The Jew First, Then The Gentile

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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Good afternoon, everyone. It's good to see visitors. Welcome to Grace Fellowship Church. It's good to see everyone again.

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Praise God, you guys. That sounded beautiful, by the way. Very touching. It's very beautiful to hear the praises to our

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Lord. So, like I said, good afternoon. It's good to see everyone again. We're back concluding our study of Mark chapter 7 as we round out the chapter verses 24 to 37.

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So, as we're turning back to Mark and preaching through that, I have to say I was quite relieved to get right back to the

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New Testament. We were looking at the book of Jonah, and I would prepare to... I preached on Jonah 3 last time

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I spoke, and I was relieved to come back to the gospel. There are challenges when citing different parts of Scripture.

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There are different hermeneutical, different interpretive challenges when you're looking at every part of Scripture, and I was relieved to go back to Mark.

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However, as it works out by divine providence, I was beautifully and gracefully reminded just the absolute tapestry of God's Word, the absolute interconnectedness and the beauty of God's Word from the

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Old Testament to the New Testament, how these themes interconnect so beautifully. We see from the

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Old Testament, from the very first verse of Genesis, in the beginning, we see that the

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Lord is ordered. We see that He is ordered. He is divine. He is perfect in His execution.

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And in His order and divine timing, He executes His sovereign will, and He does as He chooses.

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Looking at our passage today, as my brother Jason just read, this is a very straightforward text.

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It is very straightforward. It is one short parable, and then after that, our passage concludes with a miraculous work of healing.

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However, this passage, along with other similar and others that we'll look at today, has been scrutinized.

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This is a contentious, almost controversial passage. Scrutinized by liberal theologians and Bible skeptics and naysayers.

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And it is the subject, it is the prime target of those that Peter speaks of in 2

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Peter 3 .16 saying, the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction. This is a controversial passage, and we're going to look at it in its context and its beautiful totality.

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From this passage, one reason it is contentious is that we'll come to see the sharp tongue of Jesus Christ.

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But when rightfully understood, we are going to dispel every notion that Jesus did not have sharp sayings, that Jesus Christ did not offend, or that He was just some humanist, a humanist friend to sinners, that we're going to dull the teeth on this tiger.

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Jesus Christ is the Lion of Judah, and we're going to see that. So, as we learn from our passage today, the

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Lord always intended to bring salvation to many. And it is a humble heart of faith towards Jesus Christ that He delights in.

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He absolutely delights in this. If we, as people, a sinful man, approach the text with modern sensibilities and modern sensitivities, and probably with the worst of all, sinful human pride, we miss altogether what the

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Lord intends on doing. And perhaps the worst thing that we can do, outside of all this, is we make ourselves judge of Christ, according to our own sinful perspectives, if we don't view this text correctly.

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So, before we even get into the text, let's pray and seek the Lord's wisdom. O gracious and merciful loving

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Father, Lord, help us this day. Lord, we love You, we adore

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You, we sing Your praises. Father, let us come to You with humble hearts, humble with humility and faith,

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Lord, to Your Word. This is Your spoken Word. This is Your divine revelation to us. Father, let us study it for all that it is worth.

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Father, we pray for Your help, Lord. We need Your help. Father, we need Your Spirit to guide us in Your Word, Lord, that we would interpret it rightly.

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Father, that I would speak clearly and that the gospel and that the Lord Jesus Christ would be preached in power.

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Father, I pray for everyone here. Lord, we are thankful for those that You have brought. Lord, let us receive the

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Word today, the food, the spiritual manna, Lord, upon our souls, so that we would do nothing but devour this,

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Father, as food for our souls. Lord, we need Your help and we pray, Father, for every single man, woman and child in this room.

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Lord, let us receive the bread from heaven. Amen, Lord. Let us receive the living bread of Christ. We thank

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You, Father, for this day. We pray all this in His sufficient and worthy name, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Amen. So, like I said, this text does break up quite nicely into two halves, as it were.

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Our first point, if you're following notes in your bulletin or taking notes elsewhere, our first point is the

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Lord rewards faithful persistence. The Lord rewards faithful persistence.

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So, like I've said maybe a couple of times, we're back in the latter half of Mark chapter 7 and we're immediately met with a change in scenery, as we looked at our text.

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Our text today offers a little bit of a different focus and a different perspective, as we will see up until this point.

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Ironically, this is the first point in Mark where we see that someone seems to understand

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Jesus Christ as the Messiah. Up until this point in Mark, we've seen confusion on the part of the

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Pharisees, those that are healed, the people, the crowds, the Sadducees, and everyone that's introduced, for the most part.

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And ironically, we see someone who does understand a human person, but it doesn't come from the Jews. It comes from the

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Gentiles. So, as we look, we find ourselves in the region of Tyre and Sidon.

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So, for those who are geographically minded, who like to think in maps, these regions border on the edge of the

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Mediterranean Sea, if you can picture it in your mind. So, this is where modern Lebanon would be right now.

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And back in the days of Jesus Christ, this was a Greek -speaking area. So, there was a lot of people who spoke

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Greek in this time. At the beginning of Mark chapter 7, if you'll look with me, you see

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Jesus Christ dealing, even in verse 1, where it says, Now, the Pharisees gathered to him were some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem.

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We see Jesus Christ dealing with Jews and the Jewish opposition and Jewish leadership.

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And like I said, he's dealing with fierce opposition from the Jewish leadership. If you have your

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Bibles with me, I will ask you to just open and keep a finger tucked away in Matthew 15, verses 21 to about 28.

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This is the parallel passage that we see in Mark for today's passage. I'll be referring to it a couple times, so just keep a finger tucked away because we get a lot more context in our story from Matthew.

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So, if you turn with me to Matthew 15, verse 21, it says this, So, just in that one verse, we get the word withdrew.

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It's likely that Jesus Christ, in his ministry at this time, withdrew to this area of the

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Gentiles so that he could get a rest, a respite from the constant pressuring and badgering from the

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Jewish scribes. And also to minister to the disciples that were with him as the cross continuously looms in the distance, in the horizon.

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So, those are the two big reasons. But, as Shane said earlier, this is a passage of faith.

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The gospel message was always intended to go out to all the nations and not just the

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Jews. So, this is the third reason for which Jesus Christ is retiring to an area of the

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Gentiles. So, as we move in our text, as we move just back in our text in Mark, we find, in verses 25 and 26, it says this,

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Now, from our passage in Mark, not much context is given to this woman. We know that she's a Syrophoenician and that her daughter is dealing with an unclean spirit, an immoral demon that is residing within her body.

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But not much context is given to this woman. And actually, when we look to Matthew 15 once again, we find that we get just a little bit more context, just a little bit more on this lady.

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And this is what Matthew 15, verses 22 and 23 says, And behold, a

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Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, Have mercy on me,

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

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But he, Jesus Christ, did not answer her. And his disciples came and begged him, saying,

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Send her away, for she is crying out after us. So, again, up until this point, keeping the book of Mark in context, we don't get...

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We're looking at a very specific instance of a lady crying out to the Lord Jesus Christ, but we're seeing confusion amongst the ranks.

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There's always confusion in the book of Mark up until this point. We don't see anyone truly understand him.

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And ironically, it's the demons in chapters 1 and 5 that seem to get it best. These are the ones who understand the

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Lord Jesus Christ a little more, but even they don't have the full picture. They don't submit to the Lord as He ought to be deserved to be submitted to.

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This woman, however, does have a partial understanding. Looking at that verse again, she cries out,

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O Lord, son of David. This is a call back to the

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Davidic covenant. This is a reminder, a remembrance to her that Jesus Christ is the son of prophecy.

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This is the man who will redeem the world. This is the Messiah. And she has some understanding of that, and she lays claim to that as she calls out to Him.

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This is a suffering woman, desperate at her wits' end, looking for respite, looking for salvation.

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And although a Gentile, although someone to whom the promise was not given directly, understands the beauty of Jesus Christ, understands

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His glory and majesty. So not only do we get just more of a sense of the

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Syrophoenician woman, but we also get a sense of Christ. We get a different picture of Christ in this passage.

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We get somewhat of a cold picture of Christ. If you can even imagine that. You get a cold treatment initially towards this suffering mother.

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So Christ's cold disposition, it actually continues. It's not just, it doesn't just stick around in Matthew, but if you go back to Mark 7, it says this in verse 27.

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Jesus Christ says this, And He said to her, Those are harsh words.

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Those are direct words from the Lord Jesus Christ. You can understand that this passage, and others like it, like Matthew 7, 6, or Matthew 15, like we were looking at earlier, are controversial passages.

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These are not ones that we look at with modern human sensibilities and just accept.

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Very recently, and probably into the past, we have seen liberal theologians and skeptics of the

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Bible. They look at these passages and impose their own wicked sensibilities or their own sense of justice to this passage.

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Just to take our own modern world right now as it stands, the world of equality and inclusivity.

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These words seem to resonate, but the modern skeptic reels at the notion that Jesus Christ has an order,

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He has a priority and a process, that He's sovereign and that His will shall reign.

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So before the Gentile were ever to receive salvation, it must first go to the Jew. But that does not ring well with the modern sensibility of our offended culture.

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That does not ring well with us. Recently, we've heard these claims of perhaps even racism or bigotry or injustice on our

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Lord for these very passages that sinful man looks at and reels at, doesn't understand the notion of these words and is offended.

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So my question is, does this text offend you? Is there any sense that Jesus has acted in any way that is wrong or could

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He have said something different in a different way, in a lighter tone? Is that a thought that is brewing around in here in your deepest heart of hearts?

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Is there a sense that Jesus Christ was being unjust in any way?

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If this describes you, if this is a feeling you have, if this is an inkling or disposition or anything,

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I'm sorry to put it bluntly, but the problem is not in the Lord or His word.

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The problem rests solely in you. If you find offense at this passage, if you are, if you turned off, if you reel at any of Christ's harsher sayings, this is a you problem.

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It is not with the word of God. 1 Corinthians 2 .14

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says, The natural person does not accept the things of the

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Spirit, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

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It's foolishness. To the sinful common man, this is spiritual foolishness.

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We reject this. Speaking of God's sovereignty,

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His sovereign will, in Romans 9 .15 it says, For He, God, says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom

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I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.

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Our God is sovereign. It is His will that His will be done, not mine.

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If you find offense with this passage, if this passage at all is offensive to you, you have not humbled yourself towards an

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Almighty God. That's one. And two, you have not understood His word. So you've done those two things.

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You have not humbled yourself, and you haven't understood His word. In other words, you have applied a modern hermeneutic, your own imposition, on the

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Almighty Word of God. Looking back at our text, in verse 27, when we rightfully understand it, it says this.

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We see that Jesus makes clear that salvation was to go to the Jews first. Just read it with me again.

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And Jesus said, and He said to her, Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

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This message was always meant to come to the world. This is a message of salvation given to the world, but it was going to go to the

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Jews first. The redemptive story of the Old Testament, as we look at Genesis 1, went all the way to the end of Malachi, beginning in Matthew, was that the

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Jews would usher in the Messiah. They were God's chosen people, His elect people, to bring about the

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Messiah, that salvation would come through Him, first to the Jews, then the Gentiles. It says in Acts 13, 47, it says this of the

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Apostle Paul of Barnabas. It says, I have made you, the apostles, a light to the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.

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Salvation was meant to go out to the Gentiles, but it came to the Jews first. And lastly, if you're not convinced, if you're looking at a careful word study of the words within this passage,

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Jesus Christ demands that we understand His words clearly, because a proper study of the word dog, in this passage, in verse 27, actually the word in Greek actually delineates, it's actually a term in German.

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It means house dog or little dog. Who here has house pets?

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It's a term of endearment. Essentially, the visual Jesus Christ is painting with this short parable is this, that in the home of the

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Lord, the children and the dog are both under His roof, under His provision.

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They are not enemies. They are not at odds. But that is still offensive, brothers and sisters.

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So, when we come to this point in the text, when we understand that Jesus Christ has made no offense, and if you are offended, this is your disposition.

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This is a you problem. And we come to apply it. We have to ask ourselves, have I felt offended?

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Do my sensibilities urge within me? What's wrong with me? If so, what's the right response?

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What do I do? For the answer, we need to look right back at our text today.

