In his sermon 'Lord, Help Me,' Scott Brown explores Matthew 15, focusing on Jesus' interaction with the Canaanite woman and the feeding of the 4,000. The Canaanite woman's plea for her demon-possessed daughter highlights her great faith, contrasted with the Pharisees' hollow religiosity. Brown emphasizes that faith transcends cultural and religious boundaries, as demonstrated by the woman's persistence and humility. Jesus' compassion is further illustrated through the miraculous feeding of the 4,000, a testament to His divine authority and provision. Brown also discusses the theme of intercessory prayer, noting that genuine faith involves a deep connection with others and a reliance on God's mercy. The sermon encourages believers to emulate Jesus' compassion and faith, while understanding the need for humility and persistence in prayer.

Let's turn to Matthew 15, starting in verse 21 for the scripture for today. And Jesus went away from there, and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David. My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. But he did not answer her a word.

And his disciples came and begged him, saying, Send her away, for she is crying out after us. He answered, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But she came and knelt before him, saying, Lord, help me. And he answered, It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. And she said, Yes Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.

Then Jesus answered her, O woman, great is your faith, be it done for you as you desire. And her daughter was healed instantly. Juice went on from there and walked beside the Sea of Galilee. And he went up on the mountain and sat down there. And great crowds came to him bringing within the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others.

And they put them at his feet, and he healed them. So that the crowd wondered when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled keep healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seen, and they glorified the God of Israel. Then Jesus came to his disciples, called his disciples to him, and said, I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. And I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.' And the disciples said to him, Where are we to get enough bread in such a desolate place to feed so great a crowd. And Jesus said to them, How many loaves do you have?

And they said, Seven, and a few small fish. And directing the crowd to sit down on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish. And having given things, he broke them, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate, and were satisfied. And they took up seven baskets full of the broken pieces left over.

Those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children. And after sending away the crowds, he got into the boat and went to the region of Magadan. Let's pray. Oh Father, we thank you that you have given us your word. For we thank you that it is a sharp sword that pierces even down to our hearts.

Father, we pray today that you would give us ears to hear, hearts to take in your word, and a willing spirit to obey. Father, we pray this morning for God as He preaches Your Word, filling with Your Spirit, granting much grace and much wisdom as He handles Your Word. Father, bless Him and bless us in Your name. Amen. One of the beautiful and challenging things that always reaches us when we're interpreting Scripture is that God has given us a book that is so diverse and it's so wonderful to consider.

It has to be understood in so many different levels, and this passage of Scripture is one of those that gives us so, a number of textures to consider. And I think every passage of scripture, you have to do that. And so it gives the mind and the heart much to feed upon. And I pray that there's feeding upon the various contours and emphases of this text. For example, in every text there's a picture of God.

There's what God does, what God says. And as we get into this passage I'm going to identify really specific things that our Lord Jesus Christ says and does and feels. And then, so you have this vision of God. That's one contour that you always see in Scripture. And you should always look for the contours of the majesty of God when you're reading scripture because he is there on every page to disclose Himself to you as you read those words Well, then there's also the people that are involved in this passage of scripture.

There are several people involved there's a daughter a young daughter in a house who is being so torn up by the devil that she has actually come to the place where she's demonized. And then there's her mother. And then there are the multitudes. And there are all these different people in this text. And when you read the Bible, you find different kinds of people.

And you always have to ask, what are they saying? What are they doing? What are they feeling? How are they relating to things that are true? So there's that whole other contour that's so rich to consider.

You can think about the thoughts and the meditations of the people, their struggles, their good things that happen to them, the mistakes that they make. And all these things are played before us in passages of Scripture. And then you have a whole other level, the whole historical and geographical context that's there. Because Scripture happens in real life, it's not a book of mythology. It happens in places you can go today and almost stand in the exact same place that these things happened, or at least the general region.

And some of the places have the same names that they have today. So they're geographical issues, they're historical forces that are at work in any passage of Scripture. There are movements of people. There are kingdoms and dominions. There are wars.

There are all kinds of things happening in the context of Scripture. And then finally, there's a whole other layer of thought that has to be considered. And that is, what is the writer trying to say? Because all writers are not the same. For example, we're in one of the Gospels.

We're in the Gospel of Matthew. Well, Matthew, he emphasizes different things than Mark does. We've just been in a, in Matthew 15, the exact parallels are in Mark chapter 7. But if you read Mark chapter 7, you know that Mark says more things and he says some different things. Mark is emphasizing some different things.

They're all right. Matthew is emphasizing different things. They're all right. And so it's another contour of richness of Scripture. There's so much to try to gather in by your senses, to think historically, to think of heaven, to think of the people, to think of the gospel writer, the one who is inspired by God, to put these things down so that you might know how to live and how to think about everything in life.

So, Scripture is so rich And as we go through here, I pray that as a congregation, that we can begin to see the various ways that we ought to see the things that God is speaking to us. Because we too live in a historical context. We too are individuals. We too stand before a majestic God. And we also have been given as a gift, a writer to help us understand our lives, to help us make sense of what's going on in our hearts, and make sense of what's going on around us.

This is a tremendous gift. And so here in this chapter, Matthew is continuing to just explain the various evidences that Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah. He is the Son of David. And you have a woman here crying out, Oh Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me. He's proving...

