Matthew 15 verse 21. And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came and was crying, have mercy on me, oh lord, son of David, My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. But Jesus did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, send her away, for she's crying out after us.

He answered, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But she came and knelt before him, saying, lord, help me. He answered, it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. She said, yes, Lord. Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.

Jesus answered her, oh, woman, great is your faith. Be it done for you as you desire. And her daughter was healed instantly. This is the word of God. I remember many years ago when I first came to DC, there was the trial of Kermit Gosnell up in Philadelphia area.

He was probably the most prolific serial killer in American history. I went up there one day for one day of the trial just to to see it. And yet his trial was not covered much, if at all, in the national media or the national press. Perhaps you remember that. Despite being the most prolific serial killer in American history, it was not much reported on.

If you remember the story, he was an abortion doctor, and that was really almost incidental to his being a serial killer. But the fact that he was an abortion doctor is why it wasn't widely reported. Well, there was something you may remember this. There was a reporter for the Washington Post who was doing, like, a town hall at Georgetown, and a student asked her why it wasn't a bigger deal. Why wasn't the media covering this trial?

And she said, well, you know, as far as the Washington Post is concerned, it is a local crime story. It's not gonna be covered here in Washington. You see, it's a local crime story. We don't cover local crime from Philadelphia was the idea, which is an interesting way to respond to that. It makes you think, what what makes something a local story versus what makes something a national story?

What puts something on C4 instead of A1? Or for the younger generation, C4. That's the lifestyle section next to the horoscopes. I almost have to start bigger. There used to be something called newspapers.

You know what determines if something is in the lifestyle section, local section, versus on the front page? The factory blows up. Is that a local story, or is that a national story? Oh, the factory is making, you know, textiles. It's a local story.

If the factory is making nuclear weapons, that's an international story. What about a a religious leader who's wandering around the wilderness and telling everybody that their only hope for salvation is to follow him? Is that a local story, or is that an international story? And I suppose it depends. You know, there's no shortage of people like that in the world, and you don't see their descriptions outside the local news section of a paper.

That's really the question that this narrative we read this morning is hitting head on. Is Jesus a local story for Israel, or is this an international story? And another way of saying it is, is Jesus just another in the long line of Jewish religious leaders that has come and maybe more exalted than others, and he's come to reform Judaism? Obviously, Judaism had has gone astray. They're exploiting widows and and orphans and neglecting God's law and twisting it for the financial gain of their their leaders.

Certainly, there's a corruptness to it. And is Jesus coming just to reform Israel, to turn over the tables in the temple and rebuke the scribes and Pharisees for their religious shenanigans and their preferential treatment and their abuses? Is He basically just reforming Judaism? That's the question. It would be very interesting for the disciples to be asked that question.

What was their scope of things at this point in Jesus's ministry? Did they understand the international intentions of what Jesus is doing? They were so fixated on rescuing the the temple and Israel from Roman occupation, from wresting control of the temple back from Rome, and maybe even not entirely, but at least better terms for how the Jews could operate in the temple. They viewed Jesus's interaction with the Gentiles as a distraction. Can't he keep on task, for goodness sakes?

In their mind, they had much more local expectations for what Jesus would be doing. But the truth is Jesus came to His own, to the Jews, and His own did not receive Him. Where we are in Matthew 15 right now, the Jesus has just lambasted the Jewish system that really holds together their entire culture. You remember the Israelite culture at their time basically had two pillars to it. They had the Sabbath observation.

Their whole week revolved around Sabbath. Friday afternoon, all the way through Saturday evening, their life was just radically different. Things shut down. If you've been to Israel today, it's it's similar to that. It's things come to a screeching halt.

Your whole life revolves around Sabbath. And do you remember what Jesus did in Matthew 12? When his disciples were picking grain on the Sabbath, the Pharisees asked Jesus why it was lawful for him to do that, and Jesus said that he is the lord of the Sabbath. He can do whatever he wants to on the day because he's the god of that day. And he then healed somebody in the Sabbath.

You're not supposed to work on it. He healed somebody in the Sabbath, and all the religious leaders got together and conspired how to murder him. Their life revolved around Sabbath, and he blasted it and said he fulfills it because he's the God of it. The other component of their whole worldview was their their food system, clean versus unclean. Their life was divided into those two categories, and even the the clean category had divisions in it.

