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We are currently studying the gospel by Matthew, and last week we embarked upon that section of narrative that Matthew has placed from the end of chapter thirteen of his gospel to the end of chapter uh seventeen. This is one of those sections largely given to narrative, as distinct from the other parts of that gospel that are devoted to recording some of the detailed teaching of our Lord.
Last week, when we began this particular passage, we first of all scanned the chapters to notice what, if any, dominant themes there were within this section. And we found it quite easy to notice the several times that Matthew records that this or that person or group of people came to realize that Jesus is the Son of God.
That is, this is a part of Matthew that emphasizes the deity of our Lord Jesus. Now that is, of course, important in any context, but for someone like Matthew, who is writing against the background of contemporary Judaism, then, of course, this is one of the major topics that he has to face. Why do these Christians insist that Jesus is not merely a prophet, but he is the Son of God?
And in what sense is it that he is the Son of God? And further, what made the early Christians think he was the Son of God. We notice what the Apostle John tells us in his first letter and chapter five, that it is important for us in our day and generation to believe in the deity of the Lord Jesus. For the secret of overcoming the world, says John, is our faith, not that our sins have been forgiven, important as that fact is.
But then, of course, if Jesus is not the Son of God, our sins aren't forgiven anyway. The secret of overcoming the world is a vigorous faith that Jesus is the Son of God. If he is the Son of God, if he i- if he is not the Son of God, we should be fools for suffering for him or sacrificing anything for him. If he is the Son of God, we should be utter and extreme fools not to sacrifice for him.
Then we notice that in this passage of Matthew, repeated reference is made to the Apostle Peter. For one very good reason, he was among the first to voice the fact when asked, along with the other disciples just who they thought Jesus was, Peter promptly replied, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And our Lord proceeded to say, thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.
It is the fact that the Christian church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, but it is likewise built upon that basic confession that Jesus is the Son of God. And if Christendom should, in any place and at any time, deny the deity of the Lord Jesus, then of course they show, would show themselves not to be on the foundation of that church that our blessed Lord built. Now, last week we saw how Matthew raises this question of the deity of Christ at the end of Ja- uh, chapter thirteen when he tells us that the locals in our Lord's own town and countryside found it difficult to account for him.
Whence, they said, has this man this wisdom and these mighty works? Is he not the carpenter's son? And if that's all that Jesus is and was, the carpenter's son, then there are certain difficult things, uh, that have to be explained. One, the wisdom that they noticed. He was not trained in the rabbinical schools. Yet his teaching was not only impressive to his contemporaries, it has lasted with great acclaim all down the centuries.
The teacher who first taught the story of the prodigal son, with its delightful literary qualities, let alone its potential to reach the heart. If not the Son of God was a literary genius. And if he didn't, uh, speak it, but this was a concoction of a few fishermen from Galilee, then perhaps we ought to bow down and worship them, I know not. Because it is a universal classic. Behind it, of course, is no mere human author.
And then how would you account for his mighty deeds if he were not, if he were merely the carpenter's son? So does Matthew introduce the topic, and we saw in our study last week how he presents our Lord Jesus against the background of the court of Herod and the supper that he gave on his birthday, and contrasted that with the messianic banquet that our Lord proceeded to give to the crowds, it is told us in chapter fourteen, thirteen onwards.
And then, in the night scene as the apostles crossed the sea in the boat, our Lord demonstrated himself to them as being in control of the physical forces of the universe. And the people in the boat forthwith confessed of a truth, thou art the Son of God. We saw again the relevance of that to the practical situations. If we are to be missionaries for Christ and are prepared to work for him, and if need be, suffer for him, we shall need a strong faith that Jesus Christ is a son of God, controller of even the physical forces of the universe.
For this cause, says Paul, opening his heart to Timothy, his younger servant, uh, fellow servant in Christ, for this cause we labor and are spent because we have our hope set on him who is the savior of all men, especially of those that believe. And we think of our brother Suptio at this moment. Only a conviction that Jesus Christ is not only the son of God, but the controller of the physical parts of the universe would sustain him in his particular work for Christ, with all the threats that are made against him.
