Once again, we continue with
our studies in the book of Matthew. We're going along, not on a verse-by-verse
study, but more of a skim along through to where we see lessons
that our Lord is teaching the apostles, considering what our
Lord is teaching the apostle Peter. Our study's title is Simon Peter,
an Apostle of Christ. And we've been looking at how
the Lord has taught Peter from the time he called him through
to the point we are right now. And we're going to continue looking
at that very thing all the way until we get to a point where
we can go to the letters that Peter wrote. And then we can
see how Peter learned from the Lord those things that he experienced
and wrote down in words for our sakes. in 1 and 2 Peter. In our last study, we looked
at the lesson of our great Savior taught of the things that proceed
from the heart. These things are the things that
defile a man. Our Lord gave an example about
how the Pharisees were upset about His apostles going through
and eating the corn. And then He went in, in verses
16 through 20, and He said, Do not yet ye understand that
whatsoever entereth in the mouth goeth into the belly, and is
cast out into the draught? But those things which proceed
out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and they defile the
man. For of the heart proceedeth evil
thoughts, murderers, adulteries, fornications, theft, false witness,
blasphemies. These are the things which defile
a man. This is what sin is. It's what's
in our heart. It's our very nature, it's what
we are. But to eat with unwashing hands
defileth not a man. The heart is where we find the
true man. Our spirit, our inner self, our
very being. This is where we find our true
nature and this is where our Lord performs the miracle of
the new birth. The old stony heart that we come
into this world with must be cut away. For it has the nature
of sin. It must be cut away in a new
heart, a willing heart. One that is willing to believe.
One that is willing to come over and over and over again to the
Lord Jesus as our Savior, as our Lord. We were talking about that in
the men's meeting this morning. One of the brothers was talking
about how he was on his way up here this morning thinking about
how our Lord rules over everything. The very thing. He rules even
the lights that we drive through. This new heart is a heart that
believes. The old nature is one of sin.
Our Lord says in His Word, it is enmity against God. That's
one of the strongest words you could use as far as being against
something, enmity. That's the heart that we come
into this world with, one that is enmity against God. It cannot
perceive, it cannot see, it cannot understand the kingdom of God,
the kingdom of heaven. The heart is desperately wicked,
the scripture goes on to say, who can know it? Now he, the
God-man, is about to reveal that he is no respecter of persons,
that his mercy is shed upon all who come to him, all for whom
the Father hath given him, and out of every kindred, every tribe,
every tongue, God's lost sheep shall be found. Are you with
me in Matthew chapter 15? Let's continue with our Lord's
teachings, reading at verses 1, 21, and 22. Then Jesus went
thence, and departed into the coast of Tyre and Sidion. 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. Now Don Fortner wrote this, he
said, the Lord Jesus Christ, the good shepherd, will seek
and will find his lost sheep wherever they may be. I experienced that. I know that
that's truth. My Lord came looking for me and
found me, wallowing in my own pity and my own problems here
on this earth, and he brought me to this church where I could
hear his word preached for the first time. You've all heard
this story many, many times. And over the five years that
I attended these very services, my wife, who didn't want to come
at all, who thought I was bewitched, who thought I was brainwashed,
eventually got tired of being home alone. And the Lord moved
her. He moved her heart to say, I
need to be with my man. I need to be with my husband.
And she came and the Lord began speaking to her heart through
His Word. He'll find his lost sheep anywhere they are, because
he knows where everything is. You see, we're lost sheep, but
we're not lost to him. We're lost to ourselves. We don't
know where we're at. We're just wandering around out
there on the side of the mountain, eating grass and tootling along,
and the wolves are all around us and everything, and our Lord's
out. There's one of mine right there, grabs me and brings him
home. That is the first lesson set
before us in this passage. In the book of Luke, verses 15,
verse 3 through 7, we read, and he spake this parable unto them,
saying, what man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he lose one
of them, doth not leave that 99 in the wilderness, and go
after that which is lost, until he finds it? And when he hath
found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when
he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and his neighbors,
saying unto them, rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep,
which was lost. I say unto you that likewise
joy shall be in heaven over one sinner, one sinner that repenteth
more than over ninety, and nine just persons, which need no repentance
at all. The natural man reading our text
with a spiritually blind eye might think, this is not a story
about Christ seeking a woman, but about a woman seeking Christ.