They had complex oral rules that governed how they ate, what they ate, when they ate, how they prepared their food. It wasn't as simple as what the Torah says clean and unclean. It was way more complex, and Jesus tackles that. Remember, he is completely dismissive of the oral tradition. Basically says it doesn't mean anything.

You use it to contort the word of God. You don't need to follow that. And they're left with, yes, but certainly there are clean foods and unclean foods. Right? I mean, that is the substance really of the Israelite religion.

Yes. Israelite is monotheistic. They they worship one God. They have the Torah, but their daily lives were so built around how you ate. This is a massive thing.

Two sinks, two food storage areas, not eating meat at breakfast or dairy at dinner. Like, all those restrictions, it governed everything. And Jesus responds to that in verse Matthew 15 verse 20 by saying, there's no such thing as unclean foods. It doesn't matter what you eat. It does not defile you.

And so they've rejected him. What's not here in Matthew 15, after that encounter, Jesus then goes to Jerusalem. This is the journey to Jerusalem where his disciples and family go ahead, and Jesus says He doesn't know if He's gonna go, and He sends them on ahead, and then Jesus comes a few days later and kinda sneaks up on them in Jerusalem and has the encounter with the Pharisees where where He says before Abraham was, I am, and they pick up rocks to stone him to death saying, you being a man, keep making yourself out to be equal with God. They're gonna kill him. And so he leaves there, picks his disciples back up again, and they straight up leave Israel.

They were gonna put him to death in Galilee for the Sabbath worship in Matthew 13. They were gonna reject him here and conspire how to kill him because of what he did to the food system. Then he makes himself out to be like God. They are over it, and they are going to kill him. So he leaves.

And he goes in verse 21, this is our text for today, to the districts of Tyre and Sidon. That's modern day Lebanon. The people in Tyre were the enemies of the Israelites. Tyre was wicked people, often described as Israel's most fierce and storied enemy. Josephus described the Roman historian from Jesus's lifetime, describes how the people in Tyre conspired with the Greeks and the Romans to take Israel captive.

The Maccabean revolt where the temple was destroyed, what led to the whole system of the Pharisees and the Roman control of the temple that's in Israel under Herod the Great that Jesus was enacting. That whole system came when the Greeks were able to conquer Jerusalem because they conscripted a bunch of people from Tyre. The Israelites were defeated by they were Greek soldiers, but they were from Tyre. The Jews viewed Tyre as enemies, betrayers. They viewed those who were there as, first of all, just rank idol worshipers.

They worshiped all of the Greek and Roman gods. They added their own gods too. One commentator says, quote, Tyre probably represented the most extreme expression of paganism, both actually and symbolically, that a Jew could ever expect to encounter. They were the most radical example of people that were so far gone in Gentile idol worship. Yes, Gentiles are, by definition, unclean, but those entire are the worst.

And they had been the enemy of Israel for thousands of years. The Phoenicians, kind of the main enemy of Israel back in the days of the judges in first and second Samuel. The Phoenicians, that's that's Tyre. They had been fighting Israel for centuries. Queen Jezebel, she was from there.

Tyre was so bad that when Ezekiel describes the king of Tyre, he uses language comparing him to Satan so much so that it's hard for us to understand when he's talking about the king of Tyre and when he's talking about Satan himself. In fact, if you were to ask Ezekiel, are you talking about the king of Tyre or Satan? He might not even understand the question. That's Tyre. So that's where Jesus goes.

The Pharisees and the rabbis are gonna put him to death for declaring that there's no such thing as unclean foods, and so he's out and he goes to Tyre. He doesn't just go to a lake house. He goes to a lake house in Tyre. He gets away. Now in fairness, he's been trying to get away with the 12 for quite some time.

Ever since John the Baptist was put to death, he's been trying to get away with the 12 for a time of training, and the crowd has been following him. He's been unable to do that. He tried to cut across the sea, but he was against the wind, and the whole crowd made it around. Going back the other way, he walked on the water. The crowd realized he didn't take a boat.

They go back around. They meet him there. That's when he tells the crowd, listen. You're only out here because I fed you the other day. You just want crumbs.

You want food. If you want to be fed, you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood. And the whole crowd left. Still, he's been hounded. Now he's finally got a moment.

He's gotten away to tire. The disciples would have thought they're lost. Why would Jesus be bringing them to this godforsaken place? This den of idol worship and idolatry, why would Jesus take us here? There's some descriptions of a bridge across the Jordan on the way to Tyre, and while the bridge itself would have been in Israel, there are stories about how the Jews wouldn't touch the bridge because it was the way people from Tyre walked to get into Israel, so so they wouldn't touch the bridge.

