The Universality of Defeating Jesus

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Rosebrook. The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, the 15th chapter.

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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, oh

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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.

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He answered, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But she came and knelt before him saying,

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Lord help me. And he answered, it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

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She said, yes, Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.

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Then Jesus answered her, oh woman, great is your faith. Be it done for you as you desire. And her daughter was healed instantly.

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This is the gospel of the Lord in the name of Jesus. So in our gospel text, you have

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Jesus legitimately ignoring, not answering the cries of a Gentile woman whose daughter is oppressed by a demon.

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And this account just digs up all kinds of pain and agony if you think about it, and a lot of anxiety because we

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Gentiles, we folks who have like zero Jewish blood in us, we oftentimes are made to feel by bad theology that somehow as Gentiles, we are lesser citizens of the kingdom of Christ, that we're not as loved as the people of Israel were loved.

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And this really kind of digs that whole thing up. But in the midst of all of this, this woman legitimately wrestles

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Jesus to the ground with his own words and defeats him. So we're going to take a look at this question, you know, is, is

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Christianity really only for Jews? We all know the answer, but it's good for us to actually biblically hash this out so that we don't end up with some kind of a weird concept where we got this two -tiered

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Christianity. One tier, the top tier, are those who are genetically related to Abraham, and then there's the second tier, the unwashed, well, maybe the washed masses like us, who we can never aspire to be in that top tier.

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That's not how the kingdom of God works. And when Jesus says, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, that's a true statement, by the way.

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And note where he made that statement. He made that in the district of Tyre and Sidon. He said that in Gentile territory, and we'll talk a lot about that.

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But let's open up with our epistle text, shall we? Paul asks this question in Romans 11,

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I ask then, has God rejected his people? By no means. I myself am an

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Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin, Paul writes. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew, that's an important qualifier.

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Whom he foreknew, talking about God's election to salvation. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how

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Elijah appeals to God against Israel? That's the next part of this text.

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And note, that's an important bit. Paul is basically pointing these Gentiles who have been grafted into Israel, these

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Gentiles who have been grafted into the cultivated olive tree, and they are branches that have been brought in, although they are wild branches, brought into a cultivated olive tree.

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And he reminds them, let's think through this biblically, shall we? You guys remember the whole

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Elijah and Mount Carmel incident? Who was Elijah going mano a mano with?

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Who was he going toe to toe with? Was it a bunch of Assyrians, a bunch of Persians, a bunch of Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Jebusites, Uptites, and Balletites?

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No, he wasn't going up against any of them. He was going up against people who genetically were descendants of Abraham, and they were worshiping

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Baal. And to give you a preview of what's coming up in our study of the book of Ezekiel, I would note that throughout the

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Old Testament, the examples are multitudinous of people who are genetic descendants of Abraham, who engage in all kinds of gross and egregious and worthless sins and commit all kinds of abominations against God.

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And if you would like to follow along, I'd like to walk you through a great example of this found in the book of Ezekiel chapter 8,

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Ezekiel chapter 8. And here, let me give you the context, Ezekiel was a fellow who was a priest.

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He's a Levite who was taken into the Babylonian captivity in the first round.

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When we read through the book of Jeremiah, we recognized that there were three rounds of exiles taken into exile in Persia, in Babylon, and Ezekiel went in round number one.

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And because of that, the temple was still up. The temple had not been destroyed by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar yet.

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And God was prophesying its imminent destruction. And in chapter 8, we see something fascinating happen, and that is that God, and we'll say

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Christ and the Holy Spirit, take Ezekiel in the spirit, in a vision, back to Jerusalem.

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And the way he ends up there is kind of a little, it's a little abrupt, it's a little bit violent if you think about it, but he ends up back in Jerusalem and God is deciding that he's going to reveal to him four abominations that are taking place in the temple in Jerusalem.

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And again, all of the primary players here, they are Jews. These are not only

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Jews, these are people of the tribe of Judah, genetic descendants of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah.

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If anybody should have some kind of a genetic inside track with God, it's these folks, right?

