This evening we have with us Dr. Joel Beakey, who will be preaching this evening. Dr. Beakey is the president of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary and a professor there. He's also the pastor at the Heritage Netherlands Reform Congregation here in Grand Rapids. I am grateful to God for Dr. Beeky. I have been blessed by his writings, been very instructive and helpful, and I know that other people share those feelings. So I'd like to invite Dr. Beeky up to the front now. Thank you so much for being with us and leading us in God's word. Well it's great to be with you this evening. If you turn with me please to Matthew 15. We want to read from verses 21 through 28. And as you turn there, do let me bring to you especially the warm greetings of our seminary. We have some seminary students I see in our midst here tonight, and I know that worship with you regularly, and I pray God that they will be a great blessing to you and you to them. Let's hear the Word of God as it comes to us now from Matthew 15, verses 21 through 28. And as we read about the Canaanite woman, let's reflect on the fact that she really is that New Testament Jacob that we read about from Genesis 32, who learned to wrestle with God and prevailed. Then Jesus went thence and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coast and cried to him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David. My daughter is grievously vexed with the devil. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away, for she cries after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshiped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, it is not meat to take to children's bread and to cast it to dogs. And she said, truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith. Be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour. May God bless the reading of his sacred word. Well, this story has no doubt been one that you've read many times, and perhaps as many times as you've read it, you've wondered, what does it mean? And often it is difficult to understand some of the stories, the miracles, the parables of our Lord and Savior. And yet often Jesus gives us the interpretation in the last verse, whether it's a story, a miracle, or a parable, he hints at its meaning. in that last verse, and this is no exception. He says in verse 28, to the woman, O woman great, or you can translate it from the Greek, mature is your faith. So we know that in this history what Jesus is doing is He's maturing this mother's faith. And that is a great blessing indeed when God matures our faith and fills us with the kind of assurance that this woman was filled with as Jesus says to her, be it unto thee even as thou wilt. Today we honor our mothers and we recognize that mothers often have their faith matured through God dealing with them in and through the very act of mothering, and how real, how vital that truth is in this story. And so I hope, especially for you who are mothers in our midst tonight, that you may glean a great deal from this very fact and actually understand that one reason why God gives us children, be it fathers or mothers, is to mature our faith. I'm sure there's not a single parent here tonight who would say, I'm a perfect parent. The only perfect parents I know are ones who don't have kids yet. But a real parent knows there are trials in parenting. And it's through those trials that God deals with us and matures our faith. In fact, if you follow the examples of Jesus dealing with parents who bring their children to Him, often what Jesus does before He deals with a child, be it mother or father, He turns to the parent and begins to deal with that parent first. That's what happens here. That's what happens in Mark 9 with the father of the demoniac. Remember, the father comes to Jesus and says, Lord, if you can do anything, help this boy of mine who's laying on the ground foaming. And Jesus says to him, if you can believe, all things are possible to him that believes. And suddenly the whole focus you see is turned on to the father. And the father cries out with tears, Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief. So I ask you tonight, mothers and fathers, Young people, children, how mature of a Christian are you? And do you want to be a mature Christian? Are you satisfied just to be barely a Christian? Or do you want to be an excellent Christian? When couples come to me and ask me to officiate their marriage, I often ask them this question. On a scale of one to 10, what kind of a marriage would you like? Now they all say ten. One young man said, I want a twelve. You see, we all want excellent marriages, but come ten years hence to that same couple and say, what kind of a marriage do you have? And many of them will settle in at a three, a four, a five, or a six. It's the same way in the Christian faith, unfortunately. So many Christians settle in to be kind of mundane Christians, but that's not what Jesus wants of us, is it? Jesus said, I would that thou were cold or hot, not lukewarm. Lukewarm Christians, He says, I will actually spit out of my mouth. God wants His people to be excellent, mature