Now take your Bibles this morning, open to the book of Matthew as we continue our study in the book of Matthew today. Matthew 15, the passage that we read just a moment ago, heard about a man who slipped and fell off a cliff while he was hiking on the mountaintop. And luckily, he was able to grab onto a branch on the way down. He was holding on for dear life. He looked up. He'd fallen about 20 feet. He looked down. There was fifteen hundred feet below a rocky valley. And then he began to panic and he yelled at someone up there. Help me. Is there anyone out there that can help me? And he heard a booming voice that said, I will help you if you believe in me. And he said, I believe in you. He said, if you believe in me, then let go and I will save you. The man looked down again and then he said, is there anyone else up there that can help me? The story in our passage today is another desperate situation. about a woman who came to realize that there was no one else that could help her, only Jesus. And as we look at our passage today, I just want to ask you a question. Do you have a need in your life? Are you in a desperate situation? I suspect that there are many people in here that could say that. You're in a position now where only the Lord can help you. Perhaps there are people here today and you're facing a devastating family problem. Maybe there's some people here today and you're facing a medical issue there. Doctors haven't given you good news or there's not a whole lot of hope regarding your condition. Maybe there's some people here today you're having a problem, perhaps a parent with a child or a financial reversal in your life and you're not sure how you're going to make it. I could literally stand here and just go on and on. I think many people are facing desperate times today. Well, in the midst of your problems, you need someone to help you. You need someone to come and bring you through this. And this is what we find in the story today, a woman who is in a desperate situation, who came to the Lord Jesus with her problem. And so this passage can give you hope, and I hope that that's exactly what it does. I hope that as we study this today, you can realize that Jesus is sufficient for whatever your problem is, for whatever your need is. He can help you. And you're here today and you're saying, man, I need a small miracle. That was the case with this woman here. As we come to this passage today, we see a woman whose daughter was The Bible says vexed by a devil in verse 22, where this daughter was demon possessed. And the Bible uses here the term grievously vexed here in the King James Version. We could translate that seriously ill, a word that talks about a serious illness, the idea of being in tremendous pain, of being in torment. Here's a mother that has no doubt exhausted all other options. She's gone everywhere. to find help, and there was no help. You think she probably went through the various ceremonies of her false idols and gods? I think she did. I think that she did everything that she knew to do to find help for her daughter who was tormented. But here, finally, she turns to the Lord Jesus Christ, and she really does what it says in 1 Thessalonians 1 9. She turned to God from her idols. She turned to the living God from her dead idols that offered her no help. I think from here on out, she's done with that. She's done with the false worship, the false idols. And she comes to the Lord Jesus and as we find in our study in our passage today, she finds help in Christ. Jesus heals her daughter and Jesus commends her. Look at verse 28. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith. Be it unto thee even as thou will. She got what she needed from the Lord. And Jesus commends her. Jesus says your faith is great. Greek word mega. I think this whole story here, what is this about? This is all about the faith of this woman. This woman's faith serves as an object lesson to the disciples who are watching this whole thing. Jesus was demonstrating to them what real, genuine faith looked like. Great faith, he called it. Saving faith. And that's the thing. Whatever your problem is, if you'll put your faith in Jesus Christ, he can solve that problem. Do you believe that? If you put your faith in Christ, he is the one that can take care of the situation, that desperate situation that you're in. He is able, he is sufficient to take care of that. And so Jesus says, woman, you have great faith. Now, what I want to show you here in our passage today are the characteristics of her faith. Why was it so great? What was it that was pleasing to Jesus about her faith? And let me just give you these characteristics. First of all, great faith, number one, seizes a rare opportunity. It seizes a rare opportunity. Look at verse twenty one. When Jesus went thence and departed unto the coast of Tyre and Sidon. Now, this was a faith that saw an opportunity and jumped on it. Here Jesus had come to the coast of her country and she saw this now as an opportunity to get