June 22, 2008
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A Mother’s Heart by Pastor Don
Pastor Don shared this message with us on Mother’s Day. It is a wonderful message. I closed captioned it, so will share it with you with audience comments in [ ] brackets, and in Pastor Don’s own words. This one touched my heart in a big way.
In Mark, the seventh chapter is a passage of scripture that fulfills not only the significance of the song but also of this day that we are so blessed to celebrate. The Lord has a Word for us from Heaven, it is a Word of encouragement, a Word of strength. He is our God and He is faithful. [Yes, Lord]
There was a woman who learned this in the seventh chapter of Mark. I want you to pay close attention as we draw ourselves into the story and hear what the Lord has to say to your heart. Beginning in the 24th verse. “From there He…” speaking of Jesus “arose and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And He entered a house and wanted no one to know it, but He could not be hidden.”… He entered a house and wanted no one to know it but He could not be hidden. ”For a woman…” Can you say, “For a woman?” [For a woman] “a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about Him, and she came and fell at His feet.”…
This woman isn’t just a woman, but this woman is a mother. And there are just some things that may attempt to hide, but when a mother has a desire and a need for her child, she will bust down the walls to get to someone that can fix it. [amen] When a mother has a need for one of her children, there is no giant too big that he can overcome her or prevent her from taking him out. When a woman has a need for her child, there is no job that is too low to take and no circumstance too difficult that she cannot find a way to succeed. The Bible tells us that she came and fell at His feet.
This mother was a Greek, a Syro-Phoenician by birth, and “she kept asking Him.” First of all, she goes through the process to uncover where the Master is hiding. She’s not going to let this opportunity somehow escape her just because someone said, “Oh, He’s busy.” … “Oh, He’s a taking a rest right now.” “Oh, Jesus is not available.” That was not going to cut it for this momma. There was no way. If she had to she would have gone through the roof to get in the house. She would have rented a bulldozer and come through the front door.
And then, when she gets in the presence of the Lord, notice that it doesn’t say she asked once and went away disappointed. Oh that we could get the people of God not to give up so easily. [amen] There’s some people that if you, give them a word of correction they’re leaving the Church. If you tell them where to sit, they’re disgusted and giving up on the ushers and leaving. Then, sometimes all you need to do, you don’t even have to have any proof, but if you hear a rumor about the Pastor or some of the elders. Or if you hear a rumor that one of the trustees took 25 cents, that’s sufficient for you to give up on giving. Come on, somebody. If after you pray, five minutes later the symptom is still there, you give up on healing. If you have a dream and you believe that you can be a servant or of service to God, and someone tells you that you need more training and you need to go back to the drawing board, but you think that you’re all of that, so you give up on service to the Lord. Sometimes we quit too quick! We give up too easy. You know, it becomes a problem when you have a lack of vision and your motivational force can only last but for a moment of time when the, the manifestation of what you’re hoping for is just around the corner and you won’t even get down the block. Then you’re going to be disappointed and have to blame somebody. But the blame falls right fully at your feet because you gave up. You quit too soon…[laughter] The most important bank account that you could have, to Jesus, is a savings account. For a savings account shows that you have, or at least you’re trying to practice patience, endurance, and the economic value of precious things. Sometimes we should save something. People come to me for economic counseling, and I say to them, as I say to you, yes, you want to give unto the Lord, but you also want to become a saver.
For the economy of the Kingdom of God is that Jesus saves. [laughter] I’m waiting.[laughter, Amen] the devil went up to Heaven and he said he wanted to have a battle with Jesus. And the Father says, “Well how do you want to do this battle?” And he says, the devil says, “I don’t care, I just want to beat Jesus at something.” So the Father says, “Well, listen, the latest technology now is computers, so we’ll have a battle on computers.” And so Jesus agrees to it, and they sit down. They bring out some computers, and then the Father, just as quick as He can begins rattling off information. And so satan is entering his information into his computer, and Jesus is entering His information into the computer, and everything. And they’re just going on, just going on. So they’re going on for days and days and just entering it in. And then, sure enough, you know, the Lord realizes that He needs rain on the earth, so the Father sends some lightning bolts down and so the computers crash. [laughter] And so, the devil is all upset and he says, “My computer’s crashed.” And Jesus says, “My computer’s crashed too.” And then the Father says, “Well, let’s see what information you have on your computers.” The devil had none. He said, “When the power went off,” watch now, “When the power went off, I lost all my information.” [laughter] Jesus just reached over to the right hand side, picked up His floppy and said, “Jesus saves.” [laughter and applause] That work for you?