Christians who give their entire lives and souls, their mind and their strength to Him, the living God. And so tonight, we want to look at this theme of how Christ matures a mother's faith or how He matures our faith through three thoughts. First, by His apparent silence, verse 23, but He answered not a word. Second, by His apparent rejection, verse 24. And then third, by His apparent insult, verse 26. how Christ matures our faith through silence, through rejection, through insult. Now, when you consider how this woman comes to Jesus, she's a foreigner, she has no rights, she's not a citizen of Israel, she's got no religious rights, no citizenship rights, but when you consider how she comes, she comes to Jesus. and the urgency of her coming. She comes with a demon-possessed daughter. And why she comes? Begging for mercy. And how she comes? By faith, confessing Him as Lord, Son of David. You and I would think that Jesus is going to answer this woman right away, heal her daughter right away, and that all things will be well, and this story will be very short indeed. But suddenly we're confronted with these amazing words, but He, the Savior of sinners, He, the one of whom it is said, before you call, I will answer, answered her not a word. Have you ever had anyone give you the silent treatment? I've counseled couples where one person would often give the silent treatment to the spouse. Every time the spouse will tell me, it's almost like hell on earth. The tension is so overwhelming in the marriage at such times that they'd rather have their spouse yell at them or just speak. Silence is dreadful. Imagine, boys and girls, if you went to your mom and you came home from school and you rushed into the house and you said, Mom, you wouldn't believe what happened to me today at school, and you began to pour out your heart, and your mom just didn't say a word. You say, what's wrong, mom? And you'd be very upset, wouldn't you? But here's a woman, and she comes with a daughter who's possessed by a devil. She has tremendous need. She pours out her heart to Jesus. In the original Greek, it's in the repeated sense. Over and over and over again, she's crying out, Lord, Son of David, Son of David, Son of David, have mercy, have mercy, have mercy upon me. The streets are ringing with her noise. And Jesus answers her, not a word. What a contrast, a crying woman and a silent Jesus. What an affliction, what a reason to doubt, what an objection, but he answered her, not a word. Do you know what it means to face the silence of God in your life? Today, of course, we're told by health and wealth gospel preachers that there is no such thing. We're told that, you know, whenever you pray, you're going to get an answer right away. In fact, if you don't get an answer right away, you don't have enough faith. If you get sick and you don't get cured, it's because you don't have enough faith. So God answers your prayers always right away. If you pull into a parking lot and there's no open spots, you just pray and God will open a spot for you. You see, if this is true Christianity, that God meets you all the time, right away, and never appears to be silent to you, well, you're going to have to rip out and throw away a good part of the Bible. In fact, probably two-thirds of the Psalms. The Christian life is a life of trial. It's a life of facing times, seasons, when it seems that God is not answering us a word. And that's not easy. You know, if you're just a nominal Christian, no true Christian at all, or you're not a Christian at all in any sense of the word, you're an unbeliever, as long as God gives you a good spouse, good kids, good job, good home over your head, good roof, You're okay. God can keep his distance for the rest because you don't really want God to speak to you too loudly, too clearly. You don't want to change your life, surrender your life. But if you're a Christian, a real Christian, who wants to be a mature Christian, wants to live wholly to the honor of God, you see the silence of God, as the old Puritan, Scottish Puritan Samuel Rutherford said, is hell on earth to the believer. He said, the silence of God is the bitterest ingredient the Christian has to drink in his cup of sorrow here in this life. Have you experienced that? The silence of God. It's everywhere in the Bible where you look for it. The bride in the Song of Solomon said, I opened to my bridegroom, but my bridegroom had withdrawn himself and gone. I sought him, but could not find him. I called to him, but he gave me no answer. Jeremiah complains, when I cry and shout, the Lord shuts out my prayer. Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud that our prayer should not pass through. One of the versifications of the Psalms goes this way, with anguishes from piercing sword, reproach of bitter foes I hear, while day by day with taunting word, where is thy God? The scoffers sneer. You see, the psalmist, he cries out, be not silent to me, Lord, lest if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit. Hell on earth for the believer. But that just raises the question, doesn't it? Why would God be silent to his people? Martin Luther, the great reformer, once said to his dear wife, Katie, as he left for work that day, he was trying to rebuild the church, and he said, I'm afraid that, Katie, that God is dead. He's so silent to me. And that night when he came home, all the shades were pulled in the home, which was a sign that someone had died. And so Luther broke open the doors that were and said, Katie! Who died?" Well, she said, this morning, you said God, and it convicted Him. And He broke with His unbelief, and it was good for His soul. She was a wise woman. But that still doesn't answer the question, of course, why? Does God work this way in our lives? Why often at the beginning of our Christian life He seems to be answering prayers left and right, and then later on it seems that sometimes the answers are so few and far between, the patches of silence seem to be so long. Well, of course, I can't tell you all the reasons why, because only God knows. God knows everything. God knows His end from His beginning. You see, our lives, boys and girls, our lives are like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. And God works with all 1,000 pieces at one time. He knows the whole puzzle, the whole plan. He knows all the reasons why He does everything. He makes no mistakes. You and I can only work with, well, we men, we men can only work with one piece at a time, and boys as well, and girls and women seem to have an extra six cents to take in more than one thing at once. Maybe you can work with two or three pieces, you mothers, because God's given you that gift as a mother. But even you, you see, you can't work with the whole puzzle. You don't know the beginning from the end. And so we need to learn in our lives, you see, just to surrender to God and His leadings with us and recognize that there's so much we don't know, but we must learn to trust Him as our Father. And yet there are two pieces in this puzzle that I can give you based on the Word of God, two big pieces in this puzzle. And for one, If you turn with me just a moment, please, to John chapter 11, here's a very clear teaching of Scripture about one of the big reasons why God often is silent or appears to be silent for a while. If you look at verse 6, you see what happens here is that Martha and Mary send a messenger to Jesus to call Him because their brother, whom Jesus loves, the Bible says, is dying. And we read in verse 6, when Jesus therefore heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed two days still in the same place where he was. Does that strike you as strange? Jesus is only six miles away. He can walk there in two hours. He hears that Lazarus is dying, and he stays where he is for two days. You'd say, wouldn't you? Well, he must not love him after all. But what does verse 4 say? When Jesus heard that, He said, this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. You see, that's the first big piece of the puzzle. God deals with us in all our ways, all our afflictions, in such a way that He gets all the glory. Does He get more glory by healing a sick Lazarus or by raising a dead Lazarus? or translated into your life today, does God get more glory by answering all your prayers right away or by sometimes waiting until you actually come to the end of your prayers, as it were, and then out of the ashes of your forlorn hopes, when you think there's no more possibility, God breaks into your impossibility and answers you and gets all the glory. A second big piece in the puzzle is to refine, to purify, and to mature our faith. You see, our text does not say Jesus didn't hear a word. It does not say He wasn't moved by her petition. It just says he didn't answer a word. He's exercising, you see. He's refining. He's maturing her faith. God has a way of working in the midst of silence. He is a way of seeming to push us away with one hand in His visible so-called cross providences in our lives, providences that go against our desires, while even at the same moment with the other hand, He is drawing us to Himself secretly, as Peter says, silently strengthening us with strength in the inner soul. Boys and girls, when I was nine years old, I went with my dad. It was a really special treat because I had lots of brothers and sisters and didn't get much time alone with my dad. I went with my dad from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Hoboken, New Jersey to pick up my grandfather who was coming across the ocean on a boat. And as we were traveling, we suddenly entered into the Appalachian Mountains into a long, long tunnel. And I looked at my dad when we were halfway through, and I said, Dad, is this tunnel ever going to end? It was kind of scary. My dad said, oh, yeah, it's going to end. Don't worry. He said, and when it comes near the end, you're going to see a little pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel, and that pinprick will get bigger and bigger, and then we'll break out in the sunshine, and you'll appreciate the sunshine more than ever before. And that's what happened. And then 10 minutes later, we're in another tunnel again. And another one, and another one. And you see, that's sort of what the