Matthew 15:21-39 - Foreshadowing the Future

We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, and we do have extra copies.

If you would like one to follow along, just raise your hand up real high.

Somebody will drop one by your row your aisle.

If you're uh uh watching online, we welcome you as well.

I know you're up there somewhere, one of these cameras.

And uh very happy to have you joining us.

It's so fascinating every month.

Uh, get a little report on where people are um uh watching from or joining us from, and it's just so awesome to see what God can do uh with this technology, and um just grateful to have people from so many different places, different countries, different continents even following along with us in our study of Matthew's gospel.

We're calling it the King and His Kingdom, and uh we will be looking at uh, if you want to turn there, Matthew 15, verses 21 to 39, uh a three pericope passage.

Matthew 15:21–39

That is, there are three short sections of this, and we'll take each one in its turn along the way.

Before we do, let me borrow from a prayer of the 13th century uh theologian philosopher and priest Thomas Aquinas.

Grant us, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, a conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you.

Amen.

And amen.

Matthew 15, 21 to 39.

We've just come through chapter 14 and actually the first part of Matthew 15 as well.

We'll finish up chapter 15 today.

In many ways, we'll see here the foreshadowing of the future, thus, the title that you see on the screen.

Chapter 14 recorded for us the tragic death of the last of the great Old Testament-style prophets, John the Baptist.

Um, one gets the sense that in spite of John the Baptist's death, with it a new chapter has begun.

Jesus was the one John the Baptist had pointed to as a long-promised Messiah, come to bring the salvation of God to humanity.

The first thing we read about after John's passing is this sort of withdrawal of Jesus into one particular region, but the crowds follow him.

And there are 5,000 men, we're told, plus women and children, probably 5, 10, 15, who knows, 20,000 people, that he ends up feeding with uh a little boy who's got his holy Moses lunch pail.

And uh and they take that food and Jesus continues to bless and to break it, and the disciples are included in the miracle.

It's a really interesting thing that Jesus did that, that he gave the disciples the dignity of participation in his miracle.

Um and yet they were sitting around, you know, before it they were going, Well, where are we gonna get food to do this?

And you know, the creator of everything that exists, we just read about him, just keeps breaking and keeps creating bread, and there end up being these 13 baskets, and this is a word in the Greek for a small basket.

There are 13 of those left over, or 12 baskets, sorry, left over, not 13.

And which is interesting too, because Jesus didn't leave one for himself, he left enough for each of his disciples.

Isn't that interesting?

Well, and then what happened after that was uh Jesus went up on the mountain to pray, the disciples went out in the sea, it got stormy, he came walking to him on the stormy sea.

Peter wanted to walk on the water with Jesus.

Jesus said, Come on.

Peter did, but then he stopped fixing his eyes on Jesus and cast his gaze on the wind and the waves, and he began to sink.

And Jesus didn't shame him, Jesus graciously reached out to him.

Surely goodness, surely mercy.

And pulled him back up.

They got into the boat, the storm stopped immediately.

And uh it was fascinating.

And then, of course, last week we we looked at that great uh first part of chapter 15 where tradition versus traditionalism, Pastor Matt led us through that so beautifully, and we we learned the difference between the two, and we see how a lot of people think external religious rule following is what makes one righteous.

It's not that.

Matt so beautifully pointed out to us that it's the heart of the matter that is actually the matter of the heart, isn't it?

It's what's your heart doing in relation to Jesus.

So we get to chapter 15, verse 21 today, and there's a real change here.

This is a big change, actually.

So while verses 2 through 20 were about defilement, almost in a radical, bold move, Jesus heads for defilement territory, the land of the Gentiles.

See, the ancient Jews wouldn't go in the house of a Gentile.

Some of them walked around Samaria because they didn't want to become unclean because Samaria was sort of a half-Jewish, half-Gentile.

And so Jesus, in a bold move that I think is illustrative of what he's just gone through with all these guys, you know, follow rules, follow rules, follow rules.