She came out of the land of Canaan there, did she not? Granted,
this Canaanite woman came to Christ earnestly seeking Him,
but she would never have come to Him in Matthew 15.22 if He
had not come to where she was first in Matthew 15.21. Did He
not go to the coast? Did He not go to the well where
the woman in the well was? Did He not cross the sea to where
the man who lived in the tombs was? Our Lord Jesus came into the
coast of Tyre and Sidion because, as Mark says, there was a certain
woman. He didn't say, well, you know,
maybe I have one of my lost sheep over in that area. I'll go look
for it over there on that side of the hill. No, there was a
certain woman. Oh, does that reach to your heart,
folks? If you know the Lord, you are
a certain person to Him. Doesn't that just bless your
heart more than anything else in the world? We are certain
people to our Creator. So certain to Him that He would
not leave us to ourselves. He's going to come find us. This
is the hope I have for my lost son and my lost daughter. My grandchildren. If they're His, they cannot be
lost forever. If they're His, He will find
them. Right where He knows they are. That's our only hope. All the
work is His. Salvation is of the Lord from
beginning to end, is it not? Mark says there was a certain
woman there to whom he must come. If you haven't heard already,
our Friday night Bible study this Friday night, by the way,
we should be Lord willing. I've spoken with Larry and Gladys.
I haven't spoken with Marv, but Larry relayed to me that Marv
is coming up also. They'll be here Thursday morning
sometime. And Pastor Gene and Judy will
be here Thursday night. They're coming in on an 8 o'clock
flight. Kathy and I will be picking them up from the airport. And
we're going to have a full house for Friday night Bible study.
So if you can make it, please join us. We'll have refreshments,
time of fellowship. And we're going to look at this
word, must, in the Bible. That'll be our subject for Friday
night study this Friday night. there to whom He, our Lord, must
come. God, in His eternal decree, had
marked out the spot where and the time when this needy soul
would meet her all-sufficient Savior. When the time of love
arrived, He came to that very spot to perform for her. And
in her, and in His great purpose of grace, everything that He
did when He walked this earth, and everything He's doing right
now, has to do with seeking His lost sheep. Again, Fortner wrote
this, he says, wherever you find a seeking sinner, you will also
find a seeking Savior. And he refers to John 6, 44 through
45, where it says, no man can come unto me except the Father
which hath sent me draw him. And I will raise him up the last
day, for it is written in the prophets, and they shall be taught,
all taught of God. Every man, therefore, that hath
heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto me. But notice
also that this woman was from the land of Canaan. She was a
Canaanite. She was not of the Jewish nation.
How had she come to know this one who could heal the sick?
She was all the way over here in the coast, quite a ways away.
They didn't have telephones back those days. Definitely not pop
telephones that you can just flip open or smartphones. No, they didn't. How did this
woman know? Mark tells us in verse 26 of
chapter 7, he says that she was a Syrophoenician. She was from
that part of Phoenician near Syria. How did she come to trust
the Lord? Well, we don't see an answer
in Scripture, but God revealed His Son to her and gave her faith
in Him by His omnipotent grace, just as He did you and I. Just
as He has done for each and every one of His people. What gave
Peter the faith to say, OK, I'm leaving everything behind. I'm
walking away from my entire life, and I'm going to follow this
man who just told me to come follow him. The exact same faith
that this woman has. Gentiles' faith are no different
than Jews. It's all in Christ as God Almighty
in the flesh. It's all in Christ as the Savior,
as all in the saving of His people. The Lord Jesus came into the
coast of Tyre and Sidion and on an errand of mercy to meet
this woman. And as she was coming out of
those coasts to meet Christ, as we read in Isaiah 65, 24,
we read, it shall come to pass that before they call, before
she even knew what she was looking for, our Lord says, I will answer. And while they were yet speaking,
He says, I will hear. What we have here before us in
this Canaanite woman is a marvelous display of the sovereignty of
God's free and sovereign grace in His Son, the Lord Jesus. Here
is a chosen vessel of God's mercy taken from the coast of Tyre
and Sidion. She shows us that the Church
and the Kingdom of Christ is made up of God's elect, gathered
by Him from all nations into which He has scattered them.