By the way, the Gospel starts out with this whole concept that he is the son of David. Did you see the connection? Here you have a Gentile woman crying out something that was proclaimed in the very first chapter. Because Matthew is building an argument with every single section that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. He is the King of kings and He is the Lord of lords.

In the very first chapter, His authority is proclaimed. In the very last chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, what does He say? All what? All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. So this whole Gospel is a declaration of the authority, the absolute sovereignty of God over all things.

And it's a call to bow down and worship Him. So The entire argument of Matthew rests upon these two ideas, that God is sovereign and that man must bow down lest he endure eternal damnation. And so everything from the beginning to the end, everything in between, are evidences of his authority. And you see that in this passage so beautifully and so clearly. Now, There are three points I want to make in order to orient us to this text this morning.

First of all, the scenes that are before us. There are two scenes that we're considering here this morning. And the first scene is where Jesus heals a Gentile woman's demonized daughter. And she longs for the crumbs from her master's table. And he speaks of faith.

This passage is about her stories about so many things. One of these things is faith. We'll try to consider faith in some detail here this morning. There are two kinds of faith in Matthew, little faith and great faith. Here's an example of great faith.

In this context of genuine faith, we have to also understand what is happening in Matthew 15 and actually all the way through Matthew. What Matthew is telling us is that the Pharisees brought their religion, but they didn't bring their heart. And here, with the Syrophoenician woman, she brings her heart because she has no religion, or at least she has no godly religion. And J.C. Reil says that this story teaches us that it is grace, not place, which makes people believers.

And then the second part of this text that we're in is the feeding of the 4, 000, where in the beginning of it, the broken, the outcasts, the lame, the blind are there before the Lord Jesus. He's healing them all. They have no resources of themselves. They're out in a remote area. There's no food there.

They have no ability to feed themselves. They're completely cast upon the sovereign hand of God. And there's the opinion of the disciples for how to solve this problem, and then there is the opinion of the Lord Jesus Christ for how it will be solved. And it's interesting that in this section, we find even though this is the second feeding of thousands of people, they still do not understand. Now we're gonna learn more about that in the next chapter.

We're going to save the punchline until then. Why don't they understand? Well, we'll understand more when we get into chapter 16. So There's this gentile woman and then there is the feeding of the 4, 000. Now you could also look at this in the sense that here In the story of the Syrophoenician woman, you have a family that's in collapse.

You might ask yourself, when you read about this woman, to relate to her, have you ever had such a crushing affliction that has fallen upon your family, where you're completely hopeless to stop the force of evil in the heart of one of your children. This is what happened to this woman. And she's crying out to God for her daughter. You just might imagine, she's a daughter, just like many daughters in our own church. You know, I, and how heartbreaking it would be for our daughters to be found in a progression that led to such a desperate situation.

And so we find a woman who is involved in really spiritual warfare in her home. And then the second point that I want to make to help sort of calibrate us to this passage is that there are themes that carry on. And Jesus, through the inspired writing of Matthew, is continuing to expose false religion. And he's proclaiming himself to be the Messiah. Now the theme of Matthew 15 is really derived from Isaiah 29.

If you read Isaiah 29, you'll see so many connections to this passage of Scripture. Jesus has already quoted Isaiah 29. It's in the backdrop of our Lord's thinking and Matthew's thinking. And here, this theme is carried on in paralleling Matthew 29. For example, he's saying that Old Testament prophecy is being fulfilled here.

So here he has the Lord Jesus, Matthew does, go to southern Lebanon, to this area of Tyre and Sidon. And Matthew 29 says, is it not yet a very little while till Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be esteemed as a forest and in that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness The humble shall also increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among them shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel." Now this is such a clear connection to what happens with this Syriac nation woman and also in the feeding of the 4, 000 later on. And so Isaiah 29 is all about the judgment against dead religion and he's proclaiming himself to be the Savior of all those who are trapped in a dead Performance oriented outward religion, but who have but who do not have their hearts Engaged And that's why the Lord has already quoted Isaiah 29 by saying, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In Isaiah 29, he uses the term nephesh for their soul.

Their soul has no feeling. He says that they're like a man who eats and is not filled. He just eats and it just doesn't work. He's like a man who's given a book and he can't read it. He can't understand.

It's just dead to him. He has nothing in his heart that responds to God. His soul just doesn't respond. It's like a piece of dead, raw meat that cannot be brought to life. That's what Isaiah is speaking about.

And Matthew is continuing to attack this problem of the human soul, of a performance-oriented kind of religion, where There's no heart that rises up in praise unto God. And then in the midst of this thematic contour that continues to work the fiends, There's different imagery used. There's the imagery of bread. Even think of the crumbs that are falling from the master's table. That's continuing this idea of bread.

There's the imagery of cleanliness and uncleanness. You have an unclean woman, an unclean daughter, you have an unclean people in a region, you have all kinds of ceremonial uncleanness existing where the Lord Jesus comes and has mercy on those who have it. There are Jews and there are Gentiles. So anyway, I just want to say, notice the themes continue to run. Matthew is continuing to work through the same themes that he's introduced far earlier.

And then The third thing that I wanted to help us understand are the implications of these two events in the Gospel of Matthew. The implications have to do with the Great Commission, that salvation is not restricted to Israel, that the unclean of this world can become sons and daughters. Matthew has been doing this all along. He was doing it in chapter one, verses three through six, in the genealogy where you have Rahab who is included in the line. You have it in chapter 2 verses 1 through 12 in the Magi, these pagans from the outside have come in and they actually worship him.