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It says, and it's this, our application is, God rewards persistent seeking.

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God rewards persistence in seeking Him out. We just need to look back on our text to see that faith is rewarded.

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This poor mother, imagine to all the parents here, this poor mother with her child possessed and at her lowest, in her most lowest position, does not show pride, does not show pride, does not show offense, but instead displays humble understanding of God's sovereignty,

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His plan, it's His process, and yet is persistent in seeking

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Him out for His power. Her faith in seeking the Messiah is rewarded.

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We'll read the rest of our text going on from verse 28 on. It says, but she answered him, Yes, Lord, Lord.

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Yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs. And he said to her,

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For this statement, you may go your way. The demon has left your daughter. And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

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She demonstrates an understanding, even the dogs. She knew God's rightful order.

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She understood this, but in humility, she sought Him out in faith. And this shouldn't come to any surprises to us believers.

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The Lord wants us to seek Him out. He desires us to seek Him. The Lord desires our worship.

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He desires our adoration. He desires all of it. For those of you at our men's group yesterday, we talked about that every man worships something.

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This came up in our discussions. Every man is a worshiper of something. The problem, however, is not the worship, but is the idols for which we worship.

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And it is the problem of sinful man to come to an understanding that we have erred and we need to repent and worship the

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God Almighty. That is the big error that sinful man cannot come to grips with.

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That we must repent before a holy God. That we have erred, that we have sinned against Him. Again, looking inwardly, asking the question, how often do we get into spiritual ruts?

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Or we fall into this temptation or the trap of felt faith, whereby we no longer feel the joy.

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We no longer feel the joy of Christ and we wallow in this. We wallow in shame. We just give up.

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How often do we fall into this trap? What seems like coldness from the

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Lord Jesus Christ toward this poor Syrophoenician lady is actually a test of faith, brothers and sisters.

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It is a test of faith. The text is teaching us that we ought not to give up at the first sign of spiritual dullness, but that we need to persevere in faith.

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We need to persevere. I'm speaking to maybe the parents in the room here for a moment. Proverbs 22 .6

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says this, Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old, he will not depart from it.

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Your desire for your kids is that they would walk maturely in the

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Lord, that they would mature in Christ. Your desire is that they would walk maturely and that they would persevere and see

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Christ in all that they do. And that at the first sign of spiritual trouble, of hardship, of aching, that they would not give up, but keep moving forward.

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They would persist. This is the desire of every parent who seeks to raise a godly child.

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But this is what God demands of us, that we would persist, that we would not grow spiritually dull, but that we would pursue

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Christ in everything. God desires that we become persistent and continue to seek the

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Lord in absolutely everything. If you can turn with me to Luke 18, verses 1 to 8, this is just another short parable by the

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Lord Jesus Christ concerning a widow and a self -righteous judge.

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This is a fantastic parable and it helps to demonstrate the beauty of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and what it is he offers, especially in comparison to a sinful world that offers nothing like this.

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In this parable, we see a persistent widow and her persistence towards a self -righteous judge who only rules in himself.

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And what this widow does is she badgers this judge, seeking justice continually, day after day, till eventually she wins him and eventually the judge grants her justice.

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In Luke 18, verse 7, it says this, And will not God give justice to his elect who cry out to him day and night?

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Will he delay long over them? If this self -righteous judge, this sinful judge, imperfect in the law, imperfect in his own judgments, can grant these things, how much more does our

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God in heaven desire for us to seek him? The Lord does desire that you seek him with all your might.

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And it is not just for our own good, but this brings a smile to our Lord. This pleases him.

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This makes him happy for us to seek him. If you could just turn with me to Matthew 15 for just one more time.

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Just read with me what it is he says to this lady. After giving her response in verse 27, he says,

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Sorry, in verse 28, he says, Then Jesus answered her, O woman, great is your faith.

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Be it done for you as you desire. And her daughter was healed instantly. Can you just hear the smile on Jesus Christ's face?

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Can you just hear it? This pleases him. And we ought to please our master.

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We need to please him. So as we come to the end of this section in Mark, as we look to this last verse,

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I want to encourage you, brothers and sisters, I want to encourage you. If you're feeling any kind of discouragement, any kind of spiritual dullness, any kind of dullness towards the

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Lord, his providence, his grace, his beauty, his mercy, you're feeling cold to him in any way, press on, persevere, and please him.

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Please your master. Bring a smile to the face of Christ. He loves you dearly.

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Okay. So before we move into the next part of our text, it's kind of nice. There's more kids here than usual. So my illustration doesn't fall on deaf ears, but this question is for the kids.

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And just so to get the kids' minds going here, you guys,

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I just want you to think about it. Maybe don't shout out yet, but what is the most sophisticated computer or complex machine on earth?

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Do you guys know this? Does anyone have a guess what this might be? Get your minds jogging here.

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What's the most complex machine on earth? Do you have an answer?

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What is it? Close. I'll take one more.

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Oh, you had help. I can tell. You had help over there. Yes. She's very wise over there.

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The human brain. It is actually the human brain. No machine on earth, actually.

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Every machine, no matter how complex, on earth, man -made, pales in comparison to the wondrous work of God's design for our brains.

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Just a couple quick facts about the brain because of how wonderful this organ is that just functions, and we don't even recognize.

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Well, we will in a moment, but just the sophistication. The brain in the body weighs about three pounds.

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Men's brains are about 10 % bigger than the women's. Sorry. But there are parts in the male brain that are actually pretty small compared to the women's.

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Just to talk about the complexity, just the raw complexity of the human brain, it's estimated that there's about 86 billion neurons.

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86 billion neurons. Some neuroscientists suggest that we might have almost limitless ability to store information.

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Obviously, that's ruined by the fall, and that's the point. God designed these beautiful pieces of hardware that resides in every single one of us, every man, woman, and child in this room has a

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God -given brain, able to serve Him and love Him with it. But the brain is just as prone to the fall and the sin of man as anything else is in creation.

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The beautiful thing, but also the quite tragic thing about the brain is that the more we learn of it, often we learn most about the brain when parts of it fail to function.

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When things go wrong, we learn why certain parts of the brain are most useful and what it is they do when things aren't working as they should.

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So, the human body, as soon as something breaks down, you come to know the effects quite rapidly because what was the unconscious functioning of this part of the body, whether it's in the body or the brain, ceases to work, and you see the effects immediately.

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It's like working on a car. You learn just how quickly and how important your catalytic converter is the moment it goes missing.

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Unfortunately, when the brain breaks down in even the most minor areas, you see just how important that little area is in the grand scheme of this beautiful creation that God has built, just how wonderful it is and yet how fragile it is.

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And we see a glimpse of that, actually, in our second half of our text today. So, if you're taking notes again, the point is this.

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The church bears together. The church bears together. Given the writing style of Mark, we see

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Jesus Christ moving quite quickly geographically. We see Christ return back to the west side of Galilee to the region of the

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Decapolis, the Decapolis. So, it says this,

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Then he returned to the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the region of the Decapolis.

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The Decapolis is actually a region of ten Greek cities, hence the term Deca. If you guys know your math,

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Deca, that's ten. So, this was ten Greek cities that were in the area. And as Christ enters this region, as you would know, his fame has already reached the area before him and his disciples have even set one foot upon the land.

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In verse 32, we see that a man is brought to him who is deaf and has a speech impediment.

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It says this, And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him.

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So, already before Jesus Christ has stepped foot, he's being petitioned for his miracles of mercy and grace and healing.

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So, in particular, as we look at this man, as we're introduced to him, he is deaf and has a speech impediment, but it's likely that he was not completely mute.

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It's actually something what we would call maybe in olden times, more tongue -tied, maybe a stammering tongue or a speech impediment.

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He couldn't be understood. When we infer this from the text, if you're looking at verse 35, when

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Jesus Christ heals him, it says that he spoke plainly. So, Jesus Christ almost releases his tongue.

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So, he wasn't completely mute by any means, but in any case, this man would have been at the mercy of all those around him because with a condition like this, given their time and their cultural setting, a man like this would have been unable to provide for himself.

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He would not have had the means to work and it would have been at the mercy of family and friends around him. And as we see many times in this gospel, we see our

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Lord, Jesus Christ, lovingly serving and healing those that seek him out.