Tonight we are to think of our Lord's claim to be the Son of God against the background, not now of politics, but of the religious authorities from Jerusalem. Why that is important, we shall think about in a moment. But before we come down to that, I would like to s- to pre- suggest to you a just a teeny weeny little literary problem, so that if you find my speech thereafter boring, um, you may forget what I'm saying and concentrate on the solution of the problem that I am now to set, you see.
I have been arguing that in these gospels, the stories that the writer selects are not put there simply because, well, it happened and and so I put it down. Something else happened. Oh, did it? Well, I put that down as well. An odd select- a selection of stories that have very little to do with each other. I have urged rather that we should assume that the stories, like the teaching, are coherent. They are deliberately chosen so that the message that together they present is a logical whole.
But here is a little exercise, uh, uh, uh, uh, and I suggest it to you. It certainly do- do- won't carry, uh, any health danger. And in chapter fourteen, verses, do you see, one to twelve, we read last week of the story of King Herod at his birthday party. There was the king himself, Herod the Tetrarch. There was a woman, though whether wife is the right term to use of her, she lived with him anyway, she was his brother's wife, really, but... Pardon?
Partner. Partner. Oh, thank you. He is a man up to date in his terminology. Uh, do you see a partner, yes. And uh, John the Baptist had publicly rebuked Herod for this illicit alliance. And the dear lady didn't like him. And she wanted him killed, executed. But Herod so far refused. He had him imprisoned. But he didn't want to execute him because he feared the people, they all held John to be a prophet. Ah, but the dear lady, um, she got round him, you know.
Sometimes they do. And, uh, do you see, um, uh, she had a daughter. Oh yes. And she sent the daughter in to dance, and the dance pleased Herod, and in a moment of irresponsibility, he promised to give her anything she asked, up to a half of his kingdom. She, not knowing what to ask, went to consult her mama, and she demanded the head of John the Baptist on a dish. And Herod was ashamed to go against his oath in front of all his birthday guests.
And he gave in to the woman, granted her what she requested. She got the head of John the Baptist on a platter. The king, therefore, and the woman, and the king not at once wanting to give her what she asked for, and the woman's daughter. And the king eventually, uh, forced by the dear lady to give against his will what she asked for. With that in mind, uh, from last week, let's look now at chapter fifteen, and I'm going to read you a story.
And I read it to s- uh, to to ask you to think whether there is any connection at all between this story that we are about to read and the one I have described from chapter fourteen. This is chapter fifteen and verse twenty one. And Jesus went out thence and withdrew into the parts of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanitish woman came out from those borders and cried, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David. My daughter is grievously vexed with a demon. But he answered her not a word.
And his disciples came and besought him, saying, send her away, for she cries after us. But he answered and said, I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But she, that is the woman, came and prostrated herself before him, saying, Lord, help me. And he answered and said, it is not right to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs. But she says, yes, Lord, but even so, even the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith.
Be it done unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was healed from that hour. And the little puzzle is, has that any similarities, that story, with the other one of a king, a woman, and her daughter? But don't feel obliged to answer it right now, because we have to set upon what is our major theme for this evening. And we come, therefore, to chapter, uh, 15 and verse, uh, one.
Then come to Jesus from Jerusalem Pharisees and scribes. We notice they come from Jerusalem. This was, of course, the theological and doctrinal center for Judaism. This is an official deputation. These are Pharisees, the stricter of the among the, uh, leading sects in Judaism, and scribes were just people who wrote out scripture, they were experts in the law. And they asked our Lord, why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?
For they wash not their hands when they eat bread. So the challenges from the religious authorities now, and the challenge is that our Lord is transgressing the tradition of the elders, and partic- in particular, this habit he had of allowing his disciples not to wash their hands when they ate bread. Now we shall immediately see, of course, that this has nothing to do with hygiene.
It's a very good thing to wash your hands before you eat bread, lest you infect yourself with some germ. But this was nothing to do with hygiene. This was a religious rule. The Pharisees would wash their hands before they ate the meal. Why? Because they had been downtown, for instance, and they had engaged in business, they had handled money, maybe, and the money might have been ha- handled by Gentiles, and Gentiles, simply because they were Gentiles, would defile whatever they touched. Because they didn't keep scrupulously to circumcision, to the laws of Moses, and so forth, and therefore they were defiled.