And then you have it again in chapter 4 verse 15 where the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali by the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee, of the Gentiles. And then you have it again in chapter 4 verses 24 through 25. Verses 24 through 25. And so this theme of the gospel being prepared to go to the ends of the earth, the judgment against Israel for rejecting their Messiah, and then God turning to the Gentiles. That theme continues to be worked throughout throughout this gospel.

So with that, we get to verse 21. And then Jesus went out from there and departed to the region of Tyre and Sidon. So now our Lord is venturing beyond the borders of Israel. And this marks the end of Jesus' Galilean ministry. He moves what is today called Southern Lebanon or ancient Phoenicia, the district of Tyre and Sidon, which is beyond the jurisdiction of Herod and of the Jewish leaders.

And so here the Lord is making a shift. William Henderson, the commentator, says that our Lord stayed in this area from April 29th to October, and he calls it his retirement ministry, because he's trying to retire, apparently, from the crowds. And he was removing himself from the frenzy and the pressure of the Jewish leaders, from the paranoia of Herod and Tippus, from the press of the crowds, the multitudes who wanted a political messiah. And he goes into a house, says Mark in chapter 7, verse 4. It's a strategic withdrawal.

He wants to be concealed, but he cannot be concealed. He is found out because his work is so wonderful. You cannot hide him. Even if you are told not to speak about him, you cannot do it. He is too marvelous.

He is too unusual and too good. And so He's found in this place and a Syrophoenician woman finds him. There's a lot we can say about this region. It was a place of a number of great historical moments. But Remember that the Lord had just said to his disciples about the Pharisees?

He said, let them alone. The blind will lead the blind, they'll fall into a ditch, you let them alone. And then he moves and goes to this place. And in a way, he is letting them alone and going to another region. Interestingly, it seems that he's also paralleling Elijah when he bypassed the widows of Israel.

Luke says that assuredly I say that no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you that many widows were in Israel during the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months. And there was a great famine in the land. But to none of them was Elijah sent. Elijah had so many widows in Israel to come and minister to, but he didn't go there.

God actually commanded him to go to another place, to go to Zarephath, to go to a Gentile widow, who had a son. Here we have a Gentile who has a daughter. And the imagery is very connected, I really do believe. And so we can speak of the prophecy in Psalm 87 which speaks, which says, Behold, O Philistia entire with Ethiopia, all my springs are in you. So there's this movement, geographical change that's taking place here in this passage, where the Lord goes to the land of the Gentiles to go and bless the Gentiles with his own love.

And then we have this woman's prayer in verse 22, and it's a prayer born of so much pain, very practical pressures in her life from her dear daughter. You might just try to put yourself in her sandals because she's a woman with a daughter. There are many women with daughters here. And you might just think of your own heartstrings toward your daughters, your dreams for them, your hopes for them, and how heartbreaking it is whenever they choose to taste the world and like it and want some more and want some more and want some more and that that is how demonization happens it happens one taste at a time and so there's this very desperate situation here and she's identified she is a woman of Canaan from that region. She was of the, as Mark says, the Syrophoenician race, and her people were probably worshippers of Astarte and other deities that were worshipped in that region.

And so here she is as a subject of those demons, of those false gods. And the pains and the pressures are being known. She is feeling the abuses of the devil in her own family. And her heart obviously has turned from them by all the things that she is saying here in this passage. And her manner is so striking, she cried out to him, saying...

She cried out... Now the word that Matthew uses is a word of a guttural, kind of shrieking, croaking, rough sound. It's a loud, roshous kind of voice. I mean, this is a voice of desperation. And her request in verse 22, I love this line.

Have mercy on me, oh Lord, Son of David. My daughter is severely demon possessed. There's only one time in the New Testament that someone is called severely demon possessed. This is that time. She's badly demon possessed.

There seems to be degrees of demonization. Remember the man who had a legion of demons, thousands and thousands of demons. She is severely demon possessed. So again, we learn something about the supernatural world and how it operates. That there are degrees in this whole matter of demonization.

And we also see something that is so wonderful here. We really have the heart of intercessory prayer. What is intercessory prayer? Well, intercessory prayer is one person who is connected to another person. And that is the beginning of all intercessory prayer.

The beginnings of the work of God are when you meet someone. Isn't that amazing? That God would be so kind to the people of the world that he would actually cause something so simple to be the means of intercessory prayer. He would have you meet someone who is in trouble and once you meet them you are somehow connected to them. And God so desires to proliferate His love that He would put people in the world who've experienced His love.

He would command them to pray and to pray importunately and to pray aggressively. And then he would let them loose out in the world. And then they would meet people. It would start with the people they have in their homes and then the people that they encounter in their everyday life, their extended family, and the people in their town, and the people that they are aware of who live thousands of miles away. This is the beginning of the love of God when you meet someone.

We've said this before, what is your ministry? What's your ministry? Well, your ministry is really the next person you meet and the love of God that's expressed through that meeting. And as the knowledge of that person remains in your mind, you have an opportunity to be such a blessing in the world. God has created us for a blessing.

That's what we're told in Scripture. And intercessory prayer is one of those ways. So the intercessor feels the hurts and bears the burdens such that they cry out to God for them. And because they are connected. And this is how God gets much of His work done in the world.