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And we see this beginning in verse 33. It says this, We have to pause for a moment here and just understand what's happening, just the beauty of what is taking place here and just the sophistication that Mark writes with, just the visual picture that is being painted here.

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So, the first thing he does is that he pulls the man aside from this great crowd that has brought him forward to a moment of quiet.

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And the reason he does this is that he can minister to every individual part of him that is in need.

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But also, and most importantly, that he might earnestly pray for this man in the quiet of his surroundings, not surrounded by the midst of the chaos.

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So, like I said, we appreciate just this touching picture that Mark paints here in just this few verses.

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We see Jesus Christ, the great physician. He takes hold of the man and puts his fingers in his ears, ministering to his ears.

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And next, we see him touch his tongue with something called his spittle. The best way I can describe this, and you kids, maybe you might get this, if your mother's ever done this and kind of wiped the smudge on your face, that's kind of what it is that's happening here.

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That's the best way I can describe it. That was something my mother did and probably not as gentle terms or discreetly, but that is essentially the imagery that is taking place here.

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Christ is ministering to both his ears and the man's mouth. I want to make clear here that these individual actions, these actions that Jesus Christ is doing are not healing in and of themselves.

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They're not, they have no power in them, but they're done carefully to give attention to the man's greatest physical needs.

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Imagine for a moment, imagine, step in with me for a moment, that this man's world is a solitary world.

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It is a quiet, lonely one with little hope. And Christ with absolute perfect care and love and devotion is tending to this man's needs.

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And not only is he tending to his physical needs, he tends to his soul. We see that in verse 34. It says, and looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him,

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Ephphatha, that is, be opened. With the most inward of groaning and most earnest of prayers,

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Christ prays in Aramaic, as Mark defines here, this is an Aramaic word, this word Ephphatha, be opened.

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And immediately the man's senses are regained, his ears open up and his tongue is loosened.

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With absolute care for this man, Jesus Christ tends to every facet of this man's needs.

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And this is what we read at the end of our text. This is the result of Jesus Christ's wonderful and brilliant work.

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It says this, sorry, 35 to 37. And his ears were opened, his tongue was released and he spoke plainly.

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This man could speak. And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.

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And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, he has done all things well.

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He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. I hope by God's grace that I've made it clear, that I've articulated clearly that Christ is the great physician of not just your body but your soul.

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If there's one thing that is clear in this text right now is that he takes his delight and his care in every single one of you, every single one of his people.

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He addresses all their needs, every single one, solitary, individually, and corporately.

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And not just this, but he is himself the greatest of treasures. I hope at some point within this reading of this text, we have asked ourselves this question, looking not to ourselves for a moment but outwards, how often do

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I bring my brothers and sisters before this Christ? How often do we bring the weary, dying soul to the great physician who cares for our need?

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If our first point of application was that we must persist in faith, that we must strive together in the gospel towards him, our second point is that we must strive together towards Christ.

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So that is how we're going to apply this. That is one easy application we take away right now is bear with one another towards Christ.

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Bear together towards Christ. I've spoken a couple times about our men's group yesterday, but I left so encouraged.

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If you're not part of it, I actually do encourage that you would come and join us in fellowship. I left so encouraged, not just at the

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Christ -centered teaching, but the love of the brethren. Look at Christ and his care for the flock.

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Look at the way he treats this poor man, solitary in isolation. Tell me, is there any man on earth who does not need this?

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Is there any sinful man who can honestly claim they don't desire this kind of love? Look to those around you in the pews.

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Are we bringing each other before the Lord? Are we loving one another? The word of encouragement, a prayer, generosity, is the love of Christ being brought to our brothers and sisters in their time of need.

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This crowd imperfectly does this. Even in their imperfections, the Lord uses this. He redeems this.

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Again, this is, we don't know per se from the text, but we can draw on that this was a desperate moment for this crowd.

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You have to understand that housing someone with these particular needs, unable to work, unable to fend for themselves, unable to communicate, was expensive and also time -demanding and difficult altogether.

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Whether it was family and friends or a combination of his community, these people bring him in their desperation to Christ in anticipation that this

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Jesus Christ will clear them of this burden, that they will, not only for this man, but also for this community, that this man might be healed and be cleansed of this sin.

