profoundly wrong. May God humble us and God cause
us to wait and see. We cannot see hearts. And we
cannot know motives and the Lord, the Lord alone searches the heart. There was one person there who
knew exactly what was going on, knew why this lady was fixed,
loved her with a passionate and infinite love and had always
loved her exactly the same. And she came. She came and worshipped
him. She called him, O Lord, son of
David. And she just lays out her case
before him. My daughter is grievously vexed.
Lord, have mercy upon him. And she worshipped him, verse
25, and she says, Lord, help me. Oh. What a mercy it is when God brings
us to a place, as He does, I trust, often, where our only hope, our
only hope for health, for help, is from Him. What a mercy it
is that she'd been so tried that she finds herself at His throne
of grace, at His feet. And here again in contrast to
the faithlessness, the faithlessness of the Pharisees and the scribes
in the midst of the most enormous amount of evidence. And here
this lady is described as having great faith. He says of his disciples
in the preceding chapter, he says, are you of little faith? Here is great faith. Great faith. Let me just look
briefly as I close at some of the elements of great faith. As I said earlier, great faith
looks to Christ alone. It looks to Him to provide what
only He can provide. Lord help me. Great faith is personal. Great faith looks to Him. Great faith simply looks to His
Word and trusts His Word. Despite all of the unbelief in
nation Israel, the unbelief the Lord Jesus dealt with all the
time again and again, unbelief in the face of the most extraordinary
evidence, she comes and she says, O Lord, Thou Son of David. Taught, as I said earlier, by
God, and she calls him, in verse 25, Lord, and in verse 27 she
calls him Lord. He speaks the truth, even when
it's hard words to her, he speaks the truth, and she replies, it's
true, Lord. She simply trusts his word. She came to Him, she repented
and she turned and she came to Him and she cried to Him. And when he speaks of who he
is as a God who elects, a God who has a sheep hold, a God who
has a nation, a house of Israel, she doesn't argue or deny at
all. Even when he seemingly rebukes
her, for her this trophy of grace, it's just an opportunity to ask
for mercy. I love what Job says in Job 3,
verse 15, he says, Though he slave, yet will I trust him. Though he slay me, yet will I
trust him. Great faith never gives up. Great faith pleads and pleads
and pleads. Great faith has nowhere else
to go. You alone have the words of eternal
life. Great faith sees and accepts
our unworthiness. As we see His glory we become
more and more of our unworthiness and more and more we delight
to know that without Him we can do nothing, that with Him we
can do all things. Nothing is impossible. The arm
of the Lord is not shortened. Great faith is rewarded. Mercy sought, mercy given. Lord, help me. Mercy given. What a promise from
the Lord. What a remarkable statement. Be it unto thee, even as thou
wilt. May God bring our wills to will
for the things that bring Him most glory in this world and
in our lives. And what brings Him the most
glory will bring us the most peace and the most satisfaction. What is your will? What things
are you willing for? What things do we take to the
Lord? What things do I take to? What
is my passionate cry to the Lord? It is a personal matter, isn't
it, between us and Him. May He grant the prayers of His
people concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands,
command ye me." Have we been the recipients of great grace? Has God revealed in our lives
the most extraordinary reasons to trust his word, to trust his
character, to trust his providences? He is faithful. The Lord is faithful. He will
do it.