He connects people. And it seems so random sometimes, doesn't it? So many of the people that you know that you're praying for now, you met in sort of a random fashion. You heard something and you met someone and then you met someone else and you met someone else and now they are the recipients of your prayers. And it just seemed to happen in such an unobtrusive, unadorned way.

This is how God works. He works in the most simple and unadorned ways when we need people. So this woman is an intercessor, and she happens to be connected to someone in her life, and it happens to be her daughter. And so she cries out, and she says, Oh Lord, oh Lord, Son of David, my daughter is severely demon possessed." Now before we leave this point here, I just want to remind us that it is God who has said that He determines the places where we live. That's what we're told in the book of Acts.

He ordains the country and the state and the city and the very house he puts you in. And he has put you there for one beautiful purpose. And that is to bring glory to God and to be an intercessor in behalf of those that you meet while you're going on your way. So we should always take very seriously those that are put in our way so that our intercession would have its perfect result and it would result in the glory of God. Because we do know that God does answer prayer.

So here this woman is interceding for her daughter and her house is divided. Remember the Lord Jesus said every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation. He was speaking about this issue here and there's division in the household. And There was this devastation that was in this family, this bondage that had been taken up by degrees in this woman's life. And then she, it's a cry for mercy, She says, have mercy on me.

And she knows her need. She knows that only the mercy of God can accomplish anything in her life. She was calling out for something that only God really has. There are all kinds of fabrications of mercy. But God is the Father of mercies.

And so He is so fortunate to be crying out to the one who has what she needs, and that is mercy. We could spend the rest of our time trying to explain the mercy of God. And there are so many places that we could go. I'll go one place this morning. Exodus 34, 6 and 7.

Where the Lord descends from the cloud and stood with Moses and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him. And the Lord said this, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation." So she was crying out for mercy to the one who has mercy. It was also a cry for lordship. She says, Oh Lord.

She was not like those who use the name of the Lord in vain, who say, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? Have we not done many wonders in your name? Not that kind of cry. This was a genuine cry for lordship. Oh Lord.

And then it was a cry for the Messiah. She says she calls him son of David. Her faith is in the Messiah. The term son of David indicates her right opinion of Him. How different this is in contrast to the scribes and Pharisees.

You remember what they were saying? They were not saying, oh, Lord, Son of David. They were saying, he has a demon. He's a wine-bibber and a glutton. And so you see her humility and her persistence.

And then the Lord responds to her in verse 23. And this is the most astonishing thing. This is so counterintuitive, it's hard to grasp, I think, why the Lord would respond like this. I don't think anybody really understands why the Lord did this, that He answered her not a word. Instead of reaching out His hand, like he did with Peter when he was sinking.

He reaches out not his hand, not a word. He seems to ignore her. You just can't package up Jesus' evangelistic methods in a box and open them up. There's something more that's going on in ministry to people than some formulaic technique. He deals with people differently, and you cannot obsessively make formulas out of what he does.

But you have always something to learn. It's most likely that he was testing her faith, but I step on that kind of lightly. Was he testing her faith? There might be other options that are better, but it seems like perhaps he was doing that. You know, it is true that in the testing of our faith, many good things come.

In the most difficult circumstances, we grow. Somebody said, you know, the stronger, the contrary wind, the higher the kite ascends, you know, how the storm winds blow, but your faith is strengthened, you know how important it is not to despise the day of testing. God is building you up. He's making your muscles stronger. He's wounding you so that you would heal stronger than you were before.

Now, who knows exactly why? But this rebuff was intended, I believe, to build her faith, or at least to verify her faith. Perhaps It was just being authenticated rather than being built up. I don't know. But she's not such a tender-hearted person as to walk away and say, oh, that Jesus, I'll never have nothing to do with That crowd again.

That's what an unbeliever does, by the way. You can often tell unbelievers by the way that they respond to the poor lives of believers. And they somehow throw out the entire kingdom of heaven because a sinner who was saved by grace didn't do what he should have done. And they throw out the entire corpus of Christianity because of that. Well, she wasn't like that at all.

But the disciples had a different response. The disciples came and urged him saying, send her away, for she cries out after us. I just think they were weary of her inconvenient shrieking. And they just wanted to have a little bit cleaner kind of a ministry going on here. And so, the disciples are appealing to Jesus to send her away.

By the way, when we go through these two stories, notice the disciples in contrast to Jesus, in contrast to the Pharisees. There are these various kinds of responses that we see. But the disciples wanted to get rid of the woman. We'll see in the next story, they want to get rid of the thousands. So, there's something to learn from that.

And then verse 24, Jesus answers, but he answered and said, I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Here, the Son of God is always doing the will of His Father. He says, I was not sent. And here He's proclaiming His submission to His Father. And to carry out His plan.

He only goes where his Father tells him to go. He only says what his Father says he should say. And he only does what he sees his Father doing. And here the Lord is demonstrating that again. And the lost sheep of the house of Israel were his first priority.

And he breaks out of that pattern for a time. He's breaking out of that pattern here. And then the woman's worship in verse 25. Then she came and worshiped him, saying, Lord, help me. Lord, help me.

You know, When I was considering what title to put at the top of this outline that you have in front of you, I didn't know whether I wanted to put, Lord, help me, or, oh Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me, oh Lord, Son of David, Or rather, in verse 32, I have compassion on the multitude. But here, this is a very significant statement, Lord help me. And here he, the terminology And here he, the terminology that Matthew includes here is this, it's a cry, it's a cry to hasten unto. It's like saying I cannot help myself. I'm not able to do these things in my own flesh.