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But we don't have this heart. We have the heart of Christ. We have the heart of Christ.

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Our hearts should swell and melt at the thought of Jesus Christ tending to every one of our needs so lovingly and carefully.

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We should look to him, look to Christ, as unworthy as we might be with the same care and devotion that he gives to this man he tends to us.

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And then once tended to, once our wounds are healed and they're bandaged up, we should jump to our feet and bring each other to this great physician so that they might receive care in the same way.

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Galatians 6 verses 1 to 2. It says this, Brothers, this is

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Paul speaking, brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

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Keep watch on yourself lest you too be tempted. Verse 2. Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

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How often do we settle into the solo Christian mentality? The Christian life is not a solitary event.

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It is not, it is not a single person sport. It takes the team. It's family.

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We are in the body of Christ. We require one another. It is a gift of grace that the

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Lord gives here. So if we are going to persist, if we're going to bear together, fulfilling the love, the love and the law of Christ, we need to bear with one another and bring the word to bear on each and every single one of us, on our souls.

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If we are going to strive together and if we fall, we fall towards Christ. So again, together, let's bear towards Christ.

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Let's bring each other to Him. As we come to the end of our text,

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I want to give just some special attention to our last verse, just as we consider

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Jesus Christ, as we consider just the majesty of Jesus Christ. It says,

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And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, He has done all things well.

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He makes even the deaf hear and the mute speak. More directly,

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I want to speak to those who don't claim Christ, who don't fully surrender to Jesus Christ, who look to Him and keep

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Him at arm's length or keep Him at bay. I want us to note the heart of praise and the attitude of these people, of a redeemed heart.

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The heart is filled with astonishment. They marvel at Christ. They marvel at Him. And they cry out.

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They say these things. He has done all things well. Every single thing He has done, it is done well, to perfection.

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If this is not your heart, if your heart does not rejoice in the Lord Jesus Christ, if we don't just marvel at Him, at His beauty,

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His gentleness, His love, and your heart is cold, could it be that you just, you do not submit to His will?

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Can I put this forward that it is you who have not submitted to the Lordship of Christ? The believer sees

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Him, sees the risen Christ, and is speechless before His glory. Our Lord is

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Master, Master of all, and He does as He pleases. This is our Master, our God. This is

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His world and not ours. We fall under His sovereign rule. He loosens our spiritual tongues to sing

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His praises and He opens our ears that we might hear His beautiful word and His instruction. He brings us to life.

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My prayers for those who don't know the real Jesus Christ, who don't submit to Him like this, and they don't submit to His word, understand that Jesus Christ of Scripture is the most beautiful Christ that you can worship and not the one in your mind.

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Undo the idol of Jesus Christ. If you do not submit to Him, undo the one of your mind and seek the

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Christ of Scripture. Come to know Him intimately and do away with any false idol you might have fashioned in your head.

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The beauty and the fear and the warning of a passage like this is that if your disposition or your mood changes at the reading of something like this, if you're offended, it's likely and terrifyingly so, it's likely that you don't know

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Christ and that you stand in opposition to Him. This can't be so.

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This cannot be so. C .S. Lewis put it this way.

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I'm just going to read you a quick quote. He says this, I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him, that is

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Christ. I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept

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His claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say.

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A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

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He would either be a lunatic on the level of the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the devil of hell.

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You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God or else a madman or something worse.

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You can shut him up for a fool. You can spit at him. You can kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him

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Lord and God. Let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.

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He has not left that open to us and He does not intend to. This Jesus Christ we worship died for sinners, died a sinful death for you and me, that we might worship

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Him in truth, not that we might discard the God of creation, the Jesus Christ of Scripture, and worship one in our own minds or completely do away with Him for fear of our own human sensibilities.

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The Lord of Scripture has not made room for that. He is Lord of Lords, King of Heavens.

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And if your view is anything different than that, even anything different from the Lord of Lords, ruler of the heavens and the earth, then this is not the

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Jesus Christ of Scripture. You need to repent. You are commanded to repent.

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Do away with worthless idols.

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Do away with them. And bow your minds, your souls, your body before the risen

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King, the Lord Jesus Christ. This Savior does all things well.