When you deposit into the Heavenly bank, as the brother just testified. When you deposit that, you are storing up treasure in Heaven. God doesn’t need your treasure in Heaven. It’s stored up there so that when you have a need down here, Jesus said He will open up the windows of Heaven where you’ve stored up some treasure, and it’ll pour down. [amen, thank you Lord] Lord have mercy. I’m preaching now. This is the good stuff. You’d better plug in and get this.
And so, when you have a need and you say, “Lord, Lord, if you don’t show up, I don’t know what’s coming up.” Jesus’ll open up the windows of Heaven and say, “You’re just like me. You’ve saved some stuff.” Angel 333,001, [laughter] take some of this stuff down to them and bless them.
And did you notice that suddenly, do you understand how it said, suddenly, so this Syro-Phoenician woman, this Greek woman, she goes to Jesus. He is hidden but she discovers Him. She asks, but she doesn’t ask just once. She persists in asking. She asks again and again and again. How do I know? For the Scriptures said…”she kept asking him…” She what? [kept asking] ”she kept asking Him to cast the demon out of her daughter.” This demon was an unclean spirit. Come on somebody.
An unclean spirit. We know some people with unclean spirits. An unclean spirit is something from outside of this daughter that comes in or upon this daughter and instead of going right when she should go right, even though it’s against what’s best for her, she goes left. Come on now. We’ve had some people in here, sitting in the House of the Lord, that have some unclean spirits. That when you’re trying to do the right thing, and you have information to go right, here’s something that just comes upon you and you feel compelled to go left. When you’re given good Godly advice from the Word of God, or from your pastor, or from the elders, and you have your blinders up and you can’t hear what they’re saying, and therefore you’re supposed to be at peace and you’re in turmoil. God’s trying to help you get out of turmoil, and get you into peace, but you can’t follow instructions long enough. You want to take credit for it and you want to think that somehow, but you know, there are demons in the world.
There are demonic spirits, there are unclean spirits. If you are addicted or driven beyond your will, you may be experiencing something from the demonic realm. Sometimes a person has a hate or a dislike for something and they just, you know. I was doing some contracting work this week, and playing with bulldozers, and I needed some stone and one of the guys said to me, one of my guys met you. I said, “Oh, that’s great.” And he’s come back, and he says, “That’s the nicest black man I’ve ever known.” [laughter] Come on, let’s get real. Racial prejudice comes from a demonic realm. Anybody listening to what I’m saying? It comes from a demonic realm. It causes you to think things that are not true about people and, and to move in ways.
Religious discrimination comes from a demonic realm. Sometimes the heart of a husband can be turned from his wife and it can be a demon speaking to him. It can be his computer. The computer can sometimes open up channels and pop-ups can come up that are from unclean spirits and he can spend more time looking at uncleanness, and then he doesn’t want to face up and be a man about it. That it’s his fault, it’s his weakness, and he’ll blame somebody. Blame his wife for his own uncleanness.
I remember Willie Williams, he’s dead now, and so I can talk about him. Willie had an unclean spirit of gambling upon him. And so every paycheck, the first place he went, before he went to God or anything else, he went to buy lotto tickets. Lotto tickets. For the cancer that was eating him on the inside of his stomach that killed him, there was no relief in lotto. Come on somebody. There’s no relief.
And so sometimes we have these unclean spirits that torment us, and the first step, before we can get to the Savior with it, is to get honest about it. You know, some of us are driven by compulsiveness, or hypocrisy, or we, we just are out of balance in our judgment of other people. As if somehow we’re never out of balance. Sometimes we get confused between God’s best and what we want to do. Sometimes your want to’s are driven by unclean spirits.
So this mother has a daughter. The Bible doesn’t tell us how this demon draws the daughter, or we don’t know if she was a person of rage, we don’t know if she slammed doors and broke dishes, and, and cursed people out. We don’t know if she punched people and was physically violent. We don’t know if she hated herself and cut herself or mutilated her own body. We don’t know how this demon spirit affected her. We don’t know if it made her just sit in the corner in a catatonic state. We don’t know if she had fits or if she just couldn’t control herself in other ways. We don’t have any information. We only know that the mother’s heart was breaking over the fact that her child was tormented and her child was in desperate need of a Savior. That, the doctors and the people of her society had no answer for this condition, they had no answer for what was tormenting the daughter. And so the mother is just compelled, “I’m going to get some help in any way and any how that I can. By somebody, somewhere.”
And she heard about Jesus, and it popped into her consciousness that Jesus has helped other Jews. He’s done this for the Jews. And she said, “I’m not a Jew, but if He has that ability and that power, maybe He will see the compassion and the love of my mother’s heart and something good can happen for me.” [amen]
We say, “Well, Pastor Don, why is this Jewish thing important? Why do you bring that up?” Let’s read the more of the story. Come on now. So in verse 27 “But Jesus said to her, “Let the children be filled first...” Well, He’s not talking about delinquents, He’s not talking about under 12. He is talking about the Children of God. At this time the Children of God are described as the Jewish Nation. The Gospel had not yet gone out. Jesus had not yet gone to the Cross and made salvation available to whomsoever will come. Salvation now only belongs to the Jews, through the Law of Moses. There is no other way to get to God. The only way is to have a fear of God as Peter says in Acts Chapter 10. Whoever fears God and does good is right with God. But the Jews have the inside track. They knew how to get to God. And it tells us what Jesus is referring to is that the children are to be filled first.
Watch what He says. “…for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” Lord have mercy. Can we get good now? It’s going to get good now. You all ready? In the time of Jesus, there was no such thing as racial discrimination on the basis of color. It didn’t exist. It wasn’t known in their world. When the Romans conquered you, they didn’t conquer you because you were black, white, yellow or green. They just conquered you because you had something they wanted, land and money. That was all that they wanted. So the Romans didn’t discriminate, nor did the Greeks, nor did any of the earlier peoples. But there was prejudice, nonetheless, that had racial roots. When Moses settles in Canaan land, and Joshua leads the people, the 12 tribes, they are other people in the land. You had Amorites and Hittites, and Jebusites, and Parasites, [laughter]. I just love throwing that in there. Yeah, we had bloodsuckers then and we have bloodsuckers now. So, when we move into the scriptures, we realize though that the Jews were taken into captivity in Babylon. They were there some 70 years.
There was a remnant of Jews though that were left in Israel, in the land when the majority of them along with Daniel, Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego were taken in captivity to Babylon. Which is now modern day, what? Iraq. Ok, so they’re in captivity in Iraq, then the Persians and the Medes from Iran move on over and attack Iraq, where Babylon is. But during the process of time, before the handwriting is on the wall, and during that time period of Daniel, guess what. There’s a guy named Nehemiah, who goes to the King and says, “Oh King, I want to go back and rebuild the walls, and rebuild the Temple area.” So, the King has favor on him, allows him and Ezra and Nehemiah to go back. But when they get there they find that the remnant of Jews that were left there have begun to change some things. That the religion as it was handed down from Moses had been changed and altered. And they had moved the places of worship, and they had moved the way things were, and they had moved the interpretation of it. Listen, we’re living in a similar time right now. Where they’re moving our cornerstone. They’re trying to move our foundational rocks. They’re trying to give us a different way to get to Heaven. And they’re trying to substitute some other things.
We even have idiots on the radio and the television that are trying to convince us that the time period of the Church is ended and you should leave your churches. That’s insanity, suicide. For the devil’s thing is to divide and conquer and isolate you. Take you out from under wisdom and power, take you out from under good counsel. Take you out from under the Word, so he can isolate you so you can develop whatever theology you want, and invent some way to get to Heaven, only to find out that when Jesus comes back, He expects to see the Church filled, to see it strong. He expects to see it solid. For He said, the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church. And until He comes, the Church is to be standing and strong. [AMEN] I feel like preaching now. We need to understand that anyone that attacks the Church to seek to divide it and destroy it, OH YEAH, we have problems! OH YEAH, we have division! Guess what? We’re a family. We’re supposed to have problems and divisions. [applause] That’s what makes us strong. It makes the Church strong, that we don’ agree on everything. That we don’t have it all 100% perfect. That’s what makes you strong. That you learn to love and tolerate and work together even though everyone isn’t always on the exact same page. Lord have mercy! It’s insanity in our midst. And we need to get back to the solid rock on which we stand, which is Jesus Christ, the Son of God risen from the dead, that salvation could come not just to the Jews, but could be opened up to the Gentiles. [yeah!]
And Jesus knows that He is called to bring this message to the Jew first and then the Gentile second. And discrimination had entered. When the original Jews got out of Babylon, and got back in the land, they found a group of people called Samaritans. And the Samaritans had established religion on the basis of what they thought, what they liked. I like having chicken every Sunday. It’s a good thing. [laughter] But you can’t turn it into a religion. I like worshipping on the mountain, but if God said worship in Jerusalem, the you’re supposed to realize that Jerusalem is Jerusalem and inventing some mountain of your own, doesn’t make it holy, nor does it make it right. And as a result of that error, the Jews looked on the Samaritans as dogs. And so discrimination began to develop, that because of dress or cultural identification, they knew you were a Samaritan. Then the Jews would shun you. They’d cross the street to get away from you because you were a Samaritan. You were a dog.
So what Jesus is saying to her, is you are considered a dog. You are a Gentile. Because either being a Gentile which was not a Jew, or being a Samaritan, which was a half-Jew, if you would. Both of them all fitted in the category of dogs. They could not be saved. They could only be saved by the laws of Moses, therefore they were outside of the Law. They were outside of God. So Jesus isn’t calling the woman personally, a dog. Hello. He is saying culturally, you’re considered little dogs. Everybody got that? Wave your hand if you’ve got that. Or else you’ll leave here saying, “Lets go call people dogs.” [laughter] I said, let’s not…[laughter] Let’s not, huh. Let’s get away from calling people stupid. Get away from calling them dogs. Let’s get away from elevating ourselves by trampling down other people. [amen] Alright. Let’s open our minds and our hearts. As long as I’m pastor of this church, I’m going to do everything I can to see that we stay multicultural. If God sends us a bunch of Polish people, I’m going to have then sing in Polish. [hallelujah] There’s only three of you here, huh. [laughter] You Polish too? Four. We’ve got four Polish people. So if you Polish people want to do a Polish dance unto the Lord, and sing a Polish song unto the Lord, come on, bring it. We’ve got, we’ve got to escape this. The devil has sown a seed in the United States of America that needs not to grow. [amen] It needs to be ripped up by its roots.
Now, Jesus has said to the woman, He says, “Let the children be filled first.” He is making a theological statement, for He was sent to give the Gospel to the Jews first. So He says, “Let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread…” which is the Word of God, it is Himself, Jesus the Messiah, the Children’s bread, the bread that He was sent to His own. He was sent to His own. And then it says, “and throw it to the little dogs.“ The only problem here is, He’s dealing with a momma. He’s dealing with a real momma. No is never no, dealing with a momma. I live with one. [laughter]
And so, she has her mind fixed that something is going to happen for my child. And so He, look at verse 28, “And she answered and said to Him, “Yes, Lord…” I’m sure she said it real sweet. [laughter] Notice how mommas, when they correct you they all get smiling up here but under the table is one of those big swords. [laughter] You know, and you’d better have the right answer. So she said, “Yes, Lord, yet even“. She’s going to teach Him now. “…even the little dogs under the table eat from the children’s crumbs.”… You know, Jesus, I’m sure He smiled when she said that. [laughter] And I’m sure He looked under the table and said, “You can put down the big sword now.” [laughter] Even the little dogs. Here’s what she’s saying. She somehow has the revelation that the Son of God is not limited nor is He small. [amen] She has a concept in her mind, that the mercy of God, will transcend her perception of her situation because the quantity of God is greater in it’s magnificence that we normally could think, hope, or ask. Somehow she’s got the revelation and the understanding, that just a little bit, Lord have mercy, just a little bit of what Jesus has will take care of a lot of her stuff. She has an awareness that a crumb, she doesn’t need the whole loaf, she doesn’t need two slices, she’s saying, “I’ll take just a little crumb, just a speck. Let me just crawl under the table and get a speck of Your mercy. Just a speck of Your kindness. Just a drop of Your grace, is more than enough to give me what I’m asking from You.” [shouting in joy] Don’t you dare limit the possibilities of God. He’s a BIG GOD. [hallelujah] And a little crumb is enough for all of us! Oh, somebody praise Him in here! [clapping and praise] Glory to His Name! Glory to His Name
Praise God, as Pastor Don said, that all we need is a little crumb for we have a BIG God.
Praying your weekend is blessed.
Heather