It's really the cry of a sinner who's crying out to God. And so here There's the acknowledgement of the supreme authority of the Lord Jesus Christ to help her. He has the power to decide the outcome of her life and she knows that and she says, Lord, help me. And yet she doesn't give up, she's not put off, she will continue to seek him regardless of what may appear to be his disposition toward her. Even though the wind seems to be against her, she still seeks with all of her heart.

There's something driving her soul that cannot be stopped. Not even a rebuke will stop her because her soul is so hungry for the Lord Jesus Christ. And she's violently taking the kingdom of heaven by force, in this sense. She says that she worshiped, she's bowing down. It's that term worship, proskeneo.

It means to prostrate yourself before Him. That's what she's doing. And then in verses 26 through 27, our Lord answers her, finally. And he answered her and said, It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs. And she said, Yes, Lord, Yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from the master's table.

So she recognizes that even the littlest crumb from the bread of life would satisfy her soul. Even the littlest thing that she could possibly grasp would so fill her. And this is true for all of us. You think about, You think of, if you've been a Christian for say a few decades, and you recall the things that you, the things that you were able to know and understand at that time in compared to what you know now, they were like crumbs. But you know, they filled you then.

They absolutely filled you. They amazed you. They brought your heart into submission. They made you love Him because of such delicious crumbs from his table. But here, there's this whole interchange about the little dogs and the crumbs, and it's very...

In some ways, I... Was it humorous at the time? It possibly could have been. You know, there are two terms for dogs. There's the mangy junkyard dog word, and then there's the house sort of almost lap dog word.

And he uses the more affectionate word for the household dog, who is allowed in the house, and crumbs fall on the floor, and the little dogs eat the crumbs. This is actually something that I've experienced in my own house. I have these little dogs and we have large groups of people in our house. There are things in on the floor and these sweet little dogs sort of assist in the cleanup to some degree. But there are these kind of little dogs, you know, that were in the house.

And these little dogs eat the crumbs. Do I have an amen, Dan, yes, on that? Sort of. So she is saying that he is her master. That's what she's saying.

And that she'll feed on whatever falls from the table. This is the heart of a Christian. She just desires anything she can possibly get. You know what that's like? You know, when you're reading the Scriptures, and you almost don't want to keep going because you want to stop on that Word that's so wonderful.

Or you're singing a song, you're singing a hymn, and the words are going by, and you just want to hang on that one word. It's such a beautiful word, and you just want to somehow take as much as you can, but you can't because you keep... There's so much more. Even that one crumb, you know, it's just... It's wonderful, but there's more.

And so this woman has sort of has that disposition. She's satisfied with these crumbs, but there really is so much more for her. I think she's a fulfillment of Jeremiah 29, 13 and 14. And you will seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart, and I will be found by you, " declares the Lord. I've marveled at this woman.

I almost was wondering if we could possibly even do the second section because of what is here. But I want to give you 12 things that characterize this woman. She's humble. Number two, she's dependent. Number three, she's persistent.

Number four, she's positive. In other words, she cannot be rebuffed. And she, number five, she's submissive. Number six, she's trusting. Number seven, she's persuasive.

Number eight, she's genuine. Number nine, she's selfless. Number 10, she's direct. Number 11, she is aware of powers and principalities. Number 12, she is prompt.

And yet she is a dog. And she's like so many other men and women in Scripture. She's like Jacob wrestling with God. She's like the man who says, I believe, oh Lord, help me in my unbelief. She's like Zacchaeus in the tree.

She's like the woman with the issue of blood. She's like the woman in the judge in Luke 18. And the Lord Jesus answers and says to her, oh woman, great is your faith. Let it be as you desire. And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

So it was her faith. God had given her faith in her heart. And it was welling up through eternal life. It was faith. Perhaps this is the heart of the text.

Faith, an awakening of something so powerful and expanding that longs even for the crumbs that can't even get enough of that, but will be given more. Now I went back in the Gospel of Matthew to look at every instance of the word faith, because this is not the first time we've encountered this idea of faith in the Gospel of Matthew. If you go back to Matthew chapter 6, verse 30, you see how important faith is when you consider the lack that you might have today and the necessities that God is caring for. Where he says, now if God so closed the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, oh you of little faith?" It connects worry about necessities to faith. Or you could go to Matthew 8 verse 10 where it's connected to healing.

Where the Lord Jesus marveled And said to those who followed, I surely I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel. This was when He healed the centurion servant from afar, this Gentile. Faith in time of fear, Matthew 8 verse 26, and He said to them, Why are you fearful, O you of little faith? Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. Or in Matthew chapter 9 verse 2, When it was the faith of friends, which is sort of like this, you have the faith of a mother.

And behold, they brought to him a paralytic lying on a bed when Jesus saw their faith, the faith of the friends, he said to the paralytic, Son, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven you. So here you have this whole matter of faith that resides in a person who's met another person somewhere along the way. Here, four friends have a friend, and they have faith, And they are intercessors. That's how faith works. Faith multiplies.

Or Faith for blindness in Matthew 9.29, He touched their eyes saying, According to your faith, let it be to you. Or faith while sinking in Matthew 14, where Peter is stretching out his hands and the Lord catches him and says, Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt? And then there's faith for food in Matthew 16, verse 5. We'll get to that next week, where he says, Oh you of little faith, why did you reason among yourselves? Because you have brought no bread?