Christian life is like. You might call it tunnel theology. God brings us into dark places. God brings us through trials and difficulties, where we learn to cry out from Him, to Him, even though He seems silent, and then He breaks us through into the sunshine of His grace, and He answers, and He confirms that He's God. And somehow, through that whole tunnel experience, repeatedly happening in our lives, we learn to trust Him more. We learn to confide in Him more. We learn to grow in faith. And so God matures and refines our faith through His apparent silences. It's the same thing in mothering, isn't it? How often God brings you into difficulties, into challenges in mothering, and you really don't know what to do, and you cry out to Him, and there's not always a clear answer. But you wait on Him, and you persevere. And you don't panic, and you trust Him, and He brings you through. And as you look back over the years of child rearing, you have to say, God has done abundantly, exceedingly above all that you could ask or think. He uses your children to refine, to mature your faith. But secondly, God doesn't only use apparent silence, he also uses apparent rejection, apparent rejection. The disciples came and besought Jesus to send this woman away. And then Jesus himself says, which is astonishing, verse 24, but he answered and said, I'm not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. That's remarkable. It's like a double-barreled rejection. First, the disciples reject her, and then Jesus rejects her. So it seems, don't you think? It's a little easier to explain away the disciples' rejection because they're sinners. They're mere men. But they operate here in a very, very sinful way. They're being very selfish. They had just been in Jerusalem, The Pharisees had tried to capture Jesus, and he slipped away. They managed to escape arrest. And now they come to the northern boundary of Israel, where Jesus happens to meet, in his sovereign grace, this Canaanite woman in the boundaries of Tyre and Sidon. And they're hoping to get away from being the center of attention, from being liable to arrest. But what happens? Well, this woman comes out of foreign territory and is crying and crying. They said, send her away. We don't want this. We don't need this trouble. So they're selfish. They're indifferent. They're not caring about her or her soul or her daughter. And they're proud. They said, she cries after us. She wasn't crying after them. She was crying after Jesus. But that's what happens, you see, when you get in the wrong place, even as a servant of God. You can become proud and selfish and indifferent. You think more about yourself than you do about other people. But we understand that because they're mere men. They're sinful men. But what do you make of Jesus' rejection of this woman? That's a tough one. I think John Kelvin probably handled it best. He said this, it is as if Jesus warns her she is acting out of turn by trying to raid the table in the middle of the meal. Now what does Calvin mean by that? Well, Calvin goes on to explain that there's a difference between Christ's priestly work as promising and Savior in whom all nations are blessed. and his prophetical work in his earthly ministry, his personal ministry, during his sojourn on earth, which was, for all practical purposes, confined entirely to the Jews. Jesus didn't make foreign trips. He was a Jewish Messiah. He taught the Jews for three years. And during that period, you see, he suffered and then he died. arose again, ascended to heaven, sent His Spirit, and then the middle wall of partition was broken down and the gospel was extended to the Gentiles. So it's as if, Calvin said, that Jesus is sitting around a table with His Jewish disciples. converts, and this woman comes up and tries to raid this table in the middle of the meal when she doesn't have a right to it yet because she's a Gentile and Pentecost hasn't happened. And the reason why Jesus can respond this way is because she comes to him saying, Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me, which is the Jewish Messiah title. Son of David means Messiah. And so, Jesus seems to reject her. Now, what is she going to do? I mean, what would you do, boys and girls, if you came to somebody, first they gave you the silent treatment, and then finally they spoke and they said to you, you know it's not for you. He said, I come only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel." I mean, she was lost, but she wasn't a sheep, she wasn't of the house of Israel. So the message is pretty clear. There's nothing here for you, woman. What would you do? Well, maybe you say, I'd just turn my back around, turn my back on that person and go home. But you see, this woman has in her soul the seed of the sovereign, gracious, saving work of the Holy Spirit. We know that because of how she came to Jesus. And she must have heard some rumors of Jesus in her own land, of course, and she believed them by the grace of God, and she comes trusting in Him. And faith, true faith, never turns its back on Jesus. True faith is only one object, which is Jesus. And so no matter what happens, you