They shall come from the east and from the west and from the
north and from the south, He says. And their coming is a matter
of absolute certainty. Thy people shall be willing in
the day of His power. That's what it says in Romans
1, 10, 3. That's how we can sit here and
say, natural man is not willing to come to God. Our Lord says,
there are none that seeketh after Me. This is so plain and so obvious.
I had no will before His will was exercised in my life. My
will was driving me down the road to go play golf, or drink
heavily, or do whatever on a Sunday morning, watch football, and
I drank heavily, trust me. I'm not putting down drinking,
that's not what I'm doing. I'm saying that's what I would do instead
of going to church. Our wills are changed. We are
made willing in the day of thy power. He scattered them that
he might gather them." We can also see here, as we do throughout
the scriptures, that God's elect are usually those that we think
are the most unlikely to be saved. Lay it to heart, folks. Take
heed. It is a lesson that must never
be forgotten, for God's elect are often found where we least
expect them. Fortner wrote again, and I do
not apologize for quoting him. It is grace, not place, that
determines who shall be saved. It is grace, not race, that determines who shall obtain
faith. It didn't matter that this was
a Canaanite woman, a Syro-Phoenician from the coast of Tyre, and she
was a woman of a cursed race, a race of idolaters. But she
was a chosen vessel of mercy, just as we are. Chosen in his son. our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ. Not chosen for anything that
we have done or anything that we would do, but because of His
Son. And that has to be presented
before us at all times. Over and over and over again,
because the flesh is weak. And all we've got to do is hit
that golf ball down the fairway one time and think we're Tiger
Woods. And all of a sudden the Lord
will say, And that ball will go somewhere else in the next
direction to remind us that we are of the flesh and we are weak. This was a Canaanite woman, but
she was a chosen vessel of mercy. And one more thought about these
two verses to consider in this study that we have. And that
is the fact that God's providence is ordered according to his great
purpose of grace towards his elect. This entire story is a
commentary upon and an illustration of Romans 8, 28, 30, where it
says, and we know that all things are for the good to them who
love the Lord, to them who are called. What prompted this woman
to come to Christ? Notice it was her daughter, and
she was grievously vexed with the devil. No one else could
help her. No one else could help this poor
woman who was grieving so much over the fact that her daughter
was possessed. The Son of God was manifested
that He might destroy the works of the devil. You can read that
very thing in 1 John 3.8. Our Lord manifested Himself He
revealed Himself to this vessel of mercy. Wherever it was she
heard about this One called Jesus, it was enough to move her. You
see, the Lord doesn't need all kinds of stuff to move us. All He's got to do is grab a
hold of that heart and pull it along. Sometimes, It can be in a very
painful way, though, as this woman was vexed with this child,
or was concerned about her child. So we have concerns of our own
at times, don't we? Her love for her daughter, who
was grievously vexed with the devil, compelled this broken-hearted
woman to come to the Savior, bringing her daughter's need
to Him. She asked the Lord Jesus to pity her daughter as an act
of mercy to herself. Have pity on this poor girl for
my sake. Have mercy, she said, on me. Verse 22, Have mercy on me, O
LORD, thou Son of David. My daughter is grievously vexed. That was her cry. She was bowing
to Christ as her Lord. Her desperate need brought her
to the Savior and taught her how to pray. Let every believing
mother and father follow her example. The ground upon which
she cried for mercy was her need. The ground upon which she hoped
for and expected it was the man Jesus Christ and He is the Son
of David, God incarnate, Emmanuel, God with us, God and a man in
one person. The multitudes who saw Him had
no idea who He is and did not trust Him. But this woman, being
taught of God, as we read in John 6, verse 46, she knew Him
and she trusted Him. And when she was in great need,
she came to Him for mercy. Affliction is often the means
of grace to God's elect. What was it that brought John
Reeves to this building. What was it that brought John
Reeves to this building to where God would have him hear his message
the first time? It was a great affliction, one
that I will not share with you. But I came here in tears. As you have heard before, to
lean on my brother's shoulder, my older brother Lee, who was
attending here. What was Kathy's need? when she
came here. Was it not affliction of the
heart to being away from the man that she loves? Was it not
an affliction being lonely at home, left there on Sundays because
her husband was off going to church on Sundays? Fine, I'll
go to church just so I can be with him. Maybe we can go somewhere
afterwards. And as she sat here, the Lord spoke to her heart.