And so the Pharisee would wash his hands to get rid of that kind of defilement before he ate his bread. Where did they get the idea from? Well, of course, there were passages in the law of Moses that talked about washing your hands and indeed your feet. Exodus thirty, the priests and Levites had to wash their hands and feet at the laver before they engaged in the service of the Lord in the tabernacle. Or in the case of El- uh, elders, if it were discovered that somebody had been murdered and the corpse was lying out in the countryside and nobody knew who the murderer was, then the elders from the city that was nearest to the body had to go out and they had to wash their hands in water, uh, to, uh, uh, to express by that symbolic action that they weren't guilty of this
murder, nor was anybody from their city as far as they knew. Like Pilate, when he condemned the Lord Jesus, washed his hands in water, saying, it's not my fault, it's your decision. These were sensible commands in the law of Moses. But the elders, as the years had gone by, were not content with the words of scripture. They added to them, they added to them, they applied them in all sorts of situations, such as the Old Testament never envisaged, till they piled up the rules.
They did it not only with this matter, they did it in others too. There were six hundred and fourteen rules that people had to keep, and true religion became a matter of keeping the rules. For instance, the Old Testament forbade you to walk too far on a Sabbath day, the Sabbath day's journey, therefore. But you had to measure the distance from your house. Yes, but if, if you drew a wire or a cord from your house to the next door neighbor's house, that's all one house, isn't it? So you can start from the next door neighbor's house. And if you wired up all the houses down the street, that could count as your house.
And then you could start the measuring of the Sabbath day's walk from the end of the street, and so on. All sorts of endless rules and regulation that weren't in the word of God at all, but had been invented by the tradition of the elders. Now, at this stage, when Matthew was writing, most of these rules hadn't yet been written down. They came to be written down, uh, you'll see, in the subsequent decades and centuries, and form what we now call the Talmud. Lamed means to teach or to be taught.
The Talmud is a, a s- a collection of the interpretation of the elders and the scribes and so forth, and the rabbis all down the centuries. In the big Sonkino edition of the Talmud, there are thirty five volumes of all the different traditions of the elders. To this very present day, Orthodox Judaism regards the Talmud as far more authoritative than the Old Testament itself.
I was in the Hebrew University some years ago, uh, for a while, and I thought to take the opportunity of consulting a professor of Old Testament, who originally came from Oxford, but now was working in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an authority, as I thought, on Hebrew and the Old Testament, and I consulted him on the certain translation in the Greek Septuagint, do they? And when I asked him the question, he said, oh my boy, we don't know anything about the Bible. The Bible is for children, says he.
We study the Talmud. Earlier I had been, uh, working in the University of Durham, and a good Christian lady had made contact with a Jewish student in the Orthodox Seminary for Jews in Gateshead, and she had invited him one Sunday afternoon to come and meet me. He said he was going to bring his rabbi to meet me, do see, but the rabbi didn't turn up, and the student felt relieved, for he said, you know, if the rabbi had come, he would have spit at you. And anyway, he says, what is the sense of you Gentiles trying to understand the scripture?
The scripture is not for you. And anyway, we are saved, and the Bible says, who is like unto thee, O Israel, saved of the Lord? Salvation is not for you Gentiles. And anyway, he said, you can't understand the Old Testament. You'll have to read the Talmud. You can't understand the Old Testament by yourself. You have to listen to the rabbis and their interpretations. Of course, there came centuries when Christendom held that kind of view, that it's no good for people that try to understand the Bible. You must let the church interpret it.
So here come the scribes and the Pharisees, and they're questioning our Lord now because he didn't, he broke, he transgressed, as they had it, the tradition of the elders. Notice our Lord's reply. And he answered and said unto them, why do you also transgress the commandments of God because of your tradition? For God said, honor thy father and thy mother, and the one who speaks evilly or badly of father or mother, let him die the death.
That's what God said. But you say? Oh dear, notice the contrast. God said this, but you say, whoever shall say to his father or his mother, that wherewith thou mightest have been profited by me is given to God, he shall not honor his father. And you have made void, uh, the word of God because of your tradition. You hypocrites, where did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, this people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, but in vain do they worship me, teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men.