Faith for the demonized in Matthew 17 verse 14. Faith for doing mighty works in Matthew 21 verses 19 to 22. Faith in the heart. In Matthew 23, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faith.

These you ought to have done without believing the others undone." So this theme of faith is a significant one in the Gospel. Matthew, now we encounter it again with the woman who has a daughter and she has faith. It's such a wonderful thing. You think of how important it is to build your faith. You think of the things that you're doing to destroy your faith, and how harmful it is to this whole enterprise of intercessory prayer and blessing of all the people that God has given to you.

You think that you can just sin without impunity, but somehow you can drink of the world and it won't have any effect at all. But it has an effect on your faith, and that has an effect on everything. And it has an effect on that person that you met three years ago, and the person you just walked by on the street. It makes you less of an intercessor. It makes you less of a blessing in the world.

Faith is so significant and it affects every area of our life from the worry about our future to the condition of those around us that we might have faith in their behalf. I don't really understand how four friends' faith can lead to the healing of a friend. I don't know, but I know it's true. I can't unpack it for you theologically. I just know that when you have faith, it has an effect on those who are suffering.

So how important it is to grow our faith. There's this other reality that is in this story, and that is that it happens in a home. There's so many wonderful things that happen in a home. In the Gospel of Matthew, I won't reiterate all of them, but you remember Peter's mother-in-law being healed in a home. There's so many glorious things that happen in homes.

It's really the center of so much of the blessing of the kingdom of heaven. God has given you homes for that reason. To be a blessing to all those who come in and it become a lighthouse. Now, this woman had a number of things that are critical for salvation. And I just like to identify them for you.

Number one, she had a sense of need. She was aware of her own bankruptcy, her own spiritual and physical bankruptcy to do anything of any good. She had lost her hope in her own works. Second, she believed in Christ. She called, she believed she was the Messiah, the son of David.

She believed in his goodness and his sufficiency. I think she's a picture of the words of the hymn, nothing in my hand I bring only to the cross I cling. She forsook her trust in her former gods. And she had faith. So we leave this woman of faith, and we go to another place, into a mountain in the northeast side of the Sea of Galilee in the feeding of the 4, 000.

Now, the heart, I believe, of this section is found in the phrase, I have compassion on the multitude. Now there are many miracles that the Lord Jesus does, and what we find that under the providence of God, some of these miracles are repeated and actually recorded that they're repeated. It's possible that there were many miracles that were repeated but not recorded. But there's a reason that some miracles were recorded because they were repeated. And so here There's a repeat of the feeding of a large crowd of people.

He's repeating a lesson. We're not told exactly why he repeats it, but it seems that he's repeating it because they're not getting it. We learned that in chapter 16. They're not getting it. They do not understand the meaning of it.

And so, apparently, He's doing it to give them another course, another lesson. Now you know the Lord cleansed the temple twice. Once at the beginning of His ministry and He did it at the end. With the feeding of the 5, 000 and the 4, 000, there's a very short span of time, maybe a month or maybe just a few months that separated them. So it happened in fairly rapid order.

And I think one of the things that's here is that we don't learn everything we have to learn with everything we hear or see, because there's more to learn. Like you might learn a lesson, but you actually really only learn part of it. And so the Lord brings it back to you. He repeats it. This is why, you know, in Scripture, there are lots of things that are repeated Because there are things that just continually need to be acquired.

This is the way parents should operate too. You should be repeating things to your children. They should know your classic phrases. They should be so classic to them. They might come to a point where they say, oh, here I'm hearing that again.

Say it again. Say it again. That's what the Lord does in His discipleship of His children. He says it again. And now here, not a very long time, He's saying again something about feeding.

And The first feeding takes place in Galilee, composed mostly of Jews. This feeding takes place In Decapolis, which is a higher percentage, perhaps predominantly Gentiles, the first feeding was five loaves. This feeding had seven loaves. The first feeding was 12 loaves left over. This feeding, there's seven left over.

The first feeding, there were smaller baskets. The second feeding, there are really large baskets. So there are some differences. But I think the heart of the matter is the same. And so first of all, we notice the Lord's position on the mountain.

He goes to a mountain, verse 29, they skirted the Sea of Galilee and went up on a mountain here on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was a very remote place, and, You know, his going to a mountain has significance. We've said before that the Lord is also mirroring, He's mirroring Moses in the wilderness. Remember that there's a prophet like Moses? Well, Jesus is a prophet like Moses.

And he goes up to the mountain. And he does it several times. We get to chapter 17, it happens again on the Mount of Transfiguration. And Moses is actually there. And so the Lord is, He's playing out so many of the imagery or the images of the life of Moses because He is a fulfillment of Moses in every way.

And now he is standing on another mountain, the place of transcendence, the place of sovereignty, the place of absolute majesty being displayed to all of mankind upon a mountain, not hidden in a house. Though it brings light to all the house, that's one kind of majesty being communicated. But now there's a whole other level, and that is where he exerts his absolute power over every molecule that he determines to have mastery of. And here He's going to multiply molecules of bread. So here there are 4, 000, there are 4, 000 here, probably 16 to 20, 000 people.