Did He not? How is it our Lord brings us
to Him? Many, many times it's through
afflictions. Maybe it's the affliction of
trying to earn your own righteousness and not being able to do it with
whatever religion you may be following. Maybe it's following some religious
hypocrisies and you know they're hypocrisies but yet you think
this is the way to be saved and then someday the Lord moves on
your heart and shows you, no. You're not able to do that. That's
not something you can do. Only Jesus Christ can do that
perfectly. This poor woman had been put
through the ringer. Her heart was crushed. Her darling daughter,
probably her only child, was grievously vexed with the devil.
And she was utterly helpless. There was nothing she could do
to help her daughter. Yet it was the very thing that
caused her a great pain, a great heartache, a great sorrow that
brought her on her knees to the Lord Jesus and taught her to
pray. If she could speak to us now
from heaven, she would say, it is good for me that I have been
afflicted. that I might learn Thy statutes."
That's what David wrote in the Psalms of 119.71. It was good for me to come here
that day afflicted. Because He opened my heart to
the truth and gave me a new heart that believes Him. It was good
for me to be afflicted that day. Every trial, every providential
adversity, every difficulty of life is a message from God, folks. Our troubles in this world are
sent by our Heavenly Father. That's one of the things that
we can forget sometimes, you know. We can forget that our
troubles are also ruled by the Sovereign. Almighty God. 9-11 was not an accident. 9-11 was not the devil getting
an upper hand on God. God knew exactly what he was
doing. Just as he knows exactly what
he's doing with all of our troubles. Do you believe Romans 8 28? That's a hard thing to believe
at times, folks. Cancer is a nasty, nasty disease. That's a hard,
hard thing to believe. But yet, if you're one of God's,
if you belong to Him, He'll make that known to your heart one
way or another. All things are for our good. Every trial, every
providential adversity, every difficulty, Our troubles in this
world are sent by our Heavenly Father and are intended to draw
us to His Son. How often we cry out, Lord, help
me, when we're in those trials. Father, help me. Give me the strength to get through
this. These things are sent by our Heavenly Father and intended
to draw us to Christ to wean us from the world. To wean us
from ourselves. And to send us into the Scriptures
and to teach us to pray. As our trials are used of God
to bring us to Christ and to cause us to trust in Him, so
our trials are designed to keep us to cling to Christ. I've heard this before. It seems
like as a Christian, since the Lord has called me out of darkness,
it seems like I get out of one trial, I go right into another. Because I need to be drawn to
my Lord or I'll start walking away. I'm a stiff-necked man. I need Him to keep me. And because He loves me, He will. He will! Our trials are designed to keep
us clinging to our Lord and to strengthen our faith in Him.
In Hebrews 12, 5-14, you know what? Turn there if you would.
Let's close with that. Turn over to Hebrews 5-14 and
read along with me, will you? I'm sorry, I said 514. Hebrews
12. Hebrews 12. And let's begin reading at verse
5. And ye have forgotten the exhortation
which speaketh unto you as unto children. My son, despise not
thou the chastening of the Lord. nor faint when thou art rebuked
of him. For whom the Lord loveth, he
chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. For if
ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as sons. For what son
is he whom the Father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastenment,
chastisement, wherefore all are partakers, then are ye bastards,
and not sons? Furthermore, we have had fathers
of our flesh, which corrected us, and we gave them reverence.
Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of
spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days
chastened us after their own pleasure. But he, He, the Father
of spirits, but he for our prophet, that
we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for
the present seemeth to be joyous. We can all agree with that, right?
But grievous. Nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth
the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised
thereby. Wherefore, lift up the hands
which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths
for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the
way, but let it rather be healed. Follow peace with all men and
holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord." J.C. Ryle wrote this, according to
that very passage that we just read. Health is a good thing,
but sickness is far better if it leads us to God. Prosperity
is a great mercy, but adversity is an even greater one if it
brings us to Christ. Anything, anything is better
than living in carelessness and dying in sin. Better a thousand
times to be afflicted like the Canaanite mother and like her
to flee to Christ then it would be to live in ease like a rich
fool and die at last without Christ and without hope. Amen.