help, an opportunity to be blessed. And that's the first thing I learned about her faith. Her faith seized upon this God-given opportunity. You realize that this is the only occasion in the earthly ministry of Jesus where he ever journeyed outside of Jewish territory? Only time. Only time he ever traveled into Gentile lands is right here. And it records it in verse 21. He came into the coast of Tyre and Sidon. Now, why did he do that? Well, I think that what the Lord was doing here is that he was foreshadowing the idea that the gospel would eventually go to all the world, that the blessings of God are not just to Jews. They're for Gentiles as well. Barclay wrote this. He said it shows us the beginning of the end of all barriers. In other words, Jesus is demonstrating and foreshadowing that the gospel will go beyond Galilee. It will go beyond Palestine. It will go into the Gentile lands. It's for everyone. And later on, we're going to see this because later on in chapter fifteen, we have the feeding of the four thousand. Remember, we also already saw the feeding of the five thousand in chapter fourteen. Here in chapter fifteen, I should say the feeding of the four thousand. The difference is these are Gentiles. They're not Jews. So, Jesus repeats the miracle of the feeding of the multitudes, but he does it for the Gentiles. Again, what's the message? The message is the blessings of God are not restricted to just Jewish people. They're to go to everyone. But another reason why Jesus goes to this Gentile land, it was a time of deliberate withdrawal on his part. Remember, Jesus saw the end of his ministry. He saw that He needed to prepare his disciples for what was to come. He knew that the hostility continued to mount. He needed to spend some time alone with his disciples. He already tried to withdraw alone with his disciples in chapter 14 only to be followed by a multitude of people and really there was no place in the land of Galilee, where Jesus could be alone and not be bombarded with people. And so Jesus, in an effort to hide and in an effort to get alone just with his disciples, journeys north through Galilee until he comes to the land of Tyre and Sidon, where the Phoenicians dwelt. At least there he would be safe from the malignant hostility of the scribes and the Pharisees and from the mobs of the people. There he could invest time in his disciples to prepare them for what will come. So he's seeking quiet time. He's not running. He's just seeking time to be with his disciples and prepare himself. By the way, many centuries earlier, God sent a prophet into this land, a prophet of Israel also journeyed into this land. His name was Elijah. Remember, God said, go to the widow of Zarephath and there I will take care of you. She will watch over you. And so we see this kind of being repeated here. Tyre is 50 miles away from Capernaum. Inside it is just north of that twenty more miles. And when Jesus came back, one writer says he would probably take the highway east back across the mountains of Lebanon, a very circuitous route, even going farther north than side in and going through the mountains and down to the south east of the Sea of Galilee. In other words, this was a long track. This was a long journey for Jesus and his disciples. It probably would have been a route of about one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty miles of travel probably took him weeks, maybe even months. And during this time in his ministry, these weeks and these months, there was no teaching that really went on to the multitudes. At least it was a time where he trained his disciples and he's trying again to be hidden. He's trying to not be known right now. Mark seven, verse twenty four, it says, And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. Watch this. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know yet He could not be hidden. That's Jesus. I mean, he tried to be hidden from the multitudes. But Mark says he couldn't be hidden. You can't hide Jesus. He's too great for that. And even there in this Gentile land, he's known French said it like this. He said, like perfume betrays itself. So he whose name is perfume poured out cannot be hid. And that's true. Jesus was recognized even in this pagan land. In Mark chapter 3, talking about great crowds that followed Jesus, it began to say where these people were from. And it names in verse 8, from around Tyre and Sidon. Even people from Tyre and Sidon knew Jesus because some of them had traveled to Galilee to see and hear the miracles and to hear the teaching. And so even people from this region knew the Lord Jesus. And this woman, somehow she found out about him. She knew that he had come to her region. And it says in verse 22, And behold, a woman of Cana came out of the same coast. She comes out to Jesus. Now, we don't know the name of this woman. The Bible doesn't give the name. All we know is that she's a Canaanite woman and that she comes to Jesus for help. You know why? She saw this as her opportunity. This