Again, there's just an enormous crowd. Just think for a minute the scale of this scene here, of probably 16 to 20, 000 people all on a hill. And the Lord must have had a booming voice. I don't know how you picture him. This is why you should not draw pictures of Jesus and Make him into some kind of effeminate being Here's what here's one thing we do know he had a he had a voice to communicate to a very very large crowd of people And they were just captivated by him.

They would not leave him. They were so drawn to him that they stayed with him for three days. And They wouldn't even eat, or maybe they'd run out of food, something like that. Whatever it was, they hadn't had food for a while. Probably some brought a little bit of food, thought it would get them through the day, and it was gone, and they didn't realize how hungry their souls really would be.

And they stayed there. And they couldn't pry themselves away from him. It's because their food supply ran out, but they wanted bread from heaven more than they wanted the food that perishes. And so his words have come to them as having more value than even their own sustaining of their own bodies. This was not a people that was obsessed with their food.

They were obsessed with spiritual food. Imagine being the kind of person that cares more about your spiritual consumption than you do your physical consumption. Imagine that. I think we live in a world where people are so focused on their physical consumption, and it's possible that their spiritual consumption can take much reduced proportions. So you should always consider there are two kinds of nourishment in the world, and one is more important than another.

It's easy to allow the consumption of physical food to take so much of your focus and attention and energy that could have been delivered to spiritual plants. And so here, while we find this picture, we also have the Proverbs 31 woman who brings her food from afar like a merchant ship. So we should be bringing food. But she doesn't seem to neglect spiritual matters. But here, who was there?

The lame, the blind, the mute, the maimed, and many others. And they laid them down at Jesus' feet. Here you have more. You have this picture again, right before you have intercessors. You have these people who are bringing other people to Jesus.

And they went and they gathered up the lame and the blind and all these kind of people to bring them to Jesus. Again these relationships I'm sure happen like any kind of relationship that we ever have. You bump into someone, you meet them, and you're now connected to them. And you care about them, so you take them to the feet of Jesus. So again, you have two kinds of people.

You have the people who are brought and the people who are bringing. Those are the two kinds of people that are there. You know, we've said so many times, who are you in the story? Or who should you be in the story? Or who haven't you been like in the story that you ought to be like?

Those are really important questions to ask. But we have these people who are bringing people. And the multitude is marveling at what they saw. And then the Lord teaches His disciples. Now He seems now to, after having had a broad communication with the crowd, now He narrows His conversation with the disciples.

In verse 32, you can see it with me there. Now Jesus called His disciples to Himself. He called them, they came, and whether they were all by themselves or just in a subset close by, you know, in very close proximity, we don't know. But he says, I have, he tells them, I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with me three days and have nothing to eat, and I do not want to send them away hungry, lest they faint away." And so the Lord says that he has compassion. Now this is a very important term in the text and in Scripture at large.

And this word has to do with a deep, visceral connection with people, where your heart is moved. And the English word is calm Passion, right? Passion, you know what that is? Fiery feelings, emotions. Something rising up inside of your heart, and then calm with.

So with this thing inside of you. To feel deeply about someone, not withdrawn. If they're weeping, you are weeping. If they're in trouble, you are in trouble. If they're hurting, you're hurting.

You're connected with them. You're not you're not an independent Disconnected being in the world. You're not meant to live that way You are though meant to live With an upwelling of compassion when you meet someone you're not like a you're not like a dead person cool and unaffected at all. You're not like a zombie at all. You are a person who is being activated by the love of Jesus Christ.

So Christians should always be affected people, affected by those who are around us. Like the Lord Jesus here, to feel deeply. The Word appears all over the New Testament. In Matthew 9, the Lord sees the people and He felt compassion for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd. In Luke chapter 13, the Lord Jesus says, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

In Luke 19, he looks over the city and he weeps over it. In John chapter 11, when he heard that his friend Lazarus had died, and then he delayed. He treated the situation a little bit like the Syriac-Phoenician woman. He delayed. And people were not very happy that He delayed.

But then when He comes nearby, verse 35 says He wept. He wept. That was compassion. And so this whole principle of compassion is taught to us in so many places in Scripture. The Apostle Paul had it for the Philippians.

He said, How I long for you all because of the compassion of Christ Jesus himself. In Philemon 12, he speaks of the one whom he has such deep affection. In Ephesians chapter four, 32, we are commanded, instead, be kind and compassionate toward one another. In James five, verse 11, we read that the Lord is full of mercy and very compassionate. So the Lord tells his disciples something about himself.

He says, I have compassion on them. That's what was driving him. But that wasn't what was driving the disciples. You have to ask what is driving you. Are you driven by the things that were driving the disciples?

Or are you driven by the compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ? And these two things are placed just in perfect juxtaposition. The Lord says, I have compassion on them. And in verse 33, you can see where the disciples are parked on this matter. They say, where could we get enough bread in the wilderness to feed such a great multitude?

Now You can say, how blind is that? The Lord just days ago fed 5, 000 men. So why in the world would they even ask this question? Where could they get the bread? Where in the world could they get bread?

Don't you think it would just come to their mind immediately? But somehow it doesn't. And we look at that and we say, how ridiculous is that? Which reminds me of R.C. Sproul Jr.'s rules of hermeneutics.

The first rule of hermeneutics is when you see something that somebody does in the Bible that's stupid, don't say, look at how stupid that person is. Say instead, look at how many times I've done the same thing. And the second rule is if you see two people doing something stupid, ask how is it that I could be so much like both of those people. So They have a very self-focused perspective. They can only see themselves.

They can only see what is in their hands. And they do not have the wellspring of compassion that their Lord has. That's the difference between them. And that's often the difference between our Lord's sense of a situation and our sense of a situation. Because we're so worldly in our thinking.

We're so pragmatic and it just clouds our perspective. The looming consciousness of their lack of resources just lowers their vision of this majestic Almighty God who calms the winds and the waves, who changes water into wine. He feeds 5, 000, and why in the world is he not able to feed 4, 000? So it's interesting that if we just go back in the previous narrative, we have the great faith of a Gentile woman who's a dog, and we have the faithlessness of the disciples compared. This is why we should consider the Gospel writer.

What is the Gospel writer trying to say? Because the gospel writers are bringing out different things. And I believe this gospel writer is bringing out the difference between, he's showing his disciples what true faith and false faith looks like. He's been doing that all along. He's comparing the Pharisees with other people who do have genuine faith, and He's also dealing with the disciples.

There are these various parties that He's dealing with here. And so there's this very stark comparison. And so the Lord is stepping through his ministry. He's paralleling the almighty, majestic, all-providing God who was with the children of Israel in the wilderness, who gave them manna, where there was absolutely no possibility for food. They were in a wilderness area, And there was no way to get food.

And now the Lord Jesus has these 16, 000 to 20, 000 people. And there's really nowhere to get food. They've eaten it all up. It's gone. And they're in such a remote area that the ability to get food by any natural means is completely impossible.

They know that. They're just like the children of Israel in the wilderness. Is the Lord any different today than he was yesterday. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And he's that way with all of his children.

When they recognize that their necessities are not anywhere at hand, He provides for them. I know that's true. I have seen it so many times. And I know that there are people here who are fearing for their necessities. I just want to comfort you today.

You have a God who brings manna from heaven. You have a God who provides. Now it's possible that it's in your disobedience that you're in a season of privation. And you have this privation And this fear that is upon you is meant to drive you to have more faith in Him and actually to obey Him, and to be diligent with the resources and the time that God has given you. Because sometimes, privation has to do with direct disobedience to God.

But it's not always that way. It wasn't that way with this crowd at all. Their privation had nothing to do with their disobedience. But God brings His people to places where He must demonstrate, or He will demonstrate, His power to provide. And He does it over and over again, just like He did on that mountain, just like He did in the wilderness, just like He's done for you and my family for thousands of times cumulatively.

I wanted to give you seven things the Lord does here. Seven things the Lord does. Number one, He asks them a question, verse 34, How many loaves do you have? He asks them to take inventory. He's asking them to consider what they have.

They have to start with what God has given them. And I believe He's driving them to help them understand a man can receive nothing unless it's given them from heaven. That the flesh profits nothing. That I am the vine, you are the branches, for apart from me you can do nothing. Secondly, He commands them, and in his command is proclaiming his sufficiency.

So verse 35, he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. Here the Lord takes his place as the head of the household again in the feeding. For from Him, of Him, to Him, and through Him are all things. He is sovereign. He is taking action to deal with His people.

He is commanding them so that He might feed them. And then number three, He took the loaves in His hands, verse 36, and He took the seven loaves in His hands. So they are now in His hands. And that is the key to it all. What can happen with what is in Jesus' hands?

And then he gave thanks for the seven loaves. He was thankful for what was in his hands. And then he broke them, number five. He multiplied them with his own hands. And the verb tense that Matthew uses is continuous action.

There was just an endless supply from the hands of the Lord. It did not multiply in the disciples' hands. It multiplied in the Lord Jesus' hands. And then, number six, he gave the distribution to the disciples. And the disciples gave to the multitude.

The disciples were the delivery system. They were the middlemen. They were the friends who would come and bring the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ to the crowd. And then the result in verse 37, and they ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets full of the fragments that were left. Were left.

You know, how much more productive, how much sweeter were the products, the resources from the hands of Jesus than from their own hands. In their own hands it was small, in the hands of Jesus it was large and unlimited. And then number seven, Jesus sends them away. He sends the crowds away. Now those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children, and he sent away the multitude, got into a boat, and came to the region of Magdala." So there's a time to be fed and there's a time to be sent out.

And He's sending them back into the real world in the same way that He does on the Mount of Transfiguration. They want to stay and just hang with the glory that He doesn't let them do, that He sends them back down the mountain where the people are, where the meetings happen, where the relationships are built, where the intercessory work of Jesus Christ can be engaged. He sends them away back into their real world so that they can penetrate into the community. And they can tell of the great provision of the Lord Jesus Christ. So there you have it.

Two really remarkable, astounding stories to help us understand the world that we live in, our own hearts, to understand the majesty of God, to give us a vision of Him. To show us a woman who has true faith, her humble faith, her modest faith, her persistent faith. To show us disciples who are learning, who have a shepherd, who are teaching them about his compassion, so that they might learn from him, so that they might be his disciples in the world. And how dull they are, but yet how patient and how gracious He is to them. And so here we have seen such a beautiful testimony.

And I pray that it would give us the ability to examine ourselves. All of the relationships that we have, even our daughters, even the people in the community that we need, even those who are around us who are hungry and have need of something that only Jesus Christ can give. And that we would be more like our Lord who says, I have compassion on them, rather than the disciples who say, send them away. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, we were always amazed at your words and I pray that you would give us such a heart in us to hear and understand and obey these things.

Amen.