In other words, this peels off the crowd. Jesus takes the 12 with them to Tyre. The crowd is going away. Jews aren't gonna go to Tyre. But Jesus does.

Gets a minute, gets in the house. Mark's version of this, Mark seven, lets you know that Jesus finds a house there, reserved the house, and gets in it, and finally settles down with the 12. And that leads to our outline this morning. I'm just gonna take the title as our outline. The first we see, the dogs that beg.

The dogs that beg. Desperate dogs. Jesus gets in the house, tea is made, and behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out. A Canaanite. That's the generic term to describe all those Phoenicians and all the people that were driven out of the land of Canaan to make room for the Israelites so long ago.

Mark lets you know that she was a Syrian Phoenician woman. I said Syrian Phoenician, not Siri. Turn off. I do not need pictures of Phoenicia. That's just a way to mean Syrian.

It just means Arab. She's an Arab descent. She's ethnically Arab, but from Tyre and a woman. So this is the lowest of the social class. She's as low as it goes.

She's an Arab from Tyre, a woman beyond that. She comes walking in crying, busts her way through the door. Mark says she makes her way into the house, pushes her way past the twelve. Peter and Judah is probably arguing over who had the door. And she says, have mercy on me, oh lord, son of David.

That's his messianic title. She recognizes that he is the promise given to Israel. The promise of the savior would go from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, through Judah who will have the scepter, through David, the Messiah will come through him. The Messiah will not come through Ishmael. Remember Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac.

The promise did not go to Ishmael, but through Isaac. So much so the New Testament even refers to Isaac as Abraham's only son because he was the son of the promise. The Arabs come from Ishmael. So to have an Arab woman recognizing Jesus and saying, you're the son of David, is astounding. She says, this is the savior.

You are the savior. You are the son of David. And then she says, my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. Mark lets you know she was crying for help. But once she mentions a demon, the disciples jump into action and wanna throw her out of the house.

I mean, again, Arab female Gentile idol worshiper, she's definitely unclean, but now she's talking about demon possession. That's as unclean as can be. She may as well have a pork chop necklace on. And she's crying for help. And notice it says, Jesus, verse 23, did not answer her a word.

Jesus didn't say anything to her. Jesus ignored her. You got some woman who forced her way into the house, which, by the way, according to ceremonial law, would defile the house here. And Jesus is ignoring her. She's calling out, Lord, help me.

And Jesus is ignoring her. Once she says, there's a demon involved. The disciples begin in verse 23 begging. They came and they start begging Jesus, saying, send her away. Get rid of her.

For she's crying out after us. After us? I'm sorry. Did you see an us in there? She wasn't crying out after the disciples, but this it doesn't say which disciple said it.

Again, I'm imagining Peter. Lord, what does she want? My time is so valuable. I don't have time for this. Send her away.

At this, Jesus answered. Jesus is not talking to her. Jesus is talking to the disciples. And Jesus initially didn't say a word and now says, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. This is speaking to the disciples.

This is what I meant by I don't know how the disciples would understand what Jesus is doing. Because in their mind, what Jesus says is true. They want this gentile woman thrown out. Like the rich young ruler, bring him in. Children out.

Which category does she fall into? She falls in the out category. We do not have time for her. We do not need to to waste it's almost as if the disciples viewed Jesus of it having a certain number of miracles and a certain number of power. He can only answer so many prayer requests, and if he were to start answering prayer requests for for Gentile ladies, then there's not going to be enough left for Israel kind of idea.

And Jesus, in a sense, confirms that by by musing, I came only for the sheep of Israel. Right? There's no punctuation in in the Greek manuscripts here, so we don't know if there's a period at the end of that or an exclamation mark or a dot dot dot. That's the one I imagine or ellipsis of some kind or maybe a question mark. I came only for the lost sheep of Israel.

Right, guys? It forces them to think through this. Even if he said it with an exclamation mark, I came only for the lost sheep of Israel. Is that just confirming what the disciples think? If so, she needs the heave ho.

Well, when he says that, and this is in Mark seven, she pushes her way through even closer and grabs onto Jesus's feet. Matthew, verse 25, says she came and knelt before Him. Mark says she's at His feet. Physical contact has now been violated. Jesus had been not looking at her, not talking to her.

Now she's on His feet. And she says, Lord, help me. Help me. She's begging Him. Jesus answered, it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

This seems to be addressed to her. It's not right to take the children's bread. That answer, if you tried that, that would get you an f in pastoral ministries and seminary. Somebody asked for prayer, and you're like, I can't I can't help you. You're a dog.

Now if you wanna push what Jesus actually says, it's not just that she's a dog. It's that her daughter is a dog in the analogy. Imagine you have a daughter or a child convulsing in a seizure, and you call 911, and the paramedics show up, and they walk in and look at your daughter and say, I'm sorry. We we only work on people, not on dogs. You add in an ethnic difference between the paramedics and your daughter, and you can see why this is inflammatory.

I'm sorry. Do you need the number of a good vet? I can help you call a vet, but I don't work on dogs. That's what Jesus tells her. It's not right.

In fact, he makes it a moral issue. I cannot take the children's bread, meaning what's for Israel, and throw it to the dogs. This is the dogs that beg. Second, the demons who flee. The demons who flee.

Verse 27. She says, yes, Lord. Again, again with the Lord. Three times in this passage. Verse 22, verse 25, verse 27.

Yes, Lord. Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table. The word for dogs there, it's not the normal word for dog that's used in the rest of the New Testament. It's a word that translates into English, canine, but it's a word that the Greeks used for the tiny dogs, puppies. It can be used for puppies.

Sometimes it's used for for house dogs. It's not a common Jewish word, obviously, because the Jews did not keep house dogs. Dogs were unclean. That's the whole context of this whole story. The Jews didn't have they might own dogs that were working dogs in the field.

They definitely did not have a dog under their table in their kitchen, for goodness sakes. But the Gentiles did. They had little tiny dogs in the house, not big dogs, not the the street dogs. They had little chihuahuas in their house. And that's what this lady says.

It's like, yeah, Lord. I get it. But even even dogs gotta beg. Even dogs can beg. Listen.

There is nothing more annoying than a dog barking at its bowl, but there is nothing more endearing than a dog with big eyes sitting quietly at the table. You know? And you want to give in, don't you? Now I'm not a dog person. We don't have dogs, but my family goes to dinner at people's houses very often with dogs, and you can see it.

Like, we sit down for dinner, and the dog sits there looking up, and they're, like, embarrassed. Like, oh, we never feed our dog. I don't know why he's sitting here. I don't know why he's sitting here. We would never feed our feed our dog just tonight because otherwise he'll bark.

We can never feed her. And you're looking at the dog. Even the tiny dog has got to eat. Now what's amazing with this response is that she doesn't take offense at what Jesus says. Jesus just called her daughter a dog and said, I'm not gonna answer your prayer because it's not right for me to help animals.

Don't feed the dogs at the table kind of thing. And she doesn't be like, what did you say? How dare you? Now she understands listen. She understands that her need is great, and so her view of herself is low.

And so she doesn't take offense. If you flip that, if you have a high view of yourself and a low view of what you need, then you take offense at everything. And, by the way, this is the besetting American sin, isn't it? This is so ingrained in the American culture. People think so highly of themselves that to step on their toe or to say something wrong with them is offensive, and that's the worst thing you can do.

And I say it's a besetting American sin. Like, this is what I mean. In our hearts, we so easily think that we stand before God, we are going to be okay. We can go to heaven when we die because God knows that we try to do good. God we even say, like, God knows I'm a good person.

He knows I always do what I think is right. And in our culture, by the way, the most right thing you can do is to take care of your kids, and make sure your kids have a good life, and always stick up for your kids kind of thing. That's so ingrained in our culture that we view our need as insignificant because we are so good. And if my kids need something, it's my job to protect them and defend them and give it to them. And God knows that I've always done right by me and my family, and I'm basically and generally a good person, and God knows that.

That's like standard American thinking. And so we're so offended that somebody insults our kids or insults us. Such a high view of self and a low view of need. And this this woman, she's not there. Like, she is desperate, and she knows she knows she's broken.

She knows she's a sinner, and that's the antidote to this in your own mind. If you know you're a sinner, you don't think highly of yourself. She sees her sin. She sees her need. She knows she's broken.

You know, if you hear the Bible say that all has sinned and fall short of the glory of God, the Bible say that when you live according to the flesh, you deserve death, or when the scripture says that every thoughts of your heart is only evil continually, the scripture says that all the law should silence everybody's mouth so that nobody can stand before God, everybody deserves judgment, And when you hear that and if you think, wait. The Bible is telling me I'm a sinner. How dare it? Like, doesn't doesn't God know that I I try hard. God should know that I always try to do my best.

Like, I would like to be a Christian. I would like to be saved from my sin, but I need God to know that I've always tried to do what is good. That's the normal way that we think, and that puts you outside the range of the gospel. If that's your thinking, the gospel falls is the gospel is is a different range than that. It doesn't hit that heart.

The heart that says, I'm generally a good person because I do good, and I care for my kids, and I'm just a moral person, that heart is distant from the gospel. The heart that says I am broken and I am low and I am a sinner and I deserve God's judgment, that is the heart that can be hit by the gospel. And that's what the woman understands. She under Jesus says, you and your daughter are like dogs on the ground, and she's like, that's great news. Because dogs on the ground get the crumbs.

I mean, crumbs for a dog that's at the table, crumbs are a feast, aren't they? The dog finds the crumb. You know, a dog finds a crumb on the carpet one day, that dog is gonna go back to that spot of the carpet every day the rest of that dog's life. That's this woman. Jesus says, you're just a low dog.

And she says, well, that is great news. Praise God. Because those are the ones that get the crumbs. Jesus isn't a doctor for the well. He's he he's a doctor for the sick.

The person who says, I'm morally fine as it relates to God, well, they don't need a savior. Jesus didn't come for them. That's great news. Jesus didn't come for you. Carry on then.

The person who says it's not fair that so many people aren't saved because how's a Canaanite supposed to know about the line of David? How's a Canaanite supposed to know about the savior? How's some Arab living in Tyre supposed to know who who Jesus is? It's not right for God to judge people and send them to hell if they don't know. That has a high view of people.

That kind of logic has a high view of people. People are so good and so high that they, you know, they don't need a savior. It's not this woman. She goes down, down, down. She wants mercy from the Lord.

It's worth remembering, too, why Jesus is entire. The disciples and Jesus had been rejected. When somebody feeds their dog, it doesn't mean their kids are starving. Somebody feeds their dog, their kids are well fed as well. Not gonna make your kids go hungry so that your dog can get fat.

That's the implication from here. This is the axiomatic truth. When dogs eat crumbs, the kids are provided for. In this instance, Israel had been provided for through Jesus Christ, but they had rejected him. And so Jesus tells this woman, your faith, it's so great.

Look at verse 28. Your faith is so great. I love in the gospels how the people who have their faith extolled, generally Gentiles. Have you noticed that? The centurion back in Matthew eight who tells Jesus, you can heal my servant from a distance.

And Jesus says, I haven't seen this kind of faith anywhere in Israel. Some Roman soldier, and now some Arab woman. They have such pictures of faith. And so Jesus says, be it done for you as you desire. Stage one is that your sins are forgiven.

Through her faith, her sins are forgiven. She recognizes that she is a sinner in need of a savior. She sees her sin in a way that that the the Jewish people are not seeing right now. The Jewish people are still in the category of nothing unclean has ever touched my lips, and she is down on the on the floor looking for crumbs. And so her faith has healed her.

Her righteousness is only a righteousness that comes through faith. All of her deeds nailed to the cross where Jesus will die. The righteousness of God given to her. She is cleansed. She is transformed.

She's taken from an unclean Arab woman to a clean and righteous and purified Christian. At that moment. And second stage, the demon will leave your daughter. It says here, verse 28, her daughter was healed instantly. In Mark's description, she goes home and finds her daughter healed.

That's not a contradiction. The demon left her daughter immediately. She didn't realize it until she got home, of course. She was at a distance. Her daughter was healed because of faith.

And this should remind you, by the way, of the man that was lowered to the roof. A previous time where Jesus got the 12 together, had just brewed the tea, ready to sit down, and the guy comes through the roof. Remember that scene? And Jesus says, your faith has healed you. Also, to prove that your faith is taking your sin away, pick up your mat and walk.

That's the same scenario here. Your faith has healed you. And to validate that and to prove that that's true, you'll find your daughter healed instantly. God's mercy is limitless to those who come to him through faith, even to the Gentiles. She understands her sinfulness.

She understands who's she's not worthy, and she places her faith in the one who is worthy, and she is forgiven. That is the demon's flee. The final point. Jesus saves the world. Jesus saves the world.

Is Jesus the savior only for Israel? She understands first of all, she gets a parable. Jesus had parable school in Matthew 13. That was kind of cool. She didn't go.

The disciple disciples scraped through like a d minus from parable school. You saw them last week where Jesus says the blind lead the blind, they all fall into a pit. And Peter says, can you explain the parable? What in the world, Peter? It's barely a parable.

And now the very next passage, Jesus uses an actual parable, a dog's begging, and she not only gets it, interprets it, and applies it to herself. You can picture Peter going, oh, man. The gentile understands the parable. The parable teaches you that if you see your sin, you can see your savior. The same parable as last week.

If you don't see your sin, you are the blind leading the blind. If you do see your sin, you know where to look for salvation. Jesus doesn't turn away anybody with the need, Jew or Gentile. He came to his own. His own did not receive him.

And so he went to the world. I watched CNN this week, and I saw something on CNN I never thought I would see. They were having panelists were debating about dispensationalism. Like, what? What happens?

Going after Tucker it's Tucker Carlson. They're showing Tucker Carlson. It's like dispensationalism is gonna be the end of our world. Like, wait a minute. I know something about this.

We believe that God made a promise to Abraham, a covenant with Abraham, and that through Abraham, the nations of the world will be blessed. And nations that place their faith in that covenant will receive blessing. Nations that oppose Abraham and that covenant will be cursed, and we believe that covenant is fulfilled through Jesus Christ, through the seed. The way the nations of the world are blessed are by placing their faith in the seed of Abraham. Seed singular, not seeds plural.

Seed singular. Jesus Christ is the blessing to the nations. This story depicts that. You can have an Arab lady from Tyre, Phoenician by backgrounds, who places her faith in Jesus Christ, and she will receive the blessing that comes to the nations through Abraham and Isaac, even though she's through Ishmael. We also believe that there are future promises that will be fulfilled to ethnic Israel.

That the nation Israel, God has a plan for them in the future, and that at the second coming, all of Israel will turn and be converted and they will be saved. That's in the future. In this era of church history right now, in this era of history, the nations receive blessing not by making alliances with political Israel or and they receive curses not by opposing political Israel. They receive blessings by placing their faith in Christ and curses by rejecting Christ. Regardless of what side of a of a war they're on.

Listen, nations rise and fall, and there are political arguments for and against any foreign intervention anywhere in the world. But in terms of the covenant given to Abraham, that is Jesus Christ. And, again, there are promises that will be fulfilled by Israel in the future. Praise God. We long for that day.

We long for that day. But until then, look at this woman. That's what the covenant's about. It doesn't matter if her great great grandfather is Ishmael or Isaac. You can be descended from Isaac and not have faith in Jesus and stand under a curse.

And you can be descended from Ishmael and put your faith in Jesus and have your sins forgiven. What of you? Do you look at this woman and see yourself in her? Do you hear the Lord telling you that your heart is wicked and low and you don't deserve salvation? You could never earn it.

You don't deserve to have your prayers answered. You're lower than low. And do you hear that and go, oh, praise God? Because when I go down, that's where I find the gospel. Or do you hear that and take offense at it and say the Lord doesn't know what kind of family I was raised in or what kind of trials I'm going through or how my family thinks of me or what happened at work or all these excuses.

Really, I'm a good person, and I should be able to stand on my own. I mean, if that's your response to this, then you're like those in Israel who say nothing unclean has ever touched my lips. The path to salvation is to lower yourself, to see the scripture telling you your sin, to confess your sin to the Lord, and be forgiven. Jesus was finally, of course, eventually returned to Israel where he's betrayed by one of the 12, put through a sham trial by the Jewish leaders, murdered, executed by the Romans, resurrected from the grave, the only way for salvation is for you to place your faith in him. And, Lord, we're grateful that you did more than saving this girl's daughter from a demon.

You saved her soul from sin. We recognize that we're not worthy enough to eat at the table. We're not worthy enough to be welcomed into your house. We are dogs that belong outside, and yet your grace has come to us and has changed our hearts and drawn us to yourself. We're so thankful for the kindness You've shown us in Christ.

It's kindness beyond measure. I pray for anyone here this morning that has never opened their heart to the gospel. They've never come to terms with their sin. They are exalted in their own eyes. I pray that you would use this Arab woman to lower them, to bend them, and humble themselves in their heart.

They would see themselves as low and in need of a savior, which is great news because you save those who are confessing their sin. We're grateful for the gospel of Christ. It's in his name we pray. Amen. And now for a parting word for pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today or if you wanna learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church. If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to tms.edu. Now if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington DC area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel. I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service. But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.