see, no matter what happens, faith cannot turn its back and go home on Jesus. In fact, this woman has nothing to go home to but a demon-possessed daughter, you see. Faith brings us into places where we say, give me Jesus, else I die. I need the Lord Jesus Christ. And even if He seems to reject me, I can't do anything else but worship Him, collapse at His feet, if you will, cast myself upon mercy. And that's exactly what she does here. It's just amazing, isn't it? While He's silent to her, and then He speaks and seems to reject her, we then read in verse 25, Then came she and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, help me. Then, when she was rejected. It's amazing. Do you understand that? Experientially in your own soul, what it means to cast yourself again and again and again and again upon the Lord when He seems to be pushing you away. To say with Job, though he slay me, though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. And then she cries out, Lord, help me. It's so interesting, isn't it, to compare this prayer of this woman with her first prayer. Let me read the two prayers to you again. Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David. My daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. And then this, Lord, help me. Do you understand what's happening here? This woman comes with a fairly detailed prayer to Jesus, especially about her daughter. And now in the second prayer, there's no daughter mentioned. You see what's going on? Jesus is dealing with her as a mother. He's maturing her faith. Lord, help me, she cries out. I like to look at each of the three words of this prayer, this very short prayer, as links, like a golden chain. The Lord reaching up into heaven. She appeals to him now as Lord of lords, not just son of David, not just Jew as Messiah, but the Lord of the heavens and the earth. And she reaches down into the me, the hellishness of her own condition. And then the word help is the intermediate word, the word that links together Lord and me, because that's what Jesus is. He's the help. He's the mediator. Thou hast laid help upon one who is mighty, says the psalmist. And that mighty one is Jesus, the mediator, the goal between, between God and man. There's one mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ, the righteous. You remember, boys and girls, when you read Pilgrim's Progress? I hope you've all read it. It's a great book. You should read it. But you remember how Christians walking along, remember how he falls into the slough of despond? He's downcast. He's discouraged by his sin. He's got a big burden of sins on his back. He can't climb out. And a man comes by, and his name is Help, and he pulls him out. And Bunyan says in the margin so sweetly, Help is Jesus. So you see what this woman is doing. She casts herself at Jesus' feet. She just, she surrenders everything to Jesus. Give me Jesus, else I die. Lord, help me. And she worships Him. Now, to worship is a beautiful thing. And the Greek word for worship is wonderful. It's proskeneo. And pros, it's two words, really. Pros means toward, and keneo means to kiss. To worship God means that all my affections, my inmost being, my whole inner man goes out with affection and desire toward God, toward the Triune God, and specifically toward the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith has one object, Christ. We worship Him. So when she's been faced with a trial of silence and then the trial of rejection, her faith gets all the more matured and she comes and she worships Him. And she says, Lord, help me. And you're going to think, now for sure, now for sure, Jesus is going to answer. But no, there's one more trial. There's a third but here. Not only but he answered and not a word, 23, but he answered and said, verse 24, but now 26, but he answered and said, it is not fitting to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs. That's the most amazing statement of all. Now it seems that Jesus is insulting her. The Jews called the Gentiles dogs, unclean beasts. And it seems that Jesus is doing that here. Why? What is going on? Well, you see, it's one thing for this woman to recognize she has no natural rights because she's a Syrophoenician. She has no religious rights. She's a Gentile. She has no citizenship rights. She's a Canaanite. But it's quite another thing for her to realize that she's a vile outsider, that she's sinful in the core of her being, that she's unclean. She hasn't confessed that yet. Not really. How is she going to handle this third test? She passed the first test of Jesus' silence, the second test of Jesus' rejection with flying colors. How is she going to handle this third test? Verse 27. Martin Luther says of this verse, she ensnared Christ in his own words, he who loves to be so ensnared. She says, truth Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their master's table. What is she doing? Well, in Old Testament times, you see, all dogs were wild, no pet dogs. No such thing existed. New Testament times, people were beginning to bring in their homes little pet dogs. Just the little ones. All the bigger ones were considered