was it. He would never come by this way ever again. This would be the only opportunity that she had to get the help that she needed from the Lord. And so she goes to Him. Faith is perceptive. Faith sees God given opportunities. It may be that is the case with you here today. This may be the only opportunity that God gives you to get the help that you need. You never know when the opportunity will no longer be available. You know, throughout the New Testament, you'll find that God gives opportunities to people at certain times and then those opportunities are gone. There are some people that think, well, you know, whenever I'm ready to deal with God, I'll deal with him on my terms and my time. No, you'll deal with God in his time, on his terms or not at all. He's the one who makes the opportunities available. There are times of divine visitation where God comes and he gives his people an opportunity to get help from him. And those who are apathetic miss out on it. Those who are disobedient miss disobedient miss out on it. You remember in Matthew eight. First twenty first thirty four Jesus visited the country of the gatherings story he he he goes into a boat comes to that region gets out of the boat and he's met by two demon possessed man. What is Jesus to cast out the demons. What happens to the demons. They enter into a herd of pigs and the pigs run down a steep cliff. And they jump off the cliff into the scene and like one country preachers said they committed suicide jumping into the water. And you know what happened after that, the people come to Jesus and they said, you know what? Just just leave. Would you please leave? I mean, you've already cost us money. You just got here. You've already cost us so much. We were making a lot of money in that pig farming. Would you just leave? You know what happened? Jesus got in his boat and he left. You know, God's a gentleman. He's not going to force his way into people's lives. He just left. They missed the opportunity. The Bible says, My spirit will not strive with man forever. If you want the blessings of God and God gives you the opportunity, you better jump on it. You better get it. Jesus said this in John three, eight, the wind blows wherever it wants to and you can hear the sound of it, but you never know when it's going to come and when it's going to go. What was Jesus talking about there? He was talking about the spirit of God. So is everyone that is born of the spirit. He's talking about the sovereignty of the spirit. In other words, the Holy Spirit does whatever he wants to do. You don't command the spirit. You don't tell the spirit what to do. The Holy Spirit is sovereign. He does what he wants to do and when he comes, you better take advantage of it and you better yield to when he comes if you want the blessings of God. I remember one time I was watching television and I saw one of these big name faith healers on television and it was multitudes of people and there was people that were on the platform and someone would come for healing. And he was kind of playing around. And he said to the crowd, he said, you know what he said on? We're going to have everyone's going to count to three. And when you count to three, the Holy Spirit is going to come and it's going to slay this person and heal them. And all the crowd, he whipped the crowd up and they all said one, two, three. And when he said three, this person kind of just fell over and he laughed. And when that happened, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. That's blasphemy, friend. You don't treat the Holy Spirit like a dog jumping through a hoop. The Holy Spirit is not your servant, he is the master. And Jesus said he comes wherever he wants to and he does whatever he wants to. He does according to his will and you never know when he's going to come or when he's going to go. You better be ready for when the Holy Spirit moves. and here Jesus came to this place and the woman jumped on it. This is my time. The Lord has come. Second Corinthians six two at the acceptable time. I listen to you and on the day of salvation. I helped you behold. Now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation. The Holy the New Testament puts the emphasis on Now, right now, when God moves today, if you'll hear his voice, the Bible says. And so her faith was great because she seized a rare opportunity. But I want you to notice the next thing. Great faith not only seizes a rare opportunity, but great faith surmounts a real obstacle because this woman has some obstacles that she had to overcome to see that her need was met. She had to overcome these things. But her faith did not let these things stand in her way, because look how Matthew describes her in verse twenty two. And behold, a woman of Cana came out of the same coast and cried, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord. Now he describes her, first of all, as a woman of Canaan. This woman was a Gentile, which means she was already considered unclean. A typical Jewish rabbi wouldn't