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But that's not how this plays out. Let's take a look at Ezekiel chapter 8. It says in the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the fifth day of the month, and I would note something here, and that is that this is the sixth year of the

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Babylonian captivity. He's been in captivity for six years. And still the temple is up, but it's about to be destroyed.

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And scholars have actually pinned this specific vision from Ezekiel chapter 8 to the middle of September of that particular year.

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They actually kind of figured out where it took place. Some scholars think they can actually pinpoint the day.

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I'm always a little weary of that. But middle of September of the sixth year of the

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Babylonian exile, Ezekiel says, as I sat in my house with the elders of Judah sitting before me.

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That's an important point because when you read the earlier chapters of Ezekiel, Ezekiel is tasked by God to do some really strange things.

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Most notably, he has to prophesy in a way that involves his body, not his words.

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It's a prophetic act. And so he legitimately lays on his left side for more than a year, and then lays on his right side for about 60 days, two months, all in front of what

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I call Lego Jerusalem. He'd created a little model of Jerusalem depicting its eminent destruction and things like this.

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And he'd had to do this while every day eating a recipe of bread that God gave him that was cooked over dung.

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Lovely stuff when you think about it. What kind of Bible are we reading here?

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It's scandalous stuff. Okay, despite all of that really weird stuff that Ezekiel is doing, he's got the attention of the elders of Judah, and they're sitting before him listening to see if God is going to speak to him.

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And it says, the hand of Yahweh, sorry, the hand of the Lord Yahweh fell upon me there.

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And then I looked and behold a form that had the appearance of a man. Below what appeared to be his waist was fire, and above his waist was something like the appearance of brightness, like gleaming metal.

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This is an appearance of the pre -incarnate Christ, if you would. This is God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, appearing to him, similarly the way he appeared to John in the book of Revelation.

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So he put out the form of a hand, took me by a lock of my head, grabbed him by his hair, and the spirit then lifted me up between earth and heaven and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem.

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Can you imagine being yanked by God by your hair? I think of poor Jeff Kenny, I don't think it's possible for God to do that.

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Sorry I just had to bring that up. So you're spared from this particular prophetic thing.

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But he's now in Jerusalem, and it's in a trance really, it's in a vision. And so he lifted me up between heaven and earth, brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem, to the entrance of the gate of the inner court that faces north, where was the seat of the image of jealousy.

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Now a little bit of a note here. When you read this in the Hebrew, image of jealousy, it's an interesting phrase because the word image is the word semel, which is not

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Hebrew. It's a word, it's a loan word from, well, the people who originally thunk up Asherah.

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Okay, it's from their language that's plugged in here. So the hint is actually quite strong as to what's going on when you see it in the

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Hebrew. If you remember, it was Manasseh who made it so that Yahweh had a girlfriend and put that image of Asherah inside the

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Holy of Holies. And then his grandson Josiah, upon hearing the

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Torah for the first time in his life, realized that they were sinning greatly against God. And he brought reforms about, and he got rid of that image, and he got rid of all the terrible things that were going on in the temple in Jerusalem by way of idolatry.

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But after his death, it's clear here from what this text is saying that as a dog returns to its vomit, so these people have returned to their idolatry, and that image of Asherah is now back in the temple complex.

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And God calls it a smell of jealousy, and it provokes to jealousy, and behold, the glory of the

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God of Israel was there like the vision that I saw in the valley. So then he said to me, again, this is

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Jesus talking, son of man, lift up your eyes now toward the north. So I lifted up my eyes towards the north, and behold, north of the altar gate in the entrance was this image of jealousy.

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And he said to me, son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here to drive me far from my sanctuary?

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But you will see still greater abominations. You'll note here that God isn't sitting there going, well, you know, they're

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Jews, it's no big deal. They have an inside track with me, everything's fine. I mean, I just need to learn how to be not so sensitive, right?

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That's not how this works. So you'll note that God here is talking in terms of him being driven away by their abominations, by their idolatry.

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And here's the other part, I've been debating with myself whether or not to bring this into my sermon, and I've decided to bring it into my sermon, okay?

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And you'll note when we get to the book of Ezekiel in our Bible study, there are several admonitions in the book of Ezekiel where God is appealing to the children of Israel saying,

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I married myself to you. And he says,

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I'm done with you, I'm issuing you a certificate of divorce. And you'll note that God had grounds for divorce based upon adultery, where the idolatry always in the

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Old Testament is reckoned as the spiritual version of adultery, cheating on him.

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But here's where it gets really weird. If you kind of have to think this through.

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Since the worship that they were engaging in, the idol that they wanted to worship rather than Yahweh, was a

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She -Ra, Israel, like the church, is always likened to being the bride of God or the bride of Christ.

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But if the bride is decided to get rid of the husband and instead worship a female deity, the bride is engaging in a lesbian relationship.

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And it's gross to its core. And it's so abominable that God is just legitimately so angry he has to show

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Ezekiel what's going on, reveal to him the truth of how awful all of this is.

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And then by the time we get to chapter 10, we won't get to it in the sermon, but by the time you get to chapter 10,

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God's glory has lifted from the temple and he's out of there. He's gone. And what comes as a result of all of this is

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God's judgment. So you're going to see greater abominations. So he brought me to the entrance of the court.

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And when I looked, behold, there was a hole in the wall. Then he said to me, son of man, dig in the wall.

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So I dug in the wall. And behold, there was an entrance. And he said to me, go in and see the vile abominations that they are committing here.

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So I went in and saw. And there engraved on the wall all around was every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts.

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And I know the ESV says, and all the idols of the house of Israel, but the Hebrew is a little stronger.

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Let me give you a more literal translation. So engraved on the wall, every form of creeping thing, loathsome beasts, and all the fecal deities of the house of Israel.

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Yeah, there is only one joke and God likes to use that one too. Okay. Wow. God calls them fecal deities.

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It's an interesting phrase in the Hebrew. So all of that being said, you'll note that sin makes us ridiculously stupid.

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It turns the created order on its head. So much so that, you know, you look at what's happening now where people are legitimately rejecting the sex that God has made them.

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You know, you're born a man, well, you can become a woman, you know, and that way you can play on the women's soccer team and beat everybody else, right?

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It's crazy stuff. But on top of that, think about the order of creation. When you go back to the book of Genesis, God created the heavens and the earth and man is the pinnacle of God's creation, created in his image.

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And God endowed man with the task of basically being the stewards of the earth in his stead.

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And that man is the Lord of the animal kingdom, in charge of it.

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But in this idolatry, everything now is flipped. Human beings are now subjected to the whims of these false gods that take on the forms of every kind of animal under the sun that you can think of.

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Have you ever seen, you know, the hieroglyphic depiction of the deities of Egypt and the ancient world?

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They're always depicted as some kind of animals and things like this. And one completely silly, stupid thing is,

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I don't serve cows, they serve me, right? And you can see this playing out in places like India, right?

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If you were to visit Calcutta or Delhi or head over to a different portion of India, one of the things that you're going to see in common with all the cities of India is that cows roam freely and you're not allowed to touch them, harm them, or do anything to them because it could potentially be your great aunt

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Gertrude reincarnated, right? And as a result of it, there's people starving in India while meat cows are wandering the streets and they could easily have barbecue for months at a time, but no, you cannot kill these things.

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Again, it shows you that idolatry legitimately flips everything on its head to the point where humans just behave delusionally, best way to put it.

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So here's what's happening now. Ezekiel has climbed in through a wall into an inner chamber inside the temple complex and in this inner chamber he sees all these vile abominations and depictions written or drawn on the wall in paint of some kind of all of these false animal deities.

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And so he says, I went in and I saw, and they're engraved on the wall around in every form of the creeping things, the fecal deities of the house of Israel.

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And before them stood, listen to this, 70 men of the elders of the house of Israel with Jaazaniah, the son of Shaphan standing among them.

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Now let me explain the details here, 70 elders. These are the chiefs of the clans of Israel.

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This is the same number of chieftains who ascended Mount Sinai and ate in the presence of God with Moses.

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And if you remember, there was a time when Jesus sent out 70 of his disciples. This is not an insignificant number.

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And these are the top mucky mucks of the government. And they're all engaging in this idolatry and they're doing this in the dark and in secret, kind of secret society

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Gnosticism stuff going on, right? And so in our day, you'll note that there's all kinds of interesting conspiracy theories related to the leaders of planet earth and our own government and stuff like that, that they may be engaging in all kinds of weird pagan

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Gnostic beliefs and practices and religious stuff like this. I would note, there's nothing new under the sun.

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That's what was happening with the government and the top leaders of Judah of Ezekiel's day.

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And God lays bare before his eyes their very practices in their secret inner chambers, right?

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And one has to wonder, what was the knock necessary to get in the door, right?

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So there they were. And Jaazaniah, the son of Shaphan, let me help you out with that. Shaphan, if you remember, back at the time of Josiah, Shaphan was the high priest or the priest who found the scroll of the

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Torah in the temple and gave it to Josiah to read. So he's a notable fellow and a great participant in the reforms of Josiah in bringing the people of Israel back to a true worship of God and getting rid of all of these idols.

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And then three of Shaphan's sons are mentioned in the book of Jeremiah. And they are all notable helpers and defenders of Jeremiah.

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But here you've got the odd sheep, Jaazaniah, whose name in Hebrew means the

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Lord hears or Yahweh hears. It's an interesting name. He's the one leading the people, these elders, in this worship of these false gods.

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And have I mentioned a single pagan among them? They're all Jews. And they don't have any kind of an inside track.

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So Jaazaniah, the son of Shaphan, was standing among them. Each had his censer in his hand. The smoke of the cloud of incense went up.

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And then he said to me, Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of pictures?

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For they say, Yahweh does not see us. Yahweh has forsaken the land.

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It's an interesting kind of catch -22, if you think about it. Because at this point,

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Jeremiah is still alive. Jeremiah is still prophesying. And rather than listening to the voice of God through the prophet

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Jeremiah so that they would understand why they are experiencing the difficulties that they are experiencing, they have just basically said, well,

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Yahweh doesn't hear us anymore. He's not listening. He's nowhere to be found. It's because you drove him away with your idolatry.

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And Jeremiah has made that clear. And God has said, if you repent, he will save you.

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But here they are basically, well, worshiping Yahweh has gotten us nowhere, so we might as well worship all of these false gods of these other nations.

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So God said to Ezekiel, you will see greater abominations that they commit.

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So then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of Yahweh, and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz.

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Now, this is the only place in all of scripture where Tammuz is mentioned. And Tammuz is one of these deities that actually has different names, depending on which region of the ancient world you lived in.

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But for our sake, we'll just note that Tammuz, the way the myth goes regarding Tammuz, it's that when he weeps, when he cries, his tears are what becomes rain.

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And so he's the one who feeds the crops that causes them to grow.

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And so if your farm is a little dry and in need of rain, then what you do, you have your women weep for Tammuz, which will then make him sad and make him cry, so that the rain will come and water your crops.

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He's a fertility deity. And this is taking place in the temple complex.

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So then he said to me, have you seen this, O son of man? You're going to see even greater abominations than these.

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You know, it sounds like the ELCA as I'm reading this chapter. It just really does.

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So then he brought me into the inner court of the house of Yahweh, and behold, at the entrance of the temple of Yahweh, between the porch and the altar were about 25 men, and listen to the details, with their backs to the temple of Yahweh, and their faces toward the east, worshiping the sun toward the east.

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In their worship of the sun, they have turned their back on the one and only deity that exists and the one who can help them.

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And again, I note, there isn't a pagan among them. These are all genetic descendants of Abraham.

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And all of them are engaging in this, and we'll see what God's judgment is, it goes on.

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So then he said to me, have you seen this, O son of man? Is it too light of a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations that they commit here, that they should fill the land with violence and provoke me still further to anger?

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Behold, they put the branch to their nose, therefore I will act in wrath.

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My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. And though they cry in my ears with a loud voice,

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I will not hear them. You'll note that God has chosen, because of the name of Jaazaniah, Yahweh hears, that he's basically, he's riffing off of that saying, even though they cry out to me,

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I'm not going to hear them at all. But these are Jews, these are special people, these are people who glow in the dark just by their genetics, and they have an inside track with God.

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No they don't, and chapter nine helps clear this up even better. So then he cried,

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God cried, Jesus cried in Ezekiel's ears with a loud voice saying, bring near the executioners of the city, each with his destroying weapon in his hand.

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And behold, six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his weapon for slaughter in his hand, and with them was a man clothed in linen, with a writing case at his wrist, and they went in and stood beside the bronze altar.

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If this sounds like something from the book of Revelation, it should. Because the same imagery of judgment is going on, these seven folks are actually angels sent to carry out

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God's wrath, and you'll note that this is all done in a spiritual vision, which eventually takes place in actual history, with the armies of Nebuchadnezzar coming in for a second round.

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Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub on which it rested to the threshold of the house,

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God's glory is lifting up and going away, and he called to the man clothed in linen, who had the writing case at his waist, and here's what

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Yahweh says, Yahweh said to him, pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a towel on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over the abominations that are committed in it.

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And I note that in the ESV it says put a mark, but the Hebrew says put a towel.

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Let me help you out here, ancient Hebrew, the towel was made by the sign of the cross.

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Kid you not, Google it if you don't believe me, right? So you'll note, those who are groaning and sighing and lamenting over all the abominations that are being committed in the house of Yahweh, they get a cross put on their head, think

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Ash Wednesday, and they are the ones who live.

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Everyone else dies. And that's the point.

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You see, being a genetic descendant of Abraham gets you nowhere because according to the

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New Testament that clearly teaches, it is those who have the same faith as Abraham who are the ones who are considered to be the children of Abraham.

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Full stop. And here we see this playing out. God now is going to act in judgment, and only those who moan, groan, sigh, and lament all the apostasy going on inside of Yahweh's house, they are the ones who get the cross put on their head, and they get to live.

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Everyone else is treated like refuse. And God acts in wrath.

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It's the same in salvation, is it not? You persist in sin and unbelief, do you think for a second that you can play the genetic card on the day of judgment?

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No, it doesn't work that way, and that's what this text is pointing to. So all the others, he said, in my hearing,

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I want you to pass through the city after him, strike and strike. Your eye shall not spare, you shall show no pity, kill old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one on whom is the towel, on whom is the cross, and begin at my sanctuary.

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So they began with the elders who were before the house, and they said to him, defile the house and fill the courts with the slain, go out.

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So they went and struck in the city, and while they were striking, I was left alone. I fell upon my face and I cried, ah,

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Lord Yahweh, will you destroy all the remnant of Israel in the outpouring of your wrath on Jerusalem?

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Of course not. God left a remnant by faith, right?

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Now all of that is to say that this makes it clear. Salvation is universally offered to Jew and Gentile, to those of the house of Abraham and every other clan on the face of the earth that was dispersed among the face of the earth at the time of the

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Tower of Babel. It doesn't matter who your genetic line comes from.

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The gospel goes out to all of us. And so now we are left in our gospel text knowing full well that Christ has truly come for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

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What he said to this woman was true, but Romans 9, 10, and 11 make it clear that not all who are descendant from Israel are of Israel.

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And so that plays into this so that we do not despair and think that we don't somehow have a proper status before God because we are all

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Gentiles. Now let me read the story. Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre in Sidon.

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Jesus is on pagan turf. This is like the Dodgers traveling to San Francisco and playing at their stadium.

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He doesn't have home field advantage. This is their territory. This is their turf. And we all know that it's an abomination whenever anyone has to play in San Francisco, especially the

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Dodgers, but that's a whole other story. And behold, I love how it says this in the

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Greek. It just says, edu, behold, a Canaanite woman from that region. Well, are there any other kind of women from that region?

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A woman from that region came out crying and here's her prayer. Have mercy on me,

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O Lord, son of David. My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. Every time

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I read this text, I just sit there and go, who catechized this woman? Because she's got really good theology.

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In fact, better than a lot of the people who were living in Judea at the time. She knows that Jesus is the

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Lord. She knows that Jesus is Yahweh. She knows that he's also the son of David, which means she has some inkling as to how the incarnation works, and she recognizes by calling him the son of David that he's the rightful king of Israel and that he is also the

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Messiah. How did she put all of this together? Was there somebody on TikTok who kind of put this all together for her?

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I don't know. It doesn't say. But we also know that her daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.

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And if she were appealing to a pastor at an independent fundamentalist

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Baptist church, they would say, well, that's what she gets for playing with the Ouija board during the time when she had her friends over for a slumber party, right?

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They would just blame her and chastise her and say, this is what happens. But Jesus doesn't do that.

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He does something actually worse. He didn't answer her a word. Awkward.

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That is just really awkward. He didn't say anything to her.

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And last time I preached on this text, I made the connection between her and Jacob, right?

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Jacob, who wrestled with God, right? Because you'll note that this wrestling match that she's having with Jesus, although it's not physical, it's a bonafide wrestling match.

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This is a challenge. This is basically her trying to defeat Jesus, to get him to bend to her need and her will, right?

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Jacob, when he wrestled Christ out at the fort of the Jabbok River, he beat

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Jesus. It doesn't make any sense, but it does. But in this context, we see a similar thing going on.

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And you're going to note, we all should know what this is like. Because how many of us, in the middle of our deepest need, referencing our sermon hymn, have felt that God hasn't answered our prayers?

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Have you noticed that as soon as you pray, it's not like five minutes later, it's like all of a sudden there's a ring on the doorbell and somebody comes delivering your answer to your prayer on a silver platter.

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I think of David in Psalm 13, and listen to the words of the opening of Psalm 13.

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How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

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And add a little bit of context here. Think about it. David is the anointed but not yet coronated king of Israel, and the anointed and coronated king of Israel is trying to kill him.

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And so he's chasing David throughout the Judean wilderness and trying to hunt him down like he's a dog with the intent that when he catches him, he's going to put him to the sword and kill him.

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So I like to, when I read Psalm 13, read it like this. David's on the run going, how long,

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O Lord, will you forget me forever, right? He's on the run. He's moving.

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How long must I take counsel in my soul, have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?

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How long, O Lord, will I have to endure my body falling apart?

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How much longer do I have to endure my own sin? How much longer are you going to allow people to persecute me for my confession of Christ?

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How long, O Lord, right? We all have these things, right? Because you're going to note, many of us find ourselves in circumstances that are quite painful and they just continue to drag on out.

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How long, O Lord? And you'll note the resolve here.

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He says, consider and answer me, O Yahweh, my God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemies say

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I've prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I'm shaken. But verse five, he says, but I've trusted in your steadfast love.

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My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. That's David's way of saying, yeah, I've defeated you, Jesus.

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I've wrestled you to the ground. But remember that name. When Jacob wrestled Jesus all night long and then beat him, again, work this out with me here.

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It doesn't make sense, but it makes sense. At the end of this, Jacob said, bless me. I want you to bless me.

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He knew that he could receive a blessing from. So what did Christ do? He changed his name.

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To what? Israel, the one who struggles with God and prevails.

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So here in our text, we have an example of one of the lost sheep of Israel, struggling, wrestling with Christ.

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Will she prevail, right? So Jesus doesn't answer her a word, just like he doesn't oftentimes answer us a word when we cry out to him in the middle of our needs.

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And so his disciples came and begged him, saying, send her away. She's crying out after us. Maybe she knew the names of some of the disciples because word had gotten out.

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Peter, Peter, I know that that's your name, right? Jesus just changed your name to Peter, right? And yet you tell

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Jesus he needs to help me. Woman, he doesn't know what to do because Jesus is

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Lord and Jesus isn't responding to her. So should Peter respond to her? How about John or Thaddeus, right?

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Or you get the idea of Bartholomew or Simon, the zealot, should they be responding to her?

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Well, nobody's responding to her. They just come to Jesus, send her away. Would you? So he says,

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I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. True statement. But we know from Romans 9, 10, and 11 that because this woman has faith, she's already grafted in.

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She's part of Israel, just like you and I are. But she doesn't have that much of an understanding.

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So she came and she knelt before Jesus saying, and I like to think that she's probably trying to like be humble and at the same time trying to look him in the eye.

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Because when one prays, one doesn't look your God in the eye, but she's saying, Lord, help me.

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And I cannot help but think that she looks at him and goes, I know you can help me. She is wrestling with Christ here.

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Help me. And then he rebuffs her. It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

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And with that move, Jesus created a huge blunder. He left his king open for attack and now comes the checkmate.

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Because with that move, Jesus has given this woman the ammunition to not only win, but to completely defeat

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Jesus. She sees the move like a master chessman. And she says, ah, yes,

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Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table. I'm a dog, okay?

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So give me my crumbs. Checkmate.

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So he says, oh woman, great is your faith. But the thing is, is her faith wasn't produced in the middle of this wrestling match with Jesus.

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It already existed before she even came to him. He was pointing out what others couldn't see, but he did see.

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And in this difficulty that she went through, he wasn't mistreating her. He was testing her faith.

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And she rose to the challenge and she pinned Jesus to the ground, checkmated him with his own words.

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Be it done for you as you desire, Christ says, and her daughter was healed instantly. What does this have to do with us?

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What's this stuff about defeating Jesus and wrestling with God and all of us being in Israel?

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Remember, we have all been grafted into Israel. The scripture is clear. We are the ones who have that name as a family name.

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We are all Israelites. We are those who wrestle with God and prevail.

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And let me tell you that in doing so, that is how we are saved. Not because we prevail against him in our prayers, but because when

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God himself, second person of the Trinity, was born of the Virgin Mary, we wrestled with Christ.

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We put him on trial. We found him guilty. We had him scourged and we defeated him by pinning him to a cross.

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The God who desires to be defeated. I mean, think about it.

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What is more preposterous that Jacob defeated Christ at the

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Jabbok River in a wrestling match, or that this woman defeated Christ, caught him in his own words and defeated him, or that we, all of us, defeated

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Christ, wrestled him to the ground, put him on a cross, raised him up, and forced him to suffer, bleed, and die?

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What kind of God chooses to do that, to be defeated by his own creation?

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The God who loves us. It is by our contending with God and defeating him that Christ has worked our salvation.

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In the same way that this woman contended with Christ, wrestled him to the ground and defeated him with his own words, and by doing so, she won salvation for her child.

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We also have wrestled with God and defeated him on the cross. And it's through his cross that he bore your sins and mine.

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Christ chose to lose, to lay down his life so that he could give us life.

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And it's because of his satisfaction for our sins, because we have defeated him, that we now are victorious, victorious in salvation, all won by Christ as a gift.

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It's a great theme when you think about it. It's one that takes some working to kind of get at, but when you see it in its beauty, you can see then that each and every one of us, we still wrestle with God.

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We wrestle with him in the difficulties and our strugglings, and still he cares for us and we cry out to him in our time of need.

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He hears us and he doesn't always answer us immediately, but you'll note that ultimately he has already been defeated so that we can trust him.

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And even though, as the psalmist says, where are you, God? How long are you going to not hear my prayers? David says, but I've trusted in your steadfast love.

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I've already defeated you, God. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation, and I'm going to sing to the

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Lord because he's dealt bountifully with me. So no matter what you're going through, brothers and sisters, note this, you have been grafted into Israel and you have that great family heritage of those who have wrestled with God and have prevailed, and in prevailing,

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Christ has worked salvation for us because it was his will to lay down his life and humble himself and be obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross for you and for me.

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The God who chooses to be defeated and through his defeat wins for us everything.

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That's a pretty good thing to talk about. It doesn't mean it's a satisfactory place to end the sermon, but I'm going to end it here anyway.

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In the name of Jesus, amen. Thank you for your support.

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