Desperate Prayer

If you've got a Bible, let's open up to Mark chapter 7.

Mark 7 · chapter mention

Pray with me one more time briefly in our hearts.

Father God, hear our prayers.

We are a weak and needy people.

Lord, as John has prayed earlier, Lord, however we're coming into this service, distracted, joyful, heavy hearted, you know, Lord, you know us better than we even know ourselves.

We're asking that for the next few minutes, Lord, that you would draw near, that you would speak to each one of us personally.

Lord, that you would use me as a vessel, even with all of my sin and messiness, Father, that you would condescend to speak through me, Lord.

Give me the words to say.

Lord, speak for your servants are listening.

We pray all this in Christ's name.

Amen.

Mark chapter 7.

Mark 7 · chapter mention

And ask yourself this.

If God came to you, maybe in a dream, and said, Hey, I'll give you one request, one thing.

You can ask for one thing.

What will be the one thing you'd say?

Here's what I really want, here's what I most want?

And then also want you to think about this.

Does God ever change his mind?

That's kind of a theological riddle that some people like to talk about.

Has there ever been a situation in your life where you felt like God very clearly said no, the door was closed?

And then later the door was opened.

The context where we're going to pick up here in Mark chapter 7 is that Jesus has just finished a confrontation with the Jewish leaders.

Mark 7 · chapter mention

He's been teaching the Jewish crowds about ritual purity laws.

He's essentially saying, all those Old Testament food laws, they're done.

I fulfilled them.

It's over.

That's where we're going to pick up.

Mark chapter 7, verse 24.

Mark 7:24

And from there he arose and he went away to the region of Tyre in Sidon.

And he entered a house, and he did not want anyone to know.

Yet he could not be hidden.

But immediately a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet.

Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

And he said to her, Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

But she answered him, Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.

And he said to her, For this statement, you may go your way.

The demon has left your daughter.

And she went home and found the child lying in bed, and the demon gone.

Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and he went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the region of the Decapolis.

And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment.

And they begged him to lay his hand on him.

And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting, he touched his tongue.

And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said, Epitha, that is, be opened.

And his ears were opened, and his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.

And Jesus charged them to tell no one.

But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.

And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, He has done all things well.

He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.

Like me and you.

So we don't know for a hundred percent sure, but based on what we've been reading in Mark so far, part of what's going on is he probably has been doing so much ministry, he wants to hide away.

He wants to rest.

He has become so popular in the Jewish territories.

And also, he has shifted in his ministry focus a little bit.

He has these 12 men that he's training to be ministers, to run the church after he's gone, and he knows he needs more time alone with them to train them in private.

So he's like, let's escape, let's get into Gentile territory.

I'm not as famous there, and let's try to get into a house where nobody will know it.

It doesn't work.

The word is out, even in the Gentile territories.

And there's a woman, and she comes and she has a little daughter possessed by a demon.

She's heard the stories about Jesus.

She gets into the house, she throws herself at his feet.

Please heal my daughter.

I know you can.

And he doesn't seem very nice, right?

This is not the Jesus maybe that we're used to.

He essentially says, you know what, I was sent to the Jews.

I came to the Jews first.

We'll get to the Gentiles later.

Not time to take bread away from the kids and give it to dogs.

And she just picks up on that little uh story.

She says, Yeah, but some dogs live in a house.

And they get up under the table when the kids are eating and the kids are messy and they drop some crumbs.

They get to eat some of that bread.

That's all I'm asking.

I'm asking for your crumbs, Jesus.

And he basically is impressed.

He says, I like that answer.

Good answer.

Go home.

Your daughter's healed, demon's gone.

And she gets up and leaves.

He continues to travel and he comes to a place where you've got a man that's deaf.

And probably most of us have met somebody like this before.

I mean, the main way you learn to speak is by hearing.

You can't hear, even if you are able to speak, you're not able to speak very well.

So he can't hear at all and he doesn't speak very well.

And the crowd comes, please, Jesus, heal this guy.

Jesus takes him aside.

This is also a little bit weird, is it not?

He sticks his fingers into his ears.

And then there's a little bit of debate, but what it seems like he does is he spits on his hand, says, Here, let me touch your tongue.

Seems to offer a prayer, a groan, something to heaven.

He speaks, the man can hear and he can speak plainly, instantly.

And then he tells everybody, don't tell anybody about this.

Which really is honestly, it's laughable every time he does this.

Don't tell anybody.

And the more he says, please don't tell anybody, they can't shut up.

They're just proclaiming it far and wide.

I think I've got five different things that I would love for us to walk away with this morning.

The first would be this persevere in prayer.

More specifically, persevere in prayer past obstacles.

Have you ever had the experience, just in human life, with another human being where you have asked them for something and have clearly said no?

But somehow you have persevered.

Let me ask you again.

Let me say the same question in a different way.

Let me just wear you down with my asking.

And at some point the person says, Yes.

I think most of us have had that human experience, but have you had that experience with God?

That's what this woman had.

At some level, Jesus' first answer seemed like a stiff arm.

It certainly seemed like a no.

She persevered, she kept going.

Luke chapter 18, don't flip there now, you can look there later.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

You know, a lot of times when Jesus gives a parable, they don't give us the explanation.

We have to wrestle, we have to debate to try to figure it out.

But some there's one in Luke chapter 18 where he says, hey, here's the parable, and I'm going to tell you before I even tell you the parable exactly what it means.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

That you ought to pray and never lose heart.

Pray and never lose heart.

You could say pray and never give up.

No.

Please hear me.

There will be some times where you're praying for something very specific, and circumstantially that thing becomes impossible.

Maybe you're praying for a friend to become a Christian, and then the person passes away.

Time to stop praying, they'd become a Christian.

But the normal emphasis of the Bible is if there's the tiniest shred of hypothetical hope, you keep praying.

You keep persevering, you keep clinging, you don't let obstacles slow you down.

And I just I ask you this question: Is there anywhere, anything in your life that you were praying for?

And maybe because it hasn't been answered as quickly as you would like, you've just kind of given up hope.

You've just resigned yourself.

That's not the Christian way.

We are supposed to persevere in prayer past obstacles.

The second thing would be this have honest humility.

Be humble.

And why do I say it this way?

Because in one sense, all humility is, is it's just honesty about who we really are.

It's not thinking too highly of ourselves.

Pride kills perseverance.

You know, the temptations had a famous song, I think the Rolling Stones redid it later.

Ain't too proud to beg.

But some of us are too proud to beg.

I don't want to beg, I don't want to persevere in prayer, which is essentially begging, because I'm too proud for that.

We may not say it that way, but that's what's going on.

But when you're desperate, pride goes out the window, right?

I don't care anymore.

John Piper said, humility is the opposite of entitlement.

Think about that.

What does it mean to be humble?

I'm not entitled.

But listen, there are at least two different versions of pride.

There's the one form of pride that I think we're all very familiar with.

It's the stuck up, arrogant, hey, look at me, I'm better than other people, I'm entitled, I think highly of myself, and I think everybody else ought to think highly of me as well.

And most of us know people like that, and we don't like them for good reason.

But then there's another type of pride, and I call it pouty pride.

Pity pride.

Woe is me.

My life is so hard.

Somebody did something to me that I don't like and I don't understand and I don't agree with.

And listen, it's self-absorbed.

I'm having a bad day, and I kind of wish everybody around me would have a bad day with me.

Because I feel like the center of the universe.

And you want to make people walk on eggshells around you.

And guys, that's not a good way to be.

Listen to this is a quote.

This is John Newton, all right.

Pastor in England wrote Amazing Grace.

I think we're singing that later.

But a man had written him a letter.

I'm actually not sure if it was a man or woman.

Someone had written him a letter about being depressed.

And here's part of John Newton's reply.

Listen to this.

You cannot be too aware of the evils inside of yourself, but you may be improperly controlled and affected by them.

A low opinion of yourself is right, but too low an opinion of the person, work, and promises of the Redeemer is wrong.

He's still addressing this person that's depressed.

You complain about sin, but when I look at your complaints, they are so full of self-righteousness, unbelief, pride, and impatience that they are little better than the worst evils you complain of.

We can let our hardship and pain become an excuse to be so narrowly focused on ourselves, myopically introspective.

And that's just a reverse form of pride because it's self-centered, it's entitled.

Let me try to give you an illustration to try to bring this home for us.

Because I mean the whole Jew Gentile thing, we don't fully get it.

It's a little bit weird.

So here's my best effort.

All right, we're coming off of the World Cup.

And let's just imagine Messi and Ronaldo, and for those of you that say, you know, soccer's a communist sport, I don't keep up with that stuff.

These are supposedly the two best soccer players in the world.

They feel pity for America because it's like, man, you guys keep putting a team out there, y'all can never win.

They come to America and they say, we're gonna find the best soccer players in America, we're gonna train them for the next four years.

America's gonna field a winning team four years from now.

And let's say you have a best friend, maybe a daughter, college athlete, and she is one of, if not the best female soccer players in the world in the U.S.

She hears about this, she goes to the training camp with Ronaldo and Messi.

I'm here.

And they say, we didn't come to train women, we came to train men.

How might she respond?

How might some of you, even right now, responds like, I hate this example?

Misogynistic example.

How dare he?

We are so quick to find reasons to get offended.

That's like a new form of self-righteousness in our day and age.

I can be offended before the next person.

What if this woman gets offended?

How dare they?

They don't know how they don't know me.

Angry, walks away.

I'll show them.

Not gonna get trained by the two best guys in the world.

Or she could slink away.

Oh, that was so mean, that was so sad.

But what if she says, you know what?

You're right.

Male athletes faster than female athletes, I get it.

But I'll do, I'll I'll just come on the sidelines and be your ball girl if you'll let me.

Maybe they train her.

Maybe she becomes the best in the world.

What if this Gentile woman in this passage was into cancel culture?

Jesus, my daughter has a demon.

Please heal her.

I came to minister to the Jewish kids, not to the Gentile dogs.

Jesus called me a dog, called my daughter a dog?

Cancel.

I mean, basically, she says, Hey, you want to call me a dog?

That's fine.

You want to call my kid a dog?

That's fine.

But I'm gonna think of ourselves as little house puppies that live under the table, and at least we get to eat some of the crumbs.

And he says, I like this lady.

I like the humility.

I like the perseverance.

C.S.

Lewis, you've probably heard this before.

It says, humility is not thinking less of ourselves, it's just thinking about ourselves less.

Here's the most loving way that I can think to say this in modern-day vernacular.

Humility is getting over yourself.

Don't think too highly of yourself, don't think too lowly of yourself.

Try to not think about yourself, just think more about Jesus.

Get your eyes off of yourself, off of your circumstances as much as you can, and get myopically narrowly focused on the Lord Jesus Christ and all of his power and all of his graciousness and all of his love and all of his willingness to draw near you and me in our neediness and answer prayers.

Focus there.

Drill down deep on that.

Meditate on that.

That'll change your life.

So have honest humility, but third, have humble boldness.

Humble boldness.

Humility and boldness, we think, is two different sides of a spectrum, maybe, but they're not.

In Christ they go together.

Now, I want you to notice what she did.

We may not notice it at first, but she based her second prayer on Jesus' word.

Did you notice that?

But the kids get the food first, dogs get the food second.

And she said, I'll see that, Jesus, and I'll match it.

You want to call me a dog?

Fine.

Just give me some of your crumbs.

One of the best ways, guys, that we can pray, read the Bible, take the words of God, and then turn them back into a prayer.

It is the best way that we can pray.

Charles Spurgeon, the Great Baptist preacher, said, Listen, when you pray that way, it's basically like taking a check that God's already signed.

It's like just walking into the bank saying, Hey, Father, you wrote this, you signed it.

I'm just your kid coming to the bank to cash in.

Pray the scripture, turn the scripture into prayers.

Tim Keller said this: She is wrestling with Jesus in the most respectful way.

It's rightless assertiveness.

Think about that.

I have no rights, rightless assertiveness, but I will assert myself.

The desperation ought to drive us to shameless persistence.

Our weakness ought to drive us to, like Jacob in the Old Testament, hey, I'm clinging to you.

And he says, let go of me.

It's like, hey, you can kill me, but I'm not letting go until you bless me.

I may have shared this example with y'all here before, but years ago, I had some really bad back pain, and I went to a doctor and uh he said, you know, I want to try something on you.

It's kind of new, it's kind of experimental, and it's very painful.

So I need to ask, are you okay with that?

And I said to him, I said, as long as it's not illegal or immoral, I will try it at this point.

That's how much pain I'm in.

And he said, and you'll tow the line on that.

I said, I'll get really darn close.

I don't care.

I want to be fixed.

How's your prayer life?

How desperate?

How bold?

How aggressive?

How assertive?

How shameless are we in our prayer lives?

Or have we just kind of succumbed to passivity?

Okay, Sarah, Sarah, whatever will be, will be.

This, you know, life is hard, and nothing I can do about it.

That is not the Christian way.

Listen, the Christian way is not naive optimism, right?

It's always gonna be sunshiny and beautiful and bluebirds on my shoulder if I'm a Christian.

That ain't Christianity, not biblical Christianity.

But neither is it just this woe is me pessimism.

Life is always gonna be terrible.

I might as well just go have a pity party and die.

There ought to be this hope-filled confidence.

My Savior rules the world.

And does he sometimes ordain some things in my life that hurt and cut and I don't like and I don't understand?

Yes.

But I'm gonna keep clinging to him.

I'm gonna keep persisting.

I'm gonna keep hoping.

Martin Luther said this we have to learn to see God's yes hidden in his no.

God loves to bless his people.

Another commentator pointed out this.

This is the only person in all four gospel accounts who ever wins an argument with Jesus.

Think about it.

I've never noticed that before.

I mean, we have already seen several arguments that Jesus had with the most elite, the most scholarly, the scribes and the Pharisees.

Right?

And if Jesus was a boxer, it would be just like TKO after TKO.

He is knocking people out.

If he's a wrestler, he is verbally body slamming all of them.

I mean, they they he is mopping the floor with them.

Well, all of their intellectual capacity.

He's humiliating them.

But this woman comes in humble and begs.

And in a sense, she wins the argument.

Jesus, he says, Okay, I'll give you what you want.

Because she's humble and she's bold.

Fourth.

Notice both of these prayers in this passage that we looked at, they weren't ultimately prayers just for me.

It was heal my daughter.

It was heal my friend.

Yes, so much of the Christian life, guys, should not just be us praying for ourselves, but praying for our neighbor.

God bless me and bless my neighbor.

God help me because I'm needy, but help my neighbor too.

Again, we're not supposed to live self-centered lives.

Can you be honest with God about all your pains, all your weaknesses?

Of course you can and you should.

But then you should also look to the left, look to the right.

Who are the people suffering beside you and say, God have mercy on them?

God heal them.

God help them.

You know, when God in the Old Testament started with Abraham, I'm gonna start with you, Abraham.

I'm gonna bless your family.

He also said, Through you, I'm gonna bless every nation.

And it was just a few chapters later where what do we find Abraham doing?

He's praying.

Who's he praying for?

Lot, his cousin, nephew, but he's also praying for the wicked sodomites.

Christians are supposed to be praying for every tongue tribe and nation, even our enemies.

I mean, pray for those who are spiritually deaf to have their ears opened to this glorious gospel.

And then, fifth, by God's grace, we need to be doing everything that we can to bring others to Jesus.

Bring others to Jesus.

I mean, the gospel of Mark is Peter's eyewitness account.

And how did Peter get to Jesus?

His brother Andrew said, Hey, I'm at the Messiah.

Come and see.

That ought to be a normal part of the Christian life.

I'm telling others, here's what Christ has done for me.

Come and see him.

Imagine if your friend in Birmingham, you know, Birmingham's kind of a foodie town.

We got a lot of good restaurants here.

It's one of the reasons I love Birmingham.

But imagine if your friend is like, hey, I'm about to open the greatest restaurant in the world.

Michelin three star.

I think that's the highest.

I'm not an expert on all that kind of stuff.

In downtown Birmingham.

Not opening yet, don't have an opening date.

Because you're such a good friend, we're having like a soft start.

I want you to come experience at Share Meal.

And you go, and it is the greatest cuisine you've ever experienced in your life.

Magical, overwhelming.

And at the end of the meal, he says, Now, listen, the menu's not exactly finished yet.

We don't know exactly our open date.

I hadn't hired all my staff.

Please don't tell anybody.

But you're just so overjoyed.

They're like, this was the greatest experience of my life.

What do you mean, don't tell people?

Look, I'm just gonna tell a few people.

And the word gets out.

I mean, that that's a little bit of a sense.

Jesus is like, listen, guys, you don't understand really who I am yet.

You don't have the full picture of who I am and what I came to do.

So don't publish this yet.

I'm trying to get away from the crowds.

I'm trying to get some rest.

I'm trying to get some time with just my 12 men and y'all.

And it's like they couldn't shut up.

They were in the season where they weren't supposed to talk about it and they couldn't shut up.

And guys, you know what?

We're in the season where we're supposed to be talking about it all the time.

And I know for myself I don't talk about it enough.

And I get paid to talk about it.

There's one more kind of theme in this passage.

It's kind of like a hidden theme, but here it is.

The goodness and the glory of Jesus is uncontainable.

Have you ever been at the beach, like on a beautiful, bright, sunshiny, high noon day, not a cloud in the sky, and the sun's so bright that maybe you just close your eyes to try to get the sun out, but it's like the sun is so bright, it's like it's still coming through your eyelids.

That's a little bit what Jesus is like.

You can try to hide yourself from his glory, from his power, from his magnificence, from his.

You can't get away from it.

It's everywhere.

It's that's part of what's going on here.

Jesus is like, don't tell anybody I'm trying to hide, and it just doesn't work.

He's that glorious, he's that good, he's that powerful.

One commentator said, This is about the sufficiency and the surplus of Jesus.

He never runs out.

Part of what makes Jesus so glorious is he practices what he preaches.

And here's what I mean.

Think about this with me for just a second.

He's the only human being that ever lived a full life, sinless perfection.

He was the only one that could have come to God with rightful assertiveness.

Hey, I want this from you, Father, because I deserve it.

He's the only person that could have ever prayed like that.

We can't pray that way.

But he didn't pray that way.

Think specifically about his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.

This is the Olin translation.

All right, but here essentially here's what he's saying.

Father, you know, I was in eternity past when we planned this whole thing.

But now that I'm down here on planet Earth at eyeball level and I'm looking to the abyss of suffering hell for all these people who can't even stay awake with me for one hour to pray.

I don't like this plan anymore.

Is there any other way?

Yet not my will but thine.

He had a right to say no.

I mean, he said that, right?

He said at any point he could have called for legions of angels to come rescue him.

He's out of there.

He had a right to say no, but he chose to say yes.

He had a right to resist, yet he chose to submit.

He was bold to ask.

I mean, guys, I don't think you can get any more bold in your prayers than that.

Jesus saying, Is there any other way other than the cross?

Even though he knew there wasn't.

Yet he was humble to obey.

The gospel story, guys, is the greatest reason for every single one of us to be 100% humble and at the exact same time 100% bold.

Think about it.

I mean, the gospel is the good news, but the gospel, in one sense, is founded on the worst news of all time.

You realize that?

To really understand the gospel, there's this prerequisite of bad news that says, you know what, you and me are a dirty, rotten sinner.

You're so bad, you're so selfish, you're so stubborn, I am so wicked, I am so perverse that I deserve to suffer in hell forever and ever and ever because of the way that I've offended my creator.

And that the only way that I can get out of hell is God the Father had to take his pure, innocent, undefiled, loving Son and put him on the cross and let him suffer the wrath that I deserve as my substitute.

In one sense, it's the most terrible news of all time, and it's simultaneously the most glorious news of all time.

So I ought to have, and every single Christian ought to have, just this unbelievable humility.

Who am I?

I'm a creature made in the image of God who rebelled against him and terribly offended him.

I deserve hell.

How can I ever have any pride?

And yet, I'm a child of the king, man.

I'm forgiven.

I'm cleansed, I'm right, I'm locked in, can't lose it, can't screw it up, even if I want to.

Boldness, rightless assertiveness.

So, Christians, we should never walk around with a chip on our shoulder.

Thinking too highly of ourselves.

Nor should we walk around having a pity party, nor should we be sheepish and shy and scared.

There should be this humility that literally does consider others better than ourselves.

It shouldn't be that hard.

It should be pretty natural.

Because we live with ourselves and we know our own junk.

But there also ought to be this freedom, this boldness, this love, this assertiveness that comes because Christ has loved me so freely and so dearly.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we are so unworthy.

But you treat us as though we are worthy.

Thank you for your life.

Thank you for your death.

Thank you for your salvation.

Thank you for your smile.

Thank you for your near nearness, Lord, that you live inside of us, that you put your spirit inside of us, that you're changing us, that you're growing us up, that you're freeing us from all the stains of sin that remain in our character.

Lord, I pray for myself, I pray for every one of us that in a very fresh way we would taste and see your goodness and your glory this morning, and we would be joyfully motivated to go and tell others.

Pray all this in Christ's name.

Amen.