We should notice our- that our Lord didn't answer why he allowed his disciples to eat their food before they had washed their hands. That was a tradition of the elders. That's not in scripture. What he turned round on them now was this, that so very often their trans- their tradition actually contradicted what God says in his word. Why do you transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition?
You have made void the word of God because of your tradition. The doctrines you teach are the precepts of men, not of God, and they are therefore in vain. So let's take the actual case that our Lord mentioned. It is said that we have to honor father and mother. That's the positive thing, the positive command. On the negative side, whoever speaks badly, evil, disparagingly of father or mother is to be executed.
That is what God has said. You say. And the first thing that ought to astonish us is that when God had said something, they said something different. That is very serious, isn't it? You transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition. We should not be too hard on the Jews. We should remember we are part of Christendom, shouldn't we? And still today.
The Bible says that because Christ offered one sacrifice for sin forever, he has sat down. And therefore, says the Holy Spirit, there is no offering, there is no such thing as a process of offering anything at all for the forgiveness of sins. So says the Holy Spirit. Offering for sin has ceased. There is no such process. It's not only that there is no other sacrifice, but even the same sacrifice is finished.
Our Lord, having offered it, sat down. There is now no offering, no process of offering anything for the purpose of gaining forgiveness of sins. And yet, in multitudinous parts of Christ- Christendom, they say to this very present day, Lord, take this bread and wine, the work of our hands, and grant that it shall be accounted for us, become for us the body and blood of Christ. They proceed to offer it on the altar to get forgiveness of sins.
God says one thing. Christendom's tradition says another. That is an exceedingly serious thing. And here what God said was, honor your father and mother, but they said, if a man says to his parents, look, the sum of money I had that could have been, uh, of benefit to you, but I have pronounced it korban, that is meaning something offered to God.
Then, of course, he is relieved of responsibility. He shall not honor his father and mother. Oh. But scripture said you must. But they have introduced something that relieves him of the responsibility. And he shall not therefore, uh, honor his father and mother. Now the question of honoring father and mother is a question, isn't it? Not of paying them lip service or sending them a birthday card. It's a question of, if need be, supporting them financially in their old age.
That was very important in the ancient world, of course, when there were no such things as pensions or state aid, and people had a lot of children in the hopes that when they grew old, the children would maintain them. This was God's word, therefore, the responsibility of children when they have the means to support their parents in their old age. Under the guise of religion, of saying this money now is given to God. The Pharisees and scribes said that the person concerned was no longer duty-bound to maintain his parents.
It sounded very good, didn't it? It actually made void the word of God, emptied it of significance and authority. And that means that your worship, says Christ, built upon such things as this, is, uh, uh, in vain do you worship me, as Isaiah said. Because you teach as your doctrines, not God's word, but the precepts of men.
You will notice the gradation in our Lord's charge. Let me use a humble, uh, uh, a not really relevant illustration, but never mind. The law of the land says, you shall drive on the left hand side of the road in Great Britain, Josie. Okay? Imagine a driving instructor that took upon it himself to say, well, I know that's what the, uh, code says, but don't bother about that. I'm telling you, you should drive on the right hand side. Oh. So now the instructor is transgressing the law of the land.
Well, I suppose then, uh, you can drive on the right hand side if you want to. I see. So it's a matter of choice whether you drive on the left or the right. Mm. It appears to be in some countries, I've been there anyway, but quite apart from that. The next thing they go on to say, you shall not honor your parents. Ah. So now the driver instructor is saying, you shall drive on the right, and you shall not drive on the left. Ooh. Wow. That's going a stage further, isn't it? And if you ask what authority they have, the the government's driving code says on the left.
What they are teaching is not the government's authoritative law, but their own device and teaching. Why should our Lord be so strongly denounce it? Because in the first place, it was a misrepresentation of God. You see, our Lord is on record of saying, whoever comes after me and doesn't put in second place, that is to say, hate, says the Hebrew, but that means to put in second place his father and mother and his wife and family and all the rest of it, cannot be my disciple.
For if we give ourselves to Christ and he is our master and teacher, then his first condition is we put him first, absolutely first. But if we thus put him first, then one of the first things he will say to us is, look after your parents. And to take God's word concerned with a person's parents and, uh, pervert it in the name of religion. That is a serious misrepresentation of God.
I've given the money to the temple. I don't have to look after you. Oh dear, dear, dear, dear. What kind of a God is he in that temple? So he called the people to himself, Josie. Uh, verse ten. And he called the multitude and said unto them, hear and understand, not that which entereth into the mouth defileth the man, but that which proceedeth out of the mouth, this defileth the man. And once more, we're not talking, are we, about germs or eating the wrong kind of diet that can do you physical harm.
It's talking of religious ceremonial defilement. So it's not what goes in that defiles you in that sense, it what comes out of the heart defiles you. That he said to the, uh, pe- the people as a whole, summing up his tr- his teaching in those few words. But then came the disciples and said to him, knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? And our Lord said, oh, but we mustn't offend anybody. No, he didn't. He said, every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up.
These teachers are not plants that my heavenly Father has planted. How would you know that? They're teaching the very opposite of what his Father said and what his word said. And God, in the end, will root them up. And secondly, let them alone. They are blind guides, and if the blind guide the blind, both shall fall into a pit. And we notice how definite our words are. Follow that kind of teaching, you'll end up in the ditch for having disobeyed God's word. And he needed to say it, because now within comparatively few months, the Lord would be crucified, buried, risen again, and gone back to heaven, and these same apostles, Peter and company, would have to go out there and face the Sanhedrin.
It would be a question of whether they obeyed God or man, as Peter said to the, uh, members of the Sanhedrin. They forbade them. They didn't mind them doing miracles, but they forbade them to do them or to preach in the name of Jesus. The head of the Sanhedrin was a Sadducee. They had been responsible for the murder of the Lord Jesus. And now, of course, they didn't want the apostles teaching in the name of Jesus and saying Jesus has risen from the dead, and the apostles had to decide what to do. Should they bow down? They were only humble fishermen for the most part, and these were learned clerics.
Should they bow down to them or not? Here our Lord was preparing them for what lay ahead. In the very next chapter, he's going to say to Peter, on this confession I will build my church. And they would have to learn to assess the Pharisees and the scribes at their true value, insofar as they disobeyed God's word, contradicted it, and put in place, instead of God's word, their own teaching. Well, let them get offended. They are not plants that my father planted. And this is an important thing to lay hold of.
It's not a question of religious strife, it is a decision who has the authority to tell us what to teach and do. But Peter answered and said unto him, Declare unto us this parable. And our Lord replied, Are you also even yet without understanding? I suppose if you've been brought up to get off the pavement when the rabbi, um, passes by, and he's a learned man, and you're just a fisherman, it's difficult to take in.
There remains a kind of a conscience, isn't there? Afraid of the family, afraid of the rabbi, and so forth. So perhaps it took a little while for Peter, uh, to grasp what was being said. And you will remember that God in his mercy was kind to him. In the Acts of the Apostles, God sent a particular object lesson for Peter to clear Peter from the old rules of, uh, uh, eating as given in Old Testament and set him free to go and take the gospel to a Gentile centurion.
But he'd already le- learned where the authority was. Faced with the Sanhedrin forbidding him to preach, he openly said, well, it's a question, gentlemen. Uh, is it, is it better to obey God than men? We must obey the Lord Jesus. So we leave that sorry piece of history. The, our Lord's teaching challenged by the religious authorities from Judaism, and he as son of God, answering sternly and decisively, defending the character of God and his word.
But now in verse twenty one that follows, we come across a very interesting story. You'll see, there came out a, a Canaanitish woman because our Lord had gone into the parts of Tyre and Sidon. We should grasp how unusual this was. It was very rarely, as far as we're told in the Gospels, that our Lord went outside the country of Israel. Here, for a moment, he's gone out into Gentile countryside. And there came a woman, a Canaanitish woman.
Notice the adjective. She was a Gentile. And of course, as far as Jews were concerned, Gentiles were impossible sinners. Let me quote you Paul talking to Cephas. They're both Christians of some years, but they've had a disagreement, uh, uh, uh, do you see, uh, on this matter, and whether, uh, converted, uh, Jews were free to eat with converted Gentiles if the Gentiles weren't circumcised, do you see? Weren't keeping the old Mosaic law. And Pete, uh, Paul says to Peter, look here, Peter, my dear fellow, you'll say, we being Jews and not sinners of the Gentiles.
Did you notice that phrase when you last read Galatians? Sinners of the Gentiles. And Paul subsequently talking to converted Gentiles in Ephesus, he says, now I charge you that you no longer walk like the other Gentiles do, in all kinds of uncleanliness and immorality and pride and folly and ignorance of God. Gentiles, therefore, were regarded as being unclean, and here is our Lord going out to Gentiles. And what a lovely a harbinger of the dawning spring it is, when the gospel would eventually go outside of Judaism and go to the Gentiles.
Wonderful thing. It went outside of Judaism because, I'm afraid, the religious authorities forced it out of Judaism. And in many a synagogue, Paul had to turn around and say, because you thrust the gospel from you, lo, we go to the Gentiles. So now here's our Lord going across to the Gentiles, and he says, look here, Gentiles, we wouldn't, uh, come to you and tell you you're sinners at all, of course. I mean, we wouldn't be judgmental on anybody. Uh, we wouldn't say, uh, homosexuality is wrong.
I mean, it's popular among the Greeks and Gentiles, isn't it? Well, it is now, apparently, but it was originally to Greeks and Gentiles generally. No, he didn't say anything of the sort. There can... Oh, oh, I seem to remember now. You were going to tell me, weren't you, whether you saw any connection between that first story and this story. Mm-hmm. You remember what the first story was about? It was about a king, a man, you see. Yes. And a woman. And her daughter. And the woman wanted John the Baptist dead, but the man, King Herod, said no.
He was afraid to execute him because of the people. But this woman had a daughter and sent the daughter in to dance, and it pleased the king, and they promised to give her anything she liked after his kingdom. She went and consulted Mama, and Mama said, ask for the head of John Baptist. So the woman got her way in the end. They normally do, I believe, but that's not for me to say. Uh, you'll see. Uh-hum. Any connection at all? Anybody like to have a go at guessing? Any connection between that story, any glimmer of a similarity, and the story we're now about to read? Woman getting her way by persisting. Yes, a woman getting her way, yes.
Oh, yes. Against whom? Against Aman or against the king? Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, yes, the Lord appeared not to want to give it, yes? Uh, what was wrong with the woman? She was a Gentile. Yes, she was a Gentile. Any other piece in the story? What was she pleading for? Her daughter. Her daughter! Yes, yes, yes, yes. A man, a woman, and her daughter, yes, and they were Gentiles, the woman and her daughter. She had a demon.
Unclean, of course. The question is, how did she persuade Christ to give her what she wanted? And a fo- prior question is, why was Christ apparently unwilling to do what she asked? Any, any, any, any subject, uh, uh, uh, uh, suggestions? All suggestions gratefully received. Earlier he had told his own disciples, uh, to stay among the Jews. He did, didn't he? Yes. He was doing the same himself. He was doing the same himself. F.
W. Beer, he was meant to be a New Testament scholar, said the story is atrocious. Jesus being narrow-minded, he was only sent to the lost tribe of the house of Israel, and he wasn't interested in Gentiles, and she was a Gentile dog, and all this kind of thing. Why did our Lord at first seem to be unwilling? He was unwilling because those are the words that his father gave him to say. Yes. And he wanted to stimulate faith or expose faith if you were there. Yes, yes, yes. Yes.
Well, yes, let's, let's take up that, those very good suggestions, sir. Because at first our Lord said, I was not sent but to the lost tribe of the house of Israel, do you see? And when the woman persisted, uh, and the apostles said, oh Lord, send her away. They probably meant give her what she asked and get her going. We can't be bothered by Canaanitish women. Um, and our Lord said, but no, no, it is not right to take the children's bread and give it to dogs. Well, granted, he said little dogs. I'm not sure that that relieves the, uh, im- implication of the word dog, for the ancients didn't treat dogs as pets.
They were unclean animals. What was he doing? Well, listen to the woman. She didn't say, you impossible, stuck up Jewish preacher, I want nothing to do with you or your religion. She didn't. She said, Lord, you're positively right. That wouldn't be right to take the children's bread and give it to dogs. And we are Gentile dogs. But Lord, even the dogs under the table eat of the crumbs that fall from the master's table.
Mm. And our Lord replied, what magnificent faith. Did he not? Yes, listen to the woman. God is so big. Yes, Israel is in a special position. We are Gentile dogs, and in our uncleanness, her very daughter was inhabited by a demon, and Mark tells us it was an unclean demon. The woman was facing the facts. They were unclean Gentiles. But God was so big that, uh, there would be some crumbs that fell over the table after Israel had eaten to them.
Was it not right that the Gentiles should get a crumb or two? Marvelous. And he brought her to repentance, acknowledgement of her uncleanness, not seeking to make friends and saying what was unclean wasn't unclean. Like the tendency of religion is nowadays, and bring her, what is more, to faith. So one, uh, one little quote from later on in the New Testament will help to secure the message in our mind.
I quote you from Acts chapter fifteen. Acts chapter fifteen. When there arose a, a dispute among the early Christians, there were some who came down from Judea, Acts fifteen one, and taught the brothers, saying, unless you be circumcised after the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. And verse five, there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees who believed, saying, it is needful to circumcise them and to charge them to keep the law of Moses. Among those who replied was first and foremost Peter.
Verse seven, brethren, he said, you know how that a good while ago God made choice among you that by my mouth the gospel should hear the word of the gospel and believe. He's talking about the way God sent him to preach the gospel to the Gentile Cornelius. And God, who knows the heart, bear them witness, giving them the Holy Spirit, even as he did- did to us. How could God possibly give unclean Gentiles the Holy Spirit, is the point at issue. Well, says Peter, verse nine, that is what happened, and he made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.
How did our Lord cleanse the woman and her daughter. He provoked her repentance and then her faith and cleansed her heart by faith. Marvelous, that, isn't it? We live in a defiled world. This our task, not to say defilement doesn't matter, but to preach the glorious gospel that will bring people, one, to repentance by pointing out the seriousness of sin and then showing them the marvelous greatness and bigness of God who can cleanse our hearts by faith.
It is our conviction, said Paul, said Peter, that it is by the grace of the Lord Jesus we shall be saved, even we Jews, exactly and in the same way as the Gentiles are saved. The result was that our Lord went up into a mountain. It was by the Sea of Galilee, but it was on part of that s- uh, uh, coast of the sea that was in Gentile territory, and he went up a mountain, and the crowds came out of the Gentile parts, even when our Lord was here on earth, and flocked to him on the mountainside, and he healed them of their various, uh, diseases, uh, and distresses.
And the result was, and they glorified the God of Israel, says Matthew. That wouldn't make a lot of sense if they were Israelites to start with, would it? It was because these were masses of Gentiles. They glorified in the name of Christ, the God of Israel. I'm in the habit of telling my Jewish friends, if they do- bother to talk to me, that I'm an old Gentile. I don't believe in just any old God. I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And then I tell them who, who led me to believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
It is Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord. What a lovely collocation of ideas it is, that even our Lord, he rebukes the, uh, Pharisee and the scribe for their unfaithfulness to Holy Scripture and their substitution of mere man's idea on religion instead of God's word. Then he goes to the Gentiles, doesn't minimize their uncleanness, but leads them to repentance and to faith, and multitudes glorify the God of Israel.
And we who meet here tonight... are those of the Gentiles, are we not? Shall we not just bow our hearts and bless God for the coming of his dear Son? Our Father, we thank thee together in the name of our Lord Jesus, that thou art so infinitely great in thy holiness, but also in thy grace, long suffering, and thy mercy. We thank thee for the name of our Lord Jesus, for the coming of thy Son, which has shown us Gentiles who were afar off the magnificence of God's mercy, and we bless thee that we sit here tonight in the enjoyment of thy grace.
Help us, Lord, to learn our lessons from thy dear Son, that we might take the right and appropriate attitude to the world around us, where so much i- i- of religion has compromised with sin, that we ourselves might be faithful to thy word, but on the other hand, fill our hearts with thy grace and thy sympathy, that we, by the grace of thy Holy Spirit, might lead many Gentiles and Jews as well to the feet of the Savior. So we commit us to thee and thank thee for the refreshments that we shall enjoy together through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