It's all about us and our traditions and all that sort of thing.

And Jesus went away from there, verse 21, and withdrew into the district of Tyra and Sidon.

Behold, a Canaanite woman came out from that region and began to cry out, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David, my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed.

But he did not answer her a word.

And his disciples came to him and kept asking him, saying, Send her away, for she's shouting out after us.

But he answered and said, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

But she came and began to bow down before him, saying, Lord, help me.

He answered and said, It's not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

But she said, Yes, Lord, but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their master's table.

Then Jesus answered and said to her, O woman, your faith is great.

Be it done for you as you wish.

And her daughter was healed at once.

Well, this, I don't know about you, but this passage from me raises lots of questions upon the first reading.

I you know, some of that just kind of stymies me in a way.

I'm just kind of shocked and stunned.

Um and and there's a lot here which we could probably spend a good bit of time unpacking.

Let me throw the map up just so you kind of know geographically where we're at.

And for those of you online, I'll just describe this verbally.

For those of you in the room, you can see this little bouncing green dot here.

Um this is Galilee, right here in the northern third of the map's uh image.

It's sort of the reddish, I don't know what color that would be called, okra or something.

Uh Capernaum is the town that Jesus hubbed out of.

It's on the northwest shore of that tiny little bit of water we see right there called the Sea of Galilee.

The Tetrarchy of Philip to its east, the capolis region to its southeast, but also to directly below Galilee and the Sea of Galilee, even to a bit to the west of the Sea of Galilee, as you can see, uh the yellow region, the decapolis, meaning the ten cities.

These are the Greek ten cities.

This would be Gentile territory, believe it or not.

Samaria down uh on the lower third is the purple, and we see Tyre at the top to the center left of the map, uh right here.

And that area that's kind of light brown, I suppose you might call that, is actually uh today what we would call Lebanon.

Back then, that would be Syria.

And so Sidon, where this woman is from, Tyre and Sidon.

Sidon's more up here and uh you know, due north about 20 miles uh for from Tyre.

So I just want you to see this whole thing is set in real geography.

Again, one of the reasons why we look at our Bibles and we say this is not simply a book of myth and legend and fable, but actually real places, real names, stuff you can corroborate with other sources if you would like to, in terms of these places.

So in Jesus' uh teaching, we have learned that he has come here to the house uh of uh to the children of Israel.

And we see that in his interaction with his woman, but I think there's something more there for us as we look at it.

Jesus takes the initiative, first of all, to travel to Gentile territory at all.

Jews wouldn't do that, but he does that.

And he does that right after this whole argument over tradition and traditionalism and rule following and all of that.

We learn a lot about this woman.

As a matter of fact, we know more about this woman than we do a lot of other women in the Bible, actually.

It's interesting.

Look at verse 22.

It's literally got you know eight, nine things about this particular person that Jesus encounters.

He's Syrophoenician.

Some of your translations will say Canaanite.

Is that a contradiction?

Because if Mark says she's Syrophoenician or Phoenician, and Matthew says she's Canaanite, is that a contradiction?

Only if I say I'm from Middle Tennessee, and then I say I'm from Nashville, and then I say I'm from Tennessee, and then I say I'm from the USA, and then I say I'm from North America.

Do you see what I'm saying?

There are a lot of categories that might describe where I'm from and where you're from, and the same thing might be the case as we read our gospel accounts and we hear these kinds of different things.

But the point is, she is a Gentile from Syria.

She has a Canaanite background, which means not godless, but pagan.

Worshipping, the Canaanites worshiped gods like Molech and Baal, and got to the point, the Canaanites did, where in their nations they were literally sacrificing their babies to these false gods.

So she's got a religious background, a national background, a racial background, and all of that would generally keep her from ever approaching this man.

And everything that Jesus grew up learning in Israel would keep him from ever going to where she is.

She's the mother of a daughter.

She's desperate for help as her daughter was cruelly demon-possessed.

That word cruelly could be also wretchedly demon-possessed.

Now, I kind of think regular old demon possession is pretty bad.

Most of us would agree.

And I'm sure there are some parents in the room who have wondered from time to time.

I know my mom wondered from time to time as she carried me into.

Does anybody remember the Ben Franklin stores?

Are you over 50?

Anybody over?

Okay, three of you.

Okay, good.

Sweet.

Maybe somebody online remembers that too.

I don't know.

But yeah, I would be the kid that would be arching his back and screaming because mom wouldn't buy me that Batman cookie or something.

I'm just, I just wanted stuff.

I wanted it now, and I saw it, and I, you know, I just went nuclear over nothing all the time.

So I wonder if my mom sometimes wondered what was afoot inside of me, you know.

Um, but this woman has a legitimate uh sense that her daughter was cruelly demon-possessed.

Well, well, why come to Jesus?

Why not go to your Canaanite God?

Why not go to your Syrophoenician doctor or counselor?

Well, I'm gonna pause it.

This isn't in the text, but I'm just gonna stretch a little and say, I bet she had.

I bet because of the desperation I see in her here, I bet she's already exhausted all those resources.

Because those would have made logical sense to go for the resources that are nearby.

And now she has run out of resources and options on the pagan side, on the on the national side, on the political side, on anything that's this world has to offer.

She's run out of all of that.

But she's heard the rumors that there is this man from down in Jewish territory near the Sea of Galilee, Capernaum.

And he hangs out with a bunch of uneducated people, and he does things that nobody else can do.

And he seems to have, the rumors have reached that area, he seems to be able to heal diseases, he seems to be able to even calm storms.

And we even heard that one religious leader's daughter was dead and he raised her from the dead.

And more importantly than all of those things, she might have heard the rumors that this man could cast demons out of people.

Maybe as a mother who's desperate.

And there is no anguish like the anguish of a desperate mother for her child.

Maybe I'll give that a try.

And it might be, it might have been, in her view, her last option to do this.

But what's fascinating to me is she calls, I mean, we learned so much about her, she calls Jesus Lord.

Now, I understand the word Kyros could be Sir, but I think as it's used throughout the New Testament, we see it progressing, and we see that it's continued on a case-by-case basis.

If you watch its progression, and even as you watch it post the time of Jesus walked there, you you come to see that people actually thought of Jesus not just as a sir, because you wouldn't just go to a sir, any old sir, to cast a demon out of your daughter.

So the use of the word Lord here is more significant than just sir.

And then that she calls him son of David, clearly a Jewish messianic title, but she's a gentile, I remind you.

She's a pagan, I remind you.

But she's like a mother who's desperate enough to have looked up what's wrong with her daughter.

If she had Google, she would have done this.

What do we call him?

Son of David.

Why?

Because he's Messiah, he's God's deliverer who has come.

And so she uses that terminology.

She's done some, she's done some kind of research to figure that out.

As we know they didn't have Google back then.

Where did she get that phrase?

Why so persisting in her appeals to Jesus?

Why attempt to reason with Jesus here?

You know, you attempt to reason with some deities that have been positive, you know, that have sort of been, you know, uh uh imagined by people on this planet.

You attend to, intend to reason with some of them, and they literally cut your head off.

Why did she think this one could be reasoned with?

Interesting.

What impact, I wonder, did the deliverance of her daughter that we read about right there in verse 28, what impact did that deliverance have in her, that that region where she lived, that Gentile region?

And it's fascinating to me because as the, if you read the book of Acts, as the church grows up in its infancy, Syrian Antioch becomes a hub of the New Testament church.

Could this woman have been one of its first uh members at that church?

Could that daughter have been uh perhaps a part of that first youth group in that first Syrian Antioch church?

I do not know.

I'm again, I'm just speculating a little.

It's fascinating to me.

The disciples, I watch them in this and I go, man, I think they're stuck in a send them away or a send her away or a send him away mode.

And for those who follow Jesus, that's not an option.

See?

They they want to send the 5,000 away.

But Jesus said, where are we going to get enough food?

Send them away, Lord.

And Jesus says, No.

Starts breaking bread and tells the boys to hand it out, right?

Jesus doesn't do send them away.

Um, and neither do those who follow him.

We're not meant to be a send them away kind of people.

All right, so here let me just offer up, if you would allow me to, four points of how this foreshadows the future.

First, Jesus breaks through national, racial, religious, and social barriers.

Sometimes uh we do not find faith where we expect to find it in the Bible, Jewish territory, and we do find faith where we do not expect to find it, Gentile territory.

And here it is.

We've already seen it once, and I think it's Matthew 8 or 9, there, where Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee, goes over to the decapitus, and there's a demon-possessed man or two.

And remember the story where he casts the demons out of these fellows, the demons run into the 2,000 pigs, the 2,000 pigs run into the sea and are killed.

And that man wants to go when Jesus leaves that area, wants to go with Jesus, and Jesus says, No, you stay here.

And then that man becomes a living, walking, breathing testimony to the power of Jesus Christ to transform a life.

Why?

Well, because all the people in that region were afraid of him.

He ran around naked, he broke the chains that he had been bound by, he scared everyone.

And now here he was sane, talking calmly, pointing to the hope of the gospel in Jesus Christ.

And he'd been doing that for a long, long time.

Isn't that beautiful and powerful?

Here we see a foreshadowing of the future, in that the kingdom of heaven will be populated, as we see in the book of Revelation, when human history is wrapped up around the throne, there will be people from every tribe and tongue and nation and people group.

That's where this is going.

If you think this is only about people from the West or people from America or something like that, you're mistaken.

This is about people from every tribe, every tongue, every nation, every people group, gathering together before the throne of God to worship and praise the Lamb of God, who is also the Lion of Judah, who's also the Lamb who was slain for our salvation.

And this is the one Jesus that we're pointing to.

We were just together with a group of people from around the world at the Global Sing Conference.

Kim and I have spent time with the people from the Langham Partnership, which is a ministry that works with uh churches in in the global sort of sense, especially in the majority world, which typically we would have a lot of us might call the third world.

But they call it the majority world because that's where the biggest population groups are, and that's where God's really doing a lot of amazing things.

He's also doing some amazing things here, by the way, but he's really doing a lot of amazing things over there as well.

And we want to be a part of that.

And as Jesus gives us here, I think, a foretaste or a foreshadowing of the future.

And that's one of the things I love about the Christian faith.

Rebecca McLaughlin says it really beautifully in a book, Confronting Christianity, which we've read in our greenhouse group, and I highly recommend this book to you.

Contrary to popular belief, Christianity is the most ethnically, culturally, socioeconomically, and racially diverse belief system in all of history.

How so?

You do not have to have been from one nation to be offered the gospel and be able to receive the gospel.

You do not have to have one zip code or or or one particular color of skin or any of that sort of thing.

The gospel offer is universal.

Doesn't mean everybody.

Receives and accepts and believes, but the offer remains.

It's there.

The offer is for you, in spite of your sin, to be reconciled to a holy and righteous God, not based on your own merit or performance, not based on your following your traditions, but based on the fact that Jesus died on the cross, paid the price for your sin, and he paid the price for my sin.

And the offer is free.

We trust and hope in him, and he is our Savior.

He is our redeemer.

The trajectory of this world as it thinks and acts apart from God, in its delusion of self-rule, moral autonomy, and self-deification, is free falling faster and deeper into the self-destructive, self-imposed darkness and intellectual confusion and moral bankruptcy that we see all around us.

All one needs to do is take note of what's happening to our children, our youth, in the madness of this reckless cultural moment.

What can be done?

What is the solution?

What does the Bible say that we must do to avoid the fate that follows this kind of foolishness that we exhibit?

I think it begins with what we see in this woman right here.

I mean, she's not the hero, she's not a perfect person, but I look at her and at least I see a budding faith, a turning, if you will, that perhaps leads to a conversion to believe and trust and hope in Jesus.

And it's manifest in her crying out for mercy and her bowing in humility before God.

And I think that those are among the first steps towards entering the kingdom.

Um again, every bit of her religious background, every bit of her national background, every bit of her racial background, every bit of her social background would have kept her from doing what she did.

But what drove her?

Her desperation as a mother.

Her desperation as a person who had run out of resources.

And maybe that's you, right?

Now maybe you're in a place where you understand your need and you have to get there at some point.

And we see this as a process, even in this story, don't we?

Because at first she comes running and she's crying out for mercy.

And what does Jesus do at first?

He's silent.

He doesn't even respond.

And I don't know, has that ever happened to you?

Have you ever wondered why heaven is silent?

I have.

Yeah, I mean, listen, Tom Petty had it right.

The waiting is the wow, do we know our Tom Petty?

That's good.

It's the hardest part.

And there she is waiting.

Why isn't Jesus saying something to her immediately?

And when he does finally say something to her, he says something weird.

You know, he says, I've come first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

And then she comes down, bows down.

Now she's bowing down before him.

This humility is so visible here.

This appeal is so, you know, so desperate there.

And she's saying, Lord, help me.

And I I gotta say, that's if prayer is taking hold of God, which I think it is, I think this lady is exhibiting a taking hold of Jesus in this moment.

And that means she's got to let go of Molech, let go of Baal, let go of self-salvation, turn to the Savior and take hold of him.

And in many ways, I'd say it's turn to him and allow him to take you up, you know, to be the one to rescue you.

But it begins with this bowing.

We don't talk about this enough.

A lot of us, a lot of us have gotten into sort of consumer mindset about the gospel.

And it should be communor mindset about the gospel, not consumer mindset.

But it begins with this bowingness, crying out, I love, I'm a Francis Schaefer fan, I'll be one forever.

Um, in this one article you can find it online, Form and Freedom in the Church, the Zan Content Library.

He says, salvation is bowing and accepting God as creator and Christ as Savior.

I must bow twice to become a Christian.

I must bow and acknowledge that I am not autonomous.

I am creature created by the Creator.

And I must bow and acknowledge that I am a guilty sinner who needs the finished work of Christ for my salvation.

Does she have that all figured out?

No.

Does she have her theology all, her systematic theology off you?

No.

But desperation is like a magnet to the kingdom of heaven.

See?

When we get finally get desperate enough, the kingdom of heaven draws near, reminding you it was Jesus that went there first.

And I believe he had her in his mind before he even got there.

Why would he go there?

No Jew goes up there.

Um what are we to make of these responses of Jesus, though?

At first nothing.

Silence.

Then a rebuff almost, right?

And I don't know if you've ever felt like God was doing that.

It just not here.

It doesn't hear.

Hey, are you listening?

Do you even care?

You know?

What's going on?

And that process that sometimes that taking hold of God process doesn't operate on my timetable.

Doesn't operate on your timetable either.

And sometimes it's confusing.

Sometimes the answers I hear are confusing, just like this woman.

But what happens is there's more going on here than just what's going on with her.

Who else is watching this happen?

The Jewish disciples who need to know where this is all going.

And what they're seeing is a foreshadowing of the future.

When Jesus travels into Gentile territory, she asks a question.

He's moving forward.

And there might have been other people asking questions.

I mean, there could be practical reasons why he doesn't respond right away.

We could think of several.

But the text just tells us what it tells us.

And I have felt like, heaven is silent, maybe you have too.

I have felt like as I'm rolling theological ideas through my mind that I'm going, what about that?

It could be this, it could be that.

And it gets confusing sometimes.

And then my prayer gets reduced to just help, just like hers.

And then I look back over my life and I see how he helped.

And sometimes he helps at times that I don't understand and in ways I don't understand.

But all of those guys, his disciples, they're watching, they're listening, they're learning here, and they're going to be the same guys who take the gospel and spread it out beyond Israel.

See?

But that wouldn't, that would have, for them, that would have been a mind blower at this point in time.

They're not thinking that way.

They're thinking like Jewish men.

This is the we're the chosen people of God.

This is only for us.

And here he foreshadows the future in this beautiful way.

Alright, we've got to hurry.

Look at verse 29.

Departing from there, Jesus went along by the Sea of Galilee, and having gone up to the mountain, he was sitting there.

And great multitudes came to him, bringing with them those who were lame, crippled, blind, dumb, and many others.

Dumb means mute, can't speak.

And they laid them down at his feet, and he healed them.

Look at the specificity in verse 30 there.

This could not have been sleight of hand.

This was not magic, this was healing.

And this is pretty powerful.

The multitude marveled as they should, and they did that as they saw the dumb speaking, the crippled restored, the lame walking, and the blind seeing.

And so each one of those things is mentioned, and then each one of those things is reversed by the power of Jesus.

He sets things right.

And you see, he foreshadows the future.

Because he sets things right that have been twisted or broken.

And then it's interesting to me the last phrase.

And they glorified the God of Israel.

Why'd Matthew say it that way?

Well, maybe he's still, I don't know this, but maybe he's still in Gentile territory.

Because on the Sea of Galilee, down, especially down to the south, the Decapolis wraps around a little bit and goes, look, could be that he had traveled that far down.

And they glorified the God of not Canaan, not Syria, but they glorified the God of Israel, it says right there.

Interesting.

And this whole thing, again, foreshadowing the future, this is where it's going.

And this is where you disciples will be going.

Verse 32.

Jesus summoned to himself his disciples, and this time he says, I feel compassion for the multitude because they have remained with me now for three days and have nothing to eat.

And I do not wish to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.

And the disciples said to him, Where would we get so many loaves in a desert place to satisfy such a great multitude?

And we all said, Don't.

We just read not too long ago.

Now it may have been months.

Time flies here in this gospel narrative.

But don't you think the feeding of the 5,000 would have had such, as a matter of fact, it's the only one of Jesus' miracles that's in all four Gospels.

Don't you think it would have sunk in?

Don't you think they would think of Jesus as a bread machine?

Where are we going to get it?

The disciples just looked like crazies here.

Jesus said to them, How many loaves do you have?

And right about that time goes, you know, Peter goes, Oh, and the light goes on.

How many loaves?

He asked us that before.

We had five.

This time we got seven.

Oh, wow.

And they said, seven and a few small fish.

He directed the multitude to sit on the ground, took the seven loaves and fish, and gave thanks.

He broke them and he started giving them to the disciples.

And the disciples in turn to the multitudes.

Look at he's he still involved them in the miracle he did.

He still equipped them and he still sent them out into the crowds to do his work, to join him in his mission.

I love this.

They all ate and they were satisfied.

And that's that same Greek word that has that really full, loosen your belt, kind of satisfied, you know.

And they were all satisfied.

They picked up what was left over of the broken pieces, seven large baskets full.

This is a different Greek word than in the feeding of the 5,000, where they picked up the 12 baskets full.

Those were little lunch pail-sized black baskets.

This is a bushel basket, a huge basket.

You could put a human being in this basket, okay?

And they all ate and they were satisfied, and they came up with seven large baskets full.

Those who ate were 4,000 men, besides women and children.

So maybe 8,000, maybe, who knows, 12,000?

Who knows?

And dismissing the multitudes, he got into the boat and he came to the region of Magadan.

Magadon is on the uh kind of northwest, more toward the west, a little bit, toward Tiberias from Capernaum.

But in any event, this is just really amazing.

And what we want to see here is that Jesus is the great reversal artist when we look at these miracles that we see in verses 29 through 31.

And that as the great reversal artist, it will be fully displayed in this event we call the resurrection, where it brings both the power brings us both the power of the pattern for living life now connected to God's future new creation.

That's one of the reasons, again, I'm calling this the foreshadowing of the future.

Because what Jesus does there on that hillside with the cripple, with the lame, with those who couldn't speak and those who couldn't see, is he sets things right.

And he's going to set the world to rights when he returns again one day.

And I'm excited about that.

I hope you are excited about that too.

Why?

Because I think we're all kind of tired of the world being broken.

It's exasperating, it's exhausting, it's frustrating.

So if you feel that too, let's turn to him.

He's the only one that can make a difference.

As we follow Jesus, Sunday worship turns into Monday, Saturday serving and feasting at the King's table.

Where in the world do I get that from this particular passage?

Well, look with me, if you will, just at verse 32.

I feel compassion for the multitude because they have remained with me now for three days.

You know, the feeding of the 5,000 was just sort of like leaning into the evening.

Didn't say anything about people spending the night.

It wasn't like a let's go on retreat with Jesus.

You know, this is three days.

They've literally been hanging with Jesus for three days.

Not just Sunday, but into the weekdays.

And for me, anyway, I just say, let's connect the dots between our Sunday worship and our Monday through Saturday living.

Um, and just see that we're following Jesus.

We want to follow him throughout the week as well.

Leslie Nubigan is a mission, uh very much a specialist in uh in missions.

And he says only half the pastor's work is to gather people together for worship.

The other half is to send them back to their daily task, equipped to be salt of the earth, light of the world.

If we forget the second part, the other can be positively dangerous.

That's right.

See if we just come together on Sunday and congratulate ourselves on our music and and our the way we look and on our preaching and make sure everybody, you know, is is sort of positive thinking and all that sort of thing, if that's all we ever do, and we never go out there and actually live out this gospel and make a difference in the culture, if we never take care of preaching the gospel, never take care of feeding the hungry, never take care of being his arms and his hands and his feet out there, working for justice, doing everything we can to see that even those that are other than us, that live in that other territory, can hear the gospel and be encouraged by it.

We're missing a lot of what we're supposed to be doing.

As we gather with God's people bowing before King Jesus, we begin to see things the way Jesus sees them, we desire what Jesus desires, we weep over what Jesus weeps over, we value what Jesus values, we serve the way Jesus serves, and we receive from Jesus to give to others in need.

We come to the table, we receive this feast.

And then we're to be sent out to invite others to the banquet.

And I love the way Jesus loves food.

Somebody say amen.

I love the way the Bible just loves food.

Starts in a garden with all the vegetables and all that stuff, ends at a huge banqueting table, you know, uh at the Lord's table, you know, and it's just filled with food all the way through.

And we're supposed to be inviting others to that table as well.

I'll close with this quote from Peterson The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped.

It requires an active participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar territory.

In circumstances that become clear only in the hesitations and questionings, in the pauses and reflections where we engage in prayerful conversation with one another and with him.

Following King Jesus means the trajectory of your life is leading you to live in his kingdom.

We are bound for what the Old Testament called the promised land.

And it's not just a bit of geography with a zip code, it's actually his kingdom where his name is hallowed, where his will is sought and done and lived out among his people.

For now, we join one another as pilgrims on the way, following Jesus and his unfolding kingdom.

Let's pray.

Lord, we turn to you.

We bow before you like this woman.

And you are the one that hears our cries from.

We're not just crying out into the dark, empty, impersonal night sky.

You are there.

You are eager for your people.

You are the one that we can appeal to.

You are the one who can heal our broken hearts and feed our hungry souls.

Lead us, guide us to yourself and to your kingdom.

Come.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.