unclean, wild. And when Jesus said to her, it's not fitting to take the children's bread, the bread of the Jews in my prophetic ministry, and to cast it to dogs, for the word dogs, he used a little Greek suffix that indicates, as the New King James Version translated, little dog, pet dog. As if he says to her, you're not a Jewish woman, you don't have a place at my table, you're just a pet dog. And she picks up on that, you see. Faith is very inventive. Faith takes Jesus at His own word, and she ensnares Him, as it were, at His own word. She says, well, Lord, if you call me a dog, I'll gladly be your dog. Because if an earthly master won't forbid the leftover crumbs after the meal from dropping off the edge of the table to feed his pet dog, surely you, who are the glorious, wonderful, generous, beneficent, Creator, Redeemer, surely you will have crumbs for this Gentile dog. I don't ask for a whole loaf of bread, Lord. I don't ask for a Jewish portion. Just give me a few crumbs, and if they come from you, it will be sufficient." If you're a Christian, you understand this very well. If God gives you the smallest thing, You can't even tell people about it. It's so small. But if it comes from God, and you know it comes from God, it's great to you because God is great. Whatever He gives you is great. It's like your mother. On Mother's Day, if your five-year-old comes to you and gives you a picture that she's drawn, or he's drawn, and presents it to you as a Mother's Day gift, and if the picture just hardly makes any sense, and you can't even understand it, it's really nothing. But you look at it and you say, it's wonderful. This is a very special gift because it comes from my child. You see, a Christian feels a thousand times more. This is a great thing. Even a crumb from God is great because it comes from my God. So she says, truth, Lord. Truth, Lord, I'm a dog. I'm vile. I'm unclean. Yet the dogs eat of the crumbs from the master's table. The old commentaries speak much here about holy argumentation. She argues with the Lord with holy argumentation, like Job in Job 23. Do you know what it means to wrestle with God like that? Truth, Lord, yet. That's the way to pray. Truth, Lord, I'm needy, but you have everything I need. Truth, Lord, I'm poor, but you are the rich one who became poor, that poor sinners would be rich in you. Truth, Lord, I'm foolish, but you are wisdom itself. Truth, Lord, I'm unrighteous and vile, but you are pure righteousness. Truth, Lord, yet. She's like a spiritual beggar and she sticks her foot in the beggar's door and she won't let him go. She says with Jacob, I won't let you go until you bless me. Give me the crumbs from the master's table. You call me a dog, give me a dog's portion. She passes the test with flying colors. Boys and girls, I told you about my ride with my dad, but I want to tell you one more quick story. When my dad was nine years old, he lived with my grandparents, of course, in a very, very poor home. It was just a two-room house, probably no bigger than your double-car garage. And there was a train track that would go through their backyard. The train would often stop there, and beggars would get off the train and come to the front door. And one day that happened, and my dad answered the door, and the beggar said, I need a sandwich. So my dad went to my grandma and he said, there's a beggar on the door and he needs a sandwich. Oh, my grandma says, you go tell the beggar we're just as poor as he is. So that's what my dad did. And my dad went to shut the door. The beggar actually literally stuck his foot in the door and my dad couldn't close the door. And the beggar looked down at me and said, I just need one slice of bread. So my dad went back to my grandma. He didn't know what to do. He said, the beggar won't go away. The beggar just wants one slice of bread. Oh, my grandma said, he's a real beggar. Make him a whole sandwich. And you see, that's the way it is with God, isn't it? Too often we just knock once and then we leave. We don't beg. We don't persevere. We don't plead. We don't worship. We cling to him and wrestle with him like a New Testament Jacob. John Bunyan once made a list of his top ten sins. He wanted to grieve over them. He wanted to confess them. He wanted God to cure him. But high on that list, I think it was number three or four, was that I often just call on God for something just once. I let the Lord alone too easily. It's like a salesman coming to your door, isn't it? He knocks once and you don't get up right away. And by the time you get to the door, he's halfway across the lawn to the next house. And you say to your wife, oh, well, I must not have wanted this very bad, must be a salesman. Do you know what it is to engage in spiritual beggary with God? To plead and to wrestle with Him and to persevere in that pleading? Truth, Lord, yet to take Him at His word and to worship Him? To fill your mouth with arguments? To even argue from your discouraging position and say, Truth, Lord, I'm a dog, but the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the master's table? To argue then from Christ's all-sufficiency? This is all maturing