give her the time of day. But Matthew, I think on purpose, uses the word Canaan to convey a message. Remember the people, the land of Canaan, the Canaanites, they were under what they were under curse. You remember in Joshua, in the book of Joshua, they were to go in and to wipe out the Canaanites because of the curse that God had placed on these people. And so really, she was the descendants or descendant of vestiges of a race of people that had a curse upon it that really should have been wiped out. But not only that, she was an enemy because Matthew points out she came out of those same coasts. That's where she was from. And the coast of Tyre and Sidon, it was a region known for its despicable religious practices. They were a people given to idolatry. In fact, in the Old Testament, Queen Jezebel, remember the wife of Ahab, she came from this region that was the center for Baal worship. This woman was a idolater, a worshipper of Baal. Mark calls her a Syro-Phoenician woman. What does that mean? Phoenicia was the name of the country, but under a Roman general, Ptolemy, who ruled there for a while, he kind of annexed Phoenicia to Syria, and so they became a Syrian-Phoenician kind of a union. She became a Syro-Phoenician woman, and they were the enemies of Israel. Josephus writes of the Phoenicians, They have the most ill feelings towards us. So she was considered to be an enemy, not only a Gentile, not only a Canaanite under a curse, but an enemy and an idolater, a worshipper of Baal, a worshipper of the Roman gods, no doubt, because she was associated with Rome, being she was Syro-Phoenician and also a worshipper of Ashtar. All these things she had going against her. She would have been lower than a Jewish tax collector. in the minds of the disciples and she was rejected. Look at verse twenty three. The disciples said, Lord, just send her away or send her away. She came to us. She cried out for help or send her away. They're really showing their disdain, their typical attitude that a Jew would have towards a person like this. You know, racism is nothing new. You know that it was all the way back in this day. And so this woman was considered an outcast. Socially, she had barriers. She had racial barriers. She had social barriers. She had religious barriers. She had national barriers. All these things were against her. And yet none of those things hindered her from coming to the source of help. Jesus and friend, that's faith. Faith will not allow any obstacle or barrier to keep you from coming to the Lord. There may be some people here today and you may have problems in your life, you may be desperate, but you're feeling like, man, I'm unworthy. I have no right to approach God and ask him for any help. I just I don't feel right, I've been living with sin my life and to ask God to help me, I don't think I could do that. But let me just tell you that none of us are worthy to approach God. You understand that none of us. We're all sinners. In fact, this woman really is a picture of all of us. She was under a curse, but guess what? All of us who are children of Adam, we're all under a curse. The curse of sin. This woman was an enemy, but we're all, the Bible says, enemies of God before salvation. Colossians 121. And you that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled. She was unclean, but all of us are unclean. None of us are worthy. Don't ever fall into the trap of thinking that when God answers your prayer, it was because you were worthy in some way to receive the answer. No, it's all based on the mercy of God. And so she didn't let any of these things stop her. She was desperate, she had a need and her faith overcame, it surmounts these obstacles. And so we see that great faith seizes a rare opportunity. Great faith surmounts a real obstacle, but here's the third thing. Great faith seeks the right object, because who did she go to? She went to Christ. Christ was the object of her faith. Now, the reason I say that is because there are some people that have faith, but they have faith in the wrong object and their faith doesn't help them. Just faith in and of itself is of no good. Just having faith is not going to solve your problems. There are some people that have faith in faith. Understand that they just think, boy, if I just have faith, then I'll be OK. Well, faith in what? Some people treat faith as some kind of a positive mental attitude. or some kind of a force. If I just have this faith, then everything will be OK. And we see this in name it and claim it word of faith theology, where they say whatever you name, if you can visualize it and name it and then claim it, then you'll have it. In fact, did you know that the fastest growing segment of professing Christianity is the word of faith movement, also known as positive confession? And it's massive. The leaders of it are rich because they, well, they're able to extract a large amount of money from people that follow that. And they believe that just you can speak words of faith and you can get whatever you want. You ever hear that? In fact, I was doing some reading on a book written by Kenneth Hagin called How to Write Your Own Ticket with God. He said this, he said that one day the Lord appeared to him, said Hagen. He said he was within three feet of me. He appeared to me and he had a casual conversation with Jesus. And they talked about finances and they talked about ministry and they talked about current affairs. And then Hagen told, or excuse me, Jesus told Hagen to get a pencil and a piece of paper. He was going to tell him something important. And then he instructed him to write down these four principles and Hagen says, if anybody anywhere will take these four steps and put these four principles in operation, he will always receive whatever he wants from me or God, the father, according to Jesus. And then here are the steps. Number one, say it. Just say whatever you want. Number two, do it. Your action defeats you or puts you over according to your action, and then step three is receive it. And then step four is tell it to others so others may believe. And he said, that's it. Those four things, if you just do that, you can get whatever you want from me. According to Hagen, this is what Jesus told him. So just name it. And then claim it. But I want to tell you something, that's not biblical faith. That's faith and faith and it's nonsense. You know what it does? It defies man and it humanizes God. And it makes man sovereign over what is supposed to be. I'll say what it needs to be in my life and then I'll claim it. Takes God out of control and puts man in control, faith and faith, and then you have these other people that say, well, you need to have faith in yourself. If you just have faith in yourself, everything will be all right. That's the fact. The first step of success in your life is to have faith in who you are. But I want to tell you, this woman having faith in herself, that wasn't going to help her. How is that going to help her? Have faith in myself? Friend, I want to tell you something. I know myself. I don't have faith in myself. We're sinners. The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. God doesn't want us having faith in us or faith in faith. He wants us to put our faith in Him. That's the whole point. And this woman, she has it right. She comes to Jesus. She had already put her faith in false idols. She had already put her faith in superstition. She's through with that. Now she comes to Jesus and she places all of her faith in Jesus. And notice what she says. Notice what she calls him in verse 22. And she says, have mercy on me. What is she putting faith in there? She's putting faith on the mercy of God. And I want to tell you something, beloved. We have a God who is merciful and thank God he is. Put your faith on the mercy of God. That's the character of our God. He's merciful. So she put her faith in his mercy. And you know what she's saying there? She doesn't deserve what she's about to ask for. That's mercy. She doesn't come asking for justice. Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is getting what you don't deserve. And she's really saying, I'm not worthy of this. I don't deserve what I'm about to ask for, but please have mercy on me. And then she calls him the Lord. Oh, Lord, have mercy on me. Oh, Lord. She acknowledges the authority of Christ, the lordship of Christ. What does the Bible say if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord? That's saving faith there, Lord. And then she calls him son of David in verse 22, acknowledging that he is the Messiah. That is the title that acknowledges his kingship. He's Lord. He's king. He's a Messiah. And this is what she's saying. I believe that you are who you claim to be. I believe you are merciful. I believe that you are the Lord. I believe that you are the Messiah of God. And I believe you have the power to do this. This is a great confession from this woman. She has the right object. She puts her faith in Christ. Faith is not a leap into the dark. It's a leap out of darkness into light. And that's what this woman does. She leaps into light. She puts her faith in Christ. So great faith seizes a rare opportunity. Great faith surmounts a real obstacle. Great faith seeks the right object. But then I want you notice another characteristic of her faith. Great faith shows a reverent objection. Because this woman doesn't take no for an answer. She objects, but she does it reverently. She comes and gets what she wants. But I want you to notice the Lord's response to her, because we would read this and say, well, this is uncharacteristic of Christ, because notice the three responses. The first one we find in verse twenty three. But she comes and she says, oh, Lord, have mercy, oh, son of David. But look what Jesus does in verse twenty three. But he answered her not a word. He was silent to her at first. Now, why did he act that way? There's been a lot of explanations trying to figure out the reason for Jesus behavior here. Why did he act this way? Well, one explanation is that Jesus was not sent to Gentiles. He didn't want to deal with his woman because she was a Gentile. And dispensationally, according to the the counsel of God, he wasn't sent to Gentiles. This is the view of Alexander McLaren. This refusal was a real refusal on the part of Jesus. But I don't agree with that at all. Because in John 4, Jesus spoke to a Samaritan woman and he helped her. I don't see that here. In fact, later on he helps her. So, that kind of, I think, eliminates that. Well, there's another reason given. That is, well, he was silent because really he's testing her faith. And that's a good answer. It could very well be that he's testing the faith of this woman by staying silent. And then later on, he'll tell her that he was only sent to Israel. He's trying to test her to find out how bad she really wants what she wants. But then there's a third explanation. That is, Jesus wanted to strengthen her faith. This is the view of William Hendrickson, who said by delaying he was stretched He was stretching her faith, and he says, quote, She would now begin to realize far better than if he had immediately healed her daughter and what an extraordinary blessing she was receiving, end quote. And so he was just simply stretching her faith and strengthening her faith. But then there's a fourth option, and I think this is really the one I like the best, and that is Jesus wanted to highlight what he was about to do. He wanted to place a great emphasis About what he was going to do that is to hear the prayer of a Gentile woman and give her what she wanted. I think this was an object lesson to the disciples who were standing by. And I think that Jesus, in a sense here, is playing along with this woman and he's acting just the way people would expect a typical Jewish rabbi to act towards a woman of her social status. He kind of plays along. He kind of plays that role. Of a typical Jewish rabbi, and he said, well, His second thing is to refuse her. First, he's silent. But then look at verse 24. In the answer, they said, I am not sent, but under the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So he kind of refuses her here. And basically what he's saying is you're not one of the covenant people of God. You're not one of the elect of God. You're not one of my people. I think Jesus says this with tongue in cheek, by the way. He knows her heart. He knows what he's about to do for her. But he's about to show these disciples who are standing by, who have been filled with a Judaism theology that said only Israel can receive the blessings of God. Only if you're a Jew are you worthy to receive the blessings of God. And their minds are filled with this. And Jesus is about to show them that that's not true. And the most fertile soil for faith is not in Palestine or Galilee, but it's in Gentile lands. here with this woman. I love the way she responds. Verse twenty five. She doesn't give up. Verse twenty five. She then came. She and worshiped him. Sing Lord, help me. Shouldn't get offended. She bows and worships. And she says, Lord, help me. I love that. That's the way you respond to the doctrine of election, by the way. Someone says, well, you know, they're like, we tell you who's elect the ones who want help, who want Jesus. Anyone who wants help from Jesus can get it. Beloved anyone. You just come. Don't worry about any of that. Don't worry about election. You just come. If you want to help from Jesus, you'll get it. She responds the right way. She just comes and she bows. She says, Lord, help me. But then she said, give up what he says in verse twenty six, it sounds harsh, but he answered and said it is not meat to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs. Wow, that's harsh. But again, I believe Jesus was acting along. He was playing the role of a typical Jewish rabbi and how he would respond. And this was a this is what Jews would call Gentiles. This was the racial slur that they would give to Gentiles. They were called dogs. Unworthy, unclean. But two things about this response, first of all, I think Jesus, when he said this, he did it with a compassionate tone. I think he did it with a smile. And I agree with William Barclay, who wrote this. Even a thing which seems hard can be said with a disarming smile. We can be quite sure the smile on Jesus' face and the compassion in his eyes robbed the words of all insult and bitterness." And besides that, listen to this. This is very important. The word that he uses for dog here is not the typical word that a Jew would use referring to a Gentile. Whenever a Jew called a Gentile a dog, the Greek word they used talked about a scavenger, a wild dog, a back alley dog. But the word that Jesus uses here is not that word. It is a shortened form of a word which means a little dog, or we could say it like this, a household pet. or a puppy, little dog. And in a sense, Jesus was kind of drawing her in, I think, with that. He was saying, you know, it's not wise to take food for the children and give it to the to the puppy, to the household pet. We all have that. I mean, I have a dog in my house, Molly. She's I'm telling you, at dinnertime, she is right there. She's right by my side. She's helped me out a few times, I'll be honest with you. We feed our animals. That's what Jesus is saying. Well, you know, we don't give our food to household pets. And this woman, and again, I think Jesus is drawing her in. He's leading her along like a lawyer would lead a person along in a trial to get the answer that he wanted. He knows her heart. He knows her desperation. He knows her faith. And he wants her to be an object lesson to the disciples of what real faith looks like. And this is what it looks like. In a sense, is what he's saying. And so her answer is amazing to me, because look what she says in verse. Twenty seven, she said, yes, Lord. Now, when she said, yes, Lord, by the way, what is she confessing to? Yeah, I'm not I'm not worthy. Yeah, I'm I am a dog. I'm what you said I am, I agree. And again, we see great humility here. You know why some people don't get things from God? Because you come too proud. It's almost like God owes it to you. God owes you nothing. And she has a humble spirit and she comes, she says, yes, Lord, you're right. But then she says this in verse twenty seven, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their master's table. That's a brilliant response. And she's basically saying, Lord, all I need is just the crumbs. Crumbs from your table is more than enough to meet my need. I don't need you to move all the mountains in my life. Just this one. I don't need you to take care of all the problems in my life, Lord. I'm just asking for this one problem. Just this one crumb from your table will be enough for me. Please, Lord. And by the way, that is just incredible because this is the only time in the New Testament when Jesus loses a debate. Because Jesus concedes the point he understands he's right. In verse 28, then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee even as thou wilt. I think when Jesus heard her response, I can't prove it, but I think Jesus probably laughed for joy. He said, boy, that's right. And the disciples around, their mouth dropped open. And Jesus happily conceded defeat on this. He said, boy, that's right. This is real faith. This is what faith looks like. And he said, woman, and this is the fifth thing, great faith secures the requested outcome, she got what she wanted because of her faith. And again, I say to you, beloved, no matter what your need is, whatever situation you're in, Jesus is sufficient to meet that need if you'll come to him. Let's bow for prayer together. Father, we thank you for this wonderful story and we thank you for the faith of this woman that is so clear to us what real great faith is supposed to look like. And God grant us that type of faith. And Lord, I'm speaking about people all over in this auditorium today, many who have difficult, desperate problems in their life. And Lord, they need you to intervene. They need your touch. They might not need every problem moved, but Lord, just this one in their life that's plaguing them, that's hurting them. Lord, they need crumbs from your table. May they come in humility. And yet in faith. Realizing, Lord, that you are sufficient to meet that need and may, Lord, you help them today and father, I pray for some who are here today that are lost. And they feel unworthy to even approach you, Lord, may they allow their sinfulness to be a stepping stone to come to Christ. May they understand that you didn't come to help religious people, but you came for sinners, those who are hurting, those who are lost. May they come to Christ today. Heads are bowed, eyes are closed. And my friend, the invitation today is extended to you. Jesus has come to our coast and he is offering help to anyone who wants it and this might be your last opportunity friend We don't know what tomorrow holds There are people living in the East Coast that had no idea what was going to happen this week. Earthquake and a hurricane. We don't know the tragedies that await us. Friend, don't ever put off doing what you know to do today. And if God is speaking to your heart today about your soul salvation, friend, don't put it off. Come now. Now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation. If you're not sure of your salvation, when we give this invitation, I'm going to ask you to come. Thank you for listening to the Ellendale Pulpit with Dr. Jerry Harmon. If this message has been a blessing to you, we would love to hear from you. We invite you to call us at 901-386-4676 or send us an email at the following address, sermons at ellendalebaptist.org. If you are in the Memphis area, we invite you to come visit with us at Ellendale Baptist Church. We are located at 3861 Broadway Road in Bartlett, Tennessee. Our Sunday worship services are at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Our pastor, Dr. Jerry Harmon, prays that God's richest blessings will be yours.