Defeating God?

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

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

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St.

Matthew, the 15th chapter. Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.

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

O Lord, Son of David. My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. But he did not answer her a word.

And his disciples came and begged him, saying, Send her away, she's crying out after us. And he answered,

I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. She came and knelt before him, saying,

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

And she said, Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table. Then Jesus answered her,

O woman, great is your faith, be it done for you as you desire. And her daughter was healed instantly.

This is the Gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. All right, so there's

Jacob, Yaakov, if you want to pronounce it and sound like you know a little Hebrew, Yaakov, right? Heel grabber, deceiver, that's kind of the implication of the name.

And what happens is, is that God has told him, I need you to go back to Canaan. He spent 20 years with Uncle Laban.

And while he was with Uncle Laban, 14 of those years were working off a debt so that he could...

Well, it started with a debt for him marrying one of the daughters, and then Uncle Laban pulled this old switcheroo trick.

I still don't know how you pull that off. And the day after the wedding, there's Jacob, he wakes up and the woman that he thought he had married was not there.

It was her sister. And he panicked, and Laban said, No problem.

Seven more years of work and you can have the other. Wow, that's crazy. And then after all of that,

God kind of works things in his favor so that he ends up having his own very large set of flocks and herds and things like this.

And God says to him, head back to Canaan. But if you remember, the reason why he left is because, well, he had stolen the blessing from his...

That was supposed to go to his older brother. And boy, a lot of people, they don't know what to do with that, that whole

Jacob stealing Esau's blessing thing. Let me help you out on that one, all right?

Have you noticed that Scripture says that we Christians, the ungodly lot that we are?

I mean, man, there wasn't truer words that we prayed than when we said these words in our

Intuit today. For your namesake, O Lord, pardon my guilt. It's great. Right?

Each and every one of us, we have a huge pile of sin. We are not righteous in any way, shape, or form, but the

Scripture says we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. And if you were, think of it this way, we being clothed in the righteousness of Christ in his holy robes,

God the Father has chosen to be a little blind, okay? And so when we come in, he smells

Jesus on us, and we look like Jesus. We don't exactly sound like him, and we receive the blessing of salvation, mercy, and grace from God, who can't tell the difference.

It's kind of cool when you think about it. It's a little sketchy, but that's how it works with forgiven sinners.

It's kind of scandalous that real sinners really get forgiven, really are pardoned, real children of the devil are really adopted by God.

It's really fascinating when you consider it. But there's Jacob. He's heading back, and he sends word to Esau that he's heading back, and Esau gets word and sends 400 armed men in his general direction.

This is the days before satellite and social media, but Jacob gets word, and he thinks that his brother is finally going to do him in.

He wanted to murder him, and now he's going to do him in. And so Jacob is in a panic. He takes his family, divides it into two groups, sends them across, and his thinking was, well, if Esau attacks one group, maybe, just maybe, the other group will survive, right?

That's kind of the thinking on how that went. And one has to wonder, did he have a favorite group?

Because we know this about Jacob. He did play favorites. It's kind of part of the story there in Genesis.

But all of that being said, he's in a little bit of a panic, very anxiety -ridden, thinking this is the end.

And his family, having gone across the Jabbok, he then stops and prays, and then one of the most bizarre things in all of Scripture happens.

Jesus shows up. And every time I read this, I cannot help but think of Jesus kind of like Andre the

Giant from The Princess Bride. We're going to wrestle.

We're going to what? Wrestle. Why? Because. Because, okay.

And, you know, the wrestling happens, and it goes on all night.

Now, we all know how this is supposed to end. Last time I preached on this text, this is real simple. Jesus is

Hulk Hogan. Jacob is Pee -wee Herman. We know how this is supposed to go, right?

It's going to snap them in half. I mean, the God who spoke the universe into existence, all he has to do is say a word, and Jacob is toast.

It's over, right? But he doesn't. They wrestle, and they wrestle, and they wrestle, and then

Jesus cheats. He touches his hip socket, knocks it out of socket. Ah!

Right? And what happens? Jacob doesn't let go. What is this?

What is going on here? I feel like Seinfeld, you know? Ah! I don't get it, right?

Well, have you ever stopped to think that here we have something interesting?

I always like to say you don't want to twist Scripture. You don't want to take descriptive texts and then turn them into prescriptions, all right?

But you're going to note that there is an almost unbroken chain in Scripture of people who've—and here's the analogy—wrestled with God in faith, wrestled with God.

Have you noticed this life's a little difficult? Things don't always go our way? That we are prone to suffer in all kinds of different ways?

And sometimes it feels like we're in kind of a wrestling match with God. We can see what the

Bible says, and then what God is doing isn't matching with what the Scripture says.

And so you pray out to God, hey, what gives? Right? What's going on here?

And so now the wrestling of faith takes place. But we learn from this text that Jacob has great faith because he hangs on to Jesus.

That's who he's wrestling with. And he says, I'm not going to let you go unless you bless me.

That's pretty cool. That actually makes a lot of sense, all right? Because he knows that Christ can.

And so what does Jesus do? He says, all right, what's your name? Yaakov.

Okay, we've got to fix that, all right? Your name is Yaakov. We've got to work this out. Jesus says, all right, your name is no longer

Yaakov, but your name will be Israel. What a great name, by the way. He who strives with God, all right?

He who wrestles with God. What a great name. He has his name changed. Now you're sitting there going, well, what does this have to do with me?

All right, fast forward to the last book of the Bible. Revelation 2, verse 17, if you want to be specific.

What does Jesus say? The one who conquers, I will give him a white stone with a name written on it that only he knows.

Did you know that each and every one of us in Christ has a unique name that God has given to us?

And to the one who conquers, conquers, conquers, conquers who? Well, you'll note that Jacob had to conquer

Christ. And then this gospel text of ours, this woman from Tyre and Sidon, she conquers

Jesus too. How does one conquer God? Can it be done?

Yes, God wills to be conquered. The only way to do it is with faith, with his own words.

It's a very fatherly thing if you think about it. Again, I think back to when my kids were smaller.

It gets awkward as they get older. You don't want this, no. But when they're smaller, what do kids want to do?

Wrestle. What's the job of dad when the kids want to wrestle? Your job is to lose gloriously, right?

Not to just merely lose. Oh, you win. No, you got to like, oh, you got me.

I'll never be able to get up again. You got to do it, right? And you'll note that that's a really great fatherly thing to do.

And God is no different with us. With his words, with our faith in him, we legitimately, and here's the weird word, defeat

God, because God wills to be defeated with faith. I know it seems kind of weird, but that's exactly what happens.

Jacob wrestles with Christ, doesn't let go. Jesus cheats, still doesn't let go.

I'm not letting you go unless you bless me. And he does. He blesses him by changing his name. To the one who conquers,

I will give him a white stone with a name written on it. Now, this then is bookended with our

Gospel text. And I'll be blunt. I like the fact that in Scripture we have an account of a man wrestling with God and winning.

We also have an account of a woman wrestling with God and winning. I think it's important because we're all made in the image of God.

This is most certainly true. And each and every one of us, male and female alike, yes, we're binary.

Sorry. That's the way God made us. If you don't like it, take it up with him. And note

I used him because that's God's chosen pronouns. Sorry. I just have to point that out.

But all that being said, I think it's very appropriate that here we've got a woman doing the same thing.

And here's the account. Let's see if we can fill in a little bit of the data. So Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.

Well, if you look this up on a map, it's right on the coast there in the Mediterranean. One has to wonder if this isn't a little

R &R, a little relaxation time, a nice seaside village. Maybe they're staying in a cool hotel out by the pool looking over the

Mediterranean, getting the salt smell air coming through. You know what I'm talking about? Maybe a pina colada with a little umbrella.

Who knows? It doesn't exactly say. But when they get there, I love how the

Greek says this. Behold! Behold a Canaanite. Like out of nowhere, like a thundercrack, this woman shows up, and she's crying out.

And listen to these words. Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David.

My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. Have mercy on me.

Lord, Son of David, who catechized this woman? One has to wonder what the backstory is here.

Her daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. And by the way, that's not a small thing.

That's like a huge thing. Haven't you ever seen like any scary movies as it relates to the demonic? Okay, the nice thing about scary movies, they're over in two hours.

This woman's scary movie, she lives it, and she's in a complete panic regarding the health and well -being of her daughter who is being oppressed by a demon.

And of course, the callous, self -righteous person would say something, Well, that's what you get for being a

Canaanite. If you hadn't been playing with the Ouija board, you wouldn't have the demon problem now, would you?

This is how people talk, right? Well, that's not how Jesus is dealing with the situation.

But in her quest to help her daughter, which always seems to be our quest as parents, being a parent is loads of fun, right?

Again, I don't know why God gave us children that are dead set on killing themselves, and our whole job is to keep them from doing that.

It's just this crazy thing that you have to do, right? But all that being said, we've got a demon here, she's living a nightmare, and somewhere along the line, she comes in contact with the

Hebrew Scriptures. She knows a thing or two about Jesus, and she's put two and two together.

She knows exactly who Jesus is. There's folks back in Israel who have seen

Jesus heal the sick, have heard Him preach, and they're still uncertain as to who

Jesus is. They haven't been able to come to grips with, you know, He's the Messiah.

He's the one that Moses told us about. He's the one that Isaiah told us about, and all the prophets. They haven't put two and two together here.

This Canaanite woman did, and now she, through some connection to the

Word of God, has put this all together, and she wonderfully confesses that Jesus is her

Lord, and that Jesus is the Son of David, and she is crying out to Him prayerfully that He would have mercy on her, and she has come, and she's praying on behalf of her own daughter, not even herself, her own daughter.

That's pretty good. I mean, wow, I'd like to have this lady in my confirmation class.

I mean, she's a great student of the Scriptures here. And so what does Jesus do?

Nothing. He says nothing.

What's that? Well, I would argue, when you read your Bible, you're going to find that that's kind of a common response from God.

I know it seems weird, but let me explain. Job, are you familiar with Job? This poor fellow was made to suffer horrifically, and it was never told to him why he was suffering.

When we read Job, we have the actual explanation as to why he's suffering.

He's going through it and has no clue, and that's kind of the big thing, is that then when he is being comforted by his comforters, they are utterly clueless, and the things that they're saying do not jive with the reality as to why he's suffering.

Why is he suffering? Because the devil and God are having a bet. That's the reason why he's suffering.

That's how this went down. And so in Job 30, listen to these words. He says,

What a great way to describe it. You ever had a super painful night? Like something's gone wrong, and the agony just doesn't go away.

You're exhausted, but the pain isn't, and you can't figure out how to get this thing to settle down.

What a beautiful way of describing it. But don't answer me.

I stand, and you only look at me. That's Job.

You know what? That's all of us. Have you noticed that there we are? We've learned that God says, call to me in the day of trouble, and I will answer.

So the day of trouble shows up, and you pick up your cell phone, and you dial G -O -D, and no answer.

What's going on? You leave a voicemail. Hey, God, we've got a problem here. You said I can call you on the day of trouble, and you're, hello, are you there?

Send a message. It's not even read. He doesn't leave it on read. He doesn't even read the message. And you're going, what's going on here?

Job went through that same thing. So does this woman. So did

David, now that I think about it. David in Psalm 13 says, How long,

O Lord, will you forget me forever? It's like, did God do David a big favor by anointing him as the king of Israel?

Yeah, no. He's the anointed king of Israel, but there's a big problem. Saul, he's not only the anointed, he's also the current reigning king of Israel.

And usually when there's an anointed king and a reigning king, they don't get along too well. And so how does

David spend a large portion of the Bible? On the run? Like some kind of fugitive?

And Saul is constantly trying to kill him, pin him to the wall, things like this. And so David in Psalm 13,

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

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

Consider and answer me, O Lord my God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemies say

I have prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

How about you? I can think of many a time when I've prayed, and I legitimately have a real need that really needs to be solved pronto by God.

And like my dad on a Saturday morning says, yeah, I'm not going to get up until like nine, so just leave me alone, go watch cartoons or something.

That's what it seems like, right? Huh. But note this then, that Job, who also felt like God wasn't even hearing his prayers, he's also the fellow who wrote these words, same book.

O that my words were written, O that they were inscribed in a book, O that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever.

They just happened to be that, Job. Yes, they are now here. And then he says this, For I know that my

Redeemer lives. I know we're in Lent, so we can't sing the tune, okay?

That's just for like the next season. It'll be here shortly. But note what Job says, I know that my

Redeemer lives, and at the last, he will stand on the earth, and after my skin has thus been destroyed, yet in my flesh

I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

My heart faints within me thinking about it. Hmm. So there's Job. God isn't even answering my prayers, but yeah,

I know that my Redeemer lives, and even after my skin has fallen off my bones, don't worry, I'm going to see God with my very eyes, my own flesh.

Funny enough, David does the same thing in that same song. Psalm, it's Psalm 13. You know, he said, how long are you going to forget me,

O Lord? Are you going to keep hiding your face from me? But then it ends with this, but I've trusted in your steadfast love.

My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.

How do you reconcile these two very, well, they seem contradictory thoughts.

Are you going to keep ignoring me, God? But yeah, I trust in you. I'm going to see you face to face. My eyes are going to see you even though my flesh falls off my body and I die and worms eat me.

How is that possible? What is the glue that holds these two thoughts together? Answer, faith.

Faith. And that's the point. It's okay to pray this prayer to God.

Are you going to keep ignoring me, God? I'm in a lot of trouble, a lot of pain here. I need your help.

Are you going to keep ignoring? It's okay to say that because even when you say that, you're saying it to the one who actually can help you and you believe that he will.

And ultimately he will in his own good timing. But this is where we must understand something that Scripture teaches us.

Romans 5. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, and boy, that's good news right there.

We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.

The grace in which we stand, in which we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And even more than that, are you ready for these words?

I don't think you're ready for these words. I'm not ready for these words. But here are the words. We rejoice in our sufferings.

It goes on. Knowing that suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces character.

Character produces hope. And hope doesn't put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the

Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Rejoice in our sufferings.

And so what we're seeing here in our Old Testament text and in our

Gospel text are accounts where God has permitted for a short bit of time for faith to be tried through suffering.

Faith to be tried through silence. You'll note that even Joseph, and I preached about this on Wednesday, Joseph, God gave him two fantastic dreams of what was going to be coming in the future, then had him sold into slavery, and then he ends up in prison for 13 years, and God said nothing to him.

Not a thing. And so we're not any different. Faith basically is able to say, hey

God, are you listening? You said you are. Why aren't you doing anything? And at times I've gotten to the point where the difficulties in my life, my attitude with God and my prayers go something like this.

I'm not God. You are. So this isn't my problem to solve.

It's your problem to solve. I'm going to just go do my things and you gotta take care of this because you're

God. Right? Can you do that? Yes. Because that's really how faith talks.

And so note then here, this woman who clearly has faith, great theology here, she knows exactly who

Jesus is. Jesus says nothing. Not a word.

And so now his disciples come and they beg him, please send her away for she's crying out after us.

Which is basically a nice way of saying she won't shut up. One has to wonder how that went down.

I know you can hear me. You can ignore me all you want, Jesus, but I know you hear me and I know who you are.

I know that you can help me and I'm not going anywhere until you do. I'm not letting go until you bless me.

Same attitude, right? That's what the text says. She kept on crying out after them.

And the disciples are like, man, this is really embarrassing. And so Jesus kind of off the cuff says,

I was sent only for the lost sheep of Israel. Now, really funny here.

Really funny. I read Johann Gerhardt's sermon on this text this week. I wanted to see what he did with it.

Johann Gerhardt, a famous Lutheran, confessional Lutheran. And he says the fact that that didn't bring

Christ crumbling down. Well, actually, she continues and persists on it.

The fact that he said this and this is not exactly true is proof that, get this, limited atonement that the

Calvinists believe is false. It was a great point. Sorry, I nerded out on that one.

Okay, I literally got up on my desk and went, yes, yes. Anyway.

It's embarrassing the things I do in my office. My apologies. All of that being said, you'll note then, this does not send her away because she knows enough of her scripture to sit there and go, uh -uh, that ain't gonna work with me,

Jesus. I know everybody who believes in you was brought into Israel. I mean, think of Rahab the prostitute.

You think of Ruth the Moabitess. Notable pagans who are part of the story of scripture and they weren't cast aside.

They're grafted into Israel. So she said, so that doesn't get rid of her. So she comes and she kneels before Jesus saying,

Lord, help me. And she's looking him dead in the eye, kneeling down.

She knows who he is. She's not going away. And I always like to point this out.

If Jesus were ministering today, he would get canceled for this next bit. It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

All the feminist theologians, did he just call that woman a dog? Cancel, cancel, cancel

Jesus. No way. Right? She's a bad dog, all right?

Still won't take no for an answer. And here's where faith kicks in.

When we trust Christ, have you met him? Have you seen him? Know how tall he is?

What shade of brown his eyes are or his hair? How does he like to wear his beard?

Do you know these things? I know we have Jesus' graduation picture back there, but he's older since then. Okay. You don't know what he looks like.

You couldn't recognize his voice if he spoke to you without allowing you to know it was him.

That being the case then, note then we have faith in Christ and we know his words because he speaks to us from scripture.

He's spoken to us through the prophets. He's spoken to us through the writings of the apostles who've recorded this very story for us.

And note then that, well, we need to trust

Christ's words and believe him, and this woman does.

And now comes the ultimate move, wrestling move. She's going to flip

Jesus and pin him with his own words. That's right, Lord. Yep, that's right.

Dogs. If you want to say I'm a dog, I'm a dog. Yet the dogs, they eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.

So where are my crumbs? She just defeated

God. Can you do that? Yes. That's kind of the point and she did it with faith.

And now he says, oh woman, great is your faith. Be it done for you as you desire.

And her daughter was healed instantly. Listen to those words. Be it done for you as you desire. Prayer is an interesting thing.

When people start talking philosophy, are you a fatalist? Do you believe that everything's planned out ahead of time and that God has worked it all out and all this kind of stuff?

This is how philosophers talk. I see in scripture that God, who's doing a fine job of running the universe,

I do a terrible job at it, fine job of running the universe, that some of his plans, some of the things that are going on there, they're not written in stone.

They're written in pencil. And that when we pray in faith, asking for things that we need or asking for somebody else,

God sits there and goes, well yeah, that person's suffering right now, but you know, I'm gonna do what you've asked here.

And so he takes his pencil out and he puts it on the eraser and he goes, this, and he goes, as you have desired.

Whoa. Don't tell me that prayer isn't something important.

It's huge. Is it any wonder that the devil tries to deceive us into believing that it doesn't matter?

Or even worse, the doubts come up within us that say, God isn't hearing my prayer.

He's not answering me. Faith says, I don't care if God's answering me or not. I'm gonna persist until he does.

And Christ answers her prayer and does what she desired. She prevailed not only over Christ, Christ ended up doing her will.

How is any of this possible? It makes us rethink things a little bit here.

What is faith? Who is our faith in? What is he like? What I see here is a loving, kind Jesus, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, knowing full well just how deep the consequences of our sin is.

And yet, he, rather than giving us what we deserve, total silence for eternity from God, instead he comes and he gets into the mess and the mire himself.

And I would note, this silence from Jesus that this woman experienced,

Jesus himself got to experience it when he was on the cross. There, on a

Friday afternoon, in the dark, naked and bleeding, suffering for sins that he did not commit, sins that I committed, sins that you committed.

There, Jesus, bearing the sin and the guilt and the iniquity of the whole world. God the

Father, in the midst of all of that, turns away and Christ cries out,

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? You're in good company.

I'm in good company. This is the road of faith. This is the pattern.

You see it throughout the scriptures, from Jacob to this woman from Tyre and Sidon to Christ himself.

But we can say the truth, just like Job, in the midst of all of his pain and his suffering, he never flagged in faith and noted that my

Redeemer lives and even though my flesh and my skin is destroyed, yet in my flesh, my very eyes,

I will see God. And God did not forsake Christ and leave his body in the grave.

Instead, on the third day, he rose again bodily to show that his sacrifice for our sins was accepted by the

Father. So let us rejoice in the God who wills to be defeated by his creatures.

The only way you can defeat God is not with your works, but with faith. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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