this woman's faith. And you see what happens now is Jesus then turns to the woman in verse 28 and says, oh woman, mature is your faith. This woman actually puts many of us, and maybe all of us in some ways, to shame. She only heard a few things about Jesus in her foreign country, no doubt. And she comes and she trusts in him completely. But along the way, Jesus brings her through these three tunnels of silence and rejection and insult and she breaks out in the sunshine of His grace and He says to her, be it unto you even as you will. It's as if He takes the keys out of his pocket and hands them to her and says, go into my storehouse of grace and you can take whatever you want. And figuratively. It's like she goes in and she takes two big loaves of bread, one for herself and one for her daughter, and she goes home and her daughter's made whole from that very hour. The Greek word whole here means a well-rounded wholeness. She's made whole spiritually. She's made whole physically. The devil is gone. And they can speak together about the Lord Jesus Christ. What a joy! What a blessing! Jesus is amazing. But that leaves one question yet to be answered before I close, and that's this. If this woman was really unworthy, like we all are, to receive Jesus' blessing, how is it possible that Jesus could do this for her when she was a vile outsider? Well, the answer lies back in the three points I gave you at the beginning of the sermon. Did you notice I used the word apparent before all three of them? Apparent silence, apparent rejection, apparent insult. You see, the real issue here is that Jesus endured the real silence. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Silence. Jesus endured the real rejection, pushed away, not with one hand and drawn with the other, but pushed away with both hands by everyone, by God, by heaven, by earth. Rejected even by His own disciples. They were gone around the cross. By the pure-minded women who left, and by hell. All the devils in hell, as it were, said one old divine, were consuming upon him. He's rejected. Rejected by both thieves at first. The only one that didn't reject him was one despicable thief. Come down from the cross if you're really the Christ. And he endured the real insult. They cast insults, the Bible says, into his teeth. on the cross. And in Pilate's judgment hall, they insulted Him. They robed Him with a mock robe. They took crowns. They took a scepter and smashed the thorns, or took thorns rather, and took the thorns and smashed them into His skull. And then they blindfolded Him, and they slapped Him across the face, and they said, Prophesy, who smote you? Jesus endured the real thing, the silence, the rejection, the insult. so that we don't face the real thing, but only have to walk in his shadow. Yes, we're a partaker of his sufferings, but he's the leader. He's the breaker. He's like the lead Canada goose in the V-shaped Canada geese flying. He takes the wind. We just follow behind him. We endure what he endures, not to merit anything, but only to be matured, to be purified. It's just apparent silence. It's just a shadow. He endures the substance. We the shadow. Apparent silence. Apparent rejection. Apparent insult. And the reason why He can give her everything now and an open door to His storehouse is because He endured the real thing for her. He who became sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. He took her place. Suffered in her stead so that she might be set free. This is the glory of God. This is the glory of the maturation of faith. Jesus is showcasing her faith in this story and then refining it and maturing it so that we can learn in our daily lives how to walk with more mature faith. And so as you go through trials and you are confronted with all kinds of things in your life, don't panic. Don't say you're rejected by God. But turn to him, fall at his feet, worship him. Say, Lord, help me. Keep your beggar's foot in the door. Wait on him. He will mature you. He will glorify himself through you. In fact, you will live more to his glory and serve more to his glory normally when you're afflicted than you will when you're in the midst of prosperity. So trust your father. and ask Him to use every shadow to mature you, and every affliction to purify you, to bring Him all the glory. Let's pray. Great God of heaven, we thank Thee so much, so much for Thy mercy showered upon us in these moments through this wonderful story. And we do pray that our faith also, like this woman's, may be matured and that if we don't know faith at all, Lord, that Thou wouldst begin with us this night and teach us what we're missing, teach us to be emptied of self and to be filled with Thyself, and teach us to cling to Thee, to be New Testament Jacobs, to cry out to Thee, I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me. So, Lord, make everything well, we pray, and work in us that mighty work of maturation of faith and be especially with mothers to that end. Lord, mature mothers' faith through their dealings with their children as Thou dost deal